sumanchakraborty-kol Reviews

Article 370 (2024)

A Legal Puzzle, Thrilling Storyline, good Action Sequences

[10/10 · 27 February 2024]

Hollywood like picturization: camera work in few action sequences were great. Beautiful landscape of Kashmir were peppered throughout the movie.

Acting: 0 overacting and realistic dialogue in crucial times. Villains were very realistic, not over the top at all.

Modern Background music. Very unconventional for Indian movies.

Script: crisp, smooth flowing, perfectly edited. Kept up the tense situations. Perfectly showed the challenges, whether on ground or within political corners.

Complete Entertainer as a Movie. Some patriotic movies get a little boring, but this one was a complete Entertainer through and through.

Kantara (2022)

Beautiful Visuals, Good Story, Great Acting and World's best Climax.

[10/10 · 16 November 2022]

Visuals: picturesque western ghats, green deep Forrest, well-choreographed action sequences.

Story: layered characters, twists, story from the perspective of Naxalites, govt & eternal struggle for common people.

Mixed in with supernatural religious symbols and finally ending with the much talked about last 10 minutes.

The last 10 minutes was a pure adrenaline rush, NEVER saw anything like it in any movie.

As an atheist in the 21st century, all these people's beliefs shown on the screen are superstitions to me, but special is the land of India which has produced brave warriors due to these beliefs only.

Hats off to Rishab Shetty & team. 30 out of 10. Made for Big screen.

( Watched on the Big Screen in Telugu with English subtitles. Wish I understood the language or could see the Hindi version. )

Eden Lake (2008)

Unrealistic and Childish

[2/10 · 16 January 2022]

Absolutely mindless and unrealistic protagonists and antagonists. Ridiculous behavior from characters.

"Alone" on similar topic was extremely realistic.

Mother! (2017)

Loud and Childish Metaphorical Storytelling

[3/10 · 18 November 2018]

Mother has a good story, good acting (given the loud script) with beautiful photography. It's the story of human (or godly?) ego and love for self, from multiple perspectives. It's full of metaphorical scenes, which from the middle of the movie becomes obvious and in the third act becomes so loud that it is a disgrace to a viewers intelligence. When Scorsese or Nolan created metaphors, they are subtle. The metaphors of monster movie IT, is simple and clear, but never loud. But, oh, this loud piece of pretentious story-telling, which insults viewers directly, that it tries to shout metaphor over the rooftop. An utter shameful third & final act.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

Incoherent and unemotional with fragments of greatness

[6/10 · 2 February 2014]

One big factor of Tolkien's universe is emotional aspect and metaphorical meaning of the conflicts going on to the real world. This movie tried too many things but failed to be coherent enough to leave a great aftertaste. There are moments of greatness through dialog, action, cgi and some fragments of great characters. But unfortunately the emotions of a Hobbit or the leadership of Thorin don't get much screen time among the action of Elves. Many good moments, characters are initially built and then the movie leaves them and jumbles between 2-3 parallel story arcs. We don't see enough of Bilbo here and the emotional bond between Bilbo and the dwarfs is almost gone. We had many emotional moments related to loss of homeland and fearless leadership of Thorin in the first installment of the trilogy, but the second installment fails to deliver in that aspect, instead there are some good moments depicting the resurrection of the dark powers. This instead of complementing the Hobbit storyline competed against each other and finally left almost nothing for Freeman. Freeman's natural and eloquent depiction of Bilbo is a treat to watch shorty in the final act. And the Smaug is really menacing with his tyrannical but witty personality. On a technical front, this movie being so reliant upon cgi should have invested more in high quality cgi, the cgi looks artificial in some scenes during the light and shade in some scenes related to motion. The brand name of Tolkien's universe is enough to drag us to the theater and the Producer/Director should have paid more respect with a better thought out and a more authentic storyline.