Rango

Ice Cream Rating: Chocolate
Director: Gore Verbinski
Top stars: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin
Running time: 107 minutes

Johnny Depp is my favourite actor.

There! I said it! I’ve always been afraid to make that sweeping statement because I had only seen him in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. And actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney have always been dangerously close to the top of my list. But this seals it. Depp = Awesome.

Coming from a family of obstinate lovers of animated films, it’s only natural that I loved Rango. However, this is one film that even people who think that animated films are strictly for children will enjoy because it is unbelievable smart, vividly creative and undeniably heart-warming.

As the credits rolled in, I faintly recognised a name and thought “Wait! Isn’t that the girl from that weird film Wedding Daze?” Yes, it was. But Isla Fisher does quite an impressive job as the voice of Beans, the Iguana. Just goes to show me - I should never be prejudiced about an artist. An artist's potential to surprise me always exists. (Unless it’s Miley Cyrus - no hope there...)

Rango, the titular character of the film, is a chameleon who thrives on life’s beckoning to adventure and bravery. Only, his life is in a 3*2 glass box and his villain is a plastic gold fish. But he is content and domesticized, until the day he is left stranded on the Mojave Desert where he embarks on a journey to find himself! *flashing lights and inspirational music*

The impending satire of the film begins with how unnaturally important water seems to be in the town of ‘Dirt’ and comes to a chuckle-worthy end (in the extended version of the film) when ‘Dirt’ is re-named ‘Mud’. Rango has layers of humour, each to be peeled off by different people of different ages. Wikipedia tells me that there are references to many Westerns, which my Dad probably caught. These include The Shakiest Gun in the West, A Fistful of Dollars, Chinatown, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, Cat Ballou, Raising Arizona and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. One of my most favourite things about the film was the many many glass bottles that seemed to just casually be around the town. You discover what they were actually for when the Wednesday ritual begins. I needn’t say it but Gore Verbinski is an essence of brilliance.

The mariachi band of owls is a hoot (pun intended). The characterizations are refreshing, the animation gorgeous and the climax riveting. All in all, Rango is a fabulous watch, especially with the entire family.

More on Rango: Christian Spotlight, IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert, Metacritic, Wikipedia

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Ice Cream Rating: Chocolate (with blood sprinkled on top)
Director: Tim Burton
Top stars: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman
Running time: 116 minutes

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is the celluloid version of Steven Sondheim’s hit Broadway musical of the same name. The title character (Johnny Depp), previously known as Benjamin Barker, returns to the ‘hole in the world’, London, with the intention of murdering his wife’s abductor (Alan Rickman). Meanwhile, Sweeney Todd also forms a foul alliance with his tenant Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter).

The Tim Burton-Johnny Depp-Helena Bonham Carter formula, at the very first thought, obviously suggests a masterpiece. The film being butterscotch (the worst Ice Cream flavoured rating that I dish out) is out of the question.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a film that left me feeling aghast and perplexed that I had flinched and shut my eyes so often, but yet absolutely loved it. It is a perfectly perfect horror film while also being the ideal musical. Dialogues seem to be the condiments of this film, while the sumptuous base is provided by the music numbers, the magnificient sets and the background score.

When you’re used to Indian cinema, it is very easy to forget that the songs in a Hollywood musical are sung by the actual actors themselves. Johnny Depp, who has never sung before, once again proves why he is the king of the seas, the chocolate factory and fleet street. What else has that man got under his sleeve?! Bonham Carter, as always, is simply brilliant in the role of the longing, manipulative and heinous Nellie Lovett. The most memorable voice of the film was, for me, Jayne Wisener’s as she sang ‘Green Finch and Linnet Bird’. Absolutely heart stopping. Pity she had only one song.

There is one word that describes Sweeney Todd perfectly - Poshlust (Russian). Legendary novelist Nabokov defines ‘Poshlust’ as ‘the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive’. This film is the epitome of ‘poshlust’.

At first glance, it is a bewitching tale about love with alluring strains and tunes. But as it unravels, it reveals itself to be dark, angry and corrupt; a story of matter-of-fact murder, selfish deception and cannibalism with a disturbingly tragic climax. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street might give you nightmares and spoil a few naps. But watch it for the amalgam of musical, acting and directing genius that it proves to be.

More on Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Christian Spotlight, IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert, Metacritic, Wikipedia

Drive

Ice Cream Rating: --- ("bloody" isn't exactly an ice-cream flavour)
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Top stars: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston
Running time: 100 minutes

Drive happened as an impromptu plan to watch a film. It was just Dad and me on a weeknight. On the way to the theatre, I realised that Dad hadn't taken the rating (V/A) too seriously and my mind started echoing 'Yay! He finally knows that I'm a mature film viewer and that I can handle anything.' If he did think that, how wrong he was.

Drive is ridiculously slow in the first hour. Ryan Gosling, whose character's name is never revealed in the film (genius?), has two faces - an absolutely expressionless one and another absolutely expressionless one with a slight upward turn of the corner of his lips. Maybe that's how he succeeds in playing a brooding enigma. The film's editing seems careless. The film score just doesn't fit in some scenes, while the score manages to make certain scenes seem pretty uncanny. The long silences between dialogues, which are probably meaant to be strained and dramatic, are just too long to be anything but frustrating. The slow motion shots were beautiful, I thought, but they get dissolved in the blandness of the rest of the film.

This is the first hour.

The rest of the film is very challenging for me to describe or critique since my eyes were closed most of the time. The plot was finally happening and I was starting to pay attention. Then came the first killing... and it brought with it a lot of blood. I shuddered but relaxed after a few moments. The second killing brought with it much more blood and more brutality. This was viewed through a gap between my fingers. The third killing introduced a cringe-worthy scene of a fork in the eye. I put away my avatar of a film reviewer to clutch my Dad, while shivering and absolutely giving up on the idea of digesting any further popcorn. The murders continued and they just got more bloody and vicious. The scenes jumped because they were censored but the damage was done.

Overall, the plot was too simplistic. The acting was confusing. The film was painfully disturbing for me. I don't know if it was a good film and I wouldn't advise you to find out for yourself, unless your constitution aches and longs for such a genre of films (which involve a fair amount of blood and gore).

I'll be honest with you, reader. I wept when Cedric died in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I've watched The Devil Wears Prada six times with my mum. I secretly like High School Musical 3 (not much of a secret anymore, I guess). I'm not about to become a film (re)viewer who can stomach films such as Drive anytime soon.

PS - Here's a line that you might have been searching for till now. It's about the plot of the film. Drive follows a gifted driver (Ryan Gosling), as a failed heist gets him dangerously involved with ruthless mobsters.


Note from the Editor: I understand that this isn't a review, per se. The film reviewer, Anukripa, feels that she needs to possess a degree of coldness to be poker-faced and serious as a critic. She also feels that she becomes too involved in a film to do so. I, however, believe that reviews such as this one provide an alternate view of the film to you, the reader, so that you know what to expect when you walk into the film theatre. You are always free to check out what other websites say about the film; this is why the More on ... links are included with every review on Which Ice Cream. If you disagree, please leave a comment with your thoughts and Anukripa or myself will respond.


More on Drive: Christian Spotlight, IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert, Metacritic, Wikipedia

Limitless

Ice Cream Rating: Vanilla (goes perfectly with popcorn)
Director: Neil Burger
Top Stars: Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, Robert De Niro
Running time: 105 minutes

Bradley Cooper? The guy whose filmography has recently included many comedies and chick flicks (Hangover, Valentine’s Day, All about Steve)? In a thriller? Hmmm… Interesting.

The question, though, is not how Cooper works for Limitless. It is how he makes the film work for him! Imagining Leonardo DiCaprio or Matt Damon in the film, it might’ve have turned out to be a bit more staid. Cooper, on the other hand, lends a certain swagger to the film, giving us quite the capricious and unconventional ‘thriller’.

If you decide to watch Limitless, make sure you have a huge tub of well-buttered popcorn and some Pepsi drink you love. Because that is how films like this should be enjoyed. Not that it’s a film that one should take lightly. But it is, especially the first half, so delightfully suave with the absolutely gorgeous music score and jaunty camera shots, that it would be a shame to take it too seriously.

Limitless is the story of how Edward Morra (Cooper) revamps his crumbling, disappointing life by taking a pill given to him by his ex- brother-in-law. This weird pill increases the brain's working capacity from its usual 20% to a highly enhanced 100%. What follows is the meteoric rise in his popularity and bank balance and, with that, a menacing slew of enemies and do bad-ers. Things go south side when Morra discovers from his ex-wife (Anna Friel) that the drug is unstable and will cause death if discontinued. However, the increased intake leaves him with blank memory spaces and blood on his hands. Between possible death and petrifying symptoms, Morra is also trying to juggle the sensible girlfriend (Abbie Cornish), the Wall Street boss (Robert De Niro) and a sublime stalker.

About 40 minutes into it, Limitless begins to feel like another film altogether. The bearings become more sinister and you will stuff your mouth with popcorn just to avoid gasping too loudly. The horror comes to a crescendic end with Cooper drinking blood and sticking a needle in a thug’s eye.

And then, we’re back. A continuance of the subtle humour and swagger.

Jo Willems, director of photography breathes most of the life into Limitless. The vivid colour differences between the normal and heightened perception could very well be the essence of the film. Limitless would be nothing but a film with a passable plot and acting if it wasn’t for Willems' work. Maybe, just maybe, the director (Neil Burger) could have, should have made this film a little tighter, deeper, more somber. But then Limitless wouldn’t be the chilled out film that it is.

Note: If I was the CBFC, I would not allow people younger than 16 to watch this film.

More on Limitless: Christian Spotlight, IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert, Metacritic, Wikipedia

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Ice Cream Rating: Butterscotch
Director: Michael Bay (Transformers, Pearl Harbour)
Top stars: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whitely and Tyrese Gibson
Running time: 157 minutes

Transformers 1 was awesome!!! Transformers 2 (Revenge of the Fallen), even though it won ‘Worst Film of the Year’ and was bombed by the critics, still blew my mind and I remember expecting all the cars on the road to unfold into superbots the day after I watched it. So when I sat down to see Transformers 3, I already had my “I just saw an awesome film” Facebook status ready. Considering how prejudiced I was to like the film, and how much I ended up being annoyed by it - should give you a fair idea about Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Disclaimer: I have tried hard to rein in the negative adjectives in this review.

Let’s get the plot out of the way. The story is basically a re-hash of the second film. The Autobots find a long lost Cybertronian ship, carrying technology important for the defeat of Megatron. They also realize that the humans had already discovered the ship on the moon during the Apollo mission. (If Autobots are as technically advanced as the films make them out to be, how did earthlings manage to find the ship before they did, and hide the intelligence all these years? Yes, gaping holes!) Beyond that, it’s just a montage of Megatron’s scariness, crumbling buildings and lots of mechanical parts.

Why is Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) so whiny all the time? How did Carly Spencer’s (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) hair go from straight to perfect curls in consecutive days of captivity? And what is with the psychotic behavior of Jerry Wang (Ken Jeong)?! Not to mention the eyebrow raising weirdness of Bruce Brazos (John Malkovich), the boss. Throw in a peevish Mearing (Francis McDormand), a crazy Simmons (John Tuturro) and his German side-kick and we have the perfectly harassing Transformers parody. The entire film is an ensemble of caricatures that start to intensely irritate you in the course of 2 hours and 37 minutes.

I will not deny that the special effects are exhilarating and in some scenes, genius. But is that enough to float the third part of a series in which the previous films also had amazing sequences? No. Dark of the Moon drowns in its paper-thin plot and indifferent actors.

It might seem mean of me to pick on one person among the entire incompetent cast (save Patrick Dempsey, who is fairly irreproachable). But when I found myself thinking, “Megan Fox’s performance had more depth”, I knew that Ms. Rosie Hunting-Whiteley was the worst thing that happened to this film. All she does is look remarkably envious in her low cut dresses and high heels. Shia LaBeouf deserves better. Atleast, Sam Whitwicky, the guy who’s saved our planet twice before, does.

So Michael Bay, if you want to carry on with the Transformers series and make films that we all would like to watch and re-watch, bring back Megan Fox, re-orient Shia LaBeouf and get a new background scorer and all might be forgiven.

More on Transformers: Dark of the Moon: Christian Spotlight, IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert, Metacritic, Wikipedia

Hanna

Ice Cream Rating: Chocolate (with a Vanilla aftertaste)
Director: Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice)
Top stars: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett
Running time: 111 minutes

The film ends and I sit back in my seat - still, silent and stunned.

That’s what Hanna will do to you. It suctions you into the fast unraveling world of sixteen year old Hanna and takes you on a jaunt. The cinematography is, plainly put, brilliant (so brilliant that I actually found out who the cinematographer was). Scenes like the conversation between the two girls, the electricity havoc in the little room and the escape from the safe house are gorgeously shot and please may we have a standing ovation for Alwin H. Kuchler (the cinematographer, duh!).

The highly manipulative background score pushes the viewer into definite oscillations of emotions and proves to be quite quirky at times. Half way through the movie, just when you’re starting to think about how tight the editing is, it slackens in the second half. But none of these things matter in those 111 minutes because Saoirse Ronan redefines the term ‘show stealer’. She hops from being an inherent killing machine and a wide- eyed, inquisitive teen with uncanny ease. Competing with her is the icy Cate Blanchett. Blanchett is as terrifying as her role requires her to be but shines in those little moments of fear, surprise and falsity. Unfortunately, apart from the two ladies, nobody else makes an impression in the acting department. Eric Bana just barely flickers, then dies (pun intended).

Hanna (Ronan) is raised by her 'father’, Eric Heller (Bana) in the wilderness of Finland and is pumped with extensive knowledge, a large number of languages and combat skills in preparation to take on whatever is waiting in the world for her. Marissa Wiegler (Blanchett) is the CIA agent previously in-charge of killing Eric and Hanna, as they are both strays of an experiment cover-up. This compounds into a wild chase and it would be injustice to the film for me to reveal more. 

Every character, no matter how small, has beautiful depth which is very subtly revealed. But the apparent effulgence of the film dims after you have watched it. The plot begins to seem confusing and certain scenes, far-fetched. How did Hanna, who was so startled by ceiling fans and a telephone, so easily use the computer? What happens to the travelling family? And how on earth did Hanna get ear piercings living in a forest?

But sometimes an explosive first impression is enough to carry a film through. And if those occasional moments of intimate humanity and cinematic genius don’t leave you still, silent and stunned, little else will.

More info on Hanna: Christian Spotlight, IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert, Metacritic, Wikipedia

Introducing everything from Coffee to Butterscotch

Moi

When my mother was pregnant with my brother, my parents read somewhere that it’s important that the first child not feel left out and jealous. So when the little brat was born, I remember Appa taking me for watching a film almost every week. And we always went for night shows. So from a 3 year old child who never cried in the theater (like most toddlers do) to a 17 year old who is trying her hand at film reviewing, it’s been a ride that I owe to my brother, my mother and equally film- obsessed father.

I love films. Period. I’m very prejudiced, technically unsound and obstinate in my opinions - everything that a reviewer should not be. But I love them and I’ll badger you to watch a phenomenal film, till you concede just because I’m getting on your nerves (speaking of which, anybody who hasn't seen Inception, go see it NOW before I start haunting your dreams). So, if my film reviews will enhance even one person’s experience of a film, then I will continue to beg my mother to let me spend an hour writing a review in the middle of the week.

So here’s how things are going to go down. After I write what I personally thought about a film, I will rate it on a scale of five. But hey! Numbers are boring. Ice cream is not. So here is the rating scale.

5 - Coffee ice cream (Yaiy! Awesome!)

4 - Chocolate (Pretty good)

3 - Vanilla (OK OK)

2 - Strawberry (Bad)

1 - Butterscotch (Yuck!)

And people, don’t be too nice to me. If you disagree with me, please leave a comment saying so! The only thing I like more than a debate about cinema is coffee ice cream. Don’t NOT watch those butterscotch films. After all, the bad ones make the good ones taste better. If there are films that you think I should see, let me know. I’ll be watching and reviewing films, old and new, epic and epic fails. So leave behind smileys, feedback and comments. Just keep a hold on the swear words.

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep satiating myself and spend my free time on films, reviews, nothing else.