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sukrit-kumar
Reviews
What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
My All-time Favourite Vampire Movie
Have you ever felt like an underdog, as if you live in the city, but no one knows who you are or how you live your life? Big city dwellers revel in their anonymity. That's what allows Viago, Deacon and Vlad to lead their arboreal lives, entertaining each other and hunting the next meal at a nightclub.
The attention to detail is evident in the script and storytelling. As far as cinematography is concerned, you wouldn't be able to tell that this is a 2014 movie -- it seems at least a decade older. Most of the outdoor shots are in the dark, so there's a cooped-up feel to the movie. That's probably how the tech-oblivious 400 year old protagonists feel, too, sheltered in the shadows, concealing their secrets behind closed doors. It's a lonely life, a boring existence. That is, until rowdy but NZ-civil werewolves come a-howlin'.
Super Deluxe (2019)
A Brilliant Stoner Movie!
Super Deluxe has all the elements of Bollywood, from songs to a mother holding a kid with a head injury, and yet it is so iconoclastic as a mainstream Indian movie. It's got four major story lines about people from different classes in society. Their lives run parallel as spectacular and extraordinary events happen to them. It plays with your attention in places, but those moments of boredom don't last for more than a few seconds. Then, someone says or does something, like turning into an alien! It's self-aware at that point, so self-aware that it breaks the fourth wall and goes far beyond what we consider normal, everyday life.
It's hilarious, and the tension has a tactile feel to it. From ASMR sound effects to the above-mentioned alien, Super Deluxe has it all. It'll make you think of everything -- life in India, social divisions, life itself, and its perspective next to the rest of the universe. It's so packed with all the things we love about cinema that there isn't a doubt that it deserves anything less than 10/10. Watch it high and get your mind blown by one of the sweetest and most awe-inspiring movies to come out of India.
Side note: You might start revering Vijay Sethupathi after this. And trans people in general. And that's okay.
Khazana (2014)
Builds quickly and pulls you in
Khazana speaks to you through muted expressions and stifled screams. It tells the story of a mistreated wife who is tortured to the point of a horrifying albeit grand climax. It repulses you with its socio-cultural walls, invites you with an ever-tightening grip, and then plunges you into a purgatory.
The protagonist suffers closed-doors domestic abuse and lives in a shell impenetrable to empathy. Vaidehi is entangled in a loveless marriage with Amar who does little to veil his affair with Neelima. His mother disdains Vaidehi's humble origins and pushes Amar to abort his own child. He complies without remorse by blackmailing the local doctor Arun, played by Nath himself.
Vaidehi's plight is not an extreme or obscure example of what long-standing gender inequality assails on the life of women around the world. Her reaction to it, however, impresses and abhors you in equal measure.
Khazana wraps around you with references to itself. You'll ask questions which will fall to the deaf years of a smiling young woman. Vaidehi's revenge is a disturbingly delicious consummation which will bring you back to watch the movie again. I promise.