RIFLE RANGE BOY

Lorena (4-part Documentary, 2019) Amazon Prime. All this while, Bobbitt' case, in my mind, was about slicing off a part of body-part quite dear to the heart of a man by a wife scorned. More often than not, Bobbitt's name is invoked in jocular, tongue-in-cheek conversations rather than anything serious. The truth of the matter is that this case bares open the hypocrisy of a society that considers itself advanced. It also exposes the nation's fixation on sex and how the community uses people's misery for personal gain.  It reveals the various deficiencies in the American law about domestic violence and women empowerment. At that time in June 1993, when Lorena Bobbitt, a 23-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant, in an apparent fit of rage, sliced off her husband's penis and threw it into a field, I never really got the whole picture of what actually caused the entire fiasco. The media was also biased in painting a picture of a deranged woman of South American descent acting in...

Now that I am getting older, naturally, people think that the School of Hard Knocks would have knocked some wisdom in the thick skull of mine, and they approach me for advice. One of the questions asked to him in my capacity as 'Dear Thelma' or 'Auntie Agony' is about an interpersonal relationship. Why is it difficult to achieve life ambitions? I have so many things that I want to attain in my lifetime, but family life is pulling me down. My partner does not share the same fire that I breathe. The offsprings wear me down, dragging me together into a cesspool of hopelessness. Is there no relief from all these, they ask me.  I am no self-help guru by any imagination, so I try to dodge the question. "You know that is a very profound question. Philosophers for aeons have been trying to find that answer."  In fact, during Adi Sankara's travels from Kerala to the four corners of India, he had various debates with sages of other schools of philosophy. Adi Shankar...

Squid Games (오징어 게임, Korean; 2021) Screenplay & Direction: Hwang Dong-hyuk Childhood games prepare us for what is in store for us ahead in our lives. Failures are inevitable, and winners take it all. It is not and was never a level playing field, and some get favours merely by starting with an added advantage. Life is no bed of roses; deal with it. The players may claim fair play, but deep inside, we can sense insider collusion. We are taught about the need to be fair to others. They tell us about 'one good turn deserving another' and our past karma haunting us until the end of time; hence, the need to do good and be fair. But, just look around us. Nature does not give a fair crack of the whip to all. The floods terrorise the poor who can ill afford the expensive real estate on higher grounds. The pandemic intimidates the economically challenged layer of society where living space is a challenge. We always fight for equality for all. We want the system to be fair for all. W...

#Home (Malayalam, 2021) Director: Rojin Thomas We look at other people's lives and go agape. We think our lives are nothing to shout about compared to others, but we soldier on with our otherwise unglamorous life. We tell ourselves that it is our God-given duty or dharma to do the things we do as our responsibility, our raison d'etre. What is more, when we are old and unproductive. This world is no place for ageing dogs. As they say, when you age, even your shadow does not respect you. Your life experiences and life lesson are considered passé. They are deemed too worthless to put to use to fight the challenging current times. In essence, we are looked upon as a mere goods train being pulled by the engine, dragged to its destinations. The seniors go on accepting their situation as fait accompli. Yeah, our lives sucked, but it is what it is. Of course, we were once young. We also had dreams and ideas of what was right and what was not.  Unbeknownst to us,  our actions must hav...

No Time to Die (2021) Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga In my youth, I used to think, "with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, soon these espionage movies will all be passé." How wrong I was. And here I am in the 21st century, and the Russians are still posing a threat to the Western capitalist world, so we are told. The Slavs, dressed in Red Soviet uniform then, have changed into their sharp suits, digital devices, and oligarchic money to play the same espionage and political manipulation game to portray a rosy picture of communism to the world. World domination, it seems, is high on their agenda.  But frankly, let it be vulture capitalism and Red ideology; they are merely just two sides of the same coin. Think US election, think Bashar al-Assad to usurp power, think despotic leaders trying to suppress dissidents, you will find American and Russian handiwork in action. It is all about world domination, absolute power and total control by the powers that be. So, come the 21st centur...

El Sur (Spanish, The South; 1983) Director: Victor Erice This film has been hailed as one of the best films ever to come out of Spain. Ironically, the director refers to this film as an unfinished product. The remaining 90 minutes of the movie where the protagonist is supposed to visit the South of Spain never came out in the final product. Some say it was due to a lack of funds that the producer did not proceed with filming. As children, as we were growing up, we wanted to know everything that was happening around us. We knew something not right was going on but just could not put the finger on it. The adults kept things secretive, but we sensed something was cooking. We put two and two together to paint a composite picture of what we perceive as complicated adult life. Sometimes, we understand more than we were expected to know. Other times, we got it all totally wrong. This movie portrays the emotions beautifully that a child goes through the heady times of childhood in the uncertai...

Spirit of the Beehive (1973) Screenplay and Direction: Victor Erice This offering is said the best film ever to come out of Spain. To a movie connoisseur, this film is all about what filmmaking is all about. It is about the depiction of subliminal messages in symbolism and in such a subtle manner that beats the censors but not the intended target, the audience. To a regular filmgoer, the movie would be as exciting as watching paint dry. It is relatively slow, with frequent long pauses between takes. It is said that it was intentional to drive home the point about Spain's tumultuous times under the fascist dictator General Francisco Franco between 1939 and 1975. It tried to show how people led hollow lives; there was silence due to the dearth of human economic activities and governmental censorship that altered people's reality. It narrates a family of four, a father, a mother and two young sisters with a live-in maid. Both the parents are obviously not on cordial terms. Both of...

Before Trilogy Before Sunrise (1995) Before Sunset (2004) Before Midnight (2013) Director: Richard Linklater This must surely be a very ambitious project. In a way, it is real-life experimentation. It tells about how life treats two individuals over a span of 18 years. It shows how two 23-year-olds look all doe-eyed at life and again at 32 and 41. At each time, we get an idea of how they see life is ahead. They embrace it with so much zest, thinking that they know why their elders get it all wrong. They thought they had discovered the secret why so many from the generation before were so miserable and vowed never to repeat their mistakes. They could see as plain as day what and where they went wrong. They knew they would never prey to these situational demands. Jesse, an American student, met Celine, a French lass, aboard a Eurail train heading to Paris. Striking a conversation, they clicked as they shared similar values. They made an unscheduled stop at Vienna and spent the whole even...

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (season 8, final season) After a long hiatus, Brooklyn Nine-Nine returned with its last season. A lot of things happened after the previous season. George Floyd's mishandling, Black Live Matters movement and calls to defund the police did not put the police in the best of light. Despite the public sensitivities and the problems of filming under pandemic situations, the team managed to churn out an entire ten-episode season. The producers decided to keep it neutral by avoiding too much police work and limiting the storyline more to the precinct's pranks. Fonzie on water skis, in a scene from the 1977 Happy Days episode "Hollywood, Part 3", after jumping over a shark Maybe it is just me; I feel that actors have all grown lethargic playing their roles. The initial glow and enthusiasm seem to have been lost. Perhaps the producers saw that too. Rather than creating a 'jumping the shark' moment or even 'nuke the fridge' scene, they wisely ...