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News of the World (2020)
Charming but not enough
The movie is well-acted and well-filmed, but the story isn't compelling enough to hold up a full film. The most amusing bits are when Tom Hanks reads the News of the World. The main story arc, though charming, can be a bit boring.
Hanks resumes his career-defining role of the charismatic man, who always does the right thing. Helena Zengel delivers on this challenging, mostly non-speaking role.
The film reminded me of True Grit, another western with a old man - young girl relationship in the center of the story, but True Grit outshines News of the World in many aspects.
I couldn't extract any contemporary themes / lessons in the film. After reading about it, I have to admit that the film does have some interesting things to say about how news is told and perceived, and about communication in general.
Sholay (1975)
One of the best Indian movies
I completed the top 250 during the last couple of weeks, which meant that I had to see a lot of Indian movies. Though I did not become a fan of Bollywood cinema, there were a few good movies among them. Udaan is a very strong movie, and Sholay is also very enjoyable.
Sholay borrows a lot from established movies, mainly westerns. The family murder scene was very similar to a scene in Once Upon a Time in the West. The action is technically not as good as Hollywood (the blood looks ridiculous), but it doesn't prevent me from enjoying the movie. It contains a few classic elements (like the coin with heads on both sides), that we've seen before, so it doesn't surprise anymore.
The film makers changed to movie enough to Indian values and style, such that this wasn't an unnecessary remake of the classic westerns. I thought the two main characters were very likable, there war some plot twists I didn't see coming, and there were also some funny side characters (I liked the jailer a lot).