EXCERPTS from my film reviews
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Meet the Spartans
It ought to be very encouraging for upcoming writers to watch bigwigs such as Twentieth Century Fox making such duds; if I was a spoof writer, I’d pack my bags and book the first flight to Hollywood, to meet the acute shortage.
Angels and Demons
The screenplay may not have the depth of hell, but it has a diabolic odor.
The Young Victoria
There’s much that could have been written about, and a variety of perspectives that could have been taken, on the subject of the young Victoria. However, the writers do not attempt a fresh approach. Furthermore, some of the incidents are not quite factual.
Outsourced
It would have helped immensely had the scriptwriters come to India and done some basic research.
Burn After Reading
The Coen brothers’ script seems like a first draft… Just when your funny sides are beginning to split, someone takes a gun and shoots someone in the face, or someone takes a chopper and starts hacking someone to death; weird mix: blood and humour!
Amelia
The script flies in a more-or-less straight line with no ups or downs. There is no conflict. And Amelia’s navigator is put in a very bad light; luckily for the filmmakers, none of his descendents have taken them to court for character assassination.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The screenplay reveals the dearth of writers-with-depth in the land of extravagant film budgets.
Zombieland
The scriptwriters have adeptly incorporated humor in the horror genre; the dialogues and action bits are hilarious despite the gore.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
The writers have taken a novel written in 1938 and adapted it to the present times, blending the age-of-scarcity with the age-of-plenty in an almost frivolous fashion. Thus, while some of the lead characters camouflage their hungry-on-the-street past with fur and wealth, in the long run they are not afraid of revisiting it.
Terminator Salvation
The script appears to have been written with a single, forceful purpose: to keep the audience gasping for breath and not allow them time to think. And it succeeds. It will surely kick even those who don’t understand a word or have a clue of what’s happening.
Code Name: The Cleaner
The lines for the clowns are anything but funny; it would be much better to watch a major part of the film with the sound turned off.
The Other Boleyn
History as we know it is only as authentic as the various historians would have us believe. Sometimes, non-historians get creative and try to rewrite the history books.
Prom Night
The lead character, who’s a psychopath, neither looks nor behaves like one. He’s a case study of contradictions; when he murders someone, he’s loud and messy, but when there’s someone in the room, he drags bodies and cleans up the place as silently as an ant.
I wonder if the writer, director, or actor ever read a book on criminal psychology or visited a lunatic asylum.
The Dark Knight
Blurring the line, the good guys are shown having bad traits, while the bad guys are shown having good traits. More dangerously, the psychopath is a very likeable person. Is this, really, the kind of movie you would want your growing kid to watch?
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Strange that the Catholic church in India has not reacted to this blasphemous film starring the Beast of the Apocalypse wearing a cross around his wrist; carrying a gun made from a melted cross and church bells, and using bullets comprising holy water; and fighting on the side of men, against demons.
The clergy in India should also like to know that his live-in girlfriend, Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), who is a freak too, wears a large, shiny cross as a pendant, and literally transforms herself into a body of flames like the fires of hell, when it’s action time.
The lead characters in this film, like those in ‘The Dark Knight’, are neither white nor black; they are dangerously grey.
Watchmen
The superheroes of today, sadly, aren’t at all very good role models. For instance, one, the Comedian, is a potential rapist, and another repeatedly hacks someone to death in cold blood. Pity the gory depths to which filmmakers will descend to draw in their audience.
Quantum of Solace
Sadly, another major superhero has fallen into the darkness, in a film that is very grey.
WALL•E
WALL•E has binocular eyes and a pair of caterpillar tracks. EVE has no legs or wheels, instead, she levitates; her head is not physically connected to her body but perpetually hovers over it, magnetically. And mankind, glorifying in the luxury of lazy wealth, in a star-liner, has evolved, or rather, degenerated, into inflated balloons who can think, feel, and feast, but cannot walk or stand.
On the surface, this is a beautiful love story between two robots, diametrically opposite physically—one is deeply-grounded in the rotting earth, while the other is a pollution-free airy being from outer space—but with a shared, mental focus: to care for a rare sprout and initiate reforestation.
The Young Victoria
The character that Mark Strong plays is a rather odd one, with opposing characteristics: on one hand he is depicted as a scheming and powerful individual and on the other he screams at the teenage Victoria, grabs her hand, and thrusts a pen and paper into it, attempting to force her to relinquish her rights to the crown and to sign a regency order; not very convincing at all.
Flashbacks of a Fool
Writer-director Baillie Walsh opens his debut film with a major blunder.
With a cherubic smile, a child slits the whole length of his palm with a knife, while another looks on; performing this blood brother ritual, his expressions do not change; even as the blood gushes out, there is not even the slightest trace of pain on his smiling face. Now, any psychiatrist will tell you that this is a dangerous omen.
It gives the audience the wrong indication that the characters would grow up to be ruthless/grey, and sets an incorrect tone to the film. Quite to the contrary, both of them grow up to be pretty nice people. What then was the purpose of this visual? Was it simply to shock?
Outlander
Though always in battle gear, angry, fierce, and fully charged, the Viking warriors come across as being very nice people, unlike the historically-distorted version.
Alice in Wonderland
Johnny Depp is a school of comic acting all by himself. Rolling his multicolored eyes with a serious expression on his face and a mocking cackle of a laugh bursting from his throat, as the brave sad-mad clown, he’s awesome. Indeed, it’s not easy to say where the Johnny Depp character ends and that of the Mad Hatter begins, or vice versa.
The Pink Panther 2
Aishwarya Rai is artificial. What is she doing in this film?
Transporter 3
When it comes to romance and sex, Jason Statham needs some lessons; he’s stiffer than a corpse.
The Eye
It’s good to see one of the sexiest women in the world, Jessica Alba, attempting a serious role... To be honest, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for her to undergo oil massages and start doing some exercises to get those facial muscles to move.
Revolutionary Road
Leonardo DiCaprio puts up, perhaps, his best performance to date. He excels from start to finish. Watching the manner in which he leans forward and throws his lines, you are reminded of the some of the famous stars of yesteryears. Quite a pity, really, that he wasn’t nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.
As a housewife with dreams beyond the home, Winslet too is simply awesome.
Unlike in the ‘Titanic’, where they shared a lovely chemistry, here, you can feel the growing distance and stiffness between the couple; like the like poles of a magnet, they repel.
The Reader
Just when you think you’ve seen the best of Kate Winslet, she leaves you speechless with another astounding performance. Among other things, she changes her expressions, accent, and gait to enter her character. Her costumes, such as the drab, cotton dresses; hairdo; and ageing makeup add immensely to complete the transformation.
Wanted
James McAvoy has made his mark once again. Here’s a kid who’s climbing his way to the top, creditably. When he smiles, he’s naïve. And when he gets into combat mode, all the veins in his neck protrude like they are about to burst.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Known for his lively performance, Hugh Jackman, for a change, totally gets into his savage role, yet successfully brings out the human side of his character without being exuberant. Liev Schreiber displays animal characteristics, in his attitude, his growls, and his manner of leaping through the air on his fours.
Star Trek
Eric Bana comes across more as a dumb-ass street hoodlum than as the villain with an advanced scientific brain that he’s supposed to be playing.
The two kids who act as Kirk and Spock in their youth, however, put up a wonderful act. Jimmy Bennett, driving a car at a frightening speed, and Jacob Kogan, in a furious fist fight, epitomizes the anger and rebellion of their respective characters in the teeny years.
The Other Boleyn
I have never met this chap, Henry, but reading his face from the portrait paintings, it appears that Eric Bana fits quite nicely in his oversize shoes. Am afraid I cannot say the same for Portman as Anne Hathaway, though. Don’t get me wrong. I love all her varied expressions. But honestly, her mannerisms on many occasions are far from befitting one with a royal upbringing.
The Dark Knight
The one who robs the limelight, quite deservedly, is the late Heath Ledger, as the joker, a psychopath mass-murderer with a smile glued on his face; literally. Will Ledger get an Oscar nomination? There is a huge chance. And if so, given the Academy voters’ tendency to get emotional, Oscar history could very well witness a standing applause for a posthumous award.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
I wasn’t in Britain on the verge of WWII; still, I would think it looked a whole lot different from what the set decorator would have us believe.
The Young Victoria
The streets are pretty clean and the market folk too are well-dressed up; it would have helped had the art director and costume designer read some classic literature and gotten a feel of the real London in the early years of the Victorian era.
Elegy
For no real purpose some of the close ups are shot with a handheld camera, which shakes so badly that you wonder if the cameraman is suffering from trembling-hands-for-no-reason disease.
The X Files: I Want to Believe
The lighting is grammatically wrong; perhaps, intentionally: in a freezing environment under the open sky at night, the background tone is cold but the actors in focus are bathed in hot colors and their faces are sweat shiny, even though they blow smoke vapors while speaking.
Public Enemies
The lighting is terrible. There is no consistency in the color cast; a wide range is employed, and it changes within moments, sometimes within the same scene.
Pride and Glory
The cinematography draws too much attention to itself. At one point, a close up image taken through a window, bobs up and down; for a while, you reckon someone is spying on the people inside; but later, you realize it’s probably just the cameraman in a bobbing boat.
Seven Pounds
Sad to see basic editing flaws in a Hollywood film! For instance, if you look closely at the time when Smith and a girl are seated in a romantic field, you’ll notice that a close up of the actor with a serious look cuts from a shot while a smile still lingers on his face.
The Orphanage
During the exteriors, the camera moves a lot, sometimes on cranes, sometimes just panning, and sometimes on steadicam. Then, the moment the shot cuts to the interiors, still compositions are employed. Nice contrast. And when the main character goes into one her dizzy spells, the camera takes you on a merry-go-round trip.
The Strangers
Pity to see a technically-sound, relatively low-budget film, shot primarily at one location and utilizing only two actors for the most part, gone to utter waste due to the absence of a story. The uniqueness of this horror film is that the sets and lighting is consistently romantic, and this mood is enhanced using soft Country music.
The cinematographer, however, goes overboard with poetic license and gives a similar color tone to the interior as well as the exterior, with total disregard to the night and the moon beam. A handheld camera is used for some of the static close-up shots but a tripod is used for all the others, for no apparent reason… At times, the lighting appears to take on a greenish tinge; this could either be an error or a touché to highlight the growing horror.
Flashbacks of a Fool
The cinematographer has bathed Daniel Craig and his expensive surroundings, sometimes bereft of detail, in icy hues. For crucial emotional scenes, rather than the extreme close up, the extreme long shot is employed.
To build tempo, the editor employs the Soviet style of montage, fusing separate images of a little girl walking towards danger, a mother and her little daughter chopping vegetables, a woman doing gardening, a grandmother with a walking stick crying out in warning, and a couple at the height of lovemaking.
The ocean seems to have been used throughout as a metaphor. Scot jumps into it as though to cleanse his soul before he revisits his past. And the sounds of the ocean often splash onto and merge with the trippy background score. There’s also a funky number that plays an important role in the film and reverberates at crucial intervals, with a massive punch.
The production designers have successfully created two opposite worlds: the atmosphere of Scot’s plush mansion and the hotel where he meets up with Hollywood biggies is bleak and sick whereas his simple, childhood cottage by the seashore is a romantic poem.
I'm Not There
The lighting and colors keep changing according to the cinematographer's whims and fancies; when it's not in black in white, Edward Lachman's canvas is bathed in reds, blues, greenish yellows… or whatever hue comes in handy.
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The camerawork is unbelievably rotten. The cinematographer has made the rudimentary error of shooting a 3-D film with a shallow depth of field! As a result, patches of blurry objects appear everywhere. To compound this, the two perspectives have not been shot in perfect sync.
The editors must have had a terrible time playing around with all that no-good (NG) footage.
Shortcut to Happiness
Three editors share the credits. It is unlikely that they all worked together. So it’s not possible to know who was responsible for the corny shot transitions, such as the vertical wipe and the iris out. Moreover, there are at least two nasty jump cuts, which give the impression that the editors ran out of fillers.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Oh, that terrible vertical-wipe transition seems to be in fashion these days.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Awesome to watch cars, planes, and helicopters transform themselves into gigantic robotic creatures—metallic plates, wheels, nuts, and bolts hanging from their armored bodies; laser rays emanating from eyes that were once headlights; and gasoline leaking out of their speaking crevices, like spittle.
The Orphanage
What would make you jump is the sound effects. If you’re a heart patient, don’t forget to pop some pills before the show begins. At appropriate moments, even the simple closing of a door produces a sound that’s enough to get your blood pumping furiously.
The Eye
There’s nothing subtle about this supposedly ‘horror’ film, including the effects, which like loud crackers, is more likely to deafen your ears than scare you out of your wits; a sad case of the filmmakers not studying Hitchcock and his art of creating suspense sans the gore.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
The nightclub jazz tracks create an elegant mood. But did someone forget to include a sound person, and was there no sound effects editor in the studio? The audio track is too crystal clear; there is no ambience sound.
Alice in Wonderland
The sweeping orchestral score marked by strong rhythmic beats imposes a feel of war clouds over an adventurous journey.
Wanted
During the cheap-thriller scenes, including the blood-splattering ones, the soundtrack alternates between chamber music and heavy rock with a positive tone, sending out a very dangerous subliminal message: that killing is cool and fun.
Changeling
The soundtrack, improvised on a popular jazz piece, gives a period effect; but, for the records, this particular style of music wasn't in vogue till well over a couple of decades later.
Couples Retreat
Surprisingly, the majority of the film has no sound effects, background score, or songs; and during the odd moments when it has, the decibels are at an almost inaudible level. However, the opening credits scream, “Music by AR Rahman’, trying to capitalize on his name, though he has composed only two of the sixteen songs, both of which are played quite loudly during the end credits.
Watchmen
The outer space music sounds like the howling of creatures from hell to the accompaniment of a soft orchestral piece.
The Happening
M. Night Shyamalan’s audience, in general, always come to each of his films expecting to see something on the same level as ‘The Sixth Sense’, and many go home disappointed each time. That’s sad, because his films are not all that bad. In fact, if the same audiences were to watch this film without being told who the director is, they would enjoy it much, much more.
Like it or not, you still cannot trash his films, for three good reasons: the intelligent concept; his uncanny ability to make you jump out of your seat; and the message in the end, even if not powerfully conveyed.
We cannot be sure whether writer-director Shyamalan drew inspiration from Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ or from a scientific theory that appeared in a prominent magazine some years ago. However, the Master would surely be honored at the ease in which Shyamalan, who has studied his style and techniques in detail, administers adrenaline shocks.
The Other Boleyn
It might not be possible to ascertain the entire truth. But when queens and maids of honor educated in the elegant French court are shown sobbing and bickering like ordinary vagabonds, in addition to innumerous other major blunders, you strongly begin to suspect that there is much in this film directed by Justin Chadwick that is not quite accurate.
Married Life
The dullness makes Ira Sachs’ film look like someone’s brilliant idea of video-graphing a one-act play.
The Darjeeling Limited
Good to see a Hollywood filmmaker dedicating a film to Satyajit Ray. However, far from Ray’s style, the film sometimes employs the type of loud camera movements found in some of the B-grade Bollywood films. Pitiably, Wes Anderson seems to be totally unaware of the radical difference.
The emotions and reactions of the villagers are conveyed quite remarkably. Irfan Khan, in a bit role, and some of the junior artistes, stand out; in particular, because their realistic behavior contrasts very well with the insipid comics of the lead cast.
In fact, the few dialogues that are acted out in Hindi show such a stark disparity with the rest of the film that it appears to have been directed by one of our artist filmmakers. The credits, though, do not include an associate- or co-director. This could possibly mean that an Indian ghost-directed these scenes, or, the actors directed themselves.
What Just Happened
Director Barry Levinson relies more on style than content, deliberately breaking the basic rules of film grammar. So, don’t be surprised if you see a speaking actor who breaks the rule of thirds, or, an off-focus actor speaking in a two-actor shot, which has the other in focus.
The Hunting Party
It takes a certain caliber to make a satire on the ravages of war and its mastermind. Quite apparently, Richard Shepard simply doesn’t have it.
Old Dogs
Walt Becker’s soap opera disguised as a crude comedy is a disgrace to the ‘Walt Disney’ tag. This movie is not meant for kids.
Be Kind Rewind
Michel Gondry’s comic film about a VHS rental library manager who resorts to guerilla filmmaking to please his customers ought to be an inspiration for the innumerous wannabe filmmakers, in particular, many of the ‘film school’ products who ‘dream’ but never get down to making their ‘dream’ films, that all one needs to make a film of any genre is a little bit of creativity and loads of practicality and positive attitude.
To get the full feel, one must necessarily sit through the last few minutes while the subtitles roll up to the background of realistic footage in black in white. Unfortunately, everyone’s in an impatient hurry these days; the lights in the theatre come on much before the film is over, to rob you of these precious moments, and like the bulldozers of the new-age builders, the cleaners surround you, noisily.
The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep
Actors at times put up exemplary performances driven by great direction. Sometimes they perform well in spite of poor direction. One of the surest indications of the latter is when, in the same film, the quality of acting by the various characters ranges from rotten to satisfactory and excellent.
Having set a very high benchmark for herself, after her phenomenal debut in Lars Von Trier’s ‘Breaking the Waves’, Emily Watson once again demonstrates her versatility.
What was the casting department thinking when they cast Morrissey as the captain? He neither has the temperament nor the bearing of one. Furthermore, his frivolous behavior, which includes incessant firing at empty seas (even when there is a kid around who is running havoc!) and getting ridiculously excited in the face of an, albeit, false alarm, unintentionally gives the impression that the British army in WWII was led by a bunch of aimless clowns.
Jay Russell appears to be a much better director of action than director of actors.
Captivity
Some films, such as this, are made for a singular, shocking purpose: to capitalize on a sick audience’s thirst for the sight of human blood and gore…I am still in a state of utter shock; shocked to see the tragic pits to which Roland Joffé, the director of such notable films as ‘The Mission’ and ‘The Killing Fields’ has degenerated.
-Dalton
