Movie reviews of some off beat films that I saw recently

[ashdoc]

Strangers ( 2007 )



Two strangers meet in a train in England . They strike up a conversation after realising that they are both Indians by descent . Both have been living in England for quite a long time . They are travelling in business class , so the compartment is most comfortable . They are Rahul ( Jimmy Shergill ) and Sanjeev Rai ( Kay Kay Menon ) . As they begin to unravel themselves , they begin to tell each other their life stories . And one thing stands out in their life stories---they are both unhappy due to their wives .

Rahul is a flop writer who had a romantic beginning to his relationship with his wife Preeti ( Nandana Sen ) . But as his writings began to flop and his and his wife's plans to have a baby began to peter out due to their dire financial position , their marriage began to fail . Preeti began to date strangers making Rahul increasingly frustrated and jealous .

On the other hand Sanjeev is being driven round the bend due to his wife Nandini's ( Sonali Kulkarni ) crazed obsession with her son's death , something that she cannot turn away from even though their son has been dead for long . And Sanjeev comes up with a deadly plan in the train---that of the two killing each other's wives so that both the men are rid of their troublesome relationships . Because they are strangers no one will know who killed their respective wives .

But their is a twist to the plot and another twist . The first twist is that Sanjeev has no intentions of killing Preeti , for he is having a passionate affair with her . The whole journey has been planned and tickets booked so that he travels with Preeti's husband Rahul in the same compartment and provokes Rahul to murder his ( Sanjeev's ) troublesome wife Nandini . That will allow Sanjeev and Preeti to be together with Sanjeev's wife conveniently Nandini dead and Rahul behind bars for Nandini's murder .

However there is another twist to the tale ; Rahul has been keeping tabs on his wife Preeti and knows about the plot to trap him . And he decides to take revenge on Preeti . Instead of killing Sanjeev's wife , he kills his own wife Preeti . And leaves Preeti's lover Sanjeev devastated .

Colours are rich and the hence the look of the movie is beautiful as the train rolls on in the english countryside . Photography is very good too . As the train rolls in the english countryside the two main protagonists tell each other their stories which come out in flashbacks . Rahul knowing about the love affair of Sanjeev and Preeti comes out in flashbacks only . No songs are there but background music is good .

Acting wise Jimmy Shergill scores over everyone else as Rahul . He looks good too with yellowed dishevelled hair . His wife Preeti is played by Nandana Sen who looks good too . Kay Kay Menon is good as usual . Sonali Kulkarni as Sanjeev's ( Kay Kay Menon ) wife has a smaller role than the other three .

But editing of sequence of scenes was not good and some scenes looked disjointed from each other . This reduced enjoyment of the film . Still it is different film with a different ending which comes as a surprise . However more drama should have been created at the climax which looks bland inspite of the shocker in the end .

Verdict---okay .

Two stars out of five .

[sgars]

Originally Posted by ashdoc

A scandall ( 2016 )


Saw this movie on netflix recently .

Verdict---Bad .

One and a half star out of five .

Werent you saying earlier that i might like it. Or was it something else?

[ashdoc]

Originally Posted by sgars

Werent you saying earlier that i might like it. Or was it something else?

yeah i saw it on netflix and said on netflix thread . good sexy songs and body exposure of females . you will like the bad movie .

[sgars]

Originally Posted by ashdoc

A scandall ( 2016 )



Saw this movie on netflix recently .

The film is set in beautiful setting of the himalayan hill station of Nainital , a great location for photography of a lake surrounded by green tree covered mountains . Here arrive four friends from a film institute in Delhi in search of a topic for filming a film . They are Koya (Reeth Mazumder), Vidhu (Johny Baweja), Prabal (Puru Chibber), Asmi (Vasundhara Kaul) . It is Koya who has given the idea that has brought them here .

Koya's uncle Manav ( Manav Kaul ) has recently lost his only daughter Kuhu to drowning in the Nainital lake . After this he has started claiming that he can make contact with his dead daughter and can feel her presence around him . The four friends feel that this paranormal experience should be filmed by them . So they arrange a planchette in which the dead Kuhu's spirit really arrives and they can feel it .

But Manav's psychiatrist says that Manav is a manic depressive and that he is seeing only hallucinations . Also that Manav has developed a habit of cybersex recently . To film all this the four put cameras in hidden positions everywhere without Manav's and his wife knowledge . Also they have a flying helicopter camera to record in night .

Manav's wife ( Tanvi Vyas ) says that after the accident Manav has not had sex with her . But the helicopter camera shows Manav indulging in sadomasochism during cybersex . Also he forces his wife to participate in sadomasochism . His wife later confesses that she has seen Manav having sadomasochism with another girl recently .

All these revelations force Koya to ask her boyfriend Vidhu to stop the filming because it is having a deleterious effect on her uncle and his wife . But Vidhu sees the chance of a good film in the making and refuses to stop . Angered by this Koya forcibly climbs on top of Prabal to kiss him in order to take revenge on Vidhu and make him jealous . This in turn makes Prabal's girlfriend Asmi jealous and she berates Prabal for this .

But soon Manav too molests Koya like a possessed man . This drives Vidhu to anger . All of a sudden we are treated to a hot sensuous song and dance between Koya and Vidhu . That is what I was watching the film for anyway . Later the whole group minus Manav meet a person ( Vatsaal Raja ) who does seances , and he is able to uncork the truth of the whole matter from Koya . Yeah , it is Koya who is at the heart of the mystery . Just like she is the heart of the film .

But before the mystery is solved , we are treated to one more sexy song and dance featuring Koya . Reet Mazumder does look hot gyrating on these songs in exposing clothes . And the film is part suspense mystery and part chicksploitation flick for sex maniacs courtesy Reet and her hot kissing scenes and her body exposure .

So what is the mystery ? Actually Koya ( Reet ) has had a boyfriend who was into sadomasochism with her during sex . But he started to prey on little Kuhu too , and Koya had to kill him for attempting paedophilia . But after his death his evil spirit now has entered Manav's body and that is why Manav has developed the habit of kinky cybersex and sadomasochism with his wife . So Koya has to kill Manav too , and then she kills herself for hiding this for so long . End of story .

The photography of naturally beautiful Nainital is good , and background music and songs are good too . Acting however is below par and editing of scenes is horrible . Sequence of one scene after another seems disjointed and the two sexy songs appear out of nowhere in between scenes . The idea behind making the film had some real promise but it has not been filmed properly at all .

Verdict---Bad .

One and a half star out of five .

Originally Posted by sgars

45 minutes in and the conclusion is that it is a bad movie but not the kind i like. A badly made horror movie with too much yap yap. My type of bad movies are total nonsense or which show a middle finger to regular audience.
On such bad movie with more scenes is Boom. Will post pix from that elsewhere. Thats also on Netflix.

It does get watchable in the second half with the hot scenes mentioned by Docji and a couple of songs. But still not my kind of nonsense. Also, the plot moves so fast in the last 10 minutes that to catch what happened, i had to read this review with spoilers by docji.
In case you want to just see the hot scenes, they are here.

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[ashdoc]

Somewhere in time ( 1980 )



This film has become a cult classic , maybe because of the tragic fate of it's leading actor Christopher Reeve who suffers a tragic death in the movie too . When it was released it was a flop at the box office , but now there is even a club of fans of the movie .

Reeve plays Richard Collier , who is a struggling playwright . The movie begins in 1972 , when the boyishly goodlooking Richard is young and in college and is partying with friends . An old woman approaches him and gives him a pocket clock and pleads emotionally to him ''come back to me'' . She then goes home to die....

Years later Richard checks into Grand hotel and is strangely drawn to to photo of a beautiful woman hanging in the hotel museum . He talks to the hotel bellhop , who first asks him if he ever had come here before for he seems familiar . The bellhop tells Richard that the photo is of Elise Mckenna ( Jane Seymour ) , an actress who lived in the hotel in the early 20th century . And on further questioning , he realises that she was the same woman who came to him in old age asking him to come back to her....enough to make a man fall in love , especially considering her beauty....

So he goes with her pocket clock to an old companion of hers , and she recognises the clock as belonging to Elise . Richard finds things there that tell him that she constantly thought of him all these years . But how , considering the age difference between them ? Is it possible that they had met through the mists of time in another era ? He finds a book of time travel which the companion says Elise read again and again , and he decides to use the book to travel in time back to when Elise was young .

Before putting the plan in action , Richard meets the author of the book and he tells him that all things of this era must be out of sight when the time travel in done through simple self hypnosis . By repeated suggestions from a tape recorder put out of sight , he can go to the era he wants if he concentrates hard . After several failed attempts , the plan works and he travels back in time and manages to meet Elise....and she talks to him as if she knew he was going to come one day , and she had been waiting for him for a long time .

And meetings are followed by long walks together , until Elise invites Richard to watch her acting in a play . And she looks intently at him when promising love to her lover in the play , and their hearts are one . But her manager fears that her acting career will be affected by the romance , and has Richard bound and tied up till the time has come for Elise to leave . When Richard frees himself he finds Elise gone .

Relax...love will find a way , as it always does in the movies . And Elise can't let go of Richard and come searching for him and runs to him as soon as she sees him . And then she unwinds her lovely hair in her bedroom and we are enthralled by her beauty with her uncovered tresses adding lustre to it . Do I even have to say that then they make glorious love on the bed.....? And to make the relationship chaste ( it is 1912 , and people frowned upon physical intimacy before marriage in that time ) they decide to wed .

But the sighting of a coin from the present era goes against the rule told by the book's author that he must be out of sight of all things from the era he originally came from , and brings Richard back to the present from his sojourn across the barriers of time . And as he is coming back , he can still hear and see Elise screaming because he is being lost from her and dragged against his will to a time he did not want to go back to .

As Richard wakes up in his hotel room he is struck by grief and does not want to live . And he is soon discovered in his bed having died due to a broken heart . But relax....love has found a way , as it always does . As Richard dies , his soul moves through the mists of space and she is there....again looking young and beautiful , she has been waiting for him for a long time....this time the reunion is permanent .

What strikes you is the movie's endearing simplicity , of the pure and honest love between the lead pair beyond the barriers of time and the simple method of time travel done without the aid of high tech machines . The beauty of the lead actress Jane Seymour makes the movie worth a watch . But what adds to the movie watching experience is the superb musical score by John Barry . The background music lifts the romance to a different level altogether .

Colours of the movie are of lightish hue , making the photography appear magical . Acting by all actors is good too .

Verdict---Good .

Four stars out of five .