Monthly Review: September 2022
Rains, gloomy weather, travel to nearby places, watching a couple of movies, reluctantly reading a book, leaving it midway and continuing work from home — September has been kind to me, allowing me to do multiple things while the weather wasn’t motivating enough.
Books
After completing Shoe Dog last month, I didn’t pick any book to read. Whenever I’m in the middle of a reading slump, Yandamoori’s writings keep me on track. I went to a famous publishing house’s local store in my hometown. I purchased three Telugu books, “Nallanchu Tella Cheera” by Yandamoori, “Mrinalini” by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, and “The Writer” by Kommanapalli Ganapathi Rao.
Since Mrinalini was short enough, I started reading it but didn’t complete it yet. I finished ~30% and not finding it interesting at the moment. The story is fantastic so far, but I couldn’t finish reading it. Will try going back to Yandamoori to get the momentum and complete the other pending books.
Movies
I watched some good movies this month, both in theatres and on my PC, covering multiple languages. Lemme get started with the movies I watched in Cinema Halls.
Brahmastra (Hindi)
Good VFX, but awful writing made it a wasted opportunity. I travelled around 100 km to watch this movie in 3D, but the trip didn’t pay off well! Wrote about the movie in detail here: https://dinnity.medium.com/brahmastra-aa41e2c3d070
Oke Oka Jeevitham (Telugu)
My father and I went to see this movie after I finished work (late-night show). I liked the movie. It’s good to see Sharwa’s movie seeing footfalls after a really long time.
The story of this movie stemmed from the writer-director Shree Karthick’s life, and he made it with utmost love and honesty. Unlike the other films, the character artists in this film have scope to perform, their characters are written so well, and they have character arcs too!
It’s a decent film, although I had a few minor complaints about it. The emotional part didn’t connect with me. I liked the interval bang as I was yearning for the time travel films to extend it to what is shown in this film.
Spirited Away (Japanese)
Until the beginning of this month, I hadn’t seen Japanese Anime yet. Revanth and I chatted about it, and he recommended this movie for getting started. This was made in the early 2000s, and it was highly refreshing for me to explore movies in Anime. I loved this movie, especially its social commentary in various scenes. I heard about Hayao Miyazaki, but this was my formal introduction to his work. A legend indeed.
Pada (Malayalam)
One of my friends, Harish, recommended this movie when it started streaming on Prime Video. I didn’t know anything about the movie’s story and didn’t even read the plot assuming it to be a violent drama in rural Kerala. After a long delay, I watched it this month and was happily surprised to know that this movie is a faithful work on a real-life incident in Kerala.
Please watch this movie without reading anything about it, and then watch the interviews of the person who was present during the incident.
Nagaram (Telugu)
After watching his 2nd, 3rd, and 4th films, I am fanboying Lokesh Kanagaraj. He made his debut with a hyper-link story with an ensemble cast called Maanagaram (Nagaram in Telugu), and I hadn’t watched it until I had a chat with Revanth. This is one of his best works yet. Loki is too honest in this movie, with all his flexes repeating in his other movies.
The story unfolds gradually, with one character impacting the narrative of the other for good or bad in a crime world. All the actors performed well. Special mention to Shree, Charlie and Munishkant, with whom we cannot help but empathise.
Cinematography and Music complement the scenes and are key to this kind of film because we need to clearly see the actors’ emotions while also connecting the story’s dots.
This movie has a good take on geographical place as an identity, and no one owns a city or can warrant someone not to come to the city; how people from rural areas come with dreams of living in the city and how it can impact their lives.
I enjoyed watching the film altogether. This kind of narrative is less explored (I recall Vedam and Ludo), and the screenplay is gripping enough to hold you until the last scene.
If I were to rank his films in the order that I like: Vikram, Maanagaram, Khaidi, and Master.
Nandanavanam 120 km (Telugu)
The premise is intriguing and hooks you into the story. Neelakanta wrote a good story set in a challenging domestic environment with a business backdrop. The story takes turns and the big twist surprises in the end.
Let’s not get into the performances, maybe? I wish this script had good performers as main leads. The performance of the actors is a letdown.
The background score sets up the film’s mood, and it’s good. The cinematography is not great, but I feel the tight budget restrained all. I like the film for his honest writing and building a world, barring all other factors that contributed to the film.
I honestly feel someone can rehash this script and make it a decent film with good production values. It can strike a chord this time.
Virodhi (Telugu)
Another film directed by Neelakanta. Here he deals with Naxalites — their struggles, internal conflicts, back stories, and how they are brainwashed. The interesting and sensitive storyline could have been a nightmare if not made well. It won two Nandi awards. Again, the choice of actors and scale would have significantly impacted reaching out to the masses.
I only saw three of Neelakanta’s films, this, Nandanavanam, and Missamma. He builds a world with weird storylines, which pay off well at the end with a good twist. Poor production values and choice of actors play spoilsport in becoming blockbusters or reaching the masses. Thanks to Revanth for recommending his films! Realistic films in Telugu cinema are the least explored, and I wish he would continue doing films.
NOPE (English)
The latest outing of Jordan Peele was released this year. I couldn’t watch it in theatres due to its limited release but watched it on my PC last week. Again, blown by the way Jordan Peele made this horror film with social commentary. There are a couple of high-tense shots, visually spectacular shots, and a couple of spine-chilling shots in the film, apart from the WOW story.
I hated watching horror films due to the predictability of Indians’ way of making them, but this man is making me love the horror genre. Loved it!
US (English)
The second film of Jordan Peele, after the highly successful debut, Get Out. US has an amazing plot that intrigued me more than his two other films. It scared me more, and again, he does it with a minimum number of actors, lesser locations, and fewer jump scare moments. Enjoyed watching this movie too. Thanks to Vishnu for sending a meme three months back about Jordan Peele. I was unaware of this man until then, and Vishnu suggested I watch his films. Incredible filmmaker and I look forward to this film :)
I sincerely wish someone would purchase the remake rights of this film and make the necessary changes to suit the Indian audience. This can be a big film if made in India.
Knives Out (English)
Of late, I’m obsessed over the cuteness of Ana De Armas, and recently her Blonde (fictional take on Marlyn Monroe) got released. I’ve not seen any of her movies and thought to get started with Knives Out, a whodunit thriller with our Ana playing a genuine, cute, and lovely character. This movie has an ensemble cast, including Daniel Craig, and a couple of brilliant scenes between the lead cast. I started watching this movie around midnight, thinking about going to sleep in the middle, but completed watching it in a single go. A brilliant film! Eagerly waiting for the next part, streaming soon on Netflix.
Cobra (Telugu)
Ajay Gnanamuthu’s ambitious movie Cobra, starring Vikram, was released a couple of weeks back and apparently bombed at the box office. He’s one of the filmmakers who have highly ambitious projects on paper but falters somehow in the filmmaking process giving us half-baked, emotionally detached films. Cobra, again is a wasted opportunity. He tries to make too many things, and the movie feels all over the place without an emotional connection. Appreciate the efforts in conceiving the idea, but it didn’t go well. I’m not talking about the logic in the film, but its storytelling sense.
Even without counting the number of films, I believe I watched more in September than my monthly average. This can be attributed to the rains I couldn’t travel, leading to watching more films!
Latin History for Morons
John Leguizamo’s Latin History for Morons is a standup show on Netflix.
This is not a random comedy show. I saw a standup earlier, a mix of comedy + Tamil music by Alex (Alex in Wonderland). This one’s about educating the audience about Latin history. I like when the standup comics intend to share the knowledge without losing their comic touch, thus entertaining us and also sharing knowledge with the content.
I was unaware of what had happened in American History and the discrimination the Latins faced. I’ve heard about racism from a couple of friends in the states to pursue education, but the people born and brought up there still face bullying worries me.
John has a personal story of helping his son complete the school assignment, and then he mixes the personal and political take, spinning them into a comedy show.
Blogs
I wrote these blogs this month. Check them out here.
- On my solo trip to Kanchi and Tiruvannamalai here.
- On Brahmastra here.
- On Shoe Dog here.
- Conversations on Love here.
We’re coming to an end to this blog post. With this blog, I complete one year of writing Monthly Review blogs on Medium. This happened accidentally while I was on notice period at Airtel when I watched many movies in the month but didn’t have the depth to write blogs on each movie. I thought I would write 1–2 paragraphs about each movie that I had watched to keep count of new movies that I watch in a month and fill in the blog :)
PS-1 released today, and I’m sincerely rooting for Mani Ratnam ❤
Thank you to every one of you who has been reading these boring monthly reviews and encouraging me to write more of them! Until next time…
