Jude Anthany Joseph's third feature, after Ohm Shanti Oshana and Oru Muthassi Gadha, released on Prime Video at midnight today. This seemingly feel-good film, also seemingly made in limited spaces and with a shoestring budget, tackles a concept and issue never tested before in Malayalam cinema circles. In Sara'S, we follow the life of Sara Vincent (Anna Ben), a young, bubbly, yet unapologetic filmmaker who struggles to make it big in the industry. She continuously assists male directors and is in the scripting works of her dream film. Sara has decided, from her school days, that she would not bear any kids. This is when she meets Jeevan (Sunny Wayne); her relationship with him subsequently brings her ideology and decision into a confrontation with the established norms of society, family and child-rearing. Anna Ben in Sara'S The best aspect in which Sara'S has excelled, without doubt, is its hard-hitting taut script. Debutant Akshay Hareesh deserves praise for managin...
So here's the second review... The Oscar season got over and after all the hustle and bustle of award nights, Birdman came out as the final best picture of the year 2014. Here's my review on Birdman.
Everything in this world has a dark side, and Birdman proves, and successfully does, that Hollywood has one too.
The movie starts off randomly with Riggan Thompson, a fifty-something old washed up actor, apparently levitating in air. Thompson is widely known for portraying an iconic superhero named Birdman which had shaken the box office a couple of decades ago.
Thompson wants to revive his acting career, which had been already defamed after he retired from further production of the series, with a Broadway play based on Raymond Carver's short story "What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Love?" Riggan Thompson is now between Scylla and Charybdis: one, with the messy affair of the actors he casts and with the voice in his head which spats and growls at him in crucial moments of the movie.
The voice may have been caused by the massive transition from a phenomenal superhero movie to a "philosophical bullshit"-y play.
A showbiz black comedy satire in genre, Birdman shows a creepy, dark face of Hollywood; where a New York Times theater critic threatens to "kill" the play with a negative review, & where an actor Riggan casts makes the front page of the newspaper in the name of the play.
The film gives one of Emmanuel Lubezki's (who won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for Gravity) greatest achievements in cinematography. If you even bother to notice, you may surprisingly find that the entire movie is shot in just one long take. Such is is the ambition in all the technical aspects of the movie; Lubezki undertaking one of Hollywood's greatest(and finest) of cinematographic ventures.
There is also Antonio Sanchez's percussive and jazzy soundtrack which turns out to be miraculously appropriate for each and every mood of the film.
An actor who once played the role of a phenomenal superhero, Michael Keaton (not Riggan Thompson) has played a once-in-a-lifetime role as the old aged actor who is torn between his faded prestige and popularity and his simplest problems he fails to understand.
Edward Norton gives another stellar performance as Mike Shiner, a sexy yet cunning, a sincere yet arrogant aspiring actor.
Emma Stone shines as Keaton's wise ass daughter, fresh out of rehab, who gives her own show of her own frustration to her father's arrogant and egoistic attitude. Later she has an intimate chemistry with Edward Norton.
More actors follow- Zach Galifianikis, Amy Ryan, Andrea Riseborough, and Lindsay Duncan.
Yet they do not follow that dangerous theory that has ruined ensemble films over the years. They do their roles with perfection.
MPAA Rating: R (for language throughout, sexual content and some brief violence)
Run time: 119 minutes
Reviewer rating: Five stars
Reviewer- The Blog©
Everything in this world has a dark side, and Birdman proves, and successfully does, that Hollywood has one too.
The movie starts off randomly with Riggan Thompson, a fifty-something old washed up actor, apparently levitating in air. Thompson is widely known for portraying an iconic superhero named Birdman which had shaken the box office a couple of decades ago.
Thompson wants to revive his acting career, which had been already defamed after he retired from further production of the series, with a Broadway play based on Raymond Carver's short story "What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Love?" Riggan Thompson is now between Scylla and Charybdis: one, with the messy affair of the actors he casts and with the voice in his head which spats and growls at him in crucial moments of the movie.
The voice may have been caused by the massive transition from a phenomenal superhero movie to a "philosophical bullshit"-y play.
 |
| A still from the movie. Pictured: Michael Keaton |
A showbiz black comedy satire in genre, Birdman shows a creepy, dark face of Hollywood; where a New York Times theater critic threatens to "kill" the play with a negative review, & where an actor Riggan casts makes the front page of the newspaper in the name of the play.
The film gives one of Emmanuel Lubezki's (who won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for Gravity) greatest achievements in cinematography. If you even bother to notice, you may surprisingly find that the entire movie is shot in just one long take. Such is is the ambition in all the technical aspects of the movie; Lubezki undertaking one of Hollywood's greatest(and finest) of cinematographic ventures.
There is also Antonio Sanchez's percussive and jazzy soundtrack which turns out to be miraculously appropriate for each and every mood of the film.
An actor who once played the role of a phenomenal superhero, Michael Keaton (not Riggan Thompson) has played a once-in-a-lifetime role as the old aged actor who is torn between his faded prestige and popularity and his simplest problems he fails to understand.
Edward Norton gives another stellar performance as Mike Shiner, a sexy yet cunning, a sincere yet arrogant aspiring actor.
Emma Stone shines as Keaton's wise ass daughter, fresh out of rehab, who gives her own show of her own frustration to her father's arrogant and egoistic attitude. Later she has an intimate chemistry with Edward Norton.
More actors follow- Zach Galifianikis, Amy Ryan, Andrea Riseborough, and Lindsay Duncan.
Yet they do not follow that dangerous theory that has ruined ensemble films over the years. They do their roles with perfection.
A perfect blend of cinema, with ambitious technicality and powerful performances, Alejandro.G.Inarritu's laudable take on Birdman is an 'epic' entry into the black comedy genre, with Michael Keaton exhibiting his "unexpected virtue of ignorance".
MPAA Rating: R (for language throughout, sexual content and some brief violence)
Run time: 119 minutes
Reviewer rating: Five stars
Reviewer- The Blog©
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