Movies in August

I caught a lot of movies on cable this month; I'm not sure how that worked out. I saw the original Jane Fonda version of Fun with Dick and Jane, which made me wonder how badly the Jim Carrey/Tea Leone version would screw up its lowkey vibe. I'm afraid to find out. Dickie Roberts, Former Child Star was amusing, although not in the way that would be worth seeing twice. We Were Soldiers could have been the Vietnam War version of Band of Brothers, only it wasn't. I found it oddly not emotionally engaging at all.

Cop Out was directed by Kevin Smith, but not written by him. It's very obvious; it does not have any of his wit. I found the characters likeable, but there just weren't any jokes (unless you count the tagline on the DVD cover: "Rock out with your Glock out", which gave me a chuckle). Rope was our latest Alfred Hitchcock movie, and we enjoyed it. We always play Find Alfred, but for this one we also go to play Find the Hidden Cuts. It was seamlessly done, something all too easy to pull off with computers these days. There was a point when the camera followed the actors down the hall to the kitchen when it became clear that SteadiCams hadn't been invented yet, and yet it was no where near as jarring as that keeping-it-real hurky-jerky handheld camera stuff which got so popular a few years back (we hates it; it's distracting as hell). I liked his use of color too, and the cityscape looming out the window. Lastly in the category of films in English, Cold Souls, which stars Paul Giamatti as Paul Giamatti. It did feel like Being John Malkovich in a lot of ways, but it was a quieter story. Paul is working in a production of Uncle Vanya, but the angst of the play is getting to him, so he decides to let a new company remove his soul just until he's done with the play. But that has side effects and he quickly wants it back, only to find it's been stolen. He follows the trail to Russia, which has a burgeoning trade in taking the souls of Russian workers and selling them to Americans. The moment when he finds out who has his soul and what she's been using it for is priceless. A small but interesting film.

On to Bollywood then. New York is about the fallout of 09/11. John Abraham is an architecture student who is picked up for having pictures of the WTC on his camera after 9/11 and spends weeks or months held in an undisclosed location. When he's finally released, he vows revenge. Which to me, speaking in terms of story not legal definitions, doesn't exactly make him a terrorist; he's getting back at the people who specifically harmed him, the same as Mel Gibson would if you hurt his daughter, you know? The element of the story which I found most interesting, when he tries and then fails to reintegrate in society before deciding on revenge, is glossed over in a musical montage, and Katerina Kaif's character is criminally underused (there is a scene where she and Abraham are walking in Central Park and pass two randowm policemen and he starts to panic, but she holds his hand and walks him past the cops with such a fierce look in her eye; why couldn't the movie have had more of that?). Also the happy ending that comes out of nowhere feels really false; it relied on the three remaining characters having no real emotions about everything that just happened in the climactic scene and I felt a bit betrayed. This could have been a really good film but I'm afraid they flubbed it.

I had better luck with Wanted, another Salman Khan film which I had heard nothing but negative things about. Yes, it's a bit silly, another story of a cop undercover, the loose canon type who gets the job done never mind the risks or rules (Hollywood has plenty of those as well). I will agree that while the female lead is charming enough in her acting scenes, she can clearly just barely dance. I say this with great love, but it's an odd film where Salman Khan is your best dancer. But then this is not that film; Govinda turns up just long enough...




Aladin had Amitabh Bachchan as the genie of the lamp and Sanjay Dutt as a magician called the Ringmaster (he seemed to call himself that largely for one joke at the expense of a Chinese man). It was fun but not awesome. Kisna was an epic story set in the last days of British rule. It involved an Indian boy in love with a white girl, with the theme that duty comes before love. I felt bad for the Indian girl Kisna eventually married out of duty. I bet she had a fun life. Mehbooba was gorgeous with extravagant sets and the really big kind of song and dance numbers. I didn't really care for the ending here either, but at least the first three hours were entertaining.

Better was Lajja, a story about women and how society treats them. Which sounds preachy as hell, but this movie pulls all the tricks out of the bag (great dances, spot-on comic relief, a few really heroic male characters who get into fights but not ones which drag on forever) to make for a highly watchable movie which just also happens to have a message. Having seen Sita sings the Blues, the scene where Madhuri Dixit takes Sita to task for letting herself be tested by fire while performing her part in a play was awesome (it's a bit like someone playing Jesus in a passion play deciding to go off script and not get up on the cross, telling the audience they can all handle their own sins, thank you very much, and stop looking for scapegoats). This was from the same director as the very first Bollywood movie I saw: Andaz Apna Apna. I'd be hard pressed to come up with two more different films...