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vjoshi2002
Reviews
The Mist (2007)
Now that's what I call a horror movie!!
Most horror movies are lame excuses for freak/gore shows. Now here's a movie that I can genuinely say will make you feel horror of the sort that rings "The Horror! The Horror!" in your head. The way humans crack up under the circumstances and Frank Darabont's excellent touch to the ending will make sure this horror lingers with you long after you are done watching the movie. I feel Frank's main treatment of this excellent Stephen King work is more with an attempt to investigate human condition rather than just making a routine chill and thrill fare. His class as a director comes through as it becomes apparent that more than the unknown of the outside world, we ought to be more afraid of what we don't know of ourselves - of what we could do or turn into when vulnerable. And that, is the greater horror, the greater monster.
9 on 10, since I feel that apart from Marcia Gay Harden, the other performances though good, were not great. Needed a Jack Nicholson.
Traffic Signal (2007)
Decent, but doesn't work as a movie.
Very ambitiously this movie tries to deal with more plots than are usually expected in a single movie. I am sure Madhur had his hands more than full with all that he wanted to communicate through this movie. Even though the actors have done a decent job, and some pretty insightful sub plots emerge during the course of the movie, in the end it leaves one with a feeling of things having been dealt with incompletely. The movie is in fact more like a series of sketches, each dealing with a different sub-plot or idea. This feeling is enforced by the fact that it's scenes do not fit together as a tight, cohesive production. This is because even though they involve the same characters, each of them tells a very different story.
Traffic Signal seems to be the perfect example where a director should have gone for an extensive treatment of all these ideas through a serialized production rather than trying to put everything into one grand movie where the limitation of time is a huge constraint. Give me this movie's reel and a pair of scissors and I'll neatly cut out about 10 different episodes that could be independently developed to create a wonderful hard-hitting docu-drama series. With how much the movie attempts to cover of the Indian society and really, also the human condition at a deeper level, I really believe it would have been served better if executed in the way of Kieslowski's work on Dekalog.
6 out of 10.
Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal (2007)
stay away from this garbage
i love soccer. i don't normally watch bollywood movies other than the few good ones that get out in a year. however, because of the football angle i decided to give this movie a shot. i suffered. john and bipasha have proved beyond doubt they can't act and the idiotic and shallow characterization only makes it worse. this movie's script/dialog/screenplay/direction is so bad it makes boman and arshad look bad. now those two guys really have a flair to enliven proceedings but even they cant save the movie here. probably the only sensible thing they did was get a soccer choreorapher or whatever the guy who sets up the soccer play is called. but then that also is driven by such a clichéd script it is really not worth anything. if you like football you'd rather just switch to a champions league match to get your dose of soccer action. i rate it 1/10 for making such a bad movie about a sport i love. after this movie i puke every time i see bipasha.
Bride & Prejudice (2004)
Stay away from this
I can understand how the folks in the west are entertained with this song and dance video. But, well I am from India and I am sick of watching movies that do not expect any trace of intelligence in the audience. This is another example of a typical formula Indian movie, even worse because it's in English. Aishwarya Rai anyway is one of the worst actors, the USP only being the artificial dolled-up beauty, she'll convince with her utter failure at acting (not that the script demands much) that she'd serve best as a shampoo label.
I must mention the stupid song that pops up from somewhere in the middle with a Hindi tune forcefully fed with English words and an extraordinarily nonsensical picturisation - what with nicker clad surfers joining the chorus with a church choir on some fantasy beach. If that was supposed to be emotionally charged, well it did get my emotions charged up - I wanted to break someone's head.
Well, I am happy for those who have been charmed by this piece of crap, but really please don't form your opinions about Indian cinema based on this. There really is much better cinema being done here, albeit still marginal but getting stronger.