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Lucifer (2019)
The answer to the question "What after Narasimham?"
To the uninitiated Mohanlal fan, Narasimham a movie which was released in the year 2000, starring Mohanlal, the first movie produced under the banner Aashirvad Cinemas, created Malayalam movie history by becoming the highest grossing malayalam movie of all time(at that time) and set the benchmark for a Mohanlal star vehicle.19 years later, Lucifer, atleast in my opinion, has ousted Narasimham as the benchmark for a Mohanlal star vehicle irrespective of the former's box office earnings.
While the Mohanlal fan in me was disappointed by "Pulimurugan" for many reasons including the way in which it chose to portray it's women, Lucifer has made up for that fact, within the limitations of a commercial block buster of course. While I will not claim that Lucifer is a "female centric" movie, it does handle it's female characters with some respect. Even though Stephen Nedumpally enjoy's the lion's share of the screen time in the movie & Lucifer is an unabashed celebration of Mohanlal the Super-star of Malayalam Cinema , I was positively surprised to note that only Priyadarshini Ramdas - the character potrayed on screen by Manju Warrior, has actual character growth and a proper character arc. The fact that Stephen Nedumpally & Priyadarshini Ramdas delivers the same line of dialogue at different points of the movie was a nice little touch!
Every single actor brought their A - game to this movie, leaving us wishing they were featured more in the movie.
Indrajith Sukumaran is delightful as the nerdy Journalist/ Conspiracy theorist. Tovino Thomas is brilliant as the reluctant politician. Vivek Oberoi oozes charishma & revulsion in equal measure. Special mention to Vineeth(I think) for providing the voice work for Vivek Oberoi's character.
The first half of the movie was absolutely brilliant. Every shot, every scene, every line of dialogue was spot on. However, towards the end of the second half of the movie I did feel a lag because of a third song number which could have been completely avoided in my opinion. However once an action scene gets interspersed with the song it does pick-up some steam. The major plot of the story ends soon after. But then the director takes some time to tie up loose ends in the plot adding to that "laggy" feeling I was talking about. Perhaps these final scenes could have been shown separate from the movie as a mid-credits & Post - Credits's scene a-la Marvel movies.
While this movie can be called a "Mass Movie" it's not a movie with senseless scenes stitched together to cash in on Mohanlal's stardom. While Prithviraj the first time director does play to the gallery on occassion, he along with the scenarist Murali Gopy has tried to tell a good story populated with great character's with well defined motivations and wonderful dialogues which included really good throwbacks to yesteryear Mohanlal films.
I had a blast watching this movie and hope everyone who reads this review goes and watch this movie at the cinemas. Especially if you are someone who paid money to watch "Pulimurugan"
Oozham (2016)
Why did Prithiviraj Sukumaran get involved in this sorry excuse of a movie? (Spoilers)
Perhaps because Jeethu Joseph who gave us one of the best thriller's in malayalam movie history with Drishyam(2013) was at it's helm? Still, a shocker of a movie from an actor who is infamous in the industry for insisting on a fully finished script before signing on. Was it a loss in translation, I wonder because this movie was just atrocious and a pain to sit through. One of the worst movies I've seen from Prithviraj in a long while.
The characters were poorly written. The dialogues were below par, especially the English ones. Seriously, when you make a movie spending crores of rupees you should try finding a screenwriter with a good command over the language and ensure that the actors get the diction correct unless bad diction is part of a character. Neither the villain nor the two guys who played his son's (who were hamming for the most part) came off as even remotely menacing or posing a threat to our hero. Pashupathi was wasted and was that Samuthirakani? The way Jeethu writes police character's is criminal. There was not one cop in this movie who had any clue as to what was happening until it was too late, especially when neither the hero nor the villain were doing anything remotely smart in my opinion. The hero in Drishyam who used his street smarts and the knowledge he accumulated over the years from the umpteen number of movies he's seen to outsmart the cops felt more realistic than the IITian cum controlled explosive specialist protagonist eliminating his targets using explosive devices in this movie.
The background score was underwhelming. Unnecessarily loud sometimes (Conversation between Captain, Marques and his son's inside their car) and goes mute at other times (When Marques gets emotional with Captain over his son's murder)and fails to accentuate the feel of the film at times and working against it at others.
The viewers are well aware of the motive's behind the hero's journey for revenge and they also know everything there is about the villains, well before the movie hit's it's half time mark. The only thing that remained to keep the proceedings exciting was the journey itself. The movie fails in this regard mostly dues to the things that I've mentioned above. In conclusion this film fails as a mystery, crime, thriller or drama.
I am glad that I waited to watch this on DVD.
Pacific Rim (2013)
A CGI Spectacle. Nothing More. Nothing Less.
From start to finish this movie offers jaw dropping CGI. The jaegers where mind-blowing(wish tony stark builds some thing like this in the next avengers movie..!!). The kaiju could have been better. Watch this movie to see the jaeger & kaiju kick each others butt, destroy skyscrapers, bridges and everything else they get their hands on.
If you are looking for something to stimulate your mind and make you a better person, go read a book!! If you are looking for Oscar winning performance from any of the cast in this movie, you are going to be disappointed.
For me, only the little girl who played the young mako mori did any good acting. In my opinion only she deserved to survive the 'apocalypse'. Herc Hansen(Max Martini)did a good job too, i think. Hated the rest of the cast in this movie. Wish the kaiju & jaegers had some more screen time.
Jennifer Eight (1992)
A Passable Thriller, not an underrated gem!!
I would not have seen this movie, if i hadn't seen some of the reviewers calling it an 'Under-rated gem'. This movie claims to be of the Crime/Drama/Mystery genre.
Here are some of my thoughts on the movie.
John Berlin(Garcia)discovers a derelict's body in a landfill site who is suspected "to have offed himself with a knife". He also finds a brassiere & a hand. I was surprised that Berlin was going after the hand & the brassiere instead of the derelict who was in one piece. Garcia ends up falling in love(quite unsurprisingly!!) with the blind, Helena (Uma Thurman, as great as usual). And obviously the serial killer is after Helena, and Berlin is hell bound on protecting her. That takes care of the drama.
As for the mystery, if you follow the movie close enough you get a good idea who the killer is, 24 minutes into the movie. And you know who it is for sure, another 20 minutes later. An hour later, the movie just abruptly ended. It seemed so rushed (i mean come on, i had to wait another hour, to know why the serial killer, kills and to know how he will be caught) and i found myself saying *beep*, who killed the *beep* derelict ??
So watch this movie for the good acting. Garcia, Thurman,Henriksen & Malkovitch put up a great show. It was a treat to watch St.Anne, interrogate, Berlin.