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1921: Puzha Muthal Puzha Vare Review | A Hideous Propaganda Film That Caters to the Hatemongers

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1921: Puzha Muthal Puzha Vare Review | A Hideous Propaganda Film That Caters to the Hatemongers

The film 1921: Puzha Muthal Puzha Vare was introduced when Aashiq Abu revealed the title poster of Variyamkunnan starring Prithviraj Sukumaran because the title character. Then Ali Akbar, now Ramasimhan, pitched this mission nearly like a political counterattack. The agenda is fairly easy right here. Unfold blatant hatred in the direction of Muslims and likewise destroy no matter good picture is there for Variyamkunnan by making him seem like a joker. When you have the pre-requisite hatred in the direction of a group, then I suppose this B-grade hate porn offers you that orgasm.

The film is narrated as a flashback story by a person named Chathan, who used to work for the upper-class Hindus in the course of the 1921 riots. He’s now residing along with his spouse, Savitri, who was his landlord’s daughter again within the day. The film exhibits what he noticed in 1921 in the course of the Malabar Revolt.

Let me simply let you know how Ali Akbar, aka Ramasimhan, depicted Variyamkunnan on this film. Variyamkunnan seems within the film nearly on the halfway level. He’s proven as a sneaky opportunist who determined to take the gun and lead the rise up when he knew the railway tracks had been destroyed and the British received’t attain the Malabar area any time quickly. Throughout one gunfire, he runs away from the scene seeing a tiny drop of blood on his face. He decides to marry a younger woman after he features energy in the course of the riot. However due to his inefficiency in satisfying the woman bodily, she runs away with Variyamkunnan’s youthful brother. Keep in mind, Ali Akbar determined to make this film claiming Aashiq Abu would distort historical past. Ultimately, Ramasimhan created a film that even his supporters received’t take critically due to the goofy characterization.

Normally, propaganda movies will work for a specific class of the viewers who’re rooting for the film’s politics. Trying on the outright attacking mentality of 1921: Puzha Muthal Puzha Vare, regardless that the manufacturing high quality is shoddy and the craft is cheesy, the gang that funded this film is definitely scarier than the movie. From the caricature-like characterizations of Muslim characters who invade, kill and convert individuals, it is rather evident that Ali Akbar is enjoying it for the gallery that wishes to devour hate. The weird factor is that in his try to whitewash the Hindus of that period, he glorifies the social hierarchy. There’s a scene the place Chathan tells Savitri that he will get this sort of respect solely from this household. And the following second, she asks him to return to the bottom to have the meals. Wah! Kya scene hei!

RLV Ramakrishnan considerably tries to imitate his brother Kalabhavan Mani to grow to be this Karumadi Kuttan-inspired Chathan. Thalaivasal Vijay is given the job of constructing Variyamkunnan a joker, and he has given his greatest shot. Agna Suresh, as Savitri, is forgettable. Dinesh Pancker because the Collector was a hilarious selection with that wannabe English accent. Vijay Menon, Pleasure Mathew, Santhosh Ok Nair, Kozhikode Narayanan Nair, Shobi Thilakan, and so forth., are among the in style names within the film’s solid.

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There’s a scene within the film the place a Muslim man who did no unsuitable in the course of the time is getting punished within the aftermath of the motion. And Ramasimhan makes him say traces like, “I deserve it as a result of I remained silent when the Hindus had been getting assaulted.” Because of the price range constraints of this film, the fight sequences had been the one reduction the place I laughed my coronary heart out. You possibly can actually see artists double-checking these pretend blood balloons.

Last Ideas

When you have the pre-requisite hatred in the direction of a group, then I suppose this B-grade hate porn offers you that orgasm.




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Woof Woof Daddy: Aaron Kwok plays a reincarnated mutt in doggy mess

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Woof Woof Daddy: Aaron Kwok plays a reincarnated mutt in doggy mess

1/5 stars

Filmmakers’ relationship with dogs over the years has proved just as rewarding as other people’s bond with their loyal, four-legged companions. They have produced classic weepies (Old Yeller), thrilling adventures (The Call of the Wild), uproarious comedies (Beethoven), and countless animated favourites.

Asian cinema has supplied many memorable entries, including Hachiko and Koreyoshi Kurahara’s Antarctica, both of which inspired Hollywood remakes.

The secret to a compelling canine caper is either brilliantly trained animal performers or engaging animated characters – whatever effectively brings a dog’s personality to the fore – and showing them having meaningful relationships with human characters around them.

Sadly, Aaron Kwok Fu-shing’s new movie Woof Woof Daddy accomplishes none of this; it is an underwhelming combination of lazy writing, unlikeable performances and woefully subpar visual effects.

There is so much wrong with the film it is difficult to know where to begin. Suffice to say that, even within the fuzzy lines of its own insultingly half-baked premise, the film does not make a lick of sense.

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Kwok plays single father Siwang, who moonlights as a rock star between shifts at a confectionery factory. His only fan is his nine-year-old daughter Lulu (Xing Yunjia), who is left to fend for herself when Siwang is killed in a freak accident.

Banished to the afterlife, the desperate dad rebels against his assigned fate and, 24 years later, is magically reincarnated as a puppy.

Xing Yunjia as a young Lulu (centre) in a still from Woof Woof Daddy.

With remarkable ease he tracks down Lulu (Lyric Lan Yingying), who is a failing pop singer trapped in a loveless engagement to her sleazebag manager (Darren Wang Da-lu).

Siwang muscles his way back into Lulu’s, determined to help his daughter get back on her feet, despite being trapped in a small furry body.

Chief among Woof Woof Daddy’s many failings is its visual effects; the dog looks absolutely rotten, even for a modestly budgeted mainland Chinese quickie like this.

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On the page, the film fares even worse. Siwang the dog is essentially magic: he walks on two legs, holds objects between his paws, and responds to literally anything said to him; he even plays the guitar. Yet nobody bats an eyelid.

Why Siwang does not make Lulu a millionaire simply by existing is never discussed. All director Kexin Lu Ke deems to be of value is Kwok’s immature father earning a redemptive reunion with his daughter; that, and the fact the dog lays a few scatological poop jokes along the way.

Lyric Lan (front) as the adult Lulu in a still from Woof Woof Daddy.

Laboured from start to finish, Woof Woof Daddy is one bad dog that deserves to go straight to the pound.

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‘Motel Destino’ Review: Karim Aïnouz’s Tropical Noir Conjures a Potent Atmosphere of Heat, Desire and Danger Even if the Payoff Loses Steam

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‘Motel Destino’ Review: Karim Aïnouz’s Tropical Noir Conjures a Potent Atmosphere of Heat, Desire and Danger Even if the Payoff Loses Steam

Two young men fight playfully on a beach surrounded by rocky hills in the opening moments of Karim Aïnouz’s Motel Destino, their tanned bodies glistening under the scorching sun of Brazil’s northeastern coast. Before it’s revealed that the pair are brothers close in age, the scene sets up a torrid queer undercurrent that ripples throughout this erotic thriller even though the three principal characters enmeshed in a dark romantic triangle are all ostensibly straight.

Returning to his home country after last year’s English historical drama Firebrand, Aïnouz takes inspiration from classic noir, notably The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. That sets up expectations for a denouement involving some kind of twist or retribution, which the movie only sort of provides, segueing from violence to a kind of dreamy deliverance. If that ending makes it less satisfying than the sustained tension and intrigue that precede it, there’s still plenty to keep you glued.

Motel Destino

The Bottom Line

A visual knockout that doesn’t quite stick the landing.

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Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
Cast: Iago Xavier, Nataly Rocha, Fabio Assunção, Fabíola Líper, Renan Capivara, Yuri Yamamoto, David Santos, Isabela Catão, Jupyra Carvalho, Bertrand de Courville
Director: Karim Aïnouz
Screenwriter: Wislan Esmeraldo, in collaboration with Karim Aïnouz, Mauricio Zacharias

1 hour 55 minutes

At the top of that list are the intoxicating visuals of Hélène Louvart, giving the film palpable heat, physicality and danger that recall the rising-star French cinematographer’s work on Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats. The striking compositions shot on 16mm have grainy textures pulsing with vitality and electrified by bold splashes of saturated color. The look is like neon even in daylight, adding considerably to the movie’s erotic charge.

The aforementioned beach boys are 21-year-old Heraldo (Iago Xavier) and his slightly older brother Jorge (Renan Capivara), who’s about to have his first child. Heraldo is eager to leave their small beach town in Ceará, move to the city and find work as a mechanic, eventually aiming to run his own garage. But the brothers are on the payroll of local loan shark and drug dealer Bambina (Fabíola Líper), who refuses to let Heraldo go before they do an important two-man job.

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That evening at a beach bar, Heraldo hooks up with a stranger (Isabela Catão) and takes her to Motel Destino for a wild night. But once he passes out, she makes off with his money, leaving him locked in the room with no way to pay. Dayana (Nataly Rocha), who runs the seedy roadside joint with her older husband Elias (Fabio Assunção), eventually releases him. But Heraldo makes it to town just in time to see Jorge’s dead body being carted off after his botched attempt to carry out the Bambina job solo.

Aïnouz and screenwriter Wislan Esmeraldo keep the set-up tight, dispensing with unnecessary exposition. The tragedy also serves to fuel Heraldo’s dreams of Jorge, adding the weight of guilt, while fear factors in via his terror of Bambina’s semiautomatic-toting goon Rafael (David Santos) coming after him. Heraldo gets lucky with a hideout when he returns to Motel Destino and Dayana takes him on as a handyman, putting his electrician skills to work.

Production designer Marcos Pedroso renders the sex hotel as a place so sordid you can practically smell it — and that’s even before you see the donkeys humping in the yard. (Nothing like the sight of a whopping mule penis to hammer home a movie’s fascination with lust.) The rooms are bathed in a lurid red glow, as is the central corridor from which staff secure payment through window hatches that allow for the occasional bit of voyeurism. Security cameras also play into that element, uncovering secrets later on.

Perhaps even more pungently descriptive than the look of the place is sound designer Waldir Xavier’s aural racket of moaning and grunting coming from the rooms, sometimes with the added accompaniment of porn channels. Aïnouz doesn’t hold back in his depiction of an environment in which sex and desire are as dirty, sweaty, whiffy and animalistic as it gets. Heraldo even has to remove a large snake that gets into a room, and it’s not one of the sex toys provided by management.

Naturally, Heraldo and Dayana soon start having clandestine trysts while boorish hothead Elias is elsewhere. He’s busy with plans to build an extension and add more rooms, but it doesn’t take him much time to figure out what’s going on. Elias has already threatened to kill Dayana when she tried to run off in the past, so there’s no telling what he’ll do once he discovers he’s being cheated on.

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Aïnouz teases out the possible scenarios, stirring in homoerotic tension when Elias starts getting drunk and handsy around Heraldo. It’s clear the older man is no stranger to crime, even before we witness his method of dealing with a motel guest’s inconvenient heart attack. The identity of that guest and his link back to an earlier event is one of the screenplay’s more schematic touches.

Even so, the movie’s overripe sensuality pairs well with the menace of isolated settings like a wind farm on a lonely stretch of beach at night. Likewise the simmering threat of violence or sexual abuse.

But the climactic action is somewhat wayward, with a too easy solution supplied by an unfortunate animal in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dayana talks about being treated like an animal by Elias, and with the donkeys and goat and chickens always around in the motel yard, that metaphor feels heavy-handed. The script’s other failing is its wishy-washy wrap-up of the Bambina business.

Despite its flaws, Motel Destino has mood, rawness and atmosphere to burn, fueled by Amine Bouhafa’s score, which becomes steadily more disquieting as it ratchets up the urgency.

Strong performances by the three leads motor along on the characters’ nervous energy, apprehension or anger, and screen newcomer Xavier keeps you invested in Heraldo’s ordeal. Aïnouz employs the central character as a stand-in for Brazilian youth, whose drive and desire are held back by a corrupt older generation intent on maintaining its power. It’s that kind of oppression that forces young men like Heraldo to bend their fates.

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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) Review

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Furiosa:  A Mad Max Saga (2024) Review

While most of the Mad Max franchise has little in the way of plot and character development, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the rare exception.

Forty-five years ago George Miller (Lorenzo’s Oil) and Byron Kennedy (The Devil in Evening Dress) created a post-apocalyptic world where all manner of inhumane behavior ruled.  It was a vast wasteland where few controlled the limited available resources and survival of the fittest was the mantra.  Ruthlessness and lawlessness were abundant and the harsh desert climate swallowed all manner of people and creatures alive.  Starring Mel Gibson (Lethal Weapon), Mad Max was a box office success but divided critics.  This Memorial Day weekend the fifth installment in the franchise, Furious: A Mad Max Saga, will hit theaters.

In the Wasteland nothing grows.  All one can see is sand stretching out in all directions.  Besides a few pockets of colonies overseen by warlords, it is the emptiness of nothing.  However, there is a far-off region of abundance where the ground is lush and green and fruit grows on trees.  A young Furiosa (Alyla Browne; Three Thousand Years of Longing) lives there with her mother and her younger sister and is among the inhabitants who guard their paradise with their lives.  But when Furiosa is taken, her mother chases after the kidnappers to free her daughter and to keep the secret from getting out.  

Years later, working in disguise at the Citadel, Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy; The Queen’s Gambit) stows away on the gas tanker in hopes of finding and killing Dementus (Chris Hemsworth; Thor) whose gang killed her mother.  Found and taken by Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke; The Wonder), Furiosa plans her revenge but is caught in a war between Dementus, Immortal Joe (Lachy Hulme; Offspring), and The Bullet Farmer (Lee Perry; Happy Feet).  Determined she chases Dementus through the sand, exacts her vengeance, and escapes the Citadel with Joe’s wives.

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While most of the Mad Max franchise has little in the way of plot and character development, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the rare exception.  From the beginning, we understand why Furiosa is motivated to stay alive while watching the “politics” play out around her.  Miller and Kennedy’s script has human emotion surrounded by the usual anger and degradation found in the other Mad Max films.  However, there is still the usual action, explosions, and blood and gore that audiences have come to expect from these movies.  Miller, who also directs this latest installment, remains faithful to the franchise while still managing to come up with new and inventive ways to torture and blow up people and places.

What makes this movie even more interesting is the cast, specifically Taylor-Joy.  While Charlize Theron (Atomic Blonde) was simply a stone-cold bitch as the adult Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, Taylor-Joy infuses the character with layer upon layer of experiences that shape her into the person she becomes.  From feeling the emotions that come with loss and grief to those prevalent when one is scared or brazen, etc., she is the whole package.  Hemsworth starts off the film as a leader but eventually deteriorates into a madman whose plan crumbles before his eyes.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has its good points but some bad ones as well.  For starters, it is too long.  You’ve seen one desert chase seen, you’ve pretty much seen them all so Miller could have trimmed a few minutes here and there and still had the same film.  The special effects are also less than stellar taking the audience out of the action on more than one occasion.  Luckily, many fans of the franchise won’t let those distractions bother them too much.

It seems after all these years and five films, we finally have an actual story intertwined with the action.  This development makes the movie better than most of the rest of the franchise and, especially for fans, makes it a worthwhile option for movie-going this holiday weekend.

Grade: B- 

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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga images are courtesy of Warner Bros.. All Rights Reserved.

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