movie hitlist (or) why i should not write movie reviews

the recent slew of must watch movies I watched were a real lot of pathetically painful performers… highly disappointing and the plot has been diluted to the point of being so silly, that the only satisfaction that seems to be arising out of watching them is this blog post… at the great personal risk of a RGV-blaag kinda attack, I am writing this, although no one is paying me anything for it…

Narnia II – the sequel to the first one (the lion the witch and the wardrobe) seems to have lost all the magic… the only magic left is some set of weird creatures… sluggish screenplay and even more sluggish characters are better appreciated due to the total humanness of the movie’s leading roles… almost 90% of the movie is devoid of any real magical instance and eventually azlan the lion god finally turns up to end the movie and hence our boredom… prince Caspian turned out to be a real thespian effort and the movie’s title sounds most appropriate in tamil… Narnia, Narnia…

Kuruvi – “kuruvi thalaila panangaya vekkalam aana bomb vekka koodadhu”… this punch dialog in a way sums up the entire episode. Ilaya thalapathi’s stupidest role so far and apparently the movie has been a telugu remake. The hero is actually a superhero… a set of thoroughly disconnected screenplay seems to connect the amazing punch dialog comedy tracks of vivek… amazingly powerful, the hero takes a beating now and then just to prove that he is still human (or maybe that the director suddenly remembered that it was just too much to digest seeing people getting beaten up by a scrawny looking guy by the hundreds… and then the songs… they had crossed being awful and get beyond the point of being unbearable… in fact I could not digest wot I saw and I actually felt very full after the movie for a few minutes after it got over…

21 – can’t say much about this becos it is supposed to have heavy themes in it… Kevin Spacey, Lawrence Fishburne, MIT, Maths, Blackjack, LA etc etc… it is supposed to be so slick and aimed to amaze that they forgot what they set out to do – play blackjack… it turns out more as a thriller where Lawrence Fishburne in his huge menacing form and his rich set of studded huge gold rings terrorizes kids to give him their cash and plastic chips… it turned out to be a movie that seemed to have a lot of sign languages typically reminding me of the “news for the hearing impaired” which used to be shown on DD way back when people were really watching those for lack of better things to do.

Cloverfield – a monster movie shot with a handycam… ok sounds good… so wot wud a guy with a handycam, running around becos of a monster attack focus on? No, not the monster… it would be his stupid screaming friends… come on when people go to the zoo, and take pictures, they take pictures of other people completely ignoring the animals… no ? anyways, I don’t think the monster was worth the time… and considering that it was a handycam tape, there was not much time either…

Arasangam – never expected the thalaivar to make such a forgettable movie… I actually don’t remember much of it… captain takes a small detour from the normal plot of “his best friend did it” to something of a bigger twist… but the rest of it seems same… somebody who is conspicuous by his absence is “Wasim Khan”, but the usual losing of beloved ones goes on. Amazing use of technology though not required for captain, but as I told you, I have forgotten the plot. But the way he cracks the code from a seemingly unsolvable clue – the captain has not lost his touch… in fact he has gained a few… pounds that is… nowadays I can’t see the throat where those great punch dialogs and loads of advice comes from… and soon maybe in the next movie itself captain will abandon his reverse back kick style and just roll over all his enemies…

Dasavatharam – had to save the best for the last rite? A huge wait of over 2 years and kamal gives us this… of course there are a hundred hidden messages in the story (according to a floating forward) but this is what I saw… of the 10 avatars of kamal, 3-4 were good in terms of character strength and depth… others were maybe there just for the sake of being there… and the horrible graphics of the butterflies and the oceans… yugg… I have not even started on the make up yet… despite the 500 man hours that kamal is reported to have spent on the make up alone I see no worth in that. A total plastic mask affair which suited only the killer kamal because of his cold expressionless character… In fact given a chance maybe any tom dick and harry could have acted those parts… unfortunately the monkey was too small and mallika sherawat was too slim and sexy and maybe napoleon was an old family friend and the concept kamal married to a kamal made to look like asin would have gotten censored in a same sex marriage abhorring intolerant country (but dint Vishnu take on a mohini avatar?) else maybe we could have actually seen kamal in 15 avatars and an unbeatable entry to the guiness book… yeah the film is fast paced and you don’t get bored, but nothing goes in either… it is a crazy half baked script and even lesser baked special effects and graphics and it totally falls flat on the attempts at a crazy mohan type dialog exchange at the most serious moments in the movie… the amazing start of kamal’s entry as rangaraja nambi is not capitalized for the rest of the movie, and in fact seems totally unconnected. And the amazing musical scores are as relevant as skimpily clad heroines and bright multicolored heroes prancing around trees and fields… I fail to understand if kamal was really attempting some fancy dress ramp walk or trying to portray himself in the 10 different avatars of Vishnu… God only knows…