Movie Review: Ed Wood

Over the years I have developed a liking for Johny Depp because of the roles he played. Among my friends, he is best known for fantasy roles he played but there’s this other side of him, not many know that he has also enacted a lot of biographical personalities also namely Donnie Brasco in Donnie Brasco, George Jung in Blow and the one I am today going to review, Edward Davis "Ed" Wood, Jr. in Ed Wood.

This 1994 biographical movie shows the struggle of Ed Wood in Hollywood. It also explores the friendship between Ed Wood and Bella Lugossi, the actor well known for playing the title role in 1931 movie Dracula. The film also shows Ed Wood’s relationship and breakup with actress Dolores Fuller who would later have a successfull songwriting career, his brief involvement with actress Loretta King and relationship with Kathy O Hara after his break up.

This Tim Burton directed flick not only explores Ed Wood’s vision and the cheap methods adopted by him for his screenplays but also explores his carefree attitude and friendly and lenient nature as a director having to take almost zero retakes during film shoots. With Orson Welles being his idol, Ed Wood remained a struggling producer, director, scriptwriter and actor throughout his life having had made movies which were critical as well as commercial failure. He had signed many stars of that time namely Bella Lugossi and Vampira to name a few. The film shows the making of three Ed Wood movies namely Glen and Glenda (which was a critical as well as commercial failure) ,Bride of the Monster (in whose premiere it was shown that Ed Wood, his girlfriend, Vampira and the rest of the cast attending the premiere were chased away by the angry mob to have watched such a silly flick)  and Plan 9 from Outer Space.

As a person, he had a good heart ,having had the tendency to keep everyone happy which his movies could not do, staying loyal to his friends and naturewise, he loved to wear women’s clothing, this was the reason why he claimed he was the perfect director for the movie I changed my sex  later renamed Glen or Glenda because in a way it was his own biography; as a businessman he had excellent convincing power, he had managed to convince B movies producer George Weiss to let him direct Glen or Glenda, he convinced Bella Lugossi to star in his movies Glen or Glenda and Bride of the Monster , he had persuaded meat packing industry tycoon Don McCoy to fund Bride of the Monster, McCoy’s son  Tony McCoy did the lead role in that film; he had also persuaded a church leader named Reynolds to fund his movie Grave leaders from outer space which would later be renamed Plan 9 from outer space.

As an admirer of biographical films which show the titular character’s rise and fall and then death, I really wish they could have shown the last years of Ed Wood, but then in a way they did that. After the climax which shows Ed Wood at the premiere of Plan 9 from Outer Space believing that this will be the film he will be remembered for and driving off to Nevada with Kathy to get married; the closing credits reveal that Ed Wood continued to struggle in Hollywood but could not achieve mainstream success, Kathy had been his loyal wife throughout supporting him in his ups and downs, he later made many monster nudie films and died, two years after his death he was posthumously given the accolade of ‘The Worst Director of all time’ earning him a new generation of fan following.  The aftermath of other actors like Bella Lugossi, Amazing Chriswell, Vampira etc were also revealed before closing credits.

Almost all of Tim Burton movies star Johny Depp, however his movies have title roles for which Johnny Depp is the perfect choice. This movie was a surprise to have been directed by Tim Burton, and that too so perfectly. Johny Depp was awesome as ever in this film too. The biggest plus point of this movie was the star cast, they were all supposed to play real life characters and I checked out the real pictures of the characters in internet, it was as if they all have come alive in this Tim Burton’s directorial venture. 

For people who love to know about the classic period of cinema, this movie is a must watch since Ed Wood is a director who deserves worth a mention in Hollywood’s history.

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Movie Review: Ek Villain

Ek Villain is a story to show transformation. The fact that a brutal gangster can become a good person if loved and a normal man can become brutal if he receives hatred and nothing else forms the crux of the story.

The story is about Guru (Siddhartha ) who is a gangster working under don Caesar, he has a guilt to have killed a young man mercilessly. When he meets Aisha (Shraddha Kapoor), his life changes, throughout his life he hated his destiny until Aisha makes him fall in love with her and he starts to discover the wonders of the life he unknowingly wanted. Parallel to this love story is the story of Rakesh (Riteish Deshmukh) who wants to be his family’s ‘hero’ and always gets nagged by his wife Sulochna (Aamna Sharif) and thus spends time killing the girls and women who talk rudely to him. He states that he also wants to kill his wife but cannot since he loves her more than ever. Guru’s and Rakesh’s path intersect and then you get to clutter your fingers during the movie.

The best thing about this movie was watching Riteish Deshmukh in the role of a psychotic serial killer who relieves his stress, given by his wife, by mercilessly killing other girls who had been rude to him and stealing one of their ornaments and gifting it to his wife.

 Riteish was excellent in his character, throughout the movie, during the boring conversations between Guru and Aisha, I waited for Rakesh to commit another sin. Ek Villain is an example of such a movie in which the audience will cheer for the antagonist, Deshmukh. Through this movie Riteish has proved that apart from being the comedy king, he can flawlessly enact serious and villaneous roles too, though he had proved this point earlier also while giving movies like Rann and Naach, but our audience is so addicted to good looking heroes that talent goes unnoticed most of the time.

 Siddhartha was also great in his role; he has a romantic character but not a chocolaty lover kind of role that he did in his earlier movies; no doubt this gangster role fits into his profile. Shraddha Kapoor was irritating, she has an irritating voice, she had irritating dialogs, each scene that comprised only her and Siddharth were boring, thanks to Mohit Suri that he imposed a beautiful song after each of their scenes. Yes the songs were excellent; almost all of them were liked by me. Mohit Suri proved that whatever the genre is, he will rightfully produce the results that audience will love. The surprise was Kamaal R Khan, I think he should carry the comedy genre forward, even when he laughs out loud and delivers dialog, it is comedy for us. Others had a limited scope and thus properfully fitted into their charactors except Remo Fernandez who enacted the role of Caesar, he appeared to be overacting. The story has many loopholes so I won’t say that the story was excellent. Certain things weren’t explained for example what Caesar’s reaction was after Guru does not kill Rakesh’s child in the end. Why Rakesh kills Guru’s father-in-law? If Rakesh would have simply told the address to the policeman, Guru would have reached there anyway to beat Rakesh, there was no need of a psycho to kill Aisha’s father and how Rakesh did even know that the particular person is Aisha’s father? The story has these kinds of unexplained scenes which the writer and the director failed to make clear.

Overall this movie is a decent watch, at least for Siddharth and Riteish, you should watch it. After watching the movie once, you will definitely want to watch it again by forwarding some scenes only to see Riteish Deshmukh because he was the scene stealer.

Out of 5, this film deserves 3

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Movie Review: Devil's Knot

This biographical crime film is based on the novel Devil’s knot by Mara Leveritt. It showcases the true story of the three boys collectively known as The West Memphis Three, who were falsely convicted for the murder of three eight year old boys.

In 1993, in the working class community of West Memphis, Arkansas, three 8 year old children went missing from the neighborhood. Their dead bodies are found in a pond. The communinity and the police department are convinced that the murders were a work of satanic cult. Three teenagers Damien Echoels, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr were arrested after Miskelley’s exactly four hours of confession. The confession which Miskelley told them was probably false as he is shown telling his dad ‘I tried to make them happy’.

My take on this movie (more precisely the murder case) is that, there are certain things that happen unknowingly due to the supposed bad habits you and the society have. There was no solid evidence from which the police could deduce that the three were guilty but due to the superstitious belief that the murders were a work of a satanic cult, Damien Echoels and Jason Baldwin are arrested. 

They both passed their time listening to hard metal music and a religious leader believed that hard metal music is very much connected to Satanism. Moreover some witnesses revealed that Damien once threatened to kill an 8 year old boy. Another witness also revealed that Damien worshipped satan. 

Vicky hutcheson, who is an important person in the case, claimed that she saw drunken Damien openly bragging to have killed the three boys. So you can say that to an extent Damien was played too brutally by his karma. Police and Society’s superstition, Damien’s satanic nature and Jessie Misskelley Jr’s immature confessions were not the only factors responsible for their trial, there was one more angle arced against the three, the story submitted by the victim’s playmate and Vicky’s son Aaron. 

Aaron told the police that he was an eyewitness of the incident and that Jessie Miskelley made him drink a bucket of the victim’s blood and killed the children in front of him after which Miskelley confessed to have seen Echoels striking the knife into the children. 

In the end of the film, closing credits reveal that the blood samples matched the DNA of Steve Branch’s (one of the three eight year old victims) step dad, Terry although it was never submitted as evidence. Vicky Hutcheson had retracted her statement stating it as fabricated and to have said it because of policemen forcing her to do so. Aaron, their playmate who claimed to have been an eyewitness of the murders today has no idea what had really happened.

The film shows how much misguided the legal system is. Policemen arresting people only on the basis of false witness statements and superstitions and not even single solid or physical evidence. They believed what they wanted to believe.

The movie described the chaos too well, therefore it is watchable. The happenings during the trial had been described appropriately. Reese Witherspoon plays an important role as Pamela Hobbs, mother of Stevie Branch who tries to deal with her remorse for her lost son. But the best actor I would say was James Hamrick, he plays the role of Damien Echols very realistically, he was absolutely natural and dissolved into the character. Others were all great in their roles. After you watch this movie, you will then realize why the movie is called ‘Devil’s knot’.

Out of a scale of 1 to 5, the film deserves a 3.5 definitely.

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Movie Review: Humshakals

Nowadays, stupidity is also a genre, why? Because it has been accepted by the audience, movies like Gunda, Loha (Kanti Shah Masterpieces) and lately Chennai Express had been setting milestones. When ‘stupidity’ and ‘leave your brains at home’ type phrases are referred, comedy automatically pops up in mind. Sajid Khan Movies are pure expression of comedy through stupidity. Up to an extent he had been successful in this journey having delivered successful movies (not good movies) like Housefull and Housefull 2.

 After watching Humshakkals, it seems Sajid Khan has taken the Indian audience for granted. People dancing, slapping each other, making parathas of cocaine and vodka, gay situations, ball kicking and punching, mental asylum and electric shocks is all the ‘comic content’ that this movie features. Take this entire list of crap and sprinkle some pointless non funny jokes and Sajid Khan recipe is ready. Haven’t we already had enough of Houseful and Houseful 2 to bear all this?

Humshakkals features the story of two best friends Ashok (Saif Ali Khan) and Kumar (Ritesh Deshmukh), Ashok’s father is in coma so at present he owns his dad’s business. Ashok’s passion is doing stand up comedy, sorry, I mean, his passion is telling idiotic non sense jokes to an empty hall. 

There he meets Shanaya (Tamanna), a reality show host, and a very talented girl; she is talented because she happens to like those jokes. She and Ashok fall in love over a breakfast during that stupid caller tune song. Ashok’s maternal uncle Kunwar Amar Nath Singh, abbreviated as KANS (Ram Kapoor) wants the take over the Singhania property hence he somehow wants Ashok out of the scene, hence during a board meeting he mixes a drug into Ashok’s water, the drug is such that whoever consumes it starts thinking that he is a dog. First Kumar drinks it and then Ashok also drinks it and start behaving like dogs. 

They are declared mentally insane and therefore admitted into a mental hospital. This mental hospital already has their duplicates in another ward, surprisingly; none of the staffs had noticed this. 

The mental hospital consists of a warden who likes torturing the mental patients not to cure them but to please his Gods namely Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussain, Gaddafi and two more dictators. He claims that these dictators would award him a gold medal of torture for showing them Himmatwala. The insane duplicates of Ashok and Kumar who happen to have the same name get discharged mistakenly and the decent ones remain inside. Later on Ashok and Kumar learn about KANS’s conspiracy and decide to teach him a lesson, they happen to find out a duplicate of KANS, this duplicate doesn’t like any one sneezing on him because he thinks that the sneezer is trying to kill him by showering the germs on him. Rest of the story is trash. It won’t even make you laugh except in some scenes of Ram Kapoor because of ‘him being fat’ jokes. The second worst part of the movie was Saif Ali Khan, the worst part was the movie itself.

I think Sajid Khan should stop using the phrase ‘a Sajid Khan entertainer’ in all his movie tag lines. Instead he should use ‘another Sajid Khan crap straight from the washroom’. If you are expecting comedy and entertainment, do yourself a favour, grab your newspaper and checkout the TV program schedule for the list of comedy films or shows that will be on air the particular day because this movie will only waste your time, money, mood and maybe popcorn also. 

On a scale of 1 to 5, I'll rate it 2.

I had checked out public reviews on you tube, some people say it was a great movie, if you also believe it's a good movie, you can comment and tell me why you felt it was a great movie. If you want to add something, you may very well comment for that too. If you want to rate this review, you may do that by clicking at this link

Movie Review: Hemlock Society

Hemlock Society is a tollywood movie which I refer to as ‘sarcasm at its best’. It’s not romantic, It’s not emotional, it is not a revenge flick and not even a non sense masala action film; it is a dark comedy, the specific genre which has only been established a limited number of times in the history of Indian cinema. The title justification refers to an institute named Hemlock Society which trains students on how to commit suicide in the correct way. The students are of course suicide aspirants.

The story starts with our female patrogonist Meghna, played by Koel Mallick catching her fiancé cheating on her, he breaks up with her hence cancelling their marriage. She already is broken having a step mom, a dad and misses her real mother. Enters Ananda Kar (Parambrata Chatterjee), who while buying condom in a medical store sees her buying sleeping pills prescribed by her doctorate father on her insistence. He reaches her house and stops her from taking those pills and flushes them off in the toilet. He then offers her to do a free suicide crash course from his institute ‘Hemlock Society’. 

The next day he forcefully picks her up in the morning and takes her there. She is shocked to see the madness there,i.e as follows; like other colleges, this institute also has faculty members who teach how to die by hanging with rope, which medicines to take in order to get ultimate poisonous action, how to shoot yourself to death, how to die by getting yourself trampled on railway track etc. This institute also claims that once the suicide aspirant has completed the course, he/she is awarded a certificate.

This movie successfully evokes in a person the awareness and importance of life. It’s tag line is ‘morbe moro, choriyo na (If you want to die, go ahead, but don’t spread the word )’. The movie may look a little slow at first but once the duo reach the institute, the film becomes a great source of social and sarcastic entertainer. Lastly I’ll say there are a few films you really feel proud to have watched, as far as my taste is concerned, this is one such movie. I feel lucky to have watched this movie.

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Movie Review: Blow

The film shows how a boy from small town becomes millionaire and later on imprisoned. George Jung (Johnny Depp) recalls how he had seen his father lose all his money and become bankrupt when he was young. He decides that he won’t live like that in future. 

The film skips to the part where Jung, now an adult, arrives at California with his friend Tuna. They make other friends there. Tuna proposes the idea of selling weed. They along with the help of the main dealer Derek start making a good amount of money with that weed. Their business grows but eventually Jung is caught and imprisoned for 26 months, there he meets Diego Delgado who has contacts with Medellin cocaine cartel and he proposes the idea of smuggling cocaine. After they are set free they join hands with the cocaine king Pablo Escobar. George Jung now starts making huge amount of fortune and marries Mirtha Jung (Penelope Cruz). They both have a daughter whom they name Kristina sunshine. From here on George’s downfall starts, he’s arrested; he loses the support of his friends Derek and Diego and later on even his wife and daughter. The movie has a very emotional ending and thus it’s not fair to reveal it here. The movie sometimes becomes slow but for biography lovers, it’s a recommended one.

Let me share some trivia also with you about George Jung, he had been released from prison two days ago after serving 20 years, Jung will live in a halfway house on the west coast while he readjusts to society.

Movie Review: City Lights

City Lights, as I had already mentioned in my previous post, is an official remake of Metro Manila. Unlike other filmmakers, who claim that their film is “inspired” and not copied from the original, this movie on the other hand mentions the fact that it is based on Metro Manila, not one , two but three times.

City Lights follows the story of Deepak (Rajkumar Rao), his wife Rakhee (Patralekha) and their daughter. Deepak who lives in a small village in Rajasthan is happy with his family and owns a sari shop. One day Deepak unable to pay rent for his shop is kicked out of there. He decides to go to Mumbai for a better life. Rakhee at first reluctant to this decision agrees somehow and they reach Mumbai. Here they fall victim to the city’s underbelly about which they were completely ignorant of. The circumstances which follow in the story only give them a hope in the horizon for a better tomorrow but it gets worse soon.

Needless to mention that this is one of the best works of Rajkumar, actually all of his movies are one of his best works. About his acting skills, he looks like the successor of Irfan Khan. If we talk about versatile actors, they are not those punks who build six pack abs and dance with skimpy dressed girls, they are what Rajkumar is, and his acting in almost all of his works is so natural according to the character that for a moment you just remember him as that particular character and not the actor Rajkumar. I too did not have any idea that he is the Ragini MMS actor when I saw him in Gangs of Wasseypur 2 but I remembered his character Shadab Alam pretty well, that’s what Rajkumar is, in this movie also he plays the Rajasthani character with strength. The debutant, Patralekha in her deglammed avatar plays her character with full intensity though she has a limited scope. Manav Kaul who plays Deepak’s character is also a talent to look for in this movie.

In comparison to Metro Manila, the film was explained in a more simplified way. Almost all the scenes were same as Metro Manila, but the minor changes added in various scenes made it even better than Metro Manila, for example there’s a scene in which Deepak is giving an interview and he recites a joke to his boss, the interviewer, because he loves to listen to jokes. The boss gets happy and selects him for the job. The major changes were laid in the climax scene. But since it is the climax, I won’t reveal it. The songs of this movie, I am sure all of you must have heard, are brilliant and the best thing is that these songs run parallel with the storyline unlike those disgusting telugu remakes which have a dream sequence song after every ten minutes.

Overall City Lights deserves a watch, like Metro Manila, the story is the same and here I would like to add that this by far is the best remake ever made of a foreign film. Today every second film is copied from somewhere but the result is mostly crap (remember PLAYERS ?). Hansal Mehta as the director does a brilliant job by copying the BAFTA nominated independent film and succeeds at preserving it’s importance throughout the movie.

Out of a scale of 1 to 5, this film also deserves a 4, if you feel the need to rate my review click here, or if you have a different opinion about this movie, you can comment below.

Movie Review: Metro Manila

Unable to get a decent print of City Lights (2014) in torrents, I decided to download and watch Metro Manila, the BAFTA nominated award winning British-Filipino movie from which that movie has been remade. I understood the language through subtitles and the story was awesome.

Written and directed by Sean Ellis, the story is about Oscar Ramirez (Jake Macapagal), a farmer who with his wife (Althea Vega) and two daughters come to Metro Manila from a village in search of a better life and get enthralled in the web of the deceitful city life, slowly but steadily they realize that shifting to Metro Manila was not at all a wise decision. The story is about this family and their destiny which tests up till how far they can deal with their misfortunes. The best thing about the movie was its climax, which if revealed here, will omit your interest to watch the film; not only the climax; even if I give out a single spoiler, it may result in you watching the movie without being surprised during the unexpected situations.

The film was a little slow at instances but then this factor actually worked in favor of this movie because since it helped me to better understand the tensed situations in the film. The direction style in some parts reminded me of those adapted by Martin Scorcese in The Departed. About the performance, I loved Jake Macapagal throughout the movie; his expressions in various situations were sincerely incredible. Since the movie was in Filipino language, I had to follow it through subtitles.

The film was a crime thriller packed with small but powerful suspense and equally emotional proving the point that everything that shines is not gold. Overall this movie is something that a viewer will remember for lifetime. 

 All I will suggest is that do not look for the story of Metro Manila in internet, simply download and watch patiently if you are fond of offbeat and sensitive movies.

In a scale of 1 to 5, this movie deserves a 4. If you have a different opinion then your comments are very much welcomed and if you want to grade this review, click on this link