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Laal Singh Chaddha (2022)
Love Letter to India
Before the first half was over I thought this was a love letter to the people of India, using the vehicle of our beloved Indian Railways to symbolize the journey we are all in together. How the entire compartment gathers round as he tells the story, how there is some element of it that everyone relates to ... so well done!
By the end of the movie I saw it as a love letter to India ... the people, the hills, the oceans, everything about it. Though it bends over backwards not to offend current powers that be it still manages to tell a moving story, appeal to humanitarian ideals, and bring a variety of characters to life.
The music was also nice.
A Star Is Born (2018)
BORING story, TEDIOUS music
So boring. There is no "chemistry" between the two leads - everything is so rote, so cliched and so dull. As a viewer I was not rooting for anyone, did not see any real reason for these two to be together and I found the songs utterly uninspired. As poetry, they are trite in the extreme and the music adds nothing. If anything it makes them even duller. The lyrics are clunky and barely accommodate the trudging onward of the music. The one exception is the pop song which knows what it is meant to be, does not pretend to be anything else and succeeds in its chosen genre.
I am stunned at the rave reviews that go so far as to suggest that if you did not like it you are somehow emotionally lacking. No, there is a way to make romantic sparks come alive on screen and in song, this movie had NONE OF THEM.
This sentence, buried in a review full of apologies for not sufficiently liking the movie, sums it up: "I just felt the lead characters were ultimately cardboard cutouts of music cliches without any nuance or originality."
(Zeba Blay and Priscilla Frank, Huffington Post, Oct 15 2018)
One can omit the "I just felt." This is why the movie cannot deliver.
Naa Bangaaru Talli (2013)
Compelling story sensitively directed and superbly acted
Am still left speechless by this film but endeavoring to overcome it in order to post a review while fresh in my mind. To be honest I find it too difficult to see certain kinds of violence on screen so I saw those scenes in fast-forward.
Apart from the compelling social theme, the acting in this movie is riveting. Never overdone even for a moment, so many scenes bring out the subtle paradoxes of life and the moments of conflict that test one's character. Minor characters play pivotal roles and no character, scene or line is extraneous. The script is also very natural and forces you to confront such realities, never letting you think this is just a movie dialogue. And the music expresses what you cannot express while seeing what you cannot believe. The more you see this movie the more you see in this movie. And in society. Really brilliant.
PK (2014)
Expected more from Abhijat Joshi, but still a fun movie.
Is it funny? At times. Thought-provoking? A little. Tedious? At times. Entertaining? Fairly. Does it use religious stereotypes? Yes. Does it offend? It may offend those who expect more from cinema.
If you enjoyed Lage Raho Munna Bhai then don't let the familiar names and faces raise your hopes, as this is not nearly as witty, wise or well-crafted as that gem of a film. I imagine Abhijat Joshi himself would be cringing at overwrought scenes like the one showing the guru identifying people by religious attire only to find it contrast with their names as they introduce themselves. At the same time there are clever elements that make you think, and perhaps be a bit less likely to be misled by prejudice and "wrong numbers."
The usual take on religious satire is that, like a jeweller protecting genuine articles from cheap imitations, the sincerely faithful would welcome efforts to expose fraud and disown the exploitative behavior perpetrated in the name of religion, be it pressured / forced conversions, terror attacks, or claiming clairvoyance.
Consider, which is the greater evil - taking money or taking lives? So even though the focus of the story is not the sloppily placed terror incident, it suggests that there are worse things than cheating, while plodding ahead to take down the fraudulent guru and by extension the entire business of preying on people's fears for the sake of self-aggrandizement. This is not a new theme for cinema and it has been done more cleverly and more vehemently before. PK stops short of rejecting religion and instead offers a plea to save faith from those who would exploit it. The story features one devotee who sees through the fraud and walks away, so it is particularly peevish of those claiming to respect that religion to find this movie offensive. Apart from the story of the impostor-guru, the film takes a jab at purveyors of a number of religions, while still allowing for the possibility of genuine faith, as the alien "PK" articulates based on his own experience after being away from his home planet, which apparently has no concept of religion.
In the end we are asked to discredit those who perpetrate fraud in the name of religion by none other than an alien who has come to research life away from his home planet. With some lovely shots of the landscape, along with confusion over the strange habits of earthlings, a bit of farce and a smattering of romantic comedy that dovetails with the main story, it closes with credits in a fine font and tranquil background.