Suburra (2015)

Director: Stefano Sollima
Writers: Stefano Rulli, Sandro Petraglia, Carlo Bonini, Giancarlo De Cataldo
DOP: Paolo Carnera
Cast: Pierfransesco Favino, Alessandro Borghi, Greta Scarano
Language: Italian

A gangster known as "Samurai" wants to turn the waterfront of Rome into a new Las Vegas. All the local mob bosses have agreed to to work for his common goal. But peace is not to last long.

It is a neo-noir mafia thriller film, based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Carlo Bonini and Giancarlo De Cataldo. It is set in 2011 when the Pope is about to resign and the government is about to fall. Italy's financial health is in crisis mode after being bracketed into the so-called PIGS country grouping and the land use law has to be passed before the government falls. It is basically the post 2008 developed world told as a Mafioso story. The establishment is mixed in with the Mafia and the little people among the Mafioso represents the general public. Everybody is in on the crime but just that the scale of it is different. Film ends with a clusterfuck scenario where little people have gone batshit crazy disturbing the equilibrium and the future is uncertain, which is pretty much like the scenario is for Eurozone countries that were in economic doldrums post 2008.

There are so many characters in the film that it took around 45 minutes to establish all the connections. You really need to pay attention to figure it all out but the pay-off is really good. It is quite predictable towards the end but that is not a problem as it is just a case of you figuring out what they are going for. It is really stylish and follows the events that happen over a few days. Some of the narration cards in it didn't have subtitles but I figure it was counting down the Apocalypse. There is a Netflix series spin-off which acts as a prequel to the film following the events from 2008 onward. Stefano Sollima was the director of 'Gomorrah', which I haven't watched, and he has also directed the Sicario sequel which is going to get released soon. My disappointment about Denis Villenueve not directing it has been assuaged after seeing this film. Sicario: Soldado's trailer gives the impression that it is more of an action film but I think it is just a ploy to get asses in the seats. Really looking forward to it now. 

Rating: 4.25/5

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Director: Taika Waititi
Writers: Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, Stan Lee
DOP: Javier Aguirresarobe
Cast: Chris Helmsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Mark Ruffalo, Tessa Thompson

Thor is imprisoned in a random planet, ruled by a Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum), and he has to engage with the Hulk in a gladiatorial fight there. His sister, the Goddess of death, Hela (Cate Blanchett) has taken over Asgard and Thor must race against time to prevent her from destroying Asgard and all his people.

I'm so proudly ignorant about these superheroes and their backstories that the superhero films that I enjoy tend to be origin stories (Batman Begins, Deadpool, Kick-Ass). The only exception I could think of is 'X-Men: Days of Future Past' which was more like a time travel film that worked pretty well as a standalone entity. I only decided to check this one out because of the good reviews it got and it is directed by Taika Waititi. I was quite underwhelmed by it till about one-third into it, only silverlining being the use of Led Zeppelin's 'Immigrant Song'. I'm so well versed with these Norse Gods that I thought Ragnarok was like second name of Thor. Things began to pickup with the introduction of Jeff Goldblum's character and the film is at its best after Mark Ruffalo version of Hulk makes its introduction. I didn't recognize it was Cate Blanchett who was chewing up the scenery as Hela.

Overall, it is a pretty good watch even if you don't give a rat's arse about Marvel Cinematic Universe or its characters. Taika Waititi doesn't take things seriously at all and it is good fun. They've supposedly improvised a lot of lines while shooting and that is quite surprising. Apart from Immigrant Song, some of the music reminded me of the Matrix series.

Rating: 3.25/5

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Writer: Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Fillipou
DOP: Thimios Bakatakis
Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan

Steven, a cardiologist, is forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice after his life starts to fall apart, when the behaviour of a teenage boy who he has taken under his wings turn sinister.

It is better to watch the film without knowing anything about it, which is always the case for most films but especially in these kind of films from interesting directors like Yorgos Lanthimos. 'Dogtooth' was told in a matter of fact manner while 'The Lobster' was quite a comedy. His films can generally be described as dark comedies set to interesting situations and the degree of darkness can vary. This outing of his is the darkest of the lot and works more like a horror film by the end, especially if you are lulled into a comfortable state with a lobster hangover.

Colin Farrell teams up again with the director and Nicole Kidman, in an Eyes Wide Shut look, plays the role of wife who is also a doctor. They got two children and the interactions between all of them are quite modern and robotic. Barry Keoghan, whom we have seen in Dunkirk, plays the role of sinister teen-ager. It is the Haneke films like 'The Seventh Continent' and 'Funny Games' and Kubrick films like the one mentioned before and 'The Shining' that it reminded me of. I was slightly taken aback by the straight forwardness of its ending without a twist or anything. It is a great watch with some hard to stomach scenes and situations.

Rating: 4/5

Carbon (2018)

Director: Venu
Writer: Venu
DOP: K.U. Mohanan
Cast: Fahadh Faasil, Mamta Mohandas, Manikandan Aachari
Language: Malayalam

Sibi (Fahadh Faasil) is an unemployed 'dealer' of exotic items like precious stones (Marathakam), precious birds (vellimoonga), precious animals (elephants) etc and he can't catch a break. It is not clear whether he is a total fraud or if he can actually make these deals happen. He doesn't have much concern about his family and when the loan sharks start raiding his house, he flees from there to an estate bungalow deep inside the forest as an acting manager to renovate the place. His fascination for precious items are further piqued there when he hears a mythological piece of history.

Venu's previous outing as a director was with the excellent 'Munnariyappu' which ended up going pretty dark places. That film gives us a fair warning that the director does not guarantee a feel good ending and it helps in setting up the atmosphere for Carbon, which is marketed as a forest thriller. The actual forest adventure begins only after the interval and the spookiest scenes come even before the interval, which is not really good for a thriller. There is this scene where Sibi is visiting a house to checkout an elephant that is for sale and that sequence is the most effective scene in the movie. To begin with, Praveena as the lady of the house with one eye bloodshot is creepily unhinged and Soubin Shahir as the elephant guy and the elephant itself are quite unnerving. That scene establishes the rules for the film in terms of what is real and what is 'fantasy'. Life flashing before your eyes and a fantasy from that point is a quite common theme in David Lynch films and it seems that the director is going for it in an half-baked manner. To be fair,  it is quite hard to pull off and there haven't been that many attempts in Malayalam. Have seen some interpretations on those lines for Maayanadhi which I don't concur with.

Another letdown is the existential aspects of the film which end up as quite lame. You know things are gonna go downhill as soon as they reference 'The Alchemist', which is like Harry Potter equivalent of the existential fiction. With the people behind and infront of the camera for this film, you expect the best in terms of technical perfection and performances and you do get that. They could've easily shaved off some twenty minutes from its considerable 150 minutes running time and Vishal Bharadwaj's frankly forgettable songs can be prime candidates. One thing I liked about the film is that they don't romanticise tribal characters or their interactions. Sibi is quite an unlikable character throughout the film, which sort of hinders the film towards the end. My feeling towards the film is like 'Solo'- worthy effort, couldn't pull off what all they intended, a fantastic theatrical experience nevertheless, will probably catch it again at the theatres to check whether that elephant had any fucking chain.

Rating: 3.5/5

Escape from New York (1981)

Director: John Carpenter
Writers: John Carpenter, Nick Castle
DOP: Dean Cundey
Cast: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Harry Dean Stanton

In 1997, when the U.S. President crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent in to rescue him.

Well, I guess it is a film of its time which essentially means that it has not aged well. There are films like 'The Warriors' from 1979 which has enough going for it so that it is still a great watch despite being quite campy. Escape from New York is not one such. I only checked it out because I quite liked 'The Thing', the only other John Carpenter film that I have watched and have no interest in watching other famous films of his like 'Halloween'. Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is a former US forces personnel, apparent from the line that 'You flew the gullfire over Leningrad, didn't you?', which also means that US was recently at war with USSR. The President was due to attend a meeting with the Russians and the Chinese  and it is of paramount importance that he is freed to do so within 24 hours. Lee Van Cleef ( The Bad from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) forces Snake to take up the mission in exchange for Pardon after injecting something which will kill him in 24 hours time if he doesn't come back with the President. John Carpenter supposedly wanted to capture the cynicism people had with politics post Watergate scandal. The Manhattan shown in the film is quite like a Terry Gilliam sort of place.

It was interesting to see a suicide mission involving a hijacked plane crashing into a building in Manhattan. It was not World Trade Center buildings but they do feature in the film. It is overall a dry watch. It did get a sequel titled Escape From L.A with Kurt Russell reprising his role as Snake Plissken.

Rating: 2/5

Atomic Blonde (2017)

Director: David Leitch
Writers: Kurt Johnstad, Antony Johnston, Sam Hart
DOP: Jonathan Sela
Cast: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Toby Jones

An undercover MI6 agent is sent to Berlin during the tail end of the Cold War to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents.

David Leitch was a co-director and producer of John Wick. That and the hand to hand combat nature of stunts with long takes had people thinking of this film as a female version of John Wick. That won't be a correct statement because the tone of the film is entirely different as it is essentially a spy movie with some spectacular stunts in it. What is also different is that the action sequences have consequences on the body which is shown in the beginning itself with a heavily bruised Charlize Theron taking an ice-bath.  Film is based on the graphic novel with the title 'The Coldest City' and the success of Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road as Imperator Furiosa helped in getting the film made. She will now definitively go down as an action star with her set to reprise her role as Imperator Furiosa in the next installment of the Mad Max series. Atomic Blonde was also successful enough at box office to warrant a sequel/prequel.

While most people really did dig the action sequences, the plot in itself can be a little too confusing with motivations of the various characters not very clear. But I do think it was intended that way as it is essentially a spy movie involving double agents. It did remind me of Paul Thomas Anderson's 'Inherent Vice', in which it was impossible to figure out the plot. James McAvoy was excellent as usual and it's good that he is generous enough to take a supporting, albeit meaty enough, character. The highlight stunt piece is basically the one which moves to a marble stairway and seem like a single ten minute take, but apparently had 40 cuts. Still very impressive. Soundtrack is also pretty cool with some David Bowie tracks thrown in. He was approached for a role but had turned it down shortly before his death. Atomic Blonde works really well because it is an original film with its own identity rather than being the female version of a previously successful film.

Rating: 3.5/5

ഈട (Eeda) (2018)

Director: B. Ajithkumar
Writer: B. Ajithkumar
DOP: Pappu
Cast: Shane Nigam, Nimisha Sajayan, Alancier Ley Lopez, Sujith Shankar
Language: Malayalam

An excerpt from the Newslaundry article series on political violence and killings in Kannur:

“This place doesn’t believe in odd numbers. If one CPM guy is murdered, revenge killing of an RSS worker is not far away. It is the same the other way, as well. Peace prevails here only when the death toll is even.”

This is the backdrop to which the film is set and it is another one of those loose adaptations of Shakespeare's 'Romeo & Juliet' put in a different setting. The would be lovers meet for the first time on a hartal day, which was called after the killing of a left worker which is set to begin a cycle of violence in the form of retaliations and all that. The guy belongs to a family associated with the right (RSS, BJP) and the girl is from a family whose ideology is aligned to the left (CPIM). They don't know it till they fall in love as it more or less blooms in Mysore where they are respectively working and studying. First half of the 150 minutes long film is dedicated to that and second half is the aftermath. Everything is very realistically portrayed without taking any sides and without being preachy.

Since the current left government has come to power in Kerala, there has been a bunch of films that have came out which have largely romanticised the left. This film is not one. At the same time it doesn't vilify them the same way like 'Left, Right, Left' did in an over the top cartoonish way. It just kind of show the reality like the lack of individual and political freedom in the party gramams (villages) and the support system that the party provides for its 'Martyrs' and murderers. This is there from both sides but left being the much larger force has the responsibility to look at the root cause and address it. My limited point about the situation is that, if you promote shit like party villages where you try to have absolute power and control over, and thus eliminate the possibility of a legitimate democratic opposition, then the loony bunch from the right will naturally emerge as your only opposition. This is the course that communist left have taken wherever they have come to power and Kerala remains an exception because there is a balancing force, which is sadly quite communal in its underpinning, from rest of Kerala.

Coming back to the film, it is overall a very good watch where things are said in a subtle manner, be it love or politics. Both the lovers are given equal space and they have performed really well along with all the support characters. Manikandan is being a bit typecast quite lately though. The actor who played the non-uniformed police officer from Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum is also there as a character without any dialogue. I also liked the fact that they didn't feel the need to explicitly state who is being the snidy informer for all the attacks shown in the film even though it is quite evident. Revenge of the one-armed lottery seller, I guess. Length of the film can be problematic for some but I found it necessary. There won't be much of a re-watch element to it though. The team behind the film is Collective Phase One in which Rajeev Ravi is also a member.

Rating: 3.5/5

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writers: Hampton Fancher, Michael Green
DOP: Roger Deakins
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Sylvia Hoeks

A young blade runner's discovery of a long-buried secret leads him to track down former blade runner Rick Deckard, who's been missing for thirty years.

The original blade runner was notorious for its post production difficulties with the studio insisting on a narration from Harrison Ford so that audience could understand it and Ridley Scott not having total control over the cut that was released. Since then it had many cuts released including a director's cut and final cut, like the way we name our assignments. I've seen only the final cut and the ambiguity around Deckard's nature is more or less settled.

Replicants are 'human' robots built to be used as slave labour for various purposes including off-world assignments. Blade Runners are detectives/assassins who 'retires' rogue replicants. Blade Runner was a film in which the characters were struggling with existential questions and this sequel, set 30 years later, is also in similar vein. It is a film that is purely made for big screens and great sound systems and I missed out on that experience since it ran very briefly here and that too in 3-D. It is a technical marvel with gorgeous frames from Roger Deakins and a soundtrack that evokes Vangelis' work from the original. It was largely shot in practical sets, like Arrival. Almost all the characters in 2049 are replicants and the few 'human' ones behave like robots. This makes it less interesting as you end up exasperating over the fact that we have to put up with existential issues faced by robots when we already know that, as humans,  we don't have a fucking purpose anyway. It also reminds one of Matrix series in several instances and not in a good way. Audience is ahead of the protagonist in figuring out what is going on for majority of the film. I do think you have to watch Blade Runner before going for the sequel even though it can work as a standalone film.

Ultimately, it is another film that has bawled the critics over almost universally but I was slightly underwhelmed by it, like Baby Driver. I think all the big budget studio films being generally shit these days have got something to do with that and anything remotely interesting, original and adult tend to get gushed over by critics. Denis Villeneuve's big budget sci-fi films, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, have been interesting watches and technically stunning, but quite underwhelming compared to his other films. He is slated to reboot 'Dune' next. I haven't seen the one directed by David Lynch and the documentary 'Jodorowsky's Dune' is a very good watch.

Rating: 3.5/5