Brooding In the Dark

I’ve decided on an epic rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Unfortunately, I got through Buffy S3 without ever writing anything, so I’m starting with S1 of Angel and just going with it. It’s not Bollywood, but it’s got cheese and melodrama and I really like it and have lots of things to say, none of which are terribly intellectual so it seems like it'll fit right in on this blog.

I think Angel has smiled more in the first three episodes of this show than he ever did in three seasons of Buffy. That plus lampshading his habit of brooding alone in the dark endears me to him more than any amount of true love could have.

I realize that most people gif this kind of thing. But I a) do not have photoshop and b) am lazy.

Kapoor & Sons (2016)

I’m not going to say I wasted $9.50, but I would rather have watched Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, which is also written and directed by Shakun Batra, is also really annoying, but is on netflix and has Kareena Kapoor. Plus better songs.

So this is a family drama. I refuse to call it a melodrama, despite the sheer density of familial lies, resentment, and tragedy in this movie, because I like melodramas. Melodramas have big stories, evoke big feelings, and take you away into a world where even the mundane is full of dramatic significance. This is normal drama, just a hell of a lot of it. Dysfunctional families just don’t do it for me, or maybe I can only stand one per year and I already watched Dil Dhadakne Do. I can’t really fault the acting (well, maybe Sidharth Malhotra’s) but boy was this long and really overwritten.

Darr (1993)

Darr means “fear”, and the tagline is “A violent love story”, just so you know what you’re getting into. It’s not a love story at all. It’s beyond those stories of all-consuming love like Dil Se all the way past Raanjhana and into some heavy-duty crazy. So naturally I enjoyed it.

 Shahrukh Khan plays Rahul, an unbalanced young man dangerously obsessed with Kiran (Juhi Chawla).

Kiran is as beautiful and carefree as Juhi usually is. As she gets ready to leave college, she’s serenaded by an unseen singer. She assumes it’s her fiance, Sunil (Sunny Deol*), but as she searches the campus and the gardens, the mysterious voice stays hidden. It’s not Sunil, it’s Rahul, and as the movie goes on, the refrain “tu haan kar/yah naa kar/tu hai meri Kiran” (Whether you say yes or no, you’re mine) becomes more and more disturbing because we will find out that is exactly what he means. Nothing Kiran can do will stop him.

*My favorite part of the wikipedia entry on this movie: “Chopra offered Sunny Deol the choice between playing the role of Rahul and Sunil. Deol chose the latter, believing it would be an asset to his career. However, this did not happen.”

Dilwale (2015)

First things first: Kajol. Kajol Kajol Kajol Kajol. In case anyone was not aware that she’s the most beautiful woman on the planet, she is, in fact, the most beautiful woman on the planet. DO MORE MOVIES KAJOL I HEART YOU. Seriously, go watch Mehndi Laga Ke and then Gerua and tell me she has aged a single day. (And then try to work out that sympathetic crick in your neck after watching her do all those backbends.)


Second: This movie was not as good as I wished it could have been, but it was better than I was expecting. We are all here for the SRK-Kajol jodi anyway, right? And on that front, it delivers. It delivers the same thing we’ve seen a billion times before, but when we’re depending on Rohit Shetty for the delivery, he does well to avoid too much innovation.

Third: The promo picture is inaccurate. There are no gigantic wrenches in the movie. All wrenches are normal-sized.

Pyar Jhukta Nahin (1985)

I was watching Hamari Adhuri Kahaani, but that turned out to be pretty insufferable, so I found myself some Mithun to cleanse my palate. Plus, Padmini Kolhapure! The mom from PPNH! I seem to have gotten very lazy about finding subtitled versions of movies, because apparently I couldn’t be bothered to fork over $10 and wait for Amazon Prime shipping, so I watched it on youtube. The plot is straightforward and the story is sweet.

The beginning is pretty hilarious. Preeti (Padmini) drunkenly crashes her car into a lightpost and starts getting hassled by the sort of group of jackasses that always show up when a heroine is doing something improper (as if that excuses it). And like always happens, the hero shows up to leap through the air and kick everybody in the face at the same time. Our hero Ajay (Mithun Chakraborty) tries to help Preeti, who keeps trying to emphasize what a shareef ladki she is. Shareef though she may be, she is also very drunk, so Ajay hauls her home to let her sleep it off.

This is very considerate of him, and in return she accidentally sets his bedroom on fire.

Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015)

There really couldn’t be a better movie for Salman Khan right now than this. See? He’s the sort of fellow who never tells a lie, prays a lot, and risks sneaking across the Pakistani border to reunite a little girl with her family, not someone who gets drunk and runs over homeless people. Anyway, I’ve come to terms with Salman Khan the person versus Salman Khan the actor, and I do enjoy the latter quite a lot. It’s just that this film, and the winning image of a little girl riding on Salman's back is awfully well-timed, coincidence or not.

It’s also really sweet and well worth the watch. So there’s this little girl in Pakistan, Shahida (Harshaali Malhotra, the most adorable child artist I’ve seen in, like, ever) who likes goats, cricket, and wandering off where no one can find her. She’s also mute. Her mother takes her to a shrine in Delhi to pray that she will speak, but on the way back she wanders off the train and is left behind in India.

Kill/Dil (2014)

I thought there was no way I wouldn’t like this movie, seeing as how the cast list is basically a summary of my very most favorite Bollywood actors. So when the bad reviews came in, I was all “whatever, those people probably didn’t like Jhoom Barabar Jhoom either, so what do they know.” Then they were all “no, seriously, it doesn’t make any sense and Ranveer is awful” and I was all “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU” and ordered the dvd anyway.

But yeah. It might have suffered from some unreasonably high expectations on my part, but I really didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped. The movie opens with Dev (Ranveer Singh) narrating his story to a video camera, because if there’s anything Yash Raj does better than tired references to more successful films, it’s having their characters explain themselves directly at the camera instead of showing us what happened. So we learn that Dev and Tutu (Ali Zafar) were rescued from the streets and raised by Bhaiyyaji (Govinda) who basically turns them into a cold-blooded killing team. They’ve known nothing else, so they’re quite charming about the whole thing, with big guns, big smiles, and endearing bromance.

And also shirtless Ali Zafar, because I am not exactly a high-brow sort of movie viewer.