Gone Girl- goes the mile

Intro

Think of all the negative emotions one could possibly have about marriage. Now think of a couple that amplifies it further and acts on all these emotions- that is 'gone girl' for you.

The Good

His wife goes missing, he smiles in the press photo op and he takes a selfie with some random woman outside the press center. 'What an idiot' 'What an insensitive prick' may be a few thoughts that runs through your head. But the director of the film has a lot more darkness, and psychological trauma awaiting the protagonists of this film. And that is where this film succeeds. By going all out on the pessimism, the movie does well in playing with the minds of the audience.

The bad

I did not like the end of the film. Maybe the book does better with the specifics of how the story actually ends. But the film's end makes everyone out to be idiots. Including the audience.

The ugly

Well, in the ugly section we discuss the ramifications of the film in real life and Indian culture. What does a man or a woman do, when stuck in a horrible marriage. Our newspapers are rife with reports of domestic abuse and wives getting burnt. Unless the two people who are living together and sharing a life are counselled properly, things always tend to go a bit haywire; maybe not as horribly as what happens in this film. But there are many accidents waiting to happen...

Verdict: A must watch if you like psychological thrillers. 6/10 pass marks, very few points off extraordinary.

Kadhalil Sodhappuvadhu Yeppadi (How to mess it up in 'love')

Intro

The most refreshing love story ever told in the Tamil film medium. Because of the lack of tragedy our tamil (and mallu) audiences might not give it cult status like the films 'Johnny' or 
Guna.' Question is will our audiences digest a refreshing romantic comedy that for the first time looks at a realistic portrayal of love, although a slightly optimistic one...  

Synopsis

Why is love such a hard subject to deal with? After a fallout with the love of his life, Arun (Siddharth) reflects on 'what went wrong.' The narrative shifts constantly between what happened before the fallout (in the past) and what is happening now as his close friends are in transition- one of them about to marry another just about fell in love (the present). 


The above line might be hard to understand, as the sentence formation might be flawed, but the narrative in the film is so flawless that you hardly ever get confused - why you don't even think about it.  

Good 

A romantic comedy which keeps it really really real. A guy who messed it up so bad that his lover throws a glass at him. A friend who has fallen in love and another friend who loves giving cheap advice which gets you into more trouble. The movie takes you into the stages of a romantic relationship. The initial stages of intense romance, the middle stage of taking each other for granted and finally the final stage of it all falling to pieces because of circumstances that expose the second stage of indifference.... 


It's a sort of a men are from Mars, women are from Venus. But with a comical twist that will send chills down your spine if you have ever been through a breakup and laughter down your belly if you have ever watched idiot couples breaking up for silly reasons.   


An excellent movie that uses modern narrative techniques like 'mocumentary' where the artists give a documentary type interview within the film. And the non linear narrative which is seamless as mentioned in the intro keeps the audience thoroughly engaged... 


The movie is for everyone... because even though it does not dumb down audiences as out Tamil serials do, it keep everyone laughing and the closeness of the script to everyday occurrences will surely make it a 'super hit.'

Bad

The second half started with a rather boring note where the sub plot of the marrying friend takes over for like ten minutes. But 10 minutes of boredom is engulfed by 2 hours of good story telling so its negligible. 


The music is a little distracting at times...

Ugly 


Are we living in a breakup culture? The underlying angle in this film is that communication (or lack of it or mis-communication)  is the primary reason for breakups and that this is largely due to male female dissimilarities. There are also skewered expectations of money and time... 


This film reflects how as a culture we are so ill prepared to deal with these... As a culture we don't teach our young as top how to deal with this and so we (Indian's) either break up or lead a dysfunctional married life.

Marks- 8/10.No cult status, but definitely the best romantic comedy the tamil film goer has ever seen.


                                        

Endhiran – Entertaining yet Dismissing

Rajinikanth’s new movie Endhiran directed by shankar, is a definite superhit but a movie with such a big budget and high level technicians could have done better. The graphics is really good for tamil cinema but I guess an overdose of anything is bad. Before going into details on this movie I will say this, if you’re a true rajinikanth fan you will love it and you will enjoy every thing that comes on screen, if you’re the kind who goes "it’s tamil cinema that’s how it is" then you will like it too but if you are a general movie fan who likes to watch all kinds of movies this one will fall flat as it really had the chance to be so much better.

 

Synopsis: Dr. Vaseengaran aka Vasi (Rajinikanth) builds a robot Chitti (Rajinikanth) which looks like him and is programmed to help humans and his basic idea was to donate his creation to the military and stop the loss of human lives. Chitti is programmed to know all languages and arts forms known to man, he can cook, dance and fight to protect people on requirement. When Dr. Vasi tries to get it Patented and certified Dr. Bohra ( Danny Denzongpa) manages to make the robot to almost stab Dr. Vasi and hence denying the patent, following a series of unfortunate events Dr. Vasi decides to give the robot human emotions so that it can decide between right and wrong but this in turn makes the robot to fall in love with Dr. Vasi’s Fiancé Sana ( Aishwarya Rai) and it wantedly fails an evaluation of the Indian army this causes Dr. Vasi to get angry and chops Chiti to pieces and throws him into the scrap. The movie goes further on how Chiti reconstructs himself and becomes bad on the addition of a red chip into his system by Dr. Bohra and then attempths to kill Dr. Vasi and get Sana for himself, will the Evil Chiti succeed or will Dr. Vasi be able to save the day I don’t want to spoil the movie for the rest of you so watch the movie to know what happens next.

 
The Good - Rajini does not have any of his usual entry song sequence. The Differentiation in the three different characters  played by Rajini is clear and has been differentiated  very well. The graphic sequences  is really cool I must say that its one the best for an Indian movie till date, Rajini is really cool in the negative shade. The part were Rajini pulls all the iron objects towards him and stands like Kali is totally cool.

The Bad -  The song sequences in between were really annoying for a sci fi movie. I did mention the graphics was good in this movie but in certain places it was overdone and tends to get annoying (for eg. the formation sequence) certain sequences  tend to defy logic completely (for eg. the  car chase sequence where the evil chitty abducts sana and the cops chasing them sequence), the problem is not that it defies logic, The real  problem is that there  is not even an attempt in certain places to make it look real.

The Ugly - The Sequence where chitti talks to the mosquito is all weird considering the fact that chitty is programmed all the languages in the world but when was he programmed mosquito language and its not a cartoon flick where animals talk and stuff, places like this its like as if the director seems to have added scenes without logic thinking the audience will accept anything put forward at them. Another place which I find weird is the part where chitti is fighting with all the rogues and villains but no body is surprised of his super human abilities etc, its not like a robot  is a common thing amongst us.

 

Overall the movie will be a hit with the local audience but sadly the director had the opportunity and the money to make a movie which could have reached out to a wider audience. Rajini has delivered once again well am sure this movie would not have got the same pull if another actor had acted in it. Wish the song sequences were cut on screen and the director had used even that money on the Graphics.Over all every hardcore Rajini fan will love this movie to the core and for the rest i think its worth watching once at least for the graphics.

 

Marks- 5/10 (Average)