As I start writing this, I am silently hoping that the post is not very long. It is not my intent to give a comprehensive list of all cool movies, but I just couldn’t resist the temptation to list out a few that I watched in the last 2-3 weeks.
a. Sankat City (Hindi) - An extremely intelligent and wacky comedy. I kept thinking throughout the movie and later - Just how could anyone think of a plot so circuitous and still manage to keep the movie engaging and entertaining !! One of the better comedies (unlike those churned out by the Ekta Kapoor factory or the unintentionally funny ‘ghost/Nisha Kothari’ movies by RGV). The characters were wonderfully over the top and acting was top-notch!!
b. Alibaba (Tamil) - Now, I would never have thought I would enjoy a tamil movie, made by some obscure guy and featuring 2 new faces who don’t even look all that good - especially if it was touted as ‘India tholaikaatchigalil mudhal murayaga’ (for the first time on Indian Television!!). But this was one of the rare finds that don’t make it big and still have a catchy story line. My only complaint was that the hero looked and acted really bad! But for a direct-to-TV movie (I am just guessing), this was a pretty interesting thriller, except for the usual climax with a lot of senseless ‘dishoom-dishoom’.
c. Diving Bell and the Butterfly (French) - I should really dedicate a separate post for this one. This is the film-adaptation of a french novel of the same name (Le scaphandre et le papillon) and is the awe-inspiring story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, former editor-in-chief of the ‘Elle’ magazine, who as a result of a massive stroke, suffers from a locked-in syndrome, where he can only move a single eyelid. Bauby narrated the entire book in this condition to his transcriber by blinking his eyelid!! The story is wonderful enough, what makes the movie even better is the way it is filmed. Right from the start, we see people around as Bauby would have seen them. I loved a particular sequence where Bauby’s estranged wife comes to meet with him and talks to him and his eyes mist over. You can feel it because the shot of the wife’s face becomes hazy too!! A brilliant movie!!
d. 99 (Hindi) - This was on my list from the time the movie released. Frankly I had not expected it to be as good as it was. The cast comprises of Kunal Khemu, Cyrus Broacha, Soha boring Ali Khan and the amazing Boman Irani. A very interesting script and pretty sharp dialogues made this a very good watch.
e. Kaminey (Hindi) - What do I say that the media has not already said before? Forget performances, the script rocks. Of all the actors, I thought Amol Gupte playing Bhope was just so very cool !! The movie, reminded me a lot of Guy Ritchie’s ‘Lock Stock and Two Smoking barrels’ mainly because of the similarity in style and multiple tracks running in parallel. It absolutely rocked!! I simply loved the sequence between Bhope and Mikhail where they keep pretending to shoot each other - it was so surreal and filled with tension. You know both of them are maniacs and you know something is going to go terribly wrong - a brilliant brilliant sequence.
This seems like a great year for Hindi movies. Some really offbeat movies are being made. I hope, for my own sake, that the trend continues!! Meanwhile I still have Quick Gun Murugan, Achamundu Achamundu, Eeram, Sinthanai Sei and a few others lined up!!
And for those, who, like me, cannot stand Yashraj movies, this review is a delight!!
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