I watched lots of movies this past
year – one good thing about where I stay is that the theatre is a 15-minute
walk (at my pace and I am no Bernard Lagat) and I often end up there on
weekends. Quite a bit of the vernacular stuff (not my mother tongue but more
heartland Hindi, rustic and earthy and surprisingly nuanced) but my favourite
Hindi movie would easily be Gully
Boy. I liked the language and the acting and how it showed Bombay – there
were things that were dumbed down (don’t get me started on the wink-nudge
tributes to famous rappers) but the ambition and the lyrics rang true. I didn’t
really get the sense of apparently subversive messages which probably sold a
few more tickets but then I don’t ‘get’ that stuff. A few English movies as
well, the usual suspects that you have no doubt watched, a few duds (if you
have watched any of these movies, I am really sorry – Battle Angel Alita, Dark
Phoenix, MIB: International, Frozen 2), a few that I felt were genuinely good
for one reason or the other (Joker
(acting but felt pretentious), John
Wick 3 (dumb fun and insane action and maybe an interesting universe being
built and Keanu), Avengers:
Endgame (11 years and 23 movies and it mostly made sense), Ford v Ferrari (acting again,
while Bale chews up the scenes, Damon is the quiet centre of the film, they
should have just snipped the last 2 extra scenes)), Knives Out (a fine whodunit
with a terrific ensemble cast) and The Art of Self-Defense (pitch
black comedy with an unlovable, pitiful loser in the lead – did you know about
cumulative and coordinate adjectives? I had forgotten). My favourite movies
this year were the following 3 though and I watched all of them on the small
screen, maybe an intimate setting without distractions lent them some extra
flavour? –
Captive State (Dir: Rupert
Wyatt) – It’s a movie about an alien invasion (but
it’s not), it’s a political film, it’s a human movie about the cost of war. A
bit of a slow-burn, the movie tells the story of a resistance movement in a
Chicago borough that fights on, a decade after aliens have conquered Earth.
There are disparate details that are slowly brought together such as how the
resistance cell works and how some people have been co-opted and coerced into
the alien/foreign rule. It is obviously metaphorical and maybe a bit heavy
handed in certain places, but is also tense and vibrant and intimate and weird.
Though the twist (there had to be one (or two?)) is telegraphed pretty early,
the awesome performances from John Goodman, Ashton Sanders and Vera Farmiga
hold your attention in a story about the end of the world and about those who
refuse to accept that it has ended.
Shoplifters/ManbikiKazoku and After Life/Wandafuru Raifu (Dir: Hirokazu Kore-Eda) – Entries 2 and 3 are of a pair. I watched them
in that order, Shoplifters first and then After Life, though the second one was
released twenty years before the first. Shoplifters tells the story of a
makeshift family and how the dynamics within it shift due to age, money and new
members. It’s a very open-eyed look about how the basic need of money makes us miserable
and how family matters, despite it all. The film doesn’t ask for your sympathy
even as it makes you root for these losers who just trying to make the best of their circumstances in wicked, weird and yet human and forgivable ways (except
for the closing scenes, where I had to pretend not to cry). The second movie is
one of Kore-Eda’s earliest ones and feels more earnest even if less technically
accomplished. This one is about a halfway station, which has the musty feel of
a government bureau, where the newly dead come to spend a week reliving their memories
before ascending to heaven. They need to choose their favourite memory which is
then acted and staged by the few officials at the station and then they leave with
just that one memory forever. These officials have their own back stories as
well which kind of forms a constant background to the cast of new arrivals. So,
it’s a movie about memories, regrets and choices and also about movie making,
no wonder I liked it a whole lot.
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Writing about
books doesn’t make too much sense in a generic review post - they are far too
important for that. Read books, very few ones will actually disappoint if you
choose well. And I guess if one hopes to write, it is important to read well –
legal documentation and information memorandums will definitely sap all the joy
off reading if one isn’t careful. That said a small piece from a graphic novel
I had read earlier by the side (it’s a beautiful book) – the author/artist also
did the storyboards for Rogue One and The Force Awakens and he had an older
brother who was a pretty good comic artist as well. One kind of important thing
that happened was the shuttering of Vertigo, an imprint at DC, which was run by
a kickass editor, Karen Berger and was responsible for the British invasion of
the 1980s that gave us Sandman, Swamp Thing, Hellblazer and Animal Man. Below
is my Vertigo collection as it currently stands (I am always of 2 minds on
getting Swamp Thing) – recommendations would be Daytripper or any of the Astro
City volumes (either Local Heroes or Life in the Big City to start with but
honestly, pick any volume - Kurt Busiek is underrated despite being pretty
famous). I do love a good shelf, the only downside is you keep running out of
space :) And as a thought, well I will leave you with that picture on the side,
unsaid, unwritten.
