Film reviews

Feb 2, 2015: "Magic in the moonlight" is probably called a "romantic comedy" by the bureaucrats in the department of stamping and classifying movies. It must be… Romantic because the male and female leads kind of discover love for one another… and Comedy because it is made by Woody Allen (isn’t he supposed to be some funny old comedian?).

It’s OK folks, it IS a romantic comedy – I just feel guilty calling it that because it is so much better than what gets passed under that label lately. It does follow all the ground rules of these things, and then rises much higher above them. To be expected from Woody Allen, I suppose. Compared with some of his more obtuse movies, this is an outright entertainer – on one level; and that there is another level makes it interesting. On one level, it is a seemingly predictable story of a haughty, assertive and successful magician, trying to uncover a lovely young con artist performing séance, who seems to turn tables on him, in the process making him uncover that she is his real soul mate and not the one he is already ‘spoken for’…

On another level, Allen uses the fact that the male lead is a magician to drive home some points about the difference between ‘sleight of hand’ and ‘magic’, ‘factual’ and ‘make believe’ and ultimately a metaphor for meaning of life – finding versus assigning.

On a simpler level, the wonderful acting by the academy award winner Colin Firth (The King’s speech) and a relative unknown Emma Stone, is just delicious. The superb background music of jazz piano perfectly creates the mood and the period ambiance. The witty and funny dialogues trust the audience to be at least halfway intelligent. The south of France locales don’t hurt the eye at all.

I liked the movie! Not “Great”, but very enjoyable – and a little more…

***********

Dec 30, 2014: Finally... got to and addicted to "Breaking bad"... is living up to all the build up heard incessantly from others... fabulous acting by ALL, not only the leads... a compelling page-turner story... drama-emotion-tension-suspense-humor (won't mention negatives in this list, but they are there)... why can't Hollywood make movies this interesting anymore!

With this and "House of cards" (badly waiting for the next season) - seems like the big screen days are over...

***********

Dec 16, 2014 With two 14 hours direct flights, inevitably tried to catch up on my movies. Alas, the '300 movies at your fingertips' in the airline commercials is a rip-off - a. they present same movie in 6 languages and count it 6 times and b. most of the movies shouldn't have been produced in the first place. I am convinced Hollywood is officially in competition with Bollywood, for the most inane and ridiculous plots. Then there is the 'new age' genre, of mixing H and B actors and producing essentially same dopey Hindi films, with better acting and better production, in English language - Examples 'Slumdog...', 'Best exotic marigold hotel', 'Life of Pi' (at least the book was decent)...

"The 100 foot journey" is another one in that category. Helen Mirren showed the usual excellence in the beginning, but didn't have a lot to do worth her effort and just seemed to give up and coast along pretty quickly. Om Puri (aged since the Benegal-Nihalani days) already seems to have settled for the 'better actor than Akshay Kumar' award! Locales were nice, a foodie like me enjoyed the background theme... but the plot was totally predictable for any Hindi film aficionado.

And, this was one of the better of the seven films I watched (not counting "A few good men" - which is fantastic, but was watching maybe 50th time.)

***********