Sudarshan Ramani
Deccan Chronicle
Most Divergent Takes
- Whiplash (2015)5.0 vs TRM 7.1-2.1
- London Has Fallen (2016)3.0 vs TRM 5.0-2.0
- The Jungle Book (2016)6.0 vs TRM 7.2-1.2
- Free State of Jones (2016)4.0 vs TRM 5.1-1.1
- San Andreas (2015)4.0 vs TRM 5.0-1.0
Suicide Squad
2016 · Deccan Chronicle · Aug 2016
Suicide Squad is an ensemble action movie in the vein of The Dirty Dozen and Inglourious Basterds: unpretentious, irreverent, perverse and unexpectedly moving. It has little of the sentimentalism and pretentiousness of recent superhero movies like Batman v Superman and Captain America: Civil War, and like Guardians of the Galaxy it points the way forward for a less conventional outing in the genre.
The BFG
2016 · Deccan Chronicle · Jul 2016
The BFG is probably "minor Spielberg" but this is still a warm and a happy movie for the whole family with amazing special effects, and a movie that is as light as it is unpretentious.
Free State of Jones
2016 · Deccan Chronicle · Jul 2016
Free State of Jones is a wasted opportunity. The material is rich, the case is good and the story has the familiar elements of a good historical film, but the lack of real feeling lets the film down at the end.
Finding Dory
2016 · Deccan Chronicle · Jun 2016
Finding Dory is not as ambitious as Finding Nemo and lacks some of the magic of the first film. Despite this, it is still an emotional and heartwarming movie, and it's also filled with clever humorous gags and visual feats.
Mother's Day
2016 · Deccan Chronicle · Apr 2016
Structurally it does not do justice to its multiple vignettes in limited runtime, and despite a good performance by Jennifer Aniston, there isn't enough in the film to redeem its trite depiction of suburban America.
The Jungle Book
2016 · Deccan Chronicle · Apr 2016
. This version of The Jungle Book is a brilliant and beautiful evocation of the time when everything was bigger than us, when the natural world seemed to be full of wonders and where almost every new animal species, whose picture and presence we glimpsed, was an adventure in and of itself. This film is a brilliant fantasy for the whole family to see, reviving one of the great classics for a new generation.
Norm of the North
2016 · Deccan Chronicle · Mar 2016
Norm of the North is a testament to how cheap CGI animation has become and the ability to get good quality animation at a low budget.
London Has Fallen
2016 · Deccan Chronicle · Mar 2016
If Olympus Has Fallen is Die Hard for the 21st century, this film is like the boring and pointless sequels that followed. It has also been outpaced by reality. Incidents such as the Norwegian attack and the recent Paris attacks have made such fantasies redundant and banal.
The Boy
2016 · Deccan Chronicle · Feb 2016
The Boy is a movie that, if I were to descri-be, would leave you unimpressed. If you went with an open mind, this would be an engaging horror-drama with some interesting gothic imaginings.
Wrecker
2015 · Deccan Chronicle · Nov 2015
Wrecker occasionally uses some interesting shots but on the whole this is an inferior film and a weak example of the horror/slasher genre. It feels more dated than the 1971 Spielberg film and it's unsuccessful as both an action and a horror film.
Rock the Kasbah
2015 · Deccan Chronicle · Oct 2015
Bruce Willis steals all his scenes and is fun to watch. But it ultimately goes everywhere and nowhere.
Bridge of Spies
2015 · Deccan Chronicle · Oct 2015
This is a spy movie for adults, where individuals don't stand for themselves but for larger invisible forces we can't see that exist implicitly in each interaction. This focus on the institution and process shatters any claim of inherent nobility to diplomacy as a profession.
The Walk
2015 · Deccan Chronicle · Oct 2015
The Walk is in some sense an old-fashioned adventure movie. It can be seen by the whole family, it is narrated by the hero from the Statue of Liberty (appropriate because that was a gift by France to America) and it switches between '60s France and early '70s America. It's a movie with some amount of melancholy but mostly it's about human endeavour and friendships. It's about giving thanks.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
2015 · Deccan Chronicle · Aug 2015
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is enjoyable fun, filled with likeable and charismatic lead roles and a good mix of humour, action and suspense. It's a genre film that embraces its limits to the extent that it becomes its strength.
Minions
2015 · Deccan Chronicle · Jul 2015
it provides a valuable lesson without preaching and communicates much of its ideas and themes visually, and does so without losing its lightness of spirit, and even allows for a Minion speaking in gibberish to be highly resonant and emotive in many key scenes.
Terminator Genisys
2015 · Deccan Chronicle · Jul 2015
Terminator Genisys is filled with all sorts of references and knowing winks and expects the audience to know Sarah Connor, Terminator and Kyle Reese. The constant references make it next to impossible to discuss it on its own terms. They also do the film serious discredit because it only reiterates what made Cameron's films so exciting, suspenseful and terrific.
Max
2015 · Deccan Chronicle · Jul 2015
The film has a few action scenes that are well shot, though on the whole the opening sequence of the dog on the front line in Afghanistan was much more tense and suspenseful than the later scenes. Ultimately, I can't help feeling that Max would have been more interesting if the story focused on a dog on field duty or on a battlefield. The approach taken by the film does make Max an unusual family film, but it also makes sure that it remains despite its interesting premise, a highly conventional one.
San Andreas
2015 · Deccan Chronicle · May 2015
Solidly forgettable as it is, San Andreas is not too long. For all its melodramatic flaws, it manages to avoid a few of the expected and dreaded clichés and the finale is satisfying. Thanks to the actors the film is not unwatchable and a few scenes work well, namely the suspenseful rescue of Blake from a trapped car and the later boat scene is one of the big "wow" moments that really work. Otherwise, this is a movie that is too trapped in the conventions of genre to effectively break free.
Hot Pursuit
2015 · Deccan Chronicle · May 2015
As a film of modest ambitions Hot Pursuit is surprisingly entertaining. Yes the jokes and gags get a little repetitive, the plot is pretty formulaic and there is very little action and most of it is uninspired. The same is true of most action films, most of whom lack the solid lead performance that is there in this film.
Avengers: Age of Ultron
2015 · Deccan Chronicle · Apr 2015
Ultron is a work of agile craftsmanship from the cast and crew. As a director, Whedon has a good ear for dialogue and timing, and the film is a competent work of entertainment that is as satisfying as any work in this genre can be.
Whiplash
2015 · Deccan Chronicle · Feb 2015
Movies that deal with why people dedicate their lives to music, despite the uncertainty of career expectations, the constant expectations of performance and the demands it makes on their family and love lives. Whiplash does evoke this theme and dramatise it well despite all its regrettable missteps in narrative and characterisation.