Tag: action

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cinema FRS

FRS: Dragon Blade

So everyone knows what an FRS is right? 

-40: To us, the pandemic has made us seek out the absolute bottom of what Amazon Prime Video barrel had to offer, not that we had really seen the other films, but nothing was as exciting as an epic Chinese film about how Jackie Chan defends the silk road from 100,000 Romans! Yes you read that right. 

+300: To the director who convinced Jackie Chan to invest in a film by telling the above one line, yes Jackie is also the producer, apart from being the action director and action here of the piece. 

-21: Movie does not begin with narration, but with our second favourite irritation, the phrase “based on real events”. We mean…nevermind. 

+67: Jackie Chan plays Captain Huo An of the Silk Route Protection Corps formed in 48BC to maintain peace along the trade route. 

This would mean that he will have film-worthy goals like word peace and mutual anbu. Since this an epic film he will have goals which are unrealistic by even film standards such as “I will unite all the 36 nations who use this silk road kind of thing’ 

+34: Subversion of audience expectation: which is critic-speak for “movie sucks, but cant tell it openly”. If anyone had bought a ticket to Dragon Blade thinking that they would at least get to see Jackie Chan do some fighting, he would be slightly disappointed, because he is part of the peace corps. Which means that he would be preventing other kingdoms from fighting, really. 

-27: Hero beats girl in an altercation, means that the girl will fall in love with him cliche, applicable even to ancient chinese dynasty heroes. 

-32: Hero is peace loving means surely some mentor in a flashback would have told him about the importance of peace, otherwise how da. 

-61.2: Hero, back home from peace corp, we get to know is married to sweet school teacher cliche, teacher says she will work towards race equality etc. This reminded us of the Kajal Agarwal paatu class in Vivegam. 

+78: Movie becomes slightly exciting when John Cusack appears as a Roman General invading a Chinese outpost fort city, but is he really attacking or is he out here for something else? Shhh

-11: If there is a plot involving a kid and Romans in the movie, it is rest assured that the kid is in line to the throne cliche. 

+100: Sandstorm Ex Machina, a sandstorm threatens the whole fight between Jackie Chan and John Cusack and we never get to know who the better fighter is. 

+54: Natpu da! Nanben da mode, these two go into. 

In one conversation involving the difference in Chinese army and Roman army, Jackie Chan says Chinese Army is present only to maintain peace in the world

<crickets> <crickets> 

+56: John Cusack character seems sensible and is motivated by revenge against those who have done bad things to him, Jackie Chan however being the hero is still preaching peace, in short anbu selling. 

-24: Sudden target of building humongous wall within 15 days extremely sudden. 

+101: It’s done, it’s a Sino-Roman joint venture, the scenes in which Jackie’s corps and Cusack’s centurions flex their muscles and engage in a bit of play fighting are the most enjoyable in the film. 

-77.2: But as this is the movies, mutual happiness does not last more than five minutes and there needs to be an even bigger villain who should spoil these guys’ friendship. 

+561: That person is Adrien Brody, whom I have never seen have so much fun in this film, it seems more fun because our hero is straight as an arrow peace loving average anbu seller 

-23: Watch your accents Romans! While John Cusack sticks to his American accent, Adriend Brody is acting as though this is a West End production. No he is really enjoyable. 

+56.4: What’s more enjoyable are the production values and the movie making magic which leads up to the final battle, great stuff guys!

-300: Something, something happens and the movie becomes 300 for a while and it ends quite predictably with all the tribes coming together and peace finally comes to the silk board…we mean silk road. 

Nooooooo!

All are happy. Except Adrien Brody. 

Also if you have seen the film, let us know why this movie was called Dragon Blade again? 

All numbers are incidental and arbitrary, except the facts provided by our data analytics team.

Team FRS

Subam

Categories
cinema cinema:tamil FRS

FRS: Saamy 2 aka Saamy Square

saamy-2-46So you all know what an FRS is right? right?

+120: To director Hari.

critics have often told that he tends take things a few notches higher; Hari seems to have taken this criticism to heart and named the film as Saamy square which means that the current film is a result of multiplying the first movie by itself.

+6: Aarusaamy is back

Vikram so much looks the character that he makes it look like they are using extended footage from the first film shot 27 years ago.

(no this is not a side-reference to Vishwaroopam/Vishwaroop 2)

-10: Weather and mother nature start behaving badly when Aarusaamy gets angry 

(no this is not a side-reference to Sabu from Chacha Chaudhary comix)

-12: Just when you thought that there was not going to be any narration, there is. 

+18: Aishwarya Rajesh plays Bhuvana

the character essayed by Trisha in the original; but we did not see any “ivarukku badhil ivar types” serial credits at the start thus making it momentarily difficult.

-10: Aarusaamy has been married happily for over a year, but never has he once realized that the ultimate goal of his wife was to become an IAS officer #notcouplegoals

-70: Suddenly there are three sons of the original villain and all of them come from Srilanka,

the chief of them is even named Ravana; obviously hero name is Ramasaamy

+45.9: Bobby Simha as Ravana Pitchai is one of the best antagonist portrayals this year, he gets an accent, a signature killing move, a creepy BGM and performs even, just forget about the beard though.

-32: Cronies of Perumal Pitchai do not question the authority of the ‘newly-sprouted’ sons and not even one of them come to stake claim.

We hope that, this portion will be covered in the Netflix series called Saamy 1.5 or square root of Saamy 

-714: Movie suddenly says “28 years later”, which means movie should take place in 2032 but actually takes place in our time only. 

Alternate movie suggest: Saamy 2032 aka Saamy From the Future

{Aarusaamy Jr aka “6” is a humanoid robot in the service of Tirunelveli Police, which is now being run entirely by robots to fight crime against the ARUVA 2.0 gang (Artificial Robots Used For Violence and Arson) 

Accidentally ‘halwa’  falls in his mouth during a drug bust and 6 starts to believe that he is a human police and goes in search of true meaning; we can get Denis Villeneuve interested no?} 

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<GET ON WITH IT>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

+561: Movie suddenly becomes a supernatural police action film, even though this was totally unexpected, it blew our minds.

+327: Obsessive Hari heroes are obsessive about  transport

Ramasaamy (Vikram again after trim shaving Aarusaamy get-up) actually mugs entire flight time tables (both public and private air carriers), he is also very specific about kilometers etc; so good.

We believe the biggest beneficiaries of the Udaan scheme of the government are Hari movie heroes namely Singham and Saamy. Doing their bit to encourage aviation in tier 2 cities.

But Saamy is one step lower than Singham, who is known to recite  latitudes and longitudes of places by heart, thus making Google maps skip an update.

<Let’s cross our fingers for a Duraisingham and Ramasaamy crossover, should be in the lines of Ramasaamy becomes a rogue police official and Duraisingam is tasked to bring him in. Let’s call it Toothukudi: Civil War>

-201: Heroine is “foreign return”

Keerthy Suresh studies a one year course in human psychology from University of Liverpool, but does not realize that incessantly calling IPS officers during work times could irritate them.

-107: Heroine’s father is a politician in Delhi; but did not send her daughter to JNU for the psychology course.

Was he afraid she would become urban naxal or was cut-off too high? Many such open questions.

-21: Name of coffee shop where hero and heroine meet in Delhi is : Delhi Coffee Shop

(I mean come on guys!)

+17: Second time in the history of Tamil film where heroine comes and disturbs a training session at some military academy in the hills. Hi to GVM.

-305.2: It is 2018 and Soori still thinks getting himself hit by others is funny, but the joke is on us because he is there in every other film.

+7: Mildly funny Keerthy Suresh is mildly funny, she should be paid for comedic quotient.

<Business Model Moment>

Can we evolve a model where we can track the amount of laughter generated in comedy scenes in theatres, parameters could be wild-to-mild laughter and claps and then pay the comedians as a proportion to their success? This could be a merit based model which could motivate comedians to come up with actually funny stuff.

</Business Model Moment>

-34: All songs whenever, wherever 

+101: One killing set-piece

+50: Movie suddenly becomes Mad Max Fury Road in the Thar desert before the climax (one more surprise), but some sections of the audience were furious (FURIOSA!)  because run-time just crossed 7 hours.

+23: Hero establishes greatness of the police police force by choosing IPS over IAS; wait we have seen that…um…never mind

-5: Convenient transfer to Thirunelveli is highly convenient

+71: Ramasaamy has the President of India on his email contacts, and they CONVERSE IN CAPS!

Oh wait, there are plans to make it a sequel too. Saamy Cubism?

<All numbers are incidental and irrelevant, except the data provided by our data analytics team based out of PUNE>

Yours sincerely

Team FRS

Subam

Vanakkam

 

 

 

 

Categories
cinema cinema:english FRS reviews

FRS: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

jackreacher2

Well by now, you what this FRS is all about. It is basically a movie rating system which has striven to be unscientific and hence is fun, we hope.

-30: Tom Cruise never seems to age, he is doing something.

-10: Thus critics can never accuse him of ‘not playing his age’ because he  is not ageing only

-5: Critics

Anyways

+26: Makers actually came up with a title, instead of calling it Jack Reacher 2

-15.7: But title seems to be telling audience that this film does not need a rewatch, seriously yeah we know it is from the book title and all, but then you didnt called the first movie One Shot (which was the book it was based on, why start now? )

+1 : No Narration, yes it helps

+42: To Lee Child, for actually creating a character who doesn’t use a smart phone and hence is actually smart, it’s not like you walk up to Reacher and ask “Hey Reacher, where is the closest laundry place from here”,  and Reacher wont be like “hey, wait let me google that for you”. Geez, he will actually tell you where the closest laundry is, wherever in the world. He also will beat up anyone. Cool no? Take that Marvel/DC.

Whenever Reacher uses a cellphone it is a feature phone and not a smart phone and he seems to have a peaceful life, I mean apart from being chased by the military police.

-10: to the reader who would have mind voice “hey buddy, this was same in first movie as well, so why giving extra points now”; we didn’t review the first one that’s why

+4: Reacher takes public transport, good for health

-30: Hero who doesn’t want to be seen, or does not want any company will do casual flirting with one army major, also note, no whatsapp

+3: that’s what anyone would do if the major is being played by Cobie Smulders, but then Reaccher doesn’t know that because he doesn’t use skype or anything, I’m confused either to give or take points.

Live and let live.

-90: This is actually the plainest of all action films, even the action isn’t pulsating like Cruise’s MI films which we can just watch for the jumps, this looks like a Kathadi Ramamurthy family drama compared to that. Nothing cinematic, see first five mins of part one and you will fall in love with Chris Macquarrie.

-10: Tom Cruise escaping from prison cliche

-8: CCTV camera will capture everything except hero escaping from prison. Dei!!

-34: Tom Cruise running away from bad guys

-6: High school girl outruns two army majors, ok one ex-major, shows US army training, Indians will be happy.

-23: Whatever happens to hero, however he gets hit, in the end he will have only one cut on the face, and that too strategically placed so as to enhance his handsomeness

-109: Main characters will always discuss important plot details while undressing, because….

+10: Even in USA, low cost airlines will not even give water until you ask for it

+10: Even in USA, aadar card xerox and original self will be absolutely different

-670: One more time we use, Even in the USA you can burn down our blog, dei learn new phrases (to self)

-34: For a movie that has military espionage as its core, has very little excitement, ending feels like “ok…hmm”

+39: Female characters out shine male character (here Cruise), most of the plot progresses because of them, Cruise looks up to them but then also accepting that he is not used to being worked with

+7: The Girl, really very very good. funny .

-6: Typical senior officer shouting dialogues like “I wanna know what he eats, where he eats, where he sleeps and i need all these details by yesterday”. Dei dei how many days, also why being unreasonable, give them 48 hrs, this movie is not so much into world saving. It is an intimate thriller.

-20: henchmen dont realise what Reacher can do, which means they haven’t seen the first film. and he hits them very bad.

-83.9: Always during Black Ops operation or any other operation, team leader will say “Go!Go! Go!”, dei

-45.1: A good part of the movie is set in New Orleans which means surely they will show that parade and have a chase in it, esp in this it seems like low budget.

I know these fellows want to be subtle about acting and all, which comes down to much of jaw clenching again and again to express what shouldn’t be, Cruise does this well; but I can see that Sivaji would have had a tough time in Hollywood, especially in scenes where he is supposed to embrace his daughter or is she? Sivaji Ganeshan would have teared down the streets of Washington crying. Cruise just walks down cooly.

-6: Americans don’t give lift to Tom Cruise. Which is sad.

As always all numbers are totally arbitrary and absolutely irrelevant.

Nandri. Vanakkam.

FRS  Desk,

The Lowly Laureate.

Categories
cinema cinema:english Essay

MODERN PROMETHEUS

MODERN PROMETHEUS

 (Or)

Looking at film through Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron

avengers-age-of-ultron-comic-con-14-poster-full-hd

Immaterial as it may be our opinion on this state, the movies that our generation will be associated with will be the comic book movie, three words now very close to my heart.

The comic book movie now, is the film noir of the past, the western of its time, a broad genre defining a certain time and recalling a certain sentiment. Like the above genres that have been mentioned, the comic book movie will surely get its due, but only in the future.

This sudden construction of a pedestal for the comic book movie is because I truly believe that the comic book movie has in fact erased the boundaries between word and visual which is something every great literary adaptation aims to be, comic books being truly the most visual amongst the printed forms of literature. The comic book movie is also accelerator in the fusion of the genres, and this is because of the variety that each comic character offer.

“Man creates his own demons”

Avengers_Age_of_Ultron_68640

In Age of Ultron, Tony Stark fears for the future of the planet and creates a protective force under the hood. Ultron would be A.I enabled Iron Men to be called onto provide eternal peace for our planet, but as we can all guess, this save the world vanity project (TDKR reference done) goes not only out of hand but also turns back on its creator.

If we are looking to track the genetic genealogy of Avengers: Age of Ultron, then it is most certainly Mary Shelley’s gothic classic Frankenstein, only increment action here and there and populate the screen with powerful beings.

Some of the problems that people had with Ultron was that, the movie did not perhaps have a powerful villain, but I found that this movie had more character than its predecessor; because here (Ultron) there is no reason to create a powerful villain to justify and the characters have already been established.

The end is a more relaxed picture, where the intention is not to be blown away by the graphics of it all, but to go on this adventure with this bunch of misfits who are now emotionally charged rather than charged with heroics, and there is the inter-super banter!

Whedon also indulges momentarily into 1950s territory, the super hero movie giving way to over the bar talk between the troubled in-love damsel (Natasha Romanoff played by the super talented ScarJo) and the world weary-cynical-removed hero (Dr. Bruce Banner). A masterstroke of a love track between the noises.

This is the kind of genre inter-operate ability that is interesting for me to watch.

With Marvel trying to impress us with release dates for mega movies in the years to come, an Avengers movie is no longer about why and how the Avengers trounce their enemies, but about the characters, these heroes and their feelings, the setting, the worlds, the words. Action and villains can take the rear.

I was a partial Marvel movie convert after Iron-Man 3 and a fully changed man after the second Captain America flick and it seems I will remain so after Ultron. I hope that these films are seen beyond than what they are intended for, but I am sure it will now be an un-ignorable thing in the recent future, but right now if you go and tell your friend that Avengers:Ultron is about the perils of creativity and questions if man can really play God, super-men in this case, you will probably be chuckled at.

Post Script to Ultron

**** Captain America is amazing! (as if we needed to tell you that, this is also my answer to “which is your favourite avenger?” question”

****Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic horror novel Frankenstein was subtitled Modern Prometheus as it mirrored the mythical tale, we have smartly made it the title for our Avengers: Ultron piece (we are amazing!). Our subtitle of course is over ambitious, I must confess.

****This piece was written under the utter influence of the Ultron soundtrack, specifically the “heroes” track. Soundtrack composed bby Brian Tyler and Danny Elfman.

**** Most of the times when we say Ultron we mean Avengers: Age of Ultron the movie and not the villain.

Thank you for reading.

Categories
cinema cinema:english Essay

Why we need action films and why Non-Stop needs to be watched

I would never want to be an action film, I mean why would I want to provide you with fulfilling entertainment (wholesome, as it is said in some parts of India) and be trashed for being something which I am obviously not.

Action films are the go-to mistress in the time of distress for all of mankind, they just don’t realise it, even if they do, and they hide it. They come up with calculative and dull phrases like “time pass, just an action film” even after exiting a theatre soaking in positive adrenalin.

They even expect subtlety!

Disgraceful humans, introspect!

The action films can be categorised broadly into two: the mindful and the mindless. It is healthy to expect a mixture of both kinds, but even the average knowing movie goer who relishes such a film hides his happiness. The action movie nerd is the gender counterpart to the rom-com swallowing movie nerd, the fate of these films forever drowned in the reputation of stereotypes.

But then not all action movies warrant a critical appreciation na? They are after all action films, designed meticulously to provide some kind (or similar kind) of entertainment. It can be said that the simplicity that goes behind in the thinking of an action film, does not deserve it to be analysed in depth.

<Or so, you think>

First, the action film is like the canopy of an ever growing banyan tree, it is extremely accommodative, and thus willing to forgo any existence of its own, it combines itself with sister genres and to come out with tags like: action-thriller, spy-thriller, romantic-action-thriller, martial-art etc. The word thriller of course is the key; it is used by action films which use the action film formula but doesn’t want to be associated with it.

Generally there is very little to be thrilled about these films, except of course the action.

Non-Stop arrived into theatres sometime back; it is in continuance with post-Taken Liam Neeson filmography, at least in the characterisation of its lead actor (Neeson plays Bill Marks, a Federal Air Marshal on a mission or forced into one).

Non-Stop again calls itself a thriller, which it is; but going by our classification it is a ‘mindful’ action film and a very good one at that. Critics have already found it similar to at least two Hitchcock films.

It is Hithcockian in its constricted setting: a plane. The entire film takes place on a flight between New York and London, everything seems alright until when agent Bill Marks receives a text message in a secure network.

It is also Hitchcockian in being merciless about the questions of doubt and suspicion, including suggesting an unreliable protagonist.

But all this apart, Non-Stop is a brilliant action film, not quite indulgent in the set action sequences like in Raid:Redemption or as mindless an idea like The Expendables, it also discards the customary wisecracking action lead, but because there is no time for such things: we need to know who hijacked the plane and why is he killing one of the passengers every 20 minutes!

The action film is a base, maybe I went overboard with the banyan tree.

<Discontinues that tree based example>

But the action film is definitely fun, delivering most of the time because it is easier to evoke adrenalin than to evoke other sentiments. And that is how action films should be seen, I mean good action films.