Movie: La La Land

I am not sure why there is such a buzz around this movie - in fact, one of the scathing reviews on IMDB manages to capture the movie in one word - insipid. The opening scene was annoying, with wooden dancing performance, and adding no value to the plot or other redeeming features. It doesn't really get better - and although Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone provide strong acting performances, their singing and dancing hardly light up the screen.

 

In fact, the movie is somewhat Bollywoodish as opposed to a musical - given than songs and dancing are a relatively small part of the movie - and perhaps they should have taken a leaf out of Bollywood and dubbed the singing! It's a movie about Hollywood, so, perhaps like Argo, that is the reason for all the rage. I found it uninspiring and mostly boring - I would recommend avoiding.

Movie: Lion

Some times the truth is stranger than fiction - Lion traces the remarkable story of a poor young boy in rural India who gets separated from his older brother, and ends up in Kolkata (then Calcutta). For a while he lives on the streets, but is later placed in an orphanage and thereafter adopted by an Australian couple. Years later, he starts looking for his home - now enabled by technology (Google Earth and Google in general), and is memories. 

It is a beautiful film with some really strong performances - not only by the adult lead in Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire fame) but also the performance of Sunny Pawar as the 5 year old Saroo. The story is itself moving but it more than just the story - it is the performance of the ensemble cast, the locations and finally capturing both the joys and hardships. It's somewhat strange that this move doesn't have a stronger billing ...