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INDEPENDECE DAY RESURGENCE REVIEW: 20 years on.....A Sequel!

Last week we got a sequel to Finding Nemo after more than 12 years; that was a long wait. This week, we get a sequel after 20 years; that must officially be the longest gap between two sequels ever. The long standing appeal of Independence Day can be gauged from the kind of expectations this sequel generated. For a generation of audiences, Independence Day was one of the first movies that showed possible global destruction on the big screen, along with Armageddon. So, expectedly, it is the kind of sequel that would make a 90s kid all excited.

Independence Day Resurgence springs no surprises because we all know what it is going to be. The

promos made it all too clear saying that ‘we had 20 years to prepare, so did they’, which gives it away that the same eerily shaped bad guys are returning, much stronger, perhaps much wiser, than they were before. It is a question of how and when they arrive and how earth, which means USA, takes them on and finishes them. But, rather unexpectedly, the movie begins on the moon, where we are shown that an elaborate station with pilots and all has been set up; in fact, flying to the moon is easier than you can imagine. So, why did Rolan Emmerich decide to go to the moon to start off this movie? It is not his style. He usually takes very little time starting off the mass destruction process, like we have seen in 2012 or Day After Tomorrow. But, with Resurgence, he has decided to make things more slow and deliberate, an attempt at character development maybe, but that really isn’t his strength, unlike perhaps a Nolan, who can have elaborate set ups to the actual plot and still keep us interested. Emmerich is not able to make us buy into any of the leading characters’ mental baggage, especially the friction between Liam Hemsworth and Jesse Usher which he wants us to think is going to have some bearing on the movie, but which we really never care about. The set up towards the main event doesn’t quite work, maybe because it is way too obvious for all those who are familiar with Independence Day. The original movie hinged very heavily on the slow build up of tension as sightings of giant spaceships were reported all over the world,; the same kind of tension is absent here mostly because Emmerich decides to spend so much time on the moon and shows very little of what’s happening over earth. He eventually decides to wrap up the moon part, which could quite easily have been staged anywhere on earth.

It’s almost an hour when we finally get down to the business end of the movie. The connect the characters from the original Independence Day movie have with the audience is evident form the cheers they get. Jeff Goldblum is clearly a favorite, so is his dad and so is the crazy scientist who was almost killed by the alien. They are all there, of course except Will Smith. Once the invasion begins in earnest, it is the comfort zone of Emmerich and his colors begin to show. The aerial attacks, the bombing squad that goes into the spaceship, just like in the original, have all been made well, which is cakewalk for the director’s experience, he knows how to handle such stuff. But, the scenes where he tries to show cities being gobbled up by spaceship’s gravity look a bit dated. It might have looked great in 1996, but 2016 is a time when apocalypse movies release every fortnight and the VFX should be much better and imaginative to have any kind of effect on the audiences.

The original Independence Day was very interesting not just because of the big scale action we saw. It was also interesting because ultimately it was one smart move that hoodwinked the aliens who had far superior technology. So, we expect the same here. Admittedly, some of the stuff that happens is quite analogous to the original, but the final move is something new and will interest you.

It is the veteran performers who impress and make us care about Independece Day Resurgence. Jeff ^th speech. The makers have quite interestingly cast a lady as the current president of America (maybe for the first time ), which makes their political leanings quite clear. But, Emmerich can’t go all the way and show a lady president leading the resistance and giving inspiring war speeches, and so takes the easy way out and hands the baton over to the former president from 1996.

Goldblum is as good as the geeky guy as he was in 1996, while Bill Pullman returns as the ageing ex-president, but he still gets to make his July 4

Independence Day Resurgence has its moments. Emmerich does well with the stuff that he has always been comfortable with. But he uncharacteristically spends way too much time setting up things, which makes the audience a bit restless and it is only fair to say that the Hemsworth and Usher pairing does not have nearly as much screen presence as the Will Smith-Goldblum team, which makes things feel a bit damp. But, you might still enjoy it for the pretty graphic depiction of the aliens, the pretty good final move and the familiar feel good factor of reliving one of your childhood favorites. And, one wonders, why do the women pilots suddenly remove their shirts in the final scene?

Not Resurgent enough, but still watchable!

2.5/5

TE3N

Right from the moment the trailer released, the similarity in look and feel to Kahaani was unmistakable. The unique charm of Kolkata (well-captured in Te3N too) might have been behind it, or perhaps the presence of both Vidya Balan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, or perhaps the search for someone unknown. So, the expectations are quite clear walking into a theatre to watch TE3N. An old man wants justice for his grandchild who was killed 8 years ago. The case is gone, closed, perhaps forgotten by everyone, even his own wife, but he refuses to let go. He feels that it is the last thing he can do for his grandchild and he won’t stop till he has done it. But, how can an 8 year old case be investigated, especially when the investigating officer has gone on a new path saying everything has to be left to God’s will?

TE3N is the journey of John Biswas finding the truth of who was behind his grandchild’s death. He

has company in the form of a reluctant Father Martin who joins and ditches him on and off, but John never gives up on what he is after. In many ways, this is similar to Kahaani. Someone after a case even the police have given up on, someone so weak and helpless that you would think that nothing would come out of it. No one feels threatened or intimidated by the person doing the digging around, the person just passes under the radar. If in Kahaani the perceived weakness came from the fact that the protagonist was a single pregnant woman, here it is an ageing man, well over 70 by the look of things. He seems so old that he can barely stand upright while walking, there is a permanent crouch, that perhaps came from riding a Bajaj scooter that doesn’t allow him to spread his shoulders and back to their full size (yeah, it’s funny how Big B can dwarf a hefty Bajaj scooter, having to crouch uncomfortably to ride it). The body language looks a bit manufactured at first, but we get used to it.

So, John Biswas is on the case in spite of the police and Father Martin telling him that there is nothing more left to be done. But the police are soon back on the case, and why? Because history repeats itself after 8 years, and that is where TE3N really begins.

Two tales, 8 years apart, converge to reveal what actually had happened, and in a complex script written with extreme caution and skill, we are kept guessing till the very end, and that is the victory of TE3N. The who, the why and the how of the crime are explained, one by one, not exactly in the same order in a non-linear narrative that goes back and forth between the two cases 8 years apart. The similarities are remarkable, in fact both cases are identical, which tells us that it is the same man behind both. As the script shifts back and forth between the two cases, there is a parallel track which shows John Biswas’ own investigation of what happened to his grandchild. This track, perhaps the most important one in the movie, is well shot, explaining each logical step that John takes in his investigation, but the editing is questionable. As the script shifts between his investigation and the police investigation, the time lines of both investigations is not clear. Maybe it is a deliberate attempt to beguile the viewer, but one feels the director should have been more honest with the delineation of the period separating the events.

TE3N is Amitabh Bachchan’s movie, he is the protagonist, looking for justice, not revenge and he

aces the character as usual with his unmatched screen presence. Nawazuddin Siddiqui too has to be given full marks for his portrayal of a priest who seems to be faking his peace and the fact that he has come to terms with his past. Whether his character is a genuinely funny guy is a bit of a doubt, because we can see that side of him only in the first scene inside the church. What the director wanted to convey through that scene, besides his personal views on marriage, is unclear. TE3N is also a very important movie because it is titled TE3N, which means it is a story of three people. We think the tree people are the three investigators behind the case in their own ways, the third being Vidya Balan. And yet, the titles tell us that Vidya Balan is making a guest appearance. One wonders, how a character that appears almost throughout the movie, does a lot of the investigation, is classified as a ‘guest appearance’; surely the longest guest appearance in the history of cinema. This is the kind of role that has enough screen time to be considered for a best supporting actress award. But it won’t because Vidya looks a bit off color, maybe because her character doesn’t have any depth and she just has to be a cop looking at evidence. The only hint of emotional depth in her character is the relationship she may or may not have had with Martin in the past.

Despite an excellent plot and classy performers, TE3N does feel a bit stretched towards the end. Things could have been tied off a bit earlier, maybe a little less drama. But, of course, the movie is all about how far a grandfather can go for justice because he loved his grandchild so much. TE3N is a movie worth watching.

Well-narrated complex investigative thriller

3/5

THE CONJURING 2

Three years after the first one, The Conjuring franchise is ready with a sequel. The Conjuring may not count as one of the classics when it comes to horror movies, but it certainly has been the benchmark over the last few years, maybe being outshone only by the Paranormal Activity franchise, which normal cine buffs might find a bit too intense for an evening’s entertainment. The Conjuring has perhaps found the perfect middle ground of scaring just enough without putting the average viewer out of the comfort zone. The years that have intervened between the first one and the sequel have been flocked with horror flicks dime a dozen. Most of them have been underwhelming, including The Conjuring offshoot Annabelle and the highly anticipated Insiduous 3. So, hopes were indeed high while walking in for The Conjuring 2.

It starts off reminding us about the Amityville haunting which is perhaps the most talked about

haunting incident around the world. So, something similar is happening thousands of miles away in Enfield England, says a scrolling text as we’re shown The Conjuring 2 in the familiar bold yellow font. The setting is quite similar to that of The Conjuring, or any horror movie for that matter. Big house, 4 kids, man rooms, a cellar, a stair, plenty of stuff with which any supernatural entity can play havoc! It starts off as minor incidents – someone is sleepwalking, someone is thirsty in the middle of the night, some noises are heard thudding up and down the stairs, but no one really wants to take all that seriously. But then, someone decides that there’s been enough of the funny small stuff, and takes it up one notch. Now, we have a terrified bunch of kids and their mom who are sure that there is something in their house that wants them to leave. The police want to help but find nothing that they can do, the media gets in the act and soon it’s all over the papers, and before you know the church wants their experts to have a look at the place to confirm whether all this is real at all or just a hoax. That brings in Ed and Lorraine Warren.

All the way from America to Enfield England, they fly to know whether anything that is going on in the house is supernatural. They come, and they do get to see a few events, but nothing that makes it plainly clear. Quite surprisingly, the entity that didn’t seem too bothered about all events being public is not too eager about the Warren’s getting a good look at it. As Lorraine says, she just can’t sense anything. So, what is going on? Is it a hoax? Or is it something worse, more powerful, more evil than they have ever seen before?

The plot of The Conjuring 2 is as solid as the first one. The characters are quite relatable and draw empathy from the audience which is a major victory for a horror flick. The film is not a straightforward narration of the haunting. At different points in the narrative, we shift to the Warrens, who are not yet aware of the Enfield haunting, and we are shown that they are somehow connected or being dragged into this, just like the demon in The Conjuring wanted to harm their daughter. This thickens the plot. There is one particular scene in the Warren household with Lorraine Warren locked up in a study with an evil entity, which is quite chilling. The visual depiction of the entity is quite difficult to shake off for a while after the movie has ended.

As with any horror flick, The Conjuring 2 is all about how many times we jumped out of our seats.

The initial hour, where the entity makes the household aware of its presence is quite interesting and there are a few genuine jump scares and slow spooks. But, once the presence is established, and the psychological breakdown of the victim begins, things get a bit predictable. Some scenes, like the Crooked Man scene, fall flat. Once the Warrens enter, the tempo continues to be a bit flat for a while before it picks up right before the finale. It might be that we are quite used to the James Wan style by now and know where to expect the scares from, and so are not very surprised at ever event. But it all picks up with that one scene in the train where the recordings come together to make sense.

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson continue to do the fine job they started in The Conjuring, with Vera growing even more into the role of Lorraine Warren. The music is a shade less effective than in The Conjuring while the camera does a fine job of keeping us guessing of what lies beyond the light. The Conjuring 2 is not as good as its predecessor, but it still has some genuinely scary moments and a good story. Easily the best horror flick in over a year from Hollywood. Go watch it.

Scares you enough to keep you on the edge!

3/5

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS

It has been a relentless few months of superhero stuff, with DC and Marvel shooting one after another. Superhero flicks overlapping each other so much that we actually have trouble not mixing up storylines. Into this mix of Batman Vs. Superman, Captain America and X-Men, we now get the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Honestly, these are the real freaky superheroes of cinema, four brothers who are amazingly fast turtles, working from the shadows to protect the city the live under and love. The Turtles are definitely the lightweight superheroes of Hollywood when it comes to box office power, and the exhaustion factor of all these superhero movies so close to one another definitely dimmed the enthusiasm associated with the Turtles sequel. Actually, one can say that there was a degree of pessimism with Turtles coming into theaters, making expectations naturally a little lower, which might end up being a good thing!

So, how is the Turtles sequel? It is very much a regular superhero movie. The premise is very

straightforward; evil villain sets sight on total control over the world, and the turtles have to stop it. The unique factor with a turtles movie of course is that they have do it under complete anonymity, almost, working only at night, much like the Batman. Also, much like the Iron Man, the turtles are totally chilled out while kicking ass, giving away sage advice, sarcasm and cheeky lines all the time. The villain from the first movie returns in the sequel as he is plucked away into thin air from a police convoy. But it turns out there is a bigger villain waiting with more sinister plans, and then there is a mad scientist to facilitate the execution of said plans. There is nothing much about the plot that you cannot guess or predict.

But, offsetting that predictability is the pace at which the screenplay moves forward. After a racy title entry of the turtles, we are quickly taken into action. Megan Fox enters, and the cheerleader scene which was perhaps the single most hyped scene in the trailers is done away with quickly, and we are shown that the mad scientist is up to something. A road chase between a police van and a garbage truck later, we know that the scientist and the villain have schemed together to create a teleportation device, which would, as said in the movie, make Isaac Newton and Steve Jobs footnotes in the history of science. The USP of the turtles movie is that the action almost never stops, and the script has been written smoothly to flow from one encounter to another. To add to the excitement, we have a human rhinoceros and a human warthog, freaks who can match the turtles in the freakiness quotient. The showdown between them on the aircraft and then in a grand turbulent river is enjoyable.

By this time you have realized that the script has also got ambitious. It just doesn’t want to cause trouble in a city, it wants to end the world. And then we have some astrophysics, and space-time distortion stuff thrown in. To avoid spoilers, let’s just say that the proceedings at the end remind us a lot of what happened during the end of the first Avengers movie. But, the final confrontation has been well crafted.

Is there anything special in the new Turtles movie? No, absolutely not. There is nothing new that you

haven’t seen before. But, a tight no-nonsense screenplay, well shot action scenes, and witty/funny dialogues at some points, especially involving Will Arnett’s Falcon, keep things going along without making you feel bored. Stephen Amett seems to be a bit confused as to whether he is a hero or a sidekick. The writers have tried to bring in a bit of emotion, about the way the turtles feel about their place in society, but they have kept it to a bare minimum realizing it could hamper the flow of the action. You wonder what Laura Linney would do in this movie, and you are left wondering till the last scene, where some sort of justice is done to the casting. This one could be a fairly good way to have a fun evening.

Good visuals, good action, no yawns!

2.5/5

X-MEN APOCALYPSE REVIEW

This was supposed to be a new beginning, effectively after Wolverine had travelled back in time to change the course of events in Days of Future Past. So, this was one movie that had evoked more curiosity than any of the other recent superhero movie; it was the X-Men story being rewritten all over again. We are taken to a point, about 8 years after the point where Days of Future Past left off. Professor is running his school, mutants in the outside world are still having a tough time, Magneto has been unheard of since the last event, Raven is out there somewhere.

Into this mix arrives the first mutant ever born, who has slept through the ages. He wants the world to

be ‘better’, to belong to the ‘strong’, and you know the Professor does not like anything that involves destruction, and neither do any of the people at his school. So, we return to a familiar premise, mutants separated by ideology going against each other. One side is headed by the Professor as always, but the other, more radical side, is not led by Magneto but by a greater mutant.

X-Men Apocalypse starts off slow after the pretty well made pre-title portion about the first ever mutant and the pains taken to keep him safe through the ages. We are shown Raven in the wilderness doing her bit to keep mutants safe, we are shown the Professor who is doing his good work with kids with the same optimism, and we are shown Magneto who is doing a normal day job as just anyone else. But great power cannot be hidden for too long as Magneto finds out, and his faith in humanity is shaken again. It might be a bit of a spoiler, but one cannot help say that the portion is way too similar to the fate Wolverine had to face in the Origins movie. Much of the first hour, even more, is spent on showing how the two sides get together. The great mutant gets his four horsemen together and the Professor is gathering his people, they both know that a confrontation is not far off. Even we know that, but it does take a mighty long time coming.

Quite a lot of time is taken up in the ‘recruitment’ process as the great mutant imbues his horsemen with amazing powers. That process just takes a lot of time and by the time we get to Auschwitz to harness all the rage that was suffered by Eric aka Magneto, we are tired, even through the scene where the concentration camp is blown to pieces, which must have been supposed to be a breath taking spectacle. For an X-Men movie, Apocalypse has too few confrontations, in fact there are just two, the rest is just dreary drama, which really doesn’t excite. The only other time we are excited is during the superfast movements of Quicksilver during a blast. Otherwise we are left to hear about the great ambitions of Apocalypse, the troubled mind of Jean, the grieving of Magneto and diplomacy of Professor. There are good moments in between, like the Moira McTaggort scene, but they are few and far in between.

By the time all the mutants gather in one place for the final face off, the audience is slightly

disinterested, and the movie has an uphill task of providing a climax that is worth the wait. Try as they may, it just doesn’t reach that level. The final confrontation is not anything that we have not seen before, again the most enjoyable moment here comes courtesy Quicksilver’s speed.

In the midst of all this the script manages to find time for Colonel Stryker to appear and where Stryker appears we know who else will. That is the biggest moment of the film, the Wolverine moment. Every X-Men fan loves when the Wolverine arrives and it never fails to excite us, but it is too small to lift the overall mood of the film.

In spite of the overall slow nature of the script, a first hour that just doesn’t let anything happen, X-Men Apocalypse sets a good premise for the new X-Men story to move forward. Michael Fassebender’s intensity as Magneto, James Mc Avoy’s finesse as Professor and the reliable Jennifer Lawrence as Raven keep Apocalypse watchable. And don’t miss the post-credit part, which give us a clue about how Wolverine might go forward.

Slow, meandering, but watchable!

2.5/5

  

THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY REVIEW

Is being a genius a pain or a blessing? That, a regular mind would never know. To function on a plane that none of your contemporaries are able to comprehend must sound like a thrill, but the frustration of having to explain yourself every time because the others simply cannot understand what you are up to is a pain. You know you are right, you don’t have the patience to prove yourself, in fact you don’t feel the need to prove yourself, but the structures of academia will throw you out if you can’t prove what you say. You are a racehorse, being bridled and burdened like a workhorse, to prove that you indeed are a genius as you say.  The story of Srinivasa Ramanujan is one such; a man who was so far ahead of his times, much like a Galileo, that he was almost never understood.

The Man Who knew Infinity traces the journey of Srinivasa Ramanujan from Madras (derived from

Mandarajya – literally translated to The Land of Fools, as said in the movie) to Cambridge amongst the most esteemed scholars of the world. This is not just the story of Ramanujan, it is also the story of Professor G H Hardy and perhaps also the story of Cambridge and its elite systems of education, and how one man from obscurity was able to challenge all structures, not by arrogance or statesmanship or diplomacy or charm, but just by sheer brilliance.

The movie begins when Ramanujan is already married, has already ‘invented himself’ (as said in the movie) as a mathematician who can see patterns in anything. He has no education to speak of, only an inexplicable brilliance with numbers which most people cannot see, not because they do not want to, but because it is just too far above them. It requires someone who can speak the same language, the language of numbers, to understand the humongous potential of what Ramanujan has in his notebooks. G.H. Hardy was that man. He thought he had discovered someone rare, someone special, someone too important to be left aside because the Lords at Cambridge thought that bringing an Indian student with no formal education was an unnecessary indulgence.

No time is wasted in explaining much of Ramanujan’s initial struggles for recognition in Madras. Very soon, we are at Cambridge, gazing at the apple tree under which Newton sat. Once there he discovers that what he has come for and what Hardy wants are very different. Ramanujan thinks that all his work has already been done in his notebooks, and just needs to be published, but Hardy thinks otherwise. He wants Ramanujan to conform to the strictures of academia, to produce proofs so that the ground breaking work is not rejected for want of adequate explanation. Not being bred in an academic surrounding makes this change frustrating for Ramanujan who just sees the solution without feeling it necessary to explain the way. This clash of methods, of ideologies, is the central conflict of The Man who Knew Infinity. There are other conflicts, like the one Ramanujan’s young wife fights with her mother-in-law, a silent fight of tears and grief, the conflict that Hardy has to wage with some of his peers and bosses at Cambridge trying to  defend Ramanujan, the conflict that Ramanujan has to face as an outsider in an English campus in the colonial era, the First World War and, of course, Ramanujan’s conflict with his own health.

With so many issues to portray, the writers might have been in a quandary about where to put the

weight in without leaving out anything. Their vision is very clear, they want to show the work done by Ramanujan and Hardy first, everything else next, and there lies the weight of the script. Every scene where Ramanujan and Hardy argue, sometimes softly, sometimes violently is special. You can feel the friction, but greater than that is the passion to create something spectacular. That passion is so beautifully depicted in the scene where Hardy takes Ramanujan to show the enshrined status of Newton’s Principa Mathematica, and says that he belongs there, only if he can take the path to get there. The best scene of the movie for me. That Ramanujan finally comes around and understands the importance of the rigor that Hardy so desperately wants, is as much a tribute to Hardy as it is to Ramanujan. Hardy, as said in the film, ‘discovered Ramanujan’.

The best thing about The Man who knew Infinity is the absolute unidirectional purpose of its writing, never wavering, while portraying all aspects of Ramanujan’s time in the UK. Maybe perhaps a little more about his struggles for vegetarian food would have made his challenges more obvious to the audience. The dialogues are delightful at many places, like the letter written by Littlewood, played with perfect understatement by Toby Jones, to Hardy, or Hardy’s address to the council defending his plea for an FRS in favor of Ramanujan. Pure mathematics, an art unto itself, understood only by a few, and thankfully the film does not try to force any mathematical concepts to the audience, except for a very simple explanation of partitions.

Dev Patel grows on you as Ramanujan, and looks settled in the UK portion of the movie. But one still

wonders how it would have been to have an Indian actor portray Ramanujan and how his English would have sounded in Cambridge in 1914. Dev Patel’s English looks too polished (maybe deliberately so for international audiences) for a Tamil Brahmin of 1914 with no degree. The movie though belongs to Jeremy Irons who hits the nail on the head as G H Hardy, a masterclass performance, especially when he realizes that he could be Ramanujan’s friend.

The Man who Knew Infinity is an exquisite piece of cinema, along the lines of The Imitation Game or even Pawn Sacrifice, that shows us of the peculiar ways in which genius works, their struggles to get along with normal people who just don’t understand them and the importance of a guiding had that shows them the way to pinnacle of their promise. Maybe cruelly cut short in life, but Ramanujan’s legacy lives on in the same hall that houses the legacy of Sir Isaac Newton.

Perfectly told tale of incomprehensible genius!

4/5