Blue Ruin (2013) Ratings: Genre 4.5/5 | Overall 4/5

Blue Ruin runs on one of the most tested and classic movie plots in the history of mankind, revenge. But it is quite amazing to realize that this straightforward story of a man taking revenge from a bunch of people who have made wrong to his family in the past can be this well done. Everything goes by the book and there is no mind breaking twists or puzzles to be sorted at all. But still as a viewer I was struck and glued to the screen wondering what will happen next. Yet at times it was very predictable most of the time it took me by surprise.

Dwight (Macon Blair) seems to be a loner who’s living in an almost junk of a car and eating out of dumpsters. But his life makes a sudden turn when he realizes that the murderer who was responsible of making his life a nightmare will be a free man soon. Dwight decides that it’s time to go home and take care of business himself.

Macon Blair does a wonderful job portraying this amateur assassin. Through his eyes the viewer can feel his anger and the fear both at the same time. He is nothing closer to a criminal by looks and he has no skills of combat other than ambition and that ambition drives his adrenaline to deal with some very lethal situations. He gets beaten up pretty badly, gets physically injured and emotionally stressed yet maintain his balance and wits going against a family of criminals. This character is an everyday Joe who has nothing to lose but has everything to save.

Director Jeremy Saulnier keeps a very good flow the whole time. The movies brilliant cinematography creates a mood that builds the plot strongly surrounding the key character. There are very few words spoken and lot of acting that matters. Until things starts to become clear very slowly half way through the movie the whole plot remains a big mystery with only few hints to hang on to. But having such a simple plot to start with the directory has made a brilliant piece of cinema that viewers would talk about for years to come.

This is by far the best thriller of same sort I have seeing after the Swedish Headhunters (2011). And it’s not a movie to be missed thought it has quite a bit of excessive gore.

Genre: Thriller| Drama | Crime

Director: Jeremy Saulnier

Transcendence (2014) Ratings: Genre 1/5 | Overall 2.5/5

The irony about Transcendence is that it’s all about artificial intelligence but it lacks even the most natural of intelligence completely. Though it starts with a big promise of strong things to come it falls weak and on its knees so fast that once it’s done you realize that Depp has taken you on a joy ride. I cannot exactly say if it’s an entire waste of 120 minutes of your life but it sure does not add any more value to it. Transcendence looks like the big budget disaster of 2014 so far which the crown held by After Earth last year. For some it’s would be ok to argue that the movie was too complicated and it’s only for the thinkers but in my point of view thinking too much about this would only makes you feel sorry for doing it.

When Will Caster (Johnny Depp) who is a renowned scientist in artificial intelligence dies his wife uploads his consciousness to a program expecting that his great knowledge can be harvested for future. As expected Wills consciousness perform brilliantly but evolves in to a greater power and a threat than being an asset. And when he breaks the barriers of nano technology he starts to play god.

The plot clearly has lot of potential. But it’s not something groundbreaking or never heard of before. Therefore Transcendence is already decades late but tries hard to be futuristic. But still it could have being save it if didn’t have some obvious mistakes. There are so many plot holes that make it completely unjustifiable and qualify to be an effective science fiction or a drama. If wish to continue to the end you have to completely withdraw yourself from them and go along. But it’s something not very easy to do. I don’t want to give out any spoilers but keeping the AI part and the nano part aside as they are fictional the stuff that actually happens right now are depicted in a complete bogus manner here. How the story flows and the events taken place is far from its narrative and you can’t really forgive it.

Seems like the cast is a way to salvage it but to be honest nor Depp or Morgan has a strong part to perform so their appearance is a waste. The fans of both will only end up disappointed. And there are some poor looking action scenes that pop up time to time and even that make little sense. The CG is not brilliant and cinematography is mundane. But the hope of the big cast and the plot I somehow went through the whole movie.

Genre: Science Fiction | Drama

Director: Wally Pfister

The Selfish Giant (2013) Ratings Genre: 4/5 | Overall 4.5/5

Based on a tale surrounding two suburban kids who tries to make a quid selling scrap The Selfish Giant is a brilliant and a heart moving film. Beautifully filmed portraying the landscape beauty of urban lifestyle and very powerfully performed by the young actors this sure is great cinema from Great Britain.

Arbor and Swifty are 13 year olds who come from the working class families. Though best friends they have very different perspective of childhood and life. Arbor is a troubled kid with disrespect towards the elders and does not believe that the education system can do him any good. While Swifty is a silent and an obedient kid who has some skills and empathy towards his senseless friend. While both of them influence each other for good and the bad they find selling scrap to a dealer in the town can get them some cash to help their difficulties at home. But the strategy they use to find the scrap puts them in tragic circumstances.

The Selfish Giant is a character driven movie. Both Arbor’s and Swifty’s characters are complex and has deeper meanings which were shapes up by the society they live in. Partially ignored by their parents and mistreated by the people surrounding them pushes their quest for independence which ultimately leads them down a dark abyss. The movie portrays how a child can become easily misguided when they lack proper guidance from their elders. It’s not a matter of lack of love but lack of interaction and care to be precise. And the movie speaks loudly about the ill society that the children grow up in as well.

The real strength of the movie is the performance by Conner Chapman who plays Arbor. He does a fine job at portraying this very challenging character and as viewers we are left to decide if to punish him or to care for him. Maybe that’s the decision the people who interact with Arbor have to live with day in and day out. And that’s not something comfortable to deal with. The other characters also are well acted. When it comes to the plot it’s different and unpredictable. And it’s certainly very dark and gloomy.  The cinematography blend in all the elements well and the viewer’s get lost in Arbors world.

Genre: Drama

Director: Clio Barnard

Need for Speed (2014) Ratings: Genre 3/4 | Overall 2/5

As there is a common belief that soccer is the universal sport of planet earth if you ask a gamer what is the universal game they would most probably say Need for Speed or NFS.  It’s nearly impossible to find serious gamer who have not played even a single edition of NFS. And for the love of the game the long awaited Need for Speed movie is here and from a gamers perspective it’s everything they can ask for. But from a movie fans perspective there are critical downsides to it. So before you watch this think to which category you belong to. I as a person who played NFS from the very beginning when the game was supported on DOS and had nothing much to offer than pixelated moving objects have no reason to dislike the movie.

The plot is very straight forward. When street racer Tobi Marshall (Aaron Paul) is betrayed and sent to prison he has no other ambition than proving himself right. Once released he find a fast ride and get in to the legendary undercover street race to beat his rival.

For anyone who liked Need for Speed there are definitely two reasons, the nearly fantasy collection of super cars and the long races. That’s right. Need for Speed has some cars that blow your speed brains out. For motor heads its porn and the movie follow its games lead and pump in some really expensive rides. The awesome collection includes 2013 Shelby GT500, Saleen S7, Lamborghini Sesto Elemento, McLaren P1, GTA Spano, Bugatti Veyron Super Sport and Koenigsegg Agera. I’m quite certain that it’s the most expensive car line up in a movie so far ‘if’ they were the real deal. But then again for movies like this with so many of them get crashed at the end the real cars with real specs are out of limits. Apart from the cars the races are quite well done. However as the bar is already set up very high by the all-time king of street race movies Fast and Furious, Need for Speed is lacking some innovation there. But still the races are very entertaining and full of destruction.

Why Need for Speed fails to make a mark as a movie is for obvious reasons. To start with the plot is very lose and utterly impractical. You can say the same about Fast and Furious too but F&F had some charm in the cast (Heavily with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker) that made the fans forgive the movies crappy plot holes. But NFS is lacking that charm and it doesn’t look good. Aaron Paul is a good actor made his way up the ladder with the awesome TV show Breaking Bad but it seems like this role is not something that completely fits him. He is a character actor than an action star and maybe the fans expect more of him than some cheesy lines and pretending to drive inside a car in a studio. So the cast and plot both are not working in favor of the movie and that’s a big letdown.

It’s still too early to predict if Need for Speed will become a big and a good movie franchise in the future if they make a sequel. But at the moment it drags behind few spots on the top street car race movies of all time.

Genre: Action | Crime

Director: Scott Waugh

Sabotage (2014) Ratings: Genre 3/5 | Overall 2/5

It seems like after the comeback of Arnold he is not making any positive headlines. The Last Stand (2013) and Escape Plan (2013) both have being quite dull. And his this year’s supposedly block buster Sabotage is also not making big waves. True that action movies are not for Oscars. But when it comes to Arnold it was used to make some sense. Sabotage is an action + slasher movie hybrid. But the problem is it doesn’t do neither right. There are certain things that make you watch it till the predictable end. But once you’re done you will quickly move over. Yet for serial action movie lovers there are plenty of things to enjoy. But Arnold is not one of them.

The movie is based on a gang of hardcore DEA agents who pulls out a lethal raid on a drug cartel safe house and volt. And after attempting to steal 10 million dollars from it the whole gang goes out of commission and gets investigated by the high up. But after many months the investigation gets cleared and they get reinstated to find out that their team is one by one getting murdered by someone.

While the action part of it is done quite good the whole ridiculous plot and twists makes Sabotage a disaster. There are twists in side twists and when the whole show reveals itself there is not enough juice to fire up the big engine. Maybe if this was straight forward like those good old 80’s action flicks it could have done ok. Or maybe the action and the plot doesn’t fit well together. And the other noticeable element is that Sabotage is over the top gruesome. But sadly that red stuff is not adding value than disgust.

However keeping all that aside the viewers would watch this till the end only because it has this extra pumped action figures and big bullets flying in all directions. Director David Ayer has made sure that those were done right.

Director: David Ayer

Genre: Action | Crime

                

Under the Skin (2013) Ratings: Genre 4.5/5 | Overall 4/5

Under the Skin is a science fiction directed by English born director Jonathan Glazer which is loosely based on the novel of same name by Michel Faber. I on a personal note would like to call it a Sci Fi horror as its pretty intense in its horror element before it turn sci fi on a later stage of the movie. Whichever the way you put it Under the Skin is a different and a brilliant piece. It’s a mind boggling plot that makes the viewer jump their seats more than few times and a continuous guessing game till the very end. Even at the end there is plenty of questioned unanswered (at a glance) but once pondered through the whole sequence again or after a re watch things can become much clearer. And still the beauty of this movie is vast and unpredictable.

There are no names for the characters here. They simply exist and interact with each other. Come to think of it the success of the plot largely depends on this anonymity as viewers we are incapable of making any links what so ever. The lead role is a woman (Scarlett Johansson) who seems to be luring men to some dark abyss using her beauty and sexuality. There are many men who falls to her pray but what they perceive and what their actual fate is a mind confusing sequence. And then there is a biker who appears time to time and seems to be some kind of a cleaner. How his job connects with the woman is a secret on surface. In a surprising turn of events the woman decides to go out of her routine and finds out that the actual human connections are far more complex.

The movie made quite the hype before its release due to the reason that Scarlett appears in it and she is naked in some scenes. It’s obvious that her appearance makes the movie interesting and she is the only actor in the movie that we can call ‘familiar’. The rest of the actors are from Scotland and most of their roles are not significant. Choosing Scarlet could have being a smart move to gain popularity but I wish the role was done by someone else. If so the viewers could have witness a totally ‘new’ reality and forced to engulf in a completely unknown and unbiased perception. What Scarlet does the majority of the time is driving and walking other than in the short frames where she appears naked. And the other interesting fact is that other than Scarlet everyone else are not really actors. They were picked up by the director to perform their roles randomly. And the movie consists heavily with candid footage.

The mood and cinematography of Under the Skin is brilliant as well. It’s is a key reason why the viewer get instantly sucked in to the eerie plot. The cold Scottish landscapes combined with the urban and suburban locations pumps in some sort of mysteriousness right from the start. And it seems like those wide angle scenes speaks largely as much as the close up scenes. And this has no quality dialogues at all. There are dialogues that support the plot but there is nothing direct. Therefore everything goes on is clearly and certainly depicted via cinema and not verbally.

Under the Skin is an excellent piece of cinema in sci fi genre. And at the same time it’s a deep psychological experience.

Genre: Drama | Sci Fi | Thriller

Director: Jonathan Glazer

The Armstrong Lie (2013) : Rating 4/5

The Armstrong Lie is a documentary that takes a deep look at one of the most horrendous best kept lies of the sports history, the rise and fall of Lance Armstrong after being disgracefully accused for doping. He was once known as the greatest cyclist the world has ever seeing who won 7 Tour De France titles from 1999-2005 after battling and recovering from cancer.

After winning 7 titles and being away for 4 years in retirement Armstrong makes a surprise come back in 2009 with hopes of winning another title and raising funds for cancer patients. The director of this documentary Alex Gibney was hired to make a documentary of the comeback of Armstrong and he has being covering Armstrong’s sports history for quite some time. But as the doping scandal came to light the original project was never finished. But in 2013 Gibney decided that he needs a proper ending to his documentary and re-opened it after Armstrong makes a confession on Oprah Winfrey show.

This documentary is quite easy and interesting to follow. For someone with even a mild knowledge about professional cycling and Armstrong it can be digested without much effort. While having a deep look at Armstrong’s sporting career and the doping dilemma the documentary effectively provides important background information about the sport itself that fuels the main plot. And it manages to tell the story from several perspectives than being biased in to one point of view, the intention being the viewer to have their own conclusion of what had really happened. There ample amount of historical footage of practice runs, races, press conferences, court trials and other video that builds a strong case relating to each other. Obviously for being someone like Armstrong most of his well-known part of his entire life is on film somewhere. The challenge which the director goes through is to filter the most relevant and create a flow that doesn’t over hype or dull to the viewer. In my opinion the job was well done.

The Armstrong Lie is a powerful piece of documentary film making. And it would give you new perspective of what really went on with Lance Armstrong. Maybe you have followed his case eagerly while it was hot but now since things have gone a bit cold a relook would be ideal. Just as Armstrong phrase many times it felt ok at the time.

Genre: Sport| Documentary

Director: Alex Gibney

Raid 2 (2014) Ratings: Genre 5/5 |Overall 3/5

Blistering barnacles and thundering typhoons!! I have not seeing this much of hand to hand combat action after The Raid Redemption (2011) and this bone breaking second installment is fantastic. It packs a heavy and a lethal dose of adrenaline for the action movie lovers and that much of a does come seldom with effectiveness. Just like the first movie Raid 2 starts off calm and quiet and gradually builds its plot while becoming bloody and violent from floor to the ceiling.

Raid 2 picks up from the end of the first movie. Rama (Iko Uwais) who is a cop in the Jakarta police force sent undercover to discover evidence of a large crime syndicate. To do this he must commit a crime and get himself in prison and get close to a son of an underworld boss who is serving sentence. While his initial undercover plan last a few months, once in prison he realizes that the game is uglier than expected.

Raid 2 is exactly two and half hours long. And by the look of it it’s an insane long for an action flick. But once the action hits the screen and plot starts to reveal the viewers will forget the clock entirely. (or maybe the clock got smashed in to pieces by all the punches and kicks). Not like the first movie which totally takes place in a 20 story drug run apartment Raid 2 hits the streets. And it hits the prisons, night clubs, subways and even road sides like action madness. And this has elegant looking yet blood thirsty bunch of villains and the most wanted element of a thumping action movie, car chases. Imagine all this combined with the sheer amount of punching power of the first movie. It’s definitely bigger and better and this is something seldom I can say about sequels.

I must keep a note about the action of Raid 2. It is obvious at a glance that it’s natural and performed on location. As this is rare in movies these days the action choreography and pulling it off in such a brilliant way is truly commendable. And the viewers can actually feel the awesomeness of a pure combat with long action sequences and that’s mind blowing. There is a high chance that you might miss lot of details in one viewing so just as I did maybe you have to pause, rewind and replay to catch them all. It’s lightning fast!

Though Raid 2 is violent and gore it is not violent up to the extent of unwatchable insanity. Therefore most viewers should be able to digest it. And violence is not the real thing to be worried about. It’s the ample amount of kicks and punches and forever panning camera movements. If you manage to get through them and survive the cracked walls and shattered glasses Raid 2 will be one of the best action movies you have ever seeing. And this movie will go to my archives of repeat watch worthy action movies and believe me when I say this there is only handful there already (Including The Raid Redemption).

Original title: “The Raid 2: Berandal”

Genre: Action

Director: Gareth Evans

Enemy (2013) Ratings: Genre 5/5 | Overall 4/5

In my opinion a good psychological thriller has to have 3 strong elements. 1. It should be a story that’s close to everyday situations where most viewers can relate to. 2. It should have the capacity to grab the viewer from the throat and squeeze in to their brains without much effort. 3. It should have and ending without an ending that’s so mysterious that different viewers should have different opinions about it. In short a good psychological thriller is a movie that some would despise and some would break their brains to get right. And Enemy has all those qualities and I was stricken by its force. After many days of watching it and reading ample material on the net about what it really is still I don’t know if I got it right or not.

Abad Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a history professor who lives a mundane and a very routine life. He teaches in day time and has no interests of anything else as such. He has a girlfriend but her visits and time spent also part of his dull routine. But one day after recommended by someone he goes out of his routine and rents a movie. After watching the movie he realizes that there was a minor character actor that just looks exactly like him. Abad get obsessed with meeting this look alike actor.

Though the plot sounds neat and tidy the representation of it is mind scattering. There are skeptical twists that wraps the whole story and deeper it goes complicated it becomes. As there are only few words spoken and it seems like every line has its contribution towards a twisted meaning. And the peculiar cinematography always concentrates on cityscapes and shapes which are most of the time have less people and seemed isolated just like our main character. And when it’s combined with the eerie music the movie creates a mysterious atmosphere amongst the vastly seeing urban landscapes. All in all the look and feel of Enemy itself is a psychological mystery.

Performance wise Jake brings back his Donny Darko (2001) mood and it’s very good. His facial expressions contributes to his powerful character (or should I say characters) and his confusion over his own behavior is clearly shown. Jake makes Enemy even better. Enemy is directed by Denis Villeneuve who was recently well known for Incendies (2010) and Prisoners (2013). Being a big fan of both, Enemy is another valued addition to Denis’s high marks in my book.

Sadly the irony of writing a review about a psychologically thriller is that very less can be told about its plot unless you tend to reveal lot and spoil it for many. Therefore, other than saying Enemy is a piece of cinema that fried my brain cells more than ones and has one of the most twisted “WTF” endings I will not say anything further.

p.s If you have seeing this movie already and looking for some explanation this is a good place to look

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9AWkqRwd1I

Genre: Thriller | Mystery

Director: Denis Villeneuve