Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries) (2010)

Yasmin: Look Imran, Marine Drive....People throng this place everyday to eat bhel puri, pav bhaji...I think people come here more for fresh air...which is in short supply. The sea air is so different, it smells of people's desires....

After a drinking session with friends at a pub, the conversation more often than not veers towards movies. As I was telling my friend about my 3rd unsuccessful attempt at watching Ranjhaana (and his assurance that I need to reach till the point where the characters start showing darker shades), for some reason I was reminded of Dhobi Ghat - not your typical Bollywood love story. And I had to come home and watch it again, for the third time.

Dhobi Ghat is the story of a city with four different lives and their aspirations and subsequent disappointments. Shai (Monica Dogra) is an investment banker from NY who is on a sabbatical in Mumbai and has combined her research project with her hobby in photography to get a new perspective. While attending an art exhibition of painter Arun (Aamir Khan), they meet and strike a chord. After a few drinks that night, the inevitable happens and Arun is not quite sure the next morning if he really wanted it. As he makes it clear to Shai about he being a loner and not really a relationship kind of a guy, they drift apart for a while. Shai meets Munna (Prateek), the dhobi, and again starts feeling excited at knowing that Munna is a common point of contact between her and Arun. As they become friends, Shai unknowingly leads Munna on to believing that they could be a pair while all she really wants is to get closer to Arun through him.

Meanwhile Arun moves to a new place where he finds a few videotapes that belonged to the previous tenant, Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra). When curiosity gets the better of him, Arun slowly starts delving more and more into Yasmin's life through those tapes which are in the form of letters to her brother. Shai yearns for Arun's attention while going on with her life; Yasmin longs for her brother as her marriage seems to be heading into trouble; Munna dreams of a life with Shai, which he knows is not even a distant possibility; Arun finally gets to experience the ending of her mystery woman from the tapes. Disappointment awaits everyone.

Writer and director Kiran Rao makes a great debut with a beautiful story on unrequited love. Within the slow pace of the story, the details about social status in Indian society are beautifully woven in every scene. And quite ironically, the slow pace depicts the ordinary lives of people in a supposedly extraordinary fast-paced city. While not much needs to be written about Aamir Khan's performance, the other three characters are quite a surprise. Monica Dogra is the girl-next-door that you'd fall in love with, while Kriti Malhotra plays the role of a shy, repressed woman with ease. Prateek has a charming innocence about him that quite fits the role of the naive dhobi he is playing. This is a movie I'd strongly recommend to anyone who says Bollywood lacks originality.

Rating: 7.5/10

Rust and Bone (2012)

Ali: Did you have a lot of guys?
Stephanie: Before? I was with Simon.
Ali: Is that all?
Stephanie: No, there were others. But not many. I was....I liked it when men looked at me. I liked to feel seductive. That I excited them. Later it bored me, actually. 
Ali: And now?
Stephanie: Nothing. I forgot what it looks like.

Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) works different jobs to make ends meet, and he has just arrived from Belgium at his sister's place in France when he is entrusted with the responsibility of taking care of his five year-old son. He takes up a job as a bouncer at a night club, The Annexe, where he meets Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) and helps her out of a scuffle with a guy.

Stephanie is a Orca trainer at the Sea World and she also lives with her boyfriend, Simon. After the incident at the night club, Ali drives her home safe and invites himself to her place with the pretext of needing ice for his hands after the scuffle. As Simon is not too amused, Ali leaves his number with Stephanie for anytime she might need him in the future. A few months pass, and Stephanie meets with a tragic accident which leaves her crippled and alone. As she fights to get out of her depression and thoughts of suicide, she finally gives Ali a call. In the meantime, Ali has moved from his job at the night club to security at a supermarket and also helps a friend in fitting illegal surveillance cameras in the supermarkets than can provide the managers a reason to fire people.

When they meet again, Ali takes her out back into the world and helps her come to terms with her condition. When Stephanie confides in him about her unfulfilled sexual desires, Ali makes himself available on the condition of being "OP" or operational, without having any emotional attachments. While Stephanie is slowly feeling attracted to Ali, Ali seems completely oblivious to it and he couldn't care less about who he sleeps with. Ali also takes up underground fights for money and seems to be doing pretty well at it while Stephanie follows him around for his fights. For a woman, she seems very understanding towards his vocation. When things start to look steady between them, a few events follow that would test their relationship.

Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, The Beat that my Heart Skipped) delivers another brilliant story in the form of a romance and as usual, builds the characters with great detail. Schoenaert portrays the bull-headed Ali pretty well that will actually make you feel like wanting to put a little bit of sense in Ali's head. Marion Cotillard also gives an award-winning performance. Though, like always with Audiard's movies, you'll need a little patience with the pace, which is well worth it.

Rating: 7.5/10

Tyrannosaur (2011)

Hannah: I prayed for you last night.
Joseph: Yeah, well, it didn't fucking work.
Hannah: Why did you come here?
Joseph: I was just passing.
Hannah: There must be a reason. Do you want God to forgive you for something?
Joseph: [laughing] I don't want anything from that fuck.
Hannah: God loves you. You're a child of God.
Joseph: God ain't my fucking daddy. My daddy was a cunt, but he knew he was a cunt. God still thinks he's God. Nobody's told him otherwise. 
Hannah: Why are you so angry at God?
Joseph: Why are you so fucking stupid? I've met people like you all my fucking life. Goodie goodies. Make a charity record. Bake a cake. Save a fucking soul! You've never eaten shit. Don't know what it's like out there. Don't have a fucking clue.

Joseph (Peter Mullan) is a self-pitying widower with a history of violence. Hatred is all he has to offer to the rest of the world and he is always taking it out on someone weaker. When he kills his dog in a fit of rage, his world becomes only lonelier. One day he wanders off into Hannah's (Olivia Colman) store, and thus starts a friendship from mutual respect and understanding that is formed out of misery in their respective lives. Only that Joseph thinks he is the only one in the world who is hurting and insults Hannah for what he thinks are her petty troubles in a privileged life.

When he learns about Hannah's abusive husband, James (Eddie Marsan), he slowly starts to mend his own ways too. His need to save Hannah and his hesitation in doing so suggests about his own violent behavior when it came to his dead wife since it takes him on a trip down memory lane. And when Hannah finally leaves her husband to temporarily take shelter at Joseph's place, he again starts losing it as he finds it difficult to cope with the arrival of someone in his otherwise lonely life.

Meanwhile, we also meet Joseph's little friend, Sam (Samuel Bottomley), who lives down the street. Joseph is protective about Sam, who lives with his mom and her abusive boyfriend. Things take an ugly turn between Sam and his mom's boyfriend that makes Joseph feel responsible. When Sam is attacked by the dog that belongs to Sam's mom's  boyfriend, Joseph describes the incident with the dog to Hannah by saying, "an animal can take only so much punishment and humiliation before it snaps, and fights back". It's almost as if he is describing his own change of ways, and the chain of events that follow that made him veer off his track and back to his previous self.

Debutant director, Paddy Considine, gives us a tense drama about the hopelessness of some people's miserable lives. Violence begets violence, unhappiness begets unhappiness. Excellent acting from both Peter Mullan and Olivia Colman makes these characters so real, it will stay in your head for a long time. A must-watch.

Rating: 8/10

We Steal Secrets (2013)

Interviewer: What drives you?
Julian Assange: Well, I like being creative, I mean I am an inventor and all.....I also like defending victims. And I'm a combative person, so I like crushing bastards....and so this profession combines all three things and hence it is deeply, and personally satisfying.

Written and directed by Alex Gibney (of Enron:The Smartest Guys In The Room fame), We Steal Secrets is the story of Wikileaks, the whistle-blowing website founded by Julian Assange. While trying to tell the story of Wikileaks, this documentary inevitably leads to making judgments about the character of Assange.

As the patriot vs traitor debate rages on, it brings up the tarnished claim of Wikileaks that never has been the identity of an informer compromised. Of course, until Bradley Manning. Although questions can be raised about Assange's true intentions and his persecution complex, there is no doubt that the true victim here is Bradley Manning. And somewhere along the way, the documentary moves to the more interesting part of Bradley Manning vs The State. The moment the classified documents became public knowledge and another American hacker, Adrian Lamo, turned Bradley in to the authorities, there were all kinds of stories about his sexual orientation, former bosses corroborating the stories about his wayward ways, etc - a systematic character assassination. When he was recently convicted on 22 counts for "aiding the enemy" and could possibly receive the death sentence, the question still remains unanswered - who exactly is the enemy? Is it anyone who stands up to the Government? As one of the clips shows Ron Paul saying, "Wasn't it once considered patriotic to stand up to the wrong-doings of the Government?" When we see a teary-eyed Adrian Lamo wishing it had never happened - he endangering Bradley's safety for the perceived safety of others - the only party left to be blamed is the Government. Or as one interviewee mentions, it's a "politically motivated act of vengeance against someone who hasn't damaged national security, but has caused embarrassment".

Coming back to the story of Assange, the documentary interviews the two women who had accused Assange of rape. Amidst rumors that one of the women was a CIA agent, the documentary tries to make light of it and is more sympathetic towards the two women and questions why Assange has been resisting being extradited to Sweden to face justice. Well, isn't it obvious? Even if the CIA agent story might be a stretch, it could very well be a trap. Moving on from there, we are shown some interviews of Assange where he is questioned about the lives he puts at risk by going public with classified information. In one of them he specifically mentions if an Afghan civilian is helping the American soldier, then he deserves to die. Well, that's truly debatable. In some cases, it's not as black or white as he thinks it is and his "Lights on...rats out" theory does not hold.

There are lots of notorious hackers, but no one has ever done what Assange did and remained alive for so long. After reaching a cult-like status, one's ego can definitely feed to his delusions and can lead to feelings of persecution when anyone questions his character, rightly or wrongly. However, if you call it paranoia, it's exactly that what has kept him alive. Surprisingly there is no mention of Michael Hastings, the reporter from Rolling Stones who empathized with Assange and was killed in a "car accident" at the age of 33. The best way for Alex Gibney would have been to just state the facts without portraying Assange in a way as it tries to do. By bringing on former employees of Wikileaks and trying to depict Assange as a man who is turning into the character that he despised himself, the case can be made void by depicting his former colleagues as "disgruntled employees".  In the end, with so many vested interests, it's impossible to separate the facts from the fiction. And with the wave of sympathy for Assange, it could very well explain the low rating of the documentary on IMDB. Even though I would fall in the category of Assange supporters, this is a well-made documentary overall with small lapses here and there. Everything, after all, becomes a matter of opinion.

Rating: 7/10

Mr. Nobody (2009)

Jean: Nemo, do I matter to you? I'd just like to ask you one question. Did you do it on purpose? I found this on the bedside table.
Nemo: There comes a time in life where everything seems narrow. Choices have been made. I can only continue on. I know myself like the back of my hand. I can predict my every reaction. My life has been cast in cement with airbags and seat-belts.  I've done everything to reach this point and now that I'm here, I'm fucking bored. The hardest thing is knowing whether I'm still alive.

Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto) is 118, and supposedly the last living mortal on Earth where everyone else has been immortalized. As the world is curious about his past life, a journalist enters who tries to make sense of it all and wants to know how it felt in a world where humans were mortals and "before sex became obsolete". Nemo starts his story from the beginning before he was born - in a place where children know everything about the future until they enter the world.

His narration takes 3 different paths, with diversions again in each of those paths. The choices start at a time when Nemo was only nine years old, and he had to decide whether to stay with his father or with his mother. In the path where he chooses his father, he grows up to be a nerd with low social skills and falls in love with Elise (Sarah Polley). In one version of that path, he is married to Elise with kids, while Elise is having a breakdown after being unable to let go of her first love. In another path where he chooses his mom, he is in love with Anna (Diana Kruger) - a love that is reciprocated. In a different version of the same path, he is married to Jean (Lin Dan Pham), however, that path has an overlap with the path where he gets rejected by Elise during the early years. Confused, eh? Well, the journalist definitely was.

With a plot such as this, there isn't much of "acting" to be done as the whole movie is narrated in flashbacks with a voice-over. The movie talks about the "impossibility of a choice" that a nine-year old child is faced with and how life-altering and irreversible can that choice be. As Nemo says, "as long as you don't choose, everything remains possible". Tell me about it. We don't need a 118 year-old man to give us "gyan" about that in a sci-fi set-up. Though I loved the second last line of the quote I have posted on top. Deep down, I knew that too, but just that I never articulated it.

For the most part, the plot seems to have been taken from Butterfly Effect and also has similarities with Slaughterhouse 5 (which I'm currently reading) when it talks of time not necessarily moving in one direction. But I'll make no comparisons since Butterfly Effect is one of my favorite movies which leaves it open-ended but still suggests that the central character was imagining it all because of his guilt when his childhood sweetheart commits suicide. Remember, in the opening scene while at the asylum, he writes in his diary, "I did everything to save her"? I have had enough arguments about Butterfly Effect with my friends, but we'll leave it to another day. In Mr. Nobody, somehow the pieces are still contradictory, even if one tries to explain it considering that it's a sci-fi. One major loophole in the plot being why the kid was asked to choose when a train is about to leave? (That's not my original thought, but credit to someone who asked the question why hadn't the parents discussed their separation before reaching the train station). I'm not sure if the director also knew what he was aiming for. As they say, if you can't convince them, confuse them. The one who comes out understanding it all is a effing intellectual. Or may be I need to watch it again, but it's definitely not worth the effort.

Rating: 6.5/10

Enemy Of The State (1998)

Larry King: How do we draw the line - draw the line between protection of national security, obviously the government's need to obtain intelligence data, and the protection of civil liberties, particularly the sanctity of my home? You've got no right to come into my home!

If you're enjoying the action around Julian Assange and Snowden, then this is the movie to watch. If you want to know how to discredit someone by digging every little dirty secret of one's personal life, then this is the movie to watch. As the tagline says, "It's not paranoia if they are really after you". We have seen it happen to Assange, and now we starting to get a glimpse of what's about to happen to Snowden.

When D.C. lawyer Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith) gets a videotape in his possession that has substantial evidence against a mob boss, he is threatened to reveal the name of the informer or face consequences. An ex-flame, Rachel (Lisa Bonet), is the mediator between Dean and the informer, who goes by the name of Brill (Gene Hackman). Things get complicated as another whistle-blower drops a disk containing damning evidence against the Government into his bag. Apparently a congressman, who was about to oppose the bill favoring surveillance activities of the government, is murdered  by a rival, Thomas Reynolds (Jon Voight), and the whole incident is caught on tape. As the NSA guys try to hunt down Dean, he realizes his problems are not just about the mob bosses, but something even bigger than that. Dean's life turns into a nightmare as he loses his job, his house gets vandalized and his past extra-marital affair resurfaces to cast doubt on anything he might say in the future.

As Dean gets to meet Brill for the first time, he learns he is bugged from head to toe, and what we get is an action-packed chain of events that will keep you glued to your seats. Gene Hackman as the former NSA employee gives a smooth and an excellent performance. Director Tony Scott teams up with producer Jerry Bruckheimer to provide an action-thriller that is worth every minute of your time. Even though Enemy Of The State was released before 9/11, it is more relevant today than ever before as we slowly move into an Orwellian society. If you love your conspiracy theories, then this is the movie to watch.

Rating: 7/10

The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)

Robin: If you ride like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder.

Set in a small New York town, Schenectady, The Place Beyond The Pines is a drama focused on two families and spanning over two decades that depicts the consequences of actions taken long before. The film is set in three stages, with the first part centered on Luke (Ryan Gosling), a motorcycle racer with a propensity for violence and dangerous behavior. After knowing he has a son with his girlfriend Romina (Eva Mendes), he tries to turn a new leaf in order to provide for his family. Being attracted to quick ways of making money by robbing small banks, he finds himself in a tricky situation when he is cornered in a house by  rookie cop, Avery (Bradley Cooper). In a fast turn of events, Luke gets killed in the encounter and Avery becomes the local hero.

In the second stage of the movie, while Avery recuperates from his injuries, he is joined one day by his veteran colleagues who introduce him into the corrupt world of cops by targeting blacks and other minorities, as happens to be Romina's family in this case. After being witness to the harassment of Romina's family, he finds himself conflicted between doing the right thing and earning some quick cash. When he finally does the right thing by reporting the corrupt cops, he sees....surprise! surprise!......even the head of the department is involved in it. On the advice of his father and driven by his own ambition, he turns the situation to his own advantage and is made Assistant District Attorney.

15 years later...in typical Bollywood style (it's not always that our boys get "inspired" by Hollywood), Avery's son finds himself in the same class as Luke's son and they become friends. No points for guessing what'd happen next....

For some reason I have always found Ryan Gosling very over-rated. He reminds me of our very own Ajay Devgan's portrayal of an always-smoking-and-in-deep-thought brooding personality in all his movies post D-Company. The second half of the movie gets more interesting with Bradley Cooper's conflicted personality as he tries to weigh in his own ambitions as opposed to "justice". Special mention for Ray Liotta as the menacing corrupt cop because even though he doesn't have much screen time, his presence was the only time that made me sit up and pray for poor Avery. The movie is engrossing at times, while mostly it's predictable. I tried this movie after reading brilliant reviews for director Derek Cianfrance, but for someone who has grown up watching Bollywood dramas, it's just another one of those films that try too hard to stir up emotions and sympathy for the poor while trying to show how the system and the society fails them.

I'll still go with a decent rating to discount the fact that I might have been pissed off due to the rain and the fact that I didn't have chilled beer stocked up at home.

Rating: 7/10