Smorgasbord Fantasia

Foreword: Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to another moony monday. Today I present to you a brand new feature,  Monday Movie Mania !! (Ahem, that name is something I just thought up, so hey this might not be a recurring feature.  Don't hold me to this!) When was the last time you enjoyed a movie where the hero is a bearded man-child who is a vagabond and hates responsibilities and lives the free happy life of a hippie. (Don't we all men yearn for this!) Where the heroine is a bright-eyed idealist who falls in love with the idea of a ghost based on a graphic novel. (Do girls like to be like this, I wonder?) And the story? A twisted pretzel of a meandering journey through bohemian lakeside towns and misty hill-stations laden with tea-estates and quaint old-age homes. Possibly never before. Yesterday night, I watched one of the biggest money-spinners of the 2015 Malayalam film industry - a movie called Charlie starring Dulquer Salman and Parvathy .  A truly spell-bin...

So this was a movie that we have all been waiting for – for more than a year now with bated breath, having trimmed down those expectations that refuse to lie still and keep poking you, saying “hey do you think Lucas still has it? Oh wait, this time it’s his protégé, JJ Abrams behind the wheel. So can he recreate the magic?” If you have been on that boat – rocking yourself to sleep, not able to answer that question peacefully, then hey! its finally here. Part VII of the world’s biggest movie franchise. And did it knock the socks off of our audience? Well, the jury is divided on that. I  caught The Force Awakens in the first week of January – the Sunday before the world went back to work after an extensive festive holiday season. And simple answer to that question I posed above: I LOVED it. We got new faces to root for, our older favorite characters are back in the story arc, there’s a new evil at large, prophecies and intriguing back stories to be revealed – All ...

So Barry Allen ( Flash , the fastest superhero in town) and his nerdy gang of friends & family have made their definitive mark on us. Season One is over and boy! What a rousing tale, safe to say that the speedster has zipped through our hearts, huh. So Flash started out strong building up on the basic foundation we grew to love from Arrow (fellow superhero from the DC Comics world!) and then as the season moved beyond the mid-season finale with the introduction of ‘reverse-flash’, things really started to zing up. Going on to really hit it out of the park by the season finale, thus setting our expectations pretty high for the oncoming season two. You know when I saw the premiere, I wasn't impressed. How would this skinny youngish looking fella carry the weight of the world on those frail shoulders ? And zip around at express speed saving the world from Apocalypse? But hey, Grant Gustin went on to blow past me doubting dorothy. In fact, the whole series showcases no...

So yesterday I watched the latest Marvel outing, Ant-Man . Going in with minimal expectations, I came out a really happy camper - a shrewdly done light comic thriller with all the trappings of a do-good movie. I sense that Marvel is trying real hard to get out of that dark grim shadow thrown by the Age of Ultron and is coming out with little bright gimlets like the Guardians ( a comic caper and a goof-ball of a movie that was such a great overall package!) and now this . Ant-Man on the surface, is a heist-movie featuring the smallest of Marvel Super-heroes, this time a down-on-his-luck thief with a masters in Electrical Engineering called Scott Lang. Scott ( Paul Rudd , the brightest spot of sunshine in this movie!) is just out of prison after a righteous crime, out of a job having been fired from Baskin Robbins ( This scene in the beginning sets the tone for the movie. It never takes itself seriously. A boy who walks into Baskin Robbins, asks for a burger with mayo and cheese,...

With SS Rajamouli at the helm, Bahubali was always going to be an ambitious movie. But did anyone expect this South Indian movie to break records worldwide ? It's created waves - and toppled records all over. and it's still going strong! I always maintained that the home-grown stories of Fantasy are the best and Bahubali retells a somewhat familiar and yet different tale of a kingdom Mahishmati tucked away between craggy mountain peaks and sheltered by a roaring waterfall - caught in the middle of a power struggle between blood relatives for the throne. Rajamouli's epic vision blends elements of Lord of the Rings and Mahabharata into something unique, something that he owns completely and executes in grand style on the big screen. A home-grown epic fantasy movie that will knock down your defenses and any reservations you may have had - Bahubali features some stunning camework, whooping CGI effects and artistic attention to the majestic sets. Rajamouli's visual pr...

Premam is probably now in its sixth week – blasting past all past records in the box office, romping away to be a cult movie now. I saw the movie late – yesterday. And I say this with no hesitation. Nivin Pauly is a star. A natural and consummate actor who makes you roll around in splits at his goofy earthiness, at his earnest attempts at writing a love-letter, then gets you pumped up and cheering wildly as he lights up the cigarette and walks out in the pouring rain to bash up the baddies and then gets you to cry and bawl your lungs at his brilliant portrayal of a broken-hearted man. He is the full package and he gets his due in Premam, a coming-of-age romantic comedy that sees him play George – who falls in love, breaks his heart, holds those stinging broken shards of sweet romance close and then finally learns to let go and find an anchor for his wayward life. Three girls, three love-stories. Each bitter-sweet and reminiscent of stages we’ve all gone through. This nost...

I watched Mad Max: Fury Road yesterday – one among the very few who ran to catch it on an early show Friday release, the coveted first day. The theatre was empty except for a few couples in corners and probably a few die-hards in the last row. With Mel Gibson ’s iconic character still grinning gleefully in my head, I settled down as the lights doused and the movie started. The Dust-bowl nightmarish version of a post-apocalyptic world with scarce resources and men turned into animals unfolded magnificently across the screen with the voice of Tom Hardy playing Max Rockatansky – savagely grabbing and biting off the head of a long-tailed two-headed lizard in the opening scene while reminiscing about the fact that he is the one who runs from both the living and the dead. It sets the tone for the rest of the movie. Weird and demented as only George Miller ’s vision can be, unapologetically brutal - all brakes taken out, no punches pulled and gloriously riotous in terms of the no...

Avengers 2 opened last week to a lot of expectations and fanfare - another marquee release from the Marvel Comics that brought back together the earth's superheroes ( discounting Thor from Asgard!) for another last-stand - this time against a megalomaniacal borderline psychotic super-bot called Ultron . Joss Whedon is in fine touch again - giving us yet another supercharged frenetically paced blockbuster entertainer that we all had been yearning for. Avengers-2 has got so much to ground to cover - introduce us back to the all-star ranks of superheroes who would never get along with each other, throw in new characters, whip out a plot-line involving a genocidal robot out to cleanse the world and of course crunch in the never-ending action set pieces chucking them one after the other at us - that there's hardly room to breath. Seriously. The opening sequence of Avengers 2 is mind-blowing. No compare to anything I've ever seen before - our mighty superhero bunch is tr...

Woohoooo!!! The Force is still strong. And don't miss the last few seconds of the teaser..Christmas can't come sooner!!