Movies - January 2024

Count from August 2023: 99.

January 2024 - 14 movies and series

1. Neymar: Someone told me that this is a fun movie to watch. I had seen another movie, Jo and Jo, in which the two boys who played the leads in this movie have acted and I liked that movie. So I decided to watch this movie. I should add that the two "boys" are no longer "boys". The movie has a dog at its centre and the expressions of the dog have been captured well. The dog is a rock star. The first half of the movie is fun but the second half is filled with cliché and I ended up forwarding some of the edge of the seat moments in the movie. A decent one time watch movie.
2. Shatranj ke Khiladi: I saw a reel in which an actor playing Satyajit Ray receives a phone call from a student of film making from New York. The student says that he had watched the Apu series recently and was inspired by it. At the end of the call he introduces himself as Martin Scorsese. I felt impressed. I wondered if its true and searched for it on Google. I found a YouTube video that had Scorsese talking about Satyajit Ray. He was introducing the screening of Ray's Bollywood movie "Shatranj ke Khiladi". In the talk, he mentioned that he was inspired by the Apu series. As I was watching the video I realized that I had not seen a Ray movie for many years (decades?) now. I have seen "Shatranj ke Khiladi" but I think at that time I considered it a boring art movie and don't remember enjoying it. A few years later, I watched "Pather Panchali" and loved it. Since then I have seen a few other movies by Ray but don't remember many. So I decided to search for "Shatranj ke Khiladi" on YouTube. I found it and watched it. I liked the movie. Sanjeev Kumar and Saeed Jafferi are so good that they keep our minds off the the serious theme of the movie. I also liked Amjad Khan as the king. Usually, I like to watch a movie at its face value and not look for layers. It just makes the movie watching process too intellectual and responsible. Since this is a movie by Satyajit Ray I am sure there are underlying layers. The only one I could find was that the common people are not really bothered with the politics of Governance. They just want to live their lives. Anyway, I think I will watch a few other Ray movies in the future.
3. The Missouri Breaks: Marlon Brando's Napolean in "Désirée" stoked my curiosity towards the actor. I wanted to watch a few of his movies, especially his earlier movies. I had seen him in "Godfather" and "Superman" but the movies by themselves formed a greater impression on me than the actor itself. So I searched Prime Video and found this movie. The movie stars Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson. On paper, it seemed like a treat but the reviewers at the time of the release of the movie, 1976, did not like the movie. But since then the movie seemed to have become a sort of cult favourite, also IMDB gave a rating above 7. So I watched it. The movie is interesting, I liked watching it. Interestingly, Marlon Brando play a role that I usually associated with Jack Nicholson, at least in 80s and 90s. Nicholson has a straight forward role, with a slight negative shade. Marlon Brando was just annoyingly superb in the movie. He reminded me of many characters played by Joaquin Phoenix. Could he have been inspired by Brando? Prime Video has the good feature of providing information and trivia about the movie being watched; for many movies and not for all. Many a times, I pause the movie to read the trivia. In this movie, it is said that Brando improvised so much that the Director gave up and let him do what he wants. This is a good movie to watch. Once again the ending is clichéd as hell but that's ok.
4. Ronin: I had kept this movie in my watchlist for long. It has Robert De Niro and received  good reviews. Apparently, the car chases through Nice, in the movie, are good. The director John Frankenheimer was a famous director though I don't think I have seen any movie of his other than 'The Manchurain Candidate'. Unfortunately, I movie did not interest me. I don't think the movie has aged well. The chases might have been interesting in 1998 but I found it difficult to not press the forward button. During the climax, I had to press the forward button. The climax had twists and surprises for sure but by then I had lost interest in the movie. Till the end I had no idea who the villain of the movie was and when I found out in the end, I did not care. There are few interesting scenes but other than that I did not find anything interesting about the movie. 
5. You were never really here: Many lists that I have seen in the recent months have this movie as a must watch movie. I started watching this movie but the beginning of the movie itself seemed disturbing. So I stopped it and started watching the series "The Boys". Next day, afternoon, I packed lunch to the office, bread and egg, and decided to have it at my desk itself. I started watching the movie while having my lunch. The movie is terribly disturbing but it is taken beautifully. The cinematography and editing is good. The background music defines the movie. It sets the mood for every scene beautifully. As usual, Joaquin Phoenix is good and carries the movie on his shoulder. The movie does not have many dialogues and yet conveys its message effectively. I would not like to watch this movie again.
6. The Boys (Season 1): I have heard a lot about this series and even attempted to watch it once. But it seemed too gory and sexual. I watched two parts and dropped it. In recent times, I felt the urge to watch movies that I have not heard of or have heard about in distant past. The search led me to some interesting movies. 'You ere never really here' was one such movie. Now I am tired of the search and also, most of these movies are of disturbing nature. Not many well made comedies are available. So I decided to watch a series as that will at least keep me off the search for a few weeks. I picked 'The Boys' as I thought it was some super hero nonsense and yet it had a high rating in IMDB. The series has completed three seasons and the fourth one is round the corner. So I thought it will keep me occupied me for sometime. Unfortunately, the series turned out to be as disturbing as some of the movies I had seen. The basic premise of the series seems simple but as it proceeds the complexity increases and more characters came in. Season 1 ends at an interesting and frustrating point. Fortunately, I did not have to wait for long to watch the second season as it was readily available. The sex and violence is quite disturbing and so I cannot recommend this series for anyone though the theme perse is good and quite relevant to today's world.
7. The Boys (Season 2): The basic premise of the first season gets taken care of in the first few episodes of this season. The theme broadens and takes a serious tone in the second season. It continues to be bloody, sweaty and juicy. But in a way it talks about today's polarized world and how easy it is for leaders to use people's beliefs to swerve them off the path of fairness and justice. This series is a good black comedy-drama. Sadly, it is not accessible for many people. I will continue to go through the series till it ends. As I write this, I am watching the first episode of season 3 and I feel tired of it. I have parked it the whole day and am tempted to watch something else. But I think I will go back to it tomorrow and finish the series in the next four or five days. Then I will wait a few months for season 4 to come out.   
   
   Thaikudam Bridge concert: This is not the eighth entry as this is not a movie. But it is worth a mention here. Oh! More than worth a mention. There was some mess ups and heartaches about a Thaikudam Bridge concert that happened a few months back. It stayed with me for the past few months. So when Facebook informed me that the Thaikudam Bridge are playing in Bangalore on a day when I was in that city, I decided to book the ticket. Book my show showed that the tickets started at Rs. 999 but by the time I booked, the cheapest tickets available costed over 2000 bucks a seat. But we had to attend this concert and so I booked the ticket. The only issue was that it was in a hall, I had already seen them a few years back at Music Academy in Chennai. Though the band played well, the concert was not fun. I also attended a John McLaughlin concert a few years later (or earlier) at the same hall and that was not fun either. So I hoped the issue was with the hall and not the group itself. Maybe that hall was made for sa-sa-sa-ri-ri kind of concerts. 
   
   On the day of the concert, we arrived at the hall on time. As expected, malayalam seemed the national language of the hall. Our seats were somewhere in the middle of the hall. The hall itself was packed. Just after 7 pm, an MC started talking. He talked nonsense; not worth remembering or repeating here. At 7:20 pm, the stage darkened and the band walked in. They set themselves up. Soon the LED screen behind lighted up and the band started playing the song Navarasam. The song by itself is superlative but when it combined with the LED screen, the experience was mind blowing. It was a great, great, great concert. At the end of it, I walked out feeling sad that it had come to an end. The next day at 7:30 pm I looked at my watch and thought, yesterday we were watching the concert at this time. My young concert mate, started searching the web for the next Thaikudam Bridge concert. I am so fortunate to have attended the concert and I will see them again if they come anywhere close to Chennai or Bangalore (Not true! They are playing at Mahabalipuram this weekend and I have no plans to attend the concert. It is not a concert but a part of some two day programme and I don't have the patience to go through two days of programmes).
     
8. Captain Miller: I checked my mobile as soon as I woke up. He had sent a message the previous night, It read "...tomorrow some guys are gonna watch thenew Dhanush movie in Balaji theatre at 4. Can I go or stay for family time?" I got all choked up feeling the affection the boy had for his family. I asked his mother "His friends are going for Captain Miller and he wants to go too?" She responded "Let him go. He will get bored otherwise." I typed back "go ahead". Late that evening, he came back from the theatre after watching Captain Miller. He said it was interesting and that he enjoyed watching the movie. I had seen the trailer and it seemed interesting but I don't really like Dhanush. I realize half the world thinks he is the best thing to happen to Tamil cinema after Kamalahassan but I don't like his acting much. I mean, it is not the acting, I don't like his dialogue delivery. It seems too kiddish. So I don't like to spend money to watch a Dhanush movie. So though the name 'Captain Miller' and the trailer intrigued me, I did not plan to watch the movie. But he said the movie's good and so I decided to watch it.
   
   The show started fifteen minutes late. That was annoying. I liked the movie. It is a good masala movie. Mindless and lot of action. The action sequence prior to the interval was terriffic. But the second half was a bummer. It was not bad but it was not interesting either. A movie becomes terrific when one feel one is a part of the movie and when one feels one's life depended on the action of the characters in ṭhe movie. In this case, I felt I was a part of the audience watching the action of characters on a screen. That can be entertaining at the best. That is what I felt in the second half. Dhanush was ok. I was not annoyed by his dialogue delivery in this movie but his laugh is annoying. It reminded me of the bubble in comic books with the word 'ha ha ha' written in it. The laugh of a person, who does not want to hurt the person who is trying to tickle him/her. Anyway, not a bad movie to watch, but it has to be watched in the theatre. I don't think I will like the movie, if I watch it on OTT.
9. The Boys (Season 3): The Boys marathon continues. I had to end this crap and move on. I don't mean that the show is crap. Its good but the amount of graphic violence and sex just makes it unbearable. If one takes off the super hero part then one can map the happenings on the screen to what's happening around us. The super heros on the screen can be mapped on to politician and industrialists in life. The manipulation of the common people by the politicians and media is the same as what's shown in the series. Also, I liked the emotional side of the super heros shown in the series. They are not shown strong and perfect. They are unsure and constantly in search of love and adoration. This being a series, it gets all the time it requires to develop the different aspects of many of the characters and that's fun. I miss the Billy Joel songs in this season and maybe the previous one too. In the first part had many of his songs but the character who listens to Billy Joel has changed and also many other characters have walked in. So the number of songs by the artist has gone down. That said, the soundtrack of the series is good. Overall this season was more complex than the previous two and it ends in a complicated place. This should ensure that the audience will end up watching the fourth season. It is a fun series to watch but I definitely will not recommend it to anyone.
10. Gen-V: This is an off shoot of the series "The Boys". Its about an university for the super heroes. It seems like a coming to age movie that got contaminated due to the interference of the directors of "The Boys". This one too has plenty of gore and sex. Plenty of exploding heads, exploding bodies, slashed arms, plucked out brains and ... Bloody hell, the list goes on. I don't think I enjoyed it much. Just went through it so that I can be done with it. The final three scenes are quite interesting. It seems to be placed there for people to come back and watch season 2. I am not looking forward to it but think will end up seeing it anyway. The only interesting thought that I got while watching the series is that whenever a group of people come together to form an organization, there is injustice being done to people inside and/or the organization. Organizations are driven by a value system that a new entrant might not agree with and this causes many issues for the new entrant. But one does not have to watch the series to understand this, just go to your office/college/school. 
11. The Night Manager: I started watching this series as Tom Hiddleston is the protagonist of this series. He did not make much of an impression on me in the Avenger or Thor series, where I thought he was projected as a loser. But he is fantastic in the Loki series. In the first part he is funny and in the second one he is serious. He carried the series very well. Also, he has a terrific voice. In this series, he looks terrific. Another reason to watch this series, was that it is based on a book by John Le Carre. I have only read one of his book and don't remember much about it. But I remember his books as serious spy thrillers. This series also fits into that category. Not many scenes of violence but the series is envoloped with a constant feeling of violence and tension. Tom Hiddleston is great. So are the other actors, all of whom I have seen in other movies and series. The series is produced by BBC and the class is seen through the series. It had only 6 episode and so I was able to finish it in a couple of days.
    
    A few lines from the series are interesting enough to note down here.
    
    "How long have you been married?
    Twenty years
    Well! Congratulations.
    Its marriage, not a state of bliss."
    
    
    "Alternatively, fill your pocket with stones, walk into the sea and keep going" - Tom Hollander says it so beautifully that I had to watch it three times.
    
    I really liked the series.  
12. Blood Diamond: I loved this movie. I have been wanting to see it for a long time but kept pushing it. Finally! Di Caprio is amazing and so is everyone else. A tough movie to watch. I have heard about the civil war in African countries but the movie shows how brutal it is. I can't even imagine living through this after seeing the movies. Of course, the bloodiness of the diamonds that people buy also comes out well in the movie. I have seen a few DiCaprio movies but the performances in this one and 'The Killing of the flower moon' are the ones that I will never forget. 
13. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One: This is the seventh part of the Mission Impossible series and I find it ridiculous that I am watching it. But what's worse is that I enjoyed watching it. For me, any series in movies represents a lack of imagination. I think the people involved in the making of such movie like to be creative within a limited framework. They don't have to spend time on the character development, at least for the older characters and the basic premise of the story is already setup. That said, I think it is ok to make a series of movies with three or four parts, like 'Back to the future'. But I think making a series with seven or eight parts, like Fast and the Furious, is ridiculous. However, the Mission Impossible series is different. The series seems to be getting better with each movie. I did not find the early movies to be interesting, but I have liked the last three or four movies and this one is the best. The theme is terrific; it brings AI into it very well. The incidents are quite complex. Funnily, the action sequences in the climax bored me. I don't understand why there is a fight on top of the train. This has been done in millions of movies across many decades. I found the whole train sequence in the climax boring. If they had not had those sequences then the movie would have been two and a half hours long, which is good enough. In the recent past, I have started liking Tom Cruise movies. They are nothing more than entertainment and that's all I demand from movies on many occasions. The only issue is that Tom Cruise is alway Tom Cruise. For example, I find no difference between Ethan Hunt and Reacher. They are both Tom Cruise, simple. Ethan Hunt and Reacher are good characters not because of Tom Cruise playing those roles - Ethan Hunt and Reacher are good Tom Cruises. This would be seen as a limitation in the case of other actors but Tom Cruise chooses his movies well and he is so involved in the movie making that he ensures that it is fun to watch. I will definitely watch the second part of this movie in the theater.
14. Antony: The poster of this movie did not seem interesting and so I avoided watching this movie for sometime. At times, I was tempted to watch this movie as it has Joju George in it but then I remembered 'Porinju Mariam Jose' and hesitated. That movie started well but became a mess as it went along. I don't remember much about the movie, but Joju was good in that movie, I think and the person who acted in the Mariam character left a good impression too. But over the past few weeks, I kept hearing that this movie, Antony, is good and that it performed well in box office. So I decided to watch it. The beginning seemed promising but my spirits dropped when I saw the name of the director. Joshiy was a happening director in the 1980s but for some reason I don't think his movies in this century are of the same quality. I wondered if I should stop watching the movie but then I realized that I have never run away from a bad movie. (Not true, I have done it thrice - Saajan: I was actually enjoyed watching the first half of the movie but my friend, a movie buff, felt the movie was rotten and I did not have the guts to disagree with him. The second Kaadal Desam - even A R Rahman's music could not save the movie; we thought it was better to go home in the rain rather than watch the second half of the movie. Kadhalan - What a rotten movie! Once again A R Rahman's music sounded terrible when heard in the movie.) Besides, the movie had begun reasonably well. The first half of the movie went well. Joju was good, Nyla Usha effused energy in the few scenes she appeared. Kalyani seemed spunky. Her kick boxing seemed convincing. But then the movie turned sentimental and Kalyani stopped being impressive and Nyla disappeared. Joju continued to be effective though. The climax thankfully was short and to the point but the last scene was cheesy. On the whole, I am glad I watched the movie as it increased the movie count for January to 14. I am superstitious and want to avoid the number 13 as I believe the month I stop with 13 movies will be the last month I watch a movie for that year; not life, only year. After watching the movie I realized that the 'Porinju Mariam Jose' was directed by Joshiy and Nyla, Chemban and Joju played the titular characters in the movie. If I had known that information earlier, I would not have watched this movie.

The End