The sound of silence

Pushpaka Vimana (1987) isn't exactly a silent movie; there's sound, and sometimes that sound is important, but there isn't any dialogue.  Kamal Haasan plays an unemployed (and unnamed) educated young man who goes through life in the big city without much money.  Really, it's a series of incidents; he looks for a job, meets a pretty girl (Amala Akkineni) while window shopping, and struggles to get a turn in the communal bathroom.  It feels like a socially conscious episode of Mr. Bean, at least until the assassin shows up.

I should back up.  One night the young man (and I'm just going to call him Kamal from now on) stumbles across an unconscious drunken millionaire (Sameer Khakhar) who happens to have a key for room 3039 of the ultra fancy Hotel Pushpak.  And in a moment of madness, Kamal kidnaps him, ties him up and leaves him in his own dingy flat, then takes the key and goes to stay at the fancy hotel for a few days.

Suddenly Kamal has (somebody else's) money, a nice place to live, and a chance to see the girl from the shop again, since she's also staying at the hotel with her magician father (K. S. Ramesh) and doting and overprotective mother (Farida Jalal).  And he has a new problem, since someone has hired an assassin (Tinnu Anand) to kill the man in room 3039.

I know I joked about Mr. Bean earlier, but if Mr. Bean were to be menaced by a hired assassin, this would be the guy.  He's fussy, clumsy, and absolutely determined to make "killed with a knife made of ice" happen.  He's so determined, in fact, that he keeps an insulated thermos with an ice dagger with him at all times, even though he'd be better off just hitting Kamal with the thermos.

And once the assassin shows up, Kamal . . . continues to stumble from incident to incident, subjected to some combination of slapstick, pathos, and/or cringe comedy.  Valuable life lessons are occasionally learned, and the end result is interesting, sometimes compelling, but blooming hard to review.

Phir Bhi Dil Hai Bangistani

While most of the action in Bangistan (2015) takes place in Poland, the film begins in the fictional island nation of Bangistan, a land torn apart by violent conflict between the chilly and Muslim north and the warm and Hindu south and oh my goodness, you guys, I think there may be a hidden meaning here.  The two foremost religious leaders of Bangistan, the Shankaracharya (Shivkumar Subramanium) and the Imam (veteran Bollywood white guy Tom Alter) want to end the fighting, so they plan to make a joint statement at the International Peace Conference in Krakow.

This does not suit ambitious terrorist leader Abbaji (Kimud Mishra), who recruits hapless telemarketer Hafeez (Riteish Deshmukh) to disguise himself as a Hindu extremist and bomb the conference. Corrupt politician Guruji (also Kimud Mishra) is also not pleased, so he recruits struggling actor Praveen (Pulkit Samrat) to disguise himself as a Muslim and, well, bomb the conference.  Both young men are devout and devoted to their respective leaders, so after a pair of religious instruction training montages, they don their respective disguises and make their respective ways to Poland.

Once in Poland, the two coincidentally find themselves staying in the same boarding house, and they slowly become friends while immersing themselves in their assumed expatriate communities.  Of course, they're also preparing the bombs for their respective terror attacks, and both falling for apparently-Christian-but-actually-agnostic-which-is-a-minor-plot-point barmaid Rosie (Jaqueline Fernandez).  So as the appointed hour draws near, both would-be terrorists are feeling very conflicted.

This is not a subtle movie; there is a very definite message, and various characters clearly articulate that message over and over just in case there's someone in the audience who hasn't quite grasped it yet.  However, it's also a good message, and looking at the world today, I think it bears a little repetition.

This is also a really weird movie.  From the fictional island nation to Abbaji's men meeting at a chain restaurant called FcDonalds to the Russian arms dealer/potato farmer to Darth Vader being one of the religious leaders attending the conference, everything is . . . odd.  Bangistan is billed as a black comedy, but it's more surreal than funny.  The movie feels like a fairy tale, or better yet a fable, a feeling which is enhanced by a rich color palette which makes careful use of orange and green.

Bangistan was a box office disaster, making just over eight hundred thousand dollars worldwide, so I am fairly confident that this is one of the many movies that nobody likes but me.  But I do genuinely like it - it's got a timely message and an extra helping of weird.

Blarg.

I have been blessed with a jolly Christmas cold.  Reviews will resume when I'm good and ready.

And then, for no good reason, an item number.

I am famously* okay with formulaic movies, as long as the formula is well executed, and Arjun Patiala (2019) does not just execute the formula well, it embraces the formula, celebrates the formula, and helpfully points out the bits of formula you might have missed.  Instead of footnotes, we have a framing story/occasional Greek chorus, in which an ambitious writer narrates the plot of his script to his potential producer (Pankaj Tripathi.)  He promises that the script is a "hero centered" movie for men, featuring violence, action, male bonding, romance, and space for a gratuitous Sunny Leone cameo.  The full package, in other words.

The script is about Arjun Patalia (Diljit Dolsanjh) an honest cop who won his posting in a judo competition.  he quickly assembles a supporting cast, most notably including Onida Singh (Varun Sharma) the station's loyal and gleefully corrupt Chief Constable.  And after a brief flirtation with beauty parlor owner baby (Sunny Leone in a gratuitous cameo) he falls hard for spunky reporter Ritu Randhawa (Kirti Sanon.)  And, as an Indian protagonist, Arjun also has parents; a dotty father (Ritesh Shah) and doting mother (Nirmal Rishi, who doesn't get to wave a shotgun around this time.)

But what about the action?  Arjun's superior (and childhood idol) Amarjeet Singh Gill (Ronit Roy) has a dream: a crime-free district.  And Arjun has a crazy and ethically dubious plan: convince Ritu to give him a briefing  on the local criminals, then use that information to manipulate them into killing each other.  (The crime wave is presented like a tournament in a fighting game, with brackets and onscreen scores and quite a bit of cartoonish violence.)  Everything would be great, except that Ritu is beginning to suspect something, and someone is clearly pulling the strings.

Everything proceeds pretty much according to the formula, with the framing story used to provide commentary and some of the better jokes.  Some of the later plot twists are explained in "deleted scenes," and there's a literal checklist of songs.  But while the metacommentary is fun, in the end Arjun Patalia is a pretty formulaic action-comedy.  And I'm really okay with that.

(*I am not actually famous for anything.)

No, the other Himmatwala.

When you are watching a Bollywood movie from the eighties, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect.  The fight scenes will be big and ridiculous.  Any character played by Shakti Kapoor is not to be trusted.  Somebody's wicked father will be offered forgiveness that he hasn't really earned.  And the hero's sister is going to have a very bad time.  Himmatwala (1983) is a perfect example; it's not just a product of its era, it really helped to define it.

Ravi (Jeetendra) returns to his home village after qualifying as an engineer, only to discover that things have gone wrong in his absence.  His mother Savitri (Waheeda Rehman) and sister Padma (Swaroop Sampat) are both living in poverty on the edge of the village, and the wicked Sher Singh (Amjad Khan), his spoiled and sadistic daughter Rekha (Sridevi), and his equally wicked accountant Narayandas (Kader Khan) are ruling the village like feudal monarchs.  After Ravi's mother explains the history of the situation, much of which he was actually there for, Ravi decides to take action, and the first thing he does is convince Rekha to abandon her evil ways by showing her the consequences of her actions.  Soon, she's given up the leather catsuits in favor of demure saris, and is singing romantic songs with Ravi.

But it's not all righteous vengeance all the time; Ravi is actually there to work.  The government is building a dam in the area, and Ravi is the man in charge, which means among other things, he's the one in charge of deciding where the dam will be built.  That could mean opportunity for Sher Singh and Narayandas, but Ravi won't be intimidated, refuses to be bought, and is easily capable of beating up a dozen armed me, so have no leverage.  And then they discover that Padma is in love with Nrayandas's son Shakti (Shakti Kapoor.)

Like a lot of Bollywood movies of the era, Himmatwala keeps changing genre.  Sometimes it's a revenge melodrama, sometimes it's a romantic comedy, sometimes it's a hard-hitting social commentary on poverty in the villages, and for one brief moment it's a disaster movie.  That's fine; the rapid genre changes are in fact a thing that I like about Indian cinema, but it does make our villains seem incompetent, since by the time they get an evil scheme rolling it's suddenly a completely different movie.

Still, you don't watch an eighties movie for competently and consistently implemented evil schemes.  This movie has ludicrous fight scenes, bright and entertaining songs, a few moments of genuine drama, and Sridevi.  I got exactly what I paid for.

The lack of diamonds should have been my first clue.

Bank Chor (2017) is, as the title implies, a movie about a bank robber, Champak (Riteish Deshmukh), an ordinary man forced into a life of crime, and his two Delhi-born accomplices, Gulab (Bhuvan Arora) and Genda (Vikram Thapa).  They have a plan, a gun, and cunning disguises.  Unfortunately, they are also idiots, and things immediately spiral out of control, leaving them with twenty eight hostages (with varying degrees of wackiness), a media circus outside the bank lfeaturing beautiful rookie reporter Gayatri Ganguli (Rhea Chakraborty), and a police operation which has been taken over by CBI officer Amjad Khan (Vivek Oberoi), a man who likes to shoot first and ask questions later, questions which mostly involve more shooting.

And at this point I was left wondering what on Earth I could say about the movie; if you've seen one wacky crime farce, you've pretty much seen them all, so you may as well sit back and wait for the climactic chase scene.  But it turns out that Bank Chor is not a wacky crime farce, it's a gritty neo-noir crime drama involving a corrupt politician (Upendra Limaye) and an actual bank robber (Sahil Vaid) who is happy to kill everybody if it gets him what he wants.  Our heroes just happen to be in the wrong movie, still cracking jokes and bumbling around while the universe around them plays it completely straight.

And even after the big twist, I still don't have a whole lot to say about Bank Chor.  It plays fair; all the movie's twists, including the big one and the other big one, make sense based on what has come before.  It's a rare example of a successful cinematic bait and switch.

Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love.

Padmaavat (2018) opens with a disclaimer, and I shall do the same.  The movie's release met with a great deal of controversy, and I am not really going to touch on any of it; I am just an American guy who likes Indian movies, and I am not remotely qualified to comment on whether legendary and historical characters are being portrayed accurately and with respect or whether this is a suitable adaptation of an epic poem I have never read.  Instead, I'm just going to focus on the movie as a self-contained story.

The story begins with Alauddin (Ranveer Singh) and his rise to power.  To say Alauddin is ambitious would be an understatement; he claims that every beautiful thing in the world belongs to him, which is an attitude that will get him into trouble someday.  Still, he rises.  He captures an ostrich in order to marry Mehrunissa (Aditi Rao Hydari), the daughter of Jalaludin (Raza Murad.)  He helps Jalaludin win the throne of Delhi, gains great renown by successfully fighting off a Mongol invasion, then, with the help of loyal and cheerfully murderous slave Malik Kufar (Jim Sarbh), he murders his father-in-law and seizes the throne for himself. 

Meanwhile, Sinhalese princess Padmavati (Deepika Padukone) is doing princess stuff, which in her case mostly means living in the woods and being young and carefree and sure that nothing will ever change.  She's one cute animal sidekick short of being a Disney princess.  One day while hunting she accidentally shoots Ratan Singh (Shahid Kapoor), king of Mewar.  She nurses him back to health, then accompanies him home as his bride.  Everything is wonderful - until the happy couple catch Ratan's guru Raghav Chetan (who isn't credited in the IMDB) spying on them.  Padmavati insists that Raghav should be exiled, and so he is.  he swears revenge, but goes away.

In short order, Raghav makes his way to Delhi, where he arranges to be discovered by Alauddin.  He tells Alauddin of Padmavati's legendary beauty, convincing him that he is destined to rule the world, but only with her at his side.  Since Alauddin's philosophy is that every beautiful thing belongs to him anyway, he promptly takes his army to Mewar to claim his prize. 

Padmaavat sounds like a historical epic, and I suppose it is, but it plays out more like a fairy tale.  The princess is beautiful and noble and spirited and kind, the villain is consumed by greed and wickedness and dresses like heavy metal Dracula, and the handsome prince and his people are Movie Rajputs, pure of heart but completely dedicated to a rigid code of honor.  The movie even looks like a fairy tale, with the scenery ranging from pretty to stunning and otherworldly, while still remaining more grounded than the giant statues and impossible cliffs of Baahubali.

It also plays out as a tragedy, and I have mixed feelings about that.  I can follow the characters' reasoning and motivation, even though I don't agree with them.  I understand that there is cultural significance behind the final act of literal self-sacrifice, and the scene was shot and performed beautifully.  It was also a really jarring moment of culture shock for me.

Ultimately this is Ranveer Singh's movie.  The other leads are perfectly good and convincing as they stride toward their various noble fates that probably could have been avoided with a little forethought, but from his humble beginnings onward Alauddin is a terrible person, and Singh still manages to make him compelling and believable as he schemes and murders and fights and sneers and swoons and dances.  And when he dances, he really, really dances.

You know, for kids.

I have very eclectic tastes when it comes to Indian cinema, but I have to admit I've got a  soft spot for the Bollywood romantic comedies of the nineties and early oughts. They really don't make them like that any more, but luckily for me, they made a lot of them like that at the time, and I've got a backlog of movies I haven't seen yet. I can scratch Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke (1993) off the list. 

After the death of his sister, Rahul Malhotra (Aamir Khan) has taken charge of both the family garment factory and her three children, Vicky (Shahrokh Barucha), Sunny (Khunal Khemu, who years later went on to co-write and star in the slacker zombie comedy Go Goa Gone), and Muni (Baby Ashrafa).  Rahul is basically a good guy who's trying his best in a difficult situation, and the kids are little hooligans, who keep pelting the servants with eggs.  Clearly Rahul needs help, and he's not going to get it from Maya (Navneet Nishan), an old college friend who clearly would like to be more, but doesn't want to deal with the children.

Across town, Vaijanti Iyer (Juhi Chawla) has her own problems.  Her traditional Brahmin father (K. D. Chandran) is determined to marry her off to someone of her own caste, but the best he's been able to find is an oily dancer (Veeru Krishnan), to whom she takes an instant dislike.  Vaijanti runs away and hides out in a nearby fair.  Meanwhile, Rahul's charges have also crept out of the house to go to the fair.  They meet Vaijanti, and after some hijinks, the theft of a harmonica, and an impromptu musical number, they become fast friends. 

Since Vaijanti has nowhere else to go, the children decide to sneak her into the house, without telling Uncle Rahul.  Now you may think you know where this plot is going, but you are completely correct.  There are humorous misunderstandings galore, followed by valuable life lessons and our young attractive protagonists falling in love and not bothering to say anything.

Meanwhile, cartoonishly evil businessman Bijlani (Dalip Tahil) has placed an order for 100,000 shirts, an order which Rahul's late brother-in-law has failed to deliver because he died.  According to the terms of the contract the brother-in-law signed, if the shirts are not delivered in fifteen days, Bijlani will take possession of the factory and the family home.  (That is some contract.)  Bijlani is willing to be merciful, but only if Rahul agrees to marry Maya, who happens to be Bijlani's daughter.

Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke was an enormous hit when it was released, and I can see why.  There are no  real surprises here, but that's part of the charm.  This is a movie that chooses its formula and then executes it well.  The leads are charming, the villain daintily nibbles on the scenery, the gratuitous comic relief (Mushtaq Khan) is only kind of annoying, and Juhi wears an array of dowdy dresses in a rainbow of pastel colors, as if a closet full of Sunday dresses and a basket of Easter candy were fused together in a transporter accident.  It may sound like I'm damning with faint praise here, but I love this stuff.  It's cinematic comfort food.

He's a chicken, I tell you! A giant chicken!

Kanthaswamy (2009) (or Mallama, as the Telugu dub I just watched is titled) is a movie about a man who dresses up as a rooster in order to fight crime.  Yes, it is a deeply strange movie, but probably not in the way that you're thinking.

It starts with a temple devoted to Mallama (who as the film points out is known by many names, perhaps most widely as Kartikeya, but here he's Mallama).  A woman who needs money for her husband's operation ties a prayer to the tree, and that night a bag of money is placed at her door.  She's suspicious and brings the money to the police, who "confiscate" it, by which I mean the station head takes the money for himself.  That night, though, he's confronted by a masked, crowing, occasionally flying figure who claims to be Mallama himself.  The money's retrieved, and the woman's husband is saved.

This Mallama is actually a CBI officer named Mallama (Vikram), who has assumed the god's identity in order to better steal from the rich  and give to the poor.  In this case, the specific rich being stolen from are the wealthy tax cheats Mallama encounters during his day job, and the poor he gives to are the devotees who tie their prayers to the temple tree. He does not have any superpowers, and instead performs his amazing feats with the help of a dedicated team of helpers, practical effects, and literal wire-fu.

Mallama's current target is PPP (Ashish Vidyarthi), who starts off smug but winds up faking a stroke mid raid in order to get out of answering questions.  He is very devoted to the fake, pretending to be partially paralyzed, and doesn't even tell his daughter Subbalakshmi (Shriya Saran) the truth, so she in turn attempts to take revenge on Mallama, first by accusing him of rape and then by trying to make him fall in love with her.  Mallama isn't fooled for a second, but decides to play along anyway, because this is a movie and that is what you do in movies.

This is a long movie, but instead of filling out the running time with padding, it fills it out with plot - PPP isn't even the main villain!  Okay, there is a comic relief subplot which wasn't even subtitled in the version of the film I saw, and I don't think I missed anything, but apart from that there's a lot going on.  And throughout all that, Mallama actually spends relatively little time dressed as a chicken; most of his heroic deeds are performed in his real identity.

Beyond that, he's an odd superhero in other ways.  Mallama the "god" is cocky, graceful, and does everything with theatrical flair, while Mallama the CBI officer is dour, cranky, sarcastic, and totally focused on the job at hand.  It's like if Spider-Man was secretly Bruce Wayne.

Mallama is also a superhero who focuses almost entirely on white-collar crime, specifically money laundering and  tax evasion.  Mallama is deadly serious about this Robin Hood business, and speaks often and eloquently about income inequality and how much good the corrupt billionaires he targets could be doing with their money.

But the really strange part of the movie is Mallama and Subbalakshmi's relationship.  It is blindingly obvious that they're going to wind up together; several minor characters point it out as the the plot progresses.  But she's kind of a terrible person, and he's really mean to her.  Does Subbalakshmi becoime good?  Does Mallama become nice?  Well, kind of.  But they still need all of the therapy, and a prayer tied to a tree probably wouldn't hurt.

He does whatever a spyder can.

Traditionally, Bollywood and Bollywood-adjacent films haven't been shy about taking stories from all over and reshaping them for their own purposes.  That's not a bad thing - the Indianification process always adds something to the final product, creating something new and often wonderful.  I have seen things.  An adaptation of The Time Machine that leaves out the morlocks.  The Hound of the Baskervilles without hound or super-detective.  An arc on a children's superhero series lifted from the 1982 film version of Cat People.  Even a near shot-for-shot remake of The Professional with no creepy May-December subtext!  And Spyder (2017) is a Batman movie with no Batman.

Our hero is Shiva (Mahesh Babu), who is not an orphan, not a billionaire, and never ever dresses up as a bat. He's a low-ranking officer in the Intelligence Bureau, assigned to a wiretapping unit, but he has developed software which enable shim to tap into and filter through every phone and computer system in the city, enabling him to stop crimes before they happen, rescue kidnapped children, prevent suicides, and generally fight evil wherever he can.  Because this is a movie, we are supposed to pretend that this is a good thing rather than a horrifying invasion of privacy and subversion of due process; Shiva is generally a good guy, but this is technology that could easily be used for evil - "used for evil" is pretty much the default, even.  And while he doesn't wear a cape, he does have his own theme song!

 

(Fun fact - the theme song includes a line about how he's so cool he doesn't need his own theme song.  Sure, Jan.)

Shiva is also involved in one of the weirdest romantic subplots that I have ever seen.  Shalini (Rakul Preet Singh) is a gifted medical student who accidentally watched four hours of porn and now finds she can't concentrate on her studies.  Her plan, as she explains to a college friend, is to find a cute guy and "try that" so she can clear her head and get back to work. Because Shalini uses the word "help" during the phone conversation, Shiva gets an alert, listens in, and proceeds to stalk her for nearly a month, and when she angrily confronts him , he tells her he's there to help her with her concentration problem, and that is that!  It's never made clear exactly what Shiva's intentions are; he doesn't make any speeches about trying to protect her honor or anything, but while they describe themselves as "friends with benefits," nobody ever gets any "benefits."  And then not five minutes later they sing a song about how they're in love forever.  

 

(Also sexy mimes.)

Shiva is hunting a serial killer, Bhairav (Bharath) and through a combination of genuinely clever detective work, dumb luck, and horrifying violations of privacy and due process, he quickly discovers the villain's origin story; Bhairav was born in a cemetery during a funeral, and can only feel joy when he hears other people weeping.  As a child he started killing people in order to cause more funerals, and after the villagers burned down his family home he hid and kept killing people until the village was abandoned.  While he doesn't have a cool name, Bhairav is basically a supervillain; he's got the origin story, a goofy looking zipper mask that he wears once and then immediately discards, and a lair of sorts at the amusement park where his brother works as a security guard.  And like the modern Joker, his superpower is murder; he can kill minor characters pretty much with impunity, but has much less success with major characters who are not named Jason Todd.  

Bhairav is so good at murder, in fact, that the film slowly transitions from "street-level vigilante movie" to "improbable disaster movie" without realizing it.  And while even giant runaway boulders can be defeated through the power of illegal wiretapping, Shiva can't save people from the hospital attack Bhairav has planned until he figures out which hospital is being attacked, and a captive Bhairav isn't talking . . .

Spyder requires a bit more suspension of disbelief than the average Batman movie does, but there are some benefits.  While Shiva and Shalini have an incredibly weird relationship, they are an engaging couple, and the film just treats Shalini as a girl with a very healthy sex-drive rather than trying to shame her.  The action scenes are sufficiently big and improbable.   The songs are fun, and provide the opportunity to watch a costume designer slowly lose her grip on reality.  Just be prepared for strange. 

Baahubali 2: The Wrath of Kattapa

Baahubali: The Beginning ends with . . . well, not a cliffhanger, per se.  An unanswered question.  Why would Kattapa kill Baahubali?  Why would a devoted servant, who has dedicated his entire life to fulfilling his ancestors' vow to serve the royal family at all costs and obey every order despite his own conscience and feelings kill Baahubali?  It's not actually a very hard question, but Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017) still answers the heck out of it.

We begin where the last movie left off, with an extended flashback narrated by Kattapa.  Bercause of his brave deeds in battle, and specifically because of the care he showed for his subjects, Baahubali has been named as the future king of Mahishmati.  The people are thrilled, but Baahubali's adopted brother Bhallaledeva and adopted father Bijjaladeva are less enthusiastic.  Before they can begin any proper evil scheming, though, Baahubali and Kattapa leave to tour the kingdom and learn about what the people want and need.

And it's while on this tour that Baahubali meets actual warrior princess Devasena and falls in love.  He decides to pretend to be an unemployed simpleton in need of work rather than reveal his true royal identity and woo Devasena on equal terms, because shut up, that's why.  (Kattapa actually asks him why he's doing this, and Baahubali replies with a weird speech about how Kattapa doesn't understand love.  Neither do I, I guess.)

The deception gives Bhallaladeva his opportunity, though.  Upon hearing that his brother is wooing the princess in disguise, he goes to his mother Sivagami and asks for the princess openly.  Sivagami sends Devasena a condescending letter congratulating her on the match while not specifying which prince she is to be engaged to, and Devasena sends back an insulting reply, prompting Sivagami to demand that Baahubali take the princess captive, since he's in the neighborhood and all.  When he receives the message, Baahubali has just defeated a horde of bandits and revealed his true identity, so Devasena is willing to play along after he swears to protect her honor and dignity.

And that's where things start to get complicated.  Baahubali is forced to choose between his love and the throne, and he chooses love.  Worse, he also tells Sivagami that she is wrong.  Bhalla takes the throne, but the people continue to love Baahubali more.  Bhalla removes baahubali from his position as commander-in-chief, but the people continue to love Baahubali more.  Baahubali is exiled from the palace (the new commander-in-chief was using his position to grope women at the palace gates, including Devasena, so she severed his fingers and when confronted Baahubali decapitated him) and the people rejoice, because that means Baahubali will be living among them.

Clearly, the situation requires advanced evil scheming, so Bhalla fakes an assassination plot against himself, driving Sivagami to give Kattapa the fateful order, and the question is finally answered.  Baahubali is betrayed, Sivagami is killed just after declaring that Baahubali's son will be the next king, and Devasena is chained up in the courtyard and busies herself building Bhalla's funeral pyre.

And after hearing all this, Baahubali's son Shiva raises an army to take the throne and avenge his parents, because really, what choice does he have?

Like the previous film, Baahubali 2 draws heavily from the Hindu epic tradition, and in particular the Mahabharata.  Things are obviously much more black and white in the movies, of course.  For instance, Bhallaladeva's epic counterpart Duryodhan is an excellent king, while Bhallaladeva is not.

Still, both stories rely on everybody making ill-conceived declarations and stupid vows when they don't have all the facts.  That's Baahubali's secret super power - he recognizes that while keeping your word is important, it is a warrior's duty to stand up for justice.  Unfortunately, he's caught between people who can't get past their own personal honor and people with no honor who are willing to exploit the honor of others.

Of course, the movie isn't just a demonstration of Krishna's advice to Arjun, there's also the spectacle to consider.  The first Baahubali movie was big, and the conclusion is bigger.  Bigger fights, more ridiculous battle tactics, a bigger romance, and not one but two shouty queens.  Baahubali 2 doesn't just go over the top, it sails over it in a flying ship which might be real and might just be the backdrop to a particularly good dance number.  It's epic in more ways than one.

When I'm feeling blue, I like to think about the time that the London News Review accused me of being Andy Kaufman.  It's a weird claim to internet fame, but I'll take it.

Bhooty Call - Pari

Two movies called "Pari" were released last year, one in India and one in Pakistan, and after the first five minutes of Pari (2018) I realized that I was watching the wrong movie.  This wasn't the blockbuster horror film starring Anushka Sharma as a mysterious woman who may be a supernatural being, it was the other one.

Pari begins like a lot of ghost movies begin - a young family, in this case Shehram (Junaid Akhtar), his wife Mehwish (Azekah Daniel), and their young daughter Pari (Khushi Maheen), move into a new house deep in the woods.  Shehram works, leaving Mehwish and Pari alone in the big creepy house all day, and spooky things begin to happen . . . eventually.  the first half of the movie is much more concerned with Shehram and Mehwish having solemn conversations about the move and carefully avoiding the topic of their struggling marriage. 

Things do finally start to get spooky, though.  Dead birds litter the ground around a nearby tree.  The rocking chair moves by itself.  Somet unseen force snaps the foosball table in half.  There's a ghostly blue boy that only Pari can see who sits in the top bunk of her bed  and drinks her milk.  And a homeless man (Saleem Mairaj) sits outside the property, stares at the family, and proclaims that Pari is the devil and needs to be thrown out of the house.

Spoiler: homeless guy is right.  Pari terrifies an elderly professor (Qavi Khan) who visits the family in time for her (deeply depressing) birthday party, and the professor conveniently drops dead right after asking Mehwish who Pari's real father is.  Mehwish does not answer, which means that while the supernatural spookiness is escalating, we also get a lot more solemn conversations in which husband and wife studiously avoid actually saying anything.

What I am saying is, this movie is slow and very, very serious.  It's like the Pakistani remake of  the Omen, directed by Ingmar Bergman.  The actors do their best, but with all the padding they really don't have much to work with.  I will say that the movie was shot in Ayubia national park, and the occasional glimpses we see of the forest are impressive.  Most of the time, though, you can't see the forest for the plodding.

Bhooty Call - Arundhati

Arundhati (2009) features one of those large and happy extended families that were so common in the Indian movies of the Nineties.  They're rich, but it hasn't spoiled them, and even the servants are considered part of the family.  Everybody loves each other, everybody's happy, everybody's kind, and everybody's bound and determined to care for and protect Arundhati (Anushka Shetty), a literal princess and the only girl born into the family for generations.  Unfortunately, all these noble virtues get many of them killed.

On the eve of her engagement to Rahul (Arjan Bajwa), Arundhati returns to her ancestral home in Gadwal, only to find that her warm and wonderful loving family are keeping one of the servants chained up in the back yard.  Apparently while delivering wedding invitations his car was forced off the road, forcing him to seek shelter in the family's ruined castle, and something happened to drive him mad.  The plan is to bring him to Anwar (Sayaji Shinde), the local fakir, to drive out any evil spirits, but Arundhati is a modern skeptical girl, and is not impressed by Anwar's rather brutal exorcism technique, so they drag the poor fellow home again.

That night, Arundhati gets a call from rahul, asking her to meet him at the creepy ruined fort.  She doesn't know she's in a horror movie yet, and so she accepts.  And, well, she finds out that she's in a horror movie.  In the ruined dance studio stands a makeshift mausoleum, with a creepy voice demanding that she let him out.  Arundhati responds like an angry queen, loudly proclaiming that she will never let  him out, and it looks like she's about to pick a fight right then and there when Anwar arrives, drags her away, and demonstrates that yes, ghosts absolutely do exist.

And it is obviously time for some backstory.  Eighty years ago, Arundhati's great grandmother Arundhati (Divya Nagesh) was a child princess, already renowned for her martial skills, courage, and wisdom.  her older sister (I cannot find the actor's name - not cool, IMDB!) is married to Pasupathi (Sonu Sood), who is the kind of decadent aristocrat that would make Lord Byron blush.

Pasupathi has absolutely no self control.  He's such a monster that he rapes and murders Arundhati's blind dance teacher (Leena Sidhu) in the palace, but when Arundhati goes to her father and demansd that Pasupathi be exiled, she is refused.  her father explains that as long as her sister alive and married to the blackguard, he's safe.  The sister overhears and takes matters into her own hands, killing herself.  At which point Arundhati orders that Pasupathi be beaten to death and then dragged out of town by his own horse.

Unfortunately, Pasupathi isn't quite dead.  He's saved by a band of Aghori who teach him dark magic, and seven years later he returns for revenge.  By this time, Arundhati has grown into Aushka Shetty, and she manages to defeat the unstoppable sorcerer using only a pair of scarves and the techniques she learned from her blind dance teacher, and also a pair of swords and a chandelier. Because of Pasupathis's magic, though, it's too dangerous to just kill him; instead, they build a mausoleum around him, entombing him alive without even a drop of Amontillado. 

Meanwhile, the mad servant escapes and frees the ghost.  And Pasupathi - well, he doesn't so much haunt the modern Arundhati as stalk her.  Fortunately, the previous Arundhati has planned for this, sacrificing her life to create a weapon (made of her own spine!) that can kill the ghost once and for all.  Unfortunately, the ghost knows about the weapon, and it's willing to kill everybody Arundhati loves in order to keep her from it.

In a lot of ways this movie is a throwback to the old Ramsay Brothers horror flicks; there's a lot of blood, and when Pasupathi's a round the camera gets a bit male gazey.  It's the Arundhatis that keep things fresh.  The Twenties version is an awesome, indomitable warrior queen with awesome fighting skills, while the modern version does not have awesome skills, but is still willing to walk through Hell in order to protect the people she loves.  Once again Shetty puts in two distinct and memorable performances. 

And I will confess, it's nice, every now and then, to see a ghost who can be defeated with a spinesword and a Glasgow kiss, rather than having to complete his unfulfilled desires.  (Especially since the unfulfilled desires are so horrible.)

Bhooty Call - Bhaagamathie

Bhaagamathie (2018) seems like two movies in one.  The first movie is a political thriller.  In order to frame honest politician Eshwar Prasad (Jayaram), a cabal of crooked politicians arrange for his former assistant Chanchala (Anushka Shetty), now in jail for murdering her fiance Shakti (Unni Mukundan), to be transferred to a ruined castle where she can be interrogated by CBI officer Vaishnavi Natarajan (Asha Sarath) and local police officer Sampath (Murli Sharma), who also happens to be Shakti's brother and really shouldn't be involved in the case at all.  When she's not being interrogated, Chanchala is free to roam the creepy castle totally alone; the police seem to be hoping to Yellow Wallpaper a confession out of her.

At night, though, the movie changes.  The castle isn't entirely empty . . . Chanchala and a small group of comic-relief policemen are terrorized by an escalating series of supernatural events.  Strange sounds, mysterious books, a crazy old man who somehow managed to wander through security long enough to make sinister predictions, and then Chanchala is attacked by an invisible assailant.  Before too long, she's speaking in an unknown language and calling herself Bhaagmathie, Queen and rightful ruler of the palace, and swearing vengeance on her long-dead general Chandrasenan.  This complicates the ongoing interrogation.

Between the Baahubali movies, Arundhati, and Rudhramadevi, Anushka Shetty has developed quite a talent for playing angry queens.  But while the character of Bhaagamathie is spooky bombastic fun, and I will never get tired of Shetty promising to rain horrible vengeance on her enemies, her performance as Chanchala is far more interesting.  At different times, she's brave, terrified, loyal desperate, and ultimately not what she seems.  Almost nobody in the movie is quite what they seem.  The movie itself isn't quite what it seems, either.  Despite the presence of the angry ghost, it's as much film noir as it is horror, and the real monsters are very human.

Too much toon, and not enough loony.

Toonpur Ka Superhero tells the story of a Bollywood actor who is suddenly pulled into a world of living cartoons. From the premise, it sounds like it’s going to be Who Framed Rajiv Rabbit, and it is, sort of, if you replace Bob Hoskins with Ajay Devgan and swap out Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse for a bunch of characters that nobody has ever heard of.

You might think that Bollywood superstar Aditya Kumar (Ajay Devgan) has it all, but look closer and . . . well, you’d probably still be right. He has fame, fortune, a loving and only slightly crazy wife named Priya (Kajol), and two beautiful children. The only cloud on the Kumar horizon is Aditya’s relationship with his son Kabir (Ameya Pandya); Kabir is so upset about his father missing the school’s track and field day again that he stomps off the track in the middle of his race, and later accuses his father of being a “fake hero” who lets his stuntmen do all the work.

Now, if this were an American movie, then the dad (probably played by Tim Allen) would have forgotten all about his son’s sporting event until the very last minute, leading to a desperate race across town only to arrive a second too late. Not here, though; Aditya does everything he can, short of throwing a diva tantrum and storming off the set, to see his son run, he just doesn’t quite make it. That’s one of the nice things about this movie; the adults consistently behave like adults.

Meanwhile, the cartoon inhabitants of Toonpur have a problem. Ever since the good king Tooneshwar was overthrown by his treacherous general Jagaaro, the good hearted Devtoons have been oppressed by the mischievous Toonasurs. The Devtoons need a hero, and one of their number, a young Bollywood fan named Bolly, suggests his favorite action hero, Aditya Kumar.

The Devtoons send a couple of their number into the real world to kidnap Aditya. They do, and once he realizes that he’s in Toonapur . . . well, you could probably write it yourself. There are a few crazy cartoon hijinks, and Aditya comes to care for his new cartoon friends, leading them to battle and finally facing Jagaaro in a video game which has all the excitement of watching your little sister play Tomb Raider.

The inhabitants of Toonapur are all original characters, created for this movie. The Devtoons are all based on Bollywood stereotypes – there’s the aforementioned starstruck Punjabi boy, the overbearing filmi ma, the lazy policeman, the meek South Indian accountant, the perpetually lovestruck damsel, and so on. The Toonasurs are a bit more varied – they’re mostly stock Bollywood thugs, but they do have a Sumo wrestler, a caveman, and a shameless Jessica Rabbit ripoff.

The problem with the Devtoons isn’t that they’re new characters, it’s that none of them are particularly interesting. It’s like watching a movie about the supporting cast of a Bugs Bunny short. They don’t act like cartoons, they act like . . . well, like a random assortment of Bollywood stereotypes. In the fight scenes, it’s Aditya who takes advantage of cartoon physics.

The sole exception, the one cartoon character who actually behaves like a cartoon character, is Rubdoot, cartoon god of death (the name’s a pretty good pun) and Aditya’s biggest fan. (Sorry, Bolly.) Rubdoot is genuinely loony, and his big scene is a high point, but he doesn’t get much screen time at all.

It’s a shame that the cartoon world is so bland, because the scenes set in the real world are actually pretty good. Aditya is written as a grown up who’s trying to do his best, rather than as an arrested adolescent who needs to recapture the wonder of something or other, and he displays a great chemistry with his film family. Ajay Devgan is one of nature’s great straight men, but he needs someone else to deliver the punchlines, and that doesn’t happen here.

You can tell they're twins because they have the same mustache.

Twin movies are fairly common in Bollywood, and they tend to follow the same basic formula. Identical twins are separated at birth. One twin grows up poor and feisty, raised by humble working folk. The other twin grows up wealthy and meek, terrorized by evil rich relatives who are after their money, though the rich twin usually also has a good-hearted but vulnerable relative that they need to protect. Just when it seems all hope is lost, the twins accidentally trade places, with the poor twin overcoming the villains, the rich twin developing a spine, and everybody gaining a love interest. Kishen Kanhaiya (1990) follows this formula as well, but with some surprising tweaks.

The film begins just as you might expect; tragic birth, dead mother, one twin spirited away to be raised by the midwife, while the other is left with his wealthy and now widowed father, Sunderdas (Shreeram Lagoo). While Sunderdas is a devoted parent, he’s overwhelmed, and decides to marry Kamini (Bindu), the sister of his employee Gendamal (Amrish Puri). Gendamal and Kamini are, of course, evil, and soon Gendamal arranges for Sunderdas to take a convenient fall, leaving him mute and paralyzed. Thanks to a complicated will, though, Gendamal needs to keep Sunderdas and baby Kishen alive until Kishen’s 24th birthday, then force the young man to sign over the property. And in order to make this possible, Gendamal and Kamini raise the boy through terror and abuse. By the time he grows into an adult (and is played by Anil Kapoor), Kishen is basically a servant, completely cowed by his uncle, stepmother, and her illegitimate son Mahesh (Dalip Tahil).

Kanhaiya (Anil Kapooor), on the other hand, was raised by the midwife (Subha Khote), and has grown up fearless, lazy, and a bit shady, but basically good hearted. Kanhaiya is obsessed with movies, and spends his days at the movie theater, dressed in fancy clothes borrowed from his best friend Lobo (Johnny Lever). After inadvertently picking a fight with a much larger man, his filmi fisticuffs catch the eye of fellow cinemaniac Anju (Madhuri Dixit), daughter of wealthy and cranky businessman Vidya Charan (Saeed Jaffrey), who happens to be a close friend of Gendamal.

And at this point, with the characters clearly established, that you’d expect the twins to switch places. But no, not yet. Both brothers have fully developed romantic subplots under their own identities, rather than meeting their love interests while switched. Kishen falls for milkmaid Radha (Shilpa Shirodkar), and surprisingly, Gendamal is all for the match, figuring that a wife would help keep Kishen docile, and an educated woman would be harder to control.

Kanhaiya, meanwhile, grows closer to Anju, who assumes that he’s also the child of a rich family. While pursuing this relationship. Kanhaiya casually and repeatedly humiliates Anju’s “uncle” Sridhar (Ranjeet), a business associate of her father’s. Sridhar has an unhealthy interest in Anju, and is nasty enough to expose Kanhaiya’s poverty, have the young man brutally beaten, kill his adopted mother, and then shoot him in the head.

Kishen, meanwhile, suddenly grows a spine and refuses to mark the papers transferring control of the family fortune, because Radha doesn’t want him to. Gendamal does not take this refusal well, and orders Mahesh to kill Kishen and dump his body in the sea. And then, with Kishen presumed dead and Kanhaiya’s life in ruines, Kanhaiya’s adoptive father explains the switch, and Kanhaiya deliberately assumes Kishen’s identity in order to root out the villains and perhaps discover what happened to his twin.

Kishen is not really dead, of course. Anju discovers him wandering the city street and thinks he’s Kanhaiya; he cannot contradict her, because he has amnesia. Anju tries to help him recover his memories by dressing up as Raj Kapoor, but surprisingly it doesn’t work.

Kishen Kanhaiya hits many of the same story beats as, say, Seeta Aur Geeta, but it steers clear of some of the twin movie cliches. (Kanhaiya lets all the nice people know who he is as soon as possible, for instance, so there’s no tearful rejection by the family he’s trying to save.) It’s an old story, but different enough to be interesting, and the cast is full of people I like, so I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

Here’s to you, Mrs. . . does she even have a last name?

I love Bollywood DVD clearance sales. I can get stacks of movies for as little as 49 cents apiece, and because they’re often movies starring nobody I’ve ever heard of, and I have no information on the film other than an often inaccurate cover blurb, watching them is always an adventure. Sometimes I discover an amazing jewel in the rough, and sometimes I discover Kya Aisa Hota Hai Pyar (2004).
Karan (Hussein Sheikh) and Aditya (Sumeet Chawla) are college students and the best of friends. Karan is athletic, popular, dating the lovely Poorvi (Parita Vora), and secretly craves the approval of his distant workaholic father (Rajvansh Malhotra). Aditya is not particularly interested in girls, but that doesn’t stop him from toying with the emotions of Gia (Namita Shrivastav), Poorvi’s friend and roommate.

After a particularly dismal evening out with Gia (which she paid for, because Aditya is a selfish jerk) Aditya’s motorbike gets a flat tire, and older woman Aanchal (Samrita Singh) stops to offer him a ride. (Samrita Singh can’t be much older than me, but the lighting and makeup people are doing her no favors in this movie.)

Aditya may not be all that interested in girls, but Aanchal makes it very clear that she is interested in him. He’s a lttle intrigued, and agrees to meet her later, but when he arrives at her house she’s performing a sleazy dance number with some random guy who never appears again. Suddenly, Aditya is very intrigued, and soon he’s coming over to canoodle every day after school.

It’s an odd dynamic; Aanchal tries to communicate her philosophy of living for the present, and Aditya pretty much behaves like a lovestruck puppy. He’s in love for the very first time, and unfortunately, the person he chooses to share the happy news with is Gia, whom he knows is in love with him.

Karan invites a small group of friends, including both the lovesick Aditya and the heartbroken Gia, to his family estate for a few days because there’s no way that could be awkward. The kids are not alone, though. Karan’s father is there for a brief visit, and leaves the gang in the care of Karan’s beloved Auntie Aanchal. Yes, that Aanchal.

I’m trying to come up with some nice things to say about Kya Aisa Hota Hai Pyar, and it’s not easy. Samrita Singh managed to give a poorly written and cliched character some small degree of depth before what little character development Aanchal had was undone by the final scene, in which she picks up and hits on yet another young college kid. Bhaskar, the comic relief with the incredibly stupid beard made me really appreciate the acting talent and subtle comedic timing of Johnny Lever. And I’m sure the whole thing was well intentioned; it reminds me of an afterschool special about the horrible dangers of dating older women, complete with a narrator who pops up onscreen occasionally to spout gibberish about love.

Well intentioned or not, though, the final product is kind of skeezy. Aanchal is oversexed and sort of predatory, and even nice girl Gia has a scene where she writhes on the bed and displays her cleavage to the camera for no apparent reason. Comic relief guy spends his time making unwanted sexual comments to a woman who is clearly not interested, and everyone else thinks this is hilarious. And in this movie, women appear to be interchangeable; after a brief conversation with comic relief guy, Aditya goes from pining for Aanchal to pining for Gia, without even pausing for breath.

In short, this movie is not very good. Save your 49 cents.

Bhooty Call - Om Shanti Om

Unlike most of this month's movies, Om Shanti Om (2007) is not a horror movie in any way, shape or form.  It's a masala flick, a heady mix of comedy, romance, reincarnation revenge melodrama, and enthusiastic celebration of all things Bollywood.  It makes the cut because it also features the rare Reverse Scooby Doo, in which our scrappy heroes fake a haunting in order to scare Old Man Mehra into confessing to a murder.

Om Prakash Makhija (Shahrukh Khan) is a "junior artist", an extra who makes his living through bavkground parts in the glsmourous world of 1970's Bollywood.  He has a loyal best friend, Pappu (Shreyas Talpade), a loving and overdramatic mother (Khiron Kher), and a dream.  One day he will be a big star, live in a big house, and get to meet Shanti (Deepika Padukone), the famous actress that he worships from afar. 

 Om gets the chance to meet Shanti sooner than he expected, when there's a fire on set and he leaps through the flames to rescue her.  She's grateful, and agrees to spend one evening with him.  With Pappu's help, he pulls out all the stops, and arranges a magical evening on an empty set.  Shanti is delighted, and they part as friends.

But Shanti has a secret; she's secretly married to producer Mukesh Mehra (Arjun Rampal).  When Om finds out, he's heartbroken, but lets her go and, after a sad song, throws himself into his acting.

Unfortunately, Mukesh also has a secret: he's engaged to another producer's daughter, and can't have Shanti around to spoil things.  She pleads with him to reconsider, but it goes badly.  Really badly.

Mukesh burns the set down with Shanti inside, then as he leaves sends some goons to make sure she doesn't escape.  Om turns up at just the right time, tries to save her, is beaten by the goons, burned, blown up, and then hit by a car.  he dies.

And thirty years later, Om Kapoor is a big star living in a big house.  Life is great, apart from his severe pyrophobia and the crazy old lady who keeps showing up at his film shoots claiming to be his mother. 

And then Om goes to a film shoot at an abandoned studio that burned down thirty years ago, and meets his father's old friend Mukesh, and the memories of his last life all come flooding back.  He tracks down his previous mother and Pappu, and they come up with a plan.  Om will recruit Mukesh to produce the film he abandoned thirty years ago, then they will use a duplicate Shanti to convince him he's being haunted, driving him to confess to her murder.  And soon enough they find their duplicate Shanti when clumsy, start struck Sandy (also Deepika Padukone) auditions for the lead.

Writer-director Farah Khan clearly loves Bollywood, and this movie is stuffed with all the things she loves about it.  In all my years of watching Bollywood, this is the Bollywoodest bit of Bollywood that I have ever witnessed.  And it is well made.  Khan made her name as a choreographer, and the dance numbers are frequent and lively and shot with a choreographer's eye; the last number recaps the entire plot so far in a splashy Broadway style number which doubles as an exemplar of "I know what you did and I'm gonna get ya" because she's Farah Khan, and she can do that. 

And then there's Shahrukh Khan.  Khan is a gifted actor, but he rarely has a chance to demonstrate that fact; people want to see his carefully crafted persona, and so that is what he delivers.  Fortunately, he's really, really good at delivering his carefully crafted persona, and Om Shanti Om was written to play to his strengths.  SRK deserves some special credit for the celebrity cameo-filled song "Deewangi Deewangi", which requires him to establish distinct relationships with thirty one different celebrities, all in the space of a few seconds each, while dancing.  He manages to communicate a lot through small gestures.

Om Shanti Om is packed with the things I love about late Nineties/early Oughts Bollywood, and manages to cram in most of my favorite actors in the bargain.  It's one Johny Lever cameo short of the full experience.

Bhooty Call - Tumbbad

Tumbbad (2018) begins by explaining the story's cosmology.  When the world was new, the Goddess of Plenty (who possessed infinite gold and infinite food) gave birth to sixteen million gods, but her favorite child was her firstborn, Hastar.  Hastar was greedy, and claimed all the gold for himself, but when he tried to take the food as well, the sixteen million other gods fought back.  They would have destroyed him, but the Goddess hid him away in her womb, on the condition that his name doesn't appear in any of the ancient histories and no one worships him, ever.  It's a very evocative myth, and it is wrong in one important detail.

Of course, you can't keep a god secret forever, and in the cursed village of Tumbbad, Hastar has attracted a cult of worshippers,  Not much of a cult, really.  There's a bedridden Sarkaar (madhave hari Joshi), his long-suffering servant/mistress (Jyothi Malshe), their two sons Vinayak (Dhundiraj Prabhakar Jogalekar) and Sadashiv (Rudra Soni), and the Sarkaar's great grandmother (Piyush Kaushik), who has become a withered, eternally hungry monster that they keep chained up, well fed, and asleep.  (She is basically Gollum, only slightly more monstrous.) 

And everything is . . . well, not fine.  Pretty damned bleak, in fact.  The Sarkaar has wasted his life looking for the family's fabled treasure, with only a single gold coin to show for it.  he uses the coin to string Vinayak's mother along, because somebody has to keep Granny from waking up and eating everybody. And then the Sarkaar dies, and things go from bleak to actively terrible.  Sadashiv falls from the mansion wall, and his mother rushes him to a doctor, leaving Vinayak to feed Granny.  But Granny wakes up.  Vinayak barely survives, but Sadashiv doesn't.  His mother takes him away to Pune, and makes him swear never to return to Tumbbad.

Years later, Vinayak (now played by Sohum Shah) returns to Tumbbad.  Granny has been reduced to a withered husk, with a tree growing out of her body, and she is still alive and lucid enough to reveal the secret of the family treasure.  He returns to Pune with a handful of gold coins, and then another, and then another, enabling him to build a new life with his wife (Anita Date), but also making his pawnbroker (Deepak Damle) suspicious.

Despite the cursed mansion and the horrible undead grandmother, this is not a ghost story.  It's cosmic horror - the forgotten god is even named Hastar!  It presents a bleak, uncaring universe in which humans are destroyed by a combination of forbidden knowledge and their own avarice, like a combination of "The King in Yellow" and Erich von Stroheim's "Greed."  It's also top of the line cosmic horror: well written, wonderfully acted, with beautiful cinematography.  And it is so, so bleak.

Bhooty Call - Stree

Over the course of my many Octobers, I have learned one thing about ghost stories: the good ones are never just about the ghost.  That's certainly the case with Stree (2018). 

The men of the small town of Chanderi have a problem.  A ghost (and possibly a witch; the lines are blurry in Indian cinema) called Stree (Flora Saini) abducts men she catches out alone at night.  Naturally, the men are terrified. They want to run.  They want to hide.  It's scary when you live where the Stree has no name.

(And the stree literally has no name; near as I can tell, the word just translates to "woman" or "female."  Naturally, this will be important later.)

One man who isn't particularly worried is Vicky (Rajkumar Rao), a brilliant tailor who believes that he's destined for greater things.  he hopes that one of the greater things he's destined for is a mysterious woman (Shraddha Kapoor) who asked him to sew a dress for her.  And the woman seems to like Vicky as well!  She asks to meet up later, and it's only slightly odd that she asks for a few ordinary household items like brandy and a lizard's tail and the hair of a white cat.  Vicky's friends Bittu (Aparshakti Khurana) and Janna (Abhishek Banerjee) are a little more suspicious, since the woman doesn't have a phone and never actually enters the temple grounds and nobody but Vicky has ever seen her and even he still doesn't know her name, but every relationship has it's issues, right?

It's no coincidence that both of the female leads are unnamed.  (Actually, looking back, I don't think any women are named onscreen.)   This looks an awful lot like one of the stories men have been telling each other for generations that asks "What would happen if women treated us the way we treat them?"  Within the story, many of the men think that's exactly what's going on, resorting to women's clothing as a way to escape Stree's wrathful gaze, and the (fairly stupid) plan our heroes come up with to deal with Stree and get their friends back certainly plays to those tropes.  But it is explicitly a stupid plan; the real solution, as Vicky eventually realizes, is to treat Stree with respect, as a person.

So, is it scary?  Not really.  There are some intense moments, but the ghost story develops slowly, and the movie is much more interested in its cast of small town goofballs.  But then, it's not really about the ghost.  It's about respect.

Bhooty Call - Mohini

I've seen a lot of Bollywood ghost stories over the years.  Sometimes they're horror stories.  Sometimes they're revenge melodramas. Sometimes they're goofy slapstick comedies.  And sometimes you get a movie like Mohini (2018), which tries to be all of them at once.

Vaishnavi (Trisha)  is a popular chef and You-tuber who agrees to travel to London for stupid and contrived reasons and pretend to be the assistant to incompetent chef Cotton (Yogi Babu.)  Vaishu is staying in a house full of comic relief (including Swaminathan, Ganeshkar, and Jangiri Madhumitha) and, well, wackiness ensues.

Vaishu is also sort of haunted - even when she's still in India, the ghost is able to reach out and swat away an obsessed fan who breaks into her house, and once she reaches London the ghost emerges long enough to scare the comic relief, at one point yelling at them for doing stupid comedy bits when she's trying to haunt them. 

Vaishu's life is not all ghosts and slapstick though; she also meets a man!  Rohit (Jackky Bhagani) is rich and charming and frankly a little too happy to make major life decisions without consulting her.  The ghost is also occasionally possessing Vaishu at this point in order to avenge her murders, but still leaves time for the young lovers to get engaged.  They're happy, right up until the point when Vaishu meets Rohit's father, KVR (Mukesh Tiwari.)  The ghost definitely recognizes him, and we get some exposition via flashback.

Mohini (also Trisha) was an architect working for KVR's construction firm.  She accidentally stumbled upon the secret child sacrifice ring KVR has been using to "bless" his building projects (apparently child sacrifice for construction purposes that there's an entire shadow industry devoted to it, including a warehouse full of children.  In London.)  KVR was arrested and promptly released, and he and his goons murdered Mohini for her inflexible attitudes about child sacrifice.

So Mohini is back, she's ticked, and she's wiping out her killers one by one.  So far I am firmly on Team Ghost.  The problem is that she's decided that even though Rohit had nothing to do with his father's crimes, he really needs to die too, and she's not that keen on giving Vaishu her body back . . .

Let me be absolutely clear: this is a very silly movie.  The special effects are endearingly cheap, and the whole movie takes place in the weird parallel universe London you see in Indian movies sometimes; there is apparently only one church in the city, and it is right by a huge waterfall that runs through the nearby forest.  The action scenes, when Mohini hunt down her killers, are fun, but there aren't enough of them, and instead the film is padded with too many comic characters.  And the plot just doesn't make a lot of sense.  The film is occasionally entertaining, but it's the kind of movie which would be greatly improved by commentary from sarcastic robots.

State of the blog.

The Gorilla's Lament has been back in business for exactly two weeks, and we already have more than two hundred reviews posted!  Obviously, the rate of new posts is going to slow down a bit, especially since I've run out of posts from the old blog to bring over.  I still don't have everything from the prior incarnation of the Gorilla's Lament, but at this point I'm just happy to have saved anything.

I'm hard at work putting together a review index, and I also need to get the tags organized so that they're a useful addition to the site.  And of course, Bhooty Call 2019 continues.

So, still plenty to do, and more content still to come!

Bhooty Call - Anjaan: SCU

It's very tempting to compare Anjaan: Special Crimes Unit (2018) to the X-Files.  After all, both series feature a skeptic and a true believer investigating paranormal cases, and both shows combine "mythology" episodes which are tightly tied to an ongoing plotline with monsters of the week.  (Or monsters of the day - during its original run Anjaan ran on a soap opera schedule rather than as a weekly show.)  In this case, our skeptic is tough talking Mumbai cop Vikrant Singhal (Gashmeer Mahajani) and the true believer is psychic rookie cop Shivani Joglekar (Cherry Mardia), who just wants to find out what happened to her brother; later Delhi police officer Aditi Sharma (Heema Parmar) joins the team. 

Rather than aliens and liver eating mutants, the Special Crimes Unit deals with cases involving ghosts and cursed objects, along with the occasional yellow eyed demon and one vishkanya in a small but crucial role.  The big difference between Anjaan and the X-Files, though, is the way the officers are treated.  Mulder and Scully are considered a laughingstock, work out of a basement, and constantly have to worry about conspiracies above them in the chain of command.  Vikrant and the gang work out of their own (admittedly haunted) police station, and they are respected and generally deferred to by the other police they encounter.  Broadly speaking, when there's something strange in a given neighborhood, the local police know whom to call.

However, the X-Files isn't the only series that Anjaan reminds me of.  Some major plot elements are very reminiscent of the gloriously cheesy Nineties superhero serial Shaktimaan.  Both shows prominently feature mysterious sages, ancient symbols, heroes of uncertain parentage, and a drug that can turn humans into demons, and both Anjaan's Vanraj and Shaktimaan's Tamraj Kilvish are Satanic figures devoted to spreading evil and sin through the human world. The tone is entirely different, of course, and Vanraj comes across as Kilvish's edgy younger brother.

So is it scary?  Well, sometimes.  It's a show made for TV audiences, which means that gore is limited, and they tend to lean into Bollywood ghost story tropes rather than try to subvert them, which can make the scary moments kind of predictable.  On the other hand, those same tropes are often very well executed; I'm still a little unsettled by the haunted wedding bus and the hungry old lady, as well as the way the yellow eyed demons move.  One final word of warning, though: the baddies on this show can and do sometimes harm children, so if that's an issue, this may not be the show for you.

Bhooty Call 2019

It's almost October.  The nights are getting longer, the wind is getting colder, and something is stirring.  If you're careful, you can catch a glimpse as it meanders through ruined havelis, down creepy rural roads, and into the corners of poorly lit apartment buildings.  The Gorilla's Lament is back from the dead, but something came with it.  

It's almost October.  Time for a Bhooty Call.

The Bhooty Call is one of our favorite traditions here at the Gorilla's Lament offices, a month-long celebration of the many ghosts of Bollywood.  Look for a batch of scary and not-so-scary movies (and this year, one TV show) starting in October.

Run, Bhola, Run

Fraud Saiyyan (2019) opens with a full-fledged Benny Hill chase, as Bhola (Arshad Warsi) scrambles to escape the wrath of an angry wedding party.  He's just making his escape when the narration kicks in and we skip back in time to see just what he did to get into this mess.

Bhola is married to Sunita (Deepali Pansare), who dotes on him, gives him money, and asks for only one thing in return - she needs him to pick up her uncle Murari (Saurab Shukla) from the train station.  Before he can make contact, though, he's attacked by a gang of gun wielding goons, and dashes onto the train.  Murari recognizes Bhola from a picture Sunita sent him, but Bhola doesn't recognize Murari, so he doesn't mind taking a call from his other wife - well, one of his other wives.  Turns out Bhola has a lot of wives, and he's about to make the moves on a new candidate, the lovely Payal (Sara Loren) when her husband intervenes.

Bhola gets off the train at the next station, where he's attacked by the same gang of gun wielding goons.  (Apparently they are fast runners.)  Bhola dives into a car that happens to be driven by Murari, and turns on the charm, hoping for a ride to Benares.  Murari obliges, hoping for a chance to catch him in the act of bigamy (dodecagamy, as it turns out.)  And it fails - even when confronted with another wife, Sunita is too besotted to turn on her husband.

However, Bhola still doesn't know who Murari is, so Murari tries again, this time asking to become Bhola's student in the art of the con.  Bhola reluctantly agrees, mostly because Murari has a car.  And so they set out on a road trip of crime, with Murari subtly sabotaging Bhola along the way.

And then, suddenly, they run into Payal again.  Wealthy, recently widowed Payal.  Payal, who could be the answer to all of Bhola's problems, as long as he doesn't do anything stupid like falling in love.

Now, I like Arshad Warsi; he's the best second banana in Bollywood, and as a lead he has a sort of befuddled scruffy everyman charm.  This time, though, it's not enough.  Bhola is such a colossal, self-centered jackass that not even Warsi could make him likable.  On the other hand, I'm not sure if I was supposed to like Murari as much as I did; he was the obstacle in our unwitting hero's path, but again, our hero was such a jackass that he needed more obstacles to keep him from doiung bad things.  Either way, Saurabh Shukla is one of the finest "that guy"s in India, and it was nice to see him in such a meaty part.

 Fraud Saiyaan has a good cast and features some moments of genuine humor mixed in with the fart jokes, but charm can only take you so far. 

That just raises further questions!

From the moment I first saw the amazing movie poster, I have dreamed of watching Rocket Tarzan (1963). For the longest time, that was easier said than done, but the current copyright holders have finally put a nearly complete version on Youtube, and my dream has been fulfilled. Well, kind of - the print is grainy and occasionally skips, the sound drops out completely from time to time, and most seriously, there are no subtitles. Ive managed to watch the occasional movie without benefit of subtitles in the past, but Rocket Tarzan is particularly tricky since there is so much apparently going on and I still have yet to find a single plot summary online.

Here's what I've been able to figure out. Tarzan lives deep in the jungles of India or possibly Africa; either way, sometimes he fights lions and sometimes he fights tigers. he's not alone in the jungle, though. There's a nearby kingdom, which may be a surviving Roman colony, or may be an ordinary isolated kingdom with a fondness for cosplay. There is also a brilliant professor, his beautiful daughter, and his laurel-and-hardyish lab assistants/comic relief sidekicks. The professor is trying to build a rocket to travel to the moon. The people of the mystery kingdom are helping him, but a guy with a mustache wants the rocket for himself! Fortunately, Tarzan is there to help, and also fortunately the comic sidekicks are surprisingly competent; one of them gains superhuman strength and combat skills when he drinks from the bottle he always carries with him, but I'm not completely sure if it's some sort of potion or he's just a mean drunk.

After many shenanigans and kidnappings and narrow escapes the main characters all climb aboard the rocket (with Mustache Guy stowing away) and fly to the moon, where they discover ancient ruins, cheap sets, giant cardboard stars, and a big-nosed evil alien who sends a robot (or "Robert," as he keeps saying) to attack our heroes. (They are actually menaced by two apparently unrelated robots. The one from the poster is by far the more convincing of the pair.) The Robert is defeated, the big nosed alien is blown up, and then Tarzan faces Mustache Guy in, and I am not making this up, a lightsaber duel.

Rocket Tarzan is obviously very different from the Bollywood movies of today; with all the narrow escapes and sudden twists and turns it's structured more like an old fashioned movie serial, like Commando Cody with occasional musical numbers. I'm not sure if my experience really counts as watching the movie, since I'm still not clear on what just happened, but on the other hand, I don't know if it would make much more sense even with subtitles. Either way, though, I'm still counting this as a dream fulfilled.

What can change the nature of a man?

Thugs of Hindustan (2018) is a movie about thugs.  In Hindustan.  These are not the murderous Kali cultists you may know from pulp fiction and British propaganda; these thugs are heroic freedom fighters, led by noble badass Kudabaksh (Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan) and his ward, literal warrior princess Zafira (Fatima Sahna Shaikh, who played one of the kids in One 2 Ka 4 and suddenly I feel so very, very old.)  Kudabaksh and Zafira have a tragic backstory, but the film explains it right away, so I'm not going to bother. The thugs are fighting against the tyranny of the British East India company, personified by the nefarious John Clive (Lloyd Owen), and their first move is to steal a British ship because in addition to being a drama about the struggle for Indian independence, this is also a pirate movie.

In order to locate Kudabaksh, Clive hires charming scoundrel Firangi Sailor (Aamir Khan), and I am deeply disappointed that this movie has a lead character whose name literally means "foreign sailor" and nobody ever makes the obvious "named after his father" joke.  Firangi manages to feign heroism long enough to join up with the thugs, betrays them, betrays the British, and so on.  One of the many criticisms of this movie is that Firangi is just a copy of Captain Jack Sparrow, but while there's an element of truth there (they're both weirdos with questionable loyalties, awesome hats, and eye makeup who somehow manage to convince people to trust them), Firangi is a more self-aware character than Sparrow is.  The movie is at its best when it's  about Firangi and Kudabaksh, two strong characters played by two great actors musing about human nature and whether change is really possible.

But the movie is not always at it's best.  A good masala movie will leap over genre boundaries with purpose, while Thugs of Hindustan just sort of meanders from one genre to the next.  There are pirates, and then Firangi is dressing up as a British officer to woo a courtesan (Katrina Kaif) and then there';s a literal Benny Hill chase scene, and on to the next thing, over and over.  The same meandering spirit affects the fight scenes, which should be great.  Kudabaksh glowers impressively, Zafira is fast and acrobatic and seems to have the bow from Hawk the Slayer, and Firangi swashes all the buckles, but there's no real weight to anything, so it all comes off as very by the numbers - pretty numbers, but numbers nonetheless.

I'm a little frustrated.  Thugs of Hindustan is not a bad movie, but it could have been a really good movie.  Like Firangi, it needs to commit.

Community theatre saves lives.

One of the fringe benefits of watching a lot of movies made in a language I do not speak, from a country where I do not live, produced by an industry that I don't really follow, and advertised on TV channels that I do not watch is that often when I sit down to watch a movie, all I have to go on is the Netflix summary and maybe a few familiar names listed in the cast. Even today, I can be surprised. Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (2019) surprised the hell out of me. That said, I'll be spoiling all of the things, so if you want to be surprised too, stop reading, turn on Netflix, watch the movie, then come back. I'll still be here.

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first. There's a boy, struggling Delhi playwright Sahil (Rajkummar Rao). There's a girl, small town garment factory heiress Sweety (Sonam Kapoor.) Boy meets girl, girl tells boy his play sucks because he's obviously never been in love, boy helps girl escape from an angry man who turns out to be her brother Babloo (Abhishek Duhan). Boy discovers that girl is from a small town, and decides to produce his next play there, with local talent, assisted only by the theater company's caterer (and wannabe actress) Chatro (Juhi Chawla, who, I believe I have mentioned, is the absolute best.)

And at first, everything happens just as you would expect. Sweety's father, Bablbir (Anil Kapoor, Sonam's actual dad) is strict but loving. He also always wanted to be a chef, but was prevented by his own strict parents, so naturally Sahil meets him while he's cooking and assumes he's the family chef. Rumor has it that Sweety is in love with a Muslim man, and everybody (including Sahil) assumes that man is Sahil. It's not. Drama! Complications! Then Sahil confesses his love, and Sweety tells him the truth: she's not in love with a Muslim man, she's in love with a Muslim woman, Kuhu (Regina Cassandra.)

Sahil quickly gets over himself and resolves to help Sweety. (One of the more subtle Good Things about this movie is that this isn't presented as an act of amazing nobility or anything; Sahil's just being a decent person.) Of course, when all you have is a playwright, every problem looks like a stage, so Sahil comes up with the fairly terrible plan of producing a play about a young Indian woman played by Sweety in love with another woman, played by Kuhu. Sweety's family will be so moved by the play that they'll accept Sweety when she comes out to them. Things fall apart in short order, with Sweety outed ahead of schedule, but she insists on continuing the play anyway, not because she thinks it will help her now, but because it would have been a lifeline to her younger self, something to show her that she's not completely alone.

Ek Ladki is not much of a romance. Sweety and Kuhu are already in an established (if secret) relationship, and the onscreen relationship is incredibly chaste, to boot; there's some hugging and some earnest conversations, but Chatro and Balbir get to display a lot more chemistry. But that doesn't really matter, because Sweety is right; this is not a movie about romance, it's about representation. The emotional climax happens before the happy ending, during the play's performance, as the audience realizes what the play's actually about. Some people stay, some people storm out, but the camera lingers on one young girl's face as she suddenly realizes that she's not alone.

It was a nice surprise.

Madam, my heart is yours sincerely.

Quick Gun Murugun: Misadventures of an Indian Cowboy (2009) is the most action-packed movie about vegetarianism I've ever seen. Murugun (Doctor Rajendra Prasad) is, as advertised, a cowboy, which means he considers it his sacred duty to protect cows, especially from the people who want to eat them. (This is India, after all.) Murugun wanders the dusty plains of South India in the 1980's, accompanied only by his horse and his Locket Lover (Anu Menon), the image of his deceased sweetie who still speaks to him, mostly to nag him about getting a steady job, maybe something in IT? In the course of his wandering and gunslinging, Murugun runs afoul of Rice Plate Reddy, a gangster who plots to force all the local hotels to stop serving vegetables and instead serve beef. After a Crouching Tiger-inspired ambush in a coconut forest, Murugun is captured and delivered to Reddy, who defies centuries of villainous tradition and just shoots the hero while he has the chance. RIP Quick Gun.

As soon as he reaches Heaven, Quick Gun files the proper paperwork to be sent back to Earth. Unfortunately, the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly, and he's sent back to Mumbai in the twenty first century. Locket Lover thinks this is the perfect opportunity to get a job selling kerosene, but instead he reunites with his older brother and sister-in-law, then sets out to track down Reddy, who has become a business tycoon and is about to launch McDosas, a chain restaurant with an all-meat menu. He also meets the lovely Mango Dolly (Rambha), a bar singer and Reddy's secret girlfriend.

What follows is a dizzying array of explosions, kidnapped housewives, and completely improbably gunfights. The special effects are, frankly, a bit on the cheap side, but it's all a part of the fun. Despite the computer-aided supernatural gunslinging, though, I think the closest comparison I could make is to Adam West's Batman; Quick Gun Murugun is a portly middle aged man in a technicolor cowboy outfit who wanders through one ridiculous situation after another, but he's also a fearless hero with a kind heart and a natural poetry to his dialogue, and the movie never loses sight of that.

"The Earth is my bed. The sky is my ceiling. The whole of creation is my native place. My name is Murugun. Quick Gun Murugun. Mind it!"

With a capital T.

Up until the last year or so, the only Pakistani movie I had seen was the notorious "Zinda Laash," which is still the only vampire movie I know of that uses 'dracula' as a common noun. (As in, "He has become a dracula!") This may have affected my opinions about Pakistani cinema.

To be fair, though, since the late 70s, Lollywood has been looked at as a sort of poor cousin of Bollywood, making the same sorts of movies, only cheaper and more violent. Happily, things have changed, and the Pakistani film industry is enjoying a sort of Renaissance at the moment, which leads me to Teefa In Trouble.

Teefa (Ali Zafar) is an enforcer for the Butt crime family, and no, that is not a typo. Teefa's presented as a charming rogue; he's devoted to his mother, and tries hard not to kill anybody, but he has a real talent for beating people up, and is determined to make the most of it. naturally, when Butt's old friend, legitimate businessman and Polish resident Bonzo (also not a typo) decides to marry his daughter Anya (Maya Ali) to the son of a business partner rather than Butt's son Billu, Teefa is put on a plane to Poland with orders to kidnap the bride and bring her back to Lahore. Anya, however, has her own plans, and has already made arrangements to be "kidnapped" so she can spend some time with handsome bar singer Andy (Tom Coulston), so when Teefa arrives she's more than happy to go along with them.

And that's where the titular trouble comes in - Bonzo has friends in the Polish government, so Teefa is running from the police while falling in love with Anya and battling his own conscience, and you can probably already guess where this is going. It's standard romantic comedy stuff, but it's well written and punctuated with engaging action scenes and fights that range from funny to surprisingly brutal. And not a single dracula to be found.

This wouldn't have been a problem if you'd just listened to your mom and became a wrestler . . .

A brief review of Duplicate: AAAHH THIS MOVIE IS SO DUMB YOU GUYS OH MY GOSH I LOVE IT!!!!!

Ahem. Let me try that again, without shouting.

Shah Rukh Khan plays Babloo, an awkward but good-hearted Punjabi man who dreams of becoming the world's greatest chef, despite his overbearing mother (Farida Jalal, who is the mom in every other movie from the Nineties) pressuring him to take up the family business of wrestling. Step one is to get a job in the local hotel, supervised by the beautiful but snooty Sonia Kapoor (Juhi Chawla), who does not speak English as well as she thinks she does. Babloo wins the job (and Sonia's heart) by doing this:

 

(Oh for the days when I was so young and innocent that I didn't get the eggplant joke.)

Shah Rukh Khan also plays Manu, a vicious gangster who just escaped from prison and is hell-bent on taking revenge on his former partners, with the help of an array of cunning disguises and his sometime girlfriend, bar dancer Lily (Sonali Bendre).

Now, while Shah Rukh is best known for playing lovable goofball romantic heroes, he rose to stardom playing the villain, particularly in Darr (where he played an obsessive stalker targeting Juhi Chawla, and managed to completely overshadow the hero) and Baazigar (where he was hell-bent on taking revenge with the help of an array of cunning disguises.) In other words, this movie is pitting the two halves of Shah Rukh's career against each other, and because the comedy is so broad, at times we've got Shah Rukh Khan as a parody of Shah Rukh Khan doing a bad Shah Rukh Khan impression pitted against Shah Rukh Khan as a parody of etc. etc. etc.

But you don't need to know any of that to enjoy the film. The dumb gags translate a lot better than clever wordplay would, so you just need to be able to put up with unabashed silliness as Shah Rukh chews his way through two heaping servings of scenery, Everybody's Mom Farida Jalal gets to beat people up for once, Juhi lights up the screen with that smile, and Sonali Bendre actually plays things completely straight, giving a somewhat nuanced portrayal of the bad girl with a heart of . . . maybe not gold, but there's definitely some silver in there. Also more fight choreography directly ripped off from John Woo.