Skip to main content

Recent

'Sara'S' review: Anchored by a powerful script, this simple film breaks the conventions of the feel-good template

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

Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

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 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©

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dora and the Lost City of Gold- when children's beloved character comes to life on-screen

  Nickelodeon's iconic character, Dora the Explorer, is coming to life on screen as Paramount Pictures readies the worldwide release of the live-action film based on the beloved character, Dora and the Lost City of Gold, due to release on August this year. The distributors, Paramount Pictures released the official trailer for the movie, promising the fans yet another treasure hunt, accompanying Dora The Explorer. The makers have released the official synopsis for Dora and the Lost City of Gold- Having spent most of her life exploring the jungle with her parents, nothing could prepare Dora (Isabela Moner) for her most dangerous adventure ever – High School. Always the explorer, Dora quickly finds herself leading Boots (her best friend, a monkey), Diego (Jeffrey Wahlberg), a mysterious jungle inhabitant (Eugenio Derbez), and a rag tag group of teens on a live-action adventure to save her parents (Eva Longoria, Michael Peña) and solve the impossible mystery behind a lost

Reviewer-The Blog's Top 10 Films of 2015

  2015 saw movies that exceeded expectations, movies that were much hyped and failed to provide and some which we were sure wouldn't make the mark. Even though we saw the commercial successes of sequels, 2015 showed us that audiences and critics loved original ideas as well. There were unexpected successes and disappointing failures which gave that mixed feeling of satisfaction and frustration in the movies of 2015. Beginning with Woman in Black:Angels of Death and wrapping up with the much anticipated Star Wars:The Force Awakens, 2015 has been a year of surprises and failures, admiration and dissatisfaction.  Not to forget that 2015 was lauded by the success of female-centric films. As critics spent their time whining away with issues such as gender gap, 2015 showed that Hollywood still has hope left for gender equality.  As 2015 comes to an end, Reviewer-The Blog has compiled its Top 10 Films of 2015 . This list is being compiled after extensive research, by watching a

Spider-Man: Far From Home Teaser Trailer - Breakdown

Well...now we know our friendly neighborhood Spidey will be back after being turned into proverbial dust post Thanos's apocalyptic snap in the events of Avengers: Infinity War. However that is not the only possibility we take back after Marvel Studios released the first teaser trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home,  the sequel to the hit Spider-Man: Homecoming  (2017). After much anticipation from the fans of the franchise, they have now got a decent look at what Far From Home will be like and the new characters that will be introduced into the ever-growing universe, that is becoming as colorful and eventful as the multiple universes crafted in the comic book pages. Thanks to the teaser, fans have been hinted of new looks, relationships,and threats that will accompany the beloved web-slinger in his exploits. Here's the detailed analysis and breakdown of the teaser by Reviewer-The Blog. So ripping off the trailer one by one... 1) Spidey's a celebr