LSD: Love, Sex Aur Dhokha: Review

Speechless! I had great expectations from this movie, and trust me; it didn’t disappoint me even a bit! Three stories, running in different time lines, and each one of them equally engaging and brilliant! You will laugh almost all throughout the movie but you are sure to be dumbstruck at times.

LSD is the baap of all reality TV shows you’ve ever seen before, so upfront, so blatant, it hits you hard right where it should! Ok, how blatant? I saw people leaving the middle of movie, not 2-3, close to 15 viewers left as the movie started to get more and more ‘disturbing’ , probably for them. The best part of the movie remains the all new start cast, no one and I mean no one, in the whole movie was a familiar face, which works with the whole theme, and allows you to somehow connect to the 3 stories. Watch out for characters like Shruti’s father and Atul, I’m sure you must have come across such characters in your life.

Dibakar Banerjee continues to catch the ‘essence’ of regional lingo, from the curses to casual conversations, everything was realistic, or shall I say neorealist. LSD has set a standard for cinematography in the Indian Film Industry; the whole movie gives you the feel of watching ”footages” from a mobile, digicam and a CCTV which gave a sense of hyperrealism. The concept behind LSD (as far as I’ve done my research) was to show something we’re used to seeing at home, or something what we see on our computers, cell phones , but not on a big screen, not something you’d go to watch at theaters. They made sure that the light is not up to the mark or the camera angles are inappropriate at times, but nor once would you have problem understanding the scene or problem with visibility. All this ‘feel’ was maintained by keeping such cinematography, not even once would you feel that you’re watching a movie. Nothing in the movie felt larger-than-life, which maintained the aesthetic, had there been familiar faces in the movie or had the movie been shot in a “normal” way, the charge of the scenes and emotions wouldn’t have had even half the impact. LSD has a runtime of approximately 108mins, out of which last 20mins did get a little slow and honestly; I did lose a little interest. But make sure you catch LSD, you won’t be disappointed, either you’ll be ‘offended’ or you will come out astounded, very high probability of latter though.

Look out for the dialogs in the movie hilarious and strong, and, please please do try out the soundtracks if you haven’t! Kudos to Nikos Andritskis (Cinematographer), Sneha Kanwalkar (Composer) and of course, Dibakar Banerjee.

Dibakar is the director to watch out for; he has done it again for the third time!

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Here’s the a video of Dibakar and Nikos explaining why they went digital:

Rating: 4/5

Year: 2010

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1608777

Movie Site: http://www.lsdthefilm.com

Inglourious Basterds

Another movie for which I got only good things to tell!

The brilliance that lies in the Quentin Tarantino‘s work is distinctive in it’s own commen

dable way! He is known for overdoing certain things, like the bloodshed, fight sequences which work perfectly, for him, and of course throwing in some awesome dark humor (Pulp Fiction – best example), you will get to see all this in Inglourious Basterds. I might have little bias for the movie, probably because of the duo, Quentin Tarantino–Brad Pitt, and come on, I bet just first look of the movie would have got you hooked on for sure!

I personally find the movies set in the Nazi era very fascinating and also the ones based on racism, like The Pianist and Schindler’s List [Both Oscar winning flicks – must watch btw] based on former, and American History X & Crash, based on latter.

Now coming on to Inglourious Basterds, movie is set in Nazi era showing slaughter of the Jews by the SS and Nazi Army but not to the extent of Schindler’s or even Pianist, more than the Jews, it has gore filled with slaughter of Nazi army, and that too, Gore-Tarantino-Style!

Even though it might appear that the story’s protagonist is Brad Pitt, I really didn’t find that way, in fact I found the story somewhat revolving around Mélanie Laurent (Shosanna Dreyfus) (who btw is a French actress) and what amazing performance she delivered, I’m a fan!

Speaking of performance, do look out for Christoph Waltz, the guy in “negative role” – Nazi Col. Hans Landa, sheer brilliance!

The characters or the “Bastards” if you may, have been hand picked and have done perfect justice. Take for example Eli Roth who played Sgt. Donowitz aka The Jew Bear, great screen presence.

Now, Brad Pitt – Lt. Aldo Raine, supporting a thick Southern accent, gave out a great performance, as always, but didn’t really have a lot of screen time, as I said earlier, not really the protagonist. Mike Myres has a “guest appearance”, nothing that’ll stick to your memory.

There are some really hard hitting sequences in the movie, like at the end when the projector keeps rolling but projection comes on to the Smoke with the sound still on, it sent chills down my spine. Or the one where The Jew Bear lashed out on a Nazi Officer in the middle of the Jungle, whoa!

Now having said all this, the movie did not leave a mark in my memory, which obviously I expected it would. And what could have been better, the background score, there was so much possibility there.

Anyway, this one the biggest movies of this year and worth catching on big screen, and a little heads up, movie has lot of French and German, so keep an I on the screen – subtitles .

P.s. I still have to confirm if Inglourious Basterds is remake of the Italian movie – Quel maledetto treno blindato.

Rating: 4/5

Year: 2009

Imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361748

Cidade de Deus (City of God)

Foreign Cinema at its best!

This movie is so strong, so hard hitting, it’s able to leave a very strong mark in your memory, which is the best compliment for any movie. Cidade de Deus was on my list for a very long time, but it takes me a lot of time before I brace myself to start a movie with subtitles, but I’m glad I finally saw it!

Based on a true story, set in Brazil, movie covers every essence of a “Drug movie”, violence, sex, blood, and the extra topping in this one, Children Gangsters. If you thought you saw it all about Children holding guns in Blood Diamond then watch this, it’ll definitely prove you wrong. With all the bloodshed and gore, movie does have some really heart wrenching moments as well.

The cinematography of this movie took me aback! Especially while introducing new characters, and adding extra angle to the story, brilliant! Same goes out for the performances by every single character in the movie. The only glitch was the movie feels a lil dragged and I was starting to feel the movie is overrated, but just as you start to feel that, BOOM, it picks up the pace! Look out for the kid who portrays young Lil’ Dice, one of the finest performances by a child artist I’ve ever come across.

This is a must watch for everyone, especially for those who thought Slumdog Millionaire was the best movie to be shot in slums. Time to discover underbelly of Brazil, real dark!

Rating: 4/5

Year: 2002

 

Amazon:http://www.amazon.com/City-God-Alexandre-Rodrigues/dp/B0000D9PNX

 

Imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317248

Andaz Apna Apna

Poster

You think most of us have seen this movie, well that’s the illusion you live in! There are people out there who haven’t even heard about it, leave aside watching!

This is by far the most hilarious movie I’ve ever seen, and I can say that because I’m a total sucker for comedy movies. Trust me; no list of comedy movies is complete withoutAndaz Apna Apna in it! In case you doubt it, well here’s a fact, this movie is listed on #27 on the IMDB list of top comedy movies of all times. The story revolves around two small town boys who try to make it BIG in the World, how? For that watch the movie. What dialogs, what brilliant comic timing, one word Awesome!

Amir Khan and Salman Khan at their very best, and so are Paresh Rawal, Shakti Kapoor & rest of the cast. Some of my favorite dialogs:

“You are very jokey”

“Gogo ji apka ghagara”

“Sawaal ek, jawaab do. Sawaal ek, jawaab do. Sawaal-jawaab, Sawaal-jawaab, chup.. lambi khamoshi”

😀

Rating: 5!

Year: 1994

Torrent: http://www.mininova.org/com/2032577

Imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109117