a blog about a lot of things

Jungle Book: A review Many children count The Jungle Book as a childhood favourite, myself included. So my expectations for this film were perhaps unrealistically high, especially as the 1967 film was also one of my favourite films (we had the VHS copy). It’s perhaps impossible to expect any film to hold up against such idealistic standards of nostalgia and The Jungle Book indeed does not match my nostalgic aspirations. It far surpasses them. This is not a film that is grounded in the past and limited by its source material. The movie is instead revelatory in every sense. The movie is revelatory while being faithful to both Kipling’s original and to a lesser extent, the 1967 film. There is definitely a slight feeling of classic spirit about the film which is inevitable in a story which we all know. One of the most striking themes about the film, which I never really got in the original film, was of how much Mowgli is stuck between two worlds. It’s pretty much the central...

With Woody Allen films, at least in recent times, the viewer either gets a movie that’s instantly forgettable ( Magic in the Moonlight, Irrational Man) or instant classics ( Midnight in Paris, Blue Jasmine). Café Society breaks the trend by falling between these two categories by being neither a classic nor unmemorable. Drenched in nostalgia like many of Allen’s best films the movie never really seems to come off as a film instead of incredibly well-crafted idea and so at times it’s possible to lose interest. The movie is theoretically about emotion and passionate love but surprisingly (considering the director) never really manages to find the right chord that makes it seem like this passion is felt. Jesse Eisenberg is the latest actor who seems to be playing the onscreen role of a young Woody Allen and easily nails the role. His scene with the prostitute may be the best Woody Allen scene not actually starring the man himself. The film is separated into two main arcs ...

Selection Day: A Review Aravind Adiga has a reputation as a chronicler of the ambition of the Indian masses to bridge the gap of inequality. In this, his third novel, the scope is once again on the effort of members of the lower classes trying to make it into the exclusive world of privilege but this time the author goes about it by focusing on modern India’s great love: cricket.  Few things are more representative of the aspirations of the Indian masses than the dream to be a cricketer. IPL success stories capture the entire nation's attention and this allows the writer to detail another familiar Indian character, the entrepreneur who sees brilliant opportunities everywhere. The cricketers are Radha and his younger brother Manju, both exceedingly talented and continuously bullied by their father, who has made a contract with God that his son’s will be the best and second best batsmen in the wold. They make a less divine contract with Anand Metha who sponsors them ...

Richard Linklater’s films always make the viewer conscious of time, whether it’s the years represented in Boyhood or the hours that go by in Before Sunrise. Everybody Wants Some details the weekend before the start of semester for a group of college baseball players. Linklater has stated that he considers the film to be the spiritual sequel to Boyhood but in tone and style it definitely reminds one of Linklater’s 1993 comedic masterpiece Dazed and Confused. The film is quite light on plot but overall follows freshman pitcher Jake as he interacts with his teammates and navigates his first college weekend. It’s extremely heavy on the conversation and as expected for the director (possibly the best writer of dialogue in current cinema?) the characters go over ideas of varying magnitude which seem to be relevant on a universal level. Sure, the characters aren’t discussing the biggest ideas in the world but the philosophies somehow seem to be profound. There’s no real story...

With films that are shot in one take the majority of focus tends to be on this fact and the difficulty of achieving such a feat. This is understandable as the difficulty of achieving this has made the production of any one-shot film an impossibility till the fairly recent past and the development of digital movie cameras. In 2002, critically acclaimed releases such as Russian Ark and Irreversible were released and while there was sufficient regard for the technical aspect of the films being shot in one-take it was only until Birdman ( edited to seem as one take, not actually one take) in 2014 that it could really be said the one-shot entered the realm of regular film criticism. The posters and trailer for Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria regularly reference the fact that this film was shot in one take. It remains an impressive feat even if they do tell us a lot. Filmed in a couple of hours in the Kreuzberg and Mitte neighbourhoods of Berlin during the early hours of the mornin...

Suicide Squad seems to be an attempt from DC to make a film that’s more subversive and nihilistic than its previous releases. It’s inevitable that comparisons with Marvel films be made and the closest comparison for Suicide Squad seems to be that it would try to capture (some of) the feeling of Marvel’s Deadpool. One of the recurring criticisms of Batman v Superman was that the tone was far too dark and depressing. DC seems to have overcorrected in this film by going too much for quirky.   In a film where the squad is meant to be anti-heroes and “the worst of the worst”, it’s telling that the only character who seems even slightly scary is Federal Agent Amanda Waller. Waller, played by Viola Davis and Jared Leto’s Joker are easily the strongest characters in the film closely followed by Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn. The problem is that the film is filled with characters all competition for screen time and as most of them are badly written or just caricatures, a lot of ...

Copenhagen is an easy city to love. Maybe it’s the fact that I went in June when the temperature approached 27°C and the sun shone so brightly that several of my colleagues were the colour of London buses by lunchtime on the first day. But as I’ve never heard anyone who’s visited the city say they dislike it, no matter when they’ve gone, I’d be inclined to city it really is just a lovely city. London is a hard city to love, even if you live there. In fact, it’s hard to love especially if you live there. Paris is either loved or hated by everyone that has visited it. These cities bring about strong emotions in people. But Copenhagen, when I was there, brought a general feeling of calmness and comfort. The pace of the city was very slow which probably had a lot to do with the weather but also the lack of crowds in the city. We stayed less than 10 minutes from the central station and there was none of rushing and general busy attitude one would expect from such a central ...