Ishq

Lead Actors: Nithin, Nithya Menon

In short:

Awesome! Go watch it!

The longer version:

One of the best romantic Telugu movies of recent times (after Ye Maya Chesave, and better than it).

The first half of the movie is like every girl’s (guy’s too?) dream romance. Though very predictable, the nice blend of homour and romance makes it a treat to watch. The flow is amazing - nothing distracts you from the story, no unnecessary elements; the focus is just on the lead characters and the story.

Things I liked in this movie:

• The ‘Oh Priya Priya’ song...can’t stop humming it
• The storyline – which sticks to its purpose and does not deviate or let the audience’s attention deviate 
• Nitin shedding off his kiddish image – the look and characterization in this movie suits him much better. I hardly noticed him in other movies – I won’t forget this one for some time!
• Nitya Menon – The heroine with a brain, not a dumb hapless creature. Thank God, not from a village reeking of faction!
• The chemistry between the lead actors is awesome
• The lead actors act their age and don’t try to pretend to be silly teenagers in love 
• The villain – Again Thank God nothing to do with faction. He isn’t a perverted mad man either. Just another ordinary human with some negative qualities more than others
• The wedding scenes in the first half – the people in the wedding are shown like ordinary people and not clowns or dumb people
• The humor – sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious, sometimes a simple dialogue or action  takes you by surprise and you go LOLing
• How the hero goes head-on to face the problem and introduces himself to the villain

Things that could have been better:

• Trying to avoid the very clichéd strategies seen in so many movies to deal with the heroine’s family/ villain in the second half
• Songs – The songs are much better than in many movies of recent times, but only a few are memorable
• The hero’s intro…again so very clichéd
• The 'villiany' villian in the climax (not the villian mentioned above) - typical movie style; not really required?
• Lemme think…  :D

My Rating: 3.5/5

The Social Network

Lead actors: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella

Some liked the movie, some said the movie wasn’t very good and not worth watching…but how could I miss a movie on my favorite pastime?

I tried to watch the movie in the theatre…but that never happened as I could not get anyone to accompany me for it…and watching alone in the theatre – well, maybe I’ll have to start doing that soon. And as always, after a lot of planning to watch it on the big screen, I ended up watching it on the puny laptop screen (not even a TV screen :( ) 

Coming to the point now - the movie was fabulous. Bang on the point, no unnecessary scenes (at least not more than 5 mins of the total run time); the movie’s focus is ‘Perfect’.

The actors fit extremely well in the skins of the characters. I was apprehensive about Justin Timberlake starring in the movie – given his popularity, I thought his stardom would override the character he was playing, but was I wrong! Though I’m a fan of his, I was irritated by him at the end of the movie. When I look at a pic of him now, I’m bound to remember this character more than his hit numbers. It takes awesome talent to do that!

(While watching the movie, at one point, I remembered that I had a pic with Justin Timberlake at Madame Taussads and had put it on Facebook, and felt a sudden urge to delete it! I was embarrassed for a second for taking a pic with his wax replica!)

Hmm…before I create impressions about this character, this role wasn’t exactly bad, it is in fact significant and one of the roles which encourages Mark Zuckerberg (about whom the movie is actually about, but we’ll come to that later ;) ), it’s only a bit irritating.

Though the movie is about Mark Zuckerberg, he is not the central point in the movie, at least I did not feel so…no one character dominates, it is the plot that dominates the movie, as it should be…as it is in reality.

No one is good or bad in the movie, all are grey characters - including Mark. Everyone seems to be right, and it is for law to decide who is right-er :P

Loved a dialogue in the movie where Mark says that people are interested to know more about their friends, would love to have all the info about their friends in one place and maybe discover unknown facets of known people (that wasn’t the exact dialogue, I screwed it up a bit).

Verdict: A must-watch whether you ‘Facebook’ or not (I wonder if anyone falls in that category)

Rating: 4/5

P. S. : There is one thing I did not like about the movie though; the girls are shown in poor light and do not have any significant role…was there absolutely no female contribution to FB? (not Erica Albright kinda contribution, maybe coding or something useful) Well, if that is how it happened in reality, I can’t help it, can I?

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)