Joker: Folie à Deux

October 5, 2024 Leave a comment

Genre: Psychological Thriller | Year: 2024 | Duration: 138 mins | Director: Todd Phillips | Medium: Theatre (PVR-INOX) in 2024 | Trailer: HERE | Language: English | My rating: 5/5

Favorite Dialogue: I HOPE YOU GET CANCER (autograph to a prison guard), signed with a sad smiley.

Joker: Folie à Deux is a bold, unsettling, dark, and subversive sequel that dares to explore madness as both a personal and shared experience. While it may not resonate with everyone (as was evident with nearly empty theatre), the film is an ambitious character study, elevated by outstanding performances from Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker. This film is one of the most unique interpretations of the Joker mythos, weaving together psychological drama, abstraction, romance, and musical surrealism into an unforgettable cinematic experience.

Picking up where the first film (2019) left off, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime, is confined in Arkham Asylum in Gotham City, where he meets Harley Quin (Lady Gaga). Arthur Fleck as Joker is nothing less than brilliant, haunting, and unforgettable. He is as disturbing and tragic as ever, but this time with a quieter menace that builds alongside his relationship with Harley. Their twisted relationship serves as the film’s emotional and narrative core. The chemistry between Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga is one of the film’s strengths, with their performances drawing both fascination and discomfort as they navigate a romance defined by shared trauma and chaos. 

Director Todd Phillips shifts away from the gritty realism of the original, blending genres and taking inspiration from Hollywood musicals. The visuals are striking, often juxtaposing Gotham’s decaying, grimy backdrop with the characters’ vibrant fantasies.

Needless to say, Joker has been (and will always be) my most favorite comic book character, the most kickass supervillain ever created.

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Rowdy Rathore

June 24, 2020 Leave a comment

Theatrical Release Poster

Genre: Action | Year: 2012 | Duration: 140 mins | Director: Prabhu Deva | Medium: Theater (PVR-EDM) in 2012, repeat on DVD in 2020. | Trailer: HERE | Language: Hindi | My rating: 3/5

Favorite Dialogue: “Rowdy Rathore: Don’t angry me.”

Rowdy Rathore, a remake of the Telugu film Vikramarkudu, was supposed to be a come back film for Akshay Kumar as an action hero. Even though there’s several good sequences of action throughout those 140 minutes, it somehow lacked the punch of Khiladi Kumar, especially with no story or plot whatsoever, the characters are easily forgettable. Prabhu Deva has used all the tricks that goes in making a successful Telugu hit in this Hindi remake – song, dance, crass humour, romance, thunderous action and a fearless supercop out to outsmart a bunch of fearsome goons. Comic scenes are not so comic, and what really made me laugh was the dialogues in Bihari Hindi of the villains and the way it was delivered UP-style with southy twang. After a very long time, I got to hear words like, ‘Pagalet’, ‘Baklol’, ‘labarchantis‘, etc. Prabhu Deva made Akshay Kumar wear multi-colored pants forgetting Akshay’s style and using Telugu tricks, reminded me of Raja babu of 90s.

The story is of a small time crook Shiva (Akshay Kumar), who is obliged to get in shoes of his look alike, Vikram Rathore, a fearless cop who dies with severe head injuries during a fight, to rescue a fictitious village Devgarh in Bihar, from its despotic feudal lord.  Shiva falls for a girl from Patna, Priya, played by the buxom Sonakshi Sinha, whom Shiva refers as ‘Mera Maal’ repeatedly, and who could have done better than just showing her midriff!

This low-IQ, deafeningly loud, unapologetically crass, regressive drama full of mindless action is my re-watch Movie of 2020.

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Gangs of Wasseypur

April 16, 2020 Leave a comment

gangs-of-wasseypurGenre: Action | Year: 2012 | Duration: 150 mins | Director: Anurag Kashyap | Trailer: HERE | Language: Hindi | My rating: 4.5*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: “Sardar Khan [Manoj Bajpai]: Us harami ko hamein mitana hai. Goli nahi marenge saale ko. KEH KE LENGE USKI.”

I have watched this epic several times over last 8 years! Anurag Kashyap’s crime drama Gangs of  Wasseypur starring Manoj Bajpayi (truly outstanding as Sardar Khan), Richa Chadda (as Nagma Khatoon), Reema Sen (as Durga), Piyush Mishra (as Nasir, the narrator of the story) among 370 others, portraying immoral criminals is a story of emergence of coal mafia in Bihar from pre-independence 1941 moving forward through three generations. I quite liked Kashyap’s style of short scenes, several in number and often a series of montages taking the story forward continuously maintaining the intrinsic impact of the story. Kashyap’s use of dark humor to judiciously propagate violence bears an uncanny similarity to Quentin Tarantino’s style of film making, though he never allows his influences override the distinct Indian color and the local Bihari flavor of language, environment, diction and character.

Sardar Khan is an anti-hero protagonist who finds it difficult to go without sexual release, yet he is tender at heart for the people he really cares about. Sardar has four sons from Nagma Khatoon and one from Durga. Each son has a different story apportioned to them. Sardar’s oldest son Danish Khan takes the rein over from his father. Faizal Khan (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), who is a useless drug addict, gets a sudden transformation from a die hard film fan and a pot smoking idler to a responsible family man. Faizal falls for Mohsina (Huma Quraishi), and this romantic track gives the movie a refreshing change. Because of the length of the movie, Gangs Of Wasseypur was released in two parts. While the first  part explored this revenge saga, the second part dealt with the money squandering lobbyists, turning into foolhardy gangs overnight.

This gritty, exciting, violent, must-watch movie with outstanding music and full of dry & dark humor is a must watch more than once.

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Lost in Space

September 16, 2013 Leave a comment

Lost in SpaceGenre: Sci-fi | Year: 1998 | Duration: 130 mins | Director: Stephen Hopkins | Medium: VCD (Eagle Entertainment) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 2.5*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: “Robot: Warning! Warning! Alien approaching!”

The plot of this film is an adaptation from the 1960s TV series by the same name. In year 2058, the Robinson family comprising of five members, who apparently are all nerds and space explorers, along with Major Don West (Matt Leblanc) begins their journey from the dying Earth to another planet, Alpha Prime, using the newly built Hyper-drive for the next 10 years in stasis. However a terrorist re-programs an on-board robot, that changes the course of pre-fixed trajectory, and all of them gets lost in space, and crash-lands on a dying planet, after fighting off alien spiders, and rescuing a chameleon variety of monkey from a broken space ship from future. The rest of the movie is about entering bubbled time-warps and meeting Robinson Jr. in future where he has successfully built a time machine, and escape from being sucked into the black hole to the vast outer space.

Even though the special effects and animation are brilliant considering 1990s , the story line is totally unfocused and depressing. The future looked as bleak as the past with similar domestic problems and realities, so much so that sometimes the sci-fi turned into a family drama. The end was very bleak, and even a viewer with low IQ can conjure up the time vortex goof-up. I think i would have enjoyed the movie if I was 10!

This ‘lost & incoherent’ sci-fi with hollow adventure is my Movie of the Day.

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The Usual Suspects

May 28, 2013 3 Comments

Photo source: http://imdb.com

Photo source: http://imdb.com

Genre: Thriller| Year: 1995 | Duration: 106 mins | Director: Bryan Singer | Medium: DVD (Sony Home Video) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 4.5*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: “Verbal: Keaton always said, “I don’t believe in God, but I’m afraid of him.” Well, I believe in God…and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Söze.”

A group of five unlucky small time criminals, Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), a corrupt former police officer; Michael McManus (Stephen Baldwin), a short-tempered professional thief; Fred Fenster (Benicio del Toro); Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollak), a hijacker; and Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey), a con artist with cerebral palsy, are brought to a police station for interrogation in regards to a mass murder on a ship by a semi-mythical Hungarian crime kingpin feared as ‘the devil himself’ and known by others as ‘Keyser Soze’. With the promise of $91 million and the opportunity to keep their lives, the enigmatic Keyser sends this group on a fool’s errand in San Pedro harbor to stop a competitor’s huge cocaine sale that would interfere with Keyser’s own drug operation, using Kobayashi. In the end, the director brilliantly reveals the identity of Keyser Soze.

This visually stunning thriller full of black comedy with intricate twists is my Movie of the Day.

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