FILM REVIEWS

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD - a film review               Quentin Tarantino’s penchant for western movies and violence is legendary. A celebrated filmmaker of a genre in Hollywood that merges humour with gore, prudence with depravity, Tarantino has given us several commercially successful movies like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill or even Django Unchained not so long ago with similar steaks running through them. In ‘Once Upon a time in Hollywood’, his ninth film, he returns refreshed, with a beautiful period piece set in 1969, Los Angeles. Written and directed by  Tarantino himself, the movie is a tribute to the chimeric golden days of Hollywood and its decline with a shift from glory to contemporary drama and, perhaps, preoccupation with technology.                It is the miserable story of Rick Dalton, (Leonardo DiCaprio), the star of a TV western series in the 50’s, as his fame and position decline in the web of unpredictability in the movie industry in Hollywood. His stuntm

JESHTHO PUTRO – a film review A brilliant weaver of tales on relationships, Kaushik Ganguly, as director and writer, has given us yet another poem on celluloid with Jeshto Putro or the ‘first born son’. It is no less poignant a tale than the epic of ‘ Ramayana’ we so love to read. The film is a tribute to Rituporno Ghosh, a film-maker extraordinaire, as the story is inspired by one left unfinished by the maestro. A haunting and distressing tale of conflicts between siblings, the movie stupefies us to silence. The plot is unencumbered with intricate sub-plots woven into it and stays singular in execution. References to the past in many places remain sketchy and yet eloquent all through. The film explores the emotional bonding between two brothers who meet after decades in their ancestral home to perform the last rites of their deceased father. But the two brothers are not similar. The elder brother, Indrajit (Proshenjit Chatterjee), who is in the public eye as a

Vinci Da – a film review Vinci Da is a black ‘n white thriller in colour by Srijit Mukherjee under the banner of SVF Entertainment Pvt Ltd . Srijit has been playing with the genre of suspense and thrill for some time and is trying to perfect the art of making it his characteristic brand   to intrigue and electrify his viewers.   In my opinion, in his attempt to do so, earlier with Baishe Srabon and Chotushkon , he had often slipped somewhere in delivering the right pace and thrust that diluted the volume of intensity for the two previous thrillers. Vinci Da is a slight improvement on that. Shot on a shoe string budget, with artistes and not ‘stars’, Vinci Da has succeeded in capturing the attention of the audience with its open deliberation and candid confessions of a serial killer, perhaps a technique never tried before in Tollywood. The plot is a simple, awkward theme of revenge born out of a mind that is psychologically deranged. Caught in the web of this mephist

KALANK – a film review If you are a movie addict and love the extravaganza of a genre that Prithviraj Kapoor, V. Shantharam and Sanjay Leela Bhansali have popularized in Bollywood, you may, perhaps, like to take a peek at ‘Kalank”. Kalank is an intense family drama portraying a love story spread across communal conflicts set in the backdrop of the 1940s. Directed by Abhishek Varman, it is co-produced by Dharma Productions, Fox Star Studios, as well as, Nadiadwala and Grandsons. To its credit, the film has an ensemble cast with Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, Madhuri Dixit, Sanjay Dutt, Sonakshi Sinha and Aditya Roy Kapur. Set in Lahore during the spell of British rule in the sub-continent, the movie opens with the documentation of the Partition by a journalist interviewing Alia Bhatt who reveals a tragic story of deception and rejection, of trust gained and lost, of communal conflicts that slay love to make room for a soulless compromise just to stay alive. The theme is

ROSHOGOLLA   –   a film review If   “Tobacco causes cancer … (then) Rosogolla causes happiness”. This statutory warning at the beginning of the movie spells it all out about what you are about to experience on the screen. A biopic of sorts, Rosogolla is the history of making those round, spongy balls filled with syrup that Bengalis love to eat and are proud to call their own. It is basically the story of a twenty-year old Nobin Chandra Das (Ujaan Ganguly),   a poor relation in a family that ill-treats him and his widowed mother. Nobin is no smart guy who makes it big with ease when they are thrown out of the family. A simpleton and a dreamer, he turns the world upside down with tenacious efforts to make a sweet that will make his lady love happy. But he fails miserably, no matter how hard he tries, till he learns the trick from a Sahib. The story-line, both inspirational and emotional, is touching and perhaps restores Bengal’s pride in contributing ‘roshogolla’ to

BIJOYA   - a film review A sequel to Kahushik Ganguly’s commercially successful and a National Award winning film ‘Bishorjon’, Bijoya depicts a somewhat clichéd melodrama of the silent turmoil in a love triangle. Writer and director Kaushik Ganguly enjoys the pivotal role of Ganesh Mondol, the shrewd and powerful business man in a village in Bangladesh, while his wife Padma and her lover Naser Ali tread carefully in a complex situation created by Ganesh’s terminal illness that brings them to Kolkata for his treatment. Their chance meeting reignites their passion for each other once again and yet there are some obscure norms that tether them to their conscience. Pictorially ‘Bijoya’ is a shift from the  rural pastures of ‘Bishorjon’ to the labyrinthine passages in a complex metropolis like Kolkata. If ‘Bishorjon’ was about sacrifices and letting go of your beloved, ‘Bijoya’ or amicable reunion, is about repaying debts with cordiality and righteousness. The c