Tag: tom cruise

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cinema cinema:english Essay FRS Movie Notes

FRS: The Mummy

 

TheMummy1 copy

So, we all know what FRS is right? Right?

Vacation’s over boys!

-101: Narration, even if it is in Russel Crowe’s voice also cheating-like. Because narration brings in a point of view but the rest of the film doesn’t even acknowledge that. What’s this da big holly.

-23: Tired Russel Crowe is extremely tired, maybe it is his character, maybe it is us. We are extremely troubled when our favourite actors land such roles. Taking this opportunity to welcome Kamal Haasan to Big Boss. Hi.

+25: Speaking of favourite actors: Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise

A word on Cruise, let’s give the critics the benefit of the doubt, he does play the same character in every film, which of course is ‘pop criticism’, but we have a feels that Cruise knows what he is doing because at 50+, he was able to bring out something as exciting as Rogue Nation.

There is no actual rule that a screenplay should not lend itself to its larger than life lead actor, in fact it requires some really smart writing.

Boys and Cruise is among the last of the old world Hollywood type movie stars da, like that only.

-50: Speaking of smart writing, Tom Cruise being chased by a 5000-year-old Mummy who thinks he is her chosen one, like really this is the Nagesh arc from Utharavu Indri Ulle Vaa

+22: These ancient Egyptians are very specific in their rituals, so elaborate

-100: Elaborate Egyptian rituals can be interrupted

-343: Movie rests entirely on the above point

-5: Bossugal of Egypt think that Mummifying is the worst of punishments not realising that it is the most favourable situation for Hollywood Bossugal

+6: Hero does not say the useless overused line “I hate mummies” in this franchise

-21: Hero thinks stealing and protecting artefacts are the same, although he is not Indiana Jones. Hero does not belong in a museum

+23: Bug-Calling: the pioneering tech to communicate in Antman seems like walkie-talkie because The Mummy can do all that without tech only.

+56: Over-powerful Mummy is over-powerful.

TheMummy2 copy

It’s like unbeatable Mummy meets (Mission) Impossible Cruise

+5: We actually came up with the above line

FRS Rule of Thumb: Whenever main villain is captured and put on full display, you can bet your house in Adayar and that estate in Conoor that villain will surely escape.

-3: Conoor

-1: Adayar

-192: Hero sleeps with heroine as mark of love, this is mentioned multiple times in the film but never actually shown. Boss, why do you think we watch English films in the first place (dubbed also same). Please convey to concerned department.

-76: American hero saying “What the hell” when they don’t know what is happening

 

+50: Very good to decent (we give range, for specific data we are not one IBM) action sequences, I mean you don’t really care about Mummies getting hit left right and centre, but it is fun and funny, there is even a Raiders type fight in the lorry.

-10: American archaeologists immediately get into, “what we have here is a 2000-year-old artefact” kind of voice recording which works ok as exposition, but second and third time it is like over professional, boring even

+101: Hero’s friend: yeah yeah he is funny, but then also (no spoilers) LOL this is one of the films where they give a twist to the companion character and much welcome change this is.

 

+5 Tom Cruise running away from things

From a strategic career point of view, I hope he runs away from what this franchise will become, oh wait, there is more. Strike that out.

-35.9: This concept of power, like u were first Pharaoh of one region, suddenly you want to rule whole world. Why? All your IAS officers are doing so well?

Also if you are princess of Egypt, high chance you will not inherit throne, not unlike modern times. Someone said history repeats itself, someone was right.

So, if we keep repeating this statement (which is ‘history repeats itself’) then we will be proving that person right. Right?

+22: Double Pupils

-208.112: Actually, we had decided in one FRS board meeting that we should not cut points for lack of originality, or lack of ideas or something along these lines. Because we believe that very few can come up with something new, see like this FRS itself is one modified (read as copy) format, but this and all if we see…Nevermind.

But still when you have the wealth of content with you (some 300 Universal monsters) … Hollywood Bossugal must revisit this whole franchise funding.

tenor

Oh before we go, there is no Rachel Weisz in this thing, we have no idea how many points we should cut for that alone.

 

Yours Sincerely

THE FRS Team

A LhF Production

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

Holy Mackerel!

A note on De Palma: the documentary
BaradwajR in his review of the Tamil film Thoongavanam cried out that what that film really needed was the styling of De Palma, not workman like direction; but that is just reducing De Palma to a stylist, Thoongavanam on the other hand got the workman like director it needed (just a flat out thriller), it certainly did not deserve the twisted visual brilliance that a De Palma film is expected to have.

It also reinstates the prevailing notion that De Palma is just a stylist, which he isn’t, just.

Like the people who I know who love Mission Impossible, I fell in love with the De Palma film without actually knowing that it was his film, and when I did and later re-watched Mission Impossible (my permanent laptop lock screen is the cyclical staircase from the film), I went “holy mackerel!”
Obviously when I heard that a documentary was being made, it went right to the top of my ‘to watch’ list of the year and I finally saw it yesterday.
De Palma, the documentary is a very straight-plain-just-the-director-talking-about-his-movies kind, of course interspersed by clips from his films, but it doesn’t have the admittance of peers or future admirers like the documentaries of Kubrick or Orson Welles or even Woody Allen, which is sad because De Palma deserves more than just a talking head documentary, the least is to have arranged for the rest of the New Hollywood to say few words about him.
Maybe BDP wanted it this way. His life, his work, his words.
bdp
<Idea Suggest: one big round-table with Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg, Scorsese and De Palma>
Even among New Hollywood, De Palma stands a little away; he has never got the widespread admiration of the others (which itself is enough reason to re-look DP films) but somehow managed to stay commercially relevant. The bright spot of this documentary is De Palma himself, to use the often cited “he carries the film on his shoulders” expression, but here there is no other option, you just have an aged film maker being very matter-of-fact about his films, there is no romanticizing or bowing down to any of the greats, very avuncular.
DP also realizes that he was fortunate to have worked in a time when studios were more genial towards filmmakers.
The stylistic flourishes that have now come to be known as the De Palma catalogue: the long takes, split screens, character juxtapositions, ominous music or the general feeling of accentuated darkness are not mere add-ons(as they have been written about in every style vs substance argument), these are the tools of a director who thinks visually, a director whose stimulus comes from walking through art galleries, a director who know holds the same thread that Hitchcock had; these aren’t just gimmickry (well but some are).
Let us just say that De Palma uses style like how a writer uses words, well but then he uses them lightly without pretense so that you don’t have to run and look-up a dictionary every time.
I think it is very difficult to un-see a DP film, a part; ok that is too much, a moment or the visual experience always remains, like say the fireworks in Blow-Out (my favorite DP, possibly one of the best tragedies in cinema), the church in Obsession, the staircase in Mission Impossible, the opening of Snake Eyes, the ending of The Untouchables; with only great difficulty that a person can lie about forgetting the above.
It is the paranoia that he creates which just comes out of the film and surrounds the audience much like the atmosphere, to keep me thinking about the places that I’ve never been to and situations I’ve never been in. In this way even the below-average De Palma thriller is cut above your everyday thriller and holy mackerel, entertaining as well.
Proof of what a thinking mind can do a medium.
(insert Brain De Palma joke here)
De Palma films have divided people and critics, thumbed down on many efforts, even the critics who adore him only see him within Hitchcock’s shadow, clouding him from adulation are his dubious distinctions including sharing shoulders with Michael bay on the number of Razzie nominations for Worst Director.
If not for nothing, De Palma the documentary would be a good place to start or revisit a wonderful director.
Because the real life of a movie only begins when it has been removed from the theaters.
Categories
cinema cinema:english

MISSION REBOOT

Click to view trailer

 

In an extensive escape set piece from the Kremlin, Ethan Hunt transforms from an upright Russian General to an almost innocent tourist bystander, and then the Kremlin blows up.

Welcome to the movies.

The above mentioned scene is not something completely new to us, but still we gasped at the audacity of the event and clenched our hands together in anxiety fully knowing that Tom Cruise will eventually find some crevice to get out of the sticky situations.

The IMF is unlike the MI6, not just in semantics and choice of cover companies. The very name evokes some dynamism compared to their cousins from across the sea, although makes slight nods like that of a rebellious son who meets his father; take the case of the accented Benji played to brilliance by Simon Pegg a somewhat American version of Q.

Ghost protocol picks up abruptly from its predecessor; a classy opening in the streets of Budapest relocates to the prison cells of Russia, not surprisingly Russia returns as Hollywood’s primary enemy after flirting with the Balkans and China for the past few years.

Leave aside the changing locations, technology and high adrenalin is what that really contributes in making the film greater than what was expected or planned, in other words separate the action films from the better films which have action.

For a man who spent his entire career till date before a screen animating rats and out of work superheroes (which by no means is an easy job) Brad Bird excels in a live action debut, bringing in more visual humor than the previous movies.

Ghost Protocol re-instates the fact that Tom Cruise is an international star, despite the aging face and the MI franchise is ready for a new baton bearer in Jeremy Renner.

(Although nothing much has been implied, I was just extrapolating.)

And yes, they come to India to launch nuclear weapons.

Finally, don’t forget to clap for the Burj Khalifa sequence, there is a good chance you might be awed beyond remembrance for those moments.

 

I also watched Osthe, but that movie is beyond words.