MOVIE REVIEW

DAMADOL 

Director: Manoj Michigan
Writers: Abhra Chakraborty (Dialogue), Manoj Michigan (Story)
Stars: Saswata Chatterjee, Samadarshi Dutta, Saheb Bhattacharjee
Runtime: 140 Min
Strength: A light comic, one does not need to think to enjoy it
Weakness: Overacting
Showbiz rating: 2/5
Plot: Damadol is a comedy about three friends, two years out of college. There are cases of mistaken identities, hilarious confusions, and dealing with the underworld into their already tattered plots of love and friendship. The dreams of desperation of the three spin into a tangled web.
Review: If you like meaningless fun and entertainment then this the movie is for you. Bengali films usually don't care about genre. But Damadol is entirely a comedy movie. Damadol is not a movie to be judged by its believability – it rather is a mediocre attempt make the audience laugh. Subplots are there to engage the viewers. For those who are well acquainted with comedy genre of any kind may not find Damadol very funny. It takes a long time to reach climax. Some of the important characters are introduced way almost halfway through the movie. There are hidden messages throughout the movie but it never tries to be too serious. Most of the actors are less than mediocre. Saswata Chatterjee has been one of the best actors in Kolkata for a while. In Damadol, once again Saswata proved his versatility as one of the finest actors. His comic performance dwarfed others. The three leading characters tried often seemed to be trying too hard to make us laugh. With a good storyline the movie could've been much with better with good acting and direction. It is movie that can only be watched once on a dull day.

Reviewed by Zia Nazmul Islam

***

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring

Director: Kim Ki Duk    
Writer: Kim Ki Duk     
Cast: Oh Yeong Su, Kim Young Min      
Language: KoreanRuntime: 103 Minutes
Strength: Poetic visuals, Script, Acting and Direction
Showbiz rating: 4.5/5
Plot: The film is divided into five segments (the five seasons of the title), each segment depicting a different stage in the life of a novice Buddhist monk and his old teacher. The segments are roughly ten to twenty years apart, and the action of each takes place during the season of its title.
Review: The story unfolds rather simply, but the implications of the characters' actions are silently commented upon by the presence of various Buddhist symbols and iconography. The story is more of a fable than a really conventional narrative. This film is a good example why cinema is called an art - this is not just another movie, but a real piece of art. The pleasure of seeing it belongs to the aesthetics, and it transcends beyond the action and beyond what only happens on screen, or what the characters say and do. It is both a simple and complex story - the story of a life, catching all seasons of development of man: innocence of childhood - so quickly lost unfortunately, mistakes of the young age, tragedies of maturity , and wisdom coming with the old age. This film is that profound, touching, and moving.
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...Spring is the most beautiful movie I have ever seen.

Source: The Internet

***

Welcome to the Jungle

Director: Rob Meltzer
Writers: Jeff Kauffmann
Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Adam Brody, Rob Huebel, Megan Boone
Runtime: 95 minutes
Strength: Light-hearted comedy
Weakness: Some punch lines are not that funny, somewhat forced script
Showbiz rating: 3/5
Plot: A company retreat on a tropical island goes terribly awry.
Review:  Adam Brody plays Chris, a milquetoast hoping to move up the ladder in his firm whose ambitions are quashed by underhanded middle-manager Phil (Rob Huebel). When the company's head (Dennis Haysbert) sends his crew on a survivalist team-building exercise, Van Damme's Storm promptly gets them stranded on an island with no supplies and no means of contacting the mainland. Then he's carried off by a tiger, leaving Eagle Scout Chris as the only member of the party with any survival skills. If only he had the leadership skills to match them. Instead, Phil soon drugs the survivors and makes himself a god-like leader, with Chris guiding a handful of holdouts -- the generic hot girl (Megan Boone), stoner dude (Eric Edelstein), and nutso pet-fixated lady (Kristen Schaal) -- in an attempt to get rescued. Branded as the first Van Damme comedy, this was pleasantly surprising. It's a very light-hearted comedy with very predictable plot lines – so it's not going down as one of the greatest movies of all time, but it's definitely worth a few laughs over an easy going weekend. To those who are familiar with Lord of the Flies, Welcome to the Jungle will seem like a re-enactment.

Reviewed by Mohammad Haque