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Showing posts from 2019

Ford vs Ferrari: Movie Review

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Ladies and gents, we have another one! A racing docudrama! One of the best stories in motorsports that birthed possibly the most iconic race car in history. This is the 1960s saga of Ford vs Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. I have been waiting for this movie since I saw the first trailer a few months ago and it did not disappoint in any way. Matt Damon as Carroll Shelby, Christian Bale as Ken Miles and Tracy Letts as Henry Ford II were impressive support cast for the real stars - the cars. Given that this is a record in history, a summary of the plot won't exactly count as giving out spoilers. In the early 1960s, the Ford Motor Company was struggling to compete against its rivals who were offering more exciting models to a younger generation. Marketing head Lee Iacocca suggested the idea that Ford should go into racing but starting a motorsport division would be quite costly and time-consuming. At that time, a Ferrari had won the 24 Hours of Le Mans five years in a row b...

Zombieland: Double Tap - Movie Review

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Ten years! Ten years since Zombieland came out and became a cult classic z-movie. For me, it was instantly one of my favourite zombie movies and in my limited viewing repertoire, it's second to Shaun of the Dead. Now, we get a sequel with the same amiable characters - Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock. It's everything you hoped it would be... and a lot of what you'd fear a sequel to be. The movie timeline follows the same ten-year progression of the characters. For three of them, it doesn't change too much but a decade can change a lot for a kid like Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) who went from being a girl to a woman. In the apocalyptic world, puberty would be unimaginably more difficult, when the only non-Brain eating company you have is a gun-toting loon as a father figure (Tallahassee played by Woody Harrelson) and your older sister (Wichita played by Emma Stone) who is dating the ballsy, good-guy nerd (Columbus played by Jesse Eisenberg). So, the...

Turning 25

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25 years. To the aged and more experienced, that's not too significant a landmark but when that's the maximum number of years you've been alive, it feels like a big deal. Once you're 25, you're officially "old", especially in the 21st century. Here's a short version of how it has been for me... Turning 25 feels kinda sucky to be honest. I've often felt like an old person in terms of my thought process but now I feel like my body is catching up to it. At this point, the worries about the future start hitting you way harder than at 24, for no logical reason. It's like going from young interesting prospect to being expectedly stupid and boring. At 25 in India, if you're not pursuing an MBA, a masters degree, a start-up idea, a big salary hike or a marriage prospect, people find it hard to understand you. But if you're a male, nobody really cares. Because at 25, to the society, you become perfectly average. While that's not a dama...

Avengers: Endgame : Movie Review

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Is this even necessary? Is there anybody here who hasn't yet seen the final instalment of Avengers? Or needs to read a review to decide whether they should watch it? If yes, then this is for you. This is the last one. The closer. The end of an era. Maybe not the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the end of the Avengers as we've come to know them. 11 years and 21 movies later, Avengers: Endgame picks up where Avengers: Infinity War left off. Earth lost to Thanos. The damn universe lost to Thanos. Half of all living things were erased and we were left with a handful of surviving heroes on the green planet - 'Captain America' Steve Rogers, 'Black Widow' Natasha Romanoff, Thor, Hulk, 'War Machine' Rhodey, Rocket Racoon and as it happens 'Iron Man' Tony Stark himself. A few weeks after the snap, a half-dead Tony and now ally Nebula are brought back to Earth by newcomer Captain Marvel. The team was still trying to hunt down Thanos and a...

The Lego Movie 2: Movie Review

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Oh..my...Gosh. Emmet is back! If you don't know who the hell is Emmet then you need to log on to some online streaming service- Netflix, Amazon Prime or YouTube or whatever to watch 'The Lego Movie' which came out in 2014 and was a block-buster success *wink wink*. This, in case you didn't figure it out, is the sequel. And it's pretty awesome. The storyline builds from where the first movie ended and as it references to the real-world kids who build with Lego to make the story, the theme moves along with their age. The main master-builder human is now in his early teens and going through his brooding phase while his little sister has now grown up a bit too. As any sibling would tell me or you, there are always fights for the toys. Emmet (Chris Pratt) and the gang now live in a Mad Max inspired Apocalypseburg where everything is not awesome and everyone is thinking of how tough and bleak life is with the main crew adopting the theme too. Except for him. He...

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse : Movie Review

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Another Spider-Man movie? Did they change the lead actor again? Nope. This a totally different kind of Spider-Man movie and it's as true to a comic art as it can get. It's animated, but the art-style is old-school like the comics are and the storyline? Well, it's probably the best one yet. This time, the central character isn't your friendly neighbourhood Peter Parker, it's young teen Miles Morales. Yes, he is an African-American character who lives in the not-so-nice part of New York and while not poor, he isn't living a life of comfort either. So when he happens to be a smart kid and gets a scholarship to get into a high-society school for prodigious minds, his parents are very much on board with this opportunity. But Miles is not. He's smart but he doesn't want to be part of the snobs. And he wants to work on what really makes him happy: art. Also, his dad is a police officer and his uncle is a cool-but-shady guy who believes in his art. But t...