Jayeeta Majumdar Singhee

Watched quite a few of them in the last few days….no time (OK…generally lazy) to write nice and long reviews….but some general pointers to what I thought…

****
Changeling

This is one of my first Angelina Jolie movies…Yeah!!!! I know…I did watch her in Tomb Raider for some time, but only in spurts. So I am mighty impressed with her. EastWood handles the movie in his characteristic brilliant style – composed shots, excellent music and a film that is a wee bit too long.

I didn’t have the slightest clue about the movie when I started watching it, so this true-life crime melodrama left me teary eyed many times, especially in the scene where Jolie realizes that her son, Walter is missing from home and how helpless she feels when the corrupt LAPD refuse to lodge a complaint. As the story unfolds, you see different tracks of emotions, oddities, reactions, and gruesomeness. At times, a wee-bit bollywoodish with all that high-drama, but heartfelt all the same. And the fact that I didn’t want to send Ishaan down to play alone the next day.

****
Billu “Barber”

Watchable only because of the gentle, understated and completely spectacular Irrfan Khan, who plays each and every scene with such composure, that you want to hug him. Every other thing in the movie is unwatchable – SRK, hamming away in his characteristic pathetic below average acting!!!!or whatever that is called. Lara Dutta with her flicked hair cut nowhere closely resembles the village girl at the dire end of poverty. The songs are all so so off-the-track, loud and so not watchable.

Note: Watch Irfan Khan as the philandering husband in Dil Kabaddi and you will know why this guy deserves all the kudos that he gets. Not a great movie that, but watchable if only for some of those brilliant actors. Don’t miss Konkona in the end.

****
Delhi 6

A perfect example of how a good script need not turn into a good movie. The movie starts well, with an interesting first half, well developed characters, and decently well-paced. But as we enter the second half, Rakyesh Mehra turns it into this all preachy, heavily loaded with a message movie and loses it completely.

The movie boasts of one of Rehman’s finest compositions till date…but no justice made to them on screen…u almost miss them actually. Arziyan is sooo soo badly picturized I almost cried. I listen to that song ten times everyday.

And Abhishek, the lesser said the better…the only good point being that he is almost part of the background in the first half..thank god for small mercies. Sonam Kapoor is good and also very beautiful.

But the movie belongs to all the characters who make the first half so special – from the brothers up-in-arms-against-each-other (Om Puri and Pawan Malhotra), to their wives who still share things across the broken brick in the wall, the rich old Prem Chopra married to someone his grand daughter’s age, the ageless Waheeda Rehamn, the ever romantic Rishi Kapoor, the beautiful and every forgiving bua to the jalebi wala, and the low caste sweeper, Jalebi (played by Divya Dutta).