The following review was published at Dawn.com, on 17th January 2012. This post is the unedited copy. Dawn.com link is available at the end of the post. By Mohammad Kamran Jawaid At the end of the movie credits, when I was in the bee-line out of the screening, I overheard a woman’s voice making a very strange, illogical comparison: “It (meaning Contraband) was ok”, she said. “I mean, it wasn’t Pirates of the Caribbean”. I suppose she was talking about the film’s pop-corn factor. Or maybe someone misguided her that “Contraband” was about immortal mermaids and smugglers – which it is (smugglers, not mermaids).
Trading “Funny Money”, More or Less the Hard Way, is a Major Pain in the…
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Animadversion: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Reviewed by Farheen Jawaid
The post below is an unedited copy of the version published in our film review column “Animadversion”, IMAGES on SUNDAY, 15th January 2012 (Dawn Newspaper). Official links and hardcopy’s images at the end of the post. By Farheen Jawaid With “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, David Fincher gets back to the basics of his career – a quintessential thriller set in a world of dark hidden terrors, riddled with violence so deeply seeded that it cuts to the core. And that’s where our heroine works. She is an investigator – a sharply pierced Goth-girl – who looks as dark as this world.
Punked-up Goth Girl, both Intelligent and Violent
Animadversion: Young Adult – Reviewed by Kamran Jawaid
Young Adult’s review was published in our movie review column “Animadversion”, IMAGES on SUNDAY, 15th January 2012. This post is an updated version of the one published. By Mohammad Kamran Jawaid Mavis Gary is an emotionally stunted train-wreck, who authors – a word she stresses whenever someone calls her a writer – a dying series of young adult fiction. But she’s not actually the creator of the series. She’s the ghost writer. Its little departures like this, that create a realistic curve within the shockingly inspired “Young Adult”, the new dramedy staring both Charlize Theoron and midlife delusions.
Adult, Though Not So Much
Movie Review: Players – by Kamran Jawaid
This post is the updated copy of the review published on Dawn.com, 10th January 2012. The published version, is linked at the end of the post.
Mini-Coopers, Jet Turbines (on Refurbished Trains) and Unadjusted Gold
By Mohammad Kamran Jawaid
With its poster flickering in bronze and the tag-line, “Players, go for gold”, there’s actually very little left for the imagination. And that’s before we add Mini-Coopers in the mix.
“Players”, playing in screens across Pakistan, is an ineluctable mess staring Abhishek Bachchan, a safe full of gold and three mini-coopers zipping across subway tunnels. If this shapes the mental image of “The Italian Job” (2003), then you’re not far off. “Players” is an official remake, meaning it has full authorization to make like an outdated photocopy machine and vitiate familiar elements into an insipid, pedestrian heist movie.
Animadversion: Hugo – Reviewed by Farheen Jawaid
This post is the unedited copy of review published in our column “Animadversion”, Images on Sunday (Dawn Newspaper), on 8th January 2012. The published link, and the hardcopy edition, is at the end of this post.
Scorsese, Dickensian in a 3D World
By Farheen Jawaid
Hugo, a first venture for Martin Scorsese in the land of 3D is also his first family fare. But it turns out to be more than just those two things – especially when it turns out to be about what he loves the most: the film industry. Even with all of its shortcoming and sluggishness, you can’t help but get embraced by it.
Hugo starts in a beautiful 3D shot sweeping shot over early 1900 Paris and closes in on a grand train station. With haste and fervor the camera goes through the station midst curling smoke and people, resting focus on a large clock, where we see a child’s face looking into an adult’s world. That boy is our protagonist Hugo. He’s a Dickensian soul in an abstract world.
Animadversion: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows – Reviewed by Kamran Jawaid
The unedited, correction appended, review of this post was published 8th January 2012, in Images on Sunday (Dawn Newspaper), under our film review column “Animadversion”. An online link is at the end of the post.
A Game, Preposterously Bombastic
By Mohammad Kamran Jawaid
“Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” is as subtle as a vision of an angry flaming phoenix riding the wave of Armageddon. It is chaos, blitzed and revved up by adrenaline. Depending on whether you’re into relishing salubrious amount of big-screen apocalypse, regardless of its state or respect to its origins, then this grossly reimagined Holmes for the 21st century audience is for you. Maybe.
Movie Review: The Darkest Hour – By Kamran Jawaid
The following review was published at Dawn.com on 2nd January 2012. This post is an unedited version.
Fill Me Up Mate! – ET’s Terrorize During a Quick Stop-Over.
By Mohammad Kamran Jawaid
“The Darkest Hour” is the new conservatively-designed alien invasion flick featuring a lot of places to hide: basements, glass-panels, under cars, frequency-padded apartments. You see, the world is besieged by invading aliens who look like decapitated, floating heads with tentacles that prove Stephen Hawking’s theory right – they’re scavengers doing a quick stopover for an energy refill.
Animadversion: Mission: Impossible–Ghost Protocol–Reviewed by Kamran Jawaid and Farheen Jawaid
This post is the unedited version of the review published in our column “Animadversion”, iMAGES on Sunday (Dawn Newspaper), on Sunday January 1st 2012. The link to paper-published edit is at the end of this post.
Your Mission, For the Fourth-time…Should You Choose to Accept?
By Mohammad Kamran Jawaid
Believe you me: the Burj Al-Khaleefa scene will knock your socks off! I am not exaggerating, I am telling.
It goes down like this: Ethan Hunt – Tom Cruise, believable, sincere and aptly wearing beaten down look – has to disable the security system at the Burj, and to do this he has to scale the world’s tallest building. From the outside. With a set of malfunctioning adhesive gloves. And so, the vertigo inducing high-concept sequence, perhaps the key element of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol’s marketing campaign, becomes a dizzying pulse-throbbing adventure by itself.
Movie Review: Don 2 – By Kamran Jawaid
The following review was published online at Dawn.com, 28th December 2011. The published version is linked at the end of the post. This is an updated copy.
A Villain, Sometimes Hero-like, But Always Nefarious
By Mohammad Kamran Jawaid
“Don Ko Pakadna Mushkil Hi Nahin, Na-Mumkin Hai”. Despite its obvious hyperbole, trust me, substantiating the claim takes a really, really long time.
“Don 2”, staring Shah Rukh Khan, directed and written by Farhan Akhtar (in association with Ameet Mehta and Amrish Shah), believes itself a slick, twisting thriller from the villain’s vantage point. In earnest, its template is a counterfeit mixture of successful recipes: Mix the bombast of “James Bond” within a covering of “Mission: Impossible”, add a dash of the “Bourne Identity”, bake until climax. Sprinkle a helping of double-deception to taste.
A Conversation with Jarrar Rizvi, Director ‘Son of Pakistan’ – By Kamran Jawaid
The conversation below was incorporated, in part, within the review of “Son of Pakistan”, now up at Dawn.com
“Good Pakistani Movies” on the Back-Burner
By Mohammad Kamran Jawaid
It was sheer dumb luck I stumbled on to Karachi’s press-screening of “Son of Pakistan” at Nishat Cinema, on the 16th of December. There was no spectacle. No flashy lights. No traffic jams. No prior press invitations or media kits. And although only the balcony was hired for the press by the film’s producers that day (a fact I learned much later), the actual number of audience turnout was distressing.
“Son of Pakistan” is an overexcited flag-waving action spectacle staring a number of actors including Babar Ali, Meera, each with their own under-explored story-threads. Its marketing campaign must have been in whispers.
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