Sarkar

Sarkar is one of my favourite movies, and despite I watched it now for 4th, 5th or 6th time, it still offers me its unique and amazing experience. The movie is inspired by the novel Godfather, and is Ram Gopal Varma’s (RGV) interpretation. It seems like that almost every department in the making of the movie has done a superb job. Its sound design and background score is great, and just advances the story telling. Amitabh Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan have done good jobs, and Kay Kay Menon is excellent. Tanishaa was also good, and Zakir Hussain has also proven himself. I think that Sarkar will be a memorable movie for almost the actors in the movie in their careers.

It’s amazing how RGV creates such kind of intense atmosphere by using silence, which will be found in the movie. The intense atmosphere also is a result of various elements like the direction, acting, and the great background score as mentioned earlier. You’ll even find this intense tone in romantic scenes as well with great success, which I think just tells how amazing the movie is made. The editing is excellent which gives “right-to-the-point” story telling.

After so many great things with this movie, it’s difficult to understand how RGV made the horrible AAG after this amazing work.

Govinda, govinda, govindaaaaaa

Rating: 6 of 6

Ulvenatten

Etter å ha lest boka, som denne filmen er basert på, så passer det jo selvfølgelig med å se selve filmen også. Filmen er en bra action-thriller i norsk sammenheng. Det har skjedd flere tilpasninger av historien for at den skal passe for filmformatet. Bl.a. er en del av karakterene har blitt redusert, noe som kan virke som en liten skuffelse, men slik er nå det når man overfører bøker til film.

Filmen er ellers kult laget. Det som gjør den enda kulere er at den er filmet i Oslo-området, slik at man kjenner flere av stedene i et format som ellers er mer vanlig i Hollywoodfilmer.

Terningkast: 4/5

Ulvenatten

Ulvenatten er en krim av Tom Egeland, som kom i 2005. For noen uker siden kom det en filmatisering av boka, som har fått blandede kritikker. Jeg prioriterte å lese boka før jeg så filmen, fordi det er en helt annen opplevelse å lese en bok kontra det å se filmen. Bøker gir en unik mulighet til å bli kjent med karakterene, noe som filmmediet har en ulempe med i flere tilfeller.

Boka var fantastisk, og er en god krim med høy intens stemning hele veien. Kan trygt anbefales!

Jeg har egentlig hatt boka i over et år, men etter å ha lest Sirkelens Ende av samme forfatteren, så dempet motivasjonen seg. Heter det ikke at den som venter, venter ikke forgjeves?

Terningkast: 5/6

Torpedo

En såkalt actiondrama som prøver å overdramatisere hendelser uten innhold. Den første halvdelen er ikke noe å rope hurra for i det hele tatt, men den siste delen tar seg litte grann opp igjen. Til tross for det, har serien et godt stykke til å nå opp til gode actionserier med god action og intens stemning. Hombres er jo et godt eksempel på intens stemning.

Jørgen Langhelle har hovedrollen, og prøver trolig sitt beste med sin vestlandsdialekt (trolig Rogaland) å få en intens stemning, men den fungerer ikke til annet enn å skape en småkjedelig dramastemning.

Bakgrunnsmusikken er som tatt ut fra en film for 10-15 år siden, som man generelt pleier å drepe tiden sin med.

Terningkast: 3/2

Race

Race is a stylish movie in a traditional bollywood manner with action, thriller, comedy and love, but I didn’t found so much new in it. The story is interesting enough, but not that exciting. Saif Ali Khan and Akshaye Khanna deliver good performances, again, and the humour of Akshaye works well.

Rating: 4 of 6

På norsk

Unforgiven / Nådeløse Menn

This movie is made by the all-time-classical Client Eastwood. This one came in 1992, and was meant to be his last farewell to the genre of western movies and summarise his interpretation of this genre.

I haven’t seen so many western movies, and this is not my favourite genre at all. Therefore, for me, this was just an average movie. But I registered that the movie was well made, so it can be a very good entertainment for those who are interested in such movies.

Rating: 4 of 6

Super Star

Surprisingly good movie. It starts in a so-called traditional style where you’ll find a guy (Kunal) struggling to make it big in bollywood. He believes that there will come one day, where he’ll get his chance of the breakthrough. But for unfortunately for him, another guy (Karan), who has exactly same face as Kunal, and is a son of a well-known producer, also got launched. Kunal feels his dreams are smashed into pieces. But then he gets a chance he can’t resist…

You’ve probably seen a number of movies with one actor, who is playing double role. Here is the same concept, but still, the story is interesting and well told. In addition, you find a couple of good songs here too. Especially, “Mann Tu Talbat”, and its remix version which will set fire on the dance floor…

Rating: 5 of 6

Prison Break - Season 2

This season has improved a lot since the previous season. You’ll find it more suspenseful and pulse raging, and the story now includes various dimensions. In the previous season, most of the story and suspense was around the planning of the break out of the jail. But now, the guys have broken out and are on the run from the authorities, so most of the story now deals around what kind of consequences this gives. And since they aren’t restricted to a jail building anymore, the makers have taken the advantage of this, and produced lots of suspenseful action outside the jail. Simply first class entertainment!

Rating: 6 of 6

Children of Men / Menneskenes Barn

When I watched the boring movie Babel, I knew Children of Men isn’t meant for me. But since I had bought it, I had to give it a chance. This chance resulted in just another boring evening with this depressing film. The movie is about the sad future scenario where men on earth have experienced to not give birth to children for 18 years in year 2027. The only reason for that I do not give this movie a rating of one, is its visual effects. Otherwise, it was just a waste of time for me. The movie has got good critics, so it seems like that there people who like this film.

Rating: 2 of 6

Black & White

Just an all right average movie. Again, the topic is about terrorists. This time, we meet two guys who have completely different thoughts about solving the Muslim-Hindu conflicts in India.

Rating: 4/3 of 6

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Rome - Season 1

Good series. Actually, I didn’t like the first 4-5 episodes, because they went too slowly. It seemed like that Romans didn’t had much to do than be engaged in uninhibited sexual activities or war and violence! All these things in the name of politics. But after these episodes, the series picked up its speed and got better in terms of story evolvement.

Rating: 4/5 of 6

Mørkets Vendekrets / Tropic of Night

Disappointing novel. The novel is a thriller based on African magic, but out of around 570 pages, the first 400 were too boring and the story evolved too slowly. After then, it picked somehow, but then it slowed down again.

Rating: 3 of 6

KanonBall / DodgeBall

Funny movie. Unfortunately, I didn’t found so much creativity in the work from the script department so it didn’t have so high rating from me. But still a good entertainer.

Rating: 4 of 6

Corporate

Interesting movie from the award-winning director, Madhur Bhandarkar, who gave us the brilliant Page 3 before this one. He has used some of the same story telling style as in Page 3, so it is a little minus seen from a creativity point of view. Later, he gave us Traffic Signal which wasn’t that good.

The story deals around the business/corporate world, where we find two rival companies, and what kind of sly methods they use to make profits. The story is actually inspired from PepsiCo and The Coca-Cola Company, where both of them are rivals in their business, and have been in the spotlight for lawsuits and use of dubious business practices.

Rating: 5 of 6

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Hum Tum

Nice and funny romantic drama movie. This was one of those movies which helped Saif Ali Khan to re-establish himself in Bollywood after several flops. Actually, his role was intended for Vivek Oberoi, but he was too busy in those days so he indirectly rejected it. Therefore, the makers had to hire Saif, which seemed out to be a good choice and where he proved himself. At the same time, Vivek worked in several movies which didn’t worked at the box-office, so he lost some of his star value.

Rating: 5 of 6

Jeanne D'Arc / The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc

Good movie about the legendary Jeanne of Arc who lived in France in 1400-century, and was engaged in the war between France and England. There were good acting performances by most of the actors, and especially Dustin Hoffman, who suited very well in his role. Furthermore, the story was told very well.

I’ve had this movie since 2002 or something, but forgot and thought about it during an episode of Wire in the Blood – Season 2, where it was an episode which dealt around Jeanne D’Arc. The action sequences in the movie were probably good, when it came in 1999, but not so inspiring today after watching several war movies with good action.

Rating: 4/5 of 6

Aberdeen

Aberdeen is a Norwegian-Scottish movie, where the makers are mainly Norwegians with mostly Scottish actors. Therefore, I am introducing a new self-made expression for Scottish film industry, Scollywood.

The story is about a woman, Kaisa, who are experiencing success in her career in London. Suddenly, she got a call from her mother in Aberdeen to bring her alcoholic father from Oslo to Aberdeen. During her trip to Oslo and back to Aberdeen is an interesting drama which this movie is about.

The movie is directed by Hans Petter Moland, who has also given us the beautiful Norwegian movie “The Beautiful Country”.

Rating: 4/5 of 6

Zinda

When this movie came some years ago, I was amazed by its story and script and the creativity behind it. In addition, it got phenomenal critics as well. Not so long afterwards, I was telling a friend about this film and the story, and he said the story reminded him of a Korean film called Oldboy (the third movie in the series of Oldboy was Lady Vengeance). When we got into further details, we found out that this one was actually a copy of Oldboy. This isn’t actually surprising, because the maker of Zinda, Sanjay Gupta, is actually known for remaking foreign movies.

The story is about a guy who suddenly is locked up for 14 years in a dark and dingy room without telling any reason for this. After 14 years, he suddenly is released and then he tries to find out why he was locked up. I think it was a very creative story, and just imagine adding this story with perfect mixture of great cinematography, visuals, background music to give you optimal thriller experience. The acting performances were also good. With this movie, John Abraham showed that he also can act, and isn’t just another model who has succeeded in Bollywood with proper acting skills.

Below, you’ll find a nice song/scene from the movie.

Rating: 5 of 6

Rocky Balboa

I have never been fan of either Rocky –and Rambo-movies and Sylvester Stallone, so therefore I wasn’t so excited for this movie. But I heard rumours that this film was good, so I gave it a chance. It turned out to be well executed, but nothing more than an average entertainer for me. The story is about Rocky who tries his hands on boxing for almost last time in an age where mostly boxers pension themselves.

Rating: 4/3 of 6