FILM: Begin Again
Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Keira Knightley, Adam Levine, Catherine Keener, Hailee Steinfeld and James Corden
DIRECTOR: John Carney
Previously released as Can a Song Save Your Life, Begin Again is so much like an average Hindi film, full of fluff, seriously into music and light on romance.
The film shadows Greta (Keira Knightley), a songwriter who follows Dave Kohl (Adam Levine), her musician boyfriend of five years to New York City at the start of his career and ends up heartbroken, alone and unsure of her future, when he makes it big.
Disillusioned, she moves in with her good friend Steve (James Cordon). He is also a performer and at one of his club gigs he gets her to sing one of her songs. She sings half-heartedly, but the music is so good that Dan (Mark Ruffalo), a down-on-his-luck music producer who happens to be at the club at the same time, envisions the unused instruments suddenly supplying accompaniment by playing themselves.
He approaches her to sign for a record together, she agrees. And it’s this journey where they change each other’s lives which form the crux of the story.
This star-driven romantic drama released under the PVR Director’s Rare Banner is unique in its own unpretentious way. Like a regular Bollywood film, director John Carney has used songs for the story progression but what elevates it is the initial narration style, where the first few scenes are repeated thrice, each time from a different perspective.
Once you have seen the three versions which furnish the backstory, you become engrossed with the relationships of the characters and feel as though you are on this journey with them.
With all the plot possibilities that end up being the right choices, the storyline and characters may sound cliched and the music lackluster, it’s the idea of a chance meeting that can change the course of one’s life is what makes the film acceptable. The film is packed with little vignettes that realistically portray the music industry. But it’s the guessing game, the never-quite-sure sparks between Greta and Dan, will they actually fall in love is what makes the script a bit unconventional. It’s reminiscent of director John Carney’s previous showbiz drama “Once”.
Mark Ruffalo and Keira Knightley’s chemistry is really what highlights this film. Knightley is charming as Greta. She portrays her anger and anguish with equal ease and if she sang the songs herself, kudos to her. Ruffalo doesn’t sing in his role but he does show more charisma than he ever has. With a mop of curly hair and a slouchy, rumpled demeanor, he is the perfect picture of Dan, a man on a downward slide.
They are ably supported by Catherine Keener as Dan’s wife and Hailee Steinfeld as his daughter.
The only odd one out here is Adam Levine, who seems inexperienced as an actor in some scenes. At times he is clumsy and his make-up, especially his beard is tacky.
The visuals and production quality are fairly good. A few jerky edits at the initial stage mars the flow but picks up momentum due to the strong script and powerful performances. Overall, the film with its unconventional choices in the relationships combined with actual songs makes it a simply feel-good film. (IANS)
FILM: Pizza
Cast: Akshay Oberoi, Parvathy Omanakuttan,
Dipannita Sharma, Arunoday Singh
DIRECTOR: Akshay Akkineni
What the devil! Here’s the deal.
Normally in films about paranormal experiences, the terror comes from outside. But what if the fear factor is turned on its head? What if the pizza delivery boy, known to be occasionally and potentially dangerous, gets spooked while making a home delivery?
It’s an audacious, potentially delectable premise for a horror film. And debutant director Akshay Akkineni delivers.
When you gotta go, you gotta go…right? When the devil within summons the poor pizza boy for a bit of footsie in an abandoned bungalow, you know it’s time to get seriously concerned about the health of your spirit.
First-time director Akshay Akkineni (his celebrated editor-dad Sreekar Prasad adroitly edits the footage) gives us a horror film that’s also funny and flighty. There’s a comic crust to the cheesy base. That’s a rarity indeed.
If you’ve seen the Tamil original, then you know what you’re in for. “Pizza” is a pacy perky ode to new-age terror where traditional horror elements such as a woman possessed by an evil force is combined with the theme of the effect of metropolitan quirks such as mindless materialism and commitment phobia, on the mind of the upwardly mobile class.
The film has some genuinely scary moments once the pizza boy (Akshay Oberoi, sincere) gets locked inside the house with ghouls on the prowl. There are insane twists in the terror tale that add up finally to a fairly convincing too-clever-for-its-own-good denouement. Though nothing spectacularly shocking happens during the film’s running time, there are enough turns and twists in the tale to keep us alert and involved from behind our 3D glasses.
That brings me to the singular unimportance of being three-dimensional in our movies. I’m never able to figure out why our films make a spectacle of themselves.
Dude, 3D is distracting. However, the chill quotient in “Pizza” works better with objects flying into your face and bloody hands lunging from nowhere to grab our pizza boy by the throat.
But it’s not only such shock shots that make “Pizza” engaging. It’s that crisp spicy topping of humour where we see our hero being trapped into a house of horrors that his pregnant wife (Parvathy Omanakutttan, sunny and funny as the missing Mrs.) would probably have written about in one of her stories.
Yup, Mrs. Pizzaboy is a practising horror writer with a penchant for a hearty laugh at her timorous terrorized spouse’s expense. Akshay Oberoi’s Kunal is a mixture of the timid and the defiant. He lets the character’s confusions build up as the story progresses so that finally we see him as a victim in ways that we would never suspect otherwise. The supporting cast, though impressive by name, seem distressfully stilted in action. The tone in which they are made to deliver their dialogues has something to do with it. The dialogues could have been delivered less urgently than the pizza. Dipannita Sharma and Arunoday Singh are wasted. Period.
“Pizza” is a fear fest with a yummy twist at the tale’s end. Unlike other films of the horror genrem, this one doesn’t depend on excessive gore to send shivers up our spine. Director Akshay Akkineni creates an eerie aura in one specific house of horror and ramshackle havelis being passe. This one unfolds in a spanking upmarket bungalow. And then Akkineni turns around and mocks our response of horror and fear. The premise is interesting and intri-guing. Yup, “Pizza” delivers. (IANS)