Something wrong here!

Knock Knock (2015)

Director: Eli Roth

[Remake of Death Game (1977)]

My mother told me there was no such thing as a free lunch. When something is so good, it is probably not good. 

From the movie Jurassic Park, we learnt of T-Rex's unique way of trapping its prey. With short, awkward dangling forelimbs and a bulky body but a voracious appetite for flesh, it had to devise its own way to entice potential dinner. It would send in or may in the vicinity of a benign and cuddly-looking small creature. When a more enormous creature (or human as in the movie) goes to admire the cute animal, T-Rex goes for the kill in the most brutal way. 

Someone was warned in my circle when one member was quietly admiring a pretty young thing that passed on by. He was educated that humans also use this modus operandi to entice and pounce on their prey during their selective, lustful hunts. 

After crying silently under the kingdom of masculine toxicity for so long, the fairer sex has turned the table since the inception of the rebel yell of #Metoo. Victims have turned predators most cunningly.

Woman empowerment and feminism have gone a complete 180-degree twist. Some have learned to defeat their enemies in the most passive-aggressive way. Examples of how victims use sexuality to defame the opposite gender are too innumerable to enumerate. Things have gone so topsy-turvy that one cannot identify who the aggressor or victim is anymore.

I had seen its trailer quite so often in cinemas before but got around to watching it. It must be one movie that Keanu Reeves would like to forget. He can indeed perform better than the appalling one displayed here. The plot is so flimsy and full of holes. The original film it is based on, Death Game (1977), is not much better. Both can pass off as low-budget soft porn.

A goody two-shoes husband and father of two is home alone while the family is away. On a wet stormy night, two free-spirited young ladies knock on his door, soaking wet. They had got their friend's address all mixed up and were stranded. The good Samaritan takes them in to offer blankets and dry off their clothes. Things get complicated when they become too cosy with the host, flirt with him and refuse to leave the house the following day after a night-long steamy tryst. They make themselves at home, hold him hostage and turn the home he had built upside down.

It is not that feminism has gone awry, says my other half. The male species also needs to take part of the blame. The idea of restraint and fear of retribution seems to become an alien concept day by day. Nothing is sacrosanct anymore, and nothing is shameful anymore. It is one thing to rise from the ashes and utterly different from rubbing one's face with soot and saying, "There is nothing wrong here!"

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It takes one but which one?

Untouchables (2019)

The start of the fall of something big is always the same. The journey to the top must have been an arduous and an honest one. It would have been avant-garde or revolutionary then. Everyone would have liked it. Given the herd mentality that we all subscribe to, the response would have been palpably obvious with praises and felicitations that would rocket them to high heavens.

The fame would have gone to the head of the progenitors. They would think that they are God-sent avatars beamed on Earth to change Mankind. They could do no wrong. 

Those suppressed demons suddenly spring out. The rapacious appetite which was instrumental previously in launching their earlier fledgeling career now seems to have been diverted to satisfying their own primal decadent desires. The unabated admiration showered to them now is used paradoxically against the very people who put them up on a pedestal.

Everyone can see their nefarious activities but are fearful of spilling their beans as they hold a powerful position in society. It is their tiny squeak against the mammoth establishment.

It only takes one exposè. One squeal that reverberates so long that it takes down the kingdom of the evil. 

Repeatedly we have seen such occurrences. We fail to realise but continue doing the same, burning our fingers, apologising and repeating. Look around, see it done in politics, businesses and creative industries.

Harvey Weinstein

This documentary is the narration of the life and times of Harvey Weinstein, his brother Rob, their production company, Miramax, their rise to stardom and Harvey's subsequent call from grace. This film puts the accusers in the centre stage to allow them to tell their side of the debacle. As we know, Weinstein's trial opened the similar stinking bag of worms the world over. Through the #metoo movement, victims from Hollywood all the way to Bollywood, victims started voicing about their assaults. 

But beware! The #metoo movement was also fraught with conniving individuals who maliciously used it as a victim card to mar the image of people in authority. Empowerment given by resurgence of women empowerment had been misused as a 'get-out-of-jail-free' card.

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Between the willing, the forced and the maleficent

The Morning Show (Miniseries; 2019)

On the one hand, we want to empower the weaker one. We say do away with barriers. Let there be no fences between the bosses and subordinates. There should be no discrimination between the sexes. At the same time, we realise that hormones rage high in the spring of youth, at a time when everybody wants to set the right footing for their future. The race to perch at the higher branches has become increasingly difficult. The juicy fruits hanging at the top are so luring. Everyone wants to catch a glimpse from the coveted crown of the food chain.

Everyone can give their time, dedication and knowledge towards this end. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Players have to dig deep into their bags to confer something quite primal to achieve their goals. What is wrong in a little flirting or exchanging little bodily fluids, they would justify, especially when they look at the bigger picture. Mission accomplished, and everybody is happy.

People in positions of power, on the other hand, may use it as a bargaining tool to dangle their carrots.

If it is a win-win situation, why would anyone complain? Are they the sore losers who got conned into an unwilling arrangement? Were they helpless as they overcome by pressures to conform by people in authority? Was there regret? Was there a morning-after self-realisation? Was there ill intent to humiliate? Was it all a well-planned plot to dethrone? Did the juices turn sour? 

Humans being social animals, with continual contact with co-workers or bosses, may be attracted to one another over time. The question is whether this liaison is going to affect their work. No one is a saint and life is not fair. 

That is why it is tricky to deal with the #metoo complains. Sometimes it is the people in power who use their positions to obtain sexual gratifications. At other times, it is vindication on the part of the victim or alleged victims.

'The Morning Show' is a gripping miniseries with sexual misconduct in a TV station. The station is embroiled in controversy as Steve Carrel, the male anchor of their premier show of 15 years, is fired when a co-worker accuses him of sexual harassment. His co-anchor, played by Jennifer Aniston is in a tail-spin as her job is also on the chopping block. In the midst of this, Aniston, at the spur of the moment, uses her time in the limelight to announce her new co-host. The latest addition is fast-talking brash journalist, Reese Witherspoon. 

In a hurried environment of datelines and inflated ego, internal investigations try to portray a safe working environment for the public to see. Beneath all these, this is a compulsion by a few to expose the toxic culture that is happening in the station.

Not only the main stars performed well. Even the supporting actors gave their best to re-create what seems like an attempt to showcase what Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby did to the movie industry.

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All with the same trajectory, the atoms and the Universe

Super Deluxe (2019)
Story and Direction: Thiagarajan Kumaraja

Gone are the days when Tamil movie stories were rather two-dimensional. It used to be that there was a bright, distinct demarcation between characters. Everything was black or white; they were either good people or bad. And poetic justice would prevail at the end of the film, proving once again that the dharmic principles of life would be upheld.

If you are one of those who is looking for a break from making daily-altering life questions to see gyrating bodies to soothing melodies nowadays, look elsewhere. I just happened to bump into this movie by chance as I was scrolling down the Netflix menu and saw one of my favourite actors, Ramya Krishnan in a leading role.

I got hooked from the first scene itself. A young wife calls her ex-boyfriend college mate over for some hokey-pokey for old times' sake as her husband out on errands. Soon after passionate lovemaking, the lady discovers her lover stiff hard, out cold and dead. Then starts the panic as her husband walks in with some unwelcomed guests. 

This story is told in concurrent with another two (or maybe three) other tales which somehow gets intertwined as we will see later in the movie. In another scene, a young boy, a tween, is waiting patiently for his estranged father to return home after years of leaving home. A taxi stops in front of the house as the excited extended family members wait in anticipation. An overdressed lady walks out. Hold behold, the father is now a transgender person. Then come the discrimination, the ridicule and the humiliation of the 'father' and the family members. 

In another related storyline, five teenage boys play truant to watch porn. After craftily getting a copy of an X-rated DVD, they watch the show in one of the boy's home. One of them gets a shock when the lead lady is actually his mother! In anger, he throws the beer bottle on the TV screen, shattering it. He runs home in rage to confront his mother, Leela (Ramya Krishnan). As he runs with a kitchen knife to harm his mother, the boy accidentally trips and stabs himself instead, critically. Hence, starts a commotion; getting emergency medical treatment, contacting the boy's father who has left home to be an evangelical pastor. The boy's father, a tsunami survivor, feels that he is chosen by God to help people as he was the only one in his circle who survived the catastrophe as he held on to a rock statue of Jesus.

Vijay Sethupathi - excellent as transgender.

Also opened the bag of worms why the role should be played

by a male and not a transgender actor. They assert that being 
transgender is not mere wearing of a wig and applying make-up.

The rest of the boys, on the other hand, desperate to replace the broken TV get into a comedy of errors to get the money towards this end. If this is not confusing enough, wait for alien visitation and corrupt police force to completely knock you bonkers. Just when you think it is getting all draggy and how all these things are going to be tied together, it then hits you. Only then it dawns upon you that every scene and story is detailed to precision to make this offering simply a masterpiece. It leaves a trail of philosophy and questions about human behaviours that yearn to be answered. 

We are responsible for our actions, whether the scriptures tell us or not. The two-timing wife has to face the music when it is discovered. She is responsible for her activity as it has repercussions on people around her, like her parents, husband and in-laws. If her lover dies in her hands, she has to face the consequences.

Doing what seems to be the right things may not always be a pleasant thing to do.  Like the transgender lady (Manikam @ Shilpa, played beautifully by Vijay Sethupathi)) realises, even though it is her right to express her inner desires, her action may affect the people around her. It is not always about oneself but of people around her.

Being naked in public is frown upon by modern society. It is all in context. Being half-naked is the norm at the beach but not at a philharmonic orchestra performance. It might have been alright to be undressed in prehistoric times or perhaps even in generations to come, but now we have laws to govern these.

Society likes to see what it wants to see. It creates a storm when an actress acts in a porn movie but fails to credit her in a positive role, as a Goddess role. It chides the pedlars of porn but not its consumers.

A person who has done not so virtuous things also cares for his family. He also wants to do the right thing. A seemingly righteous person will do a 'sinful' things if circumstances dictate.

Apparently, just as the pastor who was enlightened during the tsunami, so was the transgender character. She also held her life on to a rock. After the ordeal, she just disposed of the rock and did her thing. The pastor, however, saw the rock statue that he held was that of Jesus and was a sign from God to save mankind. To one, it was just a piece of rock. To another, it was a message from the Maker. Interesting.

We make rules by association. We put two and two together to come to conclusions about things around us. We see the sun in the morning, and we see the moon at night, and we draw a conclusion that one appears mutually exclusive of the other. We get confused when we see both of them together. This knowledge is used by the philandering wife and her husband to confuse the police when they dispose of the body. 

Ramya Krishnan

The Universe seems to have a prototype for all of its inventions. The electrons and the tiny charged particles which are seen at a microscopic level or the intergalactic celestial bodies which are spread over many million light-years away, they are governed by a single law.

Everything holds its purpose for its existence. Like a single cell on the elephant that makes an elephant an elephant, every individual on this planet has his purpose. He exerts his influence in one way or the other - in the present time or the future. Just like historical events affect the present. The question is whether your existence is merely to fulfil your primal needs or for the betterment of the human race on the whole.

The alien character encourages us to view the human race objectively and re-evaluate the human race and laugh at our follies.

It appears like every scene, every dialogue, and every character is crafted with a purpose. No clip is introduced for the sake of filling the gap. Each has a back story. There are plenty of hidden messages in the background - like a silhouette of a flying plane to denote the timeline of the story. The cinematography is avantgarde at best, following the path of master filmmakers like Ray, Kurosawa, De Sica and Hitchcock. In many scenes, much is left to the imagination. Sometimes, sounds and dialogue have more impact. A partly obscured view adds more drama to our visual experience. 

A clear 4.8/5 that makes you want to view it again.

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Sit, Booboo, sit. Good dog!

The word 'consent' is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there are 'implied consent' and 'silence is consent', then on the other spectrum, are the murky waters of 'informed consent', as if consents are sometimes uninformed or imposed. We have also heard of 'consent under duress' which is by no means consent. In surgical practice, failure to divulge certain rare but real complications of an operation denotes carelessness and possibly negligence of the attending surgeon. As if the patient was not informed that surgery was a risky business.

Recently I heard a podcast of consent of a different kind. In fact, this edition came around way before cry babies started screaming #MeToo! The latest version of approval is 'I agreed to this but not to that..." 

A few years previously, in fact, a good full decade after a young lady (A) went separate ways with her best male friend (B), she decided to revisit the event that made them part ways. She resolved to delve head-on with her assailant (B) to try to determine when and how she put herself in a situation until she was sexually violated.

A and B had, when they were in their early twenties, a platonic relationship. They used to hang out together in each other's room together, talking about intimate things and sharing private thoughts. There was an agreed unwritten rule that lustful love and romance was not in the equation. Towards the end of their university studies, under the influence of intoxicants, they crossed their line. She was alright with the initial petting and cuddling but...

Looking back, A feels that she was wronged. She did not mind the initial part of their intimacy, but she felt assaulted after crossing certain self-made boundaries. B, being the male component of the liaison, thought, at that juncture, he needed to be the aggressor; to do what was expected of him. Perhaps, nature dictates such an arrangement. The innumerable male gametes attempting desperately to fertilise a single ovum is the testimony to this.

There is no issue at all there. Putting spark and cotton side by side and not to expect the cotton to be ignited is pure foolhardy. Of course, opposites attract. In the spring of youth and the raging of hormones fuelled by the inhibitory effects of intoxicants, the animalistic reptile brain is bound to supercede rational thinking. Rules and regulations go out of the window. Even on the female side who inherently tend to be the reluctant party, it is difficult to be brakes on emotions when the flickering ember of passion is fanned.

I think that is the problem with us. We believe we have controls on everything. Like ordering our lunch at the drive-in, we think we can dictate what want. The last person that we can trust is our own dear self! Do not put yourself in a vulnerable position. You do not need someone else to disappoint you. The person who would do that could be you.

Life is becoming more difficult with cultural conditioning, need to assert gender roles, individual responsibility for his actions, empathy, mindfulness and individual right. Nobody can do anything of his volition anymore. He is expected to act and react in certain ways only. 

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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