Decko_koji_obecava Reviews

Obituary for Escobar (2008)

Very little good and a whole lot of bad.

[3/10 · 12 May 2010]

There're only a couple of things to praise here:

• the Croatian chick did a fine job playing a Belgrade babe, accent and all (the same can't be said for baldy Bitorajac who tried to compensate by overacting ridiculously, though his saving grace might be that the role was tiny anyway),

• and Marko Zivic provided some decent enough comic relief as the jester of this criminal clan.

On the other end of the quality spectrum, well, even listing this movie's foibles is an exercise in futility as the filmmakers clearly aimed for a spoonful of cheap entertainment, so I'll pretty much stop right here. Suffice it to say, various plot points are preposterously contrived and, predictably, that special brand of lazy/cheap/dumb-ass urban humour that's fast becoming a staple of recent Serbian cinema rears its ugly head again.

Also, the fact "Citulja za Eskobara" came from the recently established Pink's film division is very noticeable as that special aura of noxious Pink jenesequis fills the air in more than a few scenes. For the uninitiated out there, Pink is a media conglomerate that makes most of its dough via a trashy Balkans-wide TV network showing yucky reality shows and banal talk & variety programmes with plenty of tits & ass.

PS: I didn't really have an idea what to expect from the film based on the trailer or the promos, and it's just as well 'cause had I known beforehand about its basic premise of a twenty-something girlie dude who surgically transforms into a hot babe and then decides to seek revenge on his former elementary school tormentor (who in the meantime has become a mafia boss) by making him fall in love with his new exterior.... well, put it this way, coupled with the fact that this is a Pink production...I'd have ran for the hills.

In the end, I guess the best I can come up with about "Citulja za Eskobara" is that it's not as bad as its summary sounds.

Superbad (2007)

Good for a few laughs

[6/10 · 21 September 2008]

As high school movies go, this is actually pretty good. A simple, fun, and occasionally, but thankfully only occasionally, contrived story. The movie, in general, is a little too much in love with itself, and whoever edited it let certain scenes run too long. I could've especially done with a little less of the cop duo towards the end - Bill Hader and Seth Rogen over-improv many of their scenes.

And that's pretty much that when it comes to the movie, however there's a bigger issue that rubs me.

Since "Apatow Inc." now comes out with like 4 movies every year, each with basically the same cast and similar shtick, it's almost impossible to view "Superbad", or any of his other movies for that matter, independently of the whole lot. And that's kinda too bad 'cause due to the volume and basic sameness of these films you can by now pretty much tell from a mile away where the joke is gonna come from in almost every scene.

I thought the Farrelly Brothers overdid it with their pace of "same comedy every two years", but this guy is relentless. He's in the year three of his big time Hollywood movie career, and already he's got like 12 movies. Take it easy, dude, the whole thing is getting kinda old.

The Italian Job (1969)

I would've enjoyed this a lot more if I was 10

[4/10 · 1 March 2008]

"The Italian Job" is pretty to look at. The material shot by the production crew is in excellent focus - no blurriness or nuthin'. And ...... uhm, did I mention it's nice to look at?

Mindless entertainment that seldom actually gets entertaining, this movie's lone asset is the beautiful photography. Italian Board of Tourism must've been very happy, and the English one probably didn't mind either since, according to this movie, even the underworld in their country during the 1960s was one big day at the beach.

To put it in fourth grade reading level terms - did I enjoy this film: well, I guess I did, somewhat. Would I recommend it to someone I care about or would I want to watch it again any time soon: hell no.

Well, on an uplifting note, some good did come of watching this. At least now I know where Guy Ritchie got/stole the idea for the ending of "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels".

PS: Kudos to Michael Caine for doing "Get Carter" two years after this. He definitely managed to redeem himself.

Breaking and Entering (2006)

A bland globalized movie customized for those in the Western world's upper echelons who enjoy pretending to care about the world(s) outside their own.

[4/10 · 28 February 2008]

Set in London, one of planet Earth's most prosperous and important cities, the film presents a series of artificially sweetened events, set in motion by an office break-in carried out by a 15-year-old kid named Mirsad, a war refugee from Bosnia. Now based in London and straddling the line between lower middle class and poverty, he is cared for by his Muslim mother Amira who provides for both by working as a seamstress after his Serb father got murdered during the war.

The office space that he keeps breaking into belongs to an architectural firm owned by Englishmen Will Francis and his partner Sandy. Will is young, rich, and bored. He's also got a depressed Swedish-American girlfriend Liv along with her 13-year-old autistic daughter Bee to deal with at home.

Another one in a growing line of recent Kumbaya, global village cinematic offerings, B&E purports to explore a slew of additional themes (human relationships, single-parent / mixed-family tribulations, etc.). However, everything outside its general "people are people" running thread is a rather bland salad dressing. Unfortunately, the main course isn't a whole lot better, either. Among an almost alarmingly germinating number of these kinds of films springing up lately - "Crash" and "Babel" being the most prominent - B&E offers no substantial improvement. Much like those mediocre movies did, in a desperate search for relevance this one also resorts to dropping little bits of halfass global liberal politics at strategic points throughout the story.

Furthermore, on the dramaturgical and even aesthetic front, B&E lives and dies by the character of Amira. She is supposed to be the spice that elevates proceedings from the mundane and purely Western "I'm kinda bored and my woman's a crazy moody bitch so some exotic tail on the side would sure hit the spot" territory into something more hearty.

And while Binoche does a minimally adequate job portraying a Bosnian Muslim woman, giving the role to a South Slavic actress would've improved things substantially, and not just from the external authenticity standpoint. Apart from her annoying French "Bosnian accent" and her insufferable French-accented Serbo-Croatian, she plays this woman very unevenly. Not to mention that the way this entire character is written feels undercooked to begin with. At times it's as if they've taken Sena, a supportive wife from "When Father was Away on Business" (played by Mirjana Karanovic), applied a selective 21st century makeover, and built a new movie around her.

A Tight Spot (1982)

Seeing that it's not ridiculous enough for camp, it's just bad.

[3/10 · 28 February 2008]

From a 26-year distance, I'm almost tempted to wax-poetic while surrendering to "Tesna koza"'s nostalgic aspects... but I won't.

Considering this was its highest grossing motion picture ever, is it any wonder Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia disintegrated in a bloodthirsty orgy blending various flavours of pent-up hatred. Not to be too harsh and cynical about it, but, damn, this movie is W-E-A-K. Low-rent screenplay, stale gags, and single-take acting aside, it's the lack of any plot that is the most objectionable. It's almost as if they knew what a huge commercial hit it would become, so they apriori decided to leave the attempts at coming up with a remotely coherent storyline for the sequels. Another problem is the focus on Pantic and his home life instead of on his relationship with Sojic or on Sojic himself. Thankfully, this was also later rectified in the sequels.

Created and conceived by Sinisa Pavic, probably the most prolific writer ever to work in Yugoslav and Serbian film and television, "Tesna koza" is one of the centerpieces of his bloated, predictable, and, lately, persistently tedious career opus. Now, the movie still has some brief moments - a few jokes do hit the spot - but they're far too isolated in a sea of low end mediocrity.

Anyway, our hero Mita Pantic is a jumpy, highstrung fiftysomething bureaucrat living with a pain-in-the-ass housewife and three unappreciative grown children as well as a crabby mother and an antagonistic subtenant who's assigned a room in their apartment through a bylaw introduced by Yugoslav commies and enforced for decades in order to cope with housing shortages. Pantic's career is hardly anything to write home about either - he works as a junior clerk at a crumbling commie company under a farcically corrupt boss Srecko Sojic.

And that's literally it. That's the "plot" - Pantic shouts, he gesticulates, he launches into exhausting semi-tirades...

There is also a handful of half-ass storyline attempts on offer: high school professor who teaches English to Pantic's son falling in love with their subtenant, Pantic betting on soccer fixtures and winning some money, Pantic being offered a bribe at work, and Sojic promoting an incompetent young typist just to be able to bang her.

Honestly, any way one looks at it, this barely even qualifies as a feature movie. The only things that tangibly separate it from a slapped together TV production are the occasional swearing and the extended shots of Sojic secretary's naked tits as well as Lepa Brena's (oh yes, she's in the movie too) long legs and plunging decoltage.

Almost Famous (2000)

Nothing to write home about.

[6/10 · 18 February 2007]

This is one of those movies that caught some major buzz, raising my expectations very high going in. Regrettably, they weren't met.

There's plenty of good here, but unfortunately there's even more so-so. Overall, "Almost Famous" comes across as a 2-hour sitcom. A pretty decent one, to be fair, but I simply never bought into the genuineness of this band, its people and their emotions. Even their fights play like something out of 'That '70s Show' and the big 'revelation' plane scene is embarrassingly hammy, all of which makes it really difficult to take this as an organic story. Too many times it seems like a high budget, major studio dress-up.

The Girl Next Door (2004)

The line between sexy and sleazy is so thin.

[2/10 · 17 February 2007]

When it comes to most teen flicks one should always remember to set brain activity knob to LOW and expect a steady amount of crap. However, that knowledge couldn't remotely prepare me for the pile of excrement that is this movie.

It was nauseating!

Unoriginal plot, badly executed story and brain cell killin' script aside, it's the overall obnoxiously smutty atmosphere that is the most offputting aspect of this mess.

Successful morphosis of "American Pie" and "Risky Business" was obviously the goal here (it even says so on the DVD box), but, boy, did they miss the target. As dopey as those flicks are, they pretty well seem like masterpieces in comparison to "The Girl Next Door". They at least dealt with sex and innuendo in a cheerful manner, whereas here everything is so sleazy and devoid of any fun.

Avoid at all costs.

PS: Elisha Cuthbert, the chick playing the title role, became semi-known on a Canadian show 'Popular Mechanics for Kids' where she played a smart goody-two-shoes with all the answers, but in taking this role she became a victim of some terrible career advice.

Perhaps the thinking was that she's certainly hot enough physically to join the likes of Lindsay Lohan, Hillary Duff, Olson twins and other Hollywood jail baits being worshiped by teenyboppers and middle-aged pervs the world over - and no quarrel there - however, instead of being catapulted into their echelon she will, likely forever, be banished down to the Elizabeth Berkley territory. Releasing a home-made sex tape would've probably done about the same amount of damage to her long term Hollywood career as this squalid stinker likely will.

The Border Post (2006)

Pretty crappy.

[3/10 · 7 February 2007]

I've never enjoyed movie-making by a committee.

"Karaula" is a cinematic equivalent of those 1980s hammy pop-folk-rock-whatever-happens-to-be-selling-at-the-moment-that is-what-we-play Bijelo dugme clones (Merlin, Hari Mata Hari, Valentino, Plavi orkestar, Divlje jagode, Regina) - a populist, don't-you-dare-go-deeper-than-the-outer-layer, watchable but ultimately quickly forgettable experience.

It has identified a pretty wide group as its target audience and panders to it relentlessly in the most general sense possible. From the folksy screenplay full of snappy, and unfortunately often corny one-liners right down to the Halid Beslic cameo, "Karaula" plays like a checklist of movie devices and stock characters that have gone over well in the cinema(s) of former Yugoslavia throughout the last two decades:

1. Goran Bregovic music score. CHECK! (And also some Sanja Ilic added for good ethno-mood measure.)

2. Adolescent men of different (yugo)Slav nationalities spouting cheesy jokes. CHECK! (In "Karaula" they're, of course, led by a wise-crackin' Belgrade bad boy and his constantly smiling Dalmatian tag-along buddy - all of which seems lifted straight from that 'Bolji zivot' episode when Boba (Dragan Bjelogrlic) goes to the army and is entrusted with forming a multi-ethnic band.)

3. Zany supporting character with a portmanteau-like nickname and a weird character trait. CHECK! (Enter botanically-obsessed colonel Rade Orhideja who follows in the long line of Mile Rent-A-Bubregs and Bili Pitons. Unfortunately he's not nearly as funny or as memorable. According to bloggers, obviously bored out of their skull, the character of Rade O. might've been inspired by Ratko Mladic who also served in Macedonia during the late 1980s and apparently also loved flowers - all of which I guess is the closest this unremarkable film will come to generating any kind of post-viewing discussion.)

4. Lots of crass, unrefined sex scenes, used either for comic relief or as prelude to something tragic. CHECK! (Bascially any number of Yugoslav movies use both, but unfortunately unlike in, off the top of my head, "Ko to Tamo Peva or "Lepota Poroka" where sex is skilfully woven into the story, "Karaula" uses it for nothing more than cheap thrills.)

5. An out of the blue prominent (turbo)folk star cameo. CHECK! (Though "Karaula" seems to be presenting Halid Beslic with an ironic distance, his appearance is essentially no different from "Tesna Koza" or "Zikina Dinastija" stopping the plot for 2 minutes so that Brena, Sneki, Zorica Brunclik or whomever can sing their little song. Unlike "Karaula" those movies are at least honest about being populist crap.)

In summary, I really have nothing apriori against usage of any of the above as movie devices, but "Karaula" simply misses the target on all of them - and misses it badly.

The one bright spot is Emir Hadzihafizbegovic in the role of ST-diseased lieutenant. Trifunovic and the Croatian kid aren't bad either, it's just too bad both of their characters are written so sketchily and incoherently. This is especially true of Trifunovic's Ljuba who suddenly goes from a friendly simpatico smart-ass to a raging sociopathic monster within like a day with absolutely no proper justification in the script or plot.

Babel (I) (2006)

Loved the Japanese poontang. Unmoved by pretty much everything else.

[6/10 · 14 December 2006]

But seriously now. This movie may be one of the better primers in support of the theory that a half-decent drama is tenfolds easier to make than a satisfactory comedy. When comedies suck, they just, well, suck. With dramas, especially those in the vein of "Babel", there're subtle degrees and emotional levels, there're striking locations and various other visual aspects the viewer can focus on - all of which means that it's almost always possible to salvage at least some enjoyment out of a sub par dramatic effort such as this one.

Babel is far from terrible and it's a safe distance away from bad, but, unfortunately, it is also long way away from great.

We're presented with four story lines on 3 continents whose overreaching inter-connections feel a little hokey and forced, making it hard to take them organically and not as artificially inserted plot devices.

Two story lines that have the most immediate link - the vacationing, marriage-crisis-experiencing American couple and the two sheep-herding kid brothers who fire a rifle at a tourist bus in Morrocco - are the most suspenseful and gripping though still fail to inspire anything more than mild approval. Too many times both stories approach, or even briefly cross into the cheesy thriller territory.

On the other hand the Japan storyline involving a deaf-mute teenage girl facing life without a mother who recently committed suicide, being cared for solely by her busy businessman father, allthewhile going through the hormonal throws of adolescence and struggling to make a connection with the world around her, is far more effective.

Mail Order Bride (2003)

Was this thing made by complete morons?

[1/10 · 9 December 2006]

Even by the straight-to-video, D movie standards, "Mail Order Bride" is simply too preposterous for words. Wow! I thought I've seen some crap in my time, but there's simply no preparing for this turd shower.

From one of the lamest plots in the history of American cinema over to the fact I've heard more authentic-sounding dialogue in many porn flicks, the English language may not be descriptive enough to convey how horrendous this stinker really is.

How do obviously horrible movies like this one get made? Even if I can somehow grasp the misguided motivation of Robert Capelli Jr., an apparent self delusional NYC goombah turned not only actor, but also screenwriter and director, I'm truly at a loss when it comes to understanding the money trail. Taking the production over to Russia and shooting on location in Moscow couldn't have been cheap - surely someone must have put up some major cash to make that happen. Who are these wonderful benefactors? Who looked at this script, agreed with the assertion about it "possessing some big-screen potential" and forked over a certain amount of dough? And how many others repeated the above sequence in one way or another?

I demand answers! There really should be some kind of tangible punishment for enabling film-making this maladroit.

Burying this piece of garbage in limited video release isn't enough. Public tarring and feathering of every single person who made "Mail Order Bride" financially possible is the least punishment these heinous enablers should have to endure.

PS: Artie Lange and Jackie "The Jokeman" Martling ought to pick their drinking and/or drug buddies more carefully. I can believe Jackie really did need the money back in 2003 to supplement his chochkie selling income, but what was Artie's excuse for being in this. Committing to movies while intoxicated is definitely not a good idea.

Treed Murray (2001)

Oh, the things one finds on late night Canadian television.

[20 April 2006]

I was flicking through channels on my TV dial at 1:30am couple of nights ago when I stumbled upon this thing already deep into opening credits. Though the little that I saw of the introductory sequence had me convinced it was at best a corny Canadian TV 'project' or an episode of some US syndicated TV series shot in Toronto I still decided to keep watching. And I'm glad I did. Well, kind of.

The first part of the movie (chase scene, Murray getting on the tree, first physical confrontations before the impasse, etc.) is truly riveting. It exploits every big city dweller's palpable fear - that of being victimized in a random, senseless act of violence. Basically, this is the same shtick Steven Spielberg built his movie empire on: introduce a rudimentary phobia every normal person harbours to some degree, extend it to extreme levels, and then exploit it cinematically to no end - his movie "Duel", and even "Jaws" to a lesser extent, often came to mind during the initial stages of "Treed Murray". So, kudos to William Philips for, at least, keeping me on the edge of my seat. At this point I still cared about all characters and was really interested in seeing where the plot takes them.

Unfortunately, the movie starts derailing sometime into the public park tree standoff. Despite coming off as this great menacing force in the beginning, watching these 5 hoodlums gets to be a major drag as time goes on. The screenplay tries its hardest to put a human face on them through minor, halfassed subplots, in hopes of providing the story with fresh legs, but all the details they (in)voluntarily surrender about personal hardships pale in comparison with the fact they're chomping at the bit to kill this random guy for absolutely no reason. We also learn Murray is no choir boy himself, but again, the fact that he cheats on his pregnant wife, occasionally uses hard drugs, and generally seems to be a manipulative, self involved jerk is completely irrelevant when viewed against the insanely murderous path these kids are on.

The fact that screenplay calls on the kid-gangsters to take turns at being evil, insightful, conniving, benevolent, barbaric, caring, bloodthirsty, poignant, etc. doesn't help either. That it comes off hokey is no great surprise as such series of transformations would be next to impossible even for seasoned pros to pull off, let alone a bunch of teen actors.

One also can't help but notice the unrealistic touches throughout the film. Murray, lame ad-exec who probably never lifted anything heavier than a pencil in his life, exhibits remarkable balance and stamina in fighting off a couple of charging gangbangers from a narrow tree branch. While incapacitating one of them, the other manages to get on the tree and Murray amazingly further succeeds in cuffing and tying him using a personal belt - quite a feat considering for example that it usually takes two trained cops to cuff an overzealous protester on terra firma.

Still, I'd be more than willing to overlook all the artificial moments had the movie been more brave and direct. It started off with a lot of potential but quickly started losing its punch.

Le divorce (2003)

Keep your expectations extremely low...

[3/10 · 26 December 2004]

...because that's the only way to get any enjoyment out of this thing.

Wow, what an unnecessary movie! Who exactly is the audience for this? Watching it I kept thinking about the fact there's absolutely no IN for the viewer. At least not for the one inhabiting planet Earth.

Story seems to take place in some kind of parallel universe - it contains not a single thing that either touched, moved, tickled or engaged me in the slightest. Pretty damn hard to have a romantic comedy with the characters who might as well have come from another galaxy.

Isabel (Kate Hudson), an American, comes to Paris to visit her 5-month pregnant sister Roxy (Naomi Watts). Her timing couldn't have been better since Roxy's French husband Charles-Henri (Melvil Poupaud) with whom she already has a small daughter leaves her for parts unknown. And all this out of the blue activity is happening precisely at the moment Isabel is getting out of a cab that took her in from the airport.

Roxy's obviously distraught. Her husband soon informs her that he desires a divorce and not only that - he wants the property divided too. Besides the fact she doesn't want to grant him a legal split which would effectively be his ticket to marrying his loony Russian mistress Magda (Rona Hartner) who also happens to be married to another American nutjob (played by Mathew Modine), situation is even further complicated by an unclear ownership of a valuable painting they would have to split in the event of a divorce. And if that's not enough, Isabel has fallen under a spell of an aging suave and oily Frenchman who, of course, is married, and just happens to be Charles-Henri's uncle.

So, for those still reading, her lover is also the brother of the mother of her sister's estranged husband. Yes, it's like a high brow Jerry Springer episode.

But even that potentially intriguing storyline falls horrendously flat.

The movie just stumbles from one contrived scene to another. After pretty much everything else bombed it plays up the joshingly debilitated international observational humour. First, French men and American women are paired up. Then, the French family (which seems to consist exclusively of territorial females and promiscuous males) is brought out. Then, we add a Russian free spirit, followed by an American family that flies into Paris. And finally, even a quirky British appraiser finds his place on this smorgasbord. Needless to say, all is served with a lot of dopey banter in form of lame one-liners that point out 'keenly observed' characteristics of each nation.

And believe it or not, they even manage to stick in an attempted suicide and a double murder.

Even on a personal level 'Le Divorce' fails to arouse. Whether it's Charles-Henri's well-off family with their nationalistically inspired pursuit of the painting that's obviously not theirs or Roxy's and Isabel's family whose general listlessness even after learning of the fact their pregnant daughter just tried to kill herself is simply baffling, the movie's characters and their motivations are very unconvincing.

By the end my retina was sore from how many times I rolled my eyes in dismissive bemusement throughout the 117 minutes of this latest James Ivory offering.

Mean Girls (2004)

I'm torn...

[7 November 2004]

"Mean Girls" had a lot of potential.

Ten minutes into it I was filled with hope as that brand of witty playfulness Tina Fey exhibits on SNL every week was very much in evidence throughout her sharp-eyed script.

Story was just starting to take root. The venomous back-and-forth between Cady, Plastics and the weirdo twosome (semi-goth chick and the husky gay dude) was developing nicely. Side, throwaway gags were all delivered with bite and at the right moments ('You come from Africa? How come you're white?' or teacher's 'I'm a pusher' monologue).

So, it was all moving along like one of the better episodes of 'The Simpsons' ...... when it suddenly pretty much came to a screeching halt somewhere around the 3/4 mark. From there on - it was a different film.

So, what happened?

Well, it's hard to say. They must have tested this thing to death and probably had 7 alternate endings on offer. How else to explain the forcedly feel good, uplifting finale? Girls workshop in school gym and Cady's queen-of-the-prom speech were not only uninspired, sub par scenes individually but didn't really fit with the rest of the film, either.

To be fair, this sudden shift couldn't completely negate all of the earlier satisfactory elements but it was very disappointing nonetheless.

After all the fun and extremely exaggerated backstabbing & cattiness, they turned it down a couple of notches (probably under studio directives), watering the movie down to a level of your run-of-the-mill teen flick in the process.

I'm still tempted to recommend it because of Lindsay Lohan's appeal (there's definitely something about that girl and it goes beyond the mere physical), but almost everything else was wasted by the end.

Bad Santa (2003)

Funny enough.

[15 August 2004]

This movie is miserable! It's ugly, it's undignified, it's twisted and demented, it's uncouth...... And, oh yeah, it's funny and I like it!

Every single character in "Bad Santa" is damaged goods. Throughout their lives, they've all had to cope with a severe shortage of love and care. Granted, it was mostly brought on by circumstances beyond their control but has nevertheless influenced their respective modi operandi noticeably - and mostly for the worse.

Willie T. Soke or simply Santa (Billy Bob Thornton) is bitter alcoholic wreck of a human being with, among other things, two passions that he often combines - those for husky ladies and anal sex. Throughout most of the year he crashes and burns around good ol' US of A eating (and drinking) into the money he made/stole the previous Christmas while anxiously waiting for the next one to roll around since he's usually dead broke by June.

He and his partner Marcus (Tony Cox) who happens to be a handicapped black midget have an annual ritual of getting jobs as mall Santa and his helper Elf, which allow them to scope the place out and rob it blind after closing time on Christmas Eve.

It's an uneasy 8-year relationship based solely on mutual financial interest, but more serious cracks are showing every new Christmas. By the time they reconvene in Phoenix for yet another holiday score, Willie is at his alcoholic, lecherous, unprofessional worst - showing up drunk for work almost every day, having quickie sex in the plus size department, etc, etc...

Despite his abhorrent veneer, he is befriended by not one, but two local oddballs whose names he doesn't even care to ask, simply referring to them as the Girl and the Kid.

The Kid (later we find out his name is bully-friendly Thurman Merman) is lonely, wide-eyed leech capable of creeping you out of your shoes one moment and melting your heart with his sweetness the next. He sees Santa as the ideal of everything good in the world. That this Santa is a foulmouthed, grizzled, unkempt drunk is of not much concern to him. I guess Willie will do just fine when you're a bullied adolescent being raised by your comatose grandmother.

The girl on the other hand is little less of a weirdo. She 'only' has a Santa sexual fetish dating back to her childhood and makes Willie wear his Santa outfit when they make love - although, they both use a different term to describe this activity.

The whole lot fits nicely in this world created by Terry Zwigoff who specializes in characters on the margins of society ("Crumb", "Ghost World"). Also memorable are Bernie Mac as oily mall security chief, late John Ritter as mall manager and Lauren Tom as Marcus' greedy girlfriend Lois.

Watching this film doesn't make you feel good about the state of humanity but IT IS funny, and since that's really the only thing they were going for - mission accomplished. Besides, you'd have to be very deprived to take any of this seriously.

The Contender (2000)

Infuriatingly bad.

[26 April 2004]

Ten minutes into it I found myself thinking: "All right, we got a movie on our hands". To see it sink so embarrassingly low was even more enraging in light of this promising start.

'The Contender' pushes an extremely liberal agenda, which did not bother me in the least. Its hypocritical and manipulative nature, on the other hand, most definitely did.

So, let's get right into it....

About 4/5 of the film are spent drilling our heads with the notion of Senator Laine Hanson's sex life, past or present, being nobody's business but her own.

No problem there!

Either publicly or even privately behind closed doors with presidential staff (that's 100% on her side, by the way) this VP designate awaiting congressional confirmation refuses to address allegations of involvement in a wild group sex orgy during her college days, because it is, as she continually insists, beneath her dignity and against her principles to discuss such matters.

Fair enough, again!

While she continues refusing to acknowledge sexual past as an issue in her quest to become Vice President, preferring instead to focus on healthcare, education, foreign policy, etc. - the director Rod Lurie uses every visual and storytelling trick in the book to convince us that the allegations are true (short of stating it explicitly).

Consider a scene near the beginning when Laine, after a hard day' work, comes home to her husband (also involved in politics as his wife's advisor and her former senatorial campaign manager) who informs her of the separate background check, outside of the one conducted by FBI. This secret investigation headed by Republican Congressman Shelley Runyon (Gary Oldman) went deeper than the FBI's, managing to unearth the sex story.

What is her reaction upon seeing a file containing "incriminating" photos dug up by Runyon's people that were handed to her side by one of Congressman's assistants who had a sudden change of heart and didn't want to participate any further in this character assassination?

Well, she slumps in a chair looking defeated. She clutches her forehead and "flashbacks" of the college gangbang start to roll as "memories from the past". Knowing what we know by the end about what she already knows at the time, would you not say this scene is wildly misconstrued, manipulative and unnatural?

I would.

Still, this is all pretty much fine & dandy. Deliberately misleading your audience in order to build up drama is a legitimate directorial technique. Granted, it's more suited for an Agatha Christie frivolous whodunit than for something pretending to be a serious political thriller.

Even if you let that one slide, reasoning: 'OK, the director played with us a little to underscore just how irrelevant these allegations are'; then why was the scene on the White House lawn (Laine and President talking and smoking cigars - cigars, get it, wink, wink, Clinton, nudge, nudge, Monica - while a banquet is going on inside) included in the movie when it goes against every single idea argued for up to that point?

Well, it's there because these hypocritical filmmakers aren't brave enough to stick to their guns. They feel a need to exonerate Sen. Hanson in the eyes of the audience despite the fact they just spent majority of their film convincing us how that is precisely something which doesn't need doing - either by her or by anyone else.

To make it more plausible, their conversation is set up as a private exchange between Laine and Jackson as opposed to VP and President or Senator and President!?

Yeah right, she's seeing this guy for like the 4th time in her life at this point and she's going to spill her guts in front of him over a stogie, even after vehemently refusing to utter a word on the topic in face of unspeakable media and peer pressure. The filmmakers obviously realized how inconsistent and out of place her behaviour in this key scene is, so they furnished her with a cheesy line to the effect of: "Well. OK, you win Mr. President. There is just something about almost puking on a cigar that gets a girl to open up" before she clarifies every single detail of the "orgy" for him and more importantly FOR US.

I mean pleeeease! As that great 20th century thinker and philosopher Judge Judy would say - don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining. It is painfully obvious the only aim of this unnatural scene is to have the audience NOT go home thinking Senator, and soon to be VP, Laine Hanson used to be a whore of Paris Hilton proportions. And all this after one of the movie's main points is that it wouldn't make her any less fit for vice presidential duties even if she was.

Gutless and pathetic!!!

No wonder Gary Oldman distanced himself from such contriving garbage.

Towards the end, things, amazingly, go from bad to even worse with President Evans barging in triumphantly on a congressional sitting to deliver a ridiculous speech that touches on issues of privacy and women's rights. What was set up to be the film's culmination comes off as one of the most cringe-inducing and embarrassing scenes in recent American cinematic history. Parts of that diatribe must have been lifted straight from Clinton administration speechwriters' rough drafts.

As icing on the cake, before closing credits we get a fade to black screen with words 'For our daughters', by which time I was reaching for something to puke in.

And I wasn't even smoking a cigar.

Comandante (2003)

Lower your expectations...

[7 April 2004]

Like one of the previous reviewers I also recently saw 'Comandante' on Canadian cable outlet CBC Newsworld...

Nothing earth shattering to report here: to the extent that I'm even having trouble labeling the movie interesting, which is quite a surprise considering the array of historically significant topics and events it touches on - though I must say seeing Fidel sport a black pair of Nikes as he paces around his office (apparently on regular basis to get exercise) might alone be worth the price of admission.

Observant audience members will also notice he grows his fingernails long for no apparent reason, which I guess is the kind of vanity one engages in after ruling a nation with an iron fist for 40+ years.

Those expecting Bill O'Reilly-type barrage of aggressive queries thrown Fidel's way will be more than disappointed. If you've ever wondered what it would be like if Robin Leech and pre-'View' Barbara Walters morphed into single person who then got an assignment to interview a sitting president.... well, you may have gotten your answer in Stone's laid back style.

Though it's clearly not all Oliver's fault, I'm really none the wiser about Fidel after 'Comandante' than I was, say, about JaRule following his appearance on MTV's 'Cribs'.

The reasons why this 2-colourful-guy chitchat ended up on TV instead of being released in the theaters are very much political and duly reflect America's current paranoid social climate.

However, in the end the movie actually profited from such skullduggery since even on the small screen I found it only marginally arousing. Having to pay $12 ticket for this would really be a bummer.

Lost in Translation (2003)

Don't believe da hype!

[14 February 2004]

You have to bring a lot of your own "stuff" to get anything out of this film. Sitting through 'Lost in Translation' pretty much felt like being invited to lunch with no advance warning of this 'new rule' that apparently required you to bring your own food & drinks. If you still managed to somehow do that - the possibility of having good time was there. If not - you pretty much had to find entertainment value in twiddling your thumbs all night.

As this is an example of a 'personal' film that's entirely dominated by 2 characters, its effectiveness in large part hinges on viewer's ability to relate to the specific personality traits these two people exhibit. The defeated manner in which they speak, their hibernating enthusiasm for - umm, let's see - everything under the sun, the way that for whatever reason their entire 'life repertoire' seemingly operates at quarter intensity, etc, etc... are just a few things that better connect with you on some level - preferably of the "yeah, I went through a thing like that" or in the very least "OK, even though these obscene quantities of modern white collar despair are foreign territory I guess I can still indulge these crybabies for 2 hours" kind. Unfortunately, none of that materialized for me, and I just basically kept wondering throughout as to why these two unremarkable bores deserve their own film. Such is the lack of fascination they aroused.

They're so miserable, so depressing, and most importantly appear to have so little to offer to each other or to anyone else, that if the objective obstacles preventing them from starting something serious were all of a sudden magically removed I strongly believe they'd run for the hills from their relationship after spending 6 months together. This film didn't even convince me Bob (Bill Murray) made more of a real connection with Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) than with that lounge singer he managed to pick up in his hotel and have a drunken one-night stand with.

Sofia Copolla desperately tries to present the state(s) of Bob's and Charlotte's souls as something complex, almost mystic and noble, when in fact terms like "selfish", "self-absorbed" or plain "bored outta their skull since their respective livings are pretty well taken care of" might be just as suitable. The movie takes itself waaay too seriously.

Amazingly enough, Universal partly labels this as comedy and markets it as such.

Well, that it most definitely ain't - and believe me when I tell ya! One star does not a flag make and a few inane bordering on stupid observations, the essence of which is that Japanese are short and speak EngRish, do not a comedy make.

In what turns out to be an excellent device, daddy's girl Sofia places the plot in exotically urban Tokyo, which is just as well 'cause I was quickly reduced to merely looking at scenery.

The Japanese are presented in an extremely stereotypical fashion with plenty of subtle disdain displayed for them. Copolla keeps visually nudging us with stuff along the lines of: "Hey man, get a load of these freaks!" However, that didn't bother me as we were watching Japan through the detached, self-involved eyes of annoying Bob & Charlotte. If anything, it made the film more realistic and effective, although I'm sure I wouldn't be so understanding if I happened to be Japanese.

Overall, 'Lost in Translation' earns points for somewhat skillfully orchestrating this couple's meanderings between a platonic friendship and an adulterous affair. But, more vitally, the fact these two grim and irritating love hunters had me tired out beyond any comprehension, unfortunately remains.

P.S: Bill Murray does an adequate job playing an over-the-hill former movie star but I found nothing so earth shattering in his performance to merit the swelling of praise he's been getting in the press lately.

24 Hour Party People (2002)

Nicely done!

[9 February 2004]

Like any other movie about rock music, documentary or not, '24 Hour Party People' packs its fair share of inside material and self-indulgent frivolity.

Due to a crammed timeframe of 20 years (essentially one big juggling act of people, bands and events) connecting all the dots required multiple viewings, even if I had certain prior knowledge of the Manchester music scene in the late '70s, '80s and the early '90s. Making matters still more difficult is the variety of extremely thick accents - to a point of entire sections of dialogue or monologue occasionally flying by with only a single word or two actually registering with me. While it added to film's authenticity, that got to be more than a bit annoying after a while. Where's that closed captioned TV set when you desperately need it?

As far as the treatment of the subjects themselves goes, the movie does an adequate job. I mean, when it gets right down to it, the only structure such a film can more-or-less follow is the basic listing of a series of real events (and in this particular case most of them already well documented). Naturally, as such it doesn't allow for a whole lot of substantial artistic freedom so the director employs many little asides, winks and nudges by our narrator Tony Wilson (often through the 'fourth wall') as well as visual tricks and, obviously, music to make this different from, say, something you might see on VH1's 'Behind the Music'. In addition to being one of the major driving forces behind the whole scene, Tony also held a full-time job at Granada TV all throughout this period, which the movie uses skillfully for comic relief.

Predictably (not that I'm complaining), things like: Ian Curtis' suicide, the opening of the Haçienda club, ascent and demise of Factory Records, Shaun Ryder's famously out-of-control & self destructive shenanigans, all receive special treatment. Through Steve Coogan's excellent performance, Tony Wilson, our guide through this zoo, comes off as a pretty fascinating fellow. Director Michael Winterbottom makes a wise choice in leaving out many details from his private life in favour of the music itself and the people who created it. Wilson's second wife and kids, for example, are barely mentioned - with a cheeky remark about Tony being a minor character in his own life story as an explanation for the lack of on-screen time devoted to them.

In the end, whether or not you enjoy '24 Hour Party People' will largely, if not entirely, depend on your level of familiarity or appreciation of the bands like Joy Division, New Order, The Happy Mondays and to a lesser extent of their punk inspirations and predecessors like The Stranglers, The Jam, Buzzcocks, Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie and the Banshees, who are also depicted in the film.

Personally, even though I was always aware of the British new wave, most of its music & 'shtick' pretty much slipped under my radar so I recently started discovering it retroactively. Therefore, it was a blast to see a well-done, interesting film celebrating that era in popular music. These blokes created & performed honest, full-blooded, passionate tunes, which is the single most important thing that comes through the movie.

P.S: The Smiths, another famous and influential Manchester band are notably absent from much of the film. This is probably due to the fact that back in 1983 both Tony and New Order producer/manager Rob Gretton agreed their demo was crap, so instead to Factory they went to Rough Trade Records based in London. They're mentioned briefly at the end, though, when Tony speaks to God himself who among other things tells him: "it's a pity you didn't sign The Smiths". :) Brilliant!

Out of Sight (1998)

Textbook example of a fun movie.

[2 October 2003]

Among other things, this film reminded me what good actress Jennifer Lopez used to be before the dancing, the perfume & clothing lines and the god awful singing turned her into 'J.Lo Inc.'. Prior to willingly relinquishing her life to celebrity press becoming in the process the biggest media whore planet Earth has seen since Elizabeth Taylor's heyday, Lopez was simply an actress. And a damn good one, too - as this film aptly demonstrates!

In what turned out to be one of her last worthy movies before crap like "The Wedding Planner", "Maid in Manhattan" and "Gigli" took the center stage, she simply illuminates the screen.

Also starring is George Clooney as jaunty serial bank robber and jail inmate Nick Foley. As the frames start to roll, he's for the umpteenth time shipped off to yet another correctional facility - this time in Florida, after an unsuccessful robbery of a Miami bank when his getaway car wouldn't start. Soon enough though, he manages to bust out (on Super Bowl Sunday no less), piggybacking on the escape plan of a few Cubans. Waiting for him, parked outside of the prison gates, is his trusty friend and partner Buddy (Ving Rhames). By pure chance, also hanging around is FBI marshall Karen Sisco (Lopez) - there to pick up an inmate who needs to be transferred. All of a sudden she's unexpectedly witnessing a prison break and quickly moves to alert the guards. In the ensuing chaos she is grabbed by Foley, shoved into the trunk of a car and is now fleeing the scene with a jail escapee and his driver-accomplice. And so the fun begins.......

What follows is greatly developed pulpy story with a series of stylish vignettes involving excellent supporting characters like the brutal Snoopy Miller (Don Cheadle), spaced-out Glen (Steve Zahn), talkative millionaire crook Richard Ripley (Albert Brooks), Foley's ex-wife Adele (Catherine Keener), jail escapee Chino (Luis Guzmán), Karen's dad (Denis Farrina), etc.

The look and the atmosphere of this thing are indescribably appealing. Really fun stuff.

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Won't miss much if you skip it.

[25 September 2003]

Although not convinced such a painfully linear story deserves to be made into a feature film I must admit I SOMEWHAT enjoyed "Catch Me If You Can". And come to think of it, how could I not with Steven Spielberg, that cinematic equivalent of a diligent travel agent, planning out my trip along the shortest possible route from point A to point B.

Staying true to what has long ago, with few exceptions along the way, become one of the main traits of his directorial opus - this movie, too, is unbelievably ordinary and unremarkable. Everything in it is on autopilot. No pun intended. We follow a straight and narrow path until a desired destination is reached without any turbulence. In the end justice is served, characters learn from their mistakes and the audience goes home happy.

Frank Abagnale Jr.'s life story could've been a piece on '60 Minutes' or a subject of an hour long 'Dateline NBC'. Making it into a two and a half hour movie was pretty unnecessary.

PS: I really don't like Tom Hanks' acting. He is so damn bland! If he were a beverage he'd be Diet Coke.

A Simple Plan (1998)

Something is missing...

[24 September 2003]

Most of the elements of "A Simple Plan" were adequate. The story carried me along and kept me interested. Cold, snowy and occasionally cerulean Minnesota countryside provided a peaceful backdrop that perfectly contrasted the abundance of dirty, greedy, evil goings-on. Performances were very good. Writing was decent enough. Yet the movie never fully took off due to a lot of 'little' things.

Firstly, it takes itself way too seriously. Part of the reason why "Fargo" (a picture that often comes to mind while watching this) was so appealing was its irreverent, unaware-of-itself, off-the-cuff style. In more than a few scenes of "A Simple Plan" through the frequent use of extreme close-ups, cartoonish makeup and lighting (especially on Bridget Fonda) director Sam Raimi is almost annoyingly shouting at us to sit up straight and prepare to have another ridiculously obvious lesson on morality and human psyche rammed down our throats.

Even the movie's tagline - 'Sometimes good people do evil things' - sounds kind of cheesy.

Additionally, the ending seems tacked on. The sudden introduction of Gary Cole, the lead-up to the showdown and the ensuing shootout simply feel unnatural. Not to mention the twist by which Hank (Bill Paxton) gets to keep the money but then learns the bills' serial numbers have been recorded by the feds who are now waiting for them to surface. And this is what makes Hank decide to burn the dough? I mean, p-leaseeee!!! Throughout the movie, fuelled by his desire to keep this fortune he found a way out of the most impossible situations even if it required him to lie, cheat, plot and kill and then ultimately this technicality is the detail that does him in and makes him give it all up!??

He didn't get a conscience all of a sudden, we know that. He burned the money not because it reminded him of the carnage he left in his wake in order to keep it or something along those lines, but only because he was looking at this seemingly insurmountable 'obstacle' of bills being marked.

I guess the filmmakers or the studio didn't want to show behaviour like this be rewarded or maybe they thought the fact that he lives is enough of a perk. Whatever the thinking and reasoning, it was all very unconvincing.

On the other hand, the most admirable parts include excellent performances from Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Brent Briscoe and several truly great exchanges between them.

To put it in simple terms - good enough but I wanted more.

Made (2001)

Not complete garbage but there are so many worthier movies out there you could devote 2 hours of your life to.

[4/10 · 4 August 2003]

Every piece of this movie's mosaic has been done to death already in American cinema: colourful buddy pair joined at the hip - the goofball and the 'straight man', out-of-control stripper raising an adorable daughter, New York-accented growling voice coming out of a weathered boss, profanity laced repartee between shady individuals, zany Italian, Irish and black American mobsters in their NYC natural habitat, and so on, and so forth.

I really have nothing against any of the above being used as a movie device, however, if it's going to be recycled to good effect after million previous directors exploited it already, one needs to have a lot more inspiration, desire, ambition and balls than the people who made "Made".

I fully understand they didn't shoot particularly high, merely aiming for something light, breezy and hopefully funny, but the end product is very abysmal even by those standards. I barely cracked a smile twice: once wholeheartedly when Screech from TV's 'Saved by the Bell' nonchalantly strolled into a club alongside a hot babe, armed with a 'sucks to be you' look directed at others waiting in line and once more to a lesser extent during a scene with club chicks (Drea de Matteo from 'The Sopranos' and Jennifer Esposito). The rest of "Made" is not funny by a long shot, managing to get very tedious by the latter stages.

Even the performances lacked spark. Contrary to the popular consensus I did not find Vince Vaughn captivating. His over the top portrayal would've been OK if this was 'SNL' or 'Mad TV' rather than a 90-minute feature. A little of him goes a long, looong way here. Puff Daddy/P. Diddy tries his hardest to make a convincing crime boss but he's no actor. Thankfully, with him, the filmmakers didn't repeat the same mistake like they did with Vaughn, so we don't have to endure Mr. Sean Combs for long stretches.

You know things have taken a turn for the worse in the world of indie film-making when terms like 'bold', 'gutsy' and 'brave' are being used in connection with something from "Made".

With a Friend Like Harry... (2000)

Masturbation.

[28 July 2003]

Let me throw my two cents in, since this is clearly one of those "hey pal, make what you will of it, we just make 'em, we don't explain 'em" type of movies - and I don't mean that in a good way, either. But first things first...

Pretty soon after you begin watching this film, its apparent Dominik Moll found more than just a passing inspiration in some other works. So, let's deal with that right off the top.

To an extent I see "Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien" as a French version of "Fight Club" - an American movie I did not care for in the least. Main protagonists in both films are essentially unhappy individuals although Michel's (Laurent Lucas) manifestation of misery is a bit more muted. Perhaps 'confused' rather than 'completely unhappy' might be a better term to describe him. In any event, to combat their conditions him and his American counterpart both 'invent' a confident male friend - an überdude of sorts - who's hopefully going to improve their lives by waking up their hibernating lust for living. In that sense Michel's Harry Balestero (Sergi López) is very much reminiscent of Narrator's Tyler Durden.

Noticeable also, are similarities to 1992 Joel & Ethan Coen offering "Barton Fink" with the entire homicidal friend and writer's block subplots. That much better film and past Palm d'Or winner in Cannes, incidentally continues to be very popular in France.

Now, onto the business of reviewing "Harry....".

When it gets right down to it, this is a slapped together exercise in psychology, mid-life crisis, insecurity and similar esoteric 'problems' of today's well-fed male. After a marginally promising start, things quickly disintegrate to a point where I completely stopped caring about the characters. Even though it's fairly short, "Harry....." is still about 30 minutes too long. The thinking on the filmmakers' part was probably that there's something for everyone here: thriller elements, family psychodrama, study of characters, sexual tension, and film noir's atmosphere. Unfortunately, in the end it's a lotta nothin'. Ridiculously misplaced free-flowing symbolism (pink bathroom, eggs, flying monkeys), irritatingly brooding performances and many other poor choices heavily outweigh the few brief satisfying moments.

Amores Perros (2000)

Dogs and love.

[23 July 2003]

After reading a lot of praise about "Amores Perros" I finally managed to see it. And....... it certainly didn't disappoint. Although not completely in the groundbreaking-classic ballpark some reviewers were quick to award, it contains more than enough passion, inspiration and underlying insightful observations to deserve a strong recommendation.

Much like Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction", another auteur (along with Luis Bunuel) Inaruttu noticeably borrows from, "Amores Perros" is split in three stories that briefly, unexpectedly and unaware of each other connect through a single event - horrific car crash on a Mexico City street.

Appropriately, considering the movie's title, dogs play important parts in lives of the protagonists of each story. Further fittingly, love is another thing giving them trouble.

From enthusiastic Octavio (Gael Garcia Bernal) who hatches a plan to run away with his hothead abusive brother Ramiro's (Marco Perez) young bride Susana (Vanessa Bauche) using funds he obtained by entering family dog Cofi in illegal fights, over to slick magazine editor Daniel (Alvaro Guerrero) who abandons his wife and kids to be with a young professional model Valeria (Goya Toledo) and her beloved dog Ritchie, and ending with 'El Chivo' (Emilio Echevarria), a gruesome looking squatter with a pack of dogs in tow who was a onetime guerilla and is now supplementing his income by killing for money while trying to reconnect with the daughter he left many years ago...these are all richly observed, authentic, slice-of-life tales.

Without visual or emotional sweetener, we're allowed to look at the world these people inhabit. Invariably one will recognize plenty of Inarrutu's cinematic influences, two of whom I mentioned already. Still, this is a very authentic work by a great director. Cleverly vivid imagery (hole in the floor, things bubbling underneath the surface), punch-in-the-gut style, uncompromising treatment of characters.... are just a few of the things making "Amores Perros" a very worthwhile experience at the movies.

The Day of the Jackal (1973)

Excellent

[23 June 2003]

You gotta hand it to the Brits. They truly know how to make a captivating thriller.

After seeing 1971's "Get Carter" I enjoyed another great ride with this story of a British assassin, known only as Jackal, hired by Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) to kill French president Charles De Gaulle. Consisting of disgruntled former French army officers and foreign legionnaires, the OAS felt De Gaulle betrayed France's interests by granting independence to Algeria so they decided to take him out. After several failed assassination attempts they turn to Jackal (Edward Fox), an outsider with a proved track record, who agrees to do it for $1,000,000.

His planning is so meticulous and thorough that at certain times it's easy to forget what he's about and start pulling for him. Movie is not shy about showing us the gritty details of an assassination plan, either. In fact, I have serious doubts if many of the 'do it yourself' scenes would make it past the censors in today's era of global terrorist threat. As he does his legwork jumping from Vienna to London to Paris to Genova against a colourful sexy European scenery we get a romanticized portrait of an ascot-wearin', Alfa Romeo-drivin' assassin who leaves nothing to chance (thankfully this never approaches the cheese level of your average James Bond flick).

My minor complaints about "The Day of the Jackal" are more logistical in nature and have to do with how quickly the French police and Scotland Yard get on Jackal's trail when they have pretty much nothing but his possible codename to start with. Also, entire first act is spent portraying him as a cunning, calculated professional with a nose for sticky situations, yet in the latter scenes he makes many reckless choices when laying low would clearly be a more sensible option.

Even if you buy his decision to proceed to Paris instead of returning to the safety of Italy when he knew police were hot on his trail after figuring out his first assumed identity, what exactly was the thinking behind the decision to go on with the plan even after police had his second false identity and ran hourly bulletins on TV. Even if he somehow managed to kill De Gaulle that day, did he really think he could successfully leave Paris afterwards? Why such a revolutionary resolve? After all, unlike OAS, he's in this only for the money.

But, anyway....

And yes, I full well realize that this is not a biopic and that without the preceeding there probably wouldn't be a movie - so everything is forgiven.

The undeniable facts remain - "The Day of the Jackal" is a thoroughly fun, charming and stylish thriller and that's an even greater feat considering its serious historical and political backdrop.