Check out this week’s TV and Movie reviews from Ryan Jay. Hear what he has to say about Strays (Universal Pictures), Puppy Love (Freevee), Blue Beetle (Warner Bros.) and Puffs (Broadway HD)
Movie Reviews
Ryan Reviews A Couple of Dog Movies and More
Posted at 11:18 AM, Aug 18, 2023
and last updated 2023-08-18 12:18:03-04
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Movie Reviews
Music Shop Murthy Review: Sincere But Overdone
BOTTOM LINE
Sincere But Overdone
RATING
2.25/5
CENSOR
U/A, 2h 7m
What Is the Film About?
Murthy (Ajay Ghosh) is a music shop owner in Vinukonda with a wife and two grown-up kids. The shop is a burden on the family as it yields no financial gains. However, Murthy is passionate about music and doesn’t let it go despite daily taunts from wife.
Murthy meets a young girl, Anjana and they immediately form a bond over their mutual liking for music. She inspired Murthy to become a DJ by following his passion. The movie’s story is about whether Murthy achieved the goal or not.
Performances
Music Shop Murthy is Ajay Ghosh’s one-man show. His journey is the movie and he does a neat job with it. The fact that the character is closer to the actor’s age helps to a large degree.
Ajay Ghosh goes about the proceedings in his usual way. However, at times he feels overdoing the goody-good act a bit. It makes the narrative needlessly syrupy, at times, as a result. He delivers in the emotional scenes and manages to pass off as being an old-age DJ without entirely looking ridiculous. Needless to say, as an actor, it is a memorable role for him as he gets a full-fledged lead part.
Chandini Chowdary plays a youngster who lives on her terms. The accent and body language feel too urban for the backdrop (Vinukonda), leaving that aside she is confident and plays a key role in delivering the message.
For Amani, this is a walk in the park. She has done similar roles in the past and does it again with the same conviction and emotion without losing a beat. Despite nothing unusual, she still stands out for the same reason.
Analysis
Siva Paladugu writes and directs Music Shop Murthy. It is a feel-good underdog story where the protagonist rises and shines against all the odds. The difference here from other such genre films is the lead who is an aged guy.
Right from the opening we know where Music Shop Murthy is headed. The world establishment makes it clear and so does the narrative as it unfolds. And still, we don’t mind it or lose interest, and that’s because of the earnestness with which the proceedings happen.
There is sincerity in Murthy, and although overdone, it works eventually. Similarly, the scenarios and the drama he is entangled in feel relatable. But, more than anything it is the age factor added to the story that makes one root for the character.
Age should not make one lose interest in what they are passionate about – this theme and the situations centred on the DJ aspect help Music Shop Murthy escape being completely outdated.
The moments between Murthy and Anjana (played by Chandini Chowdhary) bring a little bit of freshness to the proceedings. The escalation of drama in the pre-interval and interval as a consequence makes it a decent half overall.
The problem for Music Shop Murthy lies in the second half. Even within a predictable tale, the fresh element seen in the first half is missing here as the narrative ticks all the genre-related clichés.
The feel-good factor turns into a fantasy of sorts, the way things happen to our good-at-heart guy. The struggle doesn’t register and neither does the victory. Things just go through the motions as they must conclude.
It is again at the pre-climax and climax portions when the final drama occurs, there is some emotional connection. The sentiments, however predictable and cliché, and contrived at places, still work and leave us with a sense of fulfilment. The end goal is achieved.
Overall, Music Shop Murthy is a routine, but passable underdog story – the kind which is a harmless watch. The neat message and relatability are an additional bonus. Watch it if you like feel-good dramas even if they follow an utterly clichéd path.
Performances by Others Actors
Music Shop Murthy has a limited but decent casting of recognisable faces. Unfortunately, none barring Dayanandh Reddy have any worthwhile part. Dayanandh, for a change, gets a positive part which comes as a mild surprise as he is used to playing the opposite in such setups. Senior actor Bhanu Chander feels wasted playing an utterly one-dimensional part. The same is the case with Amit Sharma.
Music and Other Departments?
Pavan’s music is lacklustre for a film that is supposed to have music at its heart. The DJ bits are fine, but the regular songs are not up to the mark. The cinematography is below par if one looks at it from the big screen perspective. The editing is alright and so is the writing that works despite the utter routine content it dwells in.
Highlights?
Ajay Ghosh
Message
Few Dialogues (Even Though Predictable)
Drawbacks?
Routineness
Feels Rushed
Contrived Emotions At Places
Lack Of Memorable Music
Did I Enjoy It?
Yes, Few Parts
Will You Recommend It?
Yes, But With Reservations and to those who like underdog winning stories.
Music Shop Murthy Movie Review by M9
Movie Reviews
Review: Mother and daughter confront death in compassionate ‘Tuesday’
Movie review
Before a word of dialogue is spoken in “Tuesday,” a series of magical images introduce Death in the form of a greasy-looking bird as it visits the dying. The beast’s head clamors with their suffering, their terror and bargaining, the sick and the simply worn-out. Young and old, human and animal, they call to him before breathing their last beneath the shadow of his gently raised wing.
In this fantastical first feature from Croatian filmmaker Daina Oniunas-Pusić, striking special effects and a richly textured sound design lend a cosmic chill to a simple story of maternal grief. The mother in question is Zora (a very fine Julia Louis-Dreyfus), so deep in denial about her daughter Tuesday’s terminal illness that she can’t handle being alone with her. Creeping out of the house each morning, pretending to go to work, Zora wanders from coffee shop to park bench, ignoring Tuesday’s calls.
Yet Tuesday (beautifully played by Lola Petticrew) understands. Unable to walk and struggling to breathe, she’s a bright teenager who seems ready when Death appears. Out of sight of her pragmatic nurse (Leah Harvey), Tuesday bonds with Death, requesting time to prepare her mother, and these scenes have a lightness that prevents the film from becoming an extended moan of unrelieved sadness. Like many of us, Death, it turns out, enjoys a joke and the music of Ice Cube. It seems fitting that his taste is vintage.
As voiced, quite wonderfully, by Arinzé Kene, the bird — not the expected raven, but a macaw — is a digital star that the human actors must constantly negotiate with for visual and narrative space. Swelling and shrinking in size, he switches in an instant from cute to monstrous, amusing to terrifying, the voices in his head briefly silenced as he confesses that he hasn’t spoken in 200 years.
“I am filthy,” he growls, coughing up words like hairballs and flapping his blackened wings, as if the darkness of his mission has stained his once-bright feathers with the dirt of the grave. Yet while Tuesday seems perfectly at ease with her grim visitor, Zora responds with an increasingly hysterical campaign to — literally — swallow her greatest fear.
Without much to distract from the three central characters, “Tuesday” can feel overlong and a little claustrophobic. Yet this compassionate fairy tale works because the actors are so in sync and the imagery — as in one shot of the bird curled like an apostrophe in a dead woman’s tear duct — is often magical. Alexis Zabé’s cinematography is both intimate and expansive, reaching beyond the characters’ emotional struggles to show the apocalyptic consequences if Death should be vanquished. The sum is a highly imaginative picture that, while considering one family’s pain, also asks us to ponder the possibility that a life without end means nothing less than a world without a future.
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