'This Is Me…Now: A Love Story' Is A Cheesy-Cool JLo Vanity Project |
This Is Me…Now is an ode to Jennifer Lopez's own tabloid-bait-esque life and famous search for romance — as well as a shamelessly corny tribute to Bennifer 2.0, writes Rahul Desai |
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| | Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck |
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IS THAT A Cloud Atlas-inspired short film? Is that a Singin’ In The Rain -style musical? Is that a genre-fluid vanity project parading as an autobiographical love letter in a turn-heartbreak-into-art, Swifties-infested world? No, it’s This Is Me…Now: A Love Story, Jennifer Lopez’s — “JLo” to the unversed and un-universed — cinematic companion piece to her latest album, which comes more than 20 years after her superhit vehicle, This Is Me…Then . The hour-long ‘film’ is essentially a 54-year-old megastar’s self-published personal essay. It’s an ode to her own tabloid-bait-esque and divorce-addled life, and famous search for romance — as well as a shamelessly corny tribute to Bennifer 2.0. Lest we don’t get it with all the 2000s lyrics and middling tracks, Hollywood star Ben Affleck — Lopez’s muse and ex-boyfriend-turned-soulmate — makes a funny cameo as a toxic Trump-era news anchor bemoaning the loss of old-school love in modern pop. (Stream top-rated movies and shows across platforms and languages, using the OTTplay Premium Jhakaas pack, for just Rs 199/month.) Sure, This Is Me…Now is absurd and sappy and over-designed — what with stagey music videos woven into settings like futuristic heart factories, gothic therapy sessions, metaphorical hummingbirds and bike rides, fragile glass houses, love addicts anonymous (LAA) meetings and lonely hilltop mansions. There’s also a goofy “zodiacal council” in the sky, featuring you-go-girl Gods played by a wild assortment of celebrities like Trevor Noah, Jane Fonda, Keke Palmer, Sofia Vergara and, well, Sadhguru(!). Their job is to discuss sad-girl-hours Lopez, with her incessant rebounds, weddings, abusive relationships, hopeless optimism and serial monogamy. Meanwhile, Lopez keeps singing and feeling…a lot. |
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The Holdovers Is A Moving Hymn To Loners, Malcontents & Found Families |
Two decades after Sideways (2004), Paul Giamatti and Alexander Payne reunite for a movie which pulses with a warmth and tenderness at odds with its protagonist’s killjoy persona. |
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| Cast: Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da'Vine Joy Randolph |
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PAUL HUNHAM (Paul Giamatti) suffers from a condition that can perhaps only be described as Resting Grinch Face. Eternally crabby and generally unfriendly, Paul is disliked by students and faculty alike at Barton Academy, a prestigious New England boarding school where he teaches ancient history. Part of his infamy comes from the near-relish he seems to take in failing his students, rather than inspiring them. Rest assured, Paul won’t be getting the “O Captain! My Captain!” treatment from his students. As punishment for failing the son of a senator, Paul is forced to babysit five students who have nowhere to go for the Christmas holidays. It stands to reason no student wants to be spending their break with a man who, well, curdles the eggnog and calls them things like “rancid little philistines,” “hormonal vulgarians,” “snarling Visigoths,” “entitled degenerates,” “fetid layabouts” and “genuine troglodytes”. Yes, Paul loves a good, well-timed, bruising insult with just enough sophistication to show off his subject of expertise and just enough cruel honesty to cut a student to the quick. His words broadcast a wit, sharpened and polished over years of gnarled experience and crabbed misanthropy. Needless to say, Paul doesn’t come from the school of thought that advocates: if you can’t say anything nice then don’t say anything at all. — PRAHLAD SRIHARI |
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Madame Web: An American Superhero Debacle To End All Debacles |
The brilliant Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse warned us about the perils of crisscrossing spider canons. But clearly, Sony Pictures didn’t read their own memo. |
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| Cast: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Emma Roberts |
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EVEN BY THE Sony Spider-Man Universe’s ('SSU' apparently — because we need a surrogate Marvel universe like we need another WhatsApp group that could’ve been an email) deplorable standards — two Venom movies and one Morbius disaster so far — Madame Web is very, very, very bad. It is incompetently directed, blandly written, horribly shot, horrifically edited and poorly acted. Ironically, Dakota Johnson, who plays the titular character, is probably the best thing about the film. But you’d have to be 50 shades of cray to visit the nearest IMAX screen to see her play the younger version of a comic character who is an old, blind and paralysed clairvoyant. She has monopolised the sexy-but-awkward 30-something prototype on screen, but her co-star is mostly a green screen here. She is reduced to a Final Destination protagonist trapped in the wrong story. More on that later. Or soon. So Madame Web opens with a Jumanji -level sequence in the ‘Peruvian Amazons’ in 1973, where a pregnant woman researching spiders is killed by a greedy explorer (Tahar Rahim, why?) who escapes with a miraculous spider. Naturally, the baby — who is saved by a super-mythical tribe dressed in tacky spider-wear — grows up to become a paramedic named Cassie Web in New York City in 2003. Now this is technically a year after Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie rocked the world, and there could be weird possibilities. More so because there’s a Ben Parker (a.k.a Uncle Ben), Cassie’s work partner, whose sister Mary is pregnant with a future Peter Parker, which means Spider-Man will be 21 in 2024 and…forget it. What’s the point? The brilliant animated movie Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse warned us precisely about the perils of crisscrossing spider canons and their stunning lack of originality. But clearly, Sony Pictures didn’t read their own memo. — R.D. |
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A Space for The Unbound: Finding Hope At The End Of The World |
A slice-of-life, supernatural adventure, set in late '90s Indonesia, A Space For The Unbound follows two high-schoolers' coming-of-age story, even as a mysterious power threatens their existence. |
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EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, along comes a game that captures one's heart and mind so completely, pulls one into its world so convincingly yet with the effortlessness of falling asleep on a long journey, that every time you look up from the screen you need a moment to realign yourself with reality. Mojiken Studio's A Space for the Unbound is just one of those. A slice-of-life, supernatural adventure, set in late '90s Indonesia, the game follows high schoolers Atma and Raya’s coming-of-age story as they navigate relationships, anxiety, social conflicts, depression, and finding one's place in the world; all the while as a mysterious power threatens their existence. Faced with the prospect of the end of the world, the two must set out on a reflective journey beset with secrets, magic, mind-bending twists, and cats. — HARSH PAREEK |
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| In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an hour on this. |
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