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.