1Nenokadine - Paracosm thriller.

1Nenokkadine brings a star actor and a star director together. The hype and hoopla are at maximum as both the actor and director coming after giving respective hits in the form of SVSC and 100% love. The makers of the movie have been preparing the audience to accept that the movie is different from the regular masala and belongs to psychological thriller genre. The trailer released few weeks before the actual release of the movie has just upped the ante a little more.

1Nenokkadine starts with Gautham (Mahesh Babu) who plays a rockstar, confessing to police that he killed three people who have killed his parents. Only for the police to realize that he was fighting shadows and has not killed anyone. We come to know that he has a mental disorder in that he imagines people who killed his parents and they don't really exist. There are lot of questions that arise like were his parents killed? The persons who he thinks he killed really exist? Did he really kill anyone?

The premise is interesting and gains our attention .The difficult part for the director here is that many questions that arises during the first half has to be solved convincingly. There are several loose threads during the first half that the director manages to tie them properly and convincingly by the end of the film. The tone of the film is dark and little edgy that helps the film as it’s a thriller. This psychological thriller cum revenge movie works well for what it is. It plays with your mind. There are abundant twists and turns that are quite cleverly handled. The mystery is laid throughout the flick that keeps the intrigue value. The only problem was that length of the movie.15-20 mins trimming would bring in the edge of the seat feel. After the complex first half, second half takes routine revenge drama but the twists and turns inserted makes it an engrossing watch.

The pacing of the movie is liberal and slow at times that is needed for us to understand the psyche of the lead character. The action sequences are loaded from the start to the end. To say the stunts are on par with big ticket Hollywood flick is no exaggeration. But the problem here in the first half is that some of the action/fights seems forced and it harms the storytelling instead of maintaining interest and is implausible. Another problem I felt was that 'amma-naana' sentiment went little overboard towards the end .It only slowed the pace of the movie and should have been taken care of. May be director must have used it to connect with the masses more and he also commercialized to some extent by adding an item number and 4 songs. Though they didn't distract much but could have been avoided. Good thing is director steered away from unnecessary comedy tracks, punch dialogues etc that would have ruined the film completely. There are many scenes that are brilliant especially the interval scene which is gold.

Mahesh Babu knocks it out of the park with his performance. He is brilliant as the vulnerable rockstar. He is leaner and fitter that is required for the physically challenging action sequences. He managed to take the whole film on his shoulders and delivered convincingly. He is a treat to watch and sure to send his fans into frenzy. The female lead played by debutante Kriti Sonan has performed pretty well and is here to stay. She does have an important role in the first half while she is almost invisible in second half as Mahesh takes the center stage. While others like Sayaji Shinde, Pradeep Rawat, Kelly Dorji, Naseer have small but important roles .Mahesh's son Gautham plays the young Mahesh Babu and does a decent job.

Sukumar as always taken the responsibility as a director, story, screenplay and dialogues. He is has done justice to all the roles. His taking is brilliant and executing the scenes like interval scene or photography scene. He is always known for his creative scenes and has a good imagination. I particularly liked the scene where young Gautham draws a female picture on ground and sleeps on the picture imagining his mother. In all Sukumar's films lead character is either narcissistic, extreme obsessive or psychological disorder with negativeness in the character in first half and tames them down in the second half. Similarly he follows them in this movie as lead character here has suffers from paracosm. Sukumar has taken a path that is similar to many Hollywood thriller genre. Screenplay is where Sukumar excels here. It is a multi-layered screenplay that he handles it pretty well. There is urbanity and style in his taking. Sukumar and Mahesh complement each other well and it shows on the screen.

The cinematography is top class. Ratnavelu who handled it does a fantastic job. The way he shot in Goa, Belfast and London is amazing. Never seen Goa captured so vibrantly. His visuals capture the mood quite good. The music by DeviSriPrasad is terrific and complements well with the tone of the genre excellently. The songs are good but the back ground score is where he gets the brownie points. Technically the movie is superb. The bournesque action sequence are great but as said before some of them could have been cut off. Editing by Kartika Srinivas does a decent job. All technicians have done a good job to make the film look elegant and stylish.

1Nenokadine is an intelligent thriller and different from the regular big star movies. Kudos to Mahesh, Sukumar and the producers to make a big budget film that is almost void of any commercial elements and sticking honestly to the script. Go for it. Good bang for your buck.

Wolf of Wallstreet

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio team up again for the fifth time (Goodfellas. Aviator, the Departed and Shutter Island) for Wolf of Wall Street. Scorsese and DiCaprio were keen to do the project together several years ago, but it stalled in a tug of war between two production houses namely Warner Bros and Paramount When that dragged on, Scorsese and DiCaprio made Shutter Island instead and that turned out to be a huge hit. So now the duo are back again for Wolf of wall street.

Based on the memoirs of Jordan Belfort - the real-life stock broker who made millions by selling shoddy stocks to common man - the film showcases one seriously messed-up sleaze ball of a man. A man's whose ambition sweeps him into a debauchery where money, substance abuse and corruption, which inevitably leads to his own undoing. Similar to gangster’s lives and mafia, only difference is, here it is done by guys who wear suits, work in proper offices and all they do is just business, white-collar criminals.

The movie focuses and follows a person closely who rises to power, evil schemes which bring in pots of money and then lives a life of extreme excess. So extreme that the movie is packed with drugs, sex, luxury and material things, and characters who just want to consume just everything. These wolfish characters go into uncontrollable partying and debauchery .The gags and comedy set pieces click well. Some scenes like chest thumping during the conversation during lunch between Dicaprio and McConoughey , whole DiCaprio high on Lemonnon 714 episode or the Yatch scene with FBI agents will be remembered for a long time.  The film tries to criticize the modern capitalist urge while also acknowledge the excitement and glamour of it when indulged to an extreme level. The good part about the rise of Belfort’s drug aided financial odyssey is that it doesn’t amount to anything, no weight. Hence, there is no reason for us care.

It’s a solid story with many characters and subplots which will certainly load you with information yet it’s pretty smooth. The movie is almost 3 hours long and some may feel that the frequently repeated party scenes can be trimmed but i feel it is necessary to show the cynical nature of the ongoing excess. Those scenes are incredibly memorable and entertaining. It was hilarious throughout. One cannot help but smile for the most of the duration of the runtime. It is a complete joy but is marred little due to Indian censor boards constant nagging of 'smoking kills' ads on screen and the movie has been cut 6 minutes for the audience here. Due to this some scenes end abruptly and topless scenes are blurred. It is irritating but essence of the movie can be felt overall.

There is still more to the movie than bombardment of excess. Scorsese does make characters to have important conversation with one another, allow moments to develop and allow scenes to breath. The Wolf of Wall Street doesn't say anything new or path-breaking about the corruption in capitalism. It’s about depiction and experience of the excess and how each person reacts. The main drive of the movie and its characters is to make money and be successful by any means whatsoever which eventually leads to hard-hitting annihilation. Many people criticize the unilateral nature of the film. We only see the position of Belfort and none of the countless victims that he and his colleagues made. From a technical standpoint, this film does understand the story continues to follow. Exciting and better. We may wonder whether the film is critical enough to the many criminals and that's actually not the case. We get an insight, an exclusive look at the snorting and exorbitant lifestyle. In addition, as many people would swap their life for that of a Wall Street trader, selling the soul take them for granted.

Anytime Scorsese and DiCaprio team up, they always strike gold. Scorsese is on fire here, Di Carpio and Scorsese share such a good rapport that translates into screen very well. The movie wouldn't be half good if either one of them weren't a part of the movie. This movie has a chilled out tone throughout and probably Scorsese's funniest film to date. Di Caprio is as always amazing, he slipped into the character very well. He is wild, unleashed and uninhibited. The first person narration was fantastic and we got the whole story through Belfort’s eyes. The movie portrays Belfort as the poster boy of American greed, and Leonardo brings him to life. Superlative performance. Rest of the cast pulls their weight well as well. Jonah Hill gives convincing as Belfort's partner, Kyle Chandler as an agent who wants to nail down Belfort is good and Rob Reiner as 'Mad Max' and Matthew McConaughley in his short role are terrific. Margot Robbie plays a shrewd version of Scarlett Johansson's diva role in Don Jon .She is wonderful in her big-screen debut.

The photography is great and editing by Thelma Schoonmaker who is a longtime associate to Scorsese is good. Though the film has almost 3 hours run time, it is entertaining and time just flies. Writing is sharp; the film is full of superb lines and great speeches. The sets, costumes, props for the film all look great which helps in giving the display in the film a vibrant and full of life look. Music is used well for the intended effect. Terence Winter’s screenplay based on the book are perfect and the dialogues are hilarious yet thought provoking which are worthy of appreciation.

To sum up, The Wolf of Wall Street is a thrilling, comprehensive, funny and disturbing. It is too long and far too short. Martin Scorsese has completed a trilogy of sorts with this film, other being casino and Goodfellas which run in similar vein. The movie would have so much more fun if not for Indian censor but due to the long run time, censored version does provide a wild ride to an extent.

All is Lost

We have seen quite a few survivor/lost genre films (127 Hours, Life of Pie, Gravity etc.) in last few years. All is Lost belongs to the same genre, which is written and directed by J.C. Chandor. But unlike other similar movies, here it takes a very different route. This movie is unfeigned survival thriller of the year. In fact, All is Lost may be the best film of its type (lost/survival) I've seen.


Saw the movie at the recently concluded MFF. Let me say it right away that this movie is not for the general moviegoer, as it can be difficult to sit through with its almost no dialogue (save a few words), zero backstory , just one character and  genre that isn't about sentimentality, but simply about a man doing everything he can to stay alive."Our Man" is how Robert Redford is referred in the credits of the movie. He is awakened during his voyage in the Indian Ocean to find his boat has collided with a stray container and the cabin room is being flooded. The narrative follows the character and is more of a procedural kind, as he deals straightforwardly with a series of imminent threats to his boat. He neither panics nor gives up, but instead he relentlessly tries to solve the next important problem for his survival with whatever tools he has at hand, often improvising shrewdly.
The real star of the show here though, is the movie's only star, Robert Redford, who gives straightforward and understated performance, he commands the screen in such authoritative way that one gets involved with the character.The film's crisis repeat cycle can be exhausting, which is where I felt it could be 10-15 minutes short, but Redford's deliberate and convincing approach to performing each task makes it all very gripping. Music,here is used sparsely at the right moments and majority of the tension is drawn from superb use of sound effects.

Director J.C. Chandor makes sure the suspense is maintained throughout as film sets up the idea that something will probably go wrong until the final seconds. Very few filmmakers produce their second movie this strong. Haven't watched his debut flick 'A Margin Call' but now I am immediately trying to procure it.
To the average viewer it may put to sleep, but for those who go knowingly of its presence, it will show you an important piece of honest film-making. And also I am up for whatever comes next from J.C.Chandor.

Stoker

Being a fan of Park Chan-wook ,was pretty kicked up when i got to know he was going to direct his first Hollywood film.Park Chan Wook has said before that he decided to become a filmmaker after a watching Vertigo. From this we can make out that  Hitchcock (My favorite filmmaker) is an important influence on his work, especially the extent to which both filmmakers play with creating and shifting audience identification among different characters through plot twists and revealing selective bits of various information. In short Park pays homage to the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock and those who have seen Shadow of Doubt wouldn't find it hard to draw parallels.

Park Chan Wook didn't write this one at all. But I'd say he successfully implements his trademark style and dark,poetic feel for what might have otherwise been a forgettable psychological thriller from the creator of Prison Break (Wentworth Miller)

The story revolves around an 18-year-old India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska), whose father has died in a freakish car accident. His wife, Evie Stoker (Nicole Kidman), arranges for her mysterious brother-in-law Charlie (Matthew Goode) to stay with the family in order to help them recover the loss. India is skeptical of her uncle whom she hardly knows, and gets more suspicious and intrigued when rumors float around saying that he is having an affair with her own mom. To say anything more at this point would be spoiling the mystery behind this deceptive family who all have their fair share of skeletons in the closet.

It's a slow moody piece which creates both melancholic and terrifying atmosphere to the picture which made it fascinating.Many of the twists in the movie seemed telegraphed (though I'm not sure they aren't meant to be, in part, so as to conceal others we aren't expecting), but it certainly held my attention till the end. Acting is great from the cast: Mia Wasikowska does an exceptional job bringing India to life, Nicole Kidman is subtle and convincing on her part and Matthew Goode was good as weird and mysterious the whole time.

It's such a satisfaction to watch a film as directed as Stoker is.There's not a random image or sound anywhere to be found. Park Chan Wook is as his previous movies made it visually arresting. The sound work is expressionistic.Stoker is visceral experience,the cracks developing on hard boiled egg rolled back and forth on a the table,the pin prick of a needle bursting a blister-the park takes pleasure in it all,from beautiful to the grotesque . There's one similar effect in particular with a pencil sharpener that gave me goosebumps. I feel like seeing it twice for that particular scene to moment the craft alone. Movie also had its share of awkward portions,especially the high school scenes. The cinematography and sound design was very effective and immersive to capture the mood of the movie correctly.


For me this has to be one of the best American debuts in recent times of a popular foreign director.This psychological thriller Stoker is a beautiful, twisted and hypnotic.Go for it

Confession of a Murder

Korean movies have always fascinated me especially the thriller genre. Their story-lines are fascinating,full of intrigue and suspense. Happened to come across a film called Nae-ga sal-in-beom-i-da (original title) alias Confession of a Murder,where the title itself creates curiosity while the premise makes you want to watch the movie the very moment.

Byeong-gil jeong's psychological crime thriller starts off with a masked serial killer who is on a killing spree, already having murdered more than 10 people randomly, escapes from being captured by detective Choi (Jung Jae- Young) . Detective choi having lost the opportunity to nab the serial killer is devastated and the serial killer slit his mouth to add insult to the injury just to remind him his failure through the scar.Now after 15 years Lee Doo-Suk (Park Si-Hoo) who claims to be the serial killer and responsible for the deaths,is now releasing a book as a memoir and confession,compilation of his malicious acts openly.There is a law in Korea where if the criminal is not caught by the police for a period of 15 years,they dismiss the case and the criminal is free.Known as statute of limitation.Lee Doo-Suk cashes in on the law and the celebrity culture of today's generation and lives a high life due to media. Thus begins the intertwining story of detective,serial killer and the family of the victims where detective choi is trying to prove that Lee doo-suk is not the serial killer and is just cashing in the opportunity to get fame and rich, while the serial killer is trying to prove otherwise while the family of the victims are plotting to take revenge on the serial killer.

The movie works on various levels,the twists work well and director has covered medias role in helping grow a cult fan following for weird situations, and those who are good looking are automatically assumed innocent to doing the most wicked acts.I  liked how they portrayed the media in such a way that you just want to thrown all of your guts seeing how the media is eager to get their ratings going up. Sad really but the fact is that its reality.Seriously, reading a book written by a serial killer, wouldn't it be interesting ? That's one of the reason one would relate to the movie easily and it works,we live in a scary world.

Director infused some light moments when the narrative of the movie was getting uneven.the story unfolds wonderfully and there is never a dull moment because we are always expecting…what’s next now? The flaws in the movie can be ignored for the fact that the director keeps us on the edge of our seat for most part of the movie.And also the electric tone which the movie carries through out its duration helps a lot.

The performance of the actors were commendable.The main leads of the movie were brilliant,the subtle emotions of the character were carried off by them helped the audience to connect to them at a better level.

Niftily written and a delightful watch. A definite recommendation.