senti mat kar yaar

Sad Movie (2005)

Rating 4.0/5.0
where 5 is a movie which makes you hit the bottle with vengeance

I watched this 3 years back and I was dumbfounded. I was in a way a RomCom virgin - hadn't seen Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually or Bridget Jones Diary - I guess I was saving myself for Sad Movie :-) It made me cry! ME!!!

I watched it again today and it doesn't do that to me anymore. I attribute it to a happy marriage and a steady dosage of romantic comedies.

The only difference from the regular Hugh Grant/Colin Firth crap here is that this is SAD. Capital SAD. The director is a sadist. He creates lovable characters, ensures the script is replete with the tiniest of details to connect the right dots and then makes it tragic to the point that you feel like shooting him. The film is anyway so brilliant in terms of the script and the acting that he could've got an 8.5 on imdb by ending it happily - it is a 7.4 and hardly anyone knows about it while My Sassy Girl is being watched by the jersey cows of a DLF sellout farmer in haryana hinterland.

The cows are called Wellington and Princeton!!

Imdb link here

Tazza: The High Rollers (2006)

Rating 3.75/5.0

where 5 is a classic korean ishtyle entertainer

At a time when terrible movies like Avatar become blockbusters and the likes of Scorcese and Nolan are hell bent on making mediocre films, Korean cinema is rapidly catching up not only from an artistic standpoint but also - and this is interesting - from a pure entertainment angle. Its interesting because when you consider foreign cinema, most countries claim to fame are movies that reach arty film festivals (Iranian cinema is a case in point) - and Hollywood takes up the mantle when it comes to producing entertainers. Not anymore it seems, our wonderful Korean friends are making slick, fast paced flicks which have an added attraction - a good script! Watch this one to know what I'm talking about.

Imdb link here
buy it here

Turtle running

Running Turtle (2009)

Rating 3.50/5.00
Where 5 is the brilliant film that inspired this

This movie stars Yun-seok Kim (from The Chaser).That was reason enough for me to get hold of this. The film has some superficial similarities with Chaser and in a way there is character continuation - like Chaser, Kim's character in this film works outside the law to catch the culprit, like Chaser the hero is/used to be a small time corrupt cop. The similarities end there...Chaser was a far superior film in terms of the atmosphere it created, the characterisation, the sheer thrill..though the comparison is not fair. Its unjust because 1. I don't think this movie ever intended or aspired to be like Chaser, 2. This is a comedy (mainly) with some thrills and subtle melodrama thrown in while Chaser was a thriller and a very good one at that. So why the comparison? Because everyone should watch Chaser :)

Kim plays a rural detective who's suspended when a small time pimp he catches (for his own corrupt reasons) dies of a heart attack during interrogation - that scene is funny! Kim then, desperate not to tell his wife about the 3 month (without pay) suspension, tries to borrow money from his colleagues but noone would lend him a penny, so he does what anyone would do - steals his wife's hard earned savings (she works nights straightening socks) and bets it all on a bull butting fight. He wins! And that's when tragedy strikes - the bookie (and his dearest friend) is robbed of all of Kim's money by a Samurai like fugitive (he can beat up 10 people and not suffer a single blow). The film is about Kim's pursuit of this fugitive and how his persistence and his camraderie with cops and crooks alike, helps him through this journey.

Worth a watch just to watch Kim ji.

How Korean films are ignored on imdb here