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Reviews
Jersey (2022)
Beautiful rollercoaster of emotions
Take away a man's passion, watch a living skeleton...
Arjun Talwar, a skilled cricketer, abandons his sport, joins a government job & supports his family. Legal issues snatch his job & he is unemployed.
Arjun Talwar fades away.
The plot depicts how this lost, faded & rusted man comes back. A very quintessential trope, quite regularly used in plots, thus what this film needed to work was its screenplay.
And it worked.
Cricket was a backdrop to this film. What really made the screenplay special was the core chemistry shared between each & every character thus giving an ode to some truly elegant writing.
The film is about the journey of a man's love for his family & himself and all these forms of love are shown effortlessly, motivating the viewer & making him love his vision of life, slightly more.
Additional points:
Punjabi dialogues never felt forced from any actor.
Music is thoroughly enjoyable throughout the film.
Acting: The reason why I'm mentioning this aspect under a separate heading is that it stands out as the best part of this film. The beautiful dynamic between a fatherly coach Pankaj Kapoor & Shahid Kapoor (real life son) is beautiful. Also, the father-son chemistry shows how good a father Arjun actually is.
Well, this film really comprises some mainstream Bollywood non-cringeworthy romance, yes, quite a vestigial trope. Such organic chemistry between the leads show how skilled they are as actors & how beautifully they portrayed the ups & downs of a difficult relationship. Mrunal Thakur gave a compelling performance.
Shahid Kapoor. Till date, the man has surprised the audience every single time he came on screen. Haider, Kaminey, Jab We Met, Udta Punjab, Kabir Singh & whatever the film might be, he has managed to bring something new, something unique in every single performance he gave & this is no exception. Every single phase of Arjun was played effortlessly yet attentively. Long way to go, Shahid.
Jersey review. 23.04.22.
The Kashmir Files (2022)
Every single Indian, let alone cinephiles, should watch this film. India just got a new masterpiece.
Jan 19, 1990 (Day of Exodus)
A man hides inside a drum of rice in his own house. A gang of terrorists enter his house & fire at the drum. Blood & rice leak from the holes created on the drum. The blood soaked rice is fed to the wife.
Because the family was Hindu.
This is a real incident. And the film showed it, entirely.
Krishna is shown as the protagonist of this film, & Krishna is us, the audience. Like us, he is privileged, distant, ignorant yet heavily involved. His rage due to ignorance causes him to be easily brainwashed by the opposing forces untill he unravels the truth & through his eyes, we unravel the truth & the intention gets fulfilled.
The film follows non linear screenplay, jumping back & forth between various timelines & thus keeping the engagement factor intact. The background music, rather, the lack of background music in the most terrifying scenes, is haunting & perfect. The colour palette is gloomy, signifying the rotten soul of Kashmir & overshadowing the superficial land of Jannat. And the performances, they are terrific. Anupam Kher, being a Kashmiri Pandit himself proved his NSD roots yet again. Darshan Kumar, Pallavi Joshi, Chinmay Mandlekar & Mithun Chakraborty & every single other actor involved did a splendid, & subtle (unlike the trailer) job.
Hatsoff to the director, Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, for being so uncompromising with his vision...
'Kamzor bol nahi sakte, unhe suna jaata hai...'
-The Kashmir Files, everyone.
The Batman (2022)
Perfect.
The Batman. Now when you attach a bat to a human's name, it initially attracts curiosity, more accurately, mockery. People tend to take it lightly. But, when every night, a man dons a suit, symbolising a bat & runs through a city to eradicate the filthiest of crimes in the most horrific ways possible, ways which are darker than the crimes itself, it attracts, fear. He can't be everywhere, because the city is large, but the city doesn't know that. So crime starts to live in fear. HE starts making a difference. But, on this journey of ending darkness with more darkness, the man behind the mask keeps getting scarred internally. He starts drowning into his own dark path of justice untill he realizes, that he stands for something much greater than what he thought he did......Hope.
Cinematography, acting, background music, stunt choreography, screenplay & direction all sum up to give a pioneer experience. Its a must watch film. Then again, its not for everyone. Don't buy tickets if you are a normie when it comes to cinema.