Lucy (2014)

Director: Luc Besson
Writer:    Luc Besson
Cast:       Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-sik Choi

A woman, accidentally caught in a dark deal, turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic.

Luc Besson said that Lucy will be part Leon, part Inception and part 2001: A Space Odyssey. Well, it is all that without any of their seriousness. The scientific theory of 'Humans only using 10% of their brains and what if they use more of it?' scenario is not very credible but don't let that fact prevent you from enjoying the film. The same thing was used in 'Limitless' where also it was some drug that enhances the brain usage. In that film the story was more about how the protagonist was using it for his own gains while Lucy finds herself to be less of a human with her increased capabilities and is not motivated by things like greed. She decides to put it for a good cause by getting in contact with a professor (Morgan Freeman) who did some theories based on the central premise. In that regards it will remind one of 'Transcendence'. Anyway when you consider the three big sci-fis that came out this year-Transcendence, Lucy and Interstellar, Lucy was the most fun basically because it didn't take itself too seriously. It was the second most expensive French production and was a big box office success grossing close to $460 million, which is remarkable considering that it was a female led R-rated film.

The film has a definite B-grade and Grindhouse vibe to it which actually made it more enjoyable. The car chase scene in particular was very cheesy like one you would find in a Bollywood film. Some of the visuals used for the 2001 like sequence was great. Luc Besson did some great work in the early part of his career (The Big Blue, Subway and Leon) after which he has remained primarily in the cheesy action genre mainly serving as executive producer for franchises like Transporter and Taken. His turn as director for something like Lucy which mixes the sensibility of the action genre with his own sensibilities from the earlier part of his career, turns out to be really enjoyable mish mash of a film.

Rating: 3/5

Risky Business (1983)

Director: Paul Brickman
Writer:    Paul Brickman
Cast:       Tom Cruise, Rebecca De Mornay, Joe Pantoliano

A Chicago teenager is looking for fun at home while his parents are away, but the situation quickly gets out of hand.

Film is a satire on rich suburban teens who are meant to join Ivy league colleges and faces the pressure to be 'Perfect'. Normally people would describe this film as belonging to the coming-of-age genre, but I don't think there is not much of that for Joel (Tom Cruise). He is still kind of naive at the end of  it as he is in the beginning and does't go full 'What the fuck!'. When he gets his dad's Porsche back from the workshop, you can see kids on bi-cycles overtaking him. I don't know whether this kind of genre-bending is intended or it is a case of director not wanting to be criticized for giving a 'bad' message. I will lean on it being intentional and the film works well as something which sits between a film like 'The Outsiders' which is almost melodramatic and 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' which is an all out comedy.

Film launched Tom Cruise to stardom and the Ray-Ban Wayferer model's annual sales shot up by 2000% after its release. It was very well received critically as well as commercially with considerable praise for its intelligence and stylishness. But I don't think it has aged that well especially considering the quality of the films that came in the genre subsequently. The soundtrack is done by 'Tangerine Dreams' giving it a characteristic 80s feel along with the opening credits.

Rating: 3/5 

Closer (2004)

Director: Mike Nichols
Writer:   Patrick Marber
Cast:      Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen

The relationship of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other. 

Film is an adaptation of Patrick Marber's award winning play of the same name. The director Mike Nichols, who passed away yesterday, is also someone who jumps between stage play and films and is quite adept at adapting a play into film. The film does have a stage play feel to it when it comes to the dialog and same can be said of Nichols' debut classic 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?', which won Elizabeth Taylor an academy award. Closer landed academy awards nominations for both Natalie Portman and Clive Owen. Nichols is of course most famous as the director of classic romantic comedy film 'The Graduate' and apart from the three films mentioned so far, I have also seen his last directed film- 'Charlie Wilson's War' which was also a good one without being a romantic comedy.

Closer will not be suitable to everyone's taste but I loved it. It is evident that the director, a veteran of this genre, cuts through all the bullshit and give us an adult look at the subjects. The two ladies are Americans while the gentlemen play English characters like their real selves. I don't think there is any conversation involving anyone other than any two of the four main characters and all the four characters are in one room only during one scene. The play and thus the film is based on Mozart's opera 'Cosi fan tutte' which is referenced in the films quite a few times. The funniest couple of scenes in the film involve both the male characters. Clive Owen, who plays the Dermatologist, is the only one who is sure of what he wants and continually sows the seeds of destruction for Jude Law's relationships. Over the course of the film the power relations in both the relationships get inversed along with their habits like cigarette smoking/non-smoking. Overall the film is a great watch if you are up for what I felt was a very different treatment.

Rating: 4/5

Coherence (2013)

Director: James Ward Byrkit
Writers:  James Ward Byrkit, Alex Manugian
Cast:       Emily Baldoni, Maury Sterling, Nicholas Brendon

Strange things begin to happen when a group of friends gather for a dinner party on an evening when a comet is passing overhead. 

Film is mostly restricted to a living room and the quantum theory based on the famous analogy of Schrodinger's cat is kind of used to give credibility to the story. In the Schrodinger's cat analogy, the cat will be either alive or dead once you open the box whereas it can be both dead and alive as long as the box is closed. The film uses the comet moment of the story to postulate that it caused a state called coherence/ decoherence (Am not sure which but I suspect the latter) which is the many-worlds interpretation of the quantum mechanics. In this state, different versions of reality are interfering with each other. In the film when the current goes off, some of them leave the house they are in but sees the same house two blocks away in which their other world versions occupy. By the end of the film all of them seem to be from different versions of the reality with their own totems which can be used as an identifier. It is a very interesting way to use scientific idea to create a very different film. But it is better to see as a fantasy mystery than a proper sci-fi film.

Film was made on a micro-budget of $50K and marks the directorial debut for James Ward Byrkit. I put off watching the film since his IMDB page showed his involvement with the shitty Pirate of the Caribbean franchise. Turns out he was involved just in the Art Department of those films. Considering the budget it is certainly a very good effort and is worth a watch. It is not as inaccessible as  'Primer' which proved that there is an audience for such mindfucks. Some of the expositions in Coherence are cringey and you kind of question their initial reactions to events. But once things become clear it is very good and it will be interesting to see when the different characters get out of the house to see whether all of it hold up to scrutiny.

Rating: 3.5/5

Wonders of Life (2013)

Presented by: Professor Brian Cox

It is a five part television documentary series presented by physicist Professor Brian Cox about the origination and evolution of life on our planet Earth. Coming from a physicist, there is obviously a stress on physical and chemical properties which made life possible and its evolution into complex beings on Earth. The series was produced by BBC and China's state television network CCTV.

The five episodes, each of which is set in one particular continent, covers:

1) What is Life? -This episode is set in South East Asia explains what is life and how it began on Earth. The possible starting point is given as deep oceanic vents with the required proton gradient.

2) Expanding Universe?- Episode is set in North America (US) and details how senses arose based on laws of science. Carbon cycle is also explained in detail.

3) Endless forms most beautiful- Is set in Africa and Madagascar examining how complex organisms got evolved and why Earth is such a fertile ground for such evolution. It explains that even though many people dismiss evolution as a random mechanism, it is anything but since there is an underlying mechanism called Natural Selection which governs whether the random mutations persist.

4) Size Matter-This episode is set in Australia and looks at how the laws of Physics determine the range of sizes for organisms that is possible in both land and water and why water animals can grow to relatively large size compared to land ones.

5) Home- The final episode is set in Mexico, and details what makes Earth a home for life and what ingredients were required for complex life to begin. It explains how water got trapped in Earth and also the presence of oxygen in our atmosphere which is vital for the carbon based life that persists in our planet.

I had previously seen Brian Cox presented TV series 'Wonders of Solar System' and 'Wonders of Universe' prior to this, and he does very well to explain basics of things. Coming with a history of being in a music band (D:Ream), these documentaries' of his are characterized by being very atmospheric with great ambient music. I always prefer these to the loud narration and exaggeration of US produced documentaries. It is accessible to all and it is always good to get your basics right. Wonders of Life is not as exciting to watch as WoSS and WoU but it is still very good and the progression is increasingly complex, like life.

Rating: 4/5

Boyhood (2014)

Director: Richard Linklater
Writer:    Richard Linklater
Cast:       Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Lorelei Linklater

The life of a young man, Mason, from age 5 to 18. It was filmed over twelve years with the four main actors working with Richard Linklater to film for a few weeks every year to capture the young man's life though it is as much a story of his mother's life. Mason and his sister Samantha are raised by their mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette) who is already separated from their dad (Ethan Hawke) when the story begins. She gets back into college and get a proper job and along the way marries two other people who are prone to be alcoholic over the course of the film. His Dad who starts off as a man chasing his passions ends up as quite a  financially successful career guy with some regret over leading a more prosaic life. 

It is a hard film to describe but is certainly one of the best films I have ever seen and is a cinematic achievement. I don't know if something like this has been ever attempted before. It was not even possible for Linklater to tie the actors to a contract due to the De Havilland law, which makes it illegal in US to contract someone for more than seven years of work. I don't know how well charted out the story outline was when they began, but I suspect Linklater must have improvised as they went on to suit with how the kids were growing up. Mason grows up to be a introvert who is passionate about photography and art. He is also very existentialist and I guess it is Richard Linklater that is talking to us through him. 

There is a point in the film where the transitions in all of their lives comes through clearly. It is Mason's fifteenth birthday and his dad is taking him and Samantha  to visit his wife's parents. As he collects them it is evident that he is now more of a rich family guy who has let go off his passions and Mason's mum is still quite poor, now with her third husband who is ex-marine. The gifts that Mason receives that day from his Dad's family are- a Bible, a suit and a shot gun, all of which are completely at odds with whom he actually is. 

Another great sequence in the film is towards the end when Mason is leaving his mother to go to college. She is now back in a small house without any companions and when Mason refuses to take the first picture of her that he took with him, she breaks down completely. She laments about how her life has just been a series of milestones and the next step is her funeral.'Indian Culture Upholding' assholes can point out how this film is depicting the sad state of Western family system where there is no stable environment for growing kids and how alone the parents would be in their retirement life. Well, then things are not much different in India these days when it comes to the latter point, You can take a look at how rounded individuals these kids are when they are about to hit twenty whereas these careerist fuckwits in India don't really have a clue on how to live a good life (subjective to each individual) till it is too late.

It is funny to see how much Richard Linklater is projecting himself on to Mason's personality. I can safely hazard a guess that he is also a liberal existentialist guy without taking any of of his other films into account. I don't know whether I relate so much to his films just because of our similar outlook to things. I think Republicans won't take the film too kindly. The film ran close to three hours and I didn't want it to end (take note Christopher Nolan) and could have easily seen another three hours of it. I hope they revisit Mason's story again after a few years and he is at a stage where you don't need to film every year. Or as Linklater put it, you can see Boyhood as a prequel to the Before trilogy. 

It is criminal how underrated Richard Linklater is. I think he will certainly be in my top-25 directors of all time list and Boyhood is his master-piece. It now holds a score of 100 in metacritic and 99 on rottentomatoes. 

Rating: 5/5

The Signal (2014)

Director: William Eubank
Writers:  Carlyle Eubank, William Eubank, David Frigerio
Cast:       Brenton Thwaites, Olivia Cooke, Beau Knapp, Laurence Fishburne

On a road trip, Nic and two friends are drawn to an isolated are by a computer genius. When everything suddenly goes dark, Nic regains consciousness-only to find himself in a waking nightmare.

It is another one of those indie sci-fi films made on a shoe-string budget. It largely oscillates between horror, mystery and surreal genres but the basic story is not interesting enough to make it any good. Director puts it as a case of someone conflicted by making decisions based on logic or emotion. It is another sci-fi film from 2014 that wants to put 'LOVE' onto a pedestal along with 'Interstellar'. I don't know if it is because of me being a cynical heartless bastard, both these films didn't really work for me. It is a decent enough watch which makes you go 'Is that it?', at the end. Oh, aliens abducted them and are being tested on in their space-ship. Okay, crack on then...

Rating: 2/5