The Movie Matrix

Watching the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is like watching Superman (slide 2). Characters stand where they are, with no seeming attempt to jump, raise their swords and fly away. At-least in Superman you get to hear “Up, up and away”! (slide 3) Twilight is supposed to be the new Romeo and Juliet; enough for my wife to drag me to the cinemas. And then I realized Rome and Juliet die at the end, but in this movie the actors act as if they are already dead! (slide 4) Movies are like women – Difficult to understand until it is too late! Not to be sexist (slide 5). (slide 7) “Simple and pure fun” – The best example is Tremors – a B-grade low budget movie starring Kevin Bacon. The movie is simple – make less noise, kill creatures and have fun along the way. (slide 8) “A discovery, it’s a roller coaster!” No slack, no fillers but relentless from start to finish. Payback which starred Mel Gibson and Lucy Liu - the entire movie is mostly in two distinct colors, shades of black everywhere - every city, town, street which is contrasted by the red lipstick worn by - Lucy Liu. What makes the movie special is the pace, how the plot moves forward every minute. (slide 9) “It makes sense!” – Memento – unlike the “inspired” Amir Khan’s Ghajini or the numerous regional versions, Memento was an Onion. You peel the layers, you get more layers. You have to wait till the very end to make sense of it all. (slide 10) “An emotional tug” – When Rose lets go of Jack and as he sinks into the abyss of the Atlantic Ocean in the movie Titanic, you feel the sense of sadness, a loss, an emotional tug! (slide 11) The above matrix is not mutually exhaustive – A movie might lie in more than one quadrant. Let’s take cases - Iron Man and let’s try place it in the matrix. A man builds a flying suit of armor and beats up bad guys – Simple and Pure fun. A billionaire playboy realizes his true calling while being captured and held by terrorists, needs magnets to stay alive, likes his beautiful assistant, does not show it, invents an arc reactor, beats the bad guys and saves the world! Definitely a Roller Coaster! And no wonder we all like Iron Man which is corroborated by the Movie Matrix. Another example – Sholay 2 (Ram Gopal Verma ki Aag). Now let’s see where it fits in? It’s a discovery all-right that Bollywood can make atrociously bad movies. It fits into none of the 4 quadrants and no wonder was a huge flop! THE MOVIE MATRIX for you...