Tag: movie review

  • Review: Exhuma, Choi Min Sik, Kim Go Eun & Lee Do Hyun Film Is An Outstanding Supernatural Thriller | Movies News

    Director Jang Jae Hyun who has often delved into stories exploring exorcism, the debates between ideologies of religion, and ritualistic practices, brings a complex layered supernatural thriller Exhuma, which also links itself to a traumatic historical past.

    Starring some of the finest talent led by acclaimed star Choi Min-sik of Old Boy fame, Kim Go Eun( Goblin, Little Women ) and Lee Do Hyun ( The Glory, Good Bad Mother ) Exhuma has emerged as the biggest blockbuster success across S Korea and the biggest Korean of all time. With a hit run across Vietnam, Indonesia as well as North America, Exhuma arrives in India.

    The story opens in Los Angeles when two shamans Hwa Rim (Kim Go Eun) and her assistant Bong Gil (Lee Do Hyun) have been summoned by Park Ji-yong (Kim Jae-chul), an influential Korean American man to cure his distressed infant.

    Hwa Rim discovers the baby like all the firstborns of the family, is surrounded by an ominous presence. The source is the family’s elder, Ji Yong’s grandfather who was an influential man who bore allegiance to the Japanese. The only way out is to exhume his grave, which is in Korea. Hwa Rim enlists the help of renowned geomancer Kim Sang Duk and funeral director Ko (Yoo Hai-jin).

    However, they discover the grave which is in a secluded spot on the mountain has inauspicious feng shui as well as strange markings and a plain headstone.

    Kim Sang Duk warns the team with foreboding that unearthing this grave would bring sinister repercussions for all.

    As Hwa Rim performs a shamanistic ritual the ornate grave is unearthed. But even before it is exhumed, one of the helpers who is greedy to raid its inside opens it and it unleashes an uncontrollable malevolent spirit which is all set to destroy and wreak havoc. But it seems taming this spirit is beyond Hwa Rim’s expertise. Kim Sang Duk discovers its tied up with the country’s colonial past with Japan.

    Director Jang gives a textured screenplay which goes beyond bloody ghosts, and inexplicable situations beyond the realm of logic. He cleverly blends Korea’s violent and complicated colonial history with Japan, the scars which not only haunt the family but the nation as well.

    One cannot help but marvel at the finesse with which Choi Min-sik brings to his characters. The man who can be best described as a masterclass in acting is once again pitch-perfect.

    Kim Go Eun and Lee Do Hyun known for their versatility, once again prove their excellence as actors. Showcasing how even diviners too can’t keep themselves armoured, the actors are uninhibited in their performances.

    Exhuma is a well crafted, and outstanding supernatural narrative which scares you as well as keeps you riveted.

    4/5

  • ‘Pinocchio’ movie review: A heartwarming tale about finding beauty in the ephemerality of existence

    Express News Service

    There is something poetic about a story where a puppet trying to become a real boy is being made with stop-motion animation, which is essentially puppets coming to life through the magic of cinema. I’m not going to spoil things by telling you if the puppet boy became a real boy, but the film, with all its masterful animation, did come alive in myriad ways.

    Pinocchio is Guillermo Del Toro’s take on the classic children’s tale written by Italian writer Carlo Collodi in 1883. The themes of the story, as well as its cultural impact, have been explored in length for well over a century but Del Toro’s take on it—while once again proving to us the timelessness of the story—provides fresh warmth by rekindling an old ember.

    Del Toro has a distinct visual language, a beautiful confluence of baroque aesthetics, and a moody ambiance pervading his frames. Such a precise, Del Toro-Esque visual tone is often accentuated the most whenever the filmmaker touches upon modern fairytales. You could see it in some of his best works like Pan’s Labyrinth, Nightmare Alley, and to an unmissable extent in Pinocchio. Some of the most imaginative displays of visual design in this film can be seen with two supernatural beings; one is the Wood Sprite who brings the wooden puppet to life and the second one is her sister Death who meets Pinocchio at pivotal moments to impart wisdom about relationships, sacrifice, and immortality. The design of the Wood Sprite and Death, with their multiple eyes and wings, seems to have drawn their inspiration straight from the imagery of angels as originally described in the Bible. At times, such allusions to Biblical imagery become a commentary on religion itself, like in the scene when after Pinocchio gets verbally attacked by a mob startled by a talking puppet, he asks his father Geppetto why they seem to love the man on the cross and hate him while they are both made of wood. 

    While on a surface level Pinocchio might be a classic adventure about a boy growing up and a father learning to love again, the film unravels the multiple layers it holds with a pace backed by confidence in every frame, every line of dialogue, and every moment of silence in between. On a level right beneath its surface, Pinocchio is a poignant concoction of themes like horrors of war, fascism, existentialism, death, sacrifice, learning to let go, and learning to value the things we love.

    Perhaps bogged down by expectations from previous interpretations of the story, the film rather half-heartedly attempts musical numbers during the first half of the story. None of the songs stick to your memory and the film’s pace could have easily benefitted from their omission. On the other hand, one of the most ingenious reinterpretations that the film does is the idea of having the ‘talking cricket’ as a sophisticated, world-weary writer who hangs pictures of Arthur Schopenhauer on his walls and who literally lives inside the wooden boy’s heart and serves as his inner voice. While Sebastian J Cricket gets his own character arc, his journey through the story and his philosophical musings struggle to blend in with the central narrative of the story. His conversations with Pinocchio don’t incite the kind of character-changing evolution brought forth by Pinocchio’s epiphanic interactions with Death or the Wood Sprite. While his presence was greatly appreciated, the film could have still worked in his absence.

    With the story being set in Fascist Italy, we get brilliant patches of messages about military propaganda, the ill effects of nationalism, and fathers crushing their children’s spirits by imposing upon them their own will and expectations. These are shown through the tension between Podesta and his son Candlewick, the on-the-nose anti-war message expounded through Pinocchio’s debasement of Volpe’s play, the sequence where we see young boys being sent to military training camps, and we even get to see a perpetually miffed Mussolini. While these sequences serve as entertaining moments in the film and they do help Pinocchio’s character evolution, our attention shatters from an overload and deliberate overindulgence in such themes.

    Despite its heavily loaded thematic flesh—at its core—Pinocchio is a heartwarming tale about a wide-eyed boy learning what it means to grow up and what it takes to protect those we love. It is hard to not get swept up with the emotional crescendo of the film’s climax but if Pinocchio never tugs at your heart at any moment, I hope you learn to live with a longer nose.

    Director: Guillermo Del Toro & Mark GustafsonCast: Gregory Mann, Ewan McGregor, Finn Wolfhard, Ron Perlman, David Bradley, Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett, and Christoph WaltzStreaming platform: NetflixRating: 4/5 stars

    (This story originally appeared on Cinema Express)

    There is something poetic about a story where a puppet trying to become a real boy is being made with stop-motion animation, which is essentially puppets coming to life through the magic of cinema. I’m not going to spoil things by telling you if the puppet boy became a real boy, but the film, with all its masterful animation, did come alive in myriad ways.

    Pinocchio is Guillermo Del Toro’s take on the classic children’s tale written by Italian writer Carlo Collodi in 1883. The themes of the story, as well as its cultural impact, have been explored in length for well over a century but Del Toro’s take on it—while once again proving to us the timelessness of the story—provides fresh warmth by rekindling an old ember.

    Del Toro has a distinct visual language, a beautiful confluence of baroque aesthetics, and a moody ambiance pervading his frames. Such a precise, Del Toro-Esque visual tone is often accentuated the most whenever the filmmaker touches upon modern fairytales. You could see it in some of his best works like Pan’s Labyrinth, Nightmare Alley, and to an unmissable extent in Pinocchio. Some of the most imaginative displays of visual design in this film can be seen with two supernatural beings; one is the Wood Sprite who brings the wooden puppet to life and the second one is her sister Death who meets Pinocchio at pivotal moments to impart wisdom about relationships, sacrifice, and immortality. The design of the Wood Sprite and Death, with their multiple eyes and wings, seems to have drawn their inspiration straight from the imagery of angels as originally described in the Bible. At times, such allusions to Biblical imagery become a commentary on religion itself, like in the scene when after Pinocchio gets verbally attacked by a mob startled by a talking puppet, he asks his father Geppetto why they seem to love the man on the cross and hate him while they are both made of wood. 

    While on a surface level Pinocchio might be a classic adventure about a boy growing up and a father learning to love again, the film unravels the multiple layers it holds with a pace backed by confidence in every frame, every line of dialogue, and every moment of silence in between. On a level right beneath its surface, Pinocchio is a poignant concoction of themes like horrors of war, fascism, existentialism, death, sacrifice, learning to let go, and learning to value the things we love.

    Perhaps bogged down by expectations from previous interpretations of the story, the film rather half-heartedly attempts musical numbers during the first half of the story. None of the songs stick to your memory and the film’s pace could have easily benefitted from their omission. On the other hand, one of the most ingenious reinterpretations that the film does is the idea of having the ‘talking cricket’ as a sophisticated, world-weary writer who hangs pictures of Arthur Schopenhauer on his walls and who literally lives inside the wooden boy’s heart and serves as his inner voice. While Sebastian J Cricket gets his own character arc, his journey through the story and his philosophical musings struggle to blend in with the central narrative of the story. His conversations with Pinocchio don’t incite the kind of character-changing evolution brought forth by Pinocchio’s epiphanic interactions with Death or the Wood Sprite. While his presence was greatly appreciated, the film could have still worked in his absence.

    With the story being set in Fascist Italy, we get brilliant patches of messages about military propaganda, the ill effects of nationalism, and fathers crushing their children’s spirits by imposing upon them their own will and expectations. These are shown through the tension between Podesta and his son Candlewick, the on-the-nose anti-war message expounded through Pinocchio’s debasement of Volpe’s play, the sequence where we see young boys being sent to military training camps, and we even get to see a perpetually miffed Mussolini. While these sequences serve as entertaining moments in the film and they do help Pinocchio’s character evolution, our attention shatters from an overload and deliberate overindulgence in such themes.

    Despite its heavily loaded thematic flesh—at its core—Pinocchio is a heartwarming tale about a wide-eyed boy learning what it means to grow up and what it takes to protect those we love. It is hard to not get swept up with the emotional crescendo of the film’s climax but if Pinocchio never tugs at your heart at any moment, I hope you learn to live with a longer nose.

    Director: Guillermo Del Toro & Mark Gustafson
    Cast: Gregory Mann, Ewan McGregor, Finn Wolfhard, Ron Perlman, David Bradley, Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett, and Christoph Waltz
    Streaming platform: Netflix
    Rating: 4/5 stars

    (This story originally appeared on Cinema Express)

  • ‘Our Stupid Reactions’: Indian cinema through the lens of two Americans

    Express News Service

    With too much time and not enough Hollywood trailers to react to in 2019, American actors Rick Segall and Korbin Miles of YouTube’s ‘Our Stupid Reactions’ (OSR) fame decided to turn their keen eye toward Bollywood. 

    They debuted with Zoya Akhtar’s ‘Gully Boy’, and the duo’s reaction video to it was an instant hit, setting off an endless flurry of ‘please-react-to-this’ requests from white-people-opinion-loving (and-hating) Indians on YouTube. Today, as their channel with a subscriber base of 1.17 million is expanding, so is their repertoire of films, with the duo taking up not just Bollywood, but also regional cinema from across the country. Rick and Korbin let us in on their journey thus far.

    Excerpts from an interview:

    Q: What drew your interest in Indian films?

    Rick: We had no clue about Indian cinema. When we watched Gully Boy, it reminded us of ‘8 Mile’ and just blew us away. The length of time Bollywood films takes provides space for emotions, which is new for someone like me, who is used to traditional film arcs. We discovered such great cinema in India––we can’t help but keep coming back. OSR is also how I met my wife, Indrani Mukherjee Segall! 

    Rick Segall and Korbin Miles.

    Q: Tell us the reason behind your title ‘Our Stupid Reactions’

    Korbin: Some of our takes on films may be totally off, hence, our tongue-in-cheek title is a defense mechanism against our haters to say, “Hey, we are just dumb White guys, we don’t take ourselves so seriously.”

    Q: Tell us about a film you recently enjoyed.

    Korbin: We really loved ‘RRR’. Now that we are used to seeing characters having superhero-like abilities like picking up a motorcycle by hand, we could appreciate the film without asking questions on logic.

    Rick: ‘RRR’ provided us with a festival-like experience — it confirmed that some movies are made for practical reasons… to be watched on the big screen. 

    Q: What do you think the viewers learn from you?

    Rick: Viewers tell us they learn a lot about films in general from us, particularly our perspectives on technical brilliance. They also say they get to hear about films from other regions through OSR, making them look beyond the films produced in their respective regions.

    Q: What are your opinions on the films produced by the non-Bollywood film industries?

    Rick: Malayalam films are in line with our interests––they have unpredictability and groundedness which is remarkable, like what we saw in ‘Android Kunjappan Version 5.25’. The acting is superb. We love what Fahadh Faasil does. We also closely follow the work of artists like Vijay Sethupathy, Soubin Shahir, and Lijo Jose Pellissery (whom we interviewed). We particularly like Bangla films— they have so much heart. 

    Q: How do you access culturally-rooted films?

    Rick: Mohanlal’s ‘Vanaprastham’, where he plays a Kathakali artiste, had nuances we did not understand. But language and culture aren’t barriers. We absolutely loved the recent Tamil film ‘Kadaisi Vivasayi’ on the life of a farmer––it was a rural set up but the story is human. The films are regional, but also universal.

    Korbin: We were called ‘Bollywood bootleggers’ once, but we are conscious of the diversity today. 

    Q: In your opinion, why do viewers connect with you guys?

    Rick: We are honest about what we like. Also, we can understand and talk about artistry because we are actors ourselves. We truly love India and its art/artistry, and it is sadly so rare for Americans to see India the way Indians do.