Ford v Ferrari (2019)

City: Mumbai

Date: December 2019

Mode: Theatre

In one of my illness spells (possibly the May-June spell of 2019), I came across the trailer to this movie, and recollected it with detail to the sibling. She was surprised to see me able to pay attention, and we (along with her husband) later watched the movie in the theatre just before I took ill again. I had even written about Le Mans in my FB Sports Group. I have a simple explanation to my being able to recollect the trailer – the movie stars both Matt Damon and Christian Bale, and they looked like they were friends in the movie. The secondary explanation is that it involves car racing.

The movie has been praised by critics and watchers (and won Oscars), and has plenty of fantastic moments. I particularly liked how the death scene involving Christian Bale’s Ken Miles was done, and how Matt Damon’s Carroll Shelby sheds a few tears in front of Miles’ son. Both scenes are poignant and do not focus on debris of any kind. 

Lovers of car racing will find plenty to love about the movie, and for those who don’t understand the speed involved in car racing and the skills of the racers, watch this scene from the movie.

Rush too had a sequence that showed how quick Daniel Bruhl’s Niki Lauda is, and when Niki Lauda passed on in May 2019, I was convinced that his death wasn’t real. I kept watching this scene from the movie to convince myself that he was still alive.

The Bourne Series

When I was in high school, my classmate RM~ lent me one of Robert Ludlum’s books. I returned it to him without reading it, and now I can’t recollect the reason behind not reading it.

Later, The Bourne Series of movies arrived along with Matt Damon. I immediately fell in love with Matt Damon’s portrayal of Jason Bourne. The perfect combination of brawn and brain (and integrity), he tremendously appealed to the sapiosexual in me.

In the Bourne Series, I have watched the first three movies (2002, 2004 and 2007) on TV and liked them. The remaining two have been theatre watches for me. I didn’t enjoy The Bourne Legacy (2012) as much – it didn’t feature Matt Damon, and I was glad when he returned in Jason Bourne (2016).

Moby’s “Extreme Ways” features in the movie series more than once, and in my illness spells, I used to think of KS~ while playing the song on loop. The blue and black combination in one of the videos held special meaning to me, and the grey one more so. Even as things fell apart, I loved that the picturisations had nothing more than Matt Damon's face. 

“Oh baby, oh baby
Then it fell apart, it fell apart
Oh baby, oh baby
Like it always does, always does”

Go on, listen to the song. 

Extreme Ways – The Bourne Identity (2002) – not the official version

Extreme Ways – Jason Bourne (2016) – the official version 

I like this version even more – the pace is different.

Extreme Ways - The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) - the official version

I discovered this version today. 

Black Panther (2018)

Place: Mumbai
Year: 2019

Mode: TV

The sibling and her husband are huge fans of movies featuring superheroes, and after watching Black Panther in the theatre, she excitedly recommended the movie to me. I couldn’t watch it in the theatre, but my interest in the movie grew after watching Naomi Osaka gush over Michael B Jordan. 

pls block me 😩

— NaomiOsaka大坂なおみ (@naomiosaka) October 16, 2018

When Black Panther played on one of the TV channels last year, I watched it. The sibling had specifically mentioned that the brother-sister relationship is portrayed well, and the music is fantastic. I agree with both her points. 

In recent times, there is much debate around the poor representation of Black characters in Oscar nominations, and I was glad that this movie got made and did as well. While quizzing this year, I got to know about another special feature in this movie – that of the presence of Tolkien white guys, a pun on token white guys.

I was happy that I could finally watch Lupita Nyong’o – I still haven’t watched her Oscar winning performance. What I wasn’t prepared for is Chadwick Boseman’s performance as T’Challa / Black Panther, and Letitia Wright’s performance as his sister Shuri. Both characters are written so well, and I was mesmerised with how inspiring they are. Since yesterday, post Chadwick’s untimely death, I am remembering the movie. Actors will pass on, and yet I suspect that the passing on of popular superheroes is going to hurt a lot more.

pic.twitter.com/aZ2JzDf5ai

— Chadwick Boseman (@chadwickboseman) August 29, 2020

Writing this post makes me realise how I have small stories connected with movies, and I hope to be more frequent here. For now, I leave you with the trailer. Do watch the movie – it is a delight. Wakanda Forever!

The Rainmaker (1997)

Place: Chennai

Date: August 2020

Mode: TV

It comes as a huge surprise to me that I haven’t mentioned John Grisham on any of my blogs, given that I have read 6 of his books and watched multiple movies based on his books. I have paid attention to how the best of actors star in movies based on his books (Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Matt Damon to name three), and after I read “To Kill a Mockingbird”, I can see how it inspired Grisham’s “A Time to Kill”.

All of this is not to say that I have watched all the movies in totality. I watched The Pelican Brief (1993) briefly because I wanted to read the book first. Nowadays, I watch and read in no particular order, and when I found my father engrossed in watching ‘The Rainmaker’ recently, I too spent some time watching it on TV.

I didn’t expect to see Claire Danes play a battered wife in this, and her scenes with Matt Damon are really good. It was a pleasure to watch Danny DeVito too. Via this movie, I got to know about ambulance chasing, and how insurance companies can operate when it comes to claims. Hollywood often portrays corporates harshly (do you remember Erin Brockovich or Wall Street?), and yet it acts as a good reminder of the world that I have temporarily left. After working for as long, that world still scares me. 

I am mentioning the trailer of the movie here. Do watch it.

Shakuntala Devi (2020)

Place: Chennai

Date: August 2020

Mode: Amazon Prime

After “Crazy Rich Asians (2018)”, "Little Women (2019)", Parasite and Contagion, Amazon Prime is becoming like a theatre watch for me, and it is nice to be able to watch some movies despite Covid. I keep movie watching for weekends, and it is a nice routine to follow.

My latest watch is Shakuntala Devi. My mother and I watched it together, and enjoyed it. I first heard of the movie via Nayanika Mahtani, the writer of the movie – we are both in one online group. I got curious to see how the movie has been written and to my pleasant surprise, it is well written and well edited. As with any biopic, I am left with questions around how true the incidents depicted in the movie are, but I must say that I liked that the movie didn’t have too many songs. Perhaps the casting of Vidya Balan in the lead role had something to do with this – she isn’t known for her dancing skills.

Both my parents have witnessed Shakuntala Devi in action when she visited their educational institutes, and while I had heard of her, I must confess that I didn’t know much about her. Via the movie, I got to know that she opted to marry a divorcee and herself got divorced later. It makes me view her as a gritty woman. Her difficult relationships with her mother and her daughter have been fleshed out well, and I shed tears in one scene where she visits her childhood home after her mother has passed away, and she bawls at the sight of her mother’s material belongings that include newspaper cuttings of her performances.

The feminist flavor given in the movie to her choices make me want to know more, especially in the context of her book on homosexuality where she has referred to her ex-husband as being homosexual. The movie shows that she says this to sell the book better, but the Wikipedia entry says her book went unnoticed when it was published. 

The movie made on the “Human Computer” is worth a watch.

Ocean’s Eight (2018)

I don’t know how to review movies all that well, but I like noting down the thoughts that occur before, during and post movie-watching. The sibling once pointed out how we weren’t watching Oscar nominated movies featuring top actresses by default, and that was true. The default watch used to be best actor and best picture winners and nominees. This made me confront the bias in my head. I am still not there in overcoming it fully, but atleast I am aware.

When Ocean’s Eight was released, I paid attention to the female star-cast and can’t quite recollect why I didn’t watch the movie in the theatre. These days, I try watching one hour of TV at night and was flipping channels when I landed on Ocean’s Eight. I love watching Sandra Bullock and Anne Hathaway (who somehow makes such a good villain), though I must confess that I liked Cate Blanchett the best, was disappointed with the role given to Helena Bonham Carter and was surprised to see Rihanna in a movie. Guess this is what ensemble casts look like – not everybody gets enough screen-time and yet it is all quite entertaining.

I have watched all three Ocean series movies (11, 12 and 13) on TV and somehow wanted this movie to have some linkage with the series. The main link remains Sandra Bullock’s character who is the younger sister of George Clooney’s Danny Ocean. These heist movies look more attractive than necessary thanks to the star-cast, although if I were being ripped off in the manner they show, I would have different things to say. But then, I’d have to be THAT rich to be ripped off, so all of it is going to remain an unknown experience.

If you have time to kill, do watch. The food poisoning scene involving Anne Hathaway is interesting in the way it is shot. I wish I could comment on the chemistry between the lead actors the way Clooney and Julia Roberts had, or Clooney and Brad Pitt. I didn't find any such chemistry here. Perhaps Blanchett and Bonham-Carter might have shared some.

Onward (2020)

Post my medical review in February 2020, I got back to Mumbai and wanted to get back to watching movies in the theatre. I didn’t think I was ready for ‘Parasite’ yet, and when the sibling suggested an animated movie, I thought why not. Usually these movies have a feel-good ending and don’t demand too much in terms of thinking. I guess this is the world healthy children live in, and there’s no harm in visiting this world as an adult too. Even if one is unhealthy.

My mother, the sibling and I went to watch ‘Onward’. The theatre had more children than usual, and I felt happy. My mother felt the movie was too kiddish, but I loved it. The story of two elf brothers who set out on a quest related to their dead father was exactly what I needed to kick-start my movie-watching all over again. We went to a theatre close to where I stay with the idea that incase we had to return during the interval, it would be easy to do so. What happened was that I could sit through the movie without any discomfiture.

I notice that Hollywood often makes movies related to magic, and the animation and the art is exceptional in them. It leaves me with the lingering feeling of wanting to watch behind-the-scenes work. I don’t know how to review the quality of such movies as I am usually mesmerised at what I watch. Is there more effort put in the movie? I wouldn’t know.

Such movies usually show the principal character go through the hero’s journey and it makes for exciting viewing. The movie has some special moments. It shows the reaction of the two brothers to their mother’s new boyfriend, the independent mother who makes her own decisions, the low self-confidence in the younger brother, and how much the two brothers miss their father. Watching the younger brother draw up a list of things he wanted to do with his father was bittersweet. I also got to know about the magical and mythical manticore.

Watch the movie. It will be time well-spent. At any rate, it isn’t clear when one can get back to watching movies in the theatre, so this acts as a good way of saying, “The last movie I watched in the theatre before Covid-19”

Contagion (2011)

This movie is my third watch on Amazon Prime overall, and comes soon after I watched Parasite. Under ordinary circumstances, I ought to have watched the movie much earlier – it has a starcast I love – Matt Damon and Kate Winslet both star in it. I don’t know if this movie was released in India or how it fared at the box-office, but it is surreal to watch how it creates a world that’s affected by a flu-like pandemic that originates in Asia. It also creates the world of a journalist (Jude Law) who blogs about the truth of the pandemic much to the discomfort of the establishment.

The movie left me gripped for most part, especially the scenes that show ordinary people violating the social distancing norm put in place, the requirement of masks and other medical kits, and the spread in Asia. If this isn’t being ahead of the curve, I don’t know what is. It explains what R naught is (the basic reproduction number) and how a pandemic develops based on differing R naught. It shows an autopsy in more detail – I was not prepared to watch Gwyneth Paltrow’s brain getting dissected.

There are many dialogues that struck as applicable for today’s Covid-19 scenario and I am mentioning three of them here. I feel like validating some of these numbers and comparing myself to the average person metrics, but don't quite know dependable resources to do the same.

“But right now, our best defense has been social distancing. No hand-shaking, staying home when you're sick washing your hands frequently.”

“How fast it multiplies depends on a variety of factors. The incubation period, how long a person is contagious. Sometimes people can be contagious without even having symptoms.”

"The average person touches their face 2- or 3000 times a day. Three to five times every waking minute. In between, we're touching doorknobs water fountains, elevator buttons and each other. Those things become fomites."

Watch the trailer here to get a glimpse of what the movie is all about. If you are the sort who gets anxious after receiving more information about a disease, I’d recommend not watching this movie right now.

Parasite (2019)

Given how illness affects me and how disorienting and difficult movie-watching gets at that time (see my post on ‘Bharat’ for instance), I have decided to stay away from movie-watching at the theatre to the extent possible when I am ill. In my latest episode, I couldn’t sit through ‘Tanhaji’ with its selfie references – the only movie we watched in the theatre - and we left in the interval. I was upset at taking medication outside of home, and felt the CCTV would capture this. Which is true, but the act wouldn’t have been as disorienting on a normal day.

Anyway, Oscar season in 2020 arrived and the sibling asked me more than once if we could watch ‘Parasite’ at the theatre. I did not want to take a chance, and kept postponing the plan. Finally, I watched the movie on Amazon Prime last week in the afternoon, with sub-titles. I can see why the movie won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and still can’t figure out how it got the Best Picture award. It has won numerous awards, so perhaps critics and others can see something in the movie that I cannot - I did prefer 'Joker' on the whole.

I loved how the families were chosen for the leading roles (especially the sister in the poorer family), and how authentic the settings looked especially in the sequences involving torrential rain. I couldn’t fully relate to either family though, and the constant reference to unsavoury smells from the poor left me sad even as I recollected the odour emanating from cabs in Gurugram. What also left me upset was the way art therapy is portrayed in the movie. Trauma-driven mental illness in the rich kid could have been portrayed differently. How different? With more compassion (even for the rich) and letting go of black comedy for a bit. Art therapy doesn't see financial status. Why link it to that? There are differing views on this though.

I also learnt about this dish called Ram-Don (a made-up word for Jjapaguri in Korean) and the role it plays in the movie. MasterChef watching-exposure means I can watch non-vegetarian food getting cooked with more interest than before, and if I had been a non-vegetarian, I would have been tempted to cook this dish myself.

I thought the sex-scene in the movie was done well, and there are several opinions on how uncomfortable the audience felt on watching it. If anyone is hiding and watching others have sex, it is bound to be uncomfortable and privacy endangering, and can bring up several emotions – and this is exactly what the Director wanted the audience to experience.

Watch the trailer here. It is interesting to see who is the parasite.