Movie Review: The Woman in Black

Unsettling as it is entertaining, The Woman in Black is a deliciously creepy old fashioned ghost story, and the most enjoyable chiller since 2007’s The Orphanage. The film, an adaptation of Susan Hill’s 1983 book (which spawned a fantastic 1989 TV movie and a popular stage play) is a slickly crafted Gothic spookfest that fiddles with fear in a delightfully cinematic manner.

What makes The Woman in Black work is its unpretentious, increasingly alarming and emotionally jangling tone. Director James Watkins refreshingly doesn’t resort to gore for the scares or shock value - but the tension becomes almost unbearable as the film progresses and Watkins, his cinematographer Tim Maurice and composer Marco Beltrami keep the bloodcurling atmosphere going for the entirety of its 90 minutes. It really is pure eye and ear candy for young horror enthusiasts hungry for thrills. And it helps that Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe headlines the film with a mature, understated performance - it's great to see him tackling such a diverse role.

The story is fairly straightforward – Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, a young lawyer and a widower with a four year old son who is sent to a rotting mansion in the English countryside where the dead owner has left the estate a mess of paperwork. A sinister stench greets Kipps, there is no telephone or electricity; the townspeople seem to hide a secret and Kipps soon realizes that he is being watched from a distance by a ghostly figure in black. Soon enough, the bump in the dark frights assume full control all the way up to the smashing thrill ride of an ending. If you've seen half a dozen horror movies, you'll already know where the scares are. The standard clichés are a plenty - from the intimidating toys to the unexpected blasts from the music brass. Yet the jump scares are delivered exquisitely because director Watkins consistently finds new ways to sell them.

But the bigger coup of The Woman in Black is the pleasing climax coupled with the ample backstory. Moreover, the film marks a great return for the legendary Hammer productions that brought us such seminal horror films as Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein and The Mummy. Not only does The Woman in Black serve as a fabulous reminder of the renowned studio's heyday, but it also enriches the things that made Hammer so famous. The lighting and set design is gorgeous and constantly offers spine-chilling visual cues and shadows. There are startling noises in the fog, grimy hand prints on window panes, the mansion itself is adorned in strange decorations and is cut off from the land by a lake, but none of the supernatural overtures are the least bit cheesy. They’re just enough to keep horror veterans entertained and newbies shifting at the edge of their seats.

The Woman in Black is a simple haunted house tale but it’s beautifully nerve-racking. If you’re on the lookout for sheer atmospheric horror then you really should double bill this movie with a DVD of The Orphanage and call it a night.

(First published in Mid Day)

Hey Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the Oscars Suck

A week ago someone asked me a question – Who decides who wins the Oscars? The wrong people, I replied. 

But hey, I’m a cantankerous critic who often questions the taste of the Oscar voters and the credibility of movie awards. The Oscars don’t celebrate true artistic achievement, because every year quality cinematic gems are ignored in favor of bourgeois beanbags. Nor do the awards celebrate commercial success, since the Academy regularly turns its nose up at blockbusters, even good ones. 

What the Academy actually champions is an odd mixture of commercial, indie, garishly overblown, and politically correct tripe. It’s all about studio lobbying and network ratings, and the Best Picture award is just meant to serve as Hollywood’s poster-child. In fact some of the Oscar voters have not had anything to do with the movie industry for more than 30 years. That is why we see old fashioned scum like War Horse get nominated over more radical and challenging stuff like Martha Marcy May Marlene. 

I stopped watching the Oscars three years ago. Because the winners not only don’t let me reflect my feelings about them, but they also make me reach out for a baseball bat and storm towards the Kodak Theater. An ideal awards ceremony would fairly represent all sides of filmmakers’ struggle, but the Oscars are simply rating-hungry Teevee shows that pummel an urgent need of self-gratification upon your face. Year after year the Oscar voters continue to prove that they are unconnected to any known human behavior. Year after year they set out explicitly to demonstrate their belief that there is no relation between art, showmanship and intelligence. And judging by this year’s nominees I’m beginning to wonder if the Academy deliberately invites ridicule. 

The unreasonably schmaltzy War Horse, one of the worst ever Spielberg movies garnered an unbelievable SIX nominations. This wouldn’t matter if the film were universally acclaimed or the least bit interesting. Instead it is mind-numbingly saccharine and melodramatic; the direction is banal and the acting (apart from Benedict Cumberbatch) is just embarrassing. I am not an expert on filmmaking but I would like to know why a horsey movie that requires you to consume half a dozen Hajmola tablets to digest its cheese scored over a true masterpiece like 50/50. The Joseph Gordon Levitt-Seth Rogen starrer achieves the impossible – it is a cancer comedy that combines humour with painful subjects, and not once do we feel the film’s tone shifting from one to the other. 50/50 is critically acclaimed, but the Academy didn’t bother to nominate even the cancer survivor writer Will Reiser, who lived to tell his story because of his belief that comedy can alleviate pain and make it easier to bear.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, a movie that’s been disliked by every film lover I know and derided by the majority of the top Hollywood critics, received a Best Picture nomination.  The Steven Daldry film is so self-important and manipulative in milking the 9/11 theme that it encourages us to pat ourselves on the back for tolerating it. But Richard Ayoyade’s exceptionally quirky bittersweet dramedy Submarine, and Steven Soderbergh’s magnificent Contagion, two films that bowled over both critics and audiences didn’t get even a whiff of the nominee ballots. Both those films also feature the best soundtracks of the year, but the Academy decided to have just two nominees for Best Original song, booting out Alex Turner’s glorious tracks for Submarine in the process. To add to the tomfoolery, neither of the two songs that were nominated will even be performed during the Oscars show.

The travesty doesn’t end there. Tilda Swinton, whose turn in We Need To Talk About Kevin tops even her own previous roles could not find a berth in the Best Actress slot. Among the year’s great performances you won’t find a greater one than Swinton as a traumatized mother. Anyone unable to find something extraordinary with her character should not only be not allowed to vote, but also not be allowed to watch films. 

Laughably, Rooney Mara scored a Best Actress nom, despite playing a watered down version of the character played by Noomi Rapace three years ago in the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Fincher’s remake has a lot of nudity, and I can think of two reasons why Mara, and not Swinton delighted the Oscar voters. 

Moreover, the jury seemed to be stoned or confused about which of the six Jessica Chastain films to vote for. She received a Best Supporting Actress nom for her one dimensional character in The Help instead of for Tree Of Life which required thrice as much conviction. And the less said about Elizabeth Olsen’s snub and Glenn Close’s inclusion, the better - if makeup and costumes add to an actor’s Oscar eligibility then Eddie Murphy should’ve won a statuette or two for Norbit.

If all that weren’t enough, Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin, a double Annie award winner and a favourite to win the Animation Oscar failed to score even a nom.  I am all for endorsing films about cats, but Puss In Boots’ nomination made me gag. The fact that the Academy embraced a spinoff of the Shrek franchise and ignored a fresh film with a five-minute long single-take motorbike-boat-tank chase baffles me. 

But the biggest, most shameless display of the Academy’s moral simplemindedness comes with their complete disregard for Steve McQueen’s Shame and its star Michael Fassbender. The Oscar voters didn't pick Fassbender’s character, a shallow self-gratifying wanker, because they probably are the same. Independent Cinema is an oxymoron, and it looks like poor McQueen will have to sculpt his whole career out of jumping from festival to festival, keeping his work alive with the grants, prizes, and prestige that come at international festival screenings. Instead of Fassbender, Gary Oldman was curiously nominated for his role in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - his character is neither a crowd pleaser like Brad Pitt in Moneyball nor even especially likable. The real reason behind Oldman’s nomination seems to be the Academy’s addiction to high grade cocaine or the need to flaunt their ‘generosity’ of including commercially unsuccessful cinema.

But ultimately it is futile to criticize these ludicrous awards. Everyone will be glued to their Teevees on Feb 26, because people regard the Oscars as an occasion to sit with family and friends, and admire the celebs, make fun of their daft acceptance speeches, or gaze at their gowns and cleavage. 

I, on the other hand, shall be busy with my Joe Sacco graphic novels, not giving a fuck.

Movie Review: Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu

There is always a market for sleek, superficial, Valentine’s day date movies about the liberating power of love and being true to your own self. The new Karan Johar-produced rom-com Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu is one such film, and it almost manages to succeed over the hackneyed conventions of the genre. 

Debutant director Shakun Batra’s ripoff, correction, homage to What happened in Vegas and Recien Cazado is unabashedly slushy and syrupy, and if your favourite movie is Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na or The Notebook, then Ek Mai Aur Ekk Tu is just the film for you. The less romantic will find the entirety of this movie to be a tremendously trite, ham-handed endurance test.

On the bright side director Batra’s twist on the standard rom-com clichés is that Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu isn't bogged down by the ‘made for each other’ machination that makes a sappy Bollywood ending inevitable. The film is mostly breezy and fun as Batra and his co-writer Ayesha Devitre avoid formulaic pomposity one finds in garbage like Jhootha Hi Sahi. It helps that Amit Trivedi’s music here is just as lighthearted and inviting as the glossy Vegas locales where the first half is set. Fifty percent of the leads are excellent - Kareena  Kapoor is bright as sunshine and cruises with charming quirks and cutesy details, but Imran Khan’s mechanical performance, where he bumbles over his attempts at humor, almost sabotages her role. He labors so hard to whip life into his character that he possibly pulled a muscle or two. Teenage girls will squeal at his dreamy eyes and hair, but Imran’s forced tedium just drags us through his character’s daddy and mommy issues and uncomfortable whims that he makes you want to grab and shake him awake.

Here we have Rahul Kapoor (Imran), the obedient 25-year-old son of a rich couple (Boman Irani and Ratna Pathak Shah) who loses his job at a top construction company in Las Vegas. Rahul has never made a choice of his own in his life, and is afraid to go against his dad’s plan of being drafted into the family business and get married a colleague’s daughter. Rahul chances upon the happy-go-lucky hairstylist Riana (Kareena) at a shrink’s office, and after a drunken night on Christmas, he wakes up to find out that they got married at one of the infamous Vegas chapels. Rahul and Riana decide to procure an annulment, but as expected, Rahul realizes that Riana might just be the beacon of light in his perfunctory life.  

We’ve had too many rom-coms that feature mid-twenties boys and girls complaining about daddy issues and how they find someone who changes their lives, but in the case of Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu Imran’s character manages to keep the plot truism to a thankful minimum. A more mature and realistic portrayal of the same, however, was done by Siddharth in the Telugu film Bommarillu. 

The production design and David Mac Donald’s photography are crafted with meticulous care - the Vegas locales are menthol cool, graciously not the least bit schlocky like in Anjaana Anjaani. Unfortunately the same can’t be said about the dialogue, which seems as if it should come attached to big white balloons hovering over the characters' heads. Sample Imran saying to Kareena: ‘Duniya me do type ke parents hote hai, jo Cola aur Candy allow karte hai, aur jo nahi’. The comedy isn’t particularly hilarious, in fact most of the jokes are just sitcom level - all they’re devoid of are the accompanying laugh tracks. Most of the giggles arise from the few physical comedy bits, one of which involves Imran falling over a couch and another where he walks out of a restaurant bathroom dripping wet.

What Ek Mai Aur Ekk Tu has going for itself is the excellent supporting cast. Ratna Pathak Shah proves yet again that she is by far the most likable person on both the telly and the big screen. Ram Kapoor as Irani’s business partner is fun in his cameo, more so is Nikhil Kapoor who plays Kareena’s jovial dad. Both Ratna Pathak and Irani are given minuscule roles, one wonders why they weren’t given full reigns towards the climax, a plot point that was again better explored in the climax of Bommarillu. 

Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu is a generic predictable lollypop rom-com date movie and star vehicle all rolled into one lustrous package. It isn’t the least bit original, but it doesn’t annihilate your patience levels the way I Hate Luv Stories and Break Ke Baad did. 

(First published in Mumbaiboss)

Movie Review: 'War Horse'

If only the magnificent opening shot of Steven Spielberg’s War Horse was followed up with a story half as profound, then disappointment would not be so tangible. Shot with a truckload of affection by Janusz Kaminski, and intentionally evoking the films of John Ford, the imagery is the most compelling feature of War Horse, a maddeningly schmaltzy movie.

The elements are all in place - superb casting (newcomer Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Tom Hiddleston and Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch), gorgeous cinematography, John Williams’ lovely score; unfortunately the story never connects. War Horse falls into the clutches of long, intense ‘Spielberg Stares’ from nearly every character in the movie, inducing little drama that feels tiring and shallow. God’s rays could not have done a more admirable job of lighting War Horse, but the film’s aesthetic beauty doesn't compensate for the lack of a rewarding story.  

Based on a popular 1982 book by Michael Morpurgo, War Horse revolves around Joey, a remarkable horse who is cared for by Albert, a young farm boy in England. World War I breaks out and Joey is taken away from Albert to be used in battle. The book focused on Albert's search throughout Europe to find Joey but the film only follows Joey's harrowing journey, where he is befriended, claimed and used by several different people across the continent. As Joey is passed from Albert to a soldier to a general to a little French girl to another soldier, War Horse plummets from sweet eye candy to agonizing melodrama. The conflicts are predictable and all the actors speak in frustratingly over the top histrionic dialogue. And by the hundredth beautifully crafted trail of smoke and explosion of artistic splendor, War Horse loses more than a little steam.  

Spielberg employs a visual style that is a throwback to classic John Ford movies. Every single shot is meticulously framed and flawlessly lit, but the movie completely fails at the human level. Most of the characters remain strangers to us, and it gets difficult to sympathize with any of them. Spielberg is the grandmaster of milking themes like family, home and longing, but unlike in his other films he offers too few moments of genuine emotional power. Even the leitmotifs of loss and moving on seem too labored and superficial. The attempts at wrenching out tears are unbelievably corny - one plot point contains the horse being mercilessly snatched away by soldiers from a sickly young French girl who lives with her grandfather.

The battle scenes are astounding, and a reminder of how talented Spielberg truly is. Long, uncut shots pretty much throw you into the nightmarish trenches and the battlefields. But however admirable the film’s sense of foreboding may be, it is impossible not to be put off by a story that’s increasingly contrived, saccharine and schmaltzy. 

War Horse is a ho-hum affair, watchable but not the least bit memorable. At two and a half hours it is too long and predictable, when 90 minutes would have been plenty. By the time it reaches its passionately sappy ending, it succeeds in making us remember it as dispassionately as possible.

(First published in Mid Day)

Movie Review: 'Chronicle'

Chronicle is an astonishing achievement, as enigmatic as its title, and absolutely razor-sharp entertainment. First-time director Josh Trank combines intricate handheld live-action camerawork with CGI wizardry to stunning, if often baffling effect. This found footage thriller rises above the genre dreck like Apollo 18, and offers a distinctive visual perspective that confirms that there's art left in the genre after all.

The story of Chronicle is similar to the X Files episode ‘Rush’ where a school kid finds a cave that gives him superpowers, except it doesn’t have the gauche allegorical monochrome of the show. In Chronicle the kid is Andrew (Dane DeHaan), whose dreary life consists of a drunkard dad, a sick mom and constant humiliation from society. His cousin Matt (Alex Russel) sometimes visits him out of pity. Andrew’s only friend is his video camera which he uses to record everything that goes on in his life. Things take a turn when Andrew accompanies his cousin and his classmate Steve (Michael B Jordan) to investigate a mysterious underground cave in the woods, where they discover otherworldly crystals and develop telekinetic superpowers. As any human adolescent would do, they use their powers for mischief and before you know it the film turns into a wild mirror image of X-Men.  

Director Trank’s imagination and vision is terrific - he immediately eliminates the contrivance of the POV camera and effortlessly balances all kinds of aesthetics like dark surrealism and compositional thingamajig. His work recalls Matt Reeves’ in Cloverfield but there's pizzazz in what Trank attempts. Chronicle arrives a full 12 years after The Blair Witch Project which put found footage on the commercial cinema map and the genre has since been littered with all kinds of tripe. Yet Chronicle, thanks to its optical and creative fertility manages to rub shoulders with the genre’s best offerings like Rec and Monsters.  Trank uses every inch of every frame to fill scenes with exciting tidbits, mixing natural light with colorful characters and barn-burning action to deliver a truly unforgettable experience. Some of the visual effects look like big money Michael Bay sequences, yet have been achieved with an astounding one-tenth of the budget. 

But it’s not just all eye candy razzle-dazzle, because Chronicle does a fantastic job of putting us inside the heads of socially rejected teenagers who acquire powers to destroy lives – it is astonishing to realize that such a painfully clichéd theme can be thrillingly provocative if done right. It is possible that this film could’ve worked without the found footage gimmick and shot naturally, but the apparent realism of the characters and their existential rumination would’ve taken a beating. 

Chronicle cleverly merges handheld action and CGI with quirky storytelling, stylish lensing and assured performances. The result is an extremely inventive film, a special kind of visual ecstasy. I’m tempted to find comparisons to other more electrifying films, but the simple truth is that there’s nothing out there that's anything like this.

(First published in Mid Day)

Movie Review: 'Man on a Ledge'

Five minutes in, Man on a Ledge loses believability and devolves into near-farcical amusingly ludicrous improbability. If that’s the sort of braindead farce you’re likely to enjoy, watch the movie. For the rest, it would be a shame to see rising star Sam Worthington reduced to taking part in such grotesquely formulaic drivel. 

Man on a Ledge is just heavy handed schlock that balances unrealistic action movie howlers with painfully contrived dialogue, its only redeeming factor being the relatively short running time of 100 minutes. The film fails to generate any real excitement, though loads of ‘faux thrilling’ music is provided by Henry Jackman. All the characters here are numbingly unbelievable throughout the hackneyed script, even the scantily clad Genesis Rodriguez fails to distract from the predictable story.

Sam Worthington plays Nick Cassidy, an honest NYC cop who is wrongly accused of stealing real estate tycoon David Englander’s (Ed Harris) diamond and is sent to jail. Angered, Nick stages a prison break, makes his way to the ledge of a hotel’s high rise and threatens to jump to his death unless the cops produce Detective Mercer (Elizabeth Banks). Simultaneously, a few blocks away Nick’s brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and his girlfriend Angie (Rodriguez) attempt a reverse-heist to break into Englander’s vault to prove the diamond wasn’t stolen. Will Nick jump? Is there another twist? It’s all neither fun enough nor intelligent; instead it just slogs on without offering any real thrill.

The film is written by Pablo F. Fenjves, who won director of the year from the Directors Guild in 2008 for his documentary Ghosts of Cite Soleil, but Man on a Ledge seems like it was written by school kids. The trailer frustratingly gives away the biggest twist, and the final surprise, although obvious after the first half doesn’t make its appearance until the end, leaving plenty of time for the film to detour onto annoying avenues. The characters and the Mission Impossible-esque heist action are so flat that you can almost feel an invisible barrier that keeps you from any emotional involvement in them. There are also clumsily improbable twists of fate, some of which include the same cops being dispatched to every police action in the whole of New York. Things even go from implausible to completely absurd - nobody ever notices that Nick is wearing an earpiece to chat with his accomplices the whole time. 

But the most shocking thing to come from this film is the fact that Sam Worthington is a stunningly flavorless leading man. Worthington has done half a dozen films since his breakout role in Avatar, none of which showcased his dramatic skills. In Man on a Ledge he struggles with his accent so much that you can’t tell if he is American or British or Australian. Complimenting Worthington’s bland role are the unintentionally comedic offerings by Edward Burns and Elizabeth Banks as the police negotiators. The talented Ed Harris, Jamie Bell, Anthony Mackie (who plays Nick’s former partner) and Kyra Sedgwick (who plays a reporter) behave as if this movie was just another paycheck.

Man on a Ledge is a snoozy film – it has no great stars to show off, yet has the nerve to not even offer us any decent thrills.

  

(First published in Mid Day)

Review: 'Journey 2: The Mysterious Island'

Why would a studio go to the trouble of conceiving and producing a sequel to a slipshod movie that received mixed reviews? The answer: a gigantic 3D-bumped box office. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is an uneven, painfully silly, yet amiable mess that has more adventurous intentions than actual assets. The film is supposed to be a fun entertainer but it does not have, despite its pretty look, an interesting story to really take off as a 21st century family flick. 

The first Journey to the Center of the Earth was pretty bad - the big effects were masked by the lousy 3D and there were two paltry action scenes. Journey 2 is marginally better partly because of the accepted system that the second movie in a series is always bigger and more bombastic than the first. In reality Journey 2 is unsure whether it's a campy comedy or a big screen comic – the film dabbles in both and does neither one very well.  With its over the top CGI monsters Journey 2 in fact plays like a dorky Ed Wood homage. The acting is alternately wooden and hammy but the special effects are epic and mildly amusing. Simply put, kids would probably dig this film, as would overgrown infants who consider it a huge thrill to munch popcorn through retro science fiction baloney.  

There isn’t much of a story - Josh Hutcherson returns from the previous film as Sean Anderson, who is now a rebellious spoilt brat who feels imprisoned in his home. He had discovered Jules Verne's mystical world at the center of the earth with his uncle (Brendan Fraser), and all he wants now is to locate his grandfather (Michael Caine) whom he believes is somewhere on an obscure South Pacific island. Sean sets off on the quest along with his stepdad (Dwayne Johnson) and a father-daughter tour guide team (Vanessa Hudgens and Luis Guzman) where he encounters scary volcanoes, CGI tornadoes, gigantic reptiles and the toughest foe of them all – life lessons.

One would expect a clichéd premise like this to turn into a stinkbomb of a movie, but there are several titles worse than this. What Journey 2 lacks (and it lacks a whole lot), it makes up for in cheesy good charm. I can easily imagine Journey 2 being a movie I saw as a goofy 10-year-old and really enjoyed.  There is a lot of dumb humour on display, and the absence of an exciting story and overdependence on slapstick will limit its appeal to giggling easily distracted school kids. The special effects are seamless, but everything else about the filmmaking is sloppy. The 3D is alternately overwhelming and patience-testing, though consistently gimmicky. All the characters, including the bodacious buff Johnson are thoroughly annoying, even the great Michael Caine who is supposed to be delightfully peculiar comes off as an irritating old fart. 

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is a better quality sequel than dung heaps like Spy Kids 4. The original was one of the worst 3D movies of 2008, and while this sequel won’t win any awards, it’s (mostly) less annoying than its predecessor.

(First published in Mid Day)