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sanchitvarma14
Reviews
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)
Way better than it had any right to be
Way better than it had any right to be - I mean it is the prequel film to a long running YA franchise.
Tense, atmospheric and brutal - keeps you hooked, especially for the first two parts. The more primitive version of the hunger games is staged brilliantly and you expertly get to see how the games became the spectacle they will eventually morph into.
The third part has pacing issues and feels rushed and laggy simultaneously but the exploration into Snow's psyche makes up for that and the film really nails the ending.
Overall a way more nuanced and dark YA film than we are used to with a standout performance by Tom Blyth.
PS - A nod to the sombre, fitting score by James Newton Howard who keeps on hitting it out of the park.
Haunting of the Queen Mary (2023)
Convoluted and Muddled
The film is beautifully shot with great production design and atmosphere. The cinematography is excellent in places and you have to give them credit for sheer ambition. But that's where the positives end.
The screenplay is incredibly muddled and confusing and the story just fails to make any sense.
They try to weave in the past and present storylines together in a manner that they think is very clever but the two plot lines never mesh together and the end product is an incoherent mess.
Overall , the movie was like a fever dream where I was left admiring the beauty on the screen but scratching my head wondering what the hell is happening.
Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006)
Way ahead of its time.
This is probably the most misunderstood commercial Bollywood film of the 2000s. It takes so many risks and handles a very complex topic with sensitivity and maturity which is highly unexpected of a Karan Johar film.
It's a film that focusses on two downright miserable and pathetic characters, who basically bond because of their insecurities and then doesn't glorify them or justify their actions.The writing constantly reminds us how flawed they are and how much they are hurting their spouses by their sheer cowardice and lack of spine.
Even when the film gets them together in the end, Karan Johar makes it a point to show us that their spouses are so much better off without them, and sometimes divorce is the correct answer.
And this in 2006!
Manjhi: The Mountain Man (2015)
Misjudged and surprisingly unmoving
This story had all the right ingredients to make an engrossing, moving, spiritual tale of how a man, driven by the loss of his wife stands against the system, the government and the world in order to literally face a mountain and beat it.
The real life story is truly inspirational and it is a shame that the movie we get here is disjointed, tonally all over the place and excessively melodramatic. Ketan Mehta seems to have fallen in love with the love story so much that it dominates the whole fabric of the movie.
The first half seems to be devoted to this overtly bollywoodish love story which seems jarringly out of place and moreover the motivation of the main character over the course of the movie moves from being love lost to some bollywood version of obsession - this is what hurts the movie the most.
His mental state, his fight with the elements- both internal and external and his quest for justice and equality to the villagers in the form if the road seems to get lost. The director throws in topical political and social issues like caste system in Bihar, oppression by landlords, child marriages, emergency in India, rich poor divide but he is not able to follow through on these and connect it with the ongoing narrative. They seem like afterthoughts mostly.
The emotional power of the film is only because of the acting of Nawazuddin which is just exemplary. Even when the film fails around him, he is able to make us feel the earnestness, desperation and resolve of Manjhi - The Mountain Man.
This story deserved a better film.