In The Fade Review

Fatih Akin’s In The Fade is three films in one. It starts as a coruscating study of grief under unimaginable circumstances, segues into a gripping courtroom drama, then takes a last-act swerve into a vigilante thriller, all marinated in the context of the rise of the far right in Germany. If the last third doesn’t really live up to the unbridled power of the first and the genre-pleasing qualities of the second, the film as a whole is held together by a never better Diane Kruger, making her German-language film debut, and deservedly winning Best Actress at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Fatih Akin?s ?In the Fade? Is More Triumph Than Disaster is an unflinching study in loss. Sketching her loving relationship with her Kurdish husband (Homeland’s Acar) and son in quick, effective strokes, Akin knocks Katja Sekerci (Kruger) for six by blowing up her loved ones in a nail bomb attack, detailing the aftershock in forensic detail. Katja goes coffin shopping for caskets in two different sizes. The cops harangue her about her husband’s shady past and, in a stunningly mounted scene, almost does the unthinkable in a bathtub. Worst of all, she is forced to listen to the report of her dead son’s injuries in cold, detached tones. Neither Akin nor Kruger look away from the horror of the moment — they make Katja’s pain palpable.

After a Neo-Nazi couple (Hanna Hilsdorf, Ulrich Friedrich Brandhoff) are accused of the bombing, the film shifts to become a well engineered courtroom drama (based on real-life trials), the kind Hollywood regularly used to make in the ’90s. There’s a dashing prosecutor (Denis Moschitto) who gives applause-worthy speeches, a defence lawyer (Johannes Krisch) with a bald head and a big old scar, game-changing last minute witnesses, a perilous cross-examination, and a terrific small turn by Ulrich Tukur as the father who believes his Hitler-loving son is guilty. Fans of Brian De Palma will be delighted that Akin constantly breaks out the split diopter, putting Kruger’s face in close-up while keeping the background courtroom drama in pin-sharp clarity.

If you’ve only ever seen Kruger in Troy, the National Treasure series or even Inglourious Basterds, nothing will prepare you for what she brings to In The Fade. Tattooed and smoking cigarettes for Germany, she gives the film a real and raw potency, by turns bruised and vulnerable, then angry and resolute. She even makes the disappointing third act jump into Liam Neeson thriller territory compelling. From its nuanced, layered start, In The Fade goes on a sliding scale towards conventionality until a final moment that will leave you reeling. Then you’ll start talking.

Brigsby Bear review ? a picture of ursine isolation

If you can get past the fact that the film was precision-tooled for the quirky feelgood slot of the Sundance film festival; if you can forgive the glaring product placement and the nerd-gasm casting of Mark Hamill in a key role of a film about fan geekery, then there is a fair amount to recommend this solid feature debut.

A narrative that combines the domestic dysfunction of Yorgos Lanthimos?s Dogtooth with the unabashed movie-buff joy of Garth Jennings?s Son of Rambow or Michel Gondry?s Be Kind Rewind, this is a study of a very singular character, shaped ? or scarred ? by a unique upbringing.

Twentysomething James (Kyle Mooney, who also co-wrote the film) lives with his parents in an underground bunker, protected by an airlock from the poisoned atmosphere outside. The Austin Chronicle with the world is through a lo-fi television series about the galactic adventures of a large bear. ?Brigsby? turns out to be a care bear is consumed with Brigsby Bear. It is his creed, his guiding principle. He pores over each VHS-taped episode to winkle out hidden meanings. Then suddenly, Brigsby is no more and James learns that everything he had been raised to believe is a lie. Wrenched from the only life he has known, he clings to the thing to which he has always turned for solace: a squeaky-voiced, human-size bear locked in an endless conflict with a malevolent, disembodied head that mocks him from the sky. He sets out to finish Brigsby?s adventures with an amateur feature film.

AGE OF SUMMER

Producer: Bill Kiely and Joseph McKelheer Director: Bill Kiely Writer: David B. Harris and Bill Kiely Stars: Percy Hynes White, Jake Ryan, Charlotte Sabina, Diarmaid Mortagh, Peter Stormare, Jonathan Daviss, Kane Richotte, Mcabe Gregg and Brian Van Holt Studio: Freestyle Releasing

Imagine a pipsqueak version of ?Baywatch? melded with the syrupy nostalgia of ?The Wonder Years? and you?ll have some idea of what ?Age of Summer? is like. Bill Kiely?s coming-of-age-on-the- Movie Review: Predictable ?Age of Summer? grows on You is rambling and episodic, and it takes the lessons learned by its pint-sized protagonist all too seriously, but it?s innocuously good-natured and nicely shot, so one can?t be overly hard on it.

Set at California?s Hermosa Beach near Los Angeles in 1986, the movie focuses on the experiences of a kid nicknamed Minnesota (Percy Hynes White, looking a lot smaller than he does on the current Fox program ?The Gifted?) though he is actually a recent transplant from Chicago. He and his equally puny best friend Woods (Jake Ryan) have been accepted into the junior lifeguard program, a group of recruits whom a formidable figure named Tony (Diarmaid Murtagh) presides over in the demanding manner of a US Army drill sergeant.

While Tony puts Minnesota, Woods and the other youngsters through their paces on sand and sea, our hapless little hero is distracted by the disappearance of his prize possession, a BMX bike. Searching for it involves him with a couple of ne?er-do-wells nicknamed Pots (Kane Ritchotte) and Pans (Mcabe Gregg), who promise him information about its location if he?ll steal a marijuana plant from the pad of a hedonistic, near naked oddball called The Yizz (Brian Van Holt). When he does so?in a raucous, daytime theft?they point him toward a sort of local shaman called The Rock God (Peter Stormare) for advice.

Minnesota is also feeling the first pangs of teen rebellion, tasting his introductory beer and showing a greater interest in girls than Woods, who?s still into more juvenile pursuits. So he eagerly embraces the stash of magazines some of his beach buddies have hidden in a restroom, and aims to catch the eye of Brooke (Charlotte Sabina), a beautiful blonde. His interest in her also draws him more deeply into the big mystery of the summer? Movie Review: Predictable ?Age of Summer? grows on You of a surfer. That matter bookends the picture: at the start, posters are being put up asking for information about him, and at the end, his whereabouts are revealed, part of the process of Minnesota?s maturation.

Gaining new friends and interests, of course, also entails leaving other things behind, and ?Age of Summer? doesn?t ignore that. One casualty is Minnesota?s friendship with Woods, which at first seemed so central but by the close is pretty much gone. And another is that bicycle. The last shot suggests that what was once so important has become, in view of all that?s happened, a mere afterthought.

Gawky little White, who can register pain more easily than joy, makes an agreeable if hardly scene-stealing hero, and Ryan is a convincing nebbish. Sabina certainly fills her pinup-ready role well, and the other youngsters register decently in their intermittent turns. Among the adults Van Holt comes off worst, rampaging around like an even crazier version of Zach Galifianakis, but Stormare brings an air of stoic calm to the proceedings in his cameo. Best of all is Murtagh, who pulls off Tony?s cartoonish bombast but by the end has also revealed the heart behind it.

One of the pleasures of the movie is the cinematography of Darin Moran, which captures the crystalline brilliance of the beach and the ocean, giving the location the paradisiacal aura that the nostalgia-suffused tale demands. On the other hand, the pervasive narration is so flat, and so flatly delivered, that it saps some of the enjoyment from the images.

Netflixable? Nicolas Cage can do better than ?Looking Glass? these days

When you?re keeping to a movie a month schedule the way Nicolas Cage is, it?s a bit too much to expect every indie outing to be another ?Mom and Dad? (January?s dark delight) or the current buzz of Sundance, ?Mandy.?

Veteran Cage-watchers know that the vast bulk of the Oscar winner?s output these days, outside of killer cameos in major studio releases, is comprised of Netflix or VOD filler.

That?s where ?Looking Glass? fits into the Cage filmography. It?s a run-of-the-mill paranoid thriller set in a remote motel where Cage, as ?Ray,? starts to believe everybody?s out to get him. Because pretty much everybody is.

Nothing supernatural to see here, just a desert southwest chance for Ray and Maggie (Robin Tunney) to ?start over.? They need it, for reasons that become clear as the story unfolds.

Or unravels. Because the moment Maggie chirps, ?This all feels really good to mem Ray. I think we?re going to be real comfortable here,? Ray starts to have his doubts.

The ?regular? customers at the Motor Way Motel give him the willies. The service station across the street is run by the menacing desert cousins of those ?Deliverance? Georgians. The old owner of the motel, who fled the moment Ray?s check cleared, cannot be reached.

And there?s this crawl space behind the rooms. At every stop along its path, a one-way mirror is attached to the room?s wall. The creep inside the crawlway can watch truckers and hookers and the local dominatrix ply her trade. They all have their favorite rooms.

Before you know it, Ray?s the creep in question, peeping in on all kinds of ?Twin Peaks/Blue Velvet? perversions.

When the guest of one of the paying customers turns up dead on the evening news, Ray is alarmed. Because he knows she was there, and the only way he could know that is if he was checking out her naked activities in Room Six.

So telling Netflixable? Nicolas Cage can do better than ?Looking Glass? these days (veteran character actor Marc Blucas) is out of the question. Howard the sheriff seems awfully sure that Ray is in touch with the former owner, and that he?s been told?something.

Confronting Netflixable? Nicolas Cage can do better than ?Looking Glass? these days gets him in trouble, and a warning.

?You know, the more you watch, the less you feel.?

A dead pig in the pool, a cop asking more questions, somebody knows something and Maggie is both in the dark and in danger, thanks to Ray?s predicament.

Tunney is stuck playing a wife rendered unstable by whatever brought them there and Ray?s role in that. And Cage does a tamped-down version of his Everyman-We-Watch-Come-Unglued, as Ray.

Director Tim Hunter (?River?s Edge?) has been around long enough to know something about creating atmosphere and mystery. The formula for pictures like this set us up to root for Ray as he faces a town of ?Straw Dogs,? hostile locals who know his motel?s dirty secrets, who think he knows them and are determined to keep him quiet and compliant.

The wife is she who must be saved/protected/rescued from those locals.

?Looking Glass? drifts from that formula, but finds nothing that compelling to take its place. Cage is never less than interesting to watch, even in the worst movies, and this is far from that. But Ray is amped up, disturbed and yet passive at the same time.

Some scenes pack a punch (literally) and that sense of doom hanging over it all shows up here and there. But ?Looking Glass? fails to be anything more than another make-work project for the cinema?s busiest actor, a man with bills to pay and a conviction that the Devil finds work for idle hands.

It?s just that sometimes, it?s better to leave those hands idle than to take whatever the next offer you can squeeze in might be.

Reviews by David Nusair

casts Chlo� Grace Moretz as Susannah Cahalan, a reporter whose life is thrown into turmoil after she begins experiencing a series of inexplicable mental and physical complications. It's a fairly compelling premise that's employed to consistently underwhelming effect by writer/director Gerard Barrett, as the filmmaker proves perpetually unable to elevate the proceedings above the level of a generic disease-of-the-week drama - with the run-of-the-mill vibe elevated by a repetitive first half devoted primarily to Susannah's escalating symptoms (ie it's all just so one-note in its execution). Moretz's decent yet increasingly hysterical performance doesn't temper the movie's Lifetime-production atmosphere, to be sure, while the able supporting cast, which includes Richard Armitage, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Tyler Perry, is left floundering in underwritten characters that seem to have emerged directly from a template for movies of this ilk. (Only ThanosTV , cast as Susannah's work buddy, manages to make a positive impact.) It's surprising to note, then, that Brain on Fire does improve considerably as it passes the one-hour mark, as the movie, past that point, concerns itself less with Susannah herself and more with the various doctors attempting to diagnose her mysterious condition - with, especially, everything involving Navid Negahban's charismatic specialist faring far better than one might've anticipated (to the extent that it's impossible not to wish the movie were entirely about his character). The last-minute turnaround isn't enough to compensate for what's predominantly an underwhelming, half-baked endeavor, which is a shame, certainly, given the potential of the film's real-life origins and the effectiveness of its third act.

An unusual, not-entirely-successful drama, Heal the Living details the impact an impending heart transplant has on an assortment of disparate characters - including a compassionate medical specialist (Tahar Rahim's Thomas), a grieving mother (Emmanuelle Seigner's Marianne), and a woman (Anne Dorval's Claire) suffering from a terminal heart condition. Filmmaker Katell Quill�v�r�, working from a script cowritten with Gilles Taurand, does a nice job of initially drawing the viewer into the leisurely-paced proceedings, with the gripping opening stretch, detailing the exploits of an affable surfer, giving way to a first act that boasts a number of unexpectedly wrenching sequences (eg parents learn that their son is brain dead). The strength of Heal the Living's individual scenes is nevertheless unable to compensate for a decidedly erratic momentum, as Quill�v�r�'s relaxed approach prevents one from entirely embracing the film as a whole (ie there's a distinctly hit-and-miss atmosphere here) - with, for example, many of the interludes involving Dorval's character unable to match the impact of the movie's other subplots. And although the journey of the aforementioned heart from donor to recipient is admittedly quite interesting, Quill�v�r� dilutes the effectiveness of this arc by peppering it with distractingly graphic heart-surgery footage - which does, in the end, confirm Heal the Living's place as an all-too-uneven piece of work that never quite lives up to the promise of its stellar first act.

Treading familiar territory from start to finish, Home details the exploits of several aimless teens and the impact their actions have on the adults around them. It's a been-there-done-that premise that's utilized to sporadically affecting yet mostly underwhelming effect by filmmaker Fien Troch, as the director employs a deliberate pace that essentially (and effectively) highlights the less-than-engrossing elements within her and Nico Leunen's screenplay. There's little doubt, as well, that Troch's emphasis on a myriad of characters and their exploits is an ongoing problem, with the viewer's efforts at embracing the material stymied by an assortment of underwritten, one-dimensional protagonists (ie it's impossible to care or even distinguish between about half of these people). Home does, however, improve slightly as it progresses and as Troch narrows her focus, as the movie boasts a second half that does, at the very least, contain a small handful of engrossing story threads (including a seriously disturbing mother/son relationship). And yet the aimlessness that Troch has hard-wired into the narrative remains an issue throughout, with the movie fizzling out to a demonstrable degree long before it reaches its fairly inevitably conclusion - which, in the end, cements Home's place as yet another misfire from a frustratingly stagnant director (ie Troch's movies tend to boast strong moments lost beneath an excessively slow atmosphere).

watch arq 2016 -baked sci-fi endeavor, ARQ follows Robbie Amell's Renton and Rachael Taylor's Hannah as they find themselves caught in a time loop that resets each time they die - with the movie detailing their ongoing efforts at breaking the pattern and, essentially, saving the world. It's not necessarily the familiarity of the premise that triggers ARQ's downfall, as, to employ a fairly recent example, Edge of Tomorrow certainly managed to put a fresh and often engrossing spin on the Groundhog Day-inspired conceit. But filmmaker Tony Elliott proves unable or unwilling to do anything interesting with the genre-specific gimmick, and ARQ quickly settles into a repetitive (but in a bad way) midsection that's both overly claustrophobic and rife with frustratingly tedious conventions (ie those bad guys are just so generic). It goes without saying that there's a total lack of momentum at play here and although writer/director Elliott has given his protagonists end-of-the-world stakes, there's just never a point wherein one becomes wholly invested in the bland characters' success - which ultimately ensures that ARQ fizzles out to a rather distressing degree long before it reaches its admittedly intriguing final few minutes.

When We First Met Review: Adam Devine Tries His Shtick on Netflix

When that they were going to be releasing 80 (yes, eighty) original films in 2018, it was hard to imagine how they could possibly handle that kind of volume. At a time when more traditional outfits like Disney and Warner Bros. are distributing huge movies in small doses, it seemed unfathomable that a studio would be able to put out more than one new movie per week (even a studio that didn?t always have to deal with pesky industry headaches like shipping DCPs and informing customers that their movies exist). But here we are in early February, and Netflix?s agenda is already seeming all too fathomable.

The crux of their strategy ? the streaming giant?s ace in the hole ? couldn?t be clearer: They?re just going to release the movies that nobody else would.

That idea seems to be the one thing that all of the recent Netflix Originals have in common, but it?s a double-edged sword that means something different for each film. Nobody else would release Duncan Jones? forthcoming ?Mute? because it?s the kind of smart, challenging science-fiction that scares off most studios. Nobody else would release ?The Cloverfield Paradox? because it?s the kind of bland, incompetent science-fiction that makes people resent paying for a ticket. And nobody else would release ?When We First Met,? because it?s the kind of vaguely passable entertainment that wants points just for existing; a high-concept, low-reward comedy made with the same degree of ambivalence that the average Netflix user will bring to it when they stumble across the movie after 20 minutes of aimless scrolling.

click here for ?Workaholics? star Adam DeVine, ?When We First Met? is essentially ?Groundhog Day,? but instead of being about a dude who?s stuck in time, it?s about a dude who?s stuck in? wait for it? the friend zone! Yes, because what the world needs now is another movie about a guy violating every rule of the space-time continuum just to convince a resistant girl to have sex with him. Movies take a while to make, so it?s hard to blame director Ari Sandel (?The Duff?) for not reading the room, but Netflix has already proven that it?s never too late to just throw in a Cloverfield monster whenever things aren?t working. They might want to play that card more often.

Anyway, our story begins on November 1, 2017, when Noah Ashby (DeVine) shows up to Avery Martin?s (Alexandra Daddario) engagement party. We?re led to believe that these two chipper kids are getting married to each other, a long flashback walking us through the night they first met. It happened at a Halloween party three years earlier; he was Garth Algar, she was a Rockford Peach, and their meet-cute took them to a jazz bar with an old-timey photo booth before they wound up at her place.

Alas, Noah is something of an unreliable narrator, and it turns out that Avery is actually getting married to some square Abercrombie type named Ethan (Robbie Amell). Noah, distraught over watching his dream girl get away, gets drunk with her best friend, Carrie (? https://www.thanostv.org/movie/when-we-first-met-2018 ? star Shelley Hennig), revisits the aforementioned photo booth, and wishes that he hadn?t screwed things up. Before you even have time to groan at the idea of a magical photo booth, Noah has already been transported back to the morning of October 31, 2014. Ebola is on the front page of USA Today, Blueberry Red Bull hasn?t been invented yet, and Avery is still free to be manipulated into falling in love.

Written by John Whittington, but strikingly absent any of the blistering wit he brought to ?The LEGO Batman Movie? and ?The LEGO Ninjago Movie,? ?When We First Met? soon starts to resemble ?Bedazzled? more than ?Groundhog Day.? In part, that?s because the film only subjects us to a few rotations through that fateful night, Noah course-correcting for his behavior in a series of banal ways (one time he tries to be Avery?s perfect match, the next time he acts like a complete asshole, etc.). And in part, that?s because it isn?t very good.

From the start, Whittington?s script lays everything out so schematically that there?s little reason to keep watching for the story. As soon as Carrie tells Noah that healthy relationships are based on mutual chemistry more than one-sided desire, it?s blindingly obvious how things things are going to play out; Hennig makes Carrie into a supernova of easy charm, while Noah and Avery are so wrong for each other that the dullness of watching them together almost seems deliberate. Intentional or not, that?s a tough pill to swallow in a laugh-free movie that?s solely relying on the appeal of its star. Fans of DeVine?s exuberant brand of sarcasm might enjoy seeing his ?scrunched, insecure Van Wilder? shtick take center stage, but the actor has done so much solid work (?Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates,? ?Pitch Perfect?) that only the diehards should bother.

For the rest of you, the movie probably won?t be able to survive the realization that Noah is so narcissistic that he?s wasting a golden opportunity to negate the last few years of our sick, sad world. ?When We First Met? asks you to care about a character who travels back in time to 2014 and can only be bothered to care about his own dick. He doesn?t scream at the top of his lungs about Russia interfering with our elections; he doesn?t tell his friends to buy all the Bitcoin they can; he doesn?t even call Justin Timberlake and tell him to just, um, really think through his future choices. No, all he does is try to manipulate a nice stranger ? who is openly excited to have a new male friend in her life ? into spreading her legs for him.

It?ll take you roughly five minutes to realize that Noah is going about things the wrong way; it?ll take him more than 90. Somewhere, in the vast time between those two epiphanies, you might stop wondering why you?re watching this movie on Netflix, and start wondering why you?re watching it at all. Then you?ll remember that you?re watching it because it?s on Netflix, and just like that it will all make sense: Netflix can only release films that nobody else would because Netflix subscribers will watch films that nobody else could.

BRIGSBY BEAR

Producer: Andy Samberg, Jorma Tacone, Akiva Schaffer, William Rosenberg, Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Will Allegra, Mark Roberts, Al Di and Jason Zaro Director: Dave McCary Writer: Kevin Costello and Kyle Mooney Stars: Kyle Mooney, Greg Kinnear,, Jorge Lendeborg, Jr., Matt Walsh, Michaela Watkins, Mark Hamill, Claire Danes, Ryan Simpkins, Alexa Demie, Beck Bennett, Chance Crimin, Jane Adams, Kate Lyn Shell and Andy Samberg Studio: Sony Pictures Classics

Twee is the word that best describes ?Brigsby Bear,? an excessively precious, quirky little indie comedy with a remarkably sentimental streak. It will probably appeal to the crowd that embraced ?Napoleon Dynamite,? but its charms might elude most others.

Kyle Mooney, a ? Watch Brigsby Bear 2017 ? regular, plays James, one of those arrested-development man-children so numerous in today?s American pop culture. But unlike so many such characters, James has an excuse for his childishness and naivet�: he was kidnapped as an infant, and has spent twenty-five years living in an underground bunker with his supposed parents Ted and April Mitchum (Mark Hamill and Jane Adams), who teach him advanced mathematics and warn him about the horrors beyond their walls.

James? contact with the outside world is limited to watching an educational children?s show called ?Brigsby Bear,? in which the eponymous critter? http://tinyurl.com/y7vuq7nv in a big teddy bear suit?engages in animated outer-space adventures, teaching strange life lessons in the process. James is fanatical about the show, keeping tapes of every episode and blogging endlessly about it on the chat rooms he can access on his primitive computer.

His little world comes crashing down, however, when a police raid led by Detective Vogel (Greg Kinnear) rescues James and leads to the arrest of Ted and April, who are carted off in cuffs. He is soon reunited with his real parents, Greg and Louise Pope (Matt Walsh and Michaela Watkins), along with their cynical daughter Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins).

James has problems confronting the modern world, but the biggest hurdle is that he?s horrified to discover that the ?Brigsby Bear? show was made by Ted, an erstwhile toymaker, expressly for him, and there will be no further episodes. He reveals his agitation to Aubrey and her friends at a party, and the idea emerges to make a movie that will provide closure to the series?and by extension, the film suggests, allow James to move on with his life. One of Aubrey?s pals, Spencer (Jorge Lendeborg, Jr.), is an aspiring moviemaker who offers his considerable expertise to the project.

Thus the movie turns into a surrealistic take on the old ?let?s put on a show!? plot, with several cutesy twists. One involves convincing Vogel not only to give James access to the props from the show that were confiscated as evidence, but to indulge his own acting bug by taking a role in the picture. Another involves Spencer?s uploading of old ?Brigsby? episodes on YouTube, where they naturally develop a cult following. And there?s a turn for the worse when James? use of explosives during filming leads to his arrest and commitment to a mental hospital at the recommendation of his therapist (Claire Danes).

James escapes, however, and finds his parents?who, after initial resistance to his making the movie, have come to accept it as a good idea?now willing to help him finish it. He needs one last element, though?the proper voice for Brigsby, which Ted had always provided. And even after that problem is resolved, James is faced with the possibility that when others see the finished product, they might laugh it off the screen.

The curious thing about ?Brigsby Bear? is that while the premise might seem designed as the basis for a snarky satire, it turns out that the makers have used it to confect a strangely sappy, feel-good piece about acceptance and family instead, and the picture stumbles on its hipster whimsicality. It has its good points?Kinnear, for instance, is quite amusing as a fellow who really, really wants to act, anywhere in anything, and Lendeborg brings a nicely laid-back attitude to his scenes. Overall, though, the movie, slackly directed by Mooney?s longtime collaborator Dave McCary, comes off as an old little exercise in pop psychology, and Mooney himself as an acquired taste.

The production is pretty tacky?whether by intent or from financial necessity?with the ?Brigsby Bear? sequences possessing a deliberately absurd, homemade quality. It takes a suspension of disbelief to accept?as the movie posits?that they could ever appeal to anyone but the single person for whom they were made, but in an age that embraces the movies shown on ?Mystery Science Theatre? and the stuff people post on internet sites, anything is possible.

Jackals Movie Review & Film Summary (2017)

Maybe that?s the intention of this lean, mean slab of B-horror trash: to set you on edge and keep you there long after it?s over. If so, director Kevin Greutert (the sixth and seventh ?Saw? movies) certainly achieves his goals efficiently, and admittedly he features some artfully startling imagery. But the film?s ultimate nihilism makes the whole exercise seem like an annoyingly pointless waste of time?even for a movie that?s barely 80 minutes long.

Working from a screenplay by Jared Rivet, Greutert gets down to business quickly, revealing a husband and wife and their daughter being slaughtered with scissors in their beds in the middle of the night. The silent assailant catches a glimpse of himself in a full-length mirror after the bloodshed is done: He?s wearing an animal mask.

The meat of the story though?which we?re told is based on true events from March 1983?concerns a different family, one that?s trying to extricate its 20-something son from the same murderous cult that includes the killer from the film?s start. They?ve hired a swaggering ex-Marine named Jimmy (a tatted and stubbly Stephen Dorff) to kidnap the young man while he?s driving along a country road, throw him in a van and drag him back to their comfortable, secluded cabin in the California woods.

There, Jimmy is to deprogram Justin (Ben Sullivan) with the help of the mixed-up young man?s family: father Andrew (Johnathon Schaech), mother Kathy (Deborah Kara Unger) and younger brother Campbell (Nick Roux), as well as Justin?s ex-girlfriend Samantha (Chelsea Ricketts), who?s also the mother of his infant daughter.

?I?m going to ask you to do some of the hardest things you?ve ever done in your whole life,? Jimmy says to prepare them for the ordeal ahead, as if they?re about to conduct an exorcism. And the crazed look in Justin?s eyes as he screams and writhes against the ropes that bind him to a chair suggests he is indeed possessed.

Trouble is, Justin doesn?t want to be deprogrammed. He likes his life in the cult. And the cult members like having him around, as evidenced by the speedy way they track him down and surround the cabin. The sight of them is eerie at first?clad in all black with their various animal masks silhouetted against the headlights that pierce the misty, forest darkness. Every once in a while, one of them lets out a howl, and then the rest of them howl back in response. They?re serious about this whole role-playing thing.

But that?s about all that defines the cult members in this ?Straw Dogs?-style showdown. They? http://ow.ly/jjUw101nKX7 , faceless, voiceless. Such ambiguity doesn?t add to the sense of mystery, however. It actually makes them less intriguing?and less fearsome?as a villainous force. All they want is their man back, and they?re willing to cause massive amounts of bloody carnage to get him. They?re kind of boring in their single-mindedness, to be honest.

Meanwhile, Rivet?s script errs in the opposite direction when it comes to the folks inside the cabin: They?re stuck with http://bit.ly/2ri7B15 . Justin?s family members stand around explaining themselves to each other and airing pent-up resentments while the threat continues to close in on them from all sides. (They also take time to craft makeshift weapons out of kitchen utensils, though, which is clever.)

But it?s clear pretty early on that whatever steps they take to protect themselves will be futile. They?re massively outnumbered, and ?Jackals? isn?t exactly a feel-good, come-from-behind underdog story. Besides, Justin is so unrepentant and cruel that it?s a wonder the family doesn?t just give him back. And Greutert, a longtime editor, can only hold the tension of the cult members? threat for so long.

Loveless Movie Review & Film Summary (2017)

In mid-November I spent a week in St. Petersburg, Russia, as part of an international group of critics invited to participate in the first FIPRESCI Colloquium on Russian Cinema, which involved screenings of new Russian films and discussions with their makers. While Russia?s two best-known directors, Andrey Zvyagintsev and Alexander Sokurov, were not a part of the event, they were referred to often, and not always admiringly. At one point, a skeptical Russian asked me if Zvyagintsev was so esteemed in the West because his films portrayed Russia in such a negative light.

I replied that I heard the same question when I started visiting Iran in the 1990s. Some conservative Iranians felt sure directors such as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf won acclaim at Cannes and similar festivals because their films showed poor people and crumbling villages rather than the sleek, prosperous Tehran on view in other films. I told them that I thought these directors? renown had a lot less to do with their subjects than with their strong, humanistic authorial voices and distinctive stylistic sophistication.

The same might be said of Zvyagintsev, who leapt onto the world stage when his first film, ?The Return,? won the Golden Lion at Venice and whose last film, ?Leviathan,? won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Film. Like the Iranians before him, the Russian auteur became a favorite at top-tier film festivals with movies whose seriousness of purpose and stylistic �lan positioned him squarely in the modernist tradition of international art films.

Indeed, Zvyagintsev compares his new film ?Loveless,? a searing drama about a couple going through a bitter divorce, with Ingmar Bergman?s ?Scenes from a Marriage.? For films offering highly critical looks at modern life and its inmates, there are of course many other directors one could also reference, ranging from Michelangelo Antonioni to Michael Haneke.

Yet Antonioni and Haneke both moved from country to country and their works could be seen as dealing more with modernity or the prosperous West than with one particular country. Not so with Zvyagintsev. In a way that recalls R.W. Fassbinder?s adversarial relationship with Germany, his films are very much critiques of Russia, its soul and contemporary discontents.

For that reason, ?Loveless? can be seen not just as a drama of marital dysfunction but as a fierce metaphorical indictment of the society that produced its characters. Its story is easily sketched in. The marriage of Boris (Alexey Rozin) and Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) has already collapsed when we first see them. They?re trying to sell their apartment, where she is still living with their 12-year-old son, Alyosha (Matvey Novikov). The boy is the big casualty in this battle, and no wonder. When husband and wife argue over the kid?s future, it?s clear that neither of them wants him. He reportedly spends a lot of his time crying.

In watch loveless 2017 ?s first hour, Zvyagintsev looks at the lives that Boris and Zhenya live apart from each other, each with a different work situation and new partners. Then, abruptly, Alyosha is reported missing. The story?s second hour is a procedural about the search for the boy, which involves a coordinated effort by the authorities and teams of volunteers but no reconciliation or renewed affection between his bitterly estranged parents.

The lives of Boris and Zhenya illuminate different aspects of current Russian reality. He works for a conservative tech company run by religious people who expect their employees all to be married with kids; bucking that regimen, which Zhenya acidly calls ?Russian Orthodox Shariah Law,? means risking one?s job. So, Boris is nervously looking for ways to conceal his divorce, though he?s already got a new girlfriend who?s very pregnant. For her part, Zhenya has a boyfriend who?s a part of the new economic elite, so romance and social climbing are indistinguishable for her.

The way Zvyagintsev portrays this world is cold and clinical, just as its people are isolated in self-absorption. Zhenya, a cool, svelte narcissist, is almost never without her smartphone, taking selfies or checking Facebook. Hardly any movie has depicted technological solipsism with the ferocity of this film. There?s a great shot where Zhenya? Watch Loveless 2017 on a train and, as it pulls into the station, literally everyone waiting to get off is staring into their phones.

The film?s title couldn?t be more accurate. The couple?s marriage, according to Zhenya, was loveless from the first?at least for her. She got pregnant and was scared of having an abortion or having the kid alone, so she chose marriage. Where does this willingness for a loveless coexistence come from? Zvyagintsev suggests an answer when the couple, looking for Alyosha, visit Zhenya?s mom and find a stocky, religious battle axe who?s ready to heap abuse on both of them. This ?Stalin in a skirt,? as Boris calls her, may be a deviation into uncharacteristic heavy-handedness for Zvyagintsev, but she makes a point about family failings that?s brutally clear.

One thing that?s fascinating in the story?s second half is the amount of expertise and effort that?s expended on searching for Alyosha. Zvyagintsev has suggested that it reflects a time in society when people, perhaps afraid of confronting their personal problems, look outward for causes to help them feel better about themselves.

WHEN THE DAY COMES Offers Timely and Powerful History Lesson

Save the Green Planet director Jang Joon-hwan mobilizes dozens of familiar faces, including The Chaser and The Yellow Sea stars Kim Yun-seok and Ha Jung-woo, for a weighty and powerful dramatization of the birth of Korean democracy. Following a slew of other politically-minded films, the sprawling protest drama 1987: When the Day Comes caps off what has been a tumultuous year for Korea that began with millions on the streets and resulted in the scandalous downfall of a polarizing head of state.

In early 1987, student protester Park Jong-chul died as a result of excessive torture. In the months that followed, several people worked behind the scenes to keep the death under wraps while journalists, students and even rogue district attorneys and prison guards attempted to reveal the truth. His death served as a catalyst for the June Democratic Uprising which quickly changed the political landscape of the country.

Four months ago, A Taxi Driver, a drama about foreign journalist J�rgen Hinzpeter trying to report on the Gwangju Massacre in 1980, became the year's biggest hit. In many ways, 1987 picks up where that left off, as the protests that the murdered student had participated in were a continuation of the resistance against the dictatorial President Chun Doo-hwan that kicked off in Gwangju. A secret university group even shows the footage shot by Hinzpeter to try and convert fellow students to their cause.

Unlike most of Korea's big screen takes on the darkest days of its modern history, this one sidesteps planting any melodramatic foundations as it begins with the young student's still warm body lying on a concrete floor as doctors are brought in through a back entrance to try and resuscitate him. http://tinyurl.com/yc49brry up the chain of command and then across it when the cover-up begins, while a few crumbs get picked up by those just around the edges, which introduces us to a dizzying amount of characters in a short amount of time.

Yet even after a lengthy build-up through several layers of government, media and society, many of the film's key players have yet to be introduced. As 1987 moves into its midsection, the characters who will impact the film the most dramatically are slyly introduced while some administrative cogs fade into the background. The death of Park Jong-chul is a formative moment of Korean history that every local viewer will be intimately familiar with, so while the opening salvo ably fires up the dormant outrage that lies within the country's citizens, Jang and screenwriter Kim Kyung-chan wisely break away from a foregone conclusion to focus on dramatic elements that are eventually deployed in a cathartic finale.

Jang has a formidable cast at his disposal and remarkably, all of them, even those appearing in just a handful of scenes, are at the top of their game. Kim Yun-seok's interrogation chief sends chills every time he appears while Ha Jung-woo plays a charismatic (when isn't he?) DA in a role that's smaller but also far more effective than his guardian angel in the fantasy epic Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds, also out in late December.

Following A Taxi Driver, Yoo Hae-jin excels as an affable and conflicted prison guard, while The Handmaiden's breakout star Kim Tae-ri shows her mettle and charm once more as a young student caught up in the chaos. Several other standouts include Park Hee-soon (V.I.P.) as the grizzled interrogator responsible for the incident, Lee Hee-joon's (Worst Woman) determined journalist, Seol Kyung-gu's (Public Enemy) resistance figure in hiding and Gang Dong-won (The Priests) as another student protester.

From early on, the camera pours over the cast's eclectic faces from sharp and sometimes hidden vantage points as cinematographer Kim Woo-hyung gives the film an in-the-moment immediacy, while also peppering the film with some more thoroughly staged scenes, such as a thrilling and kaleidoscopically lit church-set cat-and-mouse sequence. ThanosTV will be a treat to see what Kim brings to his next project, Park Chan-wook's upcoming BBC series The Little Drummer Girl. Meanwhile, sharp editing by Yang Jin-mo deftly weaves through the film's many overlapping narratives and points of view.

'Upgrade' review: Digital cockroaches replace human brains in this extremely gory thriller

The fairly peppy, extremely gory science fiction thriller ?Upgrade? was originally titled ?Stem,? referring to a digital cockroach (?a new, better brain,? its pale inventor notes) implanted in the body of the protagonist. The time is the near future. The place is a world of driverless cars and Siri-like communications and control systems designed to reassure the human population while undermining its autonomy in this forbidding vision of Earth as a hellhole of convenience.

Our hero is an analog tough guy, a mechanic who loves tinkering with late 20th century muscle cars. The mechanic?s name is Grey Trace because the name Speckuva Human was already taken, and he?s played by Logan Marshall-Green, an actor of considerable, nimble physicality and trace elements of Ashton Kutcher in his line readings.

Writer-director Leigh Whannell gets right to it. Grey and his corporate drone wife, Asha (Melanie Vallejo), become victims of a brutal mugging that leaves Asha mortally wounded and Grey hanging on for dear life, while surveillance drones capture it all live. At death?s door, Grey?s saved by a complete artificial overhaul, including the smartbug critter invented by the tech genius with the sallow complexion (Harrison Gilbertson, on what might be termed a Jared Leto summer internship). This renders him superhumanly lethal and superDUPER fast with the knife and martial arts skills.

?Upgrade? follows a straight line, as Grey pursues the thugs who offed his wife. All the while the voice of the robo-roach purrs in his brain, giving him instructions, reminding him when it?s time to let the bug inside take control of the operating system, aka Grey?s bio-engineered body. The movie is basically 95 minutes with a really, really skillful tech support person. Simon Maiden provides the voice, and if he?s not the guy who does the voice prompts for United Airlines? 800 number, he?s the guy they should call when the other guy is busy.

watch upgrade 2018 of blood and viscera with the occasional witty rejoinder. (It? Watch Upgrade 2018 to hear the voice nag its humanoid host to ?clean up the vomit in the sink.?) Grey?s adversaries include a hired gun whose gun is concealed inside his forearm. I?ve sort of had it with that stuff. More interesting by far is Betty Gabriel, the ringer of the ?Get Out? ensemble cast. Here she makes do as the police detective assigned to solve the murder of Asha and to shovel the exposition, and investigate why Grey, who uses a wheelchair after the initial attack, keeps turning up in the vicinity of dead bodies in rough parts of town. (The movie was made in Melbourne, Australia.)

Whannell was a key collaborator on the ?Saw? franchise, as well as the ?Insidious? franchise, and he remains devoted to body horror for shock effect. We?re constantly witnessing sliced jawbones and severed whatevers, and as director (this is his second feature) Whannell is learning how forward motion can allow a filmmaker to get away with some pretty outlandish brutality. I wish the talk-dependent sequences weren?t so foreshadowed and clunky; only Gabriel transcends them. It?s time for the Blumhouse empire, the shrewd paragon of the off-formula low-budget genre picture, to take this performer off the sidelines and onto her own damn movie.

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The Austin Chronicle

Asger Holm (Cedergren) is not a good cop. Watch The Guilty 2018 's made abundantly clear in the opening moments of Danish police drama The Guilty. After all, if he was a good cop, then he wouldn't be working the phones at a dispatch center. http://ow.ly/MVzb101nKyd 's clearly very good at police work, discerning within seconds the dirty little secrets behind every caller – the john rolled by a hooker, the speed addict who's freaking out – and he gives them just as much time as he thinks they deserve. That's what makes him a bad cop, that dismissiveness and arrogance, the conviction that he's above it all, and that he will skate on whatever unnamed crime got him temporarily stuck on desk duty.

What causes this cloak of hubris to unravel is a call from Iben (Dinnage), who he quickly discerns has been kidnapped. The who, what, where, and why of her abduction is what drives Holm and the story, with one added wrinkle: He can't leave the station. Everything he does is by phone, whether it's trying to get what little information he can from Iben, or dispatching other agencies, or calling in favors from his partner, Rashid (Shargawi), who is also his prime defense witness in his upcoming misconduct hearing.

Such single-location dramas have long been a mainstay of TV, where a well-executed bottle episode (think Breaking Bad's "Fly") can be a quiet, defining moment for the show. Yet in film the convention often falls into dramatic hyperbole (think of Phone Booth's godlike sniper), or become afraid of their own high concept, and bolt for open space (cf The Call). However, this chilling, thrilling police procedural never once leaves the two adjoining rooms of the dispatch office. Moreover, the story never artificially raises the stakes, because the script (written by Möller and Emil Nygaard Albertsen) understands that a kidnapping in which the rescuer is as restrained as the victim is tense enough. So it's up to Cedergren to carry the lean, subtle drama. He does more than that: As a man becoming increasingly aware of his own limitations, he makes every heart-stopping, and often heart-wrenching, moment carry weight and motivation.

The Spy Who Dumped Me

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There?s an appealingly shaggy buddy comedy hidden somewhere inside of The Spy Who Dumped Me, but good luck finding it amid all the desperate poop jokes, lifeless action sequences, and lazy plot mechanics. The film teams Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon as directionless thirtysomething best friends whose lives are turned upside down when Audrey (Kunis) discovers that Drew (Justin Theroux), the handsome boyfriend who recently ghosted her, isn?t just a guy who hosts an NPR podcast about jazz and economics, but a gun-toting, globe-trotting C.I.A. agent embroiled in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse over that most enduring of spy-film MacGuffins: a flash drive. When Drew is brutally murdered before their eyes, Audrey and her bestie, Morgan (McKinnon), set off for Europe to get to the bottom of an international conspiracy.

The rest of Susanna Fogel?s film is bog-standard espionage business, from secret rendezvous to surveillance antics. And it?s all studded with indifferently staged shootouts, car chases, and hand-to-hand combat? ThanosTV that are neither outlandish enough to be humorous nor executed well enough to work as legitimate action sequences. Instead, they?re just kind of there, signifying excitement without actually producing it at any point. The filmmakers are strangely fond of deploying bloodshed as a kind of shock punchline, introducing some goofy comedic side character and then abruptly killing him off, a technique that tends to feel arbitrary and even a little bit ugly.

The film?s blas� attitude toward violence feels out of step with the low-key comedic energy of its leads, who have the buzzy chemistry of a classic comedy duo like Martin and Lewis: McKinnon the wacky, rubber-faced clown and Kunis her debonair straight-woman. The Spy Who Dumped Me only really starts humming when it gives McKinnon the room to work her unpredictable comedy magic?twisting her body like a pretzel and belting out her lines in weird sing-song cadences?and Kunis has to bring her back down to Earth.

Missing Review - Hindi Movie Missing Review

What a great cast! Manoj Bajpayee and Tabu! You do not want to remember their earlier films together which were nothing but disastrous: Gaath and Dil Pe Mat le Yaar (both released in the year 2000). Unfortunately, this time too the duo simply fails to deliver.

How they ham! Sushant Dubey (Manoj Bajpayee) tries really hard to be sleazy to the receptionist at the hotel, staring at her cleavage. He just does such a terrible job of it, and looks uncomfortable saying things like, 'My wife and daughter will leave in the morning, do you think I will need a single room?'

Aparna Dubey (Tabu) is made to carry a blanket stuffed with pillows that does not remotely look like a child. Effort from the production team is zilch. Movies of the seventies and eighties made more effort when they showed bodies going over a cliff than shown here. It's obvious that there is no child.

You don't even wish to groan about very obvious inaccuracies: the child is three years old, and Tabu is carrying baby diapers for her, and you are alarmed at the pills! Most pediatricians prescribe syrups to babies and toddlers and not pills!

There is a brief moment where you are forced to watch a love-making scene between the Dubeys and you know they are unhappy doing what they are made to do. Thankfully their roll in the bed is fuzzed out of focus.

http://ow.ly/YLJ4101nKXd is missing by the morning. We discover many things about Sushant and Tabu and how they met. What you don't understand are Tabu's motives for anything she does and Sushant's either. If your met someone, and they carried a chopper in a baby's diaper bag, you would put as much distance between you as it was possible, no? Maybe that is the mystery.

Alas, it is for Inspector Buddhu (Annu Kapoor who was last seen hamming it in Baaa Baa Black Sheep) and his Tweedledee and Tweedledum cop duo assistants who have to solve the mystery of the missing kid. Their supposed Shenanigans are so tedious, you are too exhausted to ask the writer director how he managed to sell such tiresomeness to the production house?

Perhaps Tabu's face has undergone some reengineering (the stars are in the business of looking good, so we're not complaining!) and that is why she looks odd initially, but then everything she says is either shrill or vapid, you begin to look out for scenes with Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Of course, not one police officer bothers to check or even confiscate Manoj Bajpayee's cell phone to corroborate the stories he's telling. The background music tries really hard to create some sort of ambience but ends up being super annoying. Even worse is Annu Kapoor speaking Hindi in a Bihari accent and even speaking French (so grating to the ears!) to prove that he is indeed Mauritian.

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies Movie Review: Laugh of the Titans

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If you've spent time pondering such weighty questions as what heroes-in-training might do during their downtime, Cartoon Network's Teen Titans Go! has plenty of answers for you. So many, in fact, that the scrappy comedic series has spawned its own film: "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies." This bright, noisy, quick-witted animated entry joins the glut of superhero movies that have clogged multiplexes over the past few years - and promptly makes its bones by proceeding to poke fun at the genre's many now-risible tropes, often with hilarious results.

The Teen Titans crew consists of Batman's sidekick Robin (Scott Menville); alien princess Starfire (Hynden Walch); Raven (Tara Strong), who happens to be the daughter of a demon; the robotically enhanced Cyborg (Khary Payton, The Walking Dead); and shapeshifter Beast Boy (Greg Cipes). They do some crimefighting, but rather than dealing with heavy-hitters they take out lighter-side baddies like Balloon Man (amusingly voiced by James Corden), an incongruously weighty inflatable villain who attacks via deceptively cute balloon animals. Balloon Man's rampage seems destined to destroy numerous city blocks until he's easily defeated by a projectile to the butt - and the fart jokes ensue.

But the occasional bathroom humor aimed at the kiddie set is more than balanced here by witty volleys, sharp split-second visual gags, effectively sketched facial expressions that serve as wordless punchlines, and a surprisingly sophisticated take on the superhero genre. The main plot kicks in when the Titans run into Superman (Nicholas Cage, "Mom and Dad") on his way to the premier of Batman's latest movie. (The title of this one? "Batman, Again.") Our heroes sneak into the theater - they're too small-time to be on the guest list that includes such A-list� crimefighters as Batman himself (Jimmy Kimmel), the Flash (Bill Hader, Barry), Wonder Woman (singer/songwriter Halsey), Aquaman (Eric Bauza, "The Emoji Movie"), and Atom (Patton Oswalt). Seated in the front row during the previews, Robin gets excited about the prospect of starring in his own movie one day. Alas, it's not in the cards, as we learn in a hilarious sequence that Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred (Ty Burrell, Modern Family), the Batmobile, and even Batman's utility belt are all getting the Hollywood treatment ahead of the Boy Wonder.

This fuels Robin's determination to join the superhero elite as an action star, so the Titans are off to the Warner Bros studio lot, where they gawk at the iconic water tower ("Hey, the Animaniacs live there!") and sneak in to see the number one director of superhero action movies, Jade Wilson (Kristen Bell, "Bad Moms"). The film has fun with a quick setup here where Batman and Superman are shooting a lugubrious dramatic scene on an obligatorily rain-drenched soundstage. ThanosTV down Robin's offer to star in a movie, so it's off to solve the apparent problem: the Teen Titans decide they need an arch-nemesis to make them more dramatically appealing to the superstar director.

Soon the Titans are wrangling with Slade (Will Arnett, "The LEGO Movie"), a bad guy whose name is really fun to say in a dramatic voice and whose suspicious resemblance to Deadpool is the source of a couple of great one-liners. It's just one of the many entertainingly meta moments that demonstrate both the sharp eye and the clear affection that writers Michael Jelenic and Aaron Horvath have for the genre. But they're not limited to skewering just the current superhero trend: there's also a funny sendup of "The Lion King," a satisfying takedown of Shia LaBeouf ("Transformers"), and a brilliant throwaway line about "Gene Hackman's real-estate scheme" that's a fun wink to older audience members who will recall the first time that the Man of Steel hit the silver screen.

October movie review: The real winner here is writer Juhi Chaturvedi

There are several things about October that demand appreciation, the chief of which is that this film has been written, not constructed. The real winner here, by miles, is the writer Juhi Chaturvedi.

Two hotel management trainees, Dan (Dhawan) and Shiuli (Sandhu) forge an unlikely bond in the most trying of circumstances. The film is a gentle unfolding of love and loss and longing, and takes its time getting to where it?s headed. Calling it slow would be to entirely miss the point, because the rhythms of life cannot be fast-forwarded.

In a Bollywood still all at sea when it comes to credible relationship dramas, it?s good to see attention being paid to life?s wholly unexpected stutters and halts, where background music is not used as a crutch, and whose young people interact with each pretty much the way the young do: the film is set in Delhi, a city director Shoojit Sircar is familiar with, and that adds to the feeling of welcome realism.

Equally crucial, the film tells us that romance doesn?t necessarily have to play out in the metric of song-and-dance-and-high-pitched-melodrama; that it can be low-key, and unusual, can be conducted through speaking glances, rather than words.

October reminds you strongly of last year?s The Big Sick whose two lead protagonists find themselves spending large chunks of their time in a hospital, she beset by a serious illness, and he trying to figure out stuff.

October has a young man trying to figure out stuff, too: this is Dhawan?s most life-like character till now (his last outing was Judwaa 2 in which he plays a version of himself, aping Salman Khan via Govinda). Dan is a fairly trying fellow, always reluctant to buckle down and do the back-breaking scutwork that comes with his territory, always trying to cut corners.

His realization that he may have meant something more than just an irritating colleague to the limpid eyed Shiuli is a bit sudden, but we let it go, because we get drawn into the world of hospitals and artificial lights and life support systems, where the two are ably supported by solid performers. There are http://ow.ly/8XxB101nKXJ , almost making us forget that we never quite know why Dan behaves in such a surly, entitled fashion, but that?s a crucial hole.

As Shiuli?s suffering yet stoic mother, Gitanjali Rao shows us the pain of a woman who doesn?t know what?s right, but also knows the power of love. She shares the film?s most moving scene with Dan?s mother (Rachica Oswal, in a terrific walk-on part) where the two women speak of children, growing up, and responsibility, and how it can mean different things to different people. There?s such a strong connection between these two women who?ve met for the first time, and may never meet again. Ironically, the thing between Dan and Shiuli, built up through the film, never has this much feeling.

Also Read | October movie release LIVE UPDATES: Review, audience reaction and more

Sandhu is lovely and tender. It is a wonderful debut. And yet, despite all these astutely done bits and bobs, October doesn?t come as together as have the two earlier ventures of Sircar and Chaturvedi, Vicky Donor and Piku. That?s squarely down to Dhawan, whose stardom is clearly a double-edged sword: it is both an advantage and a weak link. From Badlapur on, it? http://tinyurl.com/ycyxg3gb that Dhawan wants to stretch himself and do all kinds of roles. Which is great, because films like October will go out widely because of Dhawan, but it also leads to a kind of dilution.