Just bulldoze through...

Darbar (2019)

Are we living lives that are so unfulfilling? Are we trapped in a quagmire of hopelessness and pessimism that destined us to be forever confined in a sticky web of doom and gloom? Are we resigned to the fact we are too intellectually bankrupt to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps?

Are we waiting for that imaginary knight in shining armour to magically hoist us out of our rabbit hole of melancholy? Is it possible? Or are we imagining another realm where all our aches, pains and attachments would be magically dismantled? 

Perhaps we had fought our fights and had given up. All the power and wealth of the powers that be have disarmed us from the shield of resilience. We have crumbled and wilted to pressure. We are numbed to our addiction to our devices that have sapped our juices to think.

Maybe it is not a new phenomenon. For ages, we of the human race have suffered under the tyranny of dictators and power-hungry madmen. And we have seen saviours in the form of revolutionists, orators, storytellers and even kings who were given demigod statuses. Some were labelled Son of God, Messenger of God and even avatar or representation of God walking on Earth. Rulers were bestowed divine standings when the country was peaceful, crops were bountiful, and natural calamities were absent. When economics went south, their reputations took a beating and acquired demonic ranks.

That must have reinforced the existence of religions. And of angel and demons and when everything else failed, a blissful afterlife in the waiting! 

This film is strictly for diehard Thalaiva fans who have not seen enough of his 80s, 90s and 21st-century mind-boggling, gravity-defying and logic-escaping masala-spaghetti flicks. The storyline is the same old same old time-tested format. One lone-wolf Indian cop sends shivers down the crooks and singlehandedly clashes head-on with the whole brunt of the mafia force with brute force without planning or regards to law and order, police professionalism as well as to human rights.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Saw that and have seen that!

I (ஐ, Tamil; 2015)

Many recommended that I should watch this Kollywood outing which they say is different from the usual fare. I disagree.

Throughout the film, I had the recurrent déjà vu that I had seen this and that. This 49 year old hero (Vikram aka John Kennedy Victor aka Chiyaan), is saying that he is no push over and appears with body toned and muscle contours chiselled out to perfection and have no qualms of exhibiting it. Nevertheless, his age shows in the form of crow feet and peri-orbital wrinkles. Just like his previous outing (Anniyan comes to mind), he acts as a deformed hunched back (ala Notre Dam) with neurofibromatosis-like papules.

And the plot of vengeance involving calculated and varied manner of getting is so overdone.

Perhaps the youngsters who throng cinemas again and again and burn the ticket collections must be mesmerised with the gaudy display of props, display of the female and male anatomy, the elaborate preparation of set dances with various motifs, the picturesque poster colour sceneries of China and the songs with alien lyrics and incomprehensible meanings.

A lowly fanatical fan gets all excited when he gets the chance to meet and work with his idol advertisement model. Even both are different poles of social strata, they click. With her usual pair, pulling out from her team after she declined her sexual advances, the socially awkward fan, Lingesan @ Lee (Vikram) is roped to fill the gap. Along the way, he makes many enemies. And Vikram has a hideous metamorphosis. The rest of the story tells us in a non-linear fashion his transformation and reason for revenge.

A lovey-dovey romantic thriller for the young fans and the young at heart. One liner wise cracks from Lingesan's side-kick (Sandanam) tickles the ribs moderately. A totally Tamil language challenged pretty faced glamour actor Amy Jackson gets along the show dancing along to the tunes of AR Rahman's forgettable tunes and lip-synced dialogues.

Kudos to the make-up artists and the prosthetic team who did a good job at giving hideous faces and body parts to the hero and the villains after his calculated payback.

http://asok22.wix.com/rifle-range-boy

Waste of time...

Interview (2014)
Perhaps it was all just a stunt to catch everybody's fancy. The alleged hacking of a giant and threat of war and all. Anyway, what do you expect when a leader of a sovereign nation is ridiculed? Most Hollywood films would only make characters that resemble a leader of a small helpless nation, not point blank the very same name.
Sitting through the 1.5 hour of the movie which would make 'Austin Powers' seen as a classic, I realised that it not even worth the film it is printed on. The jokes are not funny with frequent use of explicit foul superlatives and adjective and 'in your face' sexual jokes which are not sexual innuendoes but descriptive pornographic gestures.
Over at the story department, it is nothing much. Dave Skylark (James Franco) and his producer Aaron Rapoport (Seth Rogen) are proud of their brainless TV show which features interview of worthless importance. Not surprisingly, it is a runaway hit in its ratings and is even liked by North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un - as they later found out on line. To spice up their show further, they decide to embark on a mission to interview the man himself!
As their plan reaches feverish pitch, the CIA moves in to arm twist them to be part of their plan to assassinate the North Korean dictator with a poisonous resin.
When the jokers finally reach their destination, Skylark find Kim to be a regular kind of guy who enjoys American way of life and American music. On top of it all, everything is hunky dory there in the heavenly kingdom - no famine, no malnourished kids, etcetera.
Slowly, the truth surfaces and in spite of all their bumblings, Kim is killed and democracy is restored.
It is a complete waste of time which would spiral your IQ down by a few notches!