Tag: FRS

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cinema FRS

FRS: Sadak 2

It’s good to be back!

So you all know what an FRS is right? Right? 

-20: Movie begins with “ millennial represent “ Alia Bhatt’s character Aarya sneaking into an Ashram of a Baba and (what else) drawing graffiti on one of his giant cut-out with the word Badla. 

Nothing innately wrong with this, millennials are often shown to be using graffiti as their preferred mode of expression, but seconds later the same millennial burns down the whole cut-out, which doesn’t make sense. 

Why vandalise if you are going to burn the whole thing down?  

I guess we will never understand millennial-represents, maybe the negative points are for us. Ok, it is for us. 

+12: Aarya uses the split second available before she is chased by the authorities to capture this flaming act of protest in an insta live. Opportunistic characters are opportunistic. 

+2: Director goes into a flash montage of the happenings of Sadak 1 , good for those who missed the first film, which includes most of the FRS writers room. The important takeaway is that Pooja (character played by Pooja Bhatt is dead) 

FRS Trivia Thagaval 

Vasanth’s tamil film Appu starring Top Star Prashant is a remake of Mahesh Bhatt’s Sadak 1 which itself was based on the Martin Scoresese movie Taxi Driver, which some critics opine as being inspired by John Ford’s The Searchers

FRS Trivial Thagaval brought to you by Wikipedia 

+20: Ravi seems to have done well by himself in the last 20 years, from being a taxi driver to the co-owner of Pooja Travels which has many Audis in its fleet. They also seem to have in possession of prime real estate in Mumbai, but the movie of course doesn’t want to focus on the positive aspect of the story but more on the still depressed taxi driver Ravi. 

Does Ravi fear the rise of cab operators like Ola and Uber,which could potentially eat into his business, we will never know. Movie is not interested in such things. 

+35: Millennial Aarya instead of booking Bla Bla Car or some such ride sharing service goes back to good old Pooja travels for her trip to Kailash to be completed before she turns 21.This could be seen as a hipster thing, like people picking up board games to reduce time spent on apps.  

-35: It so happens that Driver Ravi also meets Millennial Aarya at the hospital, the day before, expected movie co-incidence is expected. 

-101: Hero will deny the journey to be taken but will somehow be convinced to go on the journey, because “screenplay”. Also the audience knows this will always happen because they know the runtime of the movie.

+56: During the course of the journey we learn that millennial Aarya is also the founder of an activist group called India Against Fake Babas, it is an awareness group that meets sometimes in cafes and tells people that they do not need interpreters and can directly speak to God. Down with blind faith boys.

-22: Unfortunately, India Against Fake Babas is not against all Fake Babas but only one, namely Gyaan Prakash, whose cut-out we wrote about earlier. 

That begs us the question, how does one know who the fake babas are? Never mind, movie is not interested in such stuff anyway, if movie tells baba is fake then we must accept it, blindly. 

+101: Millennial Meet Cute- movie is very innovative in ways to make its lead characters meet. In the age of the online trolling (of which Sadak 2 is also a victim, wait for our FRS Trivia Thagaval again) Aarya seeks out Vishal (Aditya Roy Kapoor) who is the constant web irritant to her cause, India Against Fake Babas and demands a public apology. 

This being a movie, both fall in love at first sight. 

We although fear that this would encourage twitter trolls to think that if they do keep hounding celebrities that they might actually fall in love with them. 

-25: Movie makes an attempt at equipoised storytelling that champagne liberals behind causes don’t add much to the cause other than themselves, movie then abandons this line of storytelling because hero falls in love with heroine.

-57: India Against Fake Baba’s other outreach strategy is to distribute handbills to people on the street and see if they call them back, movie itself makes fun of this strategy. LOL

-101: For a movie called Sadak, almost 90 pc of the movie takes place inside rooms, maybe they should have called it Sadak 2: Now in Kamra 

That now reminds us of Chennaiyil Oru Naal 2’s unbelievable tagline. 

-122: Movie wants us to think Ooty is some Himalayan hill station, boss

-60: Movie also wants us to believe in its blatant “screenplaying”, one girl gets a father, a father who lost a daughter gains one, a man who lost interest to live found a cause etc, yeah yeah but why do you also say it in dialogue too? 

-33: Aditya Roy Kapoor always carries a guitar on his back, this made us fear that when he will break into a song and our fears came true 

That was really the most fearful moment in the movie for us, because every obstacle introduced in the movie is resolved easily in the next scene itself. 

-24.6: usual something something twist happens and everything comes to an end and millennial Aarya makes an appeal to the government saying that bringing light to all corners of the country will not do much good, but dispelling darkness by chasing away fake Babas is the true path to greatness. 

We wondered if she would dedicate her entire fortune to fighting fake babas and mythbusting, but no such announcement was seen in the movie, which made us think about Aditya Roy Kapoors abandoned comment about Champagne Liberals. 

All the best for India Against Fake Babas

FRS Trivia Thagaval 

At the time of going to press (lool we think of ourselves as one publication), Sadak 2 was the second most disliked trailer on youtube, which is why we mentioned that it was a victim of concerted web abuse, the first most disliked video is the YouTube Rewind 2018 

FRS Trivia Thagaval brought to you by Wikipedia

A short interview with our editor about the new section FRS Trivia Thagaval 

Journalist: Why did you introduce this new section to your old review format FRS?

Editor: We believe that people should learn something when they go to the movies

Journalist: We are hearing rumors that this is because of falling traffic to your blog site

Editor: It’s not a rumor, it is the truth, but we don’t add sections for such things like web traffic

Journalist: That’s big breaking news

Editor: Lool, never blogged eh? 

End of interview 

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

Subam

Team FRS

PS Mahesh Bhatt’s Sadak 2 is now streaming on Disney+Hotstar

PPS Venkatesh Bhatt’s Idhayam Thotta Samayal is now streaming on his youtube channel, just saying.

Categories
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 FRS

FRS: Penguin (2020)

And we are back! 

So everyone here knows what an FRS is right? Right? 

+2: No narration and we all sigh in relief

-3: Movie begins with a statue by a lake in Kodaikanal,the statue has so much of the art department’s fingerprints on it that none will mistake it for a real statue. Small fail. 

-45: Oho so killer in this movie will wear Charlie Chaplin mask. 

Exclusive extract of excruciating moments from the story discussion room 

“Sir, apparently clowns are very scary, in US and all, children get scared by seeing clowns, they have also made movie based on it recently”

“We should also have clown face villain to creep out audience”

“People will find out…”

“Oh then what’s next to clown…maybe we should try Charlie Chaplin” 

“Wow, done deal” 

“Let’s also add one yellow umbrella so that it becomes very iconic” 

<End of exclusive extract> 

Sorry but lol, we could never associate any kind of fear with the Chaplin Killer, no the music also was not helping, sorry. Also he has a yellow umbrella like a CSK fan and so anyone in Kodai should have spotted him by now. 

-32: Movie is set in Kodaikanal types just because our characters can wear sweaters. Yeah please there are lakes all around Chennai, please summa don’t say lakes and all. 

Also also, we can see this trend in which Amazon is picking up tamil movies for release, both Ponmagal Vandhal and Penguin has the following

✅Female protagonist

✅Movie location is hilltop town

✅Murder and kidnapping involving children

✅Drone shot over car, lake and mountain

✅Sweater people and mist

So if you’re writing and selling to Amazon, have the above somewhere in mind. 

+23: One guy (not telling who) will do one morning call for ten minutes to tell what happened in the life of KeeSu so that audience can catch up, this is also aided by some photographs etc

-23: for that 20 minute intro call, KeeSu will reply with just “miss you too” #hmmzoned 

-80: Heroine goes into flashback mode suddenly so that we can know exactly the things that we need to know to progress with the movie. 

-71.2: Heroine will rapidly tell a penguin story to her kid, so rapid that we are sure that the kid didn’t follow, we were not sure if we should follow it ourselves, later we got to know that it’s not the full story even, then why so speed?

-11:Heroine then comeback to “present day” because someone call her name cliche

+34: Lady doctor gives good advice about pregnancy but of course none of this will be followed by our heroine, points for timely advice being timely. 

+101: Understanding husband is too much understanding 

-53: Kodai police are not going to like this film, especially when the inspector seems to have made the right connection at first. 

-56.9: If it is a slasher film involving a kid, then two definite elements will be there. One kid will be allowed to draw random things and characters will get puzzled over this, also said kid will sing some nursery rhyme. 

Supposedly all this is fresh and spooky. 

-23: Something something happens and we suddenly see ourselves watching Silence of the Lambs, no we mean not that movie within this movie, but something like that. Out of the blue surprise. 

-42: Movie really doesn’t progress beyond a set of characters and since the main slasher is also Charlie Chaplin costumed, most of the genre trappings like setting, sound design and the misty cinematography are not effective. 

So we know where they are going, before they get going. 

Also then they say the movie is about motherhood. Yeah, another addition to our hill-top horror series of films which has been giving diminishing returns. Yeah. 

Team FRS

Subam

Categories
cinema FRS

FRS: Mafia Chapter 1

So you all know what an FRS is right? Right? 

+1: Movie begins with Louis Armstrong singing “What A Wonderful World” in the background, we don’t know why, maybe the movie is about how great the world is, if that is the case we should probably reduce marks.

<Extracted from audio excerpts from FRS Room audio>

……. But then the first point need not be negative…..

……..Only uncles will have such sentiment..maybe we should hire more young writers into the FRS…

…Darn it you kids…

Wait, uncle, that doesn’t mean you will be fired from the FRS writing panel! Not now, we mean. …..

</Extracted from audio excerpts from FRS Room audio>

And now for some….recruitment

Key Skills 

Are you cynical? (Weightage: 80%)

Can you write? (not an actual requirement, weightage 20%)

Are you funny? (not an actual requirement, weightage ***)

Do you believe in the magic of movies? (If yes, DON’T apply please save us some time)

Note 

You will remain anonymous for life

You will receive no privileges

Of course this job does not pay 

Thanks 

-50: Movie’s name is Mafia (now you know how we hate this gangsterism) and that’s not even the scary part, it is accompanied by the words Chapter 1, which means there is more to this…this thing.

-201: Hero’s name is Aryan. But brother’s name is Dilip or something, not Dravid

Lost opportunity is lost.

<crickets chirping> <crickets chirping> 

-31: Hero is a honest narcotics officer cliche

-507: Hero is a honest narcotics officer who narrates his own story cliche. We wish we could cut more for this, but too much obvious narration is obvious in this movie. Very very troubling. Makes you wonder if this movie was produced by GVM

(note: this movie was not produced by GVM) 

+12: Gautham Menon type friendly and understanding father (note: movie not produced by GVM) 

-3.5: Hero’s batchmates also become his teammates at the Narcotics division, but they treat him like superior and not peer; he also like that except with PBS

+5: For everytime PBS is on screen (PBS is Priya Bhavan Shankar for those who didn’t catch our point) 

PBS fans unite! She has a decent role too. 

-48fps: Slow motion overdose with BGM. Heroooooo’s caaaaaaaar stopppppps aaaaannd heeeeerooo gettttttsss oneeeeeeeee shoeeeeeeeeeee out 

It’s actually even slower in the movie. 

Accompanied by Nanananaaaa nanana…type music 

–48fps*2: same thing happens for villain too (although we are tired to type like that) 

Makes us wonder if the director thought that the only difference between short film and feature film is the slow motion. By the time, we were done with the movie, we hated slow motion everywhere and we started to think if we should take up running .

Note: all writers worked from their undisclosed location separately and submitted their drafts. WFH is the default for FRS, boys.

Urgh and we hate running. Imagine. 

+12: Director says story and all no need, just hero needs to find villain (actually not so difficult) 

–40: Movie falls into the usual trap of suave villain means should wear a coat and have wine glass and listen to some western classic music. 

Usual. 

Also usual slow motion for villain too. Slo-mo while going in a boat, slo-mo while getting out of a private jet.etc, the scenes write themselves (in slow motion)

“How much of build-up is too much build-up? Asked the gym trainer”

+23: Thalaivasal Vijay plays a concerned citizen activist who has made it his life’s mission to bring down drug menace types

-23: Thalaivasal Vijay lives in a big bungalow, totally unlike normal citizen activists, maybe we need to investigate further here. How did he fund his activism? 

-10: Movie becomes cat and mouse for sometime and then suddenly ends, but before it suddenly ends hero and villain will do animal type comparisons to themselves etc 

Hmm, they didn’t use cat and mouse analogy but. 

+15: Ending might be humorous for some.  

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

Subam

Team FRS

Categories
cinema cinema:tamil FRS

FRS: Bigil


So you all know what an FRS is right? Right? 

+2: Movie is without narration. Always a good sign (or so we thought). 

+5: Movie puts itself into porali category immediately as it begins with students protesting against change of the college building from a heritage building to a new building outside the city. (actually in Arakonam).

We feel the government is in the right here, since in-city colleges and their buses actually contribute a lot to city traffic. But of course it is not a Tamil movie, unless it opposes the government.

Even heritage buildings will breathe better without the trouble of students <umm…where are we going with this>

Heil Democracy and all that. 

-41: Predictably politician character is played as a mixture of being clueless and ruthless. Politico uncle orders a riot on protesting students, of course this is what is going to set-up the hero introduction sequence. 

+5: Hero has mastered the art of throwing bijli vedi in a manner that it explodes just before the thug’s face. Also this is a way to wish the audience “Happy Diwali Nanba”

-5: Hero hits at least 20 people within the first 20 % of the movie, means ki you can comfortably say that for the remaining 80 % of the movie any such hitting will be surely tiring and you will not experience any exhilaration. 

-2: If hero is from gully, then surely he must be the most popular guy with all the thaaymaargal’s and kutties love and affection. We will never understand why this is so, apart from the fact that he is the hero.. 

-11: Since it is written in the Kollywood Shaastram, that the  best way to end a semi-comedic intro fight would be to convert into an intro song. We now have an opening song which is shot in all shades of red available. 

-24.5: Yogi Babu is in this movie, that means a “moonji” joke is always around the corner. We have to face it. <We mean…>

+6: It’s not a big hero tamil movie, if it does not have a chief minister reference; althought this seems to be a new virus; such a thing was never said in the Kollywood Shaahstram

-90: Kollywood continues to exploit gansgterism without even for once explaining the mechanics of it. 

-91: Kollywood heroes continue to exploit cooling glasses by wearing them for 90% of the movie, so we can never see them act. 

#ItsNotCoolToWearCoolersAlways

-12: When in hospital, supporting characters will regain consciousness only to reveal entire back story of character. 

-30.8: Surprise! Father of gangster hero is also gangster, but with white hair and all. That’s about it. All pazhaya scenes only. 

+30.8: But he is well meaning gangster, because of course he is played by hero only. 

<Pause for reflection> 

Rayappan believes that his son becoming a national football player will encourage more people to move out of their gully by taking up football. 

While this is an inspiring thought, since there is always only a limited number of people who can be part of a national football side, the idea itself might not scale. 

There is a possibility that those who don’t make it to the national side either return to their rowdy roots or become sports followers on twitter who tweet GOALLLLL while following matches. 

Neither will help the overall ecosystem. 

Rayappan should have thought better. Won’t scale. 

</Pause for reflection> 

-05: No girl in the football team had the slightest doubt that Michael indeed looked like ex Tamilnadu captain Bigil. Because….hmm…

+11: Nayanthara is playing an empowered heroine in a movie about woman empowerment

-11: Empowered heroine does not tell father that she is not interested in marriage right now, this would have cut some 20 minutes of attempts at a comical church wedding. 

-3: Convenient team physiotherapist is extremely convenient (for hero)

-24: When movie transforms into sports movie, so all sports officials transform into villains and hero can become coach. 

+33: For a few minutes we actually thought this would be a women’s empowerment film, points for those minutes.

When issues are watered down so that the hero can take a stand on it, then ultimately the issue only suffers. 

Here in Bigil, while women empowerment is treated with allowable care; director offers no apology for violence and rowdyism.There are at least 300 people being thrown here and there by the hero. 

That rowdyism itself is a threat to women’s safety never occurred to the director. 

Hmm of course, hero is rowdy because rowdy is cool/wants to be etc. 

-33: For a full second half which is supposed to be about the girls, barely their names registered and most don’t have any role or character. 

+6: Director firmly believes that scoring goals is the only aspect of football he will concentrate on. 

-78: Movie relies heavily on stereotypes, but also does some baavla in the name of dismantling them. 

-101: Movie is not over yet. 2 more football matches to go. 

+3: One police station sequence which seems was directed by ARM during Darbar break. 

-5: Director sneaks in outtakes from Adidas ads for SIngapennay song, we hope people found it inspiring, or atleast to do some Diwali sports shoe shopping

<Use code BIGIL50, wherever you want, you never know> 

+5: Everyone in football team is wearing Bigil jersey, but we expected them to turn to camera and say “I am Bigil” like “I am spartacus” , no such luck.

-41.8: A team in full form will suddenly play like they have never played together before in THE FINALS of the tournament, just so our hero can go to locker room and motivate them. 

+11: Hero fulfills everyone’s wishes, including the wishes of his dead father and his father and their friends and their uncles and their gullies and the whole world. 

+32: Hero gets credit for everything by NOT getting credit for everything, wow well played. 

Hmm but..

Haters can hate, because Peace is the answer. Everyone becomes good. Society is happy. World is happy. Sleep well. 

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

Happy Deepavali Nanba.

Subam

Team FRS