Jupiter's Legacy - TV series review, now streaming on Netflix, May 2021

Meh! 

That probably sums up the feeling after watching Season 1 of Jupiter’s Legacy, one of the new additions to Netflix, and apparently in the 'top 10’ in India right now. 

Not, that this is a new feeling. So many of the OTT series we end up watching, leave us with this feeling. It’s the feeling when on one side we feel cheated at having invested the time day after day to finish the season. While on the other side, reminding ourselves ‘what would we have done with that time anyway’, being stuck at home in a lockdown! Fair enough, says Netflix back to you. One more series, one more week passing by, moving on.

Based on the comic book series of the same name by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely, #JupitersLegacy is set in modern-day America, a world filled with superheroes and supervillains belonging to the group called Union. Born over generations, since the 1920s, when an original group of 5 ordinary men (and a woman) are gifted superpowers on a remote island after they are considered ‘worthy’, this motley of young, old, and middle-aged superheroes are fighting crime, supervillains, cosmic disasters, and their own internal feuds and politics. All this, while maintaining the “code” - the all-important set of 2 rules that they all live by, (remember the age-old superhero adage “with great power comes great responsibility”) Rule #1. They will never govern Rule#2. They will never take a life. And as the 21st-century world gets worse with every passing day, living by these codes gets harder and stokes an inner conflict within the Union. Between the traditional-and-still-the-most-powerful stalwarts (most significantly driven by their leader, the Utopian) and the others, especially the younger generation superheroes, including his own son, Brandon, the successor and the future Utopian. This becomes the central plot, along with a myriad of battles between the good and the bad guys, the emergence of an all-powerful Thanos-like villain, Blackstar, and parenting troubles all around between the super-parents and their super-children. 

With so many supers in one series, one would have expected at least some good action, if not a good story. But the series disappoints in both. There is some action here and there, and a semblance of a story. But between problem children and tracing the origins of their power in the 1920s, the series loses its bearing. The series is not able to get its point of view right. It is very American in its sensibility, but it’s neither the collective-patriotic-American-Marvel nor the individualistic-dark-American-DC and without an overall point of view on life, it fails to connect with the audience. The loose narrative around trying to live by the morals and a code, in a world that increasingly doesn’t have a place for it, is poorly delivered and fails to lift the story-telling. The actors deliver average performances, themselves struggling to be convinced about their characters. 

As the fumbling scenes get to the season-ending-climax of a cliff-hanger, we are left with a big fat “meh”

Unfortunately, the only legacy that this series leaves behind, is our all-precious TV remote, which numbly reaches out to browse for the next series that we’re willing to give our not-so-precious time to. 

Nomadland, 2020 - Film Review, now streaming on Hotstar

The popular explanation for the origins of the word “movie” is that it’s a short form for ‘moving picture’. In short, a picture that moves. Also by extension then, a movie by definition is something that “moves you”. 

If so, #Nomadland is for sure, one masterpiece of a “movie”. 

Watch this beautiful poetry of a film that moves you from the first scene to the last, as the protagonist Fern (Francis McDormand) herself moves from one place to another, along with her moving “home” - her prized and only possession, where she now belongs, her van.

I wish I could have seen this movie in the theatres because that’s where it’s meant to be seen, and heard, and felt. 

A movie that invites you into a world that, just like Fern, you didn’t know could exist, but that soon becomes the only world that could possibly exist. A world that becomes a counterpoint to the one which we modern-day urbanites call normal. In that sense, Nomadland challenges “Normal-land” and forces us to ask the question, what’s normal about modern-day urban living, anyway. The Verve 90s classic Bitter-sweet symphony ringing in my ears “Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, that's life… Tryna make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die”. A world we have created that binds us to our possessions, things we buy and consume, till they are over, starting the cycle of buying and consuming all over again, and again. Till these things consume us and we leave them behind, once it’s time to say goodbye. 

What if we broke this cycle while we still have life left in us, while we still can. What if we gave up these ‘things’ in our life that hold us back, bog us down, trap us into believing that they give us happiness. Will we experience true freedom then? Can we experience this liberation during our lifetime, before the end? Before it’s too late? Hasn’t this what the pandemic really taught us. To stop. To pause. To step back. "It really is enough", says the wise old bat flying away in the sky. 

It really isn’t normal-land, my dear fellow human beings. 

Welcome to Nomadland, where being “house-less” doesn’t mean the same as being “home-less”.

Based on real events detailed out in the non-fiction book of the same name by Jessica Bruder, Nomadland gets it right with its almost-documentary style telling of the story of Fern, and her life after she loses everything when the town she has lived all her life shuts down, as the biggest corporation of the city goes under. Losing her husband and her city, she is forced to set out in a van-turned-into-home around America, where she meets like-minded people, makes friends, and discovers a whole new way of living, where the word ‘settling down’ takes the new meaning of ‘moving on'. 

While the film shows a mirror to our times, it equally opens a window to another choice of life. That’s the beauty of this movie. Of the window, that when you open becomes a door of possibilities, of seeing what the world and people could be, and perhaps should be. In that, contrary to what it might seem at first, the oscar-winning Normadland is an optimistic movie, a feel-good movie, a movie with hope, a movie with life.

As always (and once again winning the oscar) Francis McDormand does a fabulous job of portraying her complex character, vulnerable-yet-proud, independent yet craving someone in her life, missing her past but ready for her future, anxious about letting go, yet knowing that that is her truth, anchored by the love for her now-dead husband yet happy to be free of that very anchor that held her back. We see Fern grow through the course of the film, finding her way of life, the life that she never knew was hers to live, and yet a life that somehow she always knew was hers to live. The beautiful turning point in the film is when she commits to her new life after she rejects her wanderer-friend’s offer to stay with him in his comfortable, idyllic country home.

Well deserved Oscar for Chloe Zhao, the director, who manages to create the fine balance between real-life documentary and storytelling with deep emotions. The soul-moving music by composer, Ludovico Einaudi, lifts the film and completes this emotional experience powerfully. 

Since it’s an experience movie, not a plot movie, watch it when you have that mind-space at home, and let the movie take over. Not one to watch while multi-tasking on your phone on social media!

In that sense, a perfect Covid era film that takes social distancing to a whole new level, as Fern distances herself from many things of the world, and gets closest to the one thing that matters the most, herself. 

Roohi, Netflix 2021- Movie Review

Remember Stree. Forget it.

Remember the scare. Forget that too.

Remember the laughs. Forget it, almost.

And most of all, remember the point of view. Forget it completely!

I remember ending my review of Stree  (https://books-booze-boxoffice.blogspot.com/2018/09/stree-2018-movie-review.html) saying can’t wait to see the next one from the makers (Maddock films). Well, three years later, we’ve seen it and forgotten it.

Any second film always runs the risk of comparison with the first and usually disappoints. But, Roohi disappoints as a standalone film too. In many ways, it has no story connection to the first, and in that, it had the potential of writing something completely new and exciting. While still sticking to the unique genre of horror-comedy, that it created with Stree.  

The story is once again set in a small town, as a canvas for an unequal world for women. This time portrayed with an extreme situation of women being kidnapped and forced to marry a groom, based on the latter’s whim. In this assignment, protagonists Bhawra (Rajkumar Rao) and Kattanni (Varun Sharma) kidnap Roohi (Janhvi Kapoor), holding her captive till the forced wedding. Very soon the reality that innocent-eyed timid Roohi is possessed by a marriage-obsessed witch (a ‘mudiyapairi) takes the story towards a series of supposed-to-be funny scenes of the two abductors falling in love with the two different sides of her Jekyll-and-Hyde portrayal, and eventually leading towards a confusing climax between un-doing the possession and Roohi’s inner fight with her tormentor. 

What worked with Stree was an entertaining horror-comedy film that had a feminist point of view. The problem with Roohi is it’s neither entertaining nor has a point of view, even though the scene is set perfectly with bride-abduction as a base to tell a feminist story. While the dialogues (that were also the highlight of Stree) are funny and keep their rustic appeal, they fail to save the movie from fumbling from one scene to another, without any direction. At some point, you feel the story is about not discriminating based on a stereotypical view of beauty when we see Kattani falling in love with a possessed and disfigured Roohi. But that passes. Then you feel the story is about a point of view on marriage and its exaggerated role in our society. That passes too. Then you feel that it’s about women’s independence and not needing a man to live a happy life. And then, you finally give up. 

Both Rajkumar Rao and Varun Sharma do a great job of performing their characters, but the story disappoints them.

What is surprising is that director Hardik Mehta, writer of the acclaimed Pataalok series, is not able to pull through this story. Though he does a brilliant job of showcasing small-town India and its aspirations (clearly his strength area and perhaps the only reason to watch this film), he is not able to weave it as part of an engaging story. Maybe the story disappointed a gifted director too? 

All in all, yet-another-OTT-Covid-time-release that disappoints. Thankfully, it’s a movie, that you can switch off after 2 hours, and not an endless barrage of seasons and episodes. 

Now, that’s something to like about this film!