RIFLE RANGE BOY

Plein Soleil (Purple Noon, French; 1960) Director: René Clément Malaysians are more familiar with Alain Delon as a stylish clothing brand than as an accomplished actor. He was definitely an accomplished person, and he is synonymous with French cinema in the vein of Gérard Depardieu and Bridgette Bardot. Like his career, his personal life was colourful, with criminal investigations, multiple affairs, and offspring. He died at the age of 88 in 2024. In his heyday, he was a prolific actor with sex appeal who toured between French cinema and Hollywood.  This is one of his early movies, which launched his career. It is a dark tale about two buddies who have a strange relationship. Delon, the poorer of the duo, is constantly bullied and ridiculed by his wealthy friend. Actually, they are not friends at all. Delon is just a messenger passing a message from his father for a fee. The rich guy has a yacht and a pretty girlfriend.  Long story short, Delon kills the rich guy and assumes h...

Last Night in Soho (2021) Director: Edgar Wright We always like to think of the 'good old days' and how life was simpler then and people were honest. Were they really so? Artefacts from our pasts stir so much serotonin that nostalgia sells. Like Pavlov's dog, we drool at sephia photos of yesteryear. Would we really give up everything we have right now and recoil into the past and do it all again if those days were indeed so simple? If we were to delve into our lives, we should consider ourselves lucky to have survived the negativities that could have brought us down at every single turn of our lives. We should thank our lucky stars that the turns we took at the crossroads of our decision-making moments turned out to be a-OK. Not perfect, could have been better than could have been worse off. What made us take the right turn? Is it some kind of guardian angel, guiding light, our sheer intellect or the deeds of our past karma? I guess it is a topic for the sophists to argue a...

Roaring Thunder Revue (Netflix; 2019) A Bob Dylan Story (Directed by Martin Scorsese) In a way, it looks like a mockumentary. It captures a specific time during Bob Dylan's tour of Northern America. It was 1975 and Dylan did a hodgepodge   musical tour with no preset number of performers. Artistes of the era joined in as they landed in various towns. A diehard Dylon fan may know these people by hard, but to me, only Joni Mitchell rings a bell. This film puts forward the actual 16mm footage of this tour with present-day Dylan giving interviews. Over time, probably with the state of intoxication that the musicians were in, many of the information remains a blur. The real reason the title of the tour is one instance. One says it is an honour to a Native American chief, Rolling Thunder. Yet, one cites the weather at the start of the planning of the trip. Could it be that it was about the open secret North Vietnam carpet-bombing by the American Forces during the Vietnam War? After...

My Generation (Documentary; 2017) This documentary is mainly about the rise and demise of the British Invasion generation. It was the time after World War 2. Euphoria was everywhere. Clement Attlee and his Labour Party gave a shot in the arm for the working class people. NHS made medical services accessible to the average Joe. Education became free. The divide between the aristocrat and the common man soon became blurred. The class demarcation became a thing of the past. Everyone has the opportunity to prosper. Clothing became democratised. The normal sombre tone of the garments became strikingly loud and short. Dressing-up was no longer to cover the bare essentials and to keep warm but became a statement of anti-establishment. As it became to generations to come, the generation before thought that the society was heading to a path of decadence and Armageddon was nay. Music became an annoyance to the elders. Rock and roll music could not be contained by the powers that be. The young...

Avana Ivan? (Is that him?, Tamil; 1962) Directed and Produced by S. Balachander It is supposed to be based on a murder which happened in the USA at the early of 20th century. An executive killed his pregnant secretary on a boat trip to marry a rich woman. The story created such a sensation that it a spawned a best seller novel and a 1951 Hollywood hit, 'A Place in the Sun'. The lone wolf, S. Balachander, wrote the screenplay for this film based the above hit, just that this Tamil version ended up as more of a children's show. Two children witness a brutal and fatal beating of a lady. They are totally composed throughout the event and afterwards, showing no emotional catastrophe but have the composure to narrate the whole incident to adults around them. Unfortunately, none the adults including the police take them seriously. Balachander, the flamboyant director, acts as the anti-hero to have committed the heinous for the same reason; to dispose of his pest...

Seven Days in May (1963) Humans are social animals, they say. We need each other to survive. We should look at one another as our brothers and sisters to sail through the journey of life. They say we should look at another not by colour or creed, but as a fellow being seeking temporary sojournment on Planet Earth. That, borders and nation states are artificial boundaries created by multinational conglomerates with business and acquisition of wealth on their mind! But snap out of it! This is what we have. Various nations wanting to do better than the other and do not to be taken for a fool by others. An entity called nationalism evolved over differences and the trust was put on a piece of cloth and the writings which define the nation, the Constitution. Leaders are elected democratically to guard this common belief that the Constitution is supreme, infallible and can stand the test of time as the founding fathers were visionaries extraordinaire! We all may not be happy with how thi...

Inspector George Gently (Mini Series Seasons 1-7; 2007-present) There are police procedural dramas and there are police procedural dramas. What makes this British drama stand out from the rest are manifolds. For one, it is one set in an era when life was simple and was getting complicated. The pilot episode starts in 1964 and it slowly goes on to the tumultuous years at the end of that decade. We can slowly see the gender roles change from a patriarchal one slowly to one where the skirts get shorter and the brassieres go missing. In the time frame, the death penalty was removed in the UK. The seemingly euphoric times of the post WW2 era sees the baby boomers and their offspring experience the darker side of progress. The working class were no more dancing to the tune of the aristocrats. They start standing up for the rights against the perceived tyranny and the old order of the ruling class. Many minority groups start demanding for their rightful place in society. The genera...

A Single Man (2009) So, what do you do when someone in whom you put all your hope disappoints you? What do you do when your dreams come crashing down? How do you reconcile with the situation when everything seems hopeless and there is nothing else to look forward to? Do you call it quits? Do you live the rest of your life, miserably, in the memory of the good times you had with the special other? Do you get real, be a pragmatist, be level headed and start life anew and do it all again? Do you call that betrayal or realistic as life has to go on? Do you recoil into a world of solitude where you are king and nothing else matters? Do you recharge yourselves and keep your sanity by engaging yourself? They say your life is your making, your karma; your suffering your making. You decide your life is heaven or hell. They make it sound so simple as if we control the rein to the path that we go. It can be simple if there are no others involved in the journey. Otherwise, it can be too compl...

Cathy Come Home (1964) This is the story of many societies. The urban dwellers, unable to keep up in the rat race, get left behind. Initially occupying the centre of the city, as their earning capacity declines or the opportunity dwindles, they get displaced. Slowly they abandon their urban dwelling to sojourn for something modest at its fringes. With further obstacles, they go further to the suburbs. In the best of times, they form the backbone of the workforce. As the economic pie gets smaller and the profit to the bosses takes a dip, they are replaced by economic migrants who would work for a song. And the original urban dwellers would show their resentment to the migrants and the system they plunge further into hopelessness. The bourgeoisie blames the poor for taking it easy, for their decadence and not saving for a rainy day. The poor feels that it is their birthright to be cared for, after all, they contributed immensely to the progress of the country. The politicia...

Seconds 1966 Man can never be satisfied with what he has. He is forever yearning for the unattainable and not satisfied with what he already has. If by a twist of fate, he is bestowed with his boon, he would still feel discontented and would crave for what he already had before! This obscure sci-fi thriller never left its mark on anyone’s list of favourite movies. Nevertheless, it has many meaningful philosophical messages which are relevant to mankind even 50 years after its release. It follows the mundane life of a middle age banking executive whose purpose in life seems to have been lost along the way. Having two adult kids who could fend for themselves, a predictable routine which gives him a comfortable life and cursory purposeless conversation with his wife appear meaningless to Arthur Hamilton. He wants something else but what is it? A mysterious phone call from his supposedly dead friend brings him to an eerie clinic which promises him a complete make-over of himse...

Murder She Said (1961) Come to think of it, she is a bit like some of the slightly older people in our lives that we know. (Hush, hush). All inquisitive and nosy at times. Poking their heads into unnecessary businesses and insisting what they saw was right and usually is. It sometimes can be annoying to the affected parties and invades into their something quite private called privacy. To the nosy-pokers, the older generations usually, this concept may be something quite alien! However, there are some who, under the cloak of privacy, do secretive transactions and pass it off as national security and insist that it cannot be questioned. That is another topic for another day! Margaret Rutherford Across the Atlantic, in a year's time, Ursula Andres would emerge from the waves draped in what was hardly accepted as garment appropriate for general consumption. Their British cousins were quite contended with casting a 70-year-old Margaret Rutherford, hardly a sex symbol, in a mur...

The Wild Angels (1966) This movie is the prelude to the 1969 'Easy Rider' about counterculture movement. Honestly, there is nothing great to say about this one. It is about a bunch of young adults of the Hell's Angels just riding and riding being chased by cop, beating up people, breaking up things and getting high. The thing that struck me was the two main actors - Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra, both offspring of great legends of showbiz, namely Henry Fonda and Frank Sinatra. Peter Fonda had his own successes and so did Nancy Sinatra. Nancy, famous with her signature tune 'These boots are made for walking', did not do so well in the silver screen as she did on the music front. It made me uneasy whilst watching this movie is to see how offspring of a generation who had strived hard to make it big, never have the tenacity to scale great heights as the generation before them did. The story also reminds me of how the younger ones in any society at any time of his...

Easy Rider (1969) This classic of the late 60s glorifies the counterculture spirit of that era. Even though it seem to showcase a decadent lifestyle with hedonistic desires away from the usual requirements of society like working and following the law, herein lies the philosophical outlook on life. The message is imparted via the travelogues of two hippie bikers as the they span the USA from Los Angeles to St Louis to attend Mardi Gras before they retire in style in Florida with the ill-gotten stash of cash obtain by drug trafficking big time. The riders (Wyatt@Captain America, Peter Fonda, the producer; Billy, Dennis Hopper, the director) pick up a hitchhiker and spend a night in a commune. In the 60s, people who were disillusioned with the way the capitalistic industrial world was heading, with war and nuclear threat, decide to give it all up to live the simple life with simple desires with lots of love and hallucinogens. The riders could see that the members of the commune, ev...

Vennira Aadai ( வெண்ணிற ஆடை, White Attire, Tamil; 1965) Director: C.V. Sridhar This movie remains the stepping stone for 4 of its main stars, namely Jayalalitha (her first Tamil film role), Sreekanth (even though he had been made famous a year earlier through another of Sridhar's hit, Kadhallika Neramillai), Nirmala and comedian Moorthy (who earned the prefix Vennira Adai to their names). It reminds us of a time when being fully clothed to cover the bare necessities were of paramount importance and people were polite to each other! Nostalgia was written all over the movie via its sepia hued print and the actors' attires which were all in shade of magenta, pink and brown. Jayalalitha managed to showcase her star quality through her persona and ability to hold the attention of the viewers. She was considered bold, ahead of her time, as she was the first actress to be seen on Tamil cinema in a gown instead of the usual saree. Srikanth unfortunately was just an eye-candy app...

Goodbye Again (Aimez-vous Brahms?, 1961) A movie made in Paris, as someone described it as typical of a French movie starring the restaurants and automobiles, involving Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Perkins (yes! Mr Norman Bates himself). It is a romantic drama which showcases the dilemma of a love of a cougar and its prey! It exposed Perkins' acting ability to earn him the Best Actor's award in Cannes in 1961. Somehow, you cannot help but visualise him as an eccentric young man here too! Paula (Bergman) is a 40 year old interior decorator who feels that her biological clock ticking away as her partner of 5 years continue life as a swinging bachelor jumping from bed to bed. Like a good partner, Paula turns a blind eye to his philandering ways as he continues with his 'business' trips and returns to her as he feels like it. Paula gets an offer to decorate an American lady's apartment in Paris. Her son is a lazy spoilt brad who is in Paris for a short stint to learn ...

Neelagiri Express (நீலகிரி எக்ஸ்ப்ரெஸ், Tamil; 1968) The moviemakers decided to venture into a newer genre. They tried their hand into something along the line of 'Murder on the Orient Express' by Agatha Christie. Unfortunately, it did not turn out as they wanted, a thriller. Instead, it showed the excellent comic ala-Mr. Bean role in Cho Ramaswamy. It became an almost full scale comedy with Cho hitting all the thought provoking tongue-in-the-cheek clean jokes. It is not wonder that he wrote the story! The suspense component did not excite. Neither did the musical score by T.K. Ramamoorthy. None of the songs belted in the movie stood the test of time or were vaguely familiar! The background score proved different with the usage of electronic guitars. Many of the shots were outdoor shots and I can hardly remember anyone with saree. All female characters seem to be wearing spandex pants and striped body hugging tops, probably that was the latest fashion then. The modus o...

Suzanne's Career (La carrière de Suzanne, French;1963) This second of Eric Rohmer's offering of 'Moral Tales' deals with the friendship of Bertrand, a pharmacy student, a shy, passive guy who befriends a guy, Guillaume, who is a blue bearded lady killer who is only interested in short affairs without the emotional baggage. Bertrand is interested in a girl named Sophie but is too morbidly shy to progress anywhere. In the meantime, Bertrand is inadvertently dragged into Guillaume's game to bed  Suzanne and use all her money. The unashamed Suzanne just follows Guillaume's whim and fancies with no self pride. Sometimes, Bertrand feels pity for Suzanne, especially when she became broke and jobless. Along the way, Bertrand also loses some money that he left for safe keeping in his textbooks. Not knowing whether the culprit was Guillaume or Suzanne, he just keeps it to himself. Bertrand tries to improve his relation with Sophie but it goes nowhere. A few months...