Rupak Mukherjee

Nicholas Cage starrer "Knowing" reminded me of Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and also has similarities with Keanu Reeves' "The Day the Earth Stood Still". It has the touch of that Spielberg's 70s movie but certainly not the class of it. But the unique thing about the movie was it was 'dark' throughout, not a light moment, neither Cage nor the child actors or the lady played by Rosy Byrne could conjure up a smile at any moment. The brooding MIT professor kept brooding throughout and the knowledge of the impending disasters didn't seem to help his cause. As a viewer, can only pass a judgment but can't say what exact mix makes a movie from poor to average to good to great !!! 6/10

After Felu-Da and Byomkesh, turn of the Kiriti now to turn into celluloid in recent years. Kiriti has been played by Indraneil Sengupta, Priyanshu Chatterjee and Chiranjeet in Bengali film industry within last few years, and I saw the first of them, Nilacholey Kiriti. The successful male Indian models who turned to cinema, many of them thrived too for various reasons, have unfortunately not been great actors. Indraneil when directly compared to the actors playing sleuth in different other detective Bengali movies now, turn out to be among the weakest. His acting looked flat, lacking any mannerism or expression, and more importantly the charisma required to don iconic roles. Kiriti is a popular detective character penned by none other than Nihar Ranjan Gupta and our literary classics need better treatment than this. Very ordinary direction and story telling, not much use of background score to build up the mystery, not providing the viewer with time or interest to think over the crime, the entire thing is one flat line seemingly hurriedly told. Other than Indraneil, Rituparna was sub par, Abhishek Chatterjee was never a good actor, Arunima Ghosh was okay, Shantilal Mukherjee, a brilliant actor (I am a fan of his, never got his due from the industry), he obviously did well, rather an unknown actor who played Radha/Ramanuj in a challenging role caught eye. Overall, I would reiterate Bengali literature is very rich, and our literary gems demand up to the mark portrayal when turned into celluloid, however low the budget may be which seemed the case for this film though. 5.5/10 is all I can give..

Ugly is dark, Ugly is made to be ugly, with everyone trying to settle their own issues and making an opportunity out of a crisis, a kidnapping case which if pursued in a straight line should have been solved, but made complicated to the hilt with matters out of the purview of pure investigation coming into the way. It is an exceptional movie by Anurag Kashyap, certainly among his very best, and whoever has an issue with its dark climax, I don't have one. Ronit Roy is unbelievably good in these kinds of roles, saw him in Udaan and he absolutely nails these characters. There was never a drop in intensity and I would easily rate this 7.5/10

Shor in the City is a good enough movie, a multi-narrative take on the city of Mumbai, where strong performances keep you hooked in to the movie. Notably the character to remember, Mandook, and also that of Radhika Apte, Zakir Hussain and his partners need special mention too, the seriously harassed and drained NRI guy trying to set up a business in the city and the short but glamourous presence of former Miss Britain give the edge. To judge how good it is, it should be compared with other multi-narratives on the city, for now can remember Life In A Metro for one. Would give SITC a 7/10.

The USP of the this movie is Teresa Palmer's brilliant acting, her non-glamourous look of a tourist in a famous city but new to her right from the first scene where she lands on to the station and comes out of the subway will catch your attention. She carries this entire captive movie on her shoulders and makes it watchable. There are just a handful of characters and it was mostly upon her performance the film depended on and she delivers. 6/10.

This is only the second time I watched Alia Bhatt in a movie after Student Of The Year. There was not much to talk about her debut film but I heard she is one of the finest lead actresses in Bollywood now, and here she got a full opportunity to showcase her acting prowess which, well, she did with aplomb. Again a real spy story brought to light, hope there are many more coming, with one proper film on Ravinder Kaushik too other than the fanciful Ek Tha Tiger. Now talking of how good the movie was, I think, it does provide a bit different take to the viewer when it is not purely fictional and based on as real a story as Raazi is, much of it is true and inspires awe, so purely from making of the movie standpoint and how entertaining it was, it took the little time required to build up (please note since based on true incidents, it did not have the luxury to include too much of forced elements to keep you on the edge), but within an hour into the movie you are on the edge as a viewer and there is palpable tension you could feel relating to what Alia's character Sehmat experiences from then on, and that is worth it. The movie didn't try to be overly patriotic, rather focussed on the common sentiment echoing on both sides of the border from personnel of security, armed forces and intelligence agencies, and the makeshift relationships built for the purpose of mission, which nonetheless built through each day living and sharing together still does matter. A wonderful story picked up by Meghna Gulzar from the book written on it "Calling Sehmat". A 7/10.

In three words, "a pathetic movie". There seems to be a jostle in Bengali cinema to make sleuth or thriller movies but it is not everyone's cup of tea, and Mainak Bhaumik who is the latest to join that bandwagon dishes out a very poor film here. Abir is not good in negative roles and it seems he is trying to make the most of his good time in the industry doing as much work as he can, Jishu does so, so, but Sudip Mukherjee playing his police officer boss is made into a laughing stock in the movie with extremely poorly written dialogues, particularly his. Nothing sits right here and is way below par from an established team of director and actors in the industry. Hardly 5/10

Bollywood is going places in terms of content, decided to watch Vidya Balan's Sherni, can't remember many Bollywood movies on our forests, there was a multi-starrer decades back where Ajay Devgan played a joke of a ghost tiger and that's it. Sherni tries nothing fancy, even opting out of an audience pleasing climax thereby risking the film's success but chose the as realistic way as possible depicting the work and challenges our Forest Department faces from inside and outside and the conflict of habitus of our forest dwellers with the endangered animals due to shrinking and interrupted forest cover and the politics around it. Acting-wise, notable performances you would get and any other lead actress could have demanded a more glorifying climax for the lead role but not Vidya here. I am happy Bollywood trying different things in an Indian way. 6.5/10.

There have been few notable movies made in Bengali on the lives of fishermen community like Ganga in 1960, Dwiper Naam Tiya Rang in 1963 before Titas Ekti Nadir Naam in 1973. Incidentally Ritwik Ghatak who is the director of Titas Ekti Nadir Naam was also the scriptwriter for Dwiper Naam Tiya Rang. Ghatak took his experimentation of film making to next level in this direction of his, which is described as hyperlink cinema with multiple narratives, characters and plots and subplots intertwined with each other to present a holistic picture of the lives of the community living by the riverside. Based on the novel by Adwaita Mallabarman, the first half is distinctly different from the second. While there seemed to be a story being built in the initial half came to a sudden halt to intermission. For regular movie watchers, it would seem to take the natural transition to beyond intermission and good enough to cover the whole length of a film, but what we see are different characters and incidents taking place in latter half with the one central character in Basanti and the boy Ananta to a minor extent maintaining continuity. Such experimental story telling with minimalistic movement of camera angles and many close-up shots would either have takers or no takers. One particular portion towards the end struck me where after the river Titas died down and the fishermen community was denied their right to the land even, an old village woman talked of only one profession left, that is of begging and the younger woman talked of her old age being an advantage to that end unlike hers. The film ends with Basanti digging through the sand with her hands for some water in starvation baring the start realities of the hand to mouth poor of our country who know not of many other than a singular livelihood.

Mrinal Sen's Padatik brings to the forefront the Naxalite movement in Bengal on the backdrop of turbulent 70s worldwide when people fed up with unemployment, corruption, political economic mismanagement, social evils, were yearning for a change and the bugle of revolution sounded loud and clear from every nook and corner of the globe. It captures the predicament of the then Bengal youth who were swept away by leftist ideals but those who joined the militant left movement were caught in no man's land due to its failure and misdirection as against the formal left who were able to capture political power through popular support. Pravash Sarkar's portrayal of Dhiman impressed me and the presence of Simi Garewal provided the necessary yet not disjointed relief from the narrative. I wonder why this beautiful and capable actress not made into more lead heroines roles in mainstream Bollywood, maybe she was too glamorous for the then Hindi film industry. The movie won National Award for Best Screenplay in 1973. 7/10.