Logan Lucky (2017)

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writer: Rebecca Blunt (Probably Soderbergh)
DOP: Peter Andrews (Definitely Soderbergh)
Cast: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Riley Keough

Two brothers attempt to pull off a heist during a NASCAR race in North Carolina. They have to get out and in their explosive expert, Joe BANG (Daniel Craig), from a jail and his two younger brothers, who knows them twitters, are their digital experts.

It is the slower non-glitzy version of Ocean's 11 with seemingly non-experts working on the heist. Channing Tatum's character, a divorced father, is a failed quarterback while his brother, played by Adam Driver, is a veteran who lost his hand in Iraq. Films characters are from West Virginia and even though it is a comedy it treads a fine line and don't end up being too much of a caricature. There is this whole subtext of American symbols that we hate, like NASCAR, beauty pageants, showy patriotism with love for the forces, being put on a not too judgemental way just like the way characters are also portrayed. Balance is just correct as subtext pretty much stays as subtext without overwhelming what is a very fun film.

So glad to see Steven Soderbergh back working as a director after his retirement announcement a few years back in the above speech, which is a very good listen on the state of the cinema. His main gripe was with the studio controlled distribution model and with Logan Lucky, he did independent distribution. It was a successful effort grossing 45 million on 29 million budget. To get such an ensemble cast on this budget in itself is an achievement and Hillary Swank is also there as the investigating officer who joins pretty late in the film. Daniel Craig was slightly off-putting in the trailer but he is alright in the film.

Soderbergh, besides handling the camera, also edits his films and is someone who works very fast, apparently. The plan for the heist is put up by Channing Tatum as a 10 point notice for Adam Driver with the tenth being a minor spoiler. Soderbergh stayed on the notice long enough for me to get to the ninth point. Wonderful editing, I must say. The father-daughter relationship in the film also worked pretty well, surprisingly enough, and the John Denver Country Roads pageant rendition as well. The initial slow pacing of the film is an Ocean's subversion and it does pickup pace considerably towards the end and you just don't want it to end, which is always great. This is also the way we perceive the Logan boys, a bit slow initially but quite smart by the end.

Rating: 4/5

Contratiempo (The Invisible Guest) (2016)

Director: Oriol Paulo
Writer: Oriol Paulo
DOP: Xavi Jimenez
Cast: Mario Casas, Ana Wagener, Jose Coranado
Language: Spanish

While the clock is ticking, with the aid of a witness preparation expert, a successful entrepreneur accused of murder has less than three hours to come up with an impregnable defence.

It is a whodunnit film with an unreliable narrator. The initial parts of the film where the story or crime begins are quite well set up and the film is quite playful with the expositions and has a deliberate filmy feel (reference to Femme Fatale and all that). The protagonist has too many things to hide and a lot to lose and so he is circumspect regarding the extend to which he should reveal to the lawyer. This puts the onus on the latter to challenge him and peel the layers one by one for the audience. But it started losing me by the second half as it became just too convoluted to be possible. I don't like films where every small detail matters in terms of serving the plot. That is too on the nose for me and a little too convenient.

Overall, it is a decent enough one-time watch as long as you don't think too much about it after it finishes. Style wise it is quite sleek and the performances are a bit too theatrical. John Abraham has supposedly bought the rights for its remake and I can see why.

Rating: 2.5/5

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

Director: Tony Scott
Writers: Shane Black, Greg Hicks
DOP: Ward Russell
Cast: Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, Taylor Negrons

An LAPD detective's protected female witness is murdered, prompting him and her boyfriend to investigate the crime that leads to a corrupt politician and a crooked football team owner.

The film had a lot riding on it on the back of Bruce Willis' success with the Die Hard films and Shane Black's script being at that point of time the most expensive one to be bought. It apparently had lot of production difficulties with Tony Scott clashing with Bruce Willis and Joel Silver, the producer. The script also underwent a lot of rewrites and you do feel that while watching the film. It begins quite well establishing the extremely cynical character played by Bruce Willis. He ends up reluctantly teaming up with the banned quarterback character played by Damon Wayans. It is another one of those odd couple films with lots of over the top action and violence filmed in the 90s style. The script that is quite clever in the first half of the film turns quite shit with blatant expositions and tonal shifts by the end. It didn't do well at the box office and that put an end to the sequel idea that they had planned for it at the end of the film.

Overall it begins as a fun watch which becomes quite ridiculous, in a bad way, as the film progresses. Bruce Willis has plenty of funny lines and some cringe-inducing ones as well. Early 90s had plenty of experiments going on with the ways films looked and edits were done. Some of them, like Natural Born Killers, haven't aged well at all. But I did like the look of this film.

Rating: 2.5/5

The Grifters (1990)

Director: Stephen Frears
Writers: Jim Thompson (novel), Donald E. Westlake
DOP: Oliver Stapleton
Cast: Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Benning

A small-time conman has torn loyalties between his estranged mother and new girlfriend-- both of whom are high-stakes grifters with their own angles to play.

I decided on watching the film after doing a simple Google search of neo-noir films and the name of the director seemed familiar (Philomena, High Fidelity). It turned out to be an adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel whose another novel was recently adapted as 'Killer Inside Me' which is a favorite of mine. The film has a very play like feel to it and the color tone and settings reminded me of Robert Altman's 'The Player'. It doesn't do any spoon-feeding at the beginning and it takes a while for you to figure out what their game plan is. John Cusack's character is playing short cons, while his girlfriend is in it for the long game. His mother is doing it professionally by massaging the odds for a menacing bookmaker. Both the mother and the girlfriend are stylistically similar in appearance which suggests the Oedipal nature of the relationships that becomes quite apparent towards the end.

There are many films featuring con-men but they tend to be always about a big con that they are trying to pull. This one is a bit different and is more of a character study. Both the leading ladies got Oscar nominations for the film and they do outshine John Cusack. It is a very good watch even though it takes a bit of time to get going.

Rating: 3.5/5

The Big Sick (2017)

Director: Michael Showalter
Writers: Emily V. Gordon, Kumail Nanjiani
DOP: Brian Burgoyne
Cast: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano

Pakistan-born comedian Kumail Nanjiani and grad student Emily Gardner fall in love but struggle as their cultures clash. When Emily contract a mysterious illness, Kumail finds himself forced to face her feisty parents, his family's expectations, and his true feelings.

The story is based on Kumail's real life and his wife had co-written the story with him for the film. I had read about it (a Vanity Fair article I think) prior to watching the film and so the plot progression was already spoiled for me. That, coupled with me watching this film in an Insomniac mood ensured that it was underwhelming experience for me. There are just too many cliches and I felt it was too dumbed down, especially the cultural aspects. It doesn't help that Anupam Kher is an annoying little prick of a man due to his shitty politics which I can't just get past. One good thing about the film is that they don't take the 'stand-up comedian as protagonist' license to pad it up with funny stuff. He is in the struggling phase of his career and that is quite well portrayed. 

Film's best bits are when the girl is in a coma in the hospital. The lead up to the breakup was not that convincing for me. Film was acquired by Amazon after it got premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It did quite well at box office and garnered overwhelmingly positive critical response as well. That doesn't really mean anything for a film like this and Slumdog Millionaire is a case in point.

Rating: 2.75/5

The Thing (1982)

Director: John Carpenter
Writers: Bill Lancaster, John W. Campbell Jr.
DOP: Dean Cundey
Cast: Kurt Russell, A. Wilford Brimley, Keith David

A crew in Antarctica finds a neighbouring camp destroyed and its crew dead. Whatever killed them is nowhere to be found, unless it is hidden in plain sight.

'Thing' in the thing is a parasitic alien being that can assimilate into its victim and thus form an imitation. Once the crew figures it out, what follows is paranoia as they are not sure who among them is an alien victim. The situation was an inspiration for Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and there is an even more direct connection to the Hateful Eight as well. Ennio Morricone's unused work from 'The Thing' was largely used in the latter and 'Beastiality' also made an appearance in it.

Alien being was created using practical effects which was not quite as good as Ridley Scott's Alien. There was also this very badly executed computer exposition scene where the probability of infection and time taken to infect the whole of earth is spelled out. I was feeling that the film had not aged well during the initial parts of the film but it was misplaced as it improved vastly once it began focusing on the paranoia aspect. The production quality towards the end with the night sequences in snow is really great with flares and all that. The dog in the beginning is one creepy fucker.

It had released two weeks after ET along with Blade Runner. It bombed both critically and commercially as the gory unfriendly alien in grim settings turned the audience off. It has since been hailed rightly as a masterpiece. I actually enjoyed it much more than Alien and it should be more interesting on rewatch as well.

Rating: 4.25/5

The Nice Guys (2016)

Director: Shane Black
Writers: Shane Black, Anthony Bagarozzi
DOP: Philippe Rousselot
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice

It is the 1970s Los Angeles where a mismatched pair of private eyes are investigating a missing girl and the mysterious death of a porn star. One of the private eyes (Russell Crowe) is not officially a one and the other (Ryan Gosling) is a bit dim and has to contend with his daughter as well (Angourie Rice).

Shane Black made his name at a very young age as the writer of Buddy Cop film 'Lethal Weapon'. I haven't seen any of his subsequent films credited solely as a writer He took a break from cinema in the mid 90s and came back as a director with the excellent yet underrated 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'. The Nice Guys was written before KKBB and he has called this one as a spiritual cousin to it. I, in fact liked this one even more than KKBB probably because of the simple reason that the lead pair of actors are much more likable for me in this instance. Never been a big fan of Robert Downey Junior. Shane Black, as Video Essayist The Nerdwriter points out, is very good at using violence on screen with consequential effects. One of the most hilarious things about this film is that the bystanders do get hit quite disproportionately. It is billed as a mystery comedy and the mystery part of it is in the Big Lebowski mould where it is quite hard to make sense of it and that is not really the point anyway. You do raise your eyebrows when the daughter character doesn't want anyone killed in a couple of instances but one suspects that was also an in-joke and them poking fun at the genre cliches. Things do get quite ridiculous towards the end in a self aware manner and you have Ryan Gosling's character quipping that he is invincible giving us a nod to the plot armor he has. There are so many quotable lines and it is definitely worth revisiting.

The banter between Ryan and Russell is excellent and Angourie Rice amply supports and sometimes even steals the show. It is one of those films which greatly exceeds your expectations.They do set it up for a sequel but the disappointing box office numbers suggest that it might not be forthcoming.

Fuck Marvel!!

Fuck DC!!

Fuck Disney!!

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was also another one that bombed at the box office. Apparently they are planning a TV series titled 'The Nice Girls'.

Rating: 4.25/5

Good Time (2017)

Directors: Ben Safdie, Josh Safdie
Writers: Josh Safdie, Ronald Bronstein
DOP: Sean Price Williams
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Ben Safdie, Buddy Duress, Jennifer Jason Leigh

After a heist goes awry, a bank robber spends a night trying to free his mentally ill brother from being sent to Riker's Island prison.

Think ‘Enter the Void + Collateral + True Romance’ with quite an unlikable protagonist- you will get a general idea about the film. Robert Pattinson continues his great post-Twilight form in picking good roles in good films and he plays the elder brother Connie whose USP is that he thinks and acts very quickly even though they are not the smartest decisions on hindsight. He is out after a spending some time in jail (Good Time is a jail related reference) and decides to rescue his brother from the psychiatric sessions that he is getting under the wings of their grandmother. The opening scene which is a psychological evaluation of his younger brother Nick, played by one of the director brothers, is riveting to watch. Connie thinks the best thing for his brother to do is to assist him in a small-time bank robbery operation and things don't go as planned, obviously. We then have Connie trying to con some money of his girlfriend (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to raise bail-bond and then trying to rescue his brother directly. He meets a few interesting characters along the way and things just don't go as 'not' planned.

Camera movements are initially very documentary style and later on the film is largely neon-lit. ‘Oneohtrix Point Never’ handles the music and the closing credits was a collaboration with Iggy Pop. Music is a big driving force in the movie as it ratchets up tension when necessary. Film might not be up everyone's alley as the directors make no effort in making the protagonist likable. I enjoyed it thoroughly and it defies your expectations as there is variation in pacing throughout the film. It is usual in films to have unlikable villain sort of characters who are quite smart and calculating. So it was very refreshing to see someone who is not all that smart but his quick decisions fools us into believing that he is.

Rating: 4.25/5

Sexy Durga (2017)

Director: Sanal Kumar Sasidharan
Writer: No screenplay
DOP: Prathap Joseph
Cast: Rajshri Deshpande, Kannan Nayar, Sujeesh KS, Baiju Netto
Language: Malayalam

Two smalltime gangsters pick up a couple on the run, leading to a long, claustrophobic road trip in Malayalam cinema's perennial vehicle villain, an Omni van.

The lady in the couple is a North Indian who doesn't speak or understand Malayalam. This language barrier gives a license to the gangsters to say whatever they want. The film had no screenplay and I suspect the instruction from the director was to be really lewd. Film was made in the context of increasing reportage of gruesome rape cases from India. Still, Kerala is not a place that you normally associate with it. So my default expectation was that nothing terrible would happen. The language that they use is very crude and I'm pretty sure that subtitles wouldn't have conveyed the tone quite correctly in the festivals that they showed it and won many awards. They would've perceived it as an extremely dark film while I found plenty of humour in it, albeit being pretty dark and cringy.

Kerala is a place whose streets go to sleep pretty early and film can be seen as a portrayal of how behaviour changes with it. Night belongs to the nanny state police, moral policing dickwads and other people who you normally associate with it. For the couple alone at night the first two are a threat and it is only natural that they ended up with the third kind, repeatedly so in a surreal fashion. One solution is to change the law so that shops can operate any time of the day. That will help to bring more people to the night streets and thereby make it safer. Apparently, the gulf streets are very vibrant during the Ramadan month.

Film is pretty ambiguous and surreal towards the end and I found it to be a great watch. The screening that I went to was its Kerala premiere which was organized to protest against its exclusion from IFFK competitive section. This week also saw it being excluded from IFFI by the I&B ministry after getting selected by the jury. The main storyline of the film is juxtaposed with scenes of male Bhakts enduring 'Ichi the Killer' kind of body horrors in worship of Goddess Durga. Director is kind of contrasting, in a non-subtle way, the day and night behaviour of a typical Indian male.

Rating: 4.25/5

Columbus (2017)

Director: Kogonada
Writer: Kogonada
DOP: Elisha Christian
Cast: Haley Lu Richardson, John Cho, Parker Posey

A Korean man finds himself stuck in Columbus, Indiana, where his architect father is in a coma. There he meets an arch-nerd who is postponing her graduation to stay with her mother, a recovering addict.

The town, Columbus, does not look like America at all, not that I've been to US of A. It is filled with buildings and structures that are architecturally unique. Architecture is something that is glaringly neglected in a places like Kerala, where it is the private sector that is driving the growth. The lowest tender bidding format for  government building contracts doesn't really encourage architectural originality to come from there. You feel such a difference when you contrast a growing city like Kochi with the old school buildings from Trivandrum city centre with the latter having more of an identity.

Coming back to the film, it is just visually gorgeous and the theme justifies it being so. The Korean guy does not have much of a relationship with his dad and is kind of waiting for him to die so that he can go back to Korea and his routine. The girl, in sharp contrast, is overly protective of her mother and is behaving more like a parent than a child. She has a difficult 'Good Will Hunting' like decision to make, without her being portrayed as a genius. It is a very well acted film and a stunning debut for the director, who is known as a video essayist and a critic. Architecture can really make a town or city wonderful but us in India never gets a chance to experience it unless you go to places like Fort Kochi, Pondicherry etc which are just small islands in the larger scheme of things.

Rating: 4.5/5

Wind River (2017)

Director: Taylor Sheridan
Writer: Taylor Sheridan
DOP: Ben Richardson
Cast: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen

A veteran tracker/hunter with the Fish and Wildlife Service helps to investigate the murder of a young native American woman, and uses the case as a means of seeking redemption for an earlier act is irresponsibility which led to a tragedy.

Film is set in the Wind River Indian reservation, Wyoming. Taylor Sheridan had called Sicario, Hell or High Water and this as a thematic trilogy. The Indian connection is strongest in this one, with both the characters and subtext. He wrote the first two and with this one he dons the cap of director as well. The writer part sadly dominates the film, first half especially, as the grim characters are mouthing very unnatural and literary dialogues. I took a break midway and the second half seemed much better as it got into the set piece sequence with a Sicario like convoy routine.

The film has unique settings and side characters with the cowboys Vs Indians subtext which makes it a very interesting watch. It could've turned out better maybe with Taylor trusting someone else to direct it. Our gateway to the story is an American cowboy (Jeremy Renner) who was married to a native American and makes his living in the Indian territory. It is a lesser film than Sicario and HoHW but still a pretty good watch overall.

Rating: 3.25/5