Movie Reviews
‘Merry Christmas’ Movie Review: The Romance We’ve Been Waiting For – HELLO! India
When you’re planning to go for a Sriram Raghavan film, you can expect to remain perched at the end of your seat, eyes following the events unfolding onscreen minutely to not miss a single plot detail and keep up with the twists that are characteristic to the director.
His latest film Merry Christmas is immediately different.
We meet Albert (Vijay Sethupathi) as he returns to Bombay (this is set in a time before the city became Mumbai). He is grieving the recent loss of his mother and the sadness in his eyes can be attributed to that. But you know better. Surely something else is brewing here. It is a Sriram Raghavan film after all.
It’s Christmas Eve and Albert decides to reacquaint himself with the city he had left to pursue a career in Dubai (or so he claims. Classic Raghavan, amirite?). This is when he stumbles upon Maria (Katrina Kaif) and her five-year-old daughter who have been stood up unceremoniously and are left alone in a restaurant.
Albert and Maria’s paths cross again as they watch The Adventures Of Pinocchio (1986) in a theatre and they give in to what fate has been pushing them to do. They start (tentatively) to learn more about each other.
At this point, you’re convinced something terrible is going to happen. This is not a love story where this heartwarming meet-cute could be a prelude to a Christmas romance. It’s a Sriram Raghavan film, didn’t you know!
Maria and Albert reach her house and she invites him over for a drink. “Don’t go, you fool!” you yell (internally) but the delicate bond (forged by the innate sadness that’s evident in both their eyes and body language) pulls Albert towards her and they ascend to her charming apartment for a drink and maybe more.
Raghavan proves yet again why he is the master of the genre because even after delivering five incredible thrillers, he manages to lull you into a false sense of security. You slowly sink back in your seat and don’t even realise that your face has stretched into a smile at seeing Albert and Maria gently flirting with each other, hesitantly testing the boundaries of what they can and cannot do since Maria is married and Albert is a virtual stranger to her.
But it is a Sriram Raghavan film after all. The penny drops and you’re brought right back to the edge of your seat as the murder mystery finally begins to unravel in front of you.
The languid pacing is a genius trick here as it allows us to fully immerse ourselves in the narrative and the well-designed setting without feeling burdened with exposition. In true Raghavan fashion, there are easter eggs littered throughout the film (right from the beginning) that would alert his fellow mystery fans to what is about to happen.
Merry Christmas is a delectable and dark murder mystery with a beautiful love story at its core. An adaptation of French writer Frederic Dard’s Bird In A Cage, the movie is far from the nail-biting pace of his last film Andhadhun (2018) which was filled with twists and turns right up to its end. The story is also something that we’ve seen multiple times before, more recently in Sujoy Ghosh’s Jaane Jaan, an adaptation of Japanese author Keigo Higashino’s The Devotion of Suspect X. Merry Christmas is predictable yet never boring. You’re hooked till the screen blacks out and the credits roll in and that has a lot to do with the incredible performances by the cast.
Katrina Kaif delivers a performance that takes your breath away. She is a stunningly beautiful woman so it isn’t a stretch to imagine her as a mysterious damsel in distress who would inspire men to go to war for her. Her Maria is troubled and mysterious but there’s so much more. Kaif’s restraint in her performance adds layers of complex emotions to her character that lend perfectly to the narrative that slowly unfolds to reveal layers of deceit and darkness.
Vijay Sethupathi reminds us yet again that he is one of the finest actors of recent times and how it’s almost criminal that he has not been cast as a romantic hero more often.
The supporting cast in the Hindi version of the film is superb. Sanjay Kapoor as the slimy Ronny is delightful, while Vinay Pathak and Ashwini Kalsekar are brilliant as well.
Movies like these have become a rarity these days, not just because this one featured an Urdu title card but because it’s been made with so much care in all aspects.
Should you invest your time and money into watching Merry Christmas? I don’t know your life, I can’t dictate your life choices. You do you. But if you’re a fan of mysteries and appreciate good cinema, you cannot miss this one. See you in the theatres because we’re definitely going back for an encore!
Movie Reviews
Red One Movie Review: Chris Evans & Dwayne Johnson's Hyped Christmas Blockbuster Is Soul-less!
Star Cast: Chris Evans, Dwayne Johnson, Lucy Liu, Kiernan Shipka, and J.K. Simmons
Director: Jake Kasdan
What’s Good: Having J.K. Simmons as an incredible version of Santa Claus feels just right, and the message of union and love fits the holidays even if this point overplays it.
What’s Bad: The film simultaneously tries to be an action movie, a comedy, a fantasy film, and a family film, but the execution makes everything look fake and uninteresting.
Loo Break: For a considerable chunk of the second act, the characters are just running about without anything meaningful happening to them, so there is a chance to go to the bathroom right there.
Watch or Not?: Only watch if you are a massive Chris Evans or Dwayne Johnson fan; other than that, there are better Christmas movies out there.
Language: English (with subtitles).
Available On: Theaters, Apple TV+
Runtime: 124 Minutes
User Rating:
Christmas is here, and with it, a whole new wave of Christmas content will grace our screens, including Red One, a new film produced by Dwayne Johnson and directed by his Jumanji partner Jake Kasdan. This film goes out of its way to be as big as possible. Still, it loses itself into a half-baked fantasy universe while also trying to be a family film that plays out every Christmas cliche in the book, making the experience quite frustrating.
Red One Movie Review: Script Analysis
Red One is one of those movies that doesn’t feel real, not because the film is so magnificent that it feels like a miracle that it exists, but because there is so little about it that feels authentic instead of a product with actual meaning and intent behind it. However, this has been the Dwayne Johnson formula for a while. It has undoubtedly helped him create a business empire, even if it is a little shaky at the moment, and so this is a new intent by Dwayne to catch people’s attention this holiday season.
The problem is that while Red One is undoubtedly a big movie, it also feels entirely fake, as everything in it has gone through some marketing study. They forgot to tell everyone involved in the film that they should, at least, try to make it more genuine. The script tries to find space for every single Christmas cliche in the book and also tries to create characters that feel too serious for a movie that also tries to be a comedy.
The writing feels too mechanical, with jokes that barely register and character arcs that feel too much like cookie-cutter, creating a disconnection between every film element. Red One is a movie, but it feels more like it was done checking boxes than trying to tell a story that evolves organically into what the creatives wanted.
The film moves from set piece to set piece in a world-throating adventure that feels entirely made inside a movie studio, enhancing the fakeness of the film in every single shot. When you realize that the movie budget is reported to be $250 million, it becomes a bit unbelievable that all that money was wasted on something like this, as there is no soul to it, even when every single person from behind and in front of the screen is trying to be as professional as possible.
Red One Movie Review: Star Performance
While the script had potential but didn’t execute it, the casting might be the best thing about the film, especially for Chris Evans, who lately hasn’t managed to tap his potential outside of the Marvel films. Evans became a fan favorite with his nuanced and engaging performance as Captain America, but there has been nothing to display his acting prowess outside of that.
Red One doesn’t do Chris Evans when it comes to his bad decisions in picking projects lately, but the film takes advantage of his great timing for humor, and the actor keeps things afloat for most of it. He is the story’s protagonist, so we focus most on him. On the other hand, Dwayne Johnson delivers the expected Dwayne Johnson performances, and it isn’t bad or good; it is just there, and well, for those who like him, it will be fine.
Red One Movie Review: Direction, Music
The film feels all over the place regarding its technical accomplishments, although the production values are impressive in some scenes. In contrast, in others, you can almost touch the green screen behind the characters, making all those scenes a big issue in terms of consistency: without it, there are many moments where the movie will break the immersion and send you on a tangent from which it is tough to come back.
Kasdan isn’t particularly technical or artsy regarding the composition of the shots or the way characters and concepts are introduced in the movie, which creates the sensation that this is a TV movie or a costly streaming series. There is nothing wrong with that, but a film should be more careful about these decisions because the audience feels it quite a bit when there is no intent behind the choices.
Red One Movie Review: The Last Word
Red One is one massive blockbuster that will be forgotten soon after this holiday. While everyone involved is as professional as possible, there is just no soul behind the project. So even when the movie can be entertaining, there is nothing to remember after the credits roll.
Red One Trailer
Red One releases on Prime Video on 12 December, 2024.
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Movie Reviews
Movie Review: ‘September 5’ goes inside a newsroom during the Munich Olympics hostage crisis
News junkies will find much to love in “September 5,” a fictionalized account of ABC’s live coverage of the hostage crisis during the 1972 Munich Olympics. There are spirited debates about reporting with only one source, use of words like “terrorism” and what to do if violence breaks out during a live shot. There are negotiations with rival networks over satellite usage, disguises and fake badges made to get reels of 16mm film in and out of the locked down Olympic village and plenty of confused men (and a few women) trying to keep up with an ever-escalating situation.
The film is a moment by moment retelling of how a group of sports broadcasters brought this story to the world in real time, despite the technical limitations and their own inexperience across a confusing 22 hours. Everyone came to the studio that night ready for breaking sports news, scores and pre-packaged interviews. Even that was going to be a test for the man running the control room for the first time. Geoffrey Mason, portrayed by John Magaro, was a 28-year-old coordinating producer. Someone wonders about his experience and is assured that he’s covered minor league baseball games.
But in the early hours of Sept. 5, 1972, eight members of a Palestinian group called Black September broke into the Olympic village and attacked the Israeli delegation killing wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg and weightlifter Yossi Romano. Some escaped, but nine others were taken hostage.
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While the tragedy of the Munich Olympics has certainly been told many times, writer and director Tim Fehlbaum saw an opportunity in the team behind the live broadcast. And he commits fully to staying in the newsroom, with all of its glorious old technologies, from the walkie-talkies they used to stay in touch and to taking time to show how they had to manually add text to the screens. He and his screenwriter were able to reconstruct the events almost minute-by-minute, which helped shape the screenplay.
The players are many in this large ensemble. Peter Sarsgaard, who’s looked right in a newsroom since “Shattered Glass,” gives gravitas to Roone Arledge, then-president of ABC Sports, and Ben Chaplin is operations engineer Marvin Bader. Leonie Benesch is Marianne Gebhardt, a German-speaking interpreter who is the only person there able to understand the language of the country. She might be a bit of a composite who checks off a lot of boxes as both an entrepreneurial woman and a younger German offering perspective and insight into what this moment might mean for the country trying to put on a good front in the aftermath of World War II. An actor (Benjamin Walker) plays broadcaster Peter Jennings, and real archival footage of anchor Jim McKay from that day is used in the film.
And while they all rise to the occasion, mistakes are made – including a rather big one at the end, following imperfect secondhand information from the Fuerstenfeldbruck airfield. They don’t call it the first draft of history for nothing, after all, and it may be illuminating for audiences to see how it’s handled.
The film looks of its time, but it also feels fairly modern in its sensibilities which makes it always seem more like a re-telling than an in-the-moment experience. This may be to its detriment, yet it’s still an undeniably riveting and compelling watch. The word thrilling doesn’t seem appropriate, however. This is not “Apollo 13” after all. The end is not a happy one.
But at time when trust in the media is in crisis, this film is a great humanizer, reminding audiences that the media is far from a monolith, but a group of individuals under immense pressure to get the story right, get the story out and go back and do it again the next day.
“September 5,” a Paramount Pictures release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language. Running time: 94. Three stars out of four.
Movie Reviews
Thangalaan Movie Review
Thangalaan is a historical drama set in the 18th century, directed by Pa Ranjith. Starring Vikram in the lead role, the film depicts the struggles of a tribal community against colonial forces, set against the backdrop of gold mines. Initially released in theaters on August 15, 2024, it became available on OTT platforms starting December 10, 2024, in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada.
Plot
The story is set in a tribal village under North Arcot’s jurisdiction during the British era. The village chief, Thangalaan (Vikram), and his wife Jangamma (Parvathi Thiruvothu) lead their community amidst dire challenges. When their land is seized and they are forced into bonded labor, the situation escalates.
Meanwhile, British officer Lord Clement (Daniel Caltagirone) is determined to discover hidden gold mines in the region. Believing the tribal knowledge holds the key, he offers Thangalaan a share of the gold in exchange for his assistance. Motivated by the hope of a better future, Thangalaan agrees but warns Clement about the mystical guard of the mines, Aarathi (Malavika Mohanan), a sorceress.
The narrative unfolds with the tribe’s journey to the gold mines, their struggles, and Thangalaan’s connection with Aarathi. What challenges await them? What is Aarathi’s true role? These questions drive the plot forward.
Analysis
The story of Thangalaan is penned by Tamil Prabha, focusing on a tribal community’s struggle to escape bonded labor and confront mystical forces and venomous snakes. Set against the backdrop of forests and hills, the narrative is rooted in the 18th century during the British colonial era. While the story is set in this period, the presence of British officers on screen is minimal. However, the tribal village setup feels natural and authentic.
Given the forest-centric narrative, the director did not face significant challenges in recreating the atmospheric setting. Particular attention has been paid to costumes and makeup, enhancing the authenticity of the characters. The involvement of established actors like Vikram and Parvathi Thiruvothu adds credibility and interest, making their on-screen presence commendable.
The director maintains a serious tone throughout the film, presenting it as a unique piece of content. However, this approach distances the film from mainstream entertainment, offering limited moments of joy or light-heartedness. Consequently, it feels closer to a documentary in certain parts.
There are a few controversial scenes and dialogues, and the Telugu dubbing fails to align seamlessly with the characters. For instance, the protagonist, a tribal leader, uses formal phrases like “Niksheptamai,” “Sanrakshinchu,” and “Mitrama,” which feel out of place for the character and setting, reducing the impact of the dialogues.
Performances
Vikram shines as Thangalaan, delivering a performance that elevates the film. His physical transformation and intense acting make the character memorable.
Parvathi Thiruvothu impresses in a supportive yet pivotal role as Thangalaan’s wife.
Malavika Mohanan and Daniel Caltagirone bring depth to their respective roles, adding intrigue to the narrative.
Supporting cast members, including Pasupathy, justify their parts well.
Technical Aspects
Cinematography: Kishore Kumar captures the rugged terrains and tribal life beautifully, adding a layer of realism to the narrative.
Music: G.V. Prakash Kumar’s background score is adequate, and the songs blend well with the period setting.
Editing: Selva’s editing maintains a steady pace but struggles to make the lengthy runtime feel engaging.
Strengths
Authentic depiction of tribal life and struggles.
Vikram’s stellar performance.
Strong technical execution, especially in costume design and cinematography.
Drawbacks
Slow-paced narrative with limited entertainment value.
Overly serious tone, making it feel more like a documentary.
Lack of emotional depth in certain scenes.
Verdict
Thangalaan is not your typical commercial entertainer. It is a serious, visually compelling drama that highlights the struggles of a tribal community during the colonial era. While it may not have performed well in theaters, its unique content and historical backdrop may find a niche audience on OTT platforms. For viewers seeking a raw, unglamorous cinematic experience rooted in history, Thangalaan offers a distinct take.
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