Genesis

Genesis - a 1986 movie starring Nazeeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Shabana Azmi and MK Raina. Nazeer and Om are leftovers in a remote, barren, desert and their only contact with the outside world is a trader MK Raina who comes weekly to take their products which is woven blankets and supplies them with food items and all. Nazeer discovers a human skull while digging the ground one day which bemuses both of them. Then Shabana comes out of nowhere - hungry, emaciated, desolate and narrates her story of her family lost in the floods. The three of them bond together until the sexual desire overpowers them and Shabana gets pregnant in the movie. There is a kind of eeriness to the movie more so to do with the discovery of the human skull. The landscape is true to plot and of course when you have three power houses acting in one movie, it is bound to be dramatic. Mrinal uses a lot of natural light in the scenes and his direction is of course outstanding. Rating 5/5

Ocean's 8

One look at the star cast of Ocean's 8 and I am like "oh no" not her. But yeah Sandra Bullock was in the lead cast and more so as Danny Ocean's sister coming out of 5 years jail term. Danny has apparently died off in 2018. How Danny died is conveniently left out. So this is an all girls heist program to steal a diamond necklace off the neck of a model (Anne Hathaway) using the varied skills of an Indian diamantire, an African American hacker, a Chinese shoplifter - so you have all the markets covered - India, China, the African American - they left out Hispanics this time. Of all the cast Cate Blanchett was the only saving grace. Watch it at the risk of losing your nap time. Rating 1/5, frankly they should have killed the franchise then and there itself after Ocean's 13.

Bhag Milkha Bhag

Bhag Milkha Bhag is a biopic of a man who was the first athletic sporting hero of a newly independent India and I would say about 30 years late in the making. He gave up running in the mid 60s, Tokyo Marathon of 1964 being probably his last major championship. Bio pics were never popular in mainstream Indian cinema popularly called as Bollywood except as documentaries by the Indian government channels. It is only recently that few bio pics are being made which is closely resembling the lives of the protagonists otherwise they make movies "loosely based on somebody's life". Either ways, the directors take extreme liberty with the true content of the person's lives introducing elements that are never there in their real life. Bhag Milkha Bhag is therefore the story of Milkha Singh's life. It is also a sad story of Bollywood's obsession with sex, skin show, six packs and songs. Even if the four S were removed yet the story would have been beautiful enough for people to connect to the person's life who is venerated as a God in sporting circles in India. Of course in India any yadav, kumar and shinde who knows how to hold a bat or bowl a long hop is also venerated in a mad cricket crazy country. So the story is about his uprooting from his village in Pakistan, butchering of his parents, brother and sister in front of his own eyes and his traumatic train travel to India as an orphan where he has only his siblings to take care of him at a tender young age of 10. His early life in the village involved trekking to a school 10 kms away by going through sand dunes which must have been the major contributing factor to his athletic prowess in latter life. The narrative of the movie does not follow a linear format and therefore it juxtaposes from one situation to another. Army was where he first came into contact with running and the recognition from winning at running gave him the impetus to furiously pursue his pursuits. They allowed a few inaccuracies to creep up such as his breaking the world record in 400 metres which as per this Wikipaedia entry here does not show any such record in his name. In the movie they have depicted that he lost the 1960 Rome medal due to his angst and anguish at the loss of his parents and siblings in Pakistan but that was already erased in the Indo-Pak friendship series which took place in the mid 50s where he decimated the Pakistani athletes and extracted succour for that loss. Bollywood's obsession with six pack abs is almost delusional. Probably the movie makers think that anybody who has a body with huge muscles is a champion in every sport forgetting that every sport does not require huge bulging muscles. Why should an athlete have a sick pack abs with huge bulging muscles - They should have done their homework properly. This youtube video here shows that Milkha started off fast but started fading in the later stages of the 400 metres final in Rome Olympics - a case of tactical, strategic error rather than angst at his loss in Pakistan. The same tactical strategic errors continue to be committed by later Indian athletes such as Sriram Singh who had a devastating first lap in the 800 metres final of the 1976 Montreal Olympics only to fade to finish 7th in the race which was won by Cuba's Alberto Juantorena in a then world record time. Juantorena later acknowledged that he was able to break the world record only to the initial burst of speed by Sriram Singh. With all these inaccuracies and the formula system of Bollywood, the movie is well made with decent performances by all the actors including some bravura performance by Divya Dutta and Pawan Malhotra as the sister and coach respectively of Milkha. Sonam Kapoor as the love interest of Milkha has done a delightful cameo role. An absolutely must watch by all the youngsters of India, all athletes irrespective of whether they are runners, shooters, wresters, boxers. Too many songs perhaps elongated the movie to little more than 3 hours. Farhan Akhtar in his six pack has done a decent role as Milkha Singh.