DARK MATTER

This started off with a bang, right from the first page it zipped along at a brisk pace... But then around 20% into the novel, it started to lose momentum when the long descriptions started and the situations began repeating themselves. The protagonist takes more time to understand his predicament than the reader. I found myself saying, don't you understand where you are, and what's happening you simple, weak man? 

Frankly, the lead character was a bit of a sap, there are earthshattering events happening, different options, can lead to different outcomes. There is danger to many, maybe even to humanity itself, but the poor protagonist only wants to go to his home to his lovely wife and his kid. Boo hoo. In spite of everything, the only thing at stake here for him is his family life! Boo hoo. 

And then the story starts to go into bizarre territory as if the writer didn't know how to drag it along, he too had no idea what was happening. Remember Inception? 

The story had left the reader behind, and it didn't make sense at all. Quite frankly it was highly stupid if it didn't seem so highly scientific and intelligent. This is something that Hollywood does very well, it makes even the stupid seem intelligent by throwing a lot of science at you, and we the poor reader and audience feel, ohh boy, that scientific, then it's bound to be so clever that I can't understand it, so let me just accept it as a fact. But then they do go overboard, leaving logical readers like me way, way behind.

And in the end I didn't really care about it. Yawn. Well begun is half done, but that's just about it, it's just half done. Yet, it is an interesting read because of the concept and the broad storyline. Could have been much, much better.

DARK MATTER

BAD MOMS AND OTHER CRAZY MOVIES

This has to be the craziest film of the year, not good crazy or bad crazy, but just batshit crazy. And it has the dialogue of the year 2016 for me. A character in the film called Gwendolyn says - I'm pretty sure my brother-in-law just joined ISIS... and he's a Jew!

Seems like a film written by someone smoking weed. Where can I get that stuff?

WARNING - do not take this as a recommendation, watch only if you are feeling crazy yourself.

There is some good stuff in it. Some laughs, but then there are quite a few misses too. Seems abruptly edited, at least the version I saw was, the grown up moms were acting like silly teenagers, but I guess that was the point of the whole film, for moms to become bad and enjoy once in a while, but they did over do it all a bit. 

And things were too convenient, bad and good things happened too easily. The leading Bad Mom Mila Kunis gives up her job easily, and then gets it back easily, she decides to run for the PTA election easily and then gives up easily too and then the climax too is very convenient.  

Yet, it did have a few laughs and was a light movie. And the crazy child-parent dilemma was interesting. 

Well, the verdict is if you are feeling heavy and down and don't want to apply your brain and like crude sex jokes and juvenile humour try it out, else skip this.

Other movies like this that I saw lately - Dirty 30, The Night Before, Trainwreck, Sisters, How To Be Single, Bachelorette, The Late Bloomer, Flock Of Dudes.

BAD MOMS

DIRTY 30

THE NIGHT BEFORE

Trainwreck

Bachelorette

SISTERS

HOW TO BE SINGLE

THE LATE BLOOMER

FLOCK OF DUDES

NIGHT SCHOOL - JACK REACHER BY LEE CHILD

Not as good as other Jack Reacher books... It's about a Davy Crocket or some such small nuclear bomb thingy that is as powerful as the one dropped on Hiroshima but is small enough to be carried about... and ten of such bombs are missing and have fallen in the wrong hands... the world is in danger. That's some good premise... but then the ending isn't as exciting as the set up and the plot.

And I must say things are getting really easy for Jack Reacher to do. Fight ten men - done! Solve impossible like case - done! Catch the bad guy in a foreign land - done, done, done!

Others just aren't clever or strong enough when they cross paths with Jack Reacher. 

And another major grouse - why do all characters talk in the same manner, analysing-reanalysing everything? The language, manner of talking is the same for all characters.

Also the love making is too predictable, too expected. The moment a woman walks into the story and I say BAM, he's going to bang her in the next 100 pages or my name isn't what it is.

Jack Reacher needs to be in danger and shouldn't get laid so easily, some unpredictability needed... or else it's just getting too bloody easy, even if the plots are still unique.

Don't make Jack Reacher a combination of Superman and Sherlock combined... make him normal, I say... 

Other than that, I love the earlier Jack Reacher books, some more than others, but on the whole Jack Reacher is the best there is in today's world. Keep him that way. Don't be lazy. 

A Perfect Day

Don’t get fooled by the title, it’s not actually about a perfect day. Quiet far from it. You could say it is about a typical day in a hellish but totally real world. A world that we may have heard about, read and ignored but have never seen. A Perfect Day shows this world to you in all its brutal, frightening glory. 

This is a moving, real story about aid workers and their typical day as they go about helping the common people who have been ruined by war. 

The plot, in short, is this (I can bet my hat you haven't seen or heard anything like this before) - a human dead body has fallen in a fresh water well that's the only drinking water source for miles around. The aid workers have to get the body out so that the locals can get some water to drink, but to get the body out they need rope, and there is no rope around, so the aid workers go around looking for a long rope in the war ravaged land! How's that for a plot! 

This is an absolutely stunning film to watch. Visually spectacular, bizarre, quirky and some of the bravest on screen characters. Truly, these aid workers are more gutsy that even the soldiers, as they have nothing to fight back with! They don't have guns or grenades, and I wondered why are they doing this? Why are they there instead of being in their comfortable homes watching a movie like me? Why? Why? But that's how humans are. Some people sit in front of a laptop and recommend films to watch, while some other go out there and save lives while putting themselves in danger. How's that for a career choice! Crazy guys, no?      

This movie shows a world that seems more fantasy than real and and it has some of the best actors of today together - Benicio Del Toro and Tim Robbins Watch this unique film if you want to watch an almost perfect film.

Frightening and moving and exciting and humorous and suspenseful and inspiring... go ahead, watch it and make your day perfect.

A Perfect Day

  

Burning Bright (with full movie's you tube link)

So I shared sharks swimming in a mall in Bait, now how about getting barricaded in a home with a famished tiger who hunts you as a terrible storm rages outside?

You can't go out, and you certainly can't say in.

Burning Bright is high-concept, suspenseful, claustrophobic, one location thriller.

The plot is simple - A college student and her autistic little brother are staying at home that has been boarded up for a hurricane that's about to hit the town. They are all safe and sound, it seems, but late at night the girl wakes up to on hearing someone, or something moving around the house, she goes out of her room and is stunned to see a ravenous tiger roaming around the house as if it owns the bloody property. The tiger is looking for a meal as it has been starved for a while, and the only thing edible in the home is the girl and her young brother, yum, yum! The king of the jungle has become the king of the barricaded home and no door is strong enough to hold it back. The powerful cat can break any door, reach anywhere, sniff out anyone. What follows is a cat and mouse game, where the cat is the cat and the two humans are the mice.    

Did you see Don't Breathe? If you did and liked it then this one is for you. It doesn't have the twists and turns that Don't Breathe had but is just as suspenseful and exciting. 

A bit about the tiger, it has its thing for human flesh and is really vicious. There's mention about the animal jumping over a 16-foot high cage and eating a horse (not like, I'm so hungry I could eat a horse, but really eating a horse, yum yum).

Now you will ask me how in the hell can a tiger of such kind find it's way into a barricaded home? Well, here we have a human villain, the evil stepfather of the two siblings wants to get rid of them and so he bought and brought the tiger as he plans to open a 'Safari Show'. After the tiger has eaten the two he is planning to explain the incident to the cops saying that the storm must have broken open the cage letting the tiger loose in the house while he was out grabbing a beer in the local bar, sniff sniff. The mean tiger ate up his stepkids! Boo hoo hoo, waaah. Well, you get the drift. 

Burning Bright, the title is derived from British author William Blake's poem "The Tyger" published in 1794.

Watch it if you don't mind sitting on the edge of your seat for a bit. 

Burning Bright

The full movie link here

Fido (With full movie link here)

What would you say if I told you that a time will come when you can buy a zombie! You can keep him/her in your home with your family and your little ones and make the zombie the servant/slave who does everything you want. No more paying through the nose to get your house cleaned and other daily chores. Everything done by your own zombie butler/servant/slave! 

Whatsmore, it won't eat you in return too! Now how's that for an idea. 

After watching this I wish this zombie world was true. Sigh. Well that's what Fido is all about. It's also about emotional bonding between the domesticated zombie (Fido) and his masters, specially the kid who loves Fido more than just a pet.

This film is set in an alternate, maybe even a better world where an innovative company called Zomcon provides zombie collars along with remote controls that can be used to control your own zombie, thus rendering them useful as household workers. Rest and Relax, your zombie will do everything for you. 

This is an entirely unseen world, and quite frankly an amazing set-up. The movie is emotional, funny and very different from any other film I've seen. There are no parallels to this one. 

And yesterday I saw the grossly overrated and quite boring Train To Busan and I almost fell asleep at the sheer stupidity of the movie and the emotional manipulation that the Korean movie has managed to accomplish. It's setting was interesting, a zombie outbreak across the land while some people are trapped on a running train. But then the story was so full of cliches and typical characters that it became an irritating film for me. 

Now compare the writing of Train To Busan with this unknown zombie flick and you will see how different they are in terms of idea, execution, twists and turns and novelty. 

So here's my verdict, if you liked Train To Busan then watch this one. It's way, way better. In comparison to other zombie films it's way, way out there, It's the next level of writing. Quite like another zombie romance film Warm Bodies. 

Fido and Warm Bodies are the next level of zombie entertainment. They push the writing further, are more imaginative, more fantastic, yet more believable and emotional. Wicked, Witty, Wild, Wacky, Wonderful and Wabulous!   

Unfortunately, it's big budget rehashes like Train To Busan that rake in the moolah. Quite frankly I too wish I had a zombie of my own to do all this tedious writing for me, or atleast be able to proof read what I write, because proof reading is the worst part of writing, and I'm sure any zombie could do it with a bit of training (if one were to watch me proof reading, I do resemble a zombie, grunts, groans, gnashes, drool, glazed eyes, stiff body!). But it's movies like Fido that make me come alive again, become half resembling a human being and make me continue to write and more importantly proof read. 

Fido




Fido - the full movie

Bait

 This one is about sharks in a mall. Yes, you read it right. Sharks in a mall! 

No, they are not in some large aquarium, in fact they are swimming around the entire length and breadth of the mall like any normal shopper. Just hanging around, not really buying anything, like you and I like to do. 

Now, you might just laugh at me and this movie and say that there is no way on hell or earth that sharks can swim around in a large mall and eat up humans like snacks without even heading to the mall's food court, or paying through their noses for the refreshments.

Well, that's what I felt when I saw what this movie was about. But trust me, there's a very logical reason why the sharks are having a picnic in the mall. 

You see, there's been a tsunami and the sea water has entered the mainland and this mall is right next to the sea and hence most of the mall is underwater and therefore the sharks have as much as right to be there as you and me.

Like the film Snakes On A Plane where you know that there are snakes slithering away in a plane, here we have sharks terrorising the shoppers in a mall. 

The story is quite simple - a group of shoppers are caught in a mall during the tsunami. They climb the high shelves and as the water level rises they realise that that there are sharks in the water around them, and they don't have too much time till the water reaches them and they become sharks attack and they become shark snack. 

Like in a film of this kind, there are an assortment of characters - the good heroic ones, the ones in distress, the bad, evil guys, the horny youngsters, the old, the young, the macho and the stupid... 

This may not seem like a high quality film but it's quite entertaining actually. Because of the super one line concept - sharks in a mall!

I hope they come up with a sequel where they have sharks in the parliament (any country's parliament will do). Well, there actually are sharks in the parliament, but those are human sharks, I wish to see them get trapped and hunted by the sea sharks who like to chomp on a human or two. Now that would be some movie. 

Anyway, this is not a movie that will make you a better, wiser, more mature human being. But it may certainly may make you an entertained one. I recommend watching this. Good fun.   

Bait

The full movie on youtube (with lots of Russian translation, I think)