Sreehari Nair wishes to write about that which is in the cultural air but absent from trending lists. You can e-mail the author at sreeharin@rediff-inc.com
'What would a composite of Dawood, Rajan, and Arun Gawli be like?' 'What if an absconding mafia boss were to land in Mumbai tomorrow, tired from all the running, and tender his final apology to the city by narrating his story and narrating it with brutal honesty?' Sreehari Nair watches Sacred Games.
'In Sanju, Rajkumar Hirani has essentially found a Rajkumar Hirani story buried inside Sanjay Dutt's life.' 'Now if you think that's scary, sample the alternative: Perhaps Sanjay Dutt had been living his life to suit the narrative of a Rajkumar Hirani film,' says Sreehari Nair.
Dibakar Banerjee delivers his finest work to date, and Sreehari Nair makes sure to applaud him.
'In this chicks-rule-the-roost universe, the men are non-existent, untrustworthy or plain incompetent and it's the women who are providing for each other's fantasies.' Sreehari Nair applauds Ocean's 8.
'Kaala's sin is not that it is presented as a mouthpiece for its director Pa Ranjith's political viewpoints, but that it makes a travesty of them.' 'Ranjith turns Marx into merchandise, all the while functioning as a hired hand for Brand Rajinikanth,' points out Sreehari Nair.
'Harshvardhan Kapoor will go on to become one of the finest Indian actors of this generation,' predicts Sreehari Nair. 'In Bhavesh Joshi, Kapoor treats the movie like a box and tries to break out of it.' 'It's magic to watch a young actor like Kapoor achieve intensity without overextending himself; he can hold a frame while merely being in it.'
Part of what make Ee.Ma.Yau so special is its ability to focus our attention on things that conventional movies throw away under the pretext of storytelling, says Sreehari Nair.
'What we have here is a director who understands how people fight, but has not a clue about how they make love,' points out Sreehari Nair.
'Oddly enough, everything Raazi cannot explain or put a finger on, it glosses over in the name of patriotism or watan-love; glorifying thereby the very sentiment it had set out to mock.' 'This is the unique tragedy of the film: it becomes less of a counterpoint to pseudo-patriotism and more of a companion piece,' says Sreehari Nair.
'Omerta is a work of true moral force; it is, at the risk of sounding fancy, a motion picture for our times,' says Sreehari Nair.
'Sudhir Mishra takes us into the dreams and fears of our politicians, into their self-deceiving pitches, and he shows us their demons and angels,' says Sreehari Nair.
A big part of October's charm is in its taking of a cinematic tragedy and presenting to us how we may experience it in real life, says Sreehari Nair.
There's something very pompous about the basic pitch of this movie that slowly chews away at its core, feels Sreehari Nair.
'This colliding of worlds is a feature of chawl life in Mumbai, where the clashes in one household often become prime-time television for the neighbours; where the boundaries of good sex, lechery, and incest are frequently blurred,' says Sreehari Nair.
...But ends up being oddly moving, says Sreehari Nair.
Neeraj Pandey's Aiyaary is the sort of spy fantasy story that drunks narrate in bars, says Sreehari Nair.
'Parts of Pad Man look like a Vicco Turmeric commercial, parts of it look like a Tourism Ad and parts of it like a commercial for Etihad Airlines. But almost all of it, unmistakably, sounds like one big town-hall message,' says Sreehari Nair.
'Sanjay Leela Bhansali's historical characters behave as though they are already aware of the chapters that will be dedicated to them and the sonnets that will be written in their memory.' 'And yet, they talk relentlessly about making and remaking history.' 'Can anything be more superficial?' asks Sreehari Nair.
And it's written with tears, blood and unspoken lines.
'You walk out of Mukkabaaz feeling good about yourself, but unlike Kashyap's best pictures, it releases you from the responsibility of seeing yourself in it; the movie is darn clever, most of the way, but it hardly has any wisdom,' says Sreehari Nair.
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