Guided to "Monsoon Shootout"

Monsoon Shootout

John Andrews

        Amit Kumar brings us multiple films with his first film Monsoon Shootout. Adi (Vijay Varma) is a young cop in training to join the detective force in Mumbai. His boss, Khan (Neeraj Kabi), is a powerful man in Mumbai who takes matters into his own hands and worries about clean up later. Adi must find the balance of making a good impression while remaining true to his own morals and honor as the film retracts to one moment three times.

          The conflict of the film arrises in the first scene when a man and a blind beggar stop a car in order to kill a wealthy businessman for not paying his “tax” to Slumlord. This hatchet killing is not the first and it is Khan's job to find the assassin. When Khan locates two accomplices of the murder, he shoots them in cold blood and has Adi wreck their car to set up an escape attempt. Adi's first conflict is having to choose between honor and the criminal justice.

        As Adi is patched up by an old girlfriend, Anu (Geetanjali Thapa), at the local hospital, he asks her out that night. Adi returns to work and is put back on the case. He is forced to miss his date to chase a lead on the blind beggar and Shiva, the hatcher hacker.

           Adi and Khan are set up in the pouring rain. They watch the blind beggar and another man talk at a food stand when another man makes a move on Khan. Causing the unknown man to run, Khan puts down the beggar and Adi runs after the man. As he struggles through thigh-deep water and trash in the slums of Mumbai, Adi is caught in a dilemma as he pulls his gun on the man climbing over a wall. Adi can shoot this man who may not be Shiva or he can wait.

          There is a beautiful slow motion camera shot of the monsoon unleashing on Adi, a dog and clay pots, and the water cascading off of his face as he is forced to determine the fate of this man.

Varma's performance deserves recognition. He plays Adi with a sense of conviction and ease. Adi wants to be a great detective in Mumbai and follow is his late father's footsteps, but in a crooked city like Mumbai, Adi has to make decisions he would prefer not to make. It is future versus belief and Varma executes this paradox very well.

         Kumar's expansion on one moment into many is fascinating. Run Lola Run, a film that also uses three scenarios dependent upon the protagonists decisions, comes to mind. I did not enjoy Run Lola Run. Every time the film started back to Lola running out of her apartment, I felt angry and annoyed, but in Monsoon Shootout, Kumar keeps you are your toes. The film does a great job of pacing and editing. The flashbacks aren't too long and repetitive and each offers something drastically different. After the third scenario, I was left wanting more, which is a great trait in a movie.

To me, most Indian films seem to deal with the plethora of poverty and slums. While these topics are relevant, Kumar sets himself apart from this genre and story line. Instead of putting poverty at the forefront, this police-crime thriller focuses on Adi and his journey to detective. The crooked cop system of Mumbai is challenged by a shy rookie.

       Co-produced with the Dutch and the U.K., we are given a film filled with beautiful shots of color and steady, clear images. Stormed with rain and little light, we get a natural sense of what monsoon season is like in Mumbai as Adi's fate lies in question.

       Kumar leaves the ending open to interpretation. Choices seem to be the main focus of the film. Not only is Adi struggling with what to do, but the audience is left with a decision as well: which scenario actually played out. The ending is superb and you won't be let down.

Director: Amit Kumar

Writer: Amit Kumar

Producer: Sikhya Entertainment, Yaffle Films

Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Vijay Varma, Neeraj Kabi

Run Time: 88 minutes

"Seduced and Abandoned" Minute Review

Seduced and Abandoned

John Andrews

      James Toback and Alec Baldwin set off to Cannes to get a movie financed. This documentary about getting a film produced at the renowned film festival is comedic and depressing. For future filmmakers, it can be hard to watch as Toback and Baldwin are confronted with the challenges of financing a personal project. Baldwin isn't a bankable actor and a 20 million dollar budget shouldn't be but 5. Interviews with Scorcese, Gosling, Chastain, Bejo, Francis Ford Capola, and a handful of producers and billionaires bring this depressing documentary into light. I still don't know if the sex drama set in the Iraq war will make it to the big screen.

Director: James Toback

Producer: Michael Mailer, Alec Baldwin, James Toback

Starring: James Toback, Alec Baldwin

Run Time: 98 minutes

Guided to "Zulu" for Entertainment

Zulu

John Andrews

    In Cape Town, South Africa, where unrest is always prevalent, two detectives, Ali and Brian, are tasked with solving the murder of the daughter of a rugby team owner. The good cop, Ali (Forest Whitaker), collects a drug from two young boys that causes you to turn violent and lash out. Brian (Orlando Bloom), the bad cop, womanizer, poor father, and lousy ex-husband, seeks answers in the opposite fashion of Ali: gun wielding, brutality, and fear. Orlando Bloom's performance was average. Legolas and Will Turner were masked by special effects and other bigger performances, Aragorn and Jack Sparrow. With only Forest Whitaker to take the other spotlight, Bloom's chops were exposed a bit. The plot has been done before and was a bit empty. Entertaining if nothing else.

Director: Jerome Saooe

Writer: Carey Ferey, Julien Rappeneau, Jerome Salle

Producer: Pathe International

Starring: Forest Whitaker, Orlando Bloom

Run Time:105 minutes

Guided to "The Great Beauty"

The Great Beauty

John Andrews

       It is Jep Gambardella's 65^th birthday. The film opens with a lengthy, extravagant rooftop bash filled with booze, dancers, and old Italian men celebrating Jep's big day. Jep is the author of a critically acclaimed book “The Human Apparatus” and has written no other novel since. He now writes for a Roman daily newspaper. The party goes on as young girls frolic blissfully and old men scramble to obtain them.

      After the vast success of his book, Jep, played by Toni Servillo, lives a high class life in Rome in a villa overlooking the Colosseum, attending the biggest and richest parties in Rome. He has surrounded himself with lavishly rich, uber successful, and yet utterly hopeless socialites. They all attend parties together and meet weekly to banter wittily back and forth about philosophy, life, politics, sex, and religion. During one particular conversation, Jep unleashes a subtle fury of slanders and hard truths to Stefania about the lies she has told herself for years: having real relationships with her children, paying people to do everything for her, and writing 11 books that no one cared about.

      One night, as Jep strolls through the beautiful streets of Rome as he does each night, he walks into a strip club owned by an old friend. As they sit and talk, the owners' 42-year-old daughter, Ramona (Sabrina Ferilli), comes on stage to perform. Though Jep says he has no intention of being the “good guy she needs,” they develop a relationship as he woos her with his high class parties and art shows. When she abruptly dies of an incurable disease, Jep moves on with his life and starts to search for “la grande bellezza”, or “the great beauty”, of life.

      The movie circles around Jep and his search for this great beauty on Earth. Though the film is filled with all of his high class friends and characters, we see Jep alone with his thoughts throughout Rome's lush streets of architecture and wonder. Director Paolo Sorrentino explores resentment, passion, love, intellect, and emptiness through Jep.

      Jep's lifestyle begins to unravel. He cannot seem to place where his heart truly lies. As the film progresses and we learn how smart and knowledgable Jep is on just about everything, you feel for him. You want him to get back to writing and not waste his time with the frivolities and blandness he partakes in in the film.

      The cinematography is the most astonishing feature of the movie. The lingering shots of Jep meandering under the streetlights of Rome; the framing of the parties; the intricate movements over the faces of the characters. The lighting speaks volumes. The natural light of the night seems to bleed through each shot as party goers are promised magnificence. Rome is the main character, and Jep is merely a onlooker. Every scene and shot is masterfully crafted as a piece of art in itself. The art, the statues, the fountains all contribute to the essence of the city.

      The contrast of the cinematography and Jep's agenda perfectly portray Sorrentino's goals. Jep is struggling to achieve a sense of being content, struggling to capture, or at least know, what the great beauty of the world is. And yet it is all around him: Rome. A homage to the city, Sorrentino sheds light on the culture within Rome. Though not all experience this level of wealth, one can see bits and pieces worked in that pertain to anyone. Maybe there isn't a 12 year old girl throwing a paint tantrum on a giant white canvas in front of the biggest art dealers in Italy at your party, but everyone has seen that one spectacle at a party they won't ever forget.

       Jep's life makes you question what you are doing with yours. Are you withering away under the pressures of every day routine, or are you seeking out a passion, fulfilling whatever it may be that you do best? For Jep, fame and status consume him. Flashbacks to his younger days seem to haunt his mind. As he lays staring at his ceiling from his bed, we see the blue-green ocean, full of life and energy. The waves turn to white, and in the end, it is only a ceiling. As Jep seeks for the great beauty, Sorrentino shows us Jep's first sexual experience in pieces paralleled to an Italian Mother Theresa crawling up the stairs of St. Peter's Basilica. After hosting her at dinner with his socialite friends and hired princes and princesses, her words to him asking why he hasn't written another book ravage his brain. His lost youth. His risks never taken.

Director: Paolo Sorrentino

Writer: Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello

Producer: Francesca Cima, Nicola Giuliano

Director of photography: Luca Bigazzi

Starring: Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli

Run Time: 142 minutes

Guide thee not to "Heli"

Heli

John Andrews

    Heli is a slow and tedious portrayal of the life of a young man named Heli. Brutal and raw, the film peels the emotions and disgust out of you. The film holds back nothing from its scenes full of torture. Gruesome barely begins to describe the images you see.

     Technically speaking, the movie was well done, with long, wide lens shots of the wilderness and deserts of Mexico. But besides the camera work and acting, the narrative was weak and empty.

     The story begins with two men tied up and bleeding in the bed of a truck with their captors holding them down. The tone for the movie is set immediately when one of the men is tossed off a bridge, and hung. Escalante continues with the brutality as Beto, Estela's older boyfriend who is training to be a policeman, is forced to roll through his own puke and held over a latrine while being yelled at.

To disturb you even further, Estela, who I would presume to be around 12 years old, makes out with Beto, 17 years in the movie but looks older. The age difference may be a common practice in Mexico, but is off-putting from an outside perspective. Estela skips school to be with Beto. Savagery continues as Beto shoots a dog to discover a stash of cocaine. Estela sneaks out at night to help Beto hide the cocaine that he found in the water tank for the family house. When Heli discovers the drugs, having clogged the water pipes, he discards them, thinking the problem is resolved.

Heli and Estela's father is sitting in the house alone drinking a soda when the door gets bashed in. In defense he gets a couple shots off from the family rifle, but he is mowed down by men in black SWAT attire. We learn quickly that these men are of a drug cartel whose stash of cocaine has recently gone missing. Beto and Heli are also taken.

     The most difficult scene to the movie is the torture scene. I have never seen more people walk of a movie than this. As children and Heli look on, Beto is beaten with a wooden paddle across his back while strung up from the ceiling. The captors hand off the paddle to one of the boys in the room and the beating continues. Heli shows no emotion but closes his eyes and can only listen. As you sit there wondering how they pulled off this torture on camera without actually doing it, another man pulls down Beto's pants, squirts something on his privates and lights them on fire. As you sit and watch Beto burn and scream, you can only think of how in the world this is being shown in a movie. Though there is no way it was actually done, the effects and technique were done well enough to keep you in the moment and not wonder how, but only why they would show this.

     Still shots and long takes of the characters going through the mundane tasks of life are what this film was about to me. A coyote along the crest of a road with the night horizon in the background. Heli taping up a poster one handed. The father getting a soda and sitting down. Heli biking to work. These shots help to portray the every day life of Mexico, but they get redundant and wearisome. Though some of the scenic shots are beautiful, it slows the pace of the movie and creates gaps of the more lively scenes.

     The emotion wrought out of you throughout the feature is somewhat empty. I didn't really connect with the characters at all because it is like nothing I have ever experienced before. Though I don't doubt how that may be something slightly common in Mexico and drug cartel areas, for a Tennesseean it was far from mine own experiences.

     The lack of connection left me with an empty feeling towards the movie. That and the abundance of raw cruelty shut me off from finding any commonalities with the movie. I commend its shot composition and cinematography, but other than that I find Heli to be lacking in reality.

Director: Amat Escalante

Writer: Amat Escalante

Producer: Jaime Romandía

Starring: Armando Espitia, Andrea Vergara, Linda Gonzalez, Juan Eduardo Palacios

Run Time: 105 minutesf

Guided not to "Common People" - Minute Review

Common People – Minute Review

John Andrews

       Common People is a French family, comedy, drama that follows the story of six different groups of people through a park in London called The Commons. Each character is dealing with some sort of conflict, all being across the board for most people's troubles, hence the title. The conversations and realities seem to derive from the most broad controversies any average person would encounter: military veterans, how one wants to die, pregnancy, financial struggles, public space, drinking problems, love, teen immaturity, and family.

       The film oozes cheesiness. The acting is sub-par and hardly believable, the cinematography was mediocre at best for a film that took place all in one park, and the music brought a lighthearted tone to themes that should be taken quite seriously. Maybe not being from London hindered my experience and connection. Or maybe this film was outright hard to watch.

Director: Stewart Alexander, Kerry Skinner

Writer: Stewart Alexander

Producer: Common People Productions

Starring: Sam Kelly, Diana Payan, Iarla McGowan

Run Time: 86 minutes

Guided to "Much Ado About Nothing" - Minute Review

Much Ado About Nothing – Minute Review

John Andrews

In this modern adaption of a Shakespeare play, director Joss Whedon uses a colorless palate of grey, whites, and blacks to make his point. The use of the old English script from the Renaissance adds an intriguing flare to the film. Though hard to understand at times, and a bit too complex for my simple mind, the old English contrasted with the modern clothes, locale, and time offers a great perspective on a classic story. The film is filled with comedy, great music, and excellent cinematography.