Behind the mask: The rise of Leslie Vernon(2006) Genre: Comedy/Horror/Thriller, run time:87 minutes, 3.5/5

Back in 1992, a fantastic French movie by the name of "Man Bites Dog" was released. At its heart was a revolutionary concept.

A serial killer hires a documentary crew to capture his murder spree. He spouts a lot of antisemitism and with his wry sense of humor, gives a surrealistic touch to the slayings.

"Behind the mask" borrows the central idea but gives it a slight twist by replacing the serial killer with an exterminator who believes he has supernatural powers.

His idols are Freddy Kruger(A Nightmare on Elm Street), Michael Myers(Halloween) and Jason Vorhees(Friday the 13).

The recording crew of three consists of a girl who is the narrator and two guys who are cameramen.

The script is the real king here. There are many scenes in which obviously a lot of thought has gone.

I have never understood why does the killer walk so slowly in the slashers while his prey is scampering like hare. Here, I get, what seems to be, a pretty probable answer.

Among the best scenes of the movie are those which capture Vernon's conversation with an ex killer who has "retired" from the game. They help us understand how these perpetrators keep on reanimating themselves and coming back from the dead.

The selection of the victim and the kill zone are explained in detail.

There is a character who is generically called "Ahab". He is this slightly old person, generally a psychologist, who has known the murderer from his childhood and thinks that he can get the better of him.

The acting is pretty decent. The only actor I knew beforehand was Robert Englund, the original Freddy.

The direction and the story maketh any film and this is clearly evident over here. There are huge servings of black comedy.

It is a very clever film, one which would entertain you, provoke you and make you think. These are qualities which one seldom associates with a typical slasher flick. It is a must watch, both for the fans of the genre and for those who like intelligent cinema.

Shootout at Wadala(2013), Genre:Crime/Thriller/Drama, run time: 137 minutes, 1.5/5

Imagine you are a contract killer and you have just bumped off a newspaper owner whom the Haskar brothers, the dreaded gangsters of Mumbai, considered their Godfather. Would you be sucking off on a lolly on a roadside stall the very next day? More importantly, why would you be surprised if they turned up behind you to tear you apart?

The second half of the movie is full of such absurd scenes. However, the start is kind of promising.

Manya Surve has been shot in an encounter and is being taken to the nearest hospital by Inspector Baagwan. Before croaking, Surve tells the inspector the story of his transition from a law abiding youngster to a dreaded gangster.

 

John Abraham surprisingly acts pretty well during the first seventy odd minutes. As a student who gets framed along with his brother, as a helpless prisoner and as a lover who sees his inamorata getting hitched to another man, he lets his eyes talk. 

The first irritant which I encountered was Tusshar(I hope I spelt the fucker’s name correctly). He is supposed to be this Morgan Freeman type prisoner who keeps on dispensing obscene lines which would leave you disgusted. One sample of the junk he spouts out of his mouth “ I am Bruce who hasn’t fucked someone in eight years- Main Aisa Bruce hoon jisne aath saal se kisi kee lee nahin hai”. 

What struck me as really funny bit was every time someone lit up a cigarette on the screen, a message would pop up telling that smoking causes cancer. However, no such warning appears when the characters trade deeply offending insults and disparage women.

Kangana plays Abraham’s love interest. She is literally manhandled by him in their supposedly love making scenes which come off more as rape attempts.

Anil Kapoor plays the cop. He looks awesome for a guy who is approaching sixty. His fitness is even more accentuated in scenes wherein he acts along with Jackie Shroff who was once his contemporary and now looks at least ten years older than Mr. Kapoor due to his booze afflicted eye lids and protruding tummy.

 

There are enough twists and turns in the plot to keep the viewer sufficiently interested till the half way mark. After that it seemed as if the director wanted to screw away to glory. There are clichés piled upon more banalities, sufficient enough to give you long lasting migraine.

For reasons unclear to me, the Kaskar siblings (Dawood and his elder bro) are named Haskar. Manoj Vajpayee is becoming expert in dying the Sonny Corleone way. After the epic scene in Gangs of Wasseypur, here he again is bumped off in the same manner. 

Sonu Sood as Dawood is fucking hilarious. He is supposed to convey dead seriousness by his quite manner. In most of the scenes he looks like an amnesia afflicted patient, one who has forgotten his lines.

However, the absolute worst part of the movie was to see Sunny Leone speak Hindi and act as the love interest of Vajpayee. It lasted for around one minute only but nearly drove me batty, ape shit crazy.

I had the pleasure of reading Dongri to Dubai some time back. It is a fantastic book, one which would make you proud of an Indian author. Six pages of it were dedicated to the Wadala encounter. Those six pages were bloated with enough nonsense to give birth to this two hours long shit fest.  

Watch only if you have a masochistic streak.

Private Games(2012) by James Patterson, Genre: Thriller/Mystery, Pages:479, 1.5/5

James Patterson is an asshole.

After this definitive statement, you must have got an inkling of the direction in which this review would now proceed.

There was a time during the formative years of reading as a habit that I used to read everything written by Patterson. The Alex Cross books were awesome. I loved the short and snappy paragraphs. A 500 page tome of his contained, on an average 120 odd chapters and most of these ended on a cliffhanger. It was like a dream come true for a thriller fan. 

Cross was a great creation. After that came the not so great Women’s Murder Club (what a bloody pretentious name), the Bennett series and what fucking not. He began collaborating with lots of authors and all the books slowly started resembling one another. 

Because of the idiot that I am, it took me nearly 40 odd books to realize that the man had transformed into a hack and was fooling his readers left, right and center. I stopped buying his books.

Flipkart was offering huge discount on thrillers this month and that is how I ended up purchasing this.

 

When I approached this, I had no idea about Private, the world’s “most exclusive” detective agency and monsieur Knight and company. After reading this, I don’t think I would be delving into their world again.

   

The story is set during the London Olympics of 2012. A psychopath who goes by the name of Cronus is targeting the games along with three ladies called the Furies. Knight, a detective working with Private, gets involved because of high personal stakes. 

By giving his killer a Greek name, Patterson gets to write about some mythological bullshit whose hollowness made me cringe. There are war crimes tied in, rather fatuously, to the plot.

The pacing of the novel has always been Patterson’s strength and that may just be the only saving grace of this book. The absurd events keep on happening at a breakneck pace.

I have never been exceptionally good at predicting the killer in a mystery book. Even the most pedestrian whodunits end up astonishing me. Imagine my surprise, then, when nearly 150 pages from the end, I had an epiphany about the true identity of the criminal and it turned out to be right.

There are chapters dedicated to bollocks like the spirit of Olympics.

The characters are ludicrous caricatures. The participants in the Olympics don’t have a single mean bone in their body. The athletes perform so many selfless acts that they begin resembling good Samaritans more than hard nosed athletes. I nearly puked after reading the various instances of human “kindness”.

The biggest unintended joke of the book is the motive behind the crimes. You won’t believe your fucking eyes because it is so fucking stupid.

I won’t be wasting any more time with a Patterson book. 

 As the saying goes: Fool me once, shame on you and fool me twice, shame on me. Mr. Patterson, you have fooled me enough number of times. I only have two words for you along with a gesture involving my middle finger. I think you are smart enough to take the hint and fuck off.

  

Ek Thi Daayan(2013) Genre:Horror/Thriller, Runtime:119 minutes, 2/5

I am a coward at heart when it comes to sitting through a Hindi movie. I am not being snobbish or trying to show off my “refined” taste. It is just the way it is.

There was a time,around eight or so years back, when I used to go and watch all the Hindi movies in the theater. Then, I discovered English and other foreign cinema. Life has never been the same. For me, the rise of assholes like SRK has coincided with the worst period in Hindi film industry. The movies became cliched, the story line repetitive, the scriptwriter a beggar and the audience fools.

During the past few years, there has been a slew of different films which have some what restored my confidence in the so called Bollywood. One of the person who was once at the forefront of this change was Vishal Bhardwaj. However, his previous two directorial ventures, 7 Khoon Maaf and Matru… have sucked ass. But he has always been a smart writer. Hence, I approached this movie with a sense of thrill as I wanted to see how would the creator of the excellent Makdi(Vagina laced Spider) approach a hackneyed subject like haunted apartment and witchcraft. However my good mood was also colored with a dark foreboding due to the generally negative reviews this had garnered at the time of its theatrical release.

The first half is pretty good. It tells the tale of an illusionist, Bobo the baffler(Hashmi) who hears and sees her long dead sister and a lizard. His performance during the magic shows begins to slip and without informing his live in partner, Tamara(Huma Kureshi), he goes and visits his psychologist. The shrink hypnotizes the serial kisser and takes him back to his pre lip-lock days. A tale within a tale unfolds wherein we get to find out about Diana(Konkana Sen Sharma) and Bobo's childhood. Bobo suspects she is a witch who has come from the nether world. Some good scares ensue. This is easily the best part of the movie. The narrative seems fresh and keeps the viewer hooked.

It is the second half, with the story again moving to Bobo’s present, that things really get fucked up royally. Bhardwaj seems to suddenly run out of ideas and fails to take this to any logical conclusion. The end seems to be Bhardwaj’s attempt at homage to Rosemary’s Baby but actually made me want to puke my guts out.

Konkona easily takes the acting honors. She gets the best lines, full of malicious double entedre, as the titular Daayan. Pawan Malhotra, as Bobo’s father is excellent in a small role. Hashmi has been consistently reliable over the previous years and here also he doesn’t disappoint. Kalki is wasted. Huma Quereshi gets a limited scope to showcase her acting prowess but looks gorgeous and acts well.

The lyrics of Yaaram by Gulzar is drool worthy. I really loved the scene during the song when Hashmi reads Gulzar’s book and sings from it.

Kannan Iyer’s direction seems assured in the first half, like the script. It goes off track after intermission and crash lands with the horrendous denouement.

This is one of those movies which I wanted to like very much. However, the climax(of the movie) is like a kick in the balls. It stinks to high heaven. Avoid this if you don’t want to burden your heart and soul.

Very Good, Jeeves (1930) by P.G. Wodehouse, Genre: Humor, Pages: 297, 4.5/5

Have you seen the movie “40 days, 40 nights”? For the unfortunate few who have missed out on the charms of this testosterone fueled comedy, it is about a guy who takes a vow to not have any sexual activity for the aforementioned number of days. At the end of the period, he experiences a volcanic release. That is the kind of orgasmic joy which the reader would get from every episodeof this splendid collection of Wooster and Jeeves tales.

This collection has eleven stories out of which at least five, for me, are among the best that Wodehouse has written. 

Jeeves takes the cake in the appropriate titled “Jeeves and the song of songs” when he arranges far too many performances of a song which is much favored by the bathroom singers, in front of an unappreciative crowd. Then there is the tale of the impending doom wherein a cabinet minister is marooned on an island without a boat and the sea is infested with foul tempered swans. Aunt Agatha’s dog MacIntosh also makes a memorable appearance in what turns out to be a harrowing experience for Wooster. 

“The inferiority complex of Old Sippy” tells the tale of Sipperley, Wooster’s friend and an editor, who cannot gather courage to propose the girl of his choice. He also cannot say no to the articles from the principal of old school days which are inappropriate for his magazine. “The love that purifies” is a very funny tale which has its main protagonist Thomas, the son of Aunt Agatha who decides to become good when he gets to know that a prize has been set for good behavior.

It has been nearly a month since I last tasted Wodehouse’s works. I didn’t know how much I was missing him until I devoured this. There are sentences which are pure magic and would leave you cackling.

My favorite line in the book was when Wooster says he went out and came back so fast that he nearly met himself going out.

Wodehouse cannot be praised highly enough. The sheer twists he is able to give to standard screw ball stories is breath taking. What I love most about the Jeeves’ books is the way they are narrated by the dim Wooster. The language, man! The characters. Only the stone hearted can be inured from the charm of this fantastic duo. The sheer joy which his words give is something which has to be experienced to be believed. 

His books can take you higher than a good joint. They are more addictive than the most habit forming drugs.

 At the end of every Wodehouse book, I feel both delirious and slightly depressed. The reasons for my happiness have been described above. I become somewhat sad because I know now there is one less book of his left to read and there would come a time in the future when I would run out of Wodehouse.

Mother's Day(2011) Genre: Thriller, run time: 102 minutes, 3/5

I am a man who likes his gore served raw. Yes, if a film promises in its promotions to leave you drenched in blood then it should fulfill it and should not turn out to be a damp squib like Evil Dead. But to meet my “high” standards, the violence should be central to the plot and not ubiquitous a la Grotesque. 

Trepidation best describes what I was feeling when I began watching Mother’s Day. With a name like that and a poster featuring an unknown (to me) actress as the titular Mother, I had absolutely no expectation. One of my friends’ had literally shoved its DVD in my hand telling me that it was absolutely “balls blowing”. To give him the satisfaction and to massage his ego, I decided to watch this. Although it did not rip through my gonads and my family jewels are still intact and glorious in their curvaceousness, I am glad that I watched this.

This is the remake of a 80s movie of the same name. I consider myself quite knowledgeable in the important matters of life like movies, books and single girls/women. However, to be honest, I hadn’t heard of the original before. 

The story is pretty straight forward. Three brothers who rob banks take shelter in their "own" house. However, this being the times of recession, their house has new occupants courtesy foreclosure proceedings. To complicate matters a bit and to increase the body count, the new owners are in the midst of a party with nearly half a dozen of their friends. 

The brothers soon take control of the house and the situation and begin waiting for their Mother and sister. Their arrival exacerbates the situation quite rapidly.

What I really liked about this was that in all such type of films, it is quite easy to predict the survivors of the onslaught. However, here there are no clear cut heroes and most of the characters get equal treatment from the scriptwriter and hence nearly the same screen time. 

The violence, when it comes, ends up rattling because of its suddenness. Sometimes, the after effects of brutality are visible only at the corner of the screen which makes one believe that the producer/director wanted to tell a story rather than indulge in shock and awe.

The brothers and the Mother are masterly creations. Their callous barbarity would screw up with your mind. I was actually mentally cheering every act of retribution against them by the victims.

The acting is pretty decent. I could recognize only one actor, the one who plays a doctor in this. You may remember him as the guy from X Men United, the one who indulges in lip lock with the girl who has these powers of literally sucking the power by mere touch. 

The director is Mr. Bousman, the creator of past “gore fests with stories” like Saw 2,3 and 4. He brings his expertise and keeps the watcher interested for the most part.

It is a good movie, one which would give you an adrenaline rush and may just end up as being recommend by you to someone else as a balls-to-the-wall thrill ride.