La cagna (1972)

Ugh. What a piece of misogynistic pap.

Other reviews of La cagna (literally, The Bitch, though the international title is Liza) have mentioned it being "highly symbolic" - but surely the director, Marco Ferreri, could have made these same symbolic points using a less rubbish story.

Liza (Catherine Deneuve) and Giorgio (Marcello Mastroianni) are directionless misfits, fleeing from society in an ad hoc, haphazard way. They both end up on a tiny, remote island in the Mediterranean - Liza having swam away from her friend's yacht, Giorgio having established himself as a hermit there with his dog, Melampo. Shortly after Liza's arrival, they "fall in love" - or something, at least. Giorgio then drives Liza back to civilization in his motorboat. Liza then promptly returns, kills Melampo, and takes the dog's place.

There are obvious, striking similarities between this and Lina Wertmuller's far superior Swept Away - the remote island setting, the sadomasochistic love affair, even the actors' looks. But what Wertmuller achieves is a subversion and criticism of La Cagna's central conceit: bourgeois ennui, and how men and women react to it by retreating into primal roles of dominance and submission. Heck, even the uneven Adam Resurrected, which featured a similar nurse/patient, dog/master-roleplaying love affair, was more subtle than this. Both Wertmuller and, to an extent, Adam Resurrected satirized this patriarchal fantasy of "natural"/"savage"/"in the wild" gender roles - La cagna instead embraces them, presenting them as the real thing, as enviable, even.

La cagna also unfortunately relies on lobby room jazz muzak coupled with moody shots of Mastroianni and Deneuve to denote profound philosophical depths. But honestly, Ferreri's not fooling anyone: the characters are paper-thin, the attempts at backstory sloppy and unconvincing ("Ludwig is wrong! No, Ludwig is wrong!" Liza insists - sparing us who Ludwig is or what he's wrong about; the blunt flashback to Melampo as Giorgio crouches over another dead dog - how much more obvious do you need to be? WE GET IT). There's no sense of how much time is passing, no investment in the relationship, and no build and release of dramatic tension. Instead, we trudge along with inane dialogue and, at its worst, tediously stupid gender politics. And those sunglasses! Self-described "Robinson Crusoe" Giorgio springs for Yves Saint Laurent sneakers, but not sunglasses? Oh, come on.

No, we're sorry, but we really don't care about Giorgio's deep guilt over his abandoned, unstable family at home and their bourgeois restrictions on his creativity. Melampo - Pinocchio's dog - may indicate that Giorgio is Pinocchio, but Peter Pan might be more appropriate.

La tête en friche (2010)

La tête en friche (My Afternoons with Margueritte) tries to be a charming sketch of bittersweet village life, but instead it falls flat. It was just embarrassing.

In a small town somewhere in France, the stout Germain (a gone-to-seed Gérard Depardieu) unwillingly occupies the position of village idiot. Slow to read, slow with numbers and painfully conscious of this, Germain spends his days trying to find simple pleasures - his vegetable garden, his girlfriend, drinks with the mates - and trying to keep at bay the ridicule and disdain of the other villagers and, most especially, his indifferent, shrewish mother (Claire Maurier). Things take an upturn when he befriends the coquettish, patient, 95-year-old Margueritte (Gisèle Casadesus), and they spend their lunches sitting on the park bench, reading Camus to each other. Under Margueritte's loving care, Germain gets (1) the mother he wanted, and (2) the confidence to blossom like a little intellectual flower.

The core of the story is sweet enough, and might have made a charming piece. Instead, things are handled so bluntly that we wondered if the film wasn't trying to go all meta on Germain's bumbling, clumsy ham-fisting. Example: the distracting and unnecessary flashbacks, where a school-age Germain - in the same outfit! and the same haircut! - is regularly mocked by his teachers and mother for being slow. Or Margueritte and Germain's execrably banal conversations. Or the fact that Depardieu, bless him, is about thirty years too old for this part, and his relationship with the beautiful bus driver, Annette (Sophie Guillemin), strains credulity. Or their awful (AWFUL) pillow talk. Or the Italian stereotype, Gardini (François-Xavier Demaison), complete with oily hair and hands flying around.

French films about the honest, humble "la vie est belle!" glory of the village have been done before - and, presumably, there must be some good ones. But all the ones we've seen - this, Chocolat, Amélie - rely on a sort of maudlin sentimentality, as well as a romanticized notion of the rich, golden-toned Frenchness of living in France, that we can't stand. Let Nanni Moretti glorify the mundane and the good life.

Speakeasy (2002)

We were kind of hoping Speakeasy would be a hidden gem, something demonstrating the grassroots screenwriting talent that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's Project Greenlight was supposed to uncover. Unfortunately, Speakeasy - the runner-up for Project Greenlight's first year - demonstrates only how mediocre and uninspired screenwriting can be.

Failed magician Bruce (David Strathairn) lives a monotonous, suburban existence with his wife, Sophie (Stacy Edwards), and scrappy black labrador. One day, he gets in a minor traffic accident with Frank (Nicky Katt), a pawn shop owner, and they become friends. Sophie's father (Arthur Hiller) is deaf and Sophie doesn't like this - in fact, she's not on speaking terms with him. Frank's daughter (Gage Golightly) is also deaf, but Frank is OK with this. One day, a former classmate of Sophie's, now a successful psychiatrist, Dr. Addams (Christopher McDonald), starts flirting with Sophie and giving her informal therapy sessions at the local coffee shop.

The writing and direction, both by Brendan Murphy, crawl along with amateur aimlessness - the tone is indistinct, the point mysterious. At times, we sensed that it was going for an American Beauty-type vibe of quirky, semi-philosophical cynicism. But we really can't be too sure, since the music was so campy and the writing so full of lazy clichés. Some melodrama is weakly injected via Sophie's "therapy" - where she relates the various traumas of her youth, and Dr. Addams becomes a caricature of jealousy - but it's forced and inorganic.

Such a shame! That moody, red-lit poster deceived us - we had imagined all sorts of grimy, exciting storylines full of envelope-pushing, slightly surreal ideas. You know: David Strathairn is a unicorn hunter addicted to magical space glitter; his ladyfriend is only one incarnation of a hive mind. Music by The Mars Volta. Dystopian. SOMETHING LIKE THAT. ANYTHING. Not this unimaginative pap.

Never Let Me Go (2010)

Never Let Me Go, the anemic adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's famous book of the same name, puts all its money in a sort of fuzzy, idyllic, Cotswold-saturated nostalgia, and unfortunately it's a waste. Much like the protagonist who waits for people to break up or die, we waited… and waited… and waited for this movie to end.

Ostensibly a dystopia, though we'll remain spoiler-free, the tale is set in recent-past England, and it's a typical look at lost love and wistful childhood memories that abound in other films about the English being bad at love: Atonement springs immediately to mind, with the same country manor setting for a love triangle that goes on for the characters' entire lives. Though another Ishiguro adaptation, Remains of the Day, is also very similar.

Kathy (Izzy Meikle-Small as a child, the cute Carey Mulligan as an adult), Ruth (Ella Purnell as a child, Keira Knightley as an adult) and Tommy (Charlie Rowe as a child, Andrew Garfield as an adult) are students at your Standard English Boarding School - where they frolic in the fields, hide buttons in their little tin boxes, and play deadly amorous games with each other. This could be any other film about the posh and heartbroken, what with their inhibited half-confessions and epic yearning. They grow up, they pine. Some slightly sci-fi stuff happens, but the movie isn't too concerned about it - it's essentially just another way to drive the same point home. And in case you still had any doubts about what, indeed, the point of all this is, Kathy helpfully TELLS YOU THE MORAL OF THE STORY in the end. Thanks, K!

Few films accurately capture the poignant, impermanent transcendence of an English countryside - our recently reviewed A Month in the Country is one of them. Few films know what to do with love too, it seems, and Never Let Me Go presents us with the same fairy tale we've been watching since Disney: pre-pubescent "true love" that lasts a lifetime, the virgin vs. whore (with the whore meeting her usual end), people who are static, unchanging and yearning, YEARNING, so painfully, ALL THE TIME.

Which is not to say that statically yearning unreconstructed romantics aren't occasionally fun. But when their Truly Tragical Romanticness is driven home with a hammer by the director (here, Mark Romanek), we get bored and a little insulted. We get it! We can't help compare Romanek unfavorably to our recent worshipee, John Sayles: in John Sayles's Limbo, there is a stock "nightmare torment angst" scene when tragic fisherman Jumpin' Joe comes awake with a gasp, causing lounge singer Donna to awake and ask what's wrong. A shaken Joe comments only that you can't always save people. END SCENE. DONE. We got it! Great! In Never Let Me Go, there is a stock "sensitive boy has tragical rage angst" scene, which is long, and detailed, and milked for all its juicy tragicalness. We get it! We get it already!

THIS REVIEW WAS ABOUT THE MOVIE NEVER LET ME GO AND HOW WE DIDN'T LIKE IT VERY MUCH. BUT IT'S NOT REALLY A REVIEW ABOUT A MOVIE AT ALL; IT'S ABOUT LIFE. PERHAPS IF ONLY WE HAD VALUED THE PRECIOUS MOMENTS WE HAD ON THIS EARTH WE WOULD NEVER HAVE WATCHED IT/WE WOULD HAVE LIVED LIFE MORE COMPLETELY/LESS TRAGICALLY. SO MANY REGRETS!
(the book!)

Caos Calmo (2008)

Caos Calmo (Quiet Chaos), the weirdly derivative film starring Nanni Moretti as yet another grieving parent, is bad, people. Just bad.

It's also weird. Weird because it is so derivative - essentially a lesser, paler, crappier copy of the far, far superior The Son's Room, a film directed and starring Nanni Moretti, and the film for which he won the Palme D'Or back in 2001. In Caos Calmo, Moretti returns, seven years later, with much the same parlor tricks: a sudden death of a loved one leading to warmly nihilistic despair, meandering through the comfortable Italian bourgeoise, Silvio Orlando wringing his hands in anxiety, some unexpected pop tunes, and some sex (not with Silvio Orlando).

All these things came together to form a cohesive, bright, beautiful thing in The Son's Room, a film which left us in a sheen of brilliance for years and years. Yes, it was that good. It makes you love humanity, for the love of… humanity. And it makes grief something dignified and heroic, something tragic and pure. It made us cry so, so much.

Caos Calmo, instead, nearly bored us to tears. After Pietro's (Nanni Moretti) wife dies unexpectedly, Pietro - a top man in some sort of fancy film distribution company - spends his days sitting on the bench outside of his young daughter's school. There, he makes flimsy connections with the local characters. Let the healing begin?

Nanni Moretti's father figure here seemed selfish, vapid and whiny - quite a feat considering how naturally charismatic Moretti normally is for us. But his ordeal is nebulous and ill-defined: a loved one has died, but he doesn't feel bad? He didn't love her and he feels guilty? She was crazy? No wait, his sister-in-law was crazy? …What?

It's all a big, unfocused mess, without a single redeeming feature. Like The Son's Room, it clocks in at under 90 minutes, but - unlike The Son's Room - these 90 minutes feel like a plod. If you're looking for charming, humanistic, recent-ish Italian films, steer clear of this one, skippers, and point your vessels to other, better fare such as The Son's Room (DID YOU GET THAT? THE SON'S ROOM, RIGHT HERE), Caro Diario or The Best of Youth.

Daybreakers (2009)

What is it with vampires these days?

Daybreakers is the logical conclusion of our current pop obsession (popsession?) with vampires. Told from their viewpoint, they are the mainstream, the norm, the mundane. They are the bureaucratic drones and the police force. In other words, they are The Man.

The year is 2019, and it's been ten years since this film's release the outbreak of vampiritis. Since then, most people have turned into yellow-eyed undead with prominent canines. The blood of humans is quickly running out, and the few humans left are farmed in big Harkonnen-style warehouses owned by the Sam Neill Corporation of Exploitation. In other words, The Man.

Into this dystopian setting we thrust the usual bureaucratic minion, Edward Cullen Dalton (Ethan Hawke and his cheekbones). Edward is a sensitive, thoughtful pacifist/feminist/insert your sensitive, thoughtful cause here, and he's gone vegetarian. Unfortunately, not drinking human blood makes you turn into a ye olde vampire, the silent film kind, complete with no hair and horrible wings. Edward's brother, police force Frankie (Michael Dorman), severely disapproves of this counterculture tendencies. Edward himself feels pretty lost, until he bumps into the Requisite Female Emancipator, this time a human named (apparently) Audrey (Claudia Karvan), who introduces him to the man (did you read that, right? MAN. it's a MAN, people! the ladies get no love anywhere, it seems) who purports to have found the "cure" for vampiritis. By the way, this man is played by Willem Dafoe.

So there you have it! Is it worth the price of admission or the price of a DVD? Not really. It's a popcorn-churning, bloodgushing B-movie that delights in itself with some self-aware levity (did we mention vampires explode when a stake goes through their hearts? THEY EXPLODE.), though it never manages to break into truly eye-opening weirdness or truly coherent satire. What oppressed class are the humans supposed to be? We thought they were tuna or salmon for much of the film.

Ethan Hawke is a boring hero; imagine Keanu Reeves on a lot of Valium. Our beloved Sam Neill is his usual glorious self, though he does get involved in a very questionable sequence involving his human renegade daughter (Isabel Lucas), Policeman Frankie and a sort of Medieval "I sell you my daughter's virginity" prison rape. Was this eroticized vampirism and dodgy morals supposed to stick it to the Twilight people? Maybe.

Actually, the whole movie feels like an un-Twilight: a reaction to and play against the tired old vampire tropes that seem so pervasive in our fantasy genre these days. While it doesn't take itself as seriously as Twilight, and therefore is slightly less ridiculous, it still takes itself way too seriously: it is, after all, about a brooding vampire anti-hero stuck in the grind of a desaturated life. A little more sparkly color and slapstick might have been a better choice (or a little more feminism/postcolonialism; just sayin'). Overall, it's a C+: not as crafty and clever as other, better B-horrors (Shaun of the Dead, the almighty Slither), but not horrible either.

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

For a movie about leaping around the time-space continuum, The Time Traveler's Wife doesn't really go anywhere. We mean that both figuratively - no narrative arc, no challenge, no resolution, no point - and literally - the time traveler always revisits the same moments in his life, over and over again.

The story is based on the popular debut novel by Audrey Niffenegger, and unfortunately much of the book's lack of substance is transferred onto the screen. It's like a Pringles tube. You eat and eat, but never feel satisfied. It takes a very promising idea and does nothing with it. But the idea is interesting, if familiar, enough to make you want to see this particular permutation through. We remember reading the entire 546-pages in one feverish afternoon. But in the end - we felt swindled out of our time. "So what?"

Henry (Eric Bana) is your pretty standard bobo, with his family angst (Mom the opera singer died in a freak accident, Dad the concert violinist drinks so much he has the DTs), punk/post-punk tastes (Joy Division as performed by Broken Social Scene!), arty friends and love of jogging. He lives in Chicago, too! Daaaa trendy. Henry's also got a weird genetic disorder - "chrono-impairment" - that means he is occasionally flung backward and forward in time, landing naked and bewildered. These jumps can last seconds, hours or even weeks, and Henry has learned to live with them. He's now an ace at breaking into stores, stealing clothes, and finding shelter.

The time-jumps also always center around certain significant events or people in Henry's life. An obvious moment is Mom's accident, but another oft-visited node is Clare (Rachel McAdams), the love of Henry's life. Clare is the titular "wife" and, since she was six years old, Henrys of various ages have come to visit her in the field behind her house. She fell in love with her husband before the first date.

And that's basically it. Henry lives, Henry loves, Henry time travels. Henry is greatly inconvenienced by his time traveling, but... that's all. Henry and Clare happily adhere to their predetermined fates, not worrying too much about free will (though they pay some lip service to it) or paradoxes.

Worse than its superficiality is the film's (and the book's) hypocritical hipness. In one scene, Henry warns his father that Clare's dad is "a Republican" - oh no. Gomez (a wasted Ron Livingston) is seen walking out of a Pavement concert. And everyone is artistic and has great taste. But doesn't being alternative and hip mean, you know, challenging the conservative status quo? Instead of, uh, propagating it? Because the Time Traveler's Wife is fundamentally and insidiously patriarchal (if the title doesn't give it away or anything). Clare's life revolves entirely around Henry: his problematic time traveling, his fate and his desires. She (literally) is taught as a child that she will fall in love with him, and so she... just does - grinning like an idiot the whole time. Her main ambitions in life - meeting Henry, marrying Henry, having Henry's child, holding on to Henry - provide the merest whisps of narrative urgency in this pointless exercise. While Henry nobly tries to emancipate Clare - "I don't want you to spend your whole life waiting for me!" - the final words of the film are Clare's: how she likes to imagine that he's there, in that field, all the time, even when he's not.

Woman! Get a life!

Sci-fi romance is probably our favorite genre, but it seems like it's very hard to get right. Sci-fi has traditionally been very male-centric, and this story - despite being written by a woman - suffers from that old problem. Clare doesn't really exist apart from Henry, she has no real personality except the one that she performs for Henry's benefit. We get no sense of Clare's (or Henry's, for that matter) individuality. Furthermore, the two seem particularly brainless for not making even the slightest attempt to question this great, looping paradox they're living in. They love each other... because in the future they love each other? At one point, we wondered if this film (and the book) was some sort of existential nihilist thing - give man new powers and perspective and he still falls into the comforting patterns, remaining ignorant of the whole Point. But that's probably giving this too much credit.

Overall, it's the kind of thing you have trouble not watching - it's so shiny and full of potential - but it's pretty much rubbish. At least Benjamin Button, which was a similar flatline plot, was trying to get a point across.

Event Horizon (1997)

Whereas if the film did any little bit of business in America, if the film did some decent bit of business, then Hollywood would take it, and they'd remake it, and they'd up the budget by 50 million and it'd be called, “The Room With A View of Hell!”
- Eddie Izzard

It's ironic, since Eddie was talking about American remakes of British films, and the cultish pulp monster Event Horizon is a British "of Hell!" to a Russian "Room With a View".


When you're gonna steal iconic images: steal from the best! Solaris.


Blade Runner.

Why did we ever like this silly, disgusting gross-fest that inadvertently lampoons far superior entries into the whole mystery and terror of space subgenre? We think much of it has to do with its high levels of Sam Neilliness - Sam Neill sweating into his bedsheets! Sam Neill floating in a classy spacesuit! Sam Neill losing his shirt! - or does it go the other way around? Do we worship at the altar of Sam Neill because of this terrible film? It was on television an awful lot back in the 90s.

In 2040, Earth launched its first deep space vessel, the Event Horizon, a ship that was supposed to achieve faster-than-light travel using nifty space-bending stuff (Sam Neill thought of that, Simon Pegg didn't!). Instead, it never got past Neptune, where it just went dead in the water, lilting lazily to the side. Now, seven years later, a team of scrappy, reluctant pseudo-military types, led by man o' the people Captain Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and frosty intellectual Doctor Awkward (Sam Neill!), go for the rescue mission.


For long flights, such as those over the Pacific.


The best, most visually fun sequence in the film.

The rescuers do find the Event Horizon, and when they do, plasmic hell goo (literally) starts splashing everywhere, quickly followed by blood, guts and sanity. In an early scene, the laddish military types are resentful to brainy Sam Neill for dragging them into this mess - and their anti-intellectual sulking is later justified: yes, it really all was Sam Neill's fault.

Of course, in an early scene, likable tech officer Peters (a youthful Kathleen Quinlan) also likens a former crewmate to a "corpsicle" - and that pretty much sets the tone of this film. With utter seriousness, a sort of ultra-grim melody supplied by overachieving eyebrows, frosty irises and moody intonations, this film wallows in the most ludicrous scenarios. It seems to have no self-awareness at all; it doesn't realize how over-the-top it is. Instead, it goes for A-grade horror - something it only intermittently achieves, such as the glorious sequence in the green vent - when it should really be basking in B-grade silliness. On paper this is the stuff of Ghostbusters, but - alas - when choosing the form of their destructor, they went for eyeless dead wives instead of a giant marshmallow man.


What is the purpose of long spikes in the engine room? Just, you know, wondering.

So should it be watched? Only at your own peril! We kind of perversely enjoyed watching it in groups when it would be on TV, if only so we could crow at Sam Neill and then make big noises of shock when the bloody stuff begins. But it's not a particularly good film, so we can't really recommend it. It seems much more intent on pushing the boundaries of gore and dressing these up in some visual references to better films, instead of, you know, investing some more thought into the plot.

Under the Mountain (2009)

The low-budget fantasy, Under the Mountain, is an endearingly imperfect and low-key production. Based on a popular Kiwi YA book by Maurice Gee, it clocks in at a rushed 90 minutes - though we reckon something like five hours would have been enough to do the story justice. Instead, this film feels slipshod, with some very dodgy acting, a hasty narrative and a weak conclusion. Despite all this, we kinda liked it. Like, liked it a lot. It was cuddly. It featured Sam Neill. And New Zealand. And blue lakes. And volcanoes. Anyone up for a hug?

Twins Theo (Tom Cameron, awful but sweet) and Rachel (Sophie McBridge, a bit better) share that special twinly connection of telepathy and feeling what the other feels. One day, they come home to find that their mother has been killed in an accident. As Rachel reaches out in her grief, Theo shuts down - he cuts himself off from the twinliness, leaving Rachel alone in silence. Giving their father time to mourn, they are shipped off to live with their Uncle Cliff (Matthew Chamberlain) and Aunt Kay (Michaela Rooney) in Auckland. Guided by their cousin Ricky (Leon Wadham), they explore the mighty volcanoes surrounding Auckland city, marvel at the dilapidated house across the lake owned by the mysterious Wilberforces, and meet a crusty old man who yells at them. This old geezer is none other than Mr. Jones (SAM NEILL) - and, when Theo finds a 19th century picture featuring a not-much-younger Mr. Jones in his Volcanoes textbook, he realizes that Mr. Jones isn't just a crazy curmudgeon. What is up?


Not Weasleys.


The Uglies from the Planet Crap and their ill-tended yard.

Something is up! Like beyond orbit up! It's a (hilarious, unintentionally) doozy of interstellar warfare and colonizing alien species and "twinness". Mr. Jones is the last surviving extraterrestrial expat of a race of Fire Raisers (think Avatar: The Last Airbender, but they only come in pairs). Back in the day (like, waaaaay back in the day), the Fire Raisers warred with the squiggly race of crappy aliens, now embodied in the Wilberforces (think The Matrix's Agent Smith mated with Predator). Then a third alien race came in - okay, we got hazy here - called the Gargantuans, or maybe just Gargantua, and they were trapped by - the Fire Raisers? the Wilberforces? Sam Neill's Sam Neilliness? well, something - under Auckland's seven volcanoes. The mother Gargantua, a kind of Grendel thing with rhinestones for eyes, currently slumbers under the mightiest of the peaks: Rangitoto Island (Māori for "bloody sky").


By our powers combined!

And only twins can defeat the Wilberforces and the Gargantua(n)s! After giving Theo and Rachel some very handsome oversized pebbles - Fire Raiser weaponry - Mr. Jones stresses, in that particularly grumpy way of his, that the only thing that's special about Theo and Rachel is their twinness, and they have to channel this twinness if they ever hope to survive. Theo's like, "Yeah, whatever," and Rachel's like, "What happened to your twin, Mr. Jones? And all the other twins before us who attempted this feat?" and Mr. Jones is like, "THEY DIED."

The acting, especially coming from the younger actors, is terrible. Just dreadful. The pacing is also slow. The cuts are awkward, and the background score seems to have its own ideas about how the story should go. Sam Neill channels his most ultra-serious avatar, often bordering on the camp (especially when he hobbles around and growls about dead alien races). The Wilberforces, while unnerving with their Predator-like jaws and slimy exoskeletons, were also quite funny as an ancient alien race that never quite got the hang of grammar ("Make them dead!" being a good one, though we also enjoyed "Then I will observe you to die, ho ho ho!").


"They? Oh, they died horrible, drawn-out deaths," he wheezed. Yay!

Yet DESPITE ALL THIS, we cannot stress this enough, we deeply enjoyed this film. We are, of course, completely biased by our wild fondness for New Zealand and Sam Neill and young adult fantasy. But it was like Madeleine L'Engle cookies marinated in Sam Neill sauce (which sounds gross, but he even does the thing where he arches his eyebrows and glares crazily and intones some pronouncement on our DOOM). It was like a fuzzy blanket of Kiwi comfort. We just know that if we were 11-year-old Kiwi schoolgirls (as we are, on the inside), we would love the idea of sleeping alien beasts lying beneath Auckland's craters.

"But what if I don't feel any particular fondness for Sam Neill or New Zealand or aliens, PPCC?" you may ask. "What then?"

Well, since we cannot fathom such a bizarre, unnatural perspective, you're on your own. But for the rest of you: beautiful, beautiful trash. (Oh yeah, and since it's a kid's film, we think this is okay for 9-year-olds and up. Or maybe particularly badass 6-year-olds.)

(the soundtrack! the best we could do in American Amazon)

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

The planets have aligned in such a way these days that the PPCC finds itself watching movie after movie featuring classical horror themes. Zombies, ghosts (and their busters), and now, vampires and werewolves seem to be our lot, and we're not entirely averse, maybe because we never really paid much attention to these strange creatures and their comical ways.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans fell in our To Watch list because it features Michael Sheen, who impressed us so much with his performance in The Damned United that we became ravenous for more. We were furthermore encouraged because Bill Nighy, the lovely and wonderful, also featured. Unfortunately, it wasn't really worth it. We were so bored by the end of this mindless, endless, 90-minute junk food that we felt not unlike vampire Viktor (Bill Nighy) when he meets sunlight: fizzling away into a blackened crust of our former selves.

Set in an unplaceable Gothic wonderland filmed in various shades of blue, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans tells the story of the nobly laboring Lycans (werewolves) and their evil vampire overlords. While the bastardly vampires, led by Viktor, are all icy irises and hissing lisps, the werewolves toil with oily hair and oily muscles. And everyone is in black leather. The Lycan Spartacus, Lucian (Michael Sheen), is the only character afforded any warm colors as his muscly torso glistens in various firelights while he plots the slave uprising.


Our hero! Hairy, the Nobly Naked.


Our distressed damsel! Lady Poutsalot.


Our dastardly villain! Bill Nighy, the Vampire Guy.

Yes, it's all vaguely eroticized in an S&M way, and indeed the studly Lucian is carrying on an illicit affair with Viktor's daughter, the sword-wielding, perma-pouting Sonja (Rhona Mitra). Their love, which already kinda disgusted us to begin with, is furthermore grossified by the vampire elite comparing it to the unholy love child (no pun intended) of bestiality and incest. (There's some hazy stuff about a shared heritage between the two groups, except that the werewolf side of the family, well, look like dogs.)

After interminable fight scenes, numerous escapes and re-captures, and Lucian getting (sexily?) whipped or Lucian (sexily?) transforming back into human form only to find all his clothes are missing (!), this film finally grinds to a halt. We couldn't have been happier.

Performance-wise, Michael Sheen flexes his muscles - especially the ones in his neck - and delivers some vague sparks of life. He submits a few meltdowns, which the PPCC always accepts with pleasure, but otherwise he is saddled with a cardboard hero role in a cardboard movie. Rhona Mitra likewise pouts and sulks and sometimes, refreshingly, lops people's heads off, but even this token feminism doesn't redeem an otherwise typical damsel-in-distress. Around her, characters start saying things like "My lady!" and "My love!", and she even ends up under house arrest. Only her hairy, snarling knight can save her! Bill Nighy, who is making a (great!) career out of playing slightly off-center, slightly sniffily posh old lords is his usual demented self. We amused ourselves with imagining his performance as Viktor to be a natural extension of his performance in Love, Actually.


Two-flavored meltdown: the human flavor.


And the beastly flavor.

Theme-wise, with all the bizarre sexualization that vampires must endure (and werewolves?! only one werewolf is allowed to be attractive, and that is Remus Lupin!), we wondered a bit about this film's relationship to the highly popular and highly Victorian Twilight series, with all its virginal angst. Unfortunately, we soon lost interest in that comparison, as we lost interest in this film entirely. Goodness, at least Twilight has a kickin' soundtrack! Maybe a bonus track by Thom Yorke would have woken us up, as clearly even Michael Sheen screaming enough to pop a blood vessel only barely roused us from nodding off.

Well, we can't fix the film, but we can make sure this review isn't boring anymore. Enjoy!

All the Best: Fun Begins (2009)

Yet another Hindi comedy where the big joke is pretending Woman X is not actually Man X's, she's actually Man Y's?

Intermission walk-out. Don't waste your time.

Do Knot Disturb (2009)

David Dhawan's Do Knot Disturb, a remake of the French film La doublure, is much as you would expect: a low-brow comedy filled with the usual stereotypes of the adulterous husband, the saucy temptress, and an assortment of goofy, lusty supporting characters making pratfalls while they chase after supermodels. It reminded us, actually, very strongly of something Italian actor/director Cristian De Sica would have made - think Merry Christmas, in particular - and indeed Govinda seemed to be channeling De Sica with his smarmy, middle-aged bumbling infidelities. Maybe because of this familiar vibe, or maybe because our expectations were rock bottom, or maybe because Ranvir Shorey has a small role, or maybe because one of the songs was quite catchy, we actually found ourselves mildly enjoying this film!


Govinda made good use of his cheesy smile, and Sushmita Sen of her "don't waste my time" vibe.

The story opens with smarmy, middle-aged Raj (Govinda), who is harried both by the demands of his gorgeous wife (Sushmita Sen) and the demands of his gorgeous lover, Dolly (Lara Dutta). When Raj is inadvertently photographed with Dolly one day, he concocts an elaborate story that the third person in the photo - a clumsy waiter (Ritesh Deshmukh) - is actually Dolly's boyfriend. In order to give credence to the story, he hires the waiter to play the part. The waiter - who is Dolly's biggest fan (Dolly has a job?) - is only too happy to oblige. Yet Mrs. Raj suspects anyway, and so sends her devoted friend (Ranvir Shorey) as detective to investigate the waiter-Dolly pair. Meanwhile, an increasingly jealous Raj also sends his own detective to make sure things don't go too far. Pretty lame jokes ensue.


The photo in question.


Goodness - compare Govinda in this pic to De Sica in the third pic on the Merry Christmas review. They went to the same school of acting!

Much like De Sica's Merry Christmas, this story is funny in its moments of zany, absurdist comedy (De Sica's tongue piercing sequence, Govinda's suddenly shrill falsetto), but is pretty dull in its attempts at more racy humor. At least, how many double entendres can you make about plugs and outlets? TVs and DVD players? God, spare me. Thankfully, the bathroom humor didn't go too far - always a risk in movies like this. Instead, it played it safe - although this is a comedy about infidelity, it's actually quite tame (or, at least, juvenile) in its handling of sex and seduction. The one rare moment when it all fell together and actually worked as a sort of joyous celebration of love-making was in the very catchy song, Zulfaen Khol Khal Ke, sung between Govinda and Lara Dutta in their Presidential Suite (of adultery! and sitars!). The fun and frollic of these two - both actors who we're quite fond of - was just charming! And gosh, Govinda's dance moves!

Which segues nicely to the performances and other stuff. As we said, we're actually quite fond of the entire cast here - Govinda, Lara Dutta, Sushmita Sen and Ranvir Shorey are always fun to watch. Rajpal Yadav was, as expected, way over-the-top and played very hammily to the "front bench". The songs ranged from fairly "meh" to peppy enough that we were ready to dance out of our seats (the previously mentioned Zulfaen Khol Khal Ke, and the bhangra New Year's number). David Dhawan's direction made fab use of energetic cross-cuts - this actually kept things moving quite nicely when the plot and forced humor threatened to drag everything down. Overall, a C effort - not terrible, but nothing to go out of your way for.

Angels & Demons (2009)

Oy with the Photoshop.

After seeing the trailer, we thought Angels & Demons might be stupid and fun. Halfway into the film, we worried that it might be dangerously, possibly even destructively stupid and definitely not fun. Finishing the film, we concluded that (1) yes, it was pretty stupid, but not dangerously so, and (2) it was not fun.

Usually trashy Vatican corruption stories are fun. At least, for us (insert heathen disclaimer). See, for example, the story of Pope Alexander VI and his illegitimate son, Cesare Borgia (who, by the way, was made a Cardinal at 18, led the Papal Armies and was Machievelli's inspiration for The Prince). We at the PPCC have a strong Italian component in our DNA, and this provokes a tendency in us to wallow in Renaissance history as (1) the height of good aesthetics and Italian culture, and (2) tabloid-style, Papal corruption. But we can't always party like it's 1492. And there comes a time - namely, today - when we have to admit that maybe it's over. The Holy See is just not the significant political force it used to be, with all the accompanying Machiavellian machinations that drive us social scientists wild. Sure, Catholics around the world by definition still look to the Pope for spiritual guidance. But, in a multicultural, globalized world where the Mediterranean is no longer a political and economic center, most non-Catholics don't really care what the Vatican says or does anymore. Similarly, Italy is more and more being described as "beautiful, but useless" by Italians in films and amongst our homies. Alas. The days of decadent power and significance are gone.


Exploring the remaining cultural artifacts and rituals, however, is still pretty interesting.

Angels & Demons, however, seems to refuse to accept this post-Renaissance, post-Vatican reality. It attempts to smoosh together cosmological significance and political provocativeness by constructing an elaborate "war" between science - represented by CERN's Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland - and religion - represented by the Vatican. (Umm, all you other scientists and people from different religions need not apply. These two representatives have got everyone covered.) Of course, the fact that in reality the CERN scientists probably don't care what the Vatican does, the Vatican doesn't care what the CERN people do, and most people don't care about either doesn't seem to figure. Instead, based on this increasingly flimsy premise, we're supposed to believe that:

(1) Dropping anti-matter can spark an explosion somewhere between an atomic one and the Big Bang. More towards Big Bang. (Uh... dammit, man, we're a blog, not a physicist, but huh?)
(2) Radical anti-Vatican science-fundamentalist revival groups are allegedly wreaking havoc in Rome in order to... actually, the plot lost us on this one. Why all the trouble again? It had something to do with avenging Galileo.
(3) The only way to stop the havoc and the mini-Big Bang 2.0 is through the cunning deployment of ace Harvard symbologist, Robert Langdon (an aging, but still lovable, Tom Hanks).

Uh...?

We would accept this, well, stupid premise on the agreement that we would be given either hotties or action in return. We did get some hotties - specifically, Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favini, Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård (looking old too, but hotness relatively undiminished... especially in that trim, well-cut suit! v. flattering), and, most of all, Ewan McGregor channeling a sort of demented Obi-Wan Kenobi in a priest's suit. Looking v.v. good, Ewan!


Hottie #1: Pierfrancesco Favini. He gets all of... ten lines.


Hottie #2: Stellan Skarsgård. Are we alone on this one? Surely not. Well, maybe he's an alternative choice.


And HELLO.

Okay, before this devolves into pure Bridget Jones, getting back on track: ...

...actually, let's take just one more minute to marvel at Ewan McGregor's pure, unadulterated, Big Bang-style hotness.


Gratuitous Ewan shot. Yes, this blog has officially turned into Bridget Jones's Diary. Yes, we fail The Bechdel Test today.

(insert your own inappropriate physics joke here)

ANYway: we get some hotties, yes, as well as some token shots of our beloved Rome (but merely drops in the desert!), but instead of action, we just get blunt, gruesome carnage. This gratuitous, macabre focus on pushing the PG-13 bounds of what is acceptable mutilation to be seen onscreen left us feeling disgusted and upset. It was at this point - watching yet another detailed close-up of a corpse, while listening to ignorant ranting about "religion and science's ancient war" - that we worried about what it meant when trashy American films project such an apocalyptic, black-or-white, anti-rationalism, anti-compromise, ultra-violent mentality.

Thankfully, the day is saved and everyone agrees that everything was blown way out of proportion (no pun intended). We won't spoil it for you, but let's just say that Ewan factors prominently in fixing the situation and redeeming the film into more neutral (but still very trashy) waters for us. And no, it's not just because of that particularly way he bats his eyelashes, or because of that adorably fussy part in his hair. (Though that helps.)

Rishtey (2002)

Inoffensive and sweetly trashy, we didn't mean to watch all of Rishtey (Bonds)... but we ended up sticking with this film to the very end, cheering our beloved Anil Kapoor on as he boxed against an evil, towering white man named "Scorpio" (or, as Scorpio himself would prefer, "SCORPIOOOOOO! RAAAH!") in the film's finale. What can we say? Watching Anil Kapoor perform is like receiving a direct injection of opium to the heart. It's addictive, and we LOVE IT.

There were other addictive ingredients to Rishtey - plot twists reminiscent of the lovely Aa Gale Lag Jaa or the gloriously pulpy Calcutta Mail - as the film follows the beleaguered, working class Suraj (Anil Kapoor) in an extensive and violent custody battle against his evil, rich in-laws (led by Amrish Puri, of course). Suraj's brainless, estranged wife, Komal (Karisma Kapoor, lacking a lot of charisma indeed), gets entangled in her evil father's evil attempts to keep her apart from her loving husband and son because, as he sees it, it's better to be dead than poor. The film and we, the audience, naturally side with the poor all the way through - for example, Komal's family pad is a cheesy Art Deco mansion (yuck!), while Suraj and son live in maybe the coolest slum/chawl neighborhood ever (complete with Ferris wheel and a step well! in the middle of Mumbai!). Clearly interior decoration is a sign of moral righteousness, and tackiness is far from godliness! Throw in one PPCC audience stand-in, a plucky working class fish-seller, Vyjanti (Shilpa Shetty), who falls for Suraj big time and begins to see Anil's smiling face superimposed on random babies and butter-churners (insert your own comedy sequence here), and you have an enjoyable junk food film.


Pre-problems.

The best-made Custody Battle Hindi film, we reckon, is 1973's Aa Gale Lag Jaa (Come and Embrace Me), whose glorious gloriousness relies on the son and father's matching cutenesses. Master Tito and Shashi Kapoor were at the height of their adorableness in 1973 - and, heck, even the evil, rich father-in-law (Om Prakash) and easily-confused wife (Sharmila Tagore) were sympathetic.

Rishtey, unfortunately, is peopled by less charismatic types, all of whom are in their decline. Indeed, the entire film's quality rests on Anil Kapoor's shoulders. Thankfully, we love Anil Kapoor - BIG TIME - and we think his particular post-2000 brand of barrel-chested, mustachioed, father-as-superhero charisma is perfect for a role like this.

"Go, Anil, go!" we cheered, as he punched goons into orbit while bellowing No one touches my son!

"Awww!" we sighed, as he wept over the endless court cases and had various emotional breakdowns on the shoulder of his sympathetic Punjabi stereotype friend.


Mom?


Or Dad? Clearly Dad. Hello!

There was also an appealingly stupid side plot in which poor old Suraj, who used to compete in World Wrestling Federation-esque boxing matches (rings of fire! pits of spikes! artificial rain!), decides, damn it all, to perform one last time in order to get money to pay for the court fees. Or something. And all of this when, uh oh, Suraj's ancient injury from an old WWF match has left him with brain damage! "If you get hit right here again," the doctor informs Suraj, pointing to his forehead, "you may be paralyzed... or be left a vegetable... or DIE!" Of course, the evil father finds out about this and swiftly hires "SCORPIOOOOOOOOO! RAAAH!", a mercenary American WWF wrestler (not Mickey Rourke... alas), to punch Suraj repeatedly in the forehead.

Hmmm, a hardened ex-wrestler with a gooey center and Achilles-like weakness who, after familial estrangement, steps into the ring again for one final, possibly fatal fight? Clearly The Wrestler was a remake of Rishtey! We rest our case.

Music-wise, Suraj and Komal's love anthem, Har Taraf Tu Hi, was well-filmed and catchy - we've been singing, "Hai... hai-hai-hai-HAI chaahata ho itna tujhe!" all the way to the elevator and local Indian restaurant, where it's been playing on loop as well. And Anil's school-boy haircut in the song? The jerky posing? The columns?! The priceless.

And guess what sign we are? SCORPIOOOOOOO, RAAAH! Anil: plz make more boxing melodramas. Perhaps a remake of Crying Fist? We've already noted that Anil and Choi Min-Sik are the same person.

We love you, Anil Kapoor!!!

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

Where has the PPCC been this week? We'll tell you. We've been:

1. In the bathroom. We are trying (and failing) to drink the suggested three liters of water per day. I tell you, it's impossible! It cannot be done!
2. Developing a radical new theory of metaphysics based on an Obi-Wan Kenobi quote. (Seriously!)

In working on (2), when not busy with (1), we decided to revisit the classic sci-fi adventure, and the primary god of our idolatry, the Star Wars universe. Being completist types, we decided to begin at the beginning: the widely-considered low point of the series, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.


"Noooooo!" we hear the PPCC readership cry.

Now, first of all, we think all the hate and ridicule Phantom Menace has accumulated since its 1999 release is somewhat unmerited. Yes, it's bad. No, we don't know what a "phantom menace" means (a threat that doesn't actually exist?). But must it be so uncharitably vilified? In particular, we came to a surprising conclusion: Jar-Jar Binks is oddly funny once you give up on the film. Just give up. Let go. Then the humor will come. We-sa serious!!

Okay, so we-sa lying a little bit too (oh, doo-doo). We actually lost interest about forty minutes into the film, skipped forward to watch the magnificent lightsaber duel during the finale (wherein we pepped up quite a bit... go, John Williams!), and then quickly skipped even more forward to the lightsaber duel in the finale of Episode II - Attack of the Clones. Verdict: Episode I's lightsaber duel is more deliciously, magnificently glorious.


Obi-Wan: tragic Greek non-hero? Or tragic philosophical innovator? Essay coming soon to a PPCC near you!

Phantom Menace begins during a time of confusing political unrest in the galaxy. The gorgeous planet Naboo, a land of waterfalls, Renaissance Italian architecture, fantasy-novel throwback fashions and the dreaded Jar-Jar, is under a trade embargo (or something) by evil "Trade Federation" aliens carrying unfortunate "Asian stereotype" accents. George loses early points for Jar-Jar and the accents.

In come our dashing Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson, he of the interesting bone structure), and his "Padawan" learner, a young and clean-shaven Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor, he of the hot). The Jedi, nominally peacekeepers, look more like militaristic interventionists who choose to side with Naboo's Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman sometimes, Keira Knightley other times) because of some vague notions about sensing the "Dark Side of the Force" in the Trade Federation. It all sounds a bit Crusader-ish to us, but then we've never understood Jedi morality (more on that later).


The Jedi and their munchkin.

So: After a lot of indecipherable political stuff - in which one important player, Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), deftly maneuvers himself into power - and after a protracted detour on the sandy planet of Tatooine - wherein the (potential) "Chosen One" is identified in a cherub-like little slave boy, Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), much to Obi-Wan Kenobi's chagrin - we return to Naboo to settle the score between the Trade Federation and the Jedi-backed local government. The mysterious Darth Sidious (err... Ian McDiarmid, hello), semi-secret puppermaster behind the Trade Federation, sends his most badass Sith warrior, Darth Maul (Ray Park), to kick some Jedi butt. Which he does, with gusto! The film ends with the perfect set-up for the next five films:

1. Obi-Wan Kenobi is Anakin Skywalker's reluctant master. Fail forseen.
2. Anakin Skywalker worships the beautiful Queen Amidala. Double trouble!
3. No one knows who the powerful, evil Darth Sidious could possibly be, even though his main disguise is a hooded robe.

As a wee proto-PPCC, we never thought about Star Wars in any deep way. We just liked it, plain and simple. But now, with the keen, penetrating intellect of adulthood, we can shrewdly ask two important questions. These can be divided according to each trilogy:

1. Original trilogy (1977-1983): Why is the Empire considered so evil?
2. Prequel trilogy (1999-2005): Why are the Jedi considered so good?

There seems to be a stark moral dichotomy at work here, without any evidence to back things up. We just don't buy it, George!

Look: Both the Empire and the Jedi are powerful, violent and interventionist. Both of them use other planets in their galaxy-wide martial chess game. A lot of interesting talk has gone into how George Lucas added a strong touch of Zen to the Jedi - Yoda's teachings in Empire Strikes Back, for example. But what monastic order has its own characteristic weapon? Indeed, the Jedi seem to be much more samurai than Zen monks (Obi-Wan Kenobi was inspired by archetypal samurai actor Toshiro Mifune's character in The Hidden Fortress, and Mifune was apparently briefly considered for the role before it went to Alec Guinness). And the samurai were a class of politically-aligned warriors: not a moral order! So why all this moral indignation on the part of the Jedi? Are they a religion? They keep insinuating that an ultimate "good" is on their side... but their actions are just as morally ambiguous and politically motivated as any other group!

So there.


Apart from dressing in black and growling, what does this man do which is so evil? What does he do which the Jedi don't do? We just don't get it, man.

If there's one great thing that came out of Phantom Menace, apart from Ewan McGregor's spot-on interpretation of a soon-to-be-Alec-Guinness Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor seems to be the only one in the prequel trilogy who "gets" it, or are we distracted by his hotliness?) AND apart from the glorious sound effects during the Tatooine pod race (ka-chunk-chunk-chunk, whizzzz!), it was John Williams' bombastic, energizing score - in particular, the glorious track Duel of the Fates. And guess what! They're singing in Sanskrit! Yes, really. A Sanskrit translation of an ancient Welsh poem! How about that, eh? We can also say that Duel of the Fates is great for pumping iron in the gym: as a friend of ours once said, it "makes you want to punch someone" (he was actually talking about Simba's return to Pride Rock in Lion King, but the feeling is similar - get pumped!).


Even just a single picture, such as this one, gets the PPCC positively pumped. Daaaa-daaaaa! Daaaa-DAAAAAA! DA-DAAAAAAAA!

Completely unrelated, but worth a mention: We're reading Roberto Saviano's disturbing book about the Neopolitan mafia, Gomorrah, and we came across this passage:

A well-calibrated nickname, such as Francesco Schiavone's famous, ferocious Sandokan, can make or break the media fortune of a boss. He earned it for his resemblance to Kabir Bedi, the [Indian!] star of the Italian television series Sandokan, the Tiger of Malaysia, based on Emilio Salgari's novel.

First we discover that Roshan Seth once starred in an Italian mini-series about Aldo Moro, and now this! Cultural cross-fertilization, indeed.

Bulandi (2000)

The blundering Bulandi suffers from a narrow-minded worldview, an idiotic storyline and inevitable comparisons with the far, far superior Virasat. Like Virasat, Bulandi is an epic tale of rural India, told from the perspective of a divided village's noble thakur, played - yet again - by Anil Kapoor. Yet despite excellent cinematography and a gorgeous setting - similar to Virasat's - this film's attempts to tackle the same East/West cultural dilemmas are irritatingly simple-minded. Whereas Virasat acknowledged the East/West tensions and ultimately demonstrated how both Western individualism or Eastern communalism can be morally problematic, Bulandi falls back on the tired, regressive cliché where all that is Indian is morally pure and all that is Western is morally corrupt. Even more annoyingly, women are once again presented as the vehicles of Western temptation and weakness. Oh, come on! Furthermore, an unnecessary comedy sideplot starring Paresh Rawal slows and cheapens the narrative (most of the jokes are incest-based), and the comic book villain (Shakti Kapoor) felt similarly tacked on in a feeble attempt to pump up the narrative. We can only imagine that this film was made in an attempt to redo the formula which worked for Virasat - rural setting, Anil Kapoor as thakur, remake of a South Indian film, discuss culture and other lofty things. Understandable, since Virasat was such a good film. Too bad Bulandi isn't. Like waaaaay isn't.


Pretty shot, no? Well, enjoy it 'cause that's all you're gonna get here!

The story begins with some narrated scene-setting: the Elysial rural Indian village, where life is simple and the thakur's word reigns. In one particular village, we are introduced to the thakur's family of three brothers: eldest is the affectionately named Dada Thakur ("Grandpa Thakur", Anil Kapoor in gray), middle is the spunky Arjun (Anil Kapoor in brown), and last is the young Nakul (Harish). The way the brothers are introduced, it felt like the story wanted to sketch out some rough character traits - too bad they apparently didn't have any!

The story begins with Dada Thakur fixing middle brother Arjun's marriage to the "educated, modern girl", Meena (Raveena Tandon). Uh oh. Meanwhile, another even more Westernized "modern girl" arrives in the village as the next schoolteacher - this woman's only setting seems to be "Horny" and so, after one quick glance of Arjun's manly, hairy chest, she proceeds to spend the rest of the film biting her lip and writhing around while embarrassing eroticized howling plays in the background. And it gets worse! But once rapists starting marrying their victims and this was being presented as "justice", the PPCC adopted a policy of Ignore the Story, knowing that, otherwise, our head would just explode. So we distanced ourselves from the terribleness, leaned on the fast forward button, and ended up laughing very, very hard during the "tragic" ending.

The Awful

First, let's get the awfulness out of the way. First and most awful thing: the gender relations.

The film's two "bad" women - Meena the wife and No Name the school teacher - couldn't be more superficially presented. "Modern wife" Meena is a caricature of Westernized ignorance and disrespect: she scoffs at the village's superstitions, proclaims that she's not interested in children and - in one of the film's (unintentionally) funniest moments - warns Dada Thakur himself to "MIND IT!" when he innocently asks for some cold water. "Isn't this woman stupid and evil?!" the film seems to scream. Well, we found her hilarious too. Too bad she had to be "tamed" by the Good Indian Wife Lakshmi (Rekha), Dada Thakur's wife.

We found less funny the ridiculous schoolteacher woman (who wasn't even credited on IMDb!). Watching her scenes of breathlessly detailed and demonized sexualization was just painful. How regressive and idiotic were her attempts to seduce Anil Kapoor, especially compared to, for example, Madhuri Dixit's seduction of Anil Kapoor in Beta. We were very annoyed to see woman's sexuality caricatured and demonized (and associated, again with Westernized moral bankruptcy!), where anything less than being "shy and demure" loses a woman's "respect" and brands her as a shameless whore. ARGH. Does anyone have a spork?! Because we'd like to POKE OUR EYES OUT WITH IT.


The saucy school teacher.


She saucily strews strategically opened magazines in Arjun's path.


And then just tackles him onto a pile of melons, provoking much jocularity at the PPCC.

Of course, all these regressive inhibitions and limitations on women are dressed up in the usual "But it's your dharma!" discourse - that is, as Good Indian Wife Lakshmi explains, it is a wife's spiritual obligation to "serve like a slave, look like a goddess... and have the capacity to endure like the earth"! Once again, a comparison with Virasat is inevitable: while it didn't beat us over the head with "dharma" this and "dharma" that in the dialogues, Virasat's entire narrative was basically an examination of what it means to follow your dharma all the way to the (occasionally grisly) end. Without giving too much away, Virasat's protagonist loses almost everything dear to him in his pursuit of his dharma as the thakur's son (to serve the village) - yet he chooses the dharmic path anyway since that's the only morally acceptable choice. That is, after a reasoned evaluation of a difficult moral situation, Virasat's Shakti chooses the self-sacrificial anti-individualist dharmic path - this is in contrast to having dharma repeatedly thrust upon the hero via guilt trips about cultural loyalty and Hindustani pride - and the film furthermore shows that the dharmic path is painful, mired in ambiguity and an ultimate submission of the individual into the community. Bulandi's circular argument is, "You must follow your dharma because dharma is good."

The Curious

That said, there are some acceptable aspects to Bulandi (the cinematography, Rajinikanth's cameo, Kulbushan Kharbhanda shows up at one point too), as well as some purely "whoa, freaky" factors for the curious: Anil Kapoor bizarrely (and unnecessarily?) plays a double role and is paired opposite Rekha (?!) in the "older" incarnation. Whoa! Freaky!

Heroines get a hard time in commercial Hindi cinema, and there's the usual double standard where twenty year age gaps between heroes and heroines are okay... if and only if the man is older. We admit that, since it's so unusual to see an older heroine, we watched the Anil/Rekha romantic cavorting in a state of slightly bewildered discomfort. And yet Rekha's only five years older than Anil (!) - despite this Planet Bollywood review's wild claims ("70"?!).


Wha...?


Yanna Rascala! MIND IT!!!

South Indian superstar Rajinikanth's extended cameo injects a much-needed punch of energy into the film. He also seems to be the only one with a sense of humor, and he plays it straight pulpy. We've never seen Rajinikanth in action, but have only seen him parodied. South Indian cinema remains shrouded in exoticized mystery for us Hindi cinema-loving PPCC, so we were very curious and just soaked it all up. Our first impression? We can see why Rajinikanth is so popular - he was a tidal wave of charisma, with hilarious trademark moves like flipping his cigar into his mouth and flapping his shawl around to dishoom dishoom sound effects. This guy was like an alien from the Planet Fantastic! And we even recognized that exaggerated superhero anthem-style acting in Rajinikanth as the thing we loved best about Anil Kapoor's performance in Nayak where, wait for it, he plays a character... based on Rajinikanth! (That is, Anil's character's name, Shivaji Rao, is Rajinikanth's real name. And the film is a remake of a South Indian film.) Except that, next to the real deal, even our reliably zany and larger-than-life Anil Kapoor looked awfully repressed - his naturalism looked out of place amidst Rajinikanth's antics, and we kept going, "Come on, cut loose!" Have these two been in any other films together?

But speaking of jodis, why did Anil Kapoor get a double role in this? He was sort of okay as old Dada Thakur, forgettable as Arjun and only slightly resembling his usual persona as young Dada Thakur. We think this film would have improved heaps if Anil Kapoor had confined himself to playing one role and then let someone else play the other brother. That would have also opened up the jodi potentials. Since, come on, how are you gonna have jodi with yourself!?


That's just weird. (Though, side note: look! The doubling was so good that the two Anil Kapoors could even TOUCH EACH OTHER. AMAZING, NA!?)

The Passable

As stupid as this film was, we did derive some satisfaction in seeing occasional flashes of directorial and cinematographical brilliance. The compositions during the song sequences were often inspired, despite the often mediocre dancing and forgettable music. Little details were amplified for good emotional effect. For example, the PPCC is a big fan of zooming in on nervous, expressive hands. We still remember the moment in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice where the camera followed Darcy's hand in close-up as Darcy walked away from his secretly beloved Elizabeth Bennett. Heck, it was that moment itself that made us reconsider the whole film and dub it "very, very nice" instead of just, "Well, it's not Colin Firth, is it?" Bulandi has a similar moment when the camera briefly focused on Dada Thakur's hand as he gripped the carriage in an effort to discreetly contain his vast emotional suffering, and, a moment later, another close-up of the hand relaxing as the tension breaks and relief floods in. (Don't ask us what Dada Thakur was upset about, though, as it was really stupid.)


This film would have been so much better on silent. Pretty visuals without interference.

Another source of decency in the film were two of the songs. First, there is an oddly (and unintentionally!) poignant song when Arjun and Meena, having freshly made up and resolved to be the ideal Good Indian Couple, accidentally drink a load of hemp-laced bhaang, get stoned and imagine themselves in a sort of lovably dorky early 90s rap video. There was something endearingly sweet and also tragic about these two hapless, sheltered people fantasizing about enjoying life in the evil West - within the highly restricted confines of this film's "morality", a drug-induced fantasy romp was the only way poor old Arjun and Meena could have any fun, cross cultural borders and harmlessly shake it up a bit! And they were so dorky about it too! And the song itself was decent too! Oh, tragic.


The family that gets inadvertently stoned together...


...and fantasizes together...


...about mimicking LL Cool J circa 1990 together... STAYS TOGETHER.

The second song we want to mention was worth it for novelty value. In the extended flashback sequence, we see the young Dada Thakur (Anil Kapoor, remember!) fall in love with Lakshmi (Rekha, remember!). The cinematography in this song was gorgeous, the dancing was fine, but we just watched it with eyes wide because... well, goodness, it's Anil Kapoor and Rekha (!?!).

Our dominant feelings during this film - disgust, boredom, unintentional laughter, occasional rage and the mild freak-out - meant that (1) we will never watch this again and don't recommend you do at all and (2) we desperately need to go purify ourselves with something GOOD now. Recommendations, please!