prashanth nayak

Unlike any other movie in the history of mainstream Hindi cinema, systemically shattering the shibboleths of this genre with transgressive acts, provocative language and enough shocking blood-'n'-gore to spray all the white marble bright red from Delhi to Andhra, 'Animal' erupts as a true alpha beast, the visionary insane king of its own modern Indian jungle. Sandeep Reddy Vanga Is The New Selvaraghavan. And Ranbir Kapoor is the most electrifying, most shameless, most fearless male superstar in the whole of Hindi filmdom down the decades. Pic is not consistently flawless, its action-thriller-comedy template plumbing its nadir at the 90 minute mark, with risible jokes and gratuitous rotary cannon fire making one think that this movie will degenerate into "KGF" trash that has infected the local audience, but it promptly picks up with its multi-pronged powerful family angle and more targeted bursts of gripping action. Director, writer, editor Vanga excels in all the key domains of this ambitious Rs.100 crore 3 hour 20 minute jaw-bruiser, executing a powerful script with inspired direction. The son-father and wife-husband dynamic is explored with stunning power and naked honesty, dialogue is cracker-jack, select fight sequences are superb, and the impressive cast is alpha-led by Ranbir Kapoor in a performance of tremendous emotional charge. Full Review @ Upnworld

AVATAR : THE WASTE OF WATER. Too elongated (like a Na’avi thing), too mechanical despite teeming with unique sea creatures, and too obsessed with protracted battle sequences instead of the striking narrative that made the first Avatar such a global success, Avatar : The Waste of Water is a billion dollar example of sequel fatigue that has finally killed the golden run of visionary director James Cameron. His first foray starring a distant moon inhabited by the giant blue nature-synced Na’vi people, charmed with forest-freaking special effects and a gripping yarn that eventually reeled in $ 2.9 billion to become the biggest moolah spinner of all time. This flick, set in the ocean and aquamarine shores, not only for a change of scenery but also to indulge Cameron’s deep love for marine fathoms, is too long to sustain focus, the humanoid interest scenes giving way increasingly to meaningless action, and suffers from 3D effects that make the giant Na’vi shrink to puppets. 2 stars / 5 (Average) Full review @ Upnworld

RATNAM FRIES SOME BATURE WITH CHOLAS (2.5 stars / 5) Ratnam’s greatest achievement in this film is his peerless showcasing of the fairer sex and he has done this over the decades as exquisitely, as magnificently as any other person on this planet. Pic’s best assets by a Ponni mile, are the pulchritudinous, gorgeously bedecked ladies – Trisha (Princess Kundavai) and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (Nandini). Trisha, almost always with a smile that accentuates her oh-so-pretty visage crowned by a lush shapely bouffant, often outshines the resplendent Aishwarya, if such a thing were possible. Ratnam, as if to atone, puts all the gold, gems and silk from Kanjeevaram on Aishwarya’s bosom and has Ravi Varman glowingly photograph her face and jewellery in a sublime portrait that would have all the big houses from Malabar to Joy Alukka to Tribhovandas aflame with envy. Story set circa 1000 AD, involving a power struggle between the iconic Indian dynasty of the Cholas and rival groups who want to usurp the throne, is merely decent, its saving grace being solid performances by its marquee quintet of heroines and heroes. The film’s two biggest downers are its inability to incorporate successive riveting sub-plots, and its failure to properly choreograph powerful fight sequences. Amidst the largely ho-hum proceedings, one genius sequence is when the deliriously floating camera around a love-devastated crown prince further soars with the unexpected placement of the song ‘Chola Chola’s celebratory ebullience – Upnworld.

Stuffed bone to hem and thoroughly strangled by Shakespearean gobbledygook ,The Tragedy of Macbeth is truly a crying tragedy because of the horrible film it faithfully is from start to finish - easily the otherwise haloed Joel Coen's worst film. From the get-go, this black and white film with a truncated aspect ratio, reveals its fatal flaw - an over-reliance on overblown ancient dialogue whose mummified formality lacks emotional bite. Whether four hundred years old or not, these ridiculously antique and flatulently baroque lines by Joel Coen are certainly timeless in their pompous stupidity.  This kind of size 12 dialogue may be better read at leisure off the page, or through the deliberate volume of the stage, but is almost incoherent when spoken briskly in a modern film. The stark emotional power the Coens spartanly and wondrously harvested in "Fargo" and "No Country for Old Men" are nowhere in evidence in this pedantic wreck. The great Denzel Washington's weaknesses are stripped bare - he spends three-quarters of the film sleep-walking through said dandy lines, and the other bit looking an old balding man with a salt and pepper stubble. If Frances McDormand's Police Chief Marge from 'Fargo' came upon this lot, she would scrunch up her face, then say 'Hands Up' and arrest all of them for putting good sense through the woodchipper. - Upnworld

“Motherhood is a crushing responsibility“ – Leda. Hollywood star Maggie Gyllenhaal’s remarkable directorial debut is a sophisticated, sensuous and languidly paced portrait of a lady, teasingly clad in the diaphanous garb of a tantalizing mystery. There’s not much of the latter here, as it is only a ruse to sustain a suspenseful edge. A terrific film production choice by Netflix, and launching off Elena Ferrante’s novel of the same name, what the movie does sport in spades is an unalloyed desire to look at the life of a middle-aged lady (Leda Caruso, expertly essayed by Olivia Colman) as she reflects on the highly difficult time she had raising two kid daughters while juggling an academic career. This flashback is interwoven with her dysphoric vacation in a Greek beach-side. She is not a bad person, but she struggles to make the right choices, and the movie is not so much a dissection as it is a serial display of sensitively etched cross-sections of her many-hued life. If the life of a prick was shown with dysphoric magnificence in Lonergan & Affleck’s ‘Manchester By The Sea’, then this is perhaps the definitive early life climacteric with Gyllenhaal & Colman’s Leda By The Aegean. At pic’s release, The New York Times ran an article underlining how movies that honestly look at emotionally complex mothers are finally making their presence felt (The year before, they also ran an article describing the niceties of a seventy year old daughter taking care of her ninety year old mother. If Leda later turns out to have a nonagenarian mum, I’m sure we’ll get a statement from her about another type of “crushing responsibility”). - Upnworld

An underwhelming effort by well-known director Jane Campion. Enjoy the 70 mm rugged panoramic views of what pic says is 1925 Montana but is actually 2020 Otago, New Zealand. As for the dramaturgy, it promises more than it delivers and simply does not have the emotional impact we keep expecting. Visual style marries ‘Days of Heaven’ with ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and throw in some gliding landscape shots from early part of ‘Shining’. The setting is a vast, sparse ranch populated by two rich brothers inhabiting a large mansion surrounded by flat scorched ground (no wonder this is NZ – the mansion interior looks more like Nathan Homestead, Auckland). One of them becomes very happy after marrying an alcohol-addicted lady who has her own baggage including an interesting strip of a son, while the bullying brother simmers in his own ornery juices. The boy-like son (Peter, played with anemic elan by Kodi Smit-McPhee in the film’s best act) from the previous relationship, is reed-thin, lanky and quiet with slightly effeminate body language – he is teased with cat-calls as gay, but little do they know what a medical student is capable of. This must be the most miserably listless act by Kirsten Dunst, and Benedict Cumberbatch’s ill-behaved bull is never fully unleashed, spending his entire ring-time in a semi-castrated state. – Upnworld

MASURKAR'S TIGER MEOWS INSTEAD OF ROARING. As Divisional Forest Officer in an Indian forest, Vidya Vincent ( Vidya Balan) soon finds her task cut out. A man-eating tiger has unleashed terror in rural hinterlands seguing into the jungle, and she will now have to track down this transgressive beast. She may succeed, as she is gifted with composure and determination, but who really has taught her to office the much more dangerous forests of political cross-fire and gamesmanship ? Her chances of success may be shot dead in the grasses as have been so many tigresses before her in the subcontinent. Alas, Masurkar stumbles in the reeds of ‘Sherni’s taxing terrain, never quite being able to make up his mind whether this will have the rabid bite of a ferocious political tale, the visceral thrill-‘n’-hot-cold fear of rip-roaring jungle scorcher, or a lethal skein of both. To Masurkar’s credit or otherwise, he never shows a tiger attack in the entire picture. The best we get are long-range shots where a hunter aims a rifle at a far-away tiger. He also teases us with shots of vulnerable humans sitting in fields or near the forest – we think a tiger attack is about to happen but the only paw swipe here is that of the editor cutting to a different scene. The movie’s greatest strength is its obvious love of the jungle – no other Indian movie has this much lush coverage of the Indian wilds. The political chicanery however, clubbed with parodying portrayals of febrile and two-timing TV channels, is a been-there-done-that shtick at which other Indian movies have done snappier sniping. Vidya Balan unfortunately does little to perk up her drab role. The film meanders between toothless tiger tale and wan interpersonal drama, frittering away vital narrative sinew with loose direction and low intensity. - Upnworld

DANIEL CRAIG – THIS IS NO WAY TO GO ! ‘No Time To Die’ finished filming in 2019, the year before the Coronavirus pandemic changed the world we live in. It is very interesting how the story more or less presaged the prospect of biologic micro-agents upending the world. Bond, true to style, does a heck of a lot here to salvage the world’s hide. In an ideal world, some whistle-blower in the CIA would have informed Bond about how Wuhan was operating its virology circus. Bond would have swum under the China sea and secretly reached the shores. Then after a sizzling session with a Gong Li-type, he would have infiltrated the Institute, destroyed the Coronavirus and saved the world before the pandemic began. But in the real world, the real Bond was a gain-of-function virus-research funding pact between USA and China, the pandemic continues to rage, the real superheroes are vaccine scientists and healthcare professionals many of whom have sacrificed their lives, while nobody, hero or zero, has the guts to punish The Great China which has reamed Australia for speaking up and silenced Peng Shuai for good measure. Style, thrill, sex appeal, craftiness, a memorable super-villain or even a memorable Bond – none of these are in adequate evidence in the last James Bond avatar of the semi-great Daniel Craig. What an iconic shame ! Without top directors to guide him to the legend ( Martin Campbell in the greatest of ‘em of all – ‘Casino Royale’, Sam Mendes in ‘Skyfall’ and ‘Spectre’), Craig falls like a Kryptonite-kissed marionette. Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek), for a super-villain, is as chilling as a pock-marked dormouse. The Super Villain’s Secret Island Lair is a crashing bore, filled with losers raking the waters. Where’s the killer shark when you need one ? The gunfight therein is so pointless I wanted to doze off. - Upnworld