bunty-thoidingjam Reviews

Win Win (2011)

Heart-warming story about work, money and wrestling

[6/10 · 29 April 2014]

The movie starts off with characters like pieces of a puzzle…but it's not like forcefully scattered like Chris Nolan's or Guy Richie's movies. As the movie progresses, it slowly falls into place.

At the beginning of the movie:

Toddler snuggles into her mother's bed to sleep and asks where's daddy. Mom says daddy's running and the kid sort of asks - what's daddy running from.

The last movie of Paul Giamatti I saw was Cold Souls where his soul was sucked and made into an object. That one was a thought-provoking movie!

Here in this movie, he's having a trouble making ends meet, so he is full-time lawyer and also coaches a wrestling team of kids. He decides to take care of a senile old man for some extra income. Then a teenager appears at the porch of the old man's house and he turns out to be his grandson. This is where the movie really gets warmer.

But this reticent and unassuming kid is a wrestling prodigy.

The characters are so beautifully etched and realistic. Through out the movie, I didn't for a single scene feel indifferent to their roles.

The Consequences of Love (2004)

It takes courage to die an extraordinary death

[8/10 · 29 April 2014]

A stylish story-telling. Dramatic like Malèna but with the eroticism toned down. Dialogues are focused because director Paolo Sorrentino is hellbent to make spoken words as limited as possible.

Introvert Titta di Girolamo from Southern Italy lives alone at a hotel in Switzerland, confined by the mafia. Everyone is curious about his profession. He is shown as the one of those uptight people who hardly utters a word and lacks in imagination. Everything is fine and smooth with his life until he falls in love with a barmaid. Since the movie is Italian and mentions little of Mafiosi, I expected guns and tragic scenes. And the fun is that the film-maker managed to twist around everything we know of clichés about Mafioso. Does the barmaid reciprocate and fill his life with something exciting? Girolamo wrestles with insomnia and hopes to find courage to get out of the prison kind of life.

An irony of a scene comes up somewhere in the beginning. Girolamo shares a quiet dinner with a couple who is his neighbour. The narration shows that bitterness corroded the husband's life as he exclaims to his wife: I was immoral and wicked and I ruined your life. You know what frightens me most? Dying of old age, I want to die an extraordinary death. And right at that moment his wife hands him a pill and says: You've got to take this now, Carlo.

There's another scene of the old couple. The husband tells her woman they should holiday to Cambodia and so, she asks where would they get the money. He replies that he will sell off the painting gifted by her mother. She retorts that the painting is the last sign of her mother. To this he gets angry: Your materialism revolts me. You're just a petit bourgeios. All this time, Girolamo had been listening to them with a stethoscope held to an adjoining door between them.

I just love verses being read out. Here in the movie, a young woman who happened to occupy Girolamo's favourite seat reads out a beautiful verse about love to her friend. With the barmaid behind him, it seems like the situation is telling him to do something but he just stands there.

The soundtrack of the movie suits exactly. Songs fill up the silences in the movie for the film-maker was aiming to make the conversations dramatic and indeed he did pull it off.

A mesmerising Italian song closer at the end. (I don't know the duo who sang this) Some lines go like this…

You need passion,…lots of patience…raspberry syrup… And a touch of recklessness. You need a pound of…your own ability…Latin sensuality and a little distance. That's how you make it, lipstick and chocolate… and not to eat them would be a shame. That's how you do it over low heat… stirring, with lots of feeling.

Watch it but don't expect the Mafiosi fanfare. Or for that matter, don't expect nitty-gritty stuff like Gomorrah.

Scenic Route (2013)

High way to life

[6/10 · 29 April 2014]

The synopsis reads: The relationship between two old friends is tested as they are stranded in the desert. As candid as that! IMDb rating had 6.2 but what drew me to the movie was the Mohawk guy whose nose is stained with dried blood and who seems to be out of his mind.

Two friends set out on a road trip; one – played by Josh Duhamel – is a blue-collar worker and the other – Dan Fogler – an aspiring writer. The second character, Carter, stages a car breakdown in the middle of the desert and makes Mitchell, the first one, seethe with anger. With no network and waiting for the next vehicle, they managed to climb up a nearby hill for catching the mobile service and this is where their conversation took off. Carter accuses Mitchell of forgetting friends, family and his passion and Mitchell tries to drive senses into Carter that his writings aren't clicking with readers.

The dialogues are so carefully scripted that you'd wonder who's the real loser between the two. Both are so convincing with their honest point of view of their lives and there's nothing right or wrong about it but had to do with one's conviction.

I can unabashedly tell you that though both of them were too eloquent in the forsaken place to be that expressive, I really like it when Carter tries to remind Mitchell about a conversation so delightful on a cross- country trip that they drove 100 miles out of the way. Mitchell says neither one of them could remember what it was. So Carter reminds him that: It might have… Might have been when you claimed that art can reach a point where its quality became fact rather than opinion. Mitchell retorts: It sounds like a couple of hours in my life I would like to have it back.

There's another gem. Mitchell goes on when Carter asks about his job: There's this motivational poster in my office; that is like eagle soaring out of the sky and s**t. I'll spend some days just staring at it, trying to decide whether or not I'm more suicidal or homicidal that day.

There's this series of hypothetical conversations that if somebody really tries to overhear somewhere in between he'll have no idea what the f**k they're talking about. Responsibilities as bunch of keys or Care Bear's name for a pet. I like the idea of the dialogues being so haphazardly knitted like between two old friends. This is only a little part of the movie. I've left out the plots.

Frances Ha (2012)

Undateable but totally charming!

[9/10 · 29 April 2014]

Undateable but totally lovable. That's what Frances Ha is. She's lanky, clumsy, awkward, handsome and charmingly unsophisticated. Frances is a struggling dancer in New York and her life is carefully dissected. Somehow in the beginning it travails her love life, her financial struggle, her separation with her friend - Sophie and falling-out-of- love life. Sophie, her best friend, moves out from their flat and suddenly her topic comes up during *dinner with folks of her new flatmate. Her small circle of friends is also an amusing one. She clumsily dances, runs like a boy and trips & forgets her wounds. Watch her as she tries to put her life together by going away to Paris for a torturous holiday or moves back to her college to earn some bucks. Listen carefully to the conversation as characters in the movie lie to each other in order to project that their lives are happier and that embarrassing truth, to which it finally doesn't matter at all. Wasted at the *dinner, she falters and speaks about what kind of relationship she is looking for and says this is probably the reason why she is single. Dialogues are just realistic as ever.

Benji, one of her flatmates during the course of the movie, informs that another flatmate had told him that she and he might end up being married. So, she replies: I guess we're like a married couple in a way. We talk. We don't have sex. The script of conversations seems so unprepared and skewed but it all adds up.

At the end of the movie, Benji who calls her undateable all the time congratulates her about her show…. she replies: Thanks, I like things that look like mistakes. Greta Gerwig (Frances) is like Geena Davis without grace. Her name is not actually Frances Ha. But it's like that sarcastic 'Ha ha' after you've said a contradictory statement. Funny, witty, engaging and unpredictable. I totally enjoyed the movie. A different feel.

Ship of Theseus (2012)

A surprise delight of intelligence and direction

[7/10 · 29 April 2014]

The debut from Anand Gandhi is an introspection. And that too in a non- familiar territory: Organ transplant.

There are three protagonists: A blind, a monk (activist) and stockbroker. The first two are eloquent, learned but too self-absorbed while the last one is shown with his materialistic streak and thinks on his feet. There is another character who keeps asking and persuading the monk about his theory and to take his medicine. This nice chap converses about philosophy in the same vein as cracking a joke. The last character manages to throw up a lot of hilarious moments and mind you, those won't go down as forced ones.

Please be patient. I mean, there are scenes deliberately stretched.

There are several moments in the movie worth mentioning. I like the scene when the stockbroker go bonkers on his grandmom (bed-ridden) after just helping ease herself. They argue about how he is only making money and spending his life without a sense of anything. The stockbroker has a chum and both of them will crack you up. Cinematography is brilliant. Kudos to Anand, all those praises: You deserve it.

The Child (2005)

Stripped down to minimal to bring forth the essence

[7/10 · 29 April 2014]

What a jerk! This is what I felt about Bruno, a small-time crook, when the movie started. Then slowly the story develops in such a way that he goes deeper and deeper into trouble. About halfway through the movie he doesn't, for a fraction of second, seem to regret about the things he commits.

Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne's L'Infant silently speaks the vagaries of two lovers who belong to the marginalized section of the society that Hollywood does not speak of or for that Bollywood is so trying to forget.

I never did see the helplessness of a victim or an underdog in him but his character grew and you would thoughtlessly empathise with Bruno. By the end, I rooted for him and somehow wished everything was undone.

First thing he did was pretend to take his newborn for a walk in his pram and make up a plan to sell it off to some crooks. That plan went awry. Then Sonia (his girlfriend and the mother) gave him up to police. Then another plan with a juvenile friend to snatch bag from an old woman ended up with his friend being caught.

Watching the movie was dizzily overwhelming and yet judging the characters in the story was like a foreign thing to me.

Sonia played by Deborah Francois could look like Jennifer Lawrence if the latter acts better like the former. Jeremie Renier gets under the skin of Bruno. I cursed myself for not being able to watch it earlier.

The reluctance of the directors to use sound and music in the movie actually pays off. There are many gems in the movie. Though the film moves at a slow pace, you can't somehow predict the next scene. You feel hopeless not being able to but you'll love it if you love unpredictable plots. Anyway, I've given away many spoilers. Maybe, you can! Rather a brilliant catch for me.