Fury Movie

Cast: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal, Jason Isaacs, Scott Eastwood

Direction: David Ayer

Genre: Action

Duration: 2 hours 15 minutes

 

Story: It is 1945 and the European theatre of World War II is in its final stage. For a tough-as-nails tank crew in the 2nd Armored Division of the US Army, their M4A3E8 Sherman named 'Fury' is a safe haven in an environment where death can come at any moment, from any angle. Their mettle and courage is tested for one crucial mission.

 

 

Review: Sgt. Don 'Wardaddy' Collier (Pitt) leads a tightly-knit tank crew with a mixture of compassion, loyalty and toughness. They have fought together since the North African campaign and have been through hell. Boyd 'Bible' Swan (LaBeouf) is the gunner; Trini 'Gordo' Garcia (Michael Pena) drives and Grady 'Coon-Ass' Travis (Jon Bernthal) loads the 76mm gun. Norman Ellison (Lerman) is the rushed replacement for their assistant driver/bow gunner who met his end courtesy a German shell. Norman is initially disliked by all of them. But in time, Collier develops a bond with Norman, perhaps finding a bit of humanity in him that has all but vanished from the world around them.

Apart from all the shellfire, blood and guts, this is a reflective and visceral film. All of this is hinted at in the powerful opening scene, where we see a German officer on a white horse appear on the horizon. Slowly, the camera tracks man and horse as they almost languidly trace a path through a field of wrecked Shermans and Tigers. Suddenly, Collier lunges at the officer from behind a turret, takes him down and stabs him through the eye and into his brain.

Fury is unflinching in its depiction of war from the get-go to the point of being unsettling. As unrelenting as the iron tracks of a tank crushing everything in its path, it is indeed a juggernaut of action - tank against tank and tank against artillery. It is also surprisingly sophisticated in terms of the drama and interplay between all of the characters. Largely devoid of jingoism, not since Saving Private Ryan has there been a World War II film that looks so convincingly 'real. 

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Taken 3 Movie

Cast: Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace, Forest Whitaker, Dougray Scott, Sam Spruell

Direction: Olivier Megaton

Genre: Action

Duration: 1 hour 52 minutes

 

 

Story: Bryan Mills (Neeson) lives a quiet life, takes care of his teenaged daughter Kim (Grace) and feels tenderly for his ex-wife Lenore (Janssen), who has been having problems with current husband Stuart (Scott). Lenore is found dead in Bryan's apartment one afternoon and is the cops' chief suspect for her murder. But Bryan's chief objectives are to find Lenore's killers, protect his daughter and prove his innocence.

 

Review: Mills is not your ordinary tough guy. He possesses deadly skills thanks to his military and CIA background, but is also extremely ethical and discerning about when and how to use those skills. His prime concerns are his ex-wife and daughter. And when someone messes with that, he as we've seen in the previous Taken movies, he finds them and eliminates them.

 

Screenwriters Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen smoothly set up a situation that places Mills squarely in the police crosshairs as the Lenore's murderer. The film opens with some Russian mobsters who capture and kill the accountant of a company, the boss of which owes money to the mafia. Meanwhile, Mills visits his daughter ahead of her birthday and Lenore drops in at his place later on as he is making dinner. Everything changes when he comes home to her corpse the next day, after receiving a message from Lenore asking to meet. Thereafter, Mills must evade the cops, seek revenge and protect Kim. Investigating inspector Dotzler's (Whitaker) instincts tell him that all is not what it seems in this case.

What works greatly to the movie's credit is the pacing (never a dull moment here!) and that sense of 'What's going to happen next?' Mills and his group of friends rely heavily on technology to stay ahead of the cops as well as to nab the bad guys. Dotzler and team try to predict what Mills will do next. Spruell's don Malankov, suitably debauched and with a Spetsnaz background, is as nasty and cold-hearted as they come. But Grace's Kim is really the most riveting. All in all, a suitable swansong for the franchise.  

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The Imitation Game Movie Review

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech, Alex Lawther, Peter Hilton, Mark Strong, Charles Dance, Matthew Beard, Jack Bannon

Direction: Morten Tyldum

Genre: Thriller

 

Story: During WWII, mathematician extraordinaire Alan Turing's mission is to crack the Enigma machine's code used by the Wehrmacht. Turing's work will not only be instrumental in shortening the war but will also as a result, save many millions of lives. Apart from that, this is a masterful portrayal of a genius.

 

 

Review: "Pay close attention. I will not pause. I will not repeat myself..." intones Turing (Cumberbatch) very early on in the movie. And so, indeed without pause or preamble, steadily unspools the tale of one of the most brilliant minds of modern times.

In Bletchley Park (Churchill's Secret Intelligence and Computers HQ), Turing is interviewed by the imperious Commander Denniston (Dance) for a 'secret' job. When Turing utters the word 'Enigma', the deal is done. Helping him along in Hut 8 are a few code-breaking experts Hugh (Matthew), John (Leech), Peter (Beard) and his future fiance Joan (Knightley). None of their lives would ever be the same again.

Enigma has "159 million million million" combinations, says Turing, and as if things weren't difficult enough, the Nazis change the combination every midnight. But Turing sees a sliver of statistical possibility. He builds a machine that can as he hopes, crack Enigma. Only a machine can defeat another machine, he believes, as his disbelieving teammates look on.

The film bounces between three time periods - Childhood, WWII and post war. But it is the death of his childhood friend Christopher (Bannon) that becomes Turing's guiding star in life. He names the machine Christopher. A room-filling behemoth fuelled by arterial power cables and venous wires, it is like a manifestation of Turing's own complex mind.

Joan's warmth and intellect both complements and is a counterfoil to Turing's personality. While his sexuality did cause him problems in his native England, this is not a tale of tragedy but rather, one of triumph. And as Turing was told as a child: "Sometimes, it is the people whom no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine." An affecting tale of an extraordinary human being.

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Love, Rosie Movie Review

Cast: Lily Collins, Sam Claflin, Tamsin Egerton, Suki Waterhouse, Jaime Winstone, Christian Cooke, Lily Laight

Direction: Christian Ditter

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Duration: 1 hour 42 minutes

 

Story: Based on best-selling author Cecelia Ahern's novel 'Where Rainbows End', Love, Rosie is the story of two childhood friends, Rosie (Lily Collins) and Alex (Sam Claflin), who 'keep missing each other in love'. Long distance, failed marriages, even spats can't wear away the connection between the two people who always have other's back and turn to each other to seek solace. Do they end up living 'happily ever after'? Well, it's a rom-com.

 

 

 

Review: In 1989, Harry Burns professed his love for Sally Albright in 'When Harry Met Sally...' because 'he knew whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life with and he wanted the rest of his life to start as soon as possible'. Two-and-a-half decades later, with a new crop of actors, Love, Rosie attempts the same with formulaic candy-floss romance from Nora Ephron's memorable film and is quite successful in warming the cockles of our hearts.

Playing childhood BFFs, Collins and Claflin bring forth an enchanting chemistry. It is a pre-requisite for any romantic comedy to bring on screen the tangibility of their romance. The actors make Rosie and Alex's bonding affable. Their familiarity forms the crux of their romance and their ability to take each other for granted has a relatable vein to it.

Disaster strikes when Alex moves to Harvard to study medicine and Rosie's unplanned pregnancy (not with Alex's child) separates them. She decides to withhold the information and, suddenly, their lives take starkly disparate paths. The story establishes them as two flawed characters who visibly complete each other. Director Christian Ditter brings this out beautifully through tender scenes, like the one where Rosie discloses the truth about her baby to Alex and he asks if he could be the godfather.

There are many hiccups in this drama. Using the track 'Push It' during a childbirth sequence is enraging, but the warm sunshine-filled lovable frames purge these flaws. The film's ribald humour, like a condom mishap and another S&M disaster provide good laughs(sans sleaze).

Love, Rosie is quaint comfort-cinema that makes for an amiable watch. 

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Penguins of Madagascar Movie Review

Cast: [voices] Tom McGrath, Chris Miller, Conrad Vernon, John Malkovich, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ken Jeong, Annet Mahendru, Peter Stormare

Direction: Eric Darnell, Simon J. Smith

Genre: Animation

Duration: 1 hour 32 minutes

 

huge dose of cuteness!

Story: Four penguins break into Fort Knox for what they consider to be worth more than gold - a vending machine of 'Cheezy Puffs'. Once inside, they are kidnapped by the octopus Dave (Malkovich) who nurses an old grudge against them. They escape but now have to foil Dave's master plan to disfigure all creatures cute and cuddly.

 

 

 

Review: We start off with the origin story of the four. While very young, Skipper (McGrath), Kowalski (Miller) and Rico (Vernon) break away from the pack in order to save a penguin egg. When it hatches, they adopt the baby, who they name Private (Knights). Curious about what lies beyond their polar surroundings, they hitch a ride on a floating iceberg and set out to see what the world has to offer. Years later, they escape a circus (where they are stars) and head to Fort Knox to buy packets of cheese crisps - Private's birthday present.

 

While clueless about why Dave has captured them and taken them to his headquarters in Venice, he tells the puzzled penguins that the public's love for them at zoos meant that he was blatantly ignored every time. He's therefore determined to disfigure them and all the cute penguins of the world (whom he blames for his misery) by zapping them with a 'Medusa Serum' so that people will then despise their appearance.

Somehow, they escape Dave's lair but after his minion octopuses chase them through Venetian streets, the penguins are saved by a mixed-species elite force called North Wind, comprising Classified (Cumberbatch), Short Fuse (Jeong), Eva (Mahendru) and Corporal (Stormare). The penguins still need to stop Dave and North Wind too needs to apprehend him. After a few hiccups, the anthropomorphic animals pool in their efforts to bring Dave down.

The pace is brisk - frenzied, even - the animation top-notch and the script is full of witticisms, puns ("Drew, Barry - more power!" Or "Nicolas, Cage - the penguins!") and there are jokes aplenty for the kiddies as well as belly-busters for the grown-ups. And of course, the penguins are simply adorable.  

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Exodus: Gods and Kings Movie Review

Cast: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Ben Kingsley, María Valverde, Sigourney Weaver, Indira Varma

Direction: Ridley Scott

Genre: Action

Duration: 2 hours 32 minutes

 

An epic tale, massive in scale

Story: Moses (Bale) learns about who he really is and leads 400,000 Hebrew slaves out of enslavement in Egypt to faraway Canaan. While battling his own self-doubt, he must also escape the wrath of the furious Pharaoh Ramses.  

 

 

Review: We are introduced to a grown-up Moses (although his origins are helpfully explained to him later in the film) who lives in the palace of the Pharaoh Seti (Turturro) in the city of Memphis, along the River Nile. In this magnificent palace, where superstitions abound, Moses prefers pragmatism to ceremony. Moses is both brave and honest and Seti quite clearly favours him, even though Ramses (Edgerton) is actually Seti's son by blood.

 

Seti presents Moses and Ramses with two beautiful, ornate swords and tells them to look after one another on the battlefield as brothers would. Later, in the thick of battle against the Hittites, Moses saves Ramses's life. Then, when Moses visits the city of Pithom on an assignment, an elder, Nun (Kingsley), tells a disbelieving Moses who he really is. Soon after he returns to Memphis, Ramses inherits the throne and Moses is exiled. He settles down in a faraway land and marries Zipporah (Valverde, absolutely stunning) before having to embark on his monumental mission.

While the visuals can only be described using superlatives, some bits involving interpersonal relationships could have been more developed. However, scenes involving Moses and Ramses are often electrifying. So is the 'burning bush' sequence. The battles will take your breath away - crashing chariots, splintering spears, flaming arrows, metal against metal and more gore than you'd expect to see. Ramses's cold-blooded disregard for human life is shocking. But then the Ten Plagues unleashed on the Egyptians by God as punishment are unrelenting in their devastation. The Nile runs blood red, overflowing with dead fish. Masses of flies spread dread and disease. Clouds of locusts ravage crops and a sinister shadow of death creeps across the accursed land like a cold hand. Exodus: Gods and Kings is 'spectacle' with a capital 'S' and in more ways than one, definitely epic.   

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Jessabelle Movie Review

Cast: Sarah Snook, Mark Webber, Joelle Carter, Amber Stevens

Direction: Kevin Greutert

Genre: Horror

Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes

 

Story: An accident leaves Jessie (Sarah Snook) wheelchair-bound. With nowhere to go, in order to recuperate, she moves into her childhood home, where her mother died years back. However, her hope to find solace vanishes as supernatural occurrences haunt her, making her dig deep into her past. Confirming the mysterious presence in her house are a few video tapes, recorded by Jessie's mother. What do they say? 

 

 

 Review: Have you ever been scared of yourself when alone? Atmospheric and tense, Kevin Greutert plays with your mind using the theme of loneliness to the best of his advantage. If your idea of bliss is spending some time alone in a cosy countryside cottage in the woods, overlooking the lake, Jessabelle is bound to change that.

 

Smartly paced, the film builds up the suspense in a quiet, unhurried manner, thus letting the uncertainty of the situation evoke fear. Jessabelle is clearly not your typical horror film. In fact, the lack of activity, dialogue and standard scares initially make it look like an arty thriller which manages to keep you intrigued. Scenes involving the mirrors and a lake in particular give you the creeps.

As Jessie plays hide-and-seek with an evil spirit having an unknown motive, you crave to solve the mystery. Unfortunately, an underwhelming climax and a convoluted back-story fail to live up to your expectations. It looks like the director deviated from the original plot in order to conveniently end his film.

Sarah Snook acts well but pouts way too much for someone who's in grave danger. Mark Webber is likeable.

With its subtle scares, Jessabelle starts out really well. It's the abrupt, illogical ending that spoils the fun. However, if you like unconventional horror films, you can still watch this one on a lonely afternoon.  

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