Inception

Need to make a declaration before starting off with the review (to avoid embarrassment, in case the readers assume that I did not watch the movie till now :P) - I watched the movie LAST WEEK and on the IMAX SCREEN. Just didn’t have the time/ was too lazy when I had the time, to write the review.

There…now that that’s done, I’ll start off with the review :D

Breaking into another person’s mind, through their dreams and extracting info – how awesome is that? Especially when the dreams seem so real, and it’s hard to distinguish between dreams and reality – awesome idea. And what if you can go into another deeper dream though a dream; creating layers of dreams – my reaction is just this - :-O

This movie IS like The Matrix, and very different from it at the same time. The concept of dreams/ illusion created by the Matrix and the way the protagonists enter and exit this realm as per their whim is similar in both the movies. But, Inception is not as complex/ cryptic as The Matrix (3 movies versus 1 – obviously makers of The Matrix trilogy had a lot more to showcase). Inception is more mature and relies entirely on its plot to create the awe factor, unlike The Matrix trilogy which used action stunts blah blah…

So what do dreams have to do with a word like ‘inception’? The protagonists in the movie are on a mission – to plant a certain idea deep in the mind of the heir of a business empire, such that his mind will surely act upon it, as if the idea really occurred only to him – this process being called an 'Inception’.

Things I loved in the movie:

• The very concept of inception – I’ve no words to appreciate such an awesome idea

• The idea of ‘kick’ – very very innovative and sometimes funny to watch

• The scene where the architect (played by Ellen Page) ‘rolls’ the street (in her induction)

• The wittiness of Eames – ‘the forger’ (Tom Hardy) and the pranks he plays on Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).

Oh ya, and both of them are so cute, in their own ways ;)

• The scene where Arthur ties up all the others in the hotel in the 2nd level of the dream

• The background score - perfectly complemented the movie

• The ending scene – wassup with the spinning top? Too bad we can’t see what happened to it.

I was annoyed by the character of Mal (Marion Cotillard) and felt it dragged a bit. While watching the scene where Mal kills herself, I was like “Stupid, idiotic woman, what are you thinking?” and just short of hurling abuses at her :P

Couldn’t help but notice, Leonardo DiCaprio looks quite ‘elderly’ now, his boyish looks have disappeared…something I thought impossible to occur :(

Verdict: One of the best movies in recent times, go watch it if you didn't, to avoid future embarrassment :P

Rating: 4.5/5

I wish I could do an Inception and plant ideas in everyone's heads to comment on my blogs!  :(

Vedam

Lead actors: Allu Arjun, Manoj Manchu, Anushka Shetty, Manoj Bajpai, Lekha Washington, Deeksha Seth, Saranya

Watched the movie almost two weeks back and missed the first half hour of the movie. Yet, here goes!

Vedam tracks 5 stories to give the audience a simple a message; that the greatest ‘vedam’ is nothing but to live and let live. The 5 stories sometimes seem like a stark contrast to each other, and sometimes complement each other. The biggest disappointment though is that the message (what I wrote above) isn’t lucidly shown in the movie.

I just caught that line from a song from the movie and somehow it went deep into my head and I watched the movie from that perspective and felt that the movie wanted to convey the same. I don’t know why I gave so much importance to that line, it wasn’t exactly highlighted, and maybe the point I got wasn't what the director wanted to convey!

Well, if that is the point or IF there is any other point, then the movie does a pretty lousy job at conveying it. Those who didn’t notice that line will find the movie to be a hotch-potch of stories with nothing much in common except the very clichéd climax.

Coming to the story, Allu Arjun plays a guy who dreams of bungalows but lives in a slum. He has this uber-rich girlfriend (Deeksha Seth) who thinks he is the same (this guy manages the show that way) and plans to introduce him to her mom at a party. But…the ticket to the party costs about 30K for 2! So what does our hero do? He decides to steal to make the money!

Manoj Manchu and his rock band have to head to Bangalore for a concert – their biggest break ever. They miss their flight and hence decide to go by car. After a crazy attempt to overtake a lorry who’s driver mocks him, they end-up with a flat tyre. This guy is left with a girl from the band (Lekha Washington) while the others set off to get the tyre repaired. A bunch of people soon show up and force them to marry or tie a rakhi. This guy gets into a fight with them and is almost killed…

Manoj Bajpai is a Muslim (that needs to be explicitly mentioned for the story) who loses his to-be-born child when he gets into a brawl with a Hindu procession. He then decides to fly away to another country to run away from the place which caused tragedy in his life, but the police land at his door a day before his departure and arrest him and his nephews on the grounds that they are terrorists. Well, he isn’t! So he protests, but to no avail…

A poor farmer sells off his kidney to pay some dues. Now this guy suggests the same thing to his niece (Saranya) to release her son from bondage labor and get him educated. There two naïve people are told to lie that they are related to the kidney recipient, but they screw it up and are kicked out….but these people NEED the money.

Anushka Shetty plays the role of a prostitute who escapes from the place along with a transvestite. But they both keep landing in trouble and when escaping from a place the transvestite is stabbed!

Well, after a lot of twists and turns in the plot, the 5 tracks end up at a hospital! And the hospital is attacked by terrorists!

I liked the 5 stories and each was given its own importance. Many are of the opinion that the Anushka Shetty role was completely unnecessary, but I think it was included to convey that transvestites are humans too. I appreciate the fact that Allu Arjun, Manchu Manoj, Anushka Shetty agreed to play those roles and shared the stage with the others.

The 5 stories start off brilliantly. The Allu Arjun and the kidney-transplant plots were the best. I felt that the other 3 tracks lost their steam somewhere in all those twists and turns. The climax is, as I said, clichéd, fails to impress and hardly has an impact.

Well, atleast they tried something different and innovative, I would love to see more such (and better) movies in Telugu.

Verdict: A good one, better than most of the movies these days. Should be watched for its uniqueness

Rating: 3/5

The Matrix Trilogy

The Matrix

Mr. Anderson (Keanu Reeves) lives a pretty ordinary life except that he is a hacker (by the name of ‘Neo’) and is curious to know what ‘The Matrix’ is. Enter Trinity and Morpheus, and THE TRUTH is revealed to him.

Here’s the truth…

******Warning: Spoilers ahead******

The world Mr. Anderson grew up and lives in is FAKE. The people and places and even the year he thinks it is – all are fake, it was all an illusion created by ‘The Matrix’.

After the creation of AI by mankind, machines grew powerful and soon there was a war between man and machine. The machines ran on solar power, so humans created impenetrable black clouds to cut off the power-supply for the machines.

And what did the machines do? They overpowered humans, plugged them into towers and used the body heat generated as power!!! Humans are now not born, but ‘grown’ in farms!

And….‘The Matrix’ is a set of programs that create the illusion of a real world to all those plugged in – to keep them in control!

So, Mr. Anderson aka Neo wakes up from the illusion and finds himself in some gooey liquid and plugged into the tower and is astonished to find hundreds of rows of such plugged in humans in hundreds of towers!!!

My reaction at this point: I was dumbfounded; kinda short of fainting with astonishment and simultaneously could not help but worship the writers of this story, WHAT AN IDEA! Oh my! The best scene ever! The best concept ever! (Hope, really hope it isn’t copied from somewhere).

Neo is rescued from the matrix by Morpheus and Trinity and he is trained for combat by loading programs into his head as well as learning how the rules of the matrix can be broken/ bent in the illusionary world, coz they have to defeat and avoid being killed by ‘the agents’ – programs to eliminate such people in the Matrix…the deadliest of whom/ which is Mr. Smith.

Morpheus believes that Neo is ‘The One’ – who supposedly will destroy The Matrix and grant freedom to mankind, as ‘The Oracle’ prophesizes so. ‘The Oracle’ is a sweet old lady who can foresee the future…or so they think…

Is Neo really ‘The One’?

The Matrix Reloaded

Neo has learnt the tricks of the Matrix and is now hard to catch/ beat.

But…

Neo is repeatedly haunted by a nightmare - which he fears will come true, and danger is close as a swarm of sentinels (machines that search for and kill any free human being they find) is fast approaching Zion, keen to destroy the entire city.

(‘Zion’, built near the Earth’s core, is the only free-human city left. This city is just mentioned but not shown in the first movie.)

The only way Neo can stop this is to reach The Source, but first he has to find ‘The Keymaker’…who is in the hands of ‘The Merovingian’ - a distasteful, arrogant, uncooperative idiot (as you will discover while watching the movie)

Will Neo get to The Source? What is at The Source? Will Neo’s nightmare come true? What is the fate of Zion and mankind? :-O

More of the truth is revealed and this time it extends far…beyond anyone’s, even Morpheus’s imagination…

(:D just a tiny attempt to rouse curiosity in those who didn't watch the movie :D :D :D )

The Matrix Revolutions

Is Neo ‘The One’? If he is, Mr. Smith is his exact opposite.

The Oracle says ‘The power of The One extends beyond The Matrix’…

Neo and co. are pondering over the consequences of the decision Neo took at the end of The Matrix Reloaded…

Mr. Smith is cloning himself like crazy…

Zion is preparing for war…

The Oracle has played all her cards…

The Sentinels attack Zion; Zion puts up a good fight and just when Zion is about to heave a sigh of relief, scores of sentinels loom over Zion eliminating any hope of winning the war. The only thing that can save them is a miracle.

Movie Analysis:

The Matrix was released in 1999…and I watched it in 2010…before I cursed myself for not watching this movie then, I realized what my age was in 1999 and forgave myself :P. Somehow this movie was never telecast on TV; at least in the recent past, and I never found the movie’s CD/ DVD :(

Guess what I see in the library on the day I take the membership…!

Good that I watched all three movies at once… wonder how those who watched the movie in 1999 contained their curiosity till 2003! (The sequels were released then.)

A LOT of thought has gone into making this trilogy and a dunderhead like me had to see it twice to get it into my head. Things are not so obvious and direct in these movies. The meaning of each scene/ dialogue is so deep, I don't think I figured them all out yet.

The Oracle, I feel, is the main character in this story, not Neo…it is she who contols the main characters, and her prophesies are just to set them into action and bring out the results that SHE wants. She tells each one what they need to know, not necessarily the future or the truth.

Agent Smith is another fascinating character. He can give you the jitters just with his sly looks and mean, sarcastic tone. I love the way he says 'Mr. Anderson' :D

Morpheus is portrayed as this demi-god who knows the truth in The Matrix, but his importance is reduced and he is overshadowed by Neo in the sequels. I felt he should've been given more importance and the character should've been better sketched in the sequels.

Trinity - I agree with her character and the amount of importance given to it. She fits just right in the trilogy.

The Matrix is the best of the trilogy. The sequels continue the story fascinatingly but somehow the awe factor drops a little.

The graphics in the movie are mind-blowing. They did not look even 1% fake/ animated and perfectly complemented the screenplay.

The stunts and action sequences are amazing. I personally hate fights and action sequences, but there were instances where I re-watched some action sequences from this trilogy. I especially liked the chasing-fight sequence with The Twins in The Matrix Reloaded and the final fight with Mr. Smith in The Matrix Revolutions.

This movie is a masterpiece. It makes James Cameron's and Steven Spielberg's movies look like Cartoon Network stuff.

Verdict: Awesome movie! Watch it right away!

Rating: 4.5/5

Ratatouille

Lead Actors: A rat and a boy!

Directors: Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava

The movie is about a rat that wants to be a chef!

If you find the above sentence absurd, no use reading further :P

Remy is a unique rat...a rat with an appreciation for fine taste. Remy gets inspired by  the famous chef Gusteau, having read his cookery books and aspires to be chef someday. But how can an animal whose very presence is scorned in the kitchen, rule it?

It so happens that Remy ends up all alone and bumps into the garbage boy in Gusteau’s restaurant (Linguini). How this chance meeting turns around the fate of Linguini as well as Remy forms the rest of the story.

 I felt Remy was such a cute little rat, so tiny, so furry and that cute little pink nose! I wish Remy was my pet :D Linguini’s character as that of a timid and gullible young lad is well-etched.

The portrayal of the collaboration and friendship between Linguini and Remy is adorable and sometimes humorous too! I loved the scene where Linguini lets go off Remy from the bottle after taking a promise that they would work together and Remy runs away from Linguini and then feels bad for the boy and comes back.

The animators did a great job in animating France (where the story is based), you can feel and see the beauty of the city though it's an animation. The food looks so delicious in the movie; I bet you’ll feel like trying out those dishes! The climax of the movie features a dish named ‘Ratatouille’ (hence the name of the movie); it looked so very yummy that I ended up Googling for the recipe. I must say I was very disappointed by the way the dish looked in reality! Hats off to the animators!

(Caution: I’m partial towards animation movies)

Verdict: A really cute movie that makes you feel good!

Rating: 3/5

 

Ye Maya Chesave

Lead Actors: Naga Chaitanya, Samantha
Director: Gautam Menon

First impressions:

- Samantha is so cute!

- Naga Chaitanya now knows how to act (somewat)

- The music is awesome; it’s dreamy and transforms you into another world

- Too many hugs and smooches

Boy (Karthik, played by Naga Chaitanya) sees girl (Jesse, played by Samantha) , falls for her and pursues her, the girl avoids the boy, the girl starts liking boy, then she says ‘just friends’, then she starts liking him again, then she hates him, then she falls for him, then she hates him again, then she likes him again, then she avoids him…….!!! Oh ya n I forgot to mention, every now and then she keeps referring to her dad – this is what the storyline would look like if you compress it!

I held my head in my hands and almost cried for the torture Jesse was subjecting me to throughout the second part of the movie. I felt like banging my head to something when I saw her in the climax! (sob!)

Now coming to the positive aspects of the movie, the music (by A. R. Rahman) is remarkable and does a LOT for the movie. All the songs are good; my fav are ‘Manasa’, ‘Kundanapu Bomma’ and ‘Ee Hridayam’. The style of narration, atypical for a Telugu movie, is remarkable; the movie’s all about the narrative. The scenes shot in exotic locales are really beautiful and are a treat for the eyes.

The chemistry in the movie is great – the chemistry I’m referring to is the one between the narration, music and exotic locations :P

This is not the type of movie that can/ should be watched with your parents/ siblings; unless they are very open-minded and you are open minded enough to watch such movies with them. Thinking of it now, I think even the ‘parents’/ ‘siblings’ of Karthik and Jesse did not know why they were in the movie! No wonder I saw just gangs of girls/ gangs of boys/ couples at the theatre! I did not find anyone above 50 years of age!

Was it a good decision to watch the movie? Well, I’m just about as sure as Jesse!

Verdict: Watch once in the theatre for the chemistry (the one I referred to)

Rating: 2/5 for the movie. (4/5 for the movie minus the dowdy story)

Quarantine

Lead Actors: Jennifer Carpenter
Director: John Erick Dowdle

A reporter (Jennifer Carpenter) is sent along with a cameraman to a fire station to film the activities of the firemen on the job. The crew has a pretty good time getting to know the firemen and doing things like sliding down the famous fireman’s pole.

The firemen get a call and they rush to a building with the crew tagging along where an old woman is sick and has apparently gone crazy and is attacking the other people. They soon realize that the old lady is infected with some disease and the people whom she bit start to fall ill and some even die.

While all this is happening, the building is sealed by the police with the residents, firemen and the reporting crew inside the building and these guys don’t have a clue about what’s going on. The infected people soon start attacking and biting the others and our reporter and cameraman are stuck in this mad frenzy. A resident tries to escape from a window, but he is shot dead by a sniper, indicating the graveness of the infection in the building.

It turns out that a strain of rabies that rapidly infects humans is what’s causing all this mayhem. The infected people turn into zombie like creatures and attack and eat other humans! (Yuck!) The concept of zombies may still be exciting to the film maker (gross makeup on some second rate artistes would do the job, eliminating the need to spend millions to animate some other scary creatures), but I can vouch that viewers hardly find the idea thrilling anymore.

The reporter and the cameraman survive till the end of the movie, the cameraman is killed first and the movie ends with the reporter being dragged away into the darkness.

The movie is shot from the cameraman’s point of view; everything is as seen through his lens. The last few minutes have the camera in the night mode. It was quite chilling to watch the movie, it’s good that there wasn’t too much of gore but the suspense wasn’t entirely effective; I never once got startled even though I was watching it all alone at night.

I thought the lead actress overacted in many places. In one situation, when things start to go really really bad in the movie, she starts panicking and trembling with fear in such a fashion that I found this part an ordeal to sit through and was irritated to watch all the over-action.

Verdict: An ok movie that can be watched for time pass. Not really scary.
My Rating: 2/5

What Happens in Vegas

Lead Actors: Cameron Diaz, Ashton Kutcher
Director: Tom Vaughan

Joy (Cameron Diaz) stock-broker who’s recently had a breakup goes to Vegas to chill out with her best friend. Jack Fuller (Ashton Kutcher), a carpenter who’s been fired by his own father too lands up in Vegas with his friend at the same time.

They meet when they both are given the same room by mistake and end up partying together. The next morning, Joy wakes up to realize that she and Jack got married in their drunken stupor! Joy and Jack talk to each other and are relieved to find that neither of them wants to continue with the marriage and decide to annul it.

Just after their decision Jack uses Joy’s quarter in the slot machine and he wins a jackpot of 3,000,000! Joy then demands jack half the money as she is now his wife :D. They try to divorce but the judge, a person who finds such marriages and attitudes distasteful tells the couple to try to make their marriage work for six months, he threatens that else he wouldn’t let either of them get their hands on the jackpot money.

Joy then moves into Jack’s place and the rest of the story is about how they both try to outsmart, irritate, and even hurt the other to make them flee from the marriage/ jackpot. It isn’t tough to guess that they both finally fall in love with each other and ‘What Happens in Vegas’, stays long after Vegas too!

The movie is somewhat ok but does manage to elicit some laughs, esp. the scenes at the marriage counselor. In one scene, Jack’s friends hit him to portray to the counselor that he was abused by Joy; Jack appears with bruises and starts to whine about Joy when she coolly shows the counselor a video of the hitting – you should see the expression on Ashton Kutcher’s face (lol)

Verdict: A romantic comedy which is quite funny, but hardly romantic

My Rating: 2/5

Wanted

Lead Actors: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman
Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Wesley (James McAvoy) is a guy with a dull routine job and life. One fine day an assassin, Fox (Angelina Jolie), tells him that he is the son of an assassin and a gun-fight and a car-chase with another man (who supposedly is trying to kill Wesley and/ or the assassin) ensues. After warding-off the attacker, he is taken to the location of ‘The Fraternity’ where Sloan (Morgan Freeman) tells him that Wesley’s father was an assassin who worked with them and Wesley is supposed to inherit all that his father left; weapons, money, ‘legacy’ and all. He is also told that he is one of the few people on earth who have the ability of enormous speed and extremely quick reflexes when stressed; when the heart rate increases to abnormal levels (which Wesley so far thinks are just panic attacks).

Wesley chooses his normal way of life, but when he sees his bank balance at his desk, a sudden change (probably some feeling of super-confidence and I-needn’t-do-this-stupid-job-and-take-all-this-crap-coz-I-have-all-the-money-in-the-world) comes over him and he shouts at his boss and hits his backstabbing-friend with a keyboard and walks out of his office and into ‘The Fraternity’.

Wesley learns that the persons to be murdered are chosen based on some code hidden in a piece of fabric produced by a loom! This part is really silly, they should’ve thought of a better idea for where the names of the people come from. Sloan tells Wesley that these are the people who would cause destruction soon and hence they have to be killed to prevent it.

Wesley is then trained by Fox (albeit brutally, grossly) to be a professional assassin and the cute guy at the desk turns into a cold-blooded, high-precision murderer.

A lot of twists and turns and surprises follow, which better be watched than read.

This is one movie that I watched from the beginning to end with my mouth wide open in amazement (a couple of flies did go into my mouth and they had the time to come out unscathed too, so I’m still a vegetarian :P)

The way the movie was made is awesome – dark, treacherous and so out of this world – I got a feeling that what they were doing is pretty cool and powerful! I usually hate action stunts - they look very deliberate and impossible and make me wonder if I’m watching a movie or a circus and I was impressed with the action scenes in this movie; so imagine how good and well-shot they must be. I loved the curving of the bullets, I wonder if it's really possible :D

I just love it when I watch a movie without even the slightest inkling of what it is about/ who stars in it, and end up loving it!!!

N btw, move over Tom Hanks, my fav is now James McAvoy :D :D :D

Verdict: Those who like action movies/ Angelina Jolie/ James McAvoy :P will love it!

My Rating: 4/5

3 Idiots

Lead Actors: Aamir Khan, Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Kareena Kapoor
Director: Rajkumar Hirani

A rib-tickling film on three students in an engineering college – that about sums it up.

The movie is a must-watch, the situations are so funny and the dialogues are smartly written. It’s a very enjoyable movie experience. Aamir, Madhavan and Sharman manage to look like college students and I was very impressed by that; I was spooked that I would have to watch old botox-filled faces acting as college students; a-la in the Telugu movies! :P

A majority of the scenes in the movie make you ROFL. There are some senti-scenes which I did not like - I guess Bollywood cannot do without a good dose of sentiment, and these scenes are real tear-jerkers for sensitive people.

The movie is very much based on Chetan Bhagat’s first novel ‘Five-point Someone’.

The Chetan Bhagat credit issue is turning out to be very ugly and I did not expect something like this from the makers of such a huge film. As a person who read the book, I can vouch that the movie is not just ‘inspired’, but is more than 50% from book. Throwing in a few more characters and some scenes (some were totally unnecessary, esp. the delivery scene) does not make the movie just an ‘inspiration’ of the book. Of course, normally, when film makers say they are ‘inspired’ by a movie of another language, it simple means it’s a remake! I guess this trend is ‘inspiring’ the making of movies based on novels too!

All in all, the movie is ok, but the fun of the thought of the movie is lost due to the credit issue. Crediting the author at the end is in my view in really bad taste, coz in the theatre in which I saw the movie, the credits at the end weren’t even shown.
If this is the fate of a renowned author, imagine the plight of the unknown writers!

As a parting note – It is said that if you think too much about something, you become that. So I guess that’s what happened to the people associated with the movie!

Verdict: A must-watch for the comedy.
My Rating: 2.5/5, (I would’ve given a 3.5/5, but -1 bcoz of the issue :P)