Sai and Shujath talk Cinema

Everyone is familiar with Superman, Spiderman and Batman. A lesser known superhero from the Marvel universe makes his debut on the silver screen to deliver a rollicking start to the blockbuster season. In making his biggest and best film, director Jon Favreau (Elf, Zathura) delivers a thoroughly satisying superhero film.

Tony Stark is a charming, suave ladies man who also happens to be a genius running a weapons company. When he is on a trip to Afghanistan, demonstrating the latest weapon in his arsenal, he is captured by terrorists who want him to replicate it for them. Tony escapes by creating a suit of armor from what is available. When he comes back, Tony decides to put his talent to good use. So he perfects the suit of armor and becomes Iron Man. And then he uncovers an evil villain who he must stop.

It might not seem terribly thrilling the way I’ve summarized it but then it is really the presentation which makes this film what it is. Favreau and his writers (apparently two separate teams - Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby who co-wrote Children of Men and Arthur Marcum & Matthew Hollaway) get the right balance between the story, humor, action, effects and charm. Also, the fact that Iron Man is more a hero with super equipment than super powers makes him more identifiable. Some predictability does creep in but you hardly care when it is so much fun. Favreau finds the right tone to appeal to audiences looking for blockbuster entertainment as well as those looking for more sensible fun. There isn’t a dull moment in this one and though the movie doesn’t have a ton of action you don’t miss it. 

And Robert Downey Jr makes you wonder why most superhero movies don’t have an actor of his calibre and at least half his charm. After all they need to be super. Once you see Robert Downey Jr in this role, you can’t imagine anyone else in it. He just hits the correct notes with everything. Gwyneth Paltrow is also a delight in her role as Miss Potts, Stark’s secretary. Both these actors get some superb lines, especially in their scenes together and their banter is great to watch. Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski) and his bald pate suit the role of Obadiah Stane well. Terrence Howard plays a supporting role in preparation for a future as War Machine (and the post-credits sequence hints at the Avengers too).

In the past superhero films have lacked in certain aspects of their appeal for various audiences. Some were too dark for a few folks (Batman Begins), the pacing seemed slow in some (Superman Returns), some just didn’t have enough appeal for those who have grown out of their teens (The Fantastic Four) and some superheroes even cried (Spiderman 3). But this film overcomes such shortcomings to cater to almost everyone with the right blend of the major elements required for an entertaining motion picture. It is exciting and well-paced. It has a lot of humor and some really cool effects (especially those used in depicting Tony’s lab and the design process). There is just enough action and a touch of romance too. With a well-constructed screenplay, a capable helmer behind the screen and talented performers in front of it, this motion picture manages to keep the audiences glued to their seats.

I hadn’t hoped I would enjoy this film even half as much as I did. So, my recommendation is simple. Go and watch it. Soon!

P.S. The sequel comes out Summer 2010.

This martial arts script seems interesting.
Hmm.. not bad. It will need a big star like Jackie Chan or Jet Li.
Wait a minute! There’s two sizeable roles here. How about putting Jackie Chan and Jet Li together? That should guarantee box office returns.
Thats a sensational idea. But will it appeal to a larger audience in North America? How about putting an American in the middle?
Super!
Now, who wrote this?
John Fusco.
I should get him to work on a rewrite immediately.

It is possible that the film was conceived this way. Maybe it wasn’t.

As you can figure out by now, an American boy is at the centre of this film and he is crazily devoted to kung fu cinema. After an unforeseen turn of events involving an altercation with the local thugs and a shooting incident, the boy gets hold of the weapon of the Monkey King, a warrior from ancient China (presumably). Now the boy is magically transported to an unknown land (where fortunately, the friends and foes can speak English). His mission is to deliver the weapon back to the Monkey King and free him in the process so that he can overthrow a truant ruler. He is accompanied on his mission by a drunken kung fu master, a monk and a girl bent upon revenge. He also learns kung fu along the way and it stands him in good stead in his world.

The teaming of Jackie Chan and Jet Li is obviously the big deal in this film but I wouldn’t say that this film is tailored specially for the pairing. I am not sure if fans were expecting to see them pitted against each other but that isn’t the case here (though they have one enjoyable duel). Nevertheless, they work well together. Jet Li is especially hilarious as the Monkey King. The younger cast members, Michael Angarano (Sky High) and Liu Yifei are likable.

The film is really an action comedy with an element of fantasy. Director Rob Minkoff (The Lion King, Stuart Little) maintains the comic tone throughout except for a small part towards the climax where he attempts to involve you emotionally. The comedy in this film might not make you roll on the floor but it is amusing enough. The film does have some good locations/sets and pleasing cinematography but there isn’t an attempt to enchant the audience with the visuals. When Yuen Woo-Ping (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill, Matrix) choreographs the action sequences, you can be sure they are first-rate and obviously the two J’s look good executing them.

Despite the epic setting, this fantasy isn’t an epic. It isn’t a classic and it isn’t trying to be. Nevertheless, this is an entertaining entry in the martial arts comedy genre that is aimed at an audience looking for a fun night out. Fans of the genre and the two lead actors should definitely enjoy this non-serious adventure.

Based on a novel of the same name by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, this film is an inert comedy cum drama. Annie is a college graduate who is unable to decide on her future when she is accidentally hired as a nanny by Mrs X. The X family is a stereotypically dysfunctional upper class family and the film depicts Annie’s learning experiences even as she teaches them a thing or two.

Writer-director duo Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (American Splendor) don’t have material compelling enough for a winning motion picture. Between the stock characters, spiritless romance, soporific drama and mildly appealing satire, this film falls flat.

It is a shame because two actors do impress. Laura Linney (The Savages, Love Actually, Mystic River) gets the best part as Mrs X and she shines. Paul Giamatti (Lady in the Water, Sideways) also has fun as Mr X. The same cannot be said of Scarlett Johannson (The Prestige, Lost in Translation) who once again okays a film that doesn’t give her a chance to sparkle.

When the promotional material showed Johannson with an umbrella, one had hoped that this film might be in the Mary Poppins genre. It is anything but and the references to that film were unwanted and unwelcome.

Neither funny nor insightful, this decidedly uneventful film is avoidable.

8 Strangers
8 Viewpoints
1 Big Unconvincing Gimmick

The American President is at an anti-terror summit. What better place for terrorists to strike? So they do. Now the filmmakers want to tell us who did it and why but they are quite bored with a straight narrative. So they decide to show the events unfolding through the eyes of 8 different people.

There are some eminently watchable players in Dennis Quaid (In Good Company, The Day After Tomorrow, Traffic), Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Sigourney Weaver (The Village, Ghost Busters) and William Hurt (Syriana, A History of Violence). The excellent cast, apart from the promotions, were instrumental in making this film a box office success even if these actors didn’t need to do much more than sleepwalk through this and take their large paychecks to the bank when they woke up.

The main drawback of this film is its narrative. The implausibility is a given, so I won’t dwell on that. The story is taken forward with each retelling and it is fine but at the end of it all, one question remains. Was there a need for these (far too many but thankfully less than eight) replays? Does each viewpoint really provide something novel? The answer is a resounding NO. You could easily recut the film and make it complete without losing much (it would be a tad shorter too).

The Rashomon style retelling will always be interesting; no matter how many times it is reused. But it isn’t used the right way here (meaning it had no real purpose). If you were to take out that gimmick from this film, it is your average action thriller. The good thing is that they do manage to put this together well enough. Director Pete Travis makes sure that the action is slick (the chase scene towards the end is noteworthy). Barry Levy’s first screenplay does have some reasonably interesting parts like the viewpoint of the television crew. But then there are also some laughable or uninteresting, unnecessary twists and the assassination is made to seem far too easy at an event attended by the who’s who of the World’s premiers. Remote-controlled? Come on!

If you are expecting nothing more than a slick action thriller that helps you pass time, this might not disappoint. Expect anything more and it certainly will.

Those who haven’t seen this flick might be of the impression that the most supernatural thing in this movie is teleporting. Those who have seen would beg to differ. It’s Samuel L. Jackson’s supernatural “white” hairdo which fascinates the most. Well, Jumper is another poorly reviewed (but successful) film to hit the screens this year but I didn’t find it that bad. That’s because right from the outset it never sets out to be a great film. It aims low and somehow manages to achieve its target.

Gifted individuals called Jumpers have the ability to teleport to any place they visualize. To hunt them there are still more gifted (didn’t I mention Jackson’s hairdo before!) individuals called Paladins. The apocalyptic war between the two is what this epic is supposed to be. The teleporting hero (Hayden Christensen) has a Sphinx fixation (or is it lack of a bigger budget to explore more places) but still credit should be given for some great camerawork which captures the pyramids as never before. There are also few other sequences where the camera movements impress.

Then there is Rachel Bilson who can’t figure it out how her boyfriend manages to do unexplicable stuff but gets the shock of her life when he teleports a few inches within the same room. Jamie Bell is the more interesting of the two Jumpers. Christensen for some reason is hardly excited about his powers.

Oh, before I forget…last but not the least - this film is really about an American mom’s true love for her child. I think Doug Liman has not seen the Julianne Moore starrer “The Forgotten” - when aliens couldn’t come in between an American mom and her child how did he expect a silly job description would! Think that you are about to watch one of those sci-fi campy B movies and Jumper won’t be hard to endure.

There was little buzz about this film before it hit the theatres but if critics are to be believed, this is the only good film to release this weekend when the universally lambasted 10,000 B.C. raked in the big bucks.

The movie is based on an infamous robbery from 1971. Terry (Jason Statham) and his friends are offered a bank job by an old friend who has some inside information. The small time crooks decide to take up the job to rob the safe deposit boxes at Lloyd’s Bank in London. What they don’t know is that these boxes hold some very big secrets including one that is linked to the Royal family and before they know it, they are entangled in a web that threatens their lives.

This isn’t an entertainer like The Italian Job or the Ocean’s movies or a slick, charming enterprise like Guy Ritchie’s Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Nonetheless, it is an engaging, well-made caper flick. Director Roger Donaldson (The World’s Fastest Indian, Dante’s Peak) maintains the tension throughout and writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (who worked together on films like Flushed Away and Goal!) weave together the intricate subplots competently. It would have been quite easy to confuse the audience but credit to the writers, director and the editor, John Gilbert (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Bridge to Terabithia) that this does not happen. Jason Statham is sincere and convincing. He can carry a film on his shoulders but this film carries itself. The large supporting cast filled with British actors (most of whom I haven’t come across) is effective.

It is hard to discuss this film without giving away some of its secrets but the various subplots (apparently based on reality or at least what is known of it) keep you hooked. The robbery itself is a well-executed, tense affair. The intelligently plotted climax comes at you quick and ties up all the ends together but if you blink, you might miss one or two key moments. In between all this, the characters are given some personality and a love triangle finds its place too. There isn’t a lot of humor but you don’t really miss it because the film is paced well and doesn’t let your mind wander. This is well worth a watch.

Somebody had to make the campiest period flick ever but I didn’t expect Roland Emmerich would helm that. He never had the critics rooting him but I’ve loved all his “disaster flicks”. This time however, he really delivers a true blue disaster.

First and the foremost thing which comes to your mind is - What was the necessity of splattering all the promos and posters with the “spear tooth” (the big f****** tiger) and woolly mammoths (the big f****** elephants) when they actually have exactly about 10 minutes of screen-time combined. Would you have forgiven Spielberg if dinosaurs appeared in Jurassic Park only for 10 minutes! And those 10 minutes are the only justification for calling this film 10,000 BC for the people in this one seem to be living definitely not before 1000 AD.

Now comes the grand plot. Old Lady Oracle - The Chosen One - Save the World….If these three phrases sound alien to you then either you are too dumb or you don’t watch Hollywood flicks (in which case you might want to give this a try and probably end up liking it). For the rest, let’s pray together that Hollywood writers are cured of this plot device….we’ve had more than enough of those. Still, despite all this I wouldn’t have complained if the film was even a tad less boring. Those 109 minutes seemed like forever.

The screenplay and the dialogue is so bad and funny that atleast it could have been one of those “so bad it’s good” flicks but sadly it cannot be so because as the unsuspecting viewer the feeling of being royally cheated overrides everything else. Mr. Emmerich - brace yourself for next year’s Razzies and everyone else please save your money for something else.

Shia LaBeouf (Transformers) plays a teenage version of the kid from Home Alone 3 in a Rear Window style voyeuristic adventure with the neighborhood serial killer suspect. Kale (sounds so much like ‘kill’) is under house arrest and not just figuratively (the reason for the arrest isn’t particularly noteworthy). He has a device attached to the foot that monitors his movements and if he crosses a certain radius around his house, the cops are alerted (and they show up in record time too except, of course, when most necessary). And then his behavior makes his mother turn into a dictator. That means no X-Box, no i-Tunes and even no television (parents can be so harsh nowadays!). So he puts to good use the two pairs of binoculars that he’s got lying around (not to mention the video camera) to spy on everyone around, particularly the newly moved-in neighborhood teen hottie. The hottie befriends him just around the time he starts taking interest in another neighbor, whom he suspects to be a serial killer from Texas. As their love blossoms, the mystery of the strange neighbor unfolds. Is he really a serial killer? Or is it just time to give back the kid his television?

Sarcasm aside, the predictable film does have its share of suspenseful moments and is definitely a much better watch than all those horror movies and torture porn flicks that are releasing with amazing regularity. Shia is watchable, Sarah Roemer provides the eye-candy and Aaron Yoo contributes with comic support. Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix Trilogy) turns mother for this one while David Morse (The Green Mile) is very effective playing the terror suspect and his voice modulation helps.

Anyone who might want to compare this to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window shouldn’t be watching at all. This film isn’t aiming for greatness but it is a reasonable summer suspense thriller aimed at youngsters. The recycled premise is still interesting enough but I just hope that the studios don’t start commissioning sequels due to its box-office success.

The team of Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Judd Apatow first collaborated together in the sleeper hit “The 40 Year Old Virgin”. Then came last year’s “Knocked Up” which many critics have cited it as their favorite film of 2007. They again followed it up later in the year with their super-successful “Superbad”. Again, lots of critics have considered it to be best high-school teen comedy ever. They probably aren’t off the mark. Superbad made me laugh out loud than any other film I’ve seen in this genre.

It doesn’t try to tread a different path when it comes to the story - still the familiar bunch of oversexed guys who are desperate to get laid once before they finish school. In this case Evan and Seth who’ve never successfully made it to a party before have a final chance at getting laid at one - only this time they have the onus of bringing in the alcohol. Assisting them in this task is their friend Fogo/McLovin, who with his fake id claims to get them the drinks. Their (mis)adventures constitute the rest of the movie.

What differentiates this movie from other teen comedies (like American Pie series, Road Trip etc.) is its reliance primarily on outrageously hilarious dialogue rather than characters caught in risque situations. Seth (Jonah Hill) - the guy with a major “dick fixation” gets to mouth the filthiest stuff and is the major source of humor in this movie. However, it is debutant Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s turn as “McLovin” which is the funniest part of the whole enterprise. The entire sequence which begins with him announcing his fake id to Seth till the arrival of the cops in the liqour store is the one I enjoyed the most. Michael Cera gets a relatively less conspicuous role but nonetheless he shines.

In a short period of time Rogen, Goldberg and Apatow seem to have became the kings of adult comedy - with the envious distinction of scoring box office successes accompanied with even greater critical acclaim. Their next venture “Pineapple Express” is due to come out in April….should be interesting to watch (if it makes it to theatres here)!

Writer Tony Gilroy (The Devil’s Advocate, The Bourne Trilogy) makes his directorial debut with Michael Clayton. An intellectual thriller with strong dramatic elements, this is just the sort of film that critics and film buffs will love but ordinary viewers might find it tedious.

Michael Clayton is a lawyer who doesn’t go to court anymore. He is listed as special counsel for his firm and his job is to clean up the mess that is created by his firm’s big clients. His bosses refer to him as “miracle worker” while he is more pragmatic about his job as a “janitor” and to paraphrase him, the smaller the mess, the easier it is to clean. This time however, the mess isn’t small. A lawyer handling a big class action lawsuit suddenly develops a conscience that he can’t fight and decides to go against the company that he is representing. Clayton is sent to get the situation under control but can he? And more importantly, will he?

Tom Wilkinson (The Full Monty, Shakespeare in Love) plays the lawyer who develops a conscience. His role is one that requires more discernable histrionics and can be easily susceptible to overacting but he doesn’t go overboard and you start believing he is crazy enough to do the right thing. Tilda Swinton (The Deep End, The Chronicles of Narnia), on the other hand, gets a role that requires a subtle performance and I really enjoyed her work. Even though her role is short, she gets some really good scenes to perform in. Sydney Pollack (the director of films like Out of Africa and Three Days of the Condor, who also apparently acts at times) is actually quite nice as the boss of the law firm where George Clooney works. Clooney, of course, plays Michael Clayton and he is solid in a role that is perfectly suited for him (but as he himself notes, he might lose the Oscar to Daniel Day Lewis).

Tony Gilroy’s screenplay is topnotch and he creates a great mood for this film as the director. He decides against a straight narrative and that makes the film more complicated. There is a lot that is conveyed through the dialogue and the viewer would need to connect the dots many a time. The viewer that stays with the film in the first half hour would be able to appreciate the rest. Many might question the need for such a narrative but it definitely serves a purpose. It brings all the primary characters and issues into focus in the early part of the film and then manages to keep your engrossed as you are trying to figure out how everything pans out and what it means. This, unfortunately, alienates many viewers as is clearly evident from the domestic gross (under $50 million).

If you are expecting this to be an exciting, crowd-pleasing thriller, you might be disappointed. If you are prepared for an intelligently-plotted conscientious legal thriller that requires you to pay rapt attention, this should definitely appeal to you. This is the sort of movie that you need to watch a second time to get the best out of it. Both as the writer and director, Gilroy has the choice to make this a crowd pleaser like Erin Brockovich but he doesn’t go that way. His goal doesn’t seem to be to please the audience or to educate them about how money can be more important to big companies than lives. Instead, he decides to investigate how morals can affect the decisions people take, influencing their lives and how situations in life can affect people’s morals. Reliving the film from this perspective can keep you thinking for a long time.