Adventures of a Writer

If there is one movie that is perhaps the Godfather of all dirty-cops-and-gangsters movies, it's gotta be The Departed by Martin Scorsese. Interestingly, it was an adaptation of the hit Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs . While the latter was itself a very popular film, it may not be wrong to say that The Departed has surpassed it by acquiring near cult status.   So, it was with this in mind I wanted to watch Vikram Vedha which is a remake of the Tamil film of the same name. The original film starring Madhavan and Vijay Sethupathi was a huge blockbuster and it was no wonder that the filmmakers were keen to remake it in Hindi with Saif Khan and Hrithik Roshan in the roles of Vikram and Vedha. However, the Hindi remake failed to recreate the magic of the original. Even though the film is supposedly an exact copy, made by the very same filmmakers who directed the original.  While there has been a bunch of theories about why the Hindi version failed, the consensus has been that "...

Bollywood's track record of horror films is not much to write about. The Ramsay Brothers' body of work in this genre is the most popular and also extremely cringe worthy - the ghouls are more likely to make you laugh than cower in fear. However, to be fair, the filmmakers worked with shoestring budgets and the VFX age had not dawned yet. The Ramsays have their die-hard fans till date, if only for their campy style and absurd plotlines. So when Stree (released in 2019) was billed as a horror-comedy, I was a little skeptical about it. Soon critics and fans alike were raving about it and it became one of those 'sleeper hits'. Recently, thanks to streaming channels, I had the opportunity to watch it and here is my review. Stree (Woman) has an interesting premise. A small town is haunted by a female ghost who only kidnaps men during the three nights of a festival that is celebrated annually. All the men avoid going out at night and to counter the evil powers of the...

My movie bingeing on Netflix continues. And inspired by the rush of blogging that is happening everywhere I have decided to kill two birds with one stone. So, here is my review for an offbeat Bollywood romantic comedy by the name of Qarib Qarib Singlle directed by Tanuja Chandra.  I say 'offbeat' only because it does not conform to the escapist, fantasy fare that Bollywood romances usually are. In fact, the strength of QQS is that it is rooted in reality and its characters are the average everyday people you would meet. The protagonist Jaya is a single career woman whose soldier husband is no more. She is constantly being egged on by friends to start dating and shed her single status. She finally puts up her profile on an online dating site and is inundated with lewd messages from weirdos. But one message catches her eye. From a poet named Yogi. Jaya is amused and slightly bewildered by a man who insists on telling her about his ex-girlfriends on their first date. Yogi...

It's been a while since I posted movie reviews on my blog. Heck, it's been a while since I watched movies! How does a movie buff who is also a screenwriter not watch movies? That's sheer sacrilege. Well, life (and deadlines) have a way of getting in the way. But let's not dwell on that. The good thing is that Netflix and Amazon Prime are just what the doctor prescribed for a screenwriter deprived of her fix of movies. Binge-watching movies is good for the soul too! Try it some time. ;) The other Big Plus about watching movies via streaming channels is that you can simply watch the first 10-15 minutes of a film and decide whether it grabs you enough to see the rest of it. So, here are the top two movies that grabbed my attention...interestingly, both are adaptations. Ittefaq Ittefaq (directed by Abhay Chopra) is a taut thriller that is an adaptation of a 1969 film of the same name starring Rajesh Khanna-Nanda. I call it an 'adaptation', rather than a...