Listen Up Philip (2014)

Director: Alex Ross Perry
Writer:    Alex Ross Perry
Cast:       Jason Scwartzman, Elisabeth Moss, Jonathan Pryce

Anger rages in Philip as he awaits the publication of his second novel. He feels pushed out of his adopted home city of New-York by the constant crowds and noise, a deteriorating relationship with his photographer girlfriend Ashley, and his own indifference to promoting the novel. When Philip's idol Ike Zimmerman, whom is very much like him but older, offers his isolated summer home as a refuge, he finally gets the peace and quiet to focus on his favorite subject: himself.

The main two characters in it, Philip and Ike are unabashedly self-absorbed and narcissistic to the point that most people will find them intolerable like the other characters in the film seems to. I guess the level of enjoyment that you will get out of watching this film would depend on how much you relate to these characters. They are people who don't want any baggage that come with investing one's time on human relationships of any sort. The way they do that could appear to be very self-defeating but the point is that they seem to need it for their own ego and some sense of artistic integrity that they want to maintain. Plenty of the film is also driven by narration that would evoke a feel of Wes Anderson films but got to say whether the explanation given by the narrator about how Philip is feeling is actually correct  at all. The timeline jumps that it takes can be a bit disorienting but shouldn't be a problem for people who are watching these kind of films. There is a little bit of exaggeration in how Philip is behaving and you doubt whether anyone could be this level of deliberate twattishness. That said I have found that people will tolerate you more if you are honest about your own narcissism and selfishness since there is a feeling of nobility in embracing those things rather than doing it slyly. 

I was also reminded of Noah Baumbach's films when watching this and the color palette coupled with the New-York setting reminded me of 'The Squid and the Whale'. Overall it is a great watch but might not be suitable to everyone's taste. I haven't seen any other films from the director and his debut feature is an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow', which is supposed to be a very difficult to read masterpiece. Jason Scwartzman is someone had who made his debut with 'Rushmore' having no prior acting experience and this role might be his best since that.

Rating: 4.5/5

                                                               

Company (2002)

Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Writer:    Jaideep Sahni
Cast:       Ajay Devgan, Vivek Oberoir, Mohanlal, Manish Koirala
Language: Hindi

A slumdog named Chandu (Vivek Oberoi) teams up with Malik (Ajay Devgan), a middle-level enforcer for a criminal syndicate. Together they eliminate all their enemies, becoming the most feared gangsters in Mumbai, known as Company, before insecurity, anger and misunderstandings turn them against each other. Amidst all this, the South Indian  police commissioner Sreenivasan (Mohanlal) looms in the background scheming their downfall.

It is certainly the definitive gangster picture of Indian film industry aided no less by the fact that it is more or less inspired from what happened in Mumbai underworld. The director Ram Gopal Varma was at his peak and was able to fully utilize the stellar cast at his disposal. Acting is tremendously restrained and it is shot in what can be called stylistic minimalism. The soundtrack is also kick-ass and the narration when it comes gives us a sense of foreboding. Unlike Satya, RGV is not apologetic about making us root for two characters who are law-breakers and on top of that he gives us a very likable Police Commissioner who is out to get them. Another great thing about it is that it is not through the efforts of the Police that things go tits up for Company, but through very understandable sequence of events that can afflict any organization when undergoing change. Things begin to unravel when Malik starts concentrating more on his international businesses leaving Chandu to take care of Mumbai underworld. Insecurity about giving too much power to Chandu causes problems at ground level leading to misunderstandings. To compound all this Chandu doesn't become as ruthless as he should be to reflect the position that he occupies in the crime syndicate leading to conflicts with Malik. Sreenivasan makes use of the situation to bring Chandu to the other side of the law.

Vivek Oberoi makes a very assured debut with this film and Ajay Devgan, whom I consider to be a very limited actor, is also in surprisingly good form delivering some dry philosophical lines. It could have really went wrong but both of them are able to pull it off. Mohanlal made his Hindi film debut with Company and the fact that his character is a Malayalee in it helps him to use his own voice for the role. I don't know whether they shot the film sequentially but his fluency in Hindi also seemed to improve as it went on. Rest of the cast are also very good and the sparingly used songs help in ,moving the story. 

The relation of Malik and Chandu is supposed to be loosely based on the Mumbai underworld kingpins Dawood Ibrahim and Chotta Rajan respectively. The Pandit character in the film is also based on Dawood's confidant Sharad Shetty. Ironically Shetty was killed on Rajan's orders shortly after the release of the film in a case of life imitating art. Don't know whether any misunderstanding was involved mind. RGV later produced D, which is a prequel to events in Company, thus completing his Mumbai gangster trilogy which also includes Satya. 

To sum it up it is a near perfect film which could have had its running time cut down by a slight bit. To be fair the two and half hours running time is quite conservative for Indian films. I had seen it for the first time some ten years back and didn't expect it to be remain this good on a rewatch. RGV probably won't do a better film than this and the same can be said of Vivek Oberoi I guess. Got to say it is also miles better than Anurag Kashyap's bloated magnum opus 'Gangs of Wasseypur' which got good reception at Cannes where it was screened as part of Director's fortnight. 

Rating: 4.5/5

                                                                

Satya (1998)

Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Writers:  Anurag Kashyap, Saurabh Shukla, Ram Gopal Varma
Cast:       J.D. Chakravarthi, Manoj Bajpayee, Paresh Rawal, Urmila Mantodkar, Saurabh Shukla
Language: Hindi

Film follows the activities of Satya (Chakravarti), a man whose background is not entirely given, who comes to Bombay in search of a job and circumstances lead him on to become the right-hand man of a middle level gangster called Bhiku (Manoj Bajpayee). Bhiku is the hot-tempered one and following Satya's advises he moves up the food-chain that is Mumbai underworld. This brings them under the scanner of Police as well as their new rivals in the mafia world. In between all this he falls in love with his neighbor (Urmila) whilst keeping the nature of his profession a secret from her.

I am a big fan of RGV's 'Company' and many have told me that his previous underworld film 'Satya' is a superior and grittier film. With Anurag Kashyap involved with its screenplay, making his film debut, it promised much. Got to say that overall it is a good film but 'Company' is far better, at least based on my memory of watching it some ten years back. Satya portrays a far more lower level of underworld in Bombay and in that sense it is grittier. The cinematography was done by a foreigner called Gerard Hooper who seems to have not done much work besides this. The way Bombay is captured is in a magnificently bleak and realistic manner and Danny Boyle had cited RGV's 'Satya' and 'Company' along with Anurag Kashyap's 'Black Friday' as influences for how he filmed his Oscar winning shite bag 'Slumdog Millionaire'. What is great about Satya is its supporting cast and where it is let down by a huge deal is the acting of its main protagonist, played by J.D. Chakravarthi. That and RGV's propensity to adhere to Bollywood conventions in the form of some unnecessary songs and overbearing & manipulative soundtrack. It is certainly very different compared to the normal Bollywood fare but the fact that it kind of stands in the middle doesn't do it any favors when not put in a historical context. It has been bettered by the likes of Anurag Kashyap himslef leaving Satya looking a bit aged in terms of its storytelling. The last one hour of the film is quite good after the arrival of Paresh Rawal in the role of a tough Police Commissioner. 

My main problem with Chakravarti in this film is with his dilaog delivery. It might be a case of his character being someone from South India, the polished sounding delivery (at least to me) didn't sit well with me. It didn't really reflect the nature of the character and this can be contrasted with how Mohanlal handled the situation in 'Company'. Since he portrayed a South Indian character he used his own voice giving legitimacy to his  very average Hindi fluency and vocabulary in that film. Company's average and cliched story-line is masked a great deal by its overall production quality as well the main cast who were all good, even Ajay Devgan. The moralising tone of Satya's ending was much more jarring when compared to its slow buildup in Company. It was not as if RGV was a small fry in Bollywood since he had already got his big breakthrough with 'Rangeela' and so he could have been a bit bolder.

Overall it is a good watch without being anything more than that. I feel like watching Company again. Got to say that the much maligned figure of Priyadarshan, who is notorious in the Hindi speaking world for his shitty Hindi remakes of Malayalam films, had made superior Bombay underworld films involving Mohanlal much before the likes of RGV began to ply their trade in Hindi film industry. He might not have conveyed the same authenticity but he made up for it with superior storytelling. 

Rating: 3/5 

                                                                      

The Double (2013)

Director: Richard Ayoade
Writers:  Richard Ayoade, Fyodor Dostoevsky (Novel), Avi Korine
Cast:       Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn

A clerk in a government agency finds his unenviable life takes a turn for the horrific with the arrival of a new co-worker who is both his exact physical copy and his opposite- confident, charismatic and seductive with women.

It is kind of strange in the sense that it is a modern retelling of Dostoevsky's novel of the same name but by modern we don't mean contemporary. It is set in an Orwellian place ruled by a dictator who is referred to as Colonel. But the oppression there is the normal dictator variety instead of going to the extremes of 1984. The film is not really about this aspect of the setting since it could very well have been set in a modern capitalistic society where the daily grind takes its toll on the protagonist. We generally find happiness when we are comfortable in our own skins but the clerk in the story is anything but. So enters an exact replica of his physical self who is exact opposite of how he generally behaves. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what is going on. To be fair the director is not trying to make this a twist as it seems only the protagonist is not aware of what is going on inside his mind. The trouble is that we have got a better version of this story in David Fincher's 'Fight Club' which most of us would have watched. While Fincher's was much more of a rant against the capitalistic system, this one is more of a character study. 

Overall it is a good watch. It is not as darkly funny as it should be and I am bit tired of Jesse Eisenberg playing Jesse Eisenberg in films. Mia Wasikowska is excellent as usual as are the settings, cinematography and the soundtrack. It could be described as a PG-13, romantic version of 'Fight Club'. All the voyeurism in it also reminded me of Kieslowski's 'A Short Story About Love'.

Rating: 3/5

                                                                 

地獄でなぜ悪い (Why Don't You Play in Hell?) (2013)

Director: Shion Sono
Writer:    Shion Sono
Cast:       Jun Kunimura, Fumi Nikaido, Shinichi Tsutsumi
Language: Japanese

A renegade film crew become embroiled with a a Yakuza clan feud and end up staging fight scenes between them so that they could film it on 35 mm and make a masterpiece. Their production crew is called 'The Fuck Bombers'.

It is bonkers!!! Not normal kind of bonkers but the kind that only Japanese could have done. You can totally understand why Rajnikant has some Japanese following who come over to India regularly to catch his premiers. Shion Sono is giving not so subtle nods to Quentin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill and that is kind of funny since the latter is the king of homages. It is evident from the opening credits itself which uses a reworked Misirlou theme which was used in Pulp Fiction. Also the 'Japanese Bruce Lee' in it wears bride's yellow outfit and like real men, Yakuza uses swords and fight in kimonos. Tarantino's love for 35 mm film is also something that Sono plays up but the whole Tarantino thing is not overbearing in the film. It is very much a film like no other. The first half of it is kind of dragging but the second half makes up for it when the film making in it begins. It is a celebration of no-holds-barred approach to film making summed up by the machine gun wielding cameramen. All said and done it is a very difficult film to describe and you have to watch it for yourself and trailer might give you an idea.

I have seen half of Shion Sono's 'Love Exposure' and couldn't complete it because the subtitles stopped working. This one is more accessible than Love Actually and like that also there is some Japanese subtext to the whole thing. Yakuza gangs there are quite famous for supporting film making and the highly prolific Takashi Miike is someone who uses that avenue of funding. This is also something that is quite common in India with the film business being a good way to launder money. The film begins with a toothpaste ad featuring a Yakuza kingpin's child daughter and it is seen to be enjoyed by all and sundry. It kind of makes us squirmy because we have this idea of Japanese being very lax on child pornography. Sono seems to be playing on this in the same way he celebrates up-skirt shooting industry of Japan in 'Love Exposure'. 

Overall it is a great watch but is not suitable for everyone. Watch it if you are the kind that like to embrace some weird shit or you are a fan of Miike who is also someone that makes something similar in a very different way.

Rating: 4/5 

                                                                       

Love Is Strange (2014)

Director: Ira Sachs
Writers:  Ira Sachs, Mauricio Zacharias
Cast:       John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei

After Ben (Lithgow) and George (Molina) gets married after living together for twenty years, George is fired from his teaching post, forcing them to stay with friends separately while they sell their place and look for cheaper housing--a situation that weighs heavily on all involved.

The fact that they are gay does not weigh heavily on the film. It is only used as a minor plot point with George getting fired from his musical teaching post in a school run by Catholics for his marriage. So the film is trying to reflect the normalcy around it that is there in Western World with many states in US also legitimizing same-sex marriages. The film may very well could have had a hetero-sexual couple as its protagonists. One could argue that if they had kids it would have affected the film but I don't buy it since in Western World parents usually don't stay with kids and vice-versa.

The film begins with their marriage and showing how accepting their friends and relatives are to the whole idea. When they are forced to live separately, Ben is staying with his nephew's family and George with their now former neighbors. George is an introvert and finds it hard with his hosts having their friends also frequenting their apartment. Ben's nephew is always busy with work and his wife (Marisa Tomei) is a writer which makes the situation quite awkward since she prefers to work without any distractions. He is bunking with their teenage son Joey who is also not enamored by the invasion into his private space. This kind of situation is something that has been quite common theme in Malayalam cinema with the exception that one of the partner's death is the usual cause for the situation. I think I have seen one film with an exact situation like this one where a couple is forced to live separately with two different children of theirs but I don't remember which film was that. These kind of Malayalam films tend to have either monetary issues, lack of time or a cruel relative being the cause for tensions whereas in 'Love is Strange' it is the lack of space in an expensive city like New-York. 

Many of us have been in this uncomfortable situation of having a relative or a stranger staying at our place. It doesn't matter how well you get along prior to this, living in same house and occupying same space will cause friction. It is also something that I have noticed in friendships. If you can endure the challenge of living together, the friendship will be better for it and many of my best friends are from my time during my first job where I had to share an apartment with my friends. Living together means you cannot hide what you really are and you have to be accepting of others at their best and their worst. This is exactly why I also think cohabitation is a must before marriage since it is the only way to truly know a person. In India, arranged marriage is the norm and it can be very much like two strangers suddenly forced to live together. Even in love marriages there is plenty of scope to fake your personality or just be on your best behavior prior to the marriage and wondering whether you've indeed married a stranger after the event.

I went off on a tangent and coming back to the film, it is a great watch. The great thing about it  is that it doesn't overplay the reactions and we have a better understanding about what they are saying to each other than they themselves. Nobody is portrayed in an overly positive or negative light and all of it is very relatable. It doesn't amp up on specific events and this gives us a sense of subtlety to the whole thing. I haven't seen other works of the director and it was good to see Alfred Molina playing against type. The role played by Marisa Tomei is also good in the sense that it is a very realistic ally behaving normal character and an inevitable shout-out for 'George Costanza' with whom I always associate her with.

Rating: 4.5/5

                                                                  

Luther (TV Series Seasons: 1-3)

Creator: Neil Cross
Cast:      Idris Elba, Warren Brown, Dermot Crowley, Ruth Wilson

A crime drama series starring Idris Elba as a near genius murder detective whose brilliant mind can't always save him from the dangerous violence of his passions. Luther doesn't always go by the books and some in his department thinks of him as a dirty cop whom they tolerate just because he is exceptionally good at solving stuff. He is involved in the department 'Serious & Serial' and that just sort of sums up the series as it celebrates him solving very inventive serial crimes while battling through personal problems. You do get the perception that London is really a fucked up place where serial crime is a daily routine.

Idris Elba will always be known for his role as Stringer Bell in 'The Wire'. It is sad that he has not went on to be a proper leading man in the films business so far. The leaked mails that came as part of Sony hack suggests that the studio heads see him as a possible candidate to be the next James Bond after Daniel Craig. He can certainly carry it. Coming back to 'Luther', it is much more closer to 'Banshee' than it is to 'The Wire' in terms of its sensibilities. The plot can be very convoluting but you just go it with because it is enjoyably bonkers for most parts. First season consist of six episodes and the personal theme running in it is that he is going through a heart-breaking divorce process. The culprit from the first episode, Alice Morgan, develops a relationship with him and it gives the show a different feel. Her acting can be very hammy though. The crime plots find resolution in each episode while in seasons second and third they are tied up over two episodes and each of those seasons have four episodes each. The second season's personal story angle is very grating but the crime solving in it makes up for that with some bat-shit crazy ways of killing people involved. The last episode of this season is the high point of the entire series. It goes downhill from there with the third season which I found very difficult to finish. They just lose it as it become more and more ridiculous to the point of me not enjoying it at all. There is supposed to be a fourth season of it coming out this year and I am not really interested in watching that.

To sum up, it a good enough watch the first two seasons with a very bad third season which leaves a sour taste. Recommended just for the fact that Idris Elba is fucking great and this coming from someone who didn't like Stringer Bell that much, the character I meant not the acting.

Rating: 2.5/5