Tag: novel

Ready Player One |2018| Directed by Steven Spielberg

I grew up watching Steven Spielberg movies. His movies made me fall in love with Cinema, the story, the emotions, the fear and everything. I still remember crying so much after watch ET, terrified after watching Jaws and being over the top with Close Encounters of Third Kind. Even after so many years, everytime a Steven Spielberg movie comes out I am so much excited and more to the fact that I am watching it on the big screen.

I had read Ready Player One novel a year back and I have to say didn’t like it very much. Even after watching the trailer of the movie didn’t made me much enthusiastic, but I knew to trust in Spielberg’s power of storytelling and I have to say this is a movie that is much much better than the novel. Ready Player One is a story set in 2045, where most of the population is living in slum like cities. There isn’t much to face in real life so they escape in a virtual world which is called ‘Oasis’, a game built by James Halliday. After his death, Halliday created a game Anorak’s Quest. 

The person who finishes the quest is promised full ownership of OASIS among other gifts. This has attracted a number of Gunters (“egg hunters”) to play the game. Innovative Online Industries (IOI), a video game conglomerate and manufacturer of most of the virtual reality equipment used to access the OASIS, also seeks ownership of the virtual reality world, and its CEO, Nolan Sorrento, has amassed an army of debt-indentured players, known as Sixers (due to their six-digit identification), to seek the prize. However, to date, no one has managed to finish the first quest, a vehicle race across an ever-shifting version of New York City.

Wade Watts  an orphaned, 18-year-old  goes by his avatar Parzival, and has partnered with Aech, a male avatar that serves as a virtual mechanic. He later befriends well-known player Art3mis after saving her from being “zeroed out”, which would reset their avatar’s character progression, by King Kong. Wade decides to study the virtual OASIS library to learn about Halliday’s personal life, hoping to find a hint to finish the race.

As Wade finds the clue, finishes the race and gets the first key, the quests starts to become more interesting. We learn more about Halliday and what he wanted the person to learn from this game and the winner. The most beautiful thing about this movie are the visuals. The pop culture references, The Shining bit where you go back to Kubrick’s world of fear, the virtual reality, The Iron Giant and the how the characters meet outside the Oasis is something a pure treat to watch.

Spielberg manages to capture every soul and heart of the story. When the movie reaches the finale you see the message Halliday wanted to tell and what he regretted the most and what was his Rosebud. From being entertaining and emotional, Ready Player One is one of the best blockbuster movie ever made. And what is even more fantastic is that Spielberg managed to make a extraordinary movie through a mediocre novel.

The characters introduced to us remain with us till the end. The bad guy has a motive to something to fight for rather just being there for the purpose of bad guy. Even with a runtime of 140 minutes, there is not a single second where you feel it is getting lazy or anything rather when it finishes I wanted more.

Janusz Kamiński does an extraordinary job with his cinematography capturing the essence of the movie. With John Williams not scoring this one Alan Silvestri does a good job with the score.

Ready Player One is a classic blockbuster movie that entertains throughout with pop culture references from the movies you grew up with or j=have just watched recently. I can understand why Spielberg didn’t include his movies, but adding Blade Runner would have been something great to witness here. I urge everyone to watch this one in IMAX screens if possible.

Rating : 4/5

 

by Rohit Shivdas

Annihilation |2018| Directed by Alex Garland

A monumental achievement that slowly breaths through your senses. Annihilation brings ambiguity in its storytelling and curiosity that leads into The Shimmer. You are glued to your seats, looking at your screen as every frame makes you more and more curious and afraid at times. You never know what is going to happen, it is a place that almost no one has returned until Lena’s husband Kane. There is no memory of what happened inside, just the glimpse of the space and the feeling.

Directed by Alex Garland, Annihilation opens with Lena, a cellular biology professor and former U.S. Army soldier debriefing about an expedition into an anomaly called “The Shimmer”. Lena’s husband an Army Special Forces soldier named Kane, returns without warning to their home after having gone missing on a mission nearly a year ago. When Kane starts to bleed from his mouth, Lena rushes him to a hospital until the government takes both of them in.

With Kane in coma and on his last breath, Lena is recruited by Psychologist Dr. Ventress into the project they are joined by, physicist Josie Radeck, geomorphologist Cass Sheppard, and paramedic Anya Thorensen. As the team steps foot in The Shimmer, they forget extensive periods of time, and a mutated alligator attacks Josie. Everything becomes a phenomenon. Lena is fascinated by the hybridization of the alligator and the nature of the surrounding they are in.

But each step the team take forward, there is something more fearful that has lead people to their deaths. With a footage revealing something more baffling and the fucking bear almost giving a heart attack to me, Annhilation just gets grander and grander from there.

The final act of this magnificent masterpiece is an unique telling that grips you its beautiful imagery and manages you to be starstruck. I had my mouth open in surprise for the whole final act. It was just so beautiful yet at times scary to watch.

Rob Hardy’s cinematography is one to watch. The beauty inside The Shimmer is just astonishing. Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow’s score is the beating soul that matches the stroytelling and the silence of it.

Natalie Portman as Lena gives a great performance. Once Lena steps into The Shimmer she becomes more fascinated by it and what it offers. There is a self destructive part of us and everyone self destructs differently. There are moments in the movie where it slightly comes down but mostly it is because of its dialogues and nothing else. Tessa Thompson as Josie provides a subtle integration while Gina Rodriguez kind of goes over the top with her performance.

I was just happy to see Natalie Portman leading the charge after giving one of the greatest performance in Jackie. Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dr. Ventress is one character that remains deep and her moment with Natalie’s Lena in the lighthouse where she says Annihilation is one of the best moments of this movie.

This is a movie that should be experienced on the big screen, it might be at times too much to take in but it is not the reason for scrapping its worldwide release. I am glad David Ellison isn’t producing Arrival, Interstellar and Inception for that matter or even Blade Runner 2049. He took away one of the best experiences an audience could have. Liking or not liking the movie is another thing when the movie is finished watching.

Annihilation is a near perfect sci-fi masterpiece that equally takes your breath away and scares you to death at times. It is an experience that leads you into something unique. If it wasn’t for its dialogues at times this is just perfect. The score, the cinematography, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tessa Thompson. Alex Garland gives another beauty into the genre of Science Fiction that leads into an adventure that creates its own fantasy.

Rating : 4/5/5

by Rohit Shivdas

Upcoming Movie Release

Wonderstruck Directed by Todd Haynes 

Wonderstruck is a 2017 American drama film directed by Todd Haynes. The film is based on the 2011 novel Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick, who adapted the novel into a screenplay. The film stars Oakes Fegley, Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams and Millicent Simmonds.

The film premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2017, and competed for the Palme d’Or. It is scheduled to have a limited release in the United States on October 20, 2017, by Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions.

 

by Rohit Shivdas

The Light Between Oceans | Review | 2016

quad-main_the-light-between-oceans-e1468101737364It is love that makes us strong and weak. We can live resenting someone for a mistake they did for our whole life or forgive them to live a life that we deserve. Because Forgiveness has to be done once.

Tom has seen horrors of war. He wants to be isolated. He picks up a job where he will be alone from life. He is closed. One day love finds him in the nature of Isabel. He opens up to her. They get married. Isabel wants a child, but she looses her two pregnancies. Tom is helpless in this matter to her. He wants to give everything to Isabel.

One day a small boat comes to the shore with a dead man a girl child. Tom wants to report it, but the desperation of Isabel to have a child makes him to commit something he is never ready for.

Isabel and Tom start to lead a happy life with the child. Their love for her transcends. But this happiness is not forever, as Tom and Isabel are confronted by the real mother and her pain of losing the child and her husband. Tom has to decide whether to say nothing and keep the child with him and Isabel or to return to her real mother.

Light Between Oceans is so beautiful yet painful to watch. It has love to the purest, but a dark cloud always chasing. It may look slow, nothing much is happening. Two people, their love, pain and a desire of child.

The guilt that Tom has for taking a child away from her mother and his wife. The promise he made to give her everything and anything. Deserving every bad thing that happens to him, his belief that he lived long enough than he should be. Isabel’s love that changed him, her pain that he took, her mistakes that he took upon himself. The punishment he is ready for.

Another love of Hannah and Frank, which makes a daughter defy her father. Frank who after facing so much discrimination from public, yet so happy and a smile on his face every time. He says you have forgive once, living in regret makes you feel the regret everyday and it effects your future. Hannah loves this nature of Frank and their daughter but unfortunate events tangle and Frank has to leave with their daughter in a boat. Much to Hannah’s news it was the last time she would see Frank.

Fassbender, Vikander and Weisz give a powerful performance. The chemistry between Vikander and Fassbender seemed so surreal. Their aren’t much dialogues in the movie, but the way they both present their love and pain goes beyond something that you see everyday. Vikander shines with every moment of pain and love.

The final moments of the movie made me tear my heart out, the letter Lucy receives from Isabel is so beautiful and seeing Tom and Lucy standing, a father and his daughter. Lucy remembering every moment of her childhood with Tom and Isabel is just a light between the ocean.

Alexandre Desplat’s score moves with every symphony he presents. t goes along with every emotion these characters have. It may not be Derek Cianfrance best work, but it is still so mature in it’s content and love that I just couldn’t look away.

Rating : 4/5

by Rohit Shivdas