RIFLE RANGE BOY

Kummathy (Bogeyman, Malayalam; 1979) Director: G Aravindan Most viewers would not have heard of this movie maker, mainly known as a legend in the Indian alternative cinema field. Unlike the masala Bollywood kind of logic-defying escapism that excites the masses, these artsy films only fascinate people who see beyond the story and what is shown on the screen. Some label this film as the best Indian movie ever made. The movie came to the mainstream's attention after Martin Scorsese's team restored the old, lacklustre copies found in the Indian film archives in 2021. Scorcese announced this movie was one of his f avourites at its restoration premiere in Italy.  The original cinematographer , however, still preferred the analogue version, as he thought it had more texture and character. It has been popularised as a children's movie and is usually screened on International Children's Day. The first thing one notices when watching this film is that he feels like a child. Reme...

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) Director: Martin Scorsese Based on David Grann's book (2017) Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI The narration is always the same. Again and again, history has repeatedly shown the same narration. The local population would live in harmony, in sync with their environment. The rambunctious mavericks from outside, with both eyes fixed on the wealth, would trickle in, peddle their snake oil elixirs and promise the moons and the stars. They would bulldoze their thinking into the local populace. The host would be cordial enough to accommodate the newcomers' wisdom, too. Once the shields are lowered, when the host treats the visitors as equals and gives them due recognition, they would zap.  The bottom line is all about wealth, money and control.  The Native Indians were nicely tugged into the New World, as 'discovered' by Europeans. The areas around Missouri and Kansas were occupied by a group that later be...

Irishman (2019) Director: Martin Scorsese This movie received brickbats even before it came to the screens (or rather Netflix). Scorsese, maybe on purpose, stirred the hornet's nest by making a statement about the genre that seems to captivate the imaginations of the Millenials - the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). He asserted that the MCU world is not cinema but mere theme parks. To quote Scorsese, " cinema is about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It is about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves. Marvel movies don't encapsulate those criteria." To be fair, even Alfred Hitchcock's and P Ramlee's movies were criticised in their days. There were said to be gruesome or too violent (Psycho) or crossing the social norms (Ramlee's Gelora). Even though the new franchises...

Wolf of Wall Street (2013) I could not help it but to compare this offering to Martin Scorsese's 1980 classic 'Raging Bull'. The same director with the same record number of 'f-words' in the script. One could,  in fact, learn all through the various functions of the flowery f-word (as a noun, pronoun, descriptive term, verb, adjective etcetera) in this movie. The viewers appreciate the decadent life-style that the 'The Wolf' - Jordan Belfort led but to be graphic and to show bevies of ladies in various states of undress and compromising positions in all frames all through is not really necessary belying the greatness of the director. The director's name itself is enough to create a storm at the box-office. Hence, there is not no need to turn this biography to a pornographic presentation. Perhaps, the view of sugar candy must have taken away the acting talents of some of the characters. The film, a 2 hour feature, tells of a stock broker, Jordan Bel...

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore 1974 I wonder why the past few films have women themes in them, pure coincidence, I suppose. This 1974 flick was directed by the Hollywood legend Martin Scorsese. Unlike his usual cup of tea which involves a lot of violence and killings, this one is a family drama with a lot of emotions involved. It did create some noise groups for portrayal of an abused docile wife. Alice Wyatt (Ellen Burstyn) had big ambitions of being a singer. Came a man in her life, blinded by love, marriage and pop came a son, he ended up as a housewife to a hot tempered Cola Cola employee and a mother to a slightly bad mannered 11 year old boy. In spite of the strained relationship, life went on till husband was killed in an accident. Facing financial difficulties, she sells her meagre belongings in New Mexico and decide to drive back to her home town of Monterey, California with her son to continue where she stopped of what was supposed to be the beginning of h...

Taxi Driver (1976) After watching Satyajit Ray's 1962 Abhijan about a cynical taxi driver, the only natural thing to is watch another cynical taxi driver. This time in the form of Martin Scorsese's depiction of a mentally disturbed Yellow Cab driver in New York. If Ray's protagonist was trying to find the answer to life and morality, Scorsese's character, Travis Bickle (a young Robert De Niro) takes his own moral judgement on the wrongdoers. A honourably discharged ex-Marine Travis, takes the job of night cab driver to make some money and as he is as awake as an owl at a time when most sane people are sleeping. He cannot stand the filth and vice that goes on in the streets and wishes that something could be done to clean it up. We can see that he is having some kind of post traumatic stress disorder as he narrates his life in his journal. He is infatuated with a Presidential candidate campaigner, Betsy (a young Cybill Shepherd). He finally plucks some courage to a...