Sneha Jaiswal's Blog, page 267

The Mysterious Affair At Styles – Book Review

Book number 18 for the year – Mom’s copy of ‘The Mysterious Affair At Styles’ by Agatha Christie. I’ve read a few Christie novels back in school & loved them. However, her Victorian sense of humour is slightly burdensome to read as an adult. The prime character Hercule Poirot sometimes comes across as a grandmother masquerading as a male investigator. That said, her books continue to remain gripping and I was able to finish this one in one sitting.

‘The Mysterious Affair At Styles’ is about how an old rich woman is found poisoned and the needle of suspicion falls on her husband, who is 20 years her junior. Like classic Christie – as the investigation progresses, almost everyone becomes a suspect. The famous investigator Hercule Poirot helps unravel the truth. I like how Christie deliberately makes Poirot say things about the murder case that confuses the reader, but doesn’t reveal enough to be sure of our calculations.

Like a lot of Christie’s novels, different kinds of poisons and how they effect the human body find mention in this novel too. What’s even intriguing is the fact that at least three characters have easy access to the poison that kills the victim. Anyway, not going to go into details or give any spoilers. This one is a quick fun thriller that you can finish in 3-4 hours. It’s a 4 on 5 from me.

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‘I Care A Lot’ Review – Pike’s Con Girl Act Suffers From MPD

We all know what happens in films with the classic ‘good versus evil’ themes, but what do you expect in a story that’s basically ‘evil versus evil’? Director J Blakeson explores this possibility in the film “I Care A Lot”, where Rosamund Pike takes on Peter Dinklage.

Pike plays Marla Grayson, a ruthless white-collar con-woman, who legally forces old rich people into a care home and takes over their assets. Things go great for her ‘care-taking’ business until she messes with the wrong old woman. The ‘badder’ guys led by Roman Lunyov (Peter Dinklage) vow to make ‘life uncomfortable’ for her.

The first 90 minutes of ‘I Care A Lot’ is gripping, dark and a delight to watch. But things go downhill in the last 29 minutes, they get juvenile, silly and convenient. It’s like having a four course meal, where the soup, appetizer and entree is great, but the dessert is so mediocre that is brings down the mood of the entire dinner date. The first half is clever, the viewer gets an interesting front-seat view of Grayson’s hustle, which involves gullible oldsters, unscrupulous doctors and an unsuspecting legal system. However, the second-half is unable to live up to the expectations the beginning breeds into the viewer’s mind.

Rosamund Pike is brilliant as the cold-blooded vicious Grayson, who preys on helpless senior-citizens and would stoop to any level to make money. Dianne Wiest who plays Jennifer Peterson, the ‘wrong’ rich old lady Marla messes with, is fun in the few scenes she has, even if she is drugged out in most of them. Peter Dinklage provides an amusing contrast to Grayson’s grey shades, making it hard for the viewer to pick a side, since both of them are exploitative vultures. But a top-notch cast cannot save a film from a doddering and underwhelming climax. It was 20 minutes too long.

‘I Care A Lot’ is like watching a person with multiple-personality disorder (MPD), because the first half felt like it was written by an experienced crime writer, the rest seemed like an amateur was tasked to take over finish the script because the original author lost interest. I saw it with my dad, who was extremely excited initially and didn’t even want to take a dinner break, but once the film was over, he exclaimed “pah! this film is a flop”. Well, don’t know about dad, but it’s a 6/10 from me.

Please do check out our new Podcast show by the same name on YouTube.

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‘I Care A Lot’ Review – Rosamund Pike’s Con Girl Act Suffers From MPD

We all know what happens in films with the classic ‘good versus evil’ themes, but what do you expect in a story that’s basically ‘evil versus evil’? Director J Blakeson explores this possibility in the film “I Care A Lot”, where Rosamund Pike takes on Peter Dinklage.

Pike plays Marla Grayson, a ruthless white-collar con-woman, who legally forces old rich people into a care home and takes over their assets. Things go great for her ‘care-taking’ business until she messes with the wrong old woman. The ‘badder’ guys led by Roman Lunyov (Peter Dinklage) vow to make ‘life uncomfortable’ for her.

The first 90 minutes of ‘I Care A Lot’ is gripping, dark and a delight to watch. But things go downhill in the last 29 minutes, they get juvenile, silly and convenient. It’s like having a four course meal, where the soup, appetizer and entree is great, but the dessert is so mediocre that is brings down the mood of the entire dinner date. The first half is clever, the viewer gets an interesting front-seat view of Grayson’s hustle, which involves gullible oldsters, unscrupulous doctors and an unsuspecting legal system. However, the second-half is unable to live up to the expectations the beginning breeds into the viewer’s mind.

Rosamund Pike is brilliant as the cold-blooded vicious Grayson, who preys on helpless senior-citizens and would stoop to any level to make money. Dianne Wiest who plays Jennifer Peterson, the ‘wrong’ rich old lady Marla messes with, is fun in the few scenes she has, even if she is drugged out in most of them. Peter Dinklage provides an amusing contrast to Grayson’s grey shades, making it hard for the viewer to pick a side, since both of them are exploitative vultures. But a top-notch cast cannot save a film from a doddering and underwhelming climax. It was 20 minutes too long.

‘I Care A Lot’ is like watching a person with multiple-personality disorder (MPD), because the first half felt like it was written by an experienced crime writer, the rest seemed like an amateur was tasked to take over finish the script because the original author lost interest. I saw it with my dad, who was extremely excited initially and didn’t even want to take a dinner break, but once the film was over, he exclaimed “pah! this film is a flop”. Well, don’t know about dad, but it’s a 6/10 from me.

Please do check out our new Podcast show by the same name on YouTube.

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‘Penguin Bloom’ Review – A Poignant Family Drama

Sometimes life can beat you down in a way that could make you wary of people who you love the most. ‘Penguin Bloom’ is about a woman, a wife, a mother, who cannot walk after a freak accident; chained to a wheelchair, her body becomes a prison and her self-loathing festers into despising her own family. However, she learns to live a little more after her sons adopt an injured magpie called Penguin. It’s based on a real life story.

Directed by Glendyn Ivin, this family drama follows the Bloom family and is narrated by the eldest son Noah Bloom (Griffin Murray-Johnston), who recalls how his mother Sam changes into a different person after she loses her ability to walk. She has no will to do anything and chooses to spend time inside the house as an invalid. “You are not enough. The children are not enough” she says teary eyed in a moving scene to her husband Cameron (Andrew Lincoln). The makers don’t shy away from showing just how negatively an accident can impact someone’s life. It’s not all roses and inspirational music. Things we think but never say are said in this film.

The strongest point of ‘Penguin Bloom’ is the scenic cinematography which captures the blue shores of Australia beautifully. A lot of the story is shot inside the Bloom’s home, which is a spacious sunny space, that exudes a positive aura. The contrasting symbolism is brought out nicely – despite having a lovely home in a gorgeous beach town, with a caring husband & three sweet little boys, Sam Bloom is unable to look at the brighter side of things. It takes a little bird to finally teach her that all is not lost.

Naomi Watts portrays Sam with all her heart, and Andrew Lincoln shines in his role as her supportive spouse, his acting needs special mention, because it was very hard to like him as the protagonist in the ‘Walking Dead’ series. Actor Jacki Weaver who plays Sam Bloom’s mother was quite endearing as the worry-wart mother who doesn’t know how to be politically correct. The bird Penguin Bloom is the definite hero of this film. While watching it, one might wonder if it’s all special effects, but according to the makers, 80% of the scenes with the bird were all real. One has to applaud bird trainer Paul Mander, who made it all possible.

‘Penguin Bloom’ is a largely serious film, peppered with some touching family moments, with an adorable bird to boot. It might not be the ‘fun friday film’ you are looking for, but it makes for a nice pick to watch with the family. Warning – expect some waterworks, because a few scenes might make you emotional.

It’s a 8/10 from me. Because honestly, I expected the film to be depressing, dreary and slow, but instead, it was moving, sweet and poignant.

Please do check out our new Podcast show by the same name on YouTube.

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‘Tale of Sand’ Review – Like A Silent Color Film

Book no. 17 this year – Tale of Sand by Jim Henson. Okay, so I am reading a lot of graphic novels this month on the kindle app and the illustrations in this one were AMAZING. The panels are a brilliant splash of colours, in tandem with the surreal story about a guy who finds himself travelling across a dessert, encountering weird people.

It was originally written by Henson & Jerry Juhl as a screenplay for a film. They never got around to getting it made into a film, but instead we have this surrealistic drama on paper. There is very little dialogue & it’s like you are watching a silent film in colour. Those who aren’t very appreciative of art and comic panels may end up being disappointed with the minimal story-telling. But I really enjoyed the illustrations and scenes that made very little sense.

Tale of Sand starts with the protagonist taking part in what looks like a celebration where most people are cheering him on. He then is handed out a map and sent off on a journey, and he has no idea what the mission his. It’s like he is on some sort of a race, with a villain always close on his heels. As he travels in the dessert, bizzare and random things keep happening. It reminded me a little of Samuel Beckett’s work, who was famous for his absurd plays. While on surface they didn’t make any sense, they infact symbolised the nature of life itself.

It’s a solid 4/5 from me for this book. Think I am definitely going to buy a hardback copy later, just because the artwork is so damn good.

Please do check out our new Podcast show by the same name on YouTube.

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‘The Last Temptation’ Book Review

Book no 16. this year – The Last Temptation by Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli & Alice Cooper. This was a quick 150 page graphic novel /comic that was not as dark as the cover art seemed to suggest.

The story starts off doing Halloween celebrations, with a bunch of boys swapping gory horror stories as they walk back home from school. They stop midway to look at a theater and are soon accosted by a sinister looking stranger, who dares them to come inside and watch a show alone. The boys challenge the protagonist Stevens to go in and that’s where things start to get creepy.

‘The Last Temptation’has the classic “devil’s bargain” as its theme, a la ‘Doctor Faustus’. Although it’s not the soul at stake and the devils victims are children. The artwork was colourful, yet dark at the same time, kind of like the modern Batman comics. The black overtones in the comic-panels give a necessary ominous touch to the story.

I think the book was a pretty good pick for a quick read. Neil Gaiman in the introduction himself explains that he wanted to write something light, equivalent to a pop song – “nothing too deep, nothing too ambiguous”. And he delivers just that with his graphic novel. So don’t go expecting a lot, it’s a pretty simple yet intriguing tale.

If you have a kindle unlimited subscription, the ebook version is free to read.

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‘Squared Love’ Review – Circle of Cliches

Have you ever had a skeptical frown on your face throughout the course of watching a film, simultaneously judging yourself for your film choices? Happened to me while watching ‘Squared Love’, a 2021 Polish romantic comedy film directed by Filip Zylber, that’s written by Wiktor Piątkowski and Marzanna Polit. It’s funny that the film needed two people to write it, because even a 10th grader who reads a lot of fluffy romantic fiction could have done the job.

The film follows the story of Monika (Adrianna Chlebicka), a nerdy school teacher, who lives a double life. She slips out of her glasses, brunette ponytail and boring clothes to become ‘Klaudia’, a blonde model, so that she can pay off her father’s debts from modelling gigs. Enter Enzo (Mateusz Banasiuk), a popular journalist who is cast across Klaudia for a car campaign and sparks fly between the two. Although their romance begins with the cliche trope of them not liking each other at first after a misunderstanding on their first meet.

While a kid from her school can easily recognize that Klaudia/Monika are the same person, everybody else cannot seem to see the similarity. Reminded me of the Bollywood film ‘Rab Ne Bana De Jodi’, where the shy/nerdy hero gets a makeover to lead a double life, in order to woo his own wife. His wife thinks they are two different people, because apparently, women can’t recognize their husbands if they get a hair-cut and lose their mustache. For non-Bollywood fans, maybe the Klark Kent/Superman example would make more sense – Monika is Klark Kent to Klaudia the super model, who is trying to save her dad from loan-sharks.

Now that I am watching a lot of foreign movies these days, it’s quite clear that some romantic tropes are just universal to film industries across the world. ‘Squared Love’ is a mash of a lot of romance films, with elements that are just too boring and predictable for a 2021 movie. For example, they use the classic, ‘put the bad boy with a bunch of kids and the woman will fall for him when she sees how nice he is with children’. Why do we need to see men/women around kids to understand that they might be nice people? Ugh.

Nothing really stands out in this film, the cinematography is average, the background score is completely forgettable and the actors are just about okay in their roles. Nobody really stands out with their acting. Not even the child actors. While Enzo is supposed to be a hot womanizer, the actor who plays his brother is more handsome. Although beauty is in the eye of the beholder. C’mon, I couldn’t resist writing a ‘writing cliche’ while talking about a film which uses just about every little trick in the old book of romance writing. Cliches aren’t always a bad thing, sometimes we love seeing them, because they are relatable, but it all depends on the execution – you need to know how to put the old wine in a new bottle and make it sell.

Despite being a very mediocre romantic-comedy, the pace was actually not too bad, there aren’t many unnecessary long, lingering boring shots, which makes it a little easier to watch. Still wouldn’t recommend it to anybody. It’s a 4 on 10 from me.

Please do check out our new Podcast show by the same name on YouTube.

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‘Little Big Women’ Review – Lessons In Loss

In the 2020 Taiwanese film ‘Little Big Women’, a matriarch and her three daughters struggle to come to terms with the loss of a man who had been absent in their lives for almost twenty years, yet fresh in their memories like it was all yesterday. Directed by Joseph Chen-Chieh Hsu, it’s an emotional tale of family, sisterhood and marriage.

At the centre of the story is Lin Shoying (Chen Shu-fang), a self-made woman, whose estranged husband dies on her 70th birthday. She refuses to halt her birthday celebrations, but eventually gives the father of her three daughters a grand funeral, even if grudgingly. What comes next is the untangling of emotions Shoying and her daughters experience, as they try to bid farewell to a man who had left them a long time ago.

Shoying’s youngest daughter Jiajia (Ke-Fang Sun) helps run her restaurant, while the eldest is a freewheeling dancer Ching (Hsieh Ying-xuan) and the middle one is a wealthy doctor Yu (Vivian Hsu). She also has a grand-daughter called Clementine, a lovely curious child, whose doctor mother wants to pack her away to America for further studies. ‘Little Big Women’ is the story of these ordinary women and the challenges life throws them. The film is leisurely paced and might test the patience of a lot of viewers, but it gives us an endearing glimpse into the lives of flawed but strong women. There’s a lot of light, witty, relatable family banter and the warm relationship between the three sisters is lovingly executed. They are united in terror of their strict mother, and in their love for a father who was barely there for them.

The cinematography is pretty captivating, right from the bustling fish-market at the start, to the blue waters of the Taiwanese shore. Everything is shot artistically. For non-natives, the film offers interesting insights into their culture and beliefs, which is revealed through the funeral rituals. What I really liked was how the director manages to lighten up even the sadder moments in the film with casual clever witticism. But a lot of moments are dragged longer than needed.

The strength of this film is its storytelling and the simple ways in which the makers show how irrational love can be. Shoying’s relationship with her estranged husband is revealed in flashbacks and we see how a strong-willed woman chases her man with a butcher’s knife and yet forgives all his philandering in a heart-beat. As Shoying and her girls lose the man they loved with all their heart, they must now learn to let go. A little bit of chopping by the director on the run-time would’ve greatly benefited the story.

Despite its short-comings, ‘Little Big Women’ was a thoroughly enjoyable fare and is a 8/10 for me. (The film is available to stream on Netflix)

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Namaste Wahala Review – Very 90s Bollywood

The cross-cultural film ‘Namaste Wahala’ written and made by debutant director Hamisha Daryani Ahuja feels like an out and out Bollywood film from the 1990s. Sample the opening scene – a woman bumps into a man by the beach, they stare into each other’s eyes and it’s ‘love at first sight’. The boy decides she is the girl he wants to marry. Not even kidding, just watch the trailer if you haven’t.

The movie is set in Nigeria and the hero is an Indian investment banker called Raj (Ruslaan Mumtaz) who woos Nigerian lawyer Didi (Ini Dima Okojie). The two date for three months and Raj insists that he meet his girlfriend’s parents. The couple soon faces a mighty challenge – to convince their parents to agree to their marriage, because neither family is thrilled about their kid marrying somebody who is not of their nationality. The parents are blindingly prejudiced and mean for most part of the film.

While it’s a romantic comedy, there is a small sub-plot in the film about Didi fighting a case to get justice for a woman who was brutally assaulted by a rich brat, and that bit was far more interesting than her romantic life. The movie is slightly funny, but has an overtly dramatic background score, which seems straight out an Indian television drama from the early 2000s. Despite being classified under the ‘African Movies’ genre on Netflix, ‘Namaste Wahala’ is as Indian as Indian movies get.

The support cast that played Raj and Didi’s friends were more fun than the lead actors, although Ruslaan Mumtaz and Ini Dima Okojie play their roles quite earnestly. And the actor who plays Raj’s father cannot act to save his life. Despite having a lot of potential to be a super fun family film, it’s very mediocre because of the lazy script-writing. Some of the comedy scenes are too fake and contrived. Also, I usually don’t have anything to say about the costumes in a movie, but some of the stuff that the actors wear in this film was way too flashy/loud.

If director Hamisha Daryani was aiming at making a parody Bollywood film, she has nailed it, but if this was a serious attempt at a romantic comedy, than it’s pretty disappointing. ‘Namaste Wahala’ is the sort of no-brainer comedy that you can only watch with a bunch of friends and have a laugh at. It’s a 5/10 from me.

10 Fiction Books With Little Or Zero Romance

The romance genre is one of the most popular genre in the fiction world for obvious reasons, but every now and then, readers want to read a book that delves into matters that don’t have much to with the heart. So in the lastest podcast episode of Abstract AF, I recommend 10 fiction books that have little or close to no romance.

It’s an interesting mix of classics, graphic novels and contemporary fiction from across the world, so listen in.