“Life is all memory except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you can hardly catch it going” said Tennesse Williams. Dil Chahta Hai (दिल चाहता है) was released 10 years ago in 2001 when me and my friends were (finally!) at the end of our college days and our futures looked bright and happy. Colored by that lens, Dil Chahta Hai, or DCH as we came to call it, became the definitive movie for a lot of us. I watched DCH again recently and it was quite a different experience, though I could clearly see why DCH had felt like our movie in the past.

Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Akshaye Khanna play three rich kids caught in that carerfree twilight zone between college and real life. Aaamir is a prankster who is aloof of love. Saif is innocent and confused about love. Akshaye is the serious type and has fallen in love with an older woman. After a memorable Goa trip, the trio have a spat and Aamir moves away to Australia. Real life catches up with him and he discovers love in Preity Zinta, but is not able to express it. Predictably, his friends return to help him in the act.

Dil Chahta Hai was the debut for director (and now actor) Farhan Akhtar. Though dealing with a standard story, it is told remarkably well with flashbacks. Acting and cinematography are good, but the best memories from this movie are its music. Songs by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, spun around the poignant poetry of Javed Akhtar. Though Koi Kahe Kehta Rahe gets all the airplay, I personally love the depth of the lyrics in Dil Chahta Hai and Tanhayee. I only need to listen to the title track to open the dam of memories of carefree college days. Chamkeele Din indeed! In the 10 years since DCH, what has not really aged well is the length of the movie. At 3 hours, it now seems tortuously slow and unnecessarily long drawn out. Farhan should probably create a shorter director’s cut edition sometime. In the year of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, a quarter-life-crisis-movie by Farhan’s sister, Dil Chahta Hai still remains a good movie to recollect those times!

Jeux d’enfants (Love Me If You Dare) is a 2003 French movie directed by Yann Samuell. The entire movie revolves around a game of dare that a boy and girl play on each other. Sophie is being harassed by her classmates when Julien offers his toy box to console her. She dares him to do something crazy for her, which he does by setting off the school bus down a hill. This game of daring each other by offering the toy box continues all their life. Their dares wreck the lives of their parents, their partners and finally the love they have for each other. Or does it really?

Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard play the main characters with great aplomb, effortlessly pulling in the viewer into their maniacal world. The plot is surreal and nutty, but engaging. Two alternate endings are shown for the movie, one of which is the real one. I so wished the director had chosen the other ending. Jeux d’enfants is a dreamy romantic tragedy that can be watched once.

Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries) is the much-hyped movie by Kiran Rao that released earlier this year. The movie portrays a few days in the lives of 4 people in Mumbai, whose experiences turn out to be interconnected. Arun (Aamir Khan) is a painter, living alone, his divorced wife and child now in Australia. He draws energy from the buzz of the city for his work. Shai (Monica Dogra) is on a sabbatical in Mumbai, on a photography project to capture the life and professions of the city. Munna (Pratiek Babbar) is a dhobi by day and a rat-killer by night. He has dreams of being a Bollywood star one day. And finally Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra), a newly-wed small-town girl from Uttar Pradesh experiencing the big city and recording her moments on a video camera. Something seems amiss in her life.

Like the title suggests, there is no real plot in Dhobi Ghat, it is just what happens in the lives of these characters. All the characters feel real and complex, portrayed well by the actors. The cinematography is excellent, capturing the nuances of the people and the city. People die, things happen, moments pass by slowly, and the city feels like a throbbing living organism. There is a creative vision and some good writing here. Dhobi Ghat is a snapshot of Indian city life, nothing more, nothing less.

Many lives before he was the sadistic doctor in House M.D., Hugh Laurie was an enormously talented British TV actor who paired with another great persona that is Stephen Fry in the rib-tickling comedy series Jeeves and Wooster. Any bookworm from the Indian subcontinent should be familiar with the books by P. G. Wodehouse, which was a staple of all circulating libraries during my school days. This TV series is loosely based on the works of Wodehouse. Set in UK of the pre-WWII era, Wooster (Hugh Laurie) is a parentless young high-society gentleman and Jeeves (Stephen Fry) is his valet. In a seemingly never-ending string of stories, the feckless Wooster adventures through the various girls who are thrust at him by his Aunt Agatha, escaping the clutches of each by a mix of luck, pluck and the intelligence lent by Jeeves.

Some of the finest things in life are an acquired taste and Jeeves and Wooster is no exception. I cannot fathom how this series will be received by folks who are not familiar with the works of P. G. Wodehouse. For me, it took a few episodes before the yin and yang of Jeeves and Wooster became intimately familiar. After that it is one sweet long ride of pure joy. Through 4 seasons of 50-minute long episodes, this series is a keeper. Not just the enormous talent of the two principal actors, but the whole cast is excellent. Though it aired in the early 90s, the 1930 setting of UK and USA have been faithfully recreated. The dress, mannerisms, culture, the weirdly amusing English names and the verbal volleys exchanged between the gentleman and his valet are sure to remain etched in one’s memory. Watched through the glasses of 2011, Jeeves and Wooster has only gotten better, this is a series for everyone and anytime.

The spate of super-hero movies this year seems endless, Hollywood studios must have gotten really desperate! Not having seen the effectiveness of 3D in movies in quite a while, I decided to check out the 3D version of Green Lantern at a theatre recently. The story is set in an alternate universe involving Earth and aliens of all sorts. Planet Oa is the home of the Green Lanterns, a regiment of green-suit wearing aliens who guard the Universe. Their superpower is will, which they can use to bring to life any object which they can imagine. The villain named Parallax, a planet-sized smoky mass shaped like a spider, preys on fear (depicted by yellow). To interest us Earthlings to watch the movie (or buy the comic) a new Green Lantern is chosen from Earth, a fighter pilot named Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds). As is typical in the first movie of a superhero series, Hal has to turn into a responsible human, get used to the powers of his green ring and then trounce the villain to prove himself to his green peers.

Quite a bit of the plot takes place in outer space with weirdly shaped aliens and lots and lots of green and yellow swirly undulations. I did not find any of this interesting, maybe because I am not familiar with this superhero or maybe because it is actually tedious. There is a mad scientist (played by Peter Saarsgaard) who is the pawn of Parallax on Earth, which he plays to maniacal aplomb. Ryan Reynolds in a buffed-up role took some getting used to, mostly because in my mind he still remains the carefree medical student he played in the sitcom Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place. (I love that series, too bad it was shelved after just 2 seasons.) His love interest is Blake Lively, a stiletto wearing fighter pilot (!), who has no use but as the prize fought between the hero and the villain. I still remain skeptical of the power of 3D, and the unending barrage of computer effects in this movie did not repudiate my opinion. Green Lantern is an uninteresting long-drawn-out yarn, whether you catch it in 3D or less.

When we were young, we could not wait to grow up. And now that we have, there are days we wish we were young and irresponsible. Age is just a number and yet it causes so many hours of worrying. People worried about mid-life crisis before, but now even folks in their 20s are not spared of quarter-life crisis! In this progression of ever more depressing numbers stands 30. As one who turned 30 recently, I am all too familiar with the assumptions and expectations that families and society in India direct towards a 30-year old. The pressure is only worse on the fairer sex in India.

Directed by Alankrita Shrivastava, Turning 30!!! deals with the problems facing one such urban working woman. Naina (Gul Panag) works at an advertising agency and is going steady with Rishabh, her boyfriend of 3 years. Her dreams of a happy married life in her thirtieth year are dashed when Rishash leaves her and she is unjustly pushed to the verge of losing her job. Life throws a confusing melange of people into her life: a former boyfriend who is interested, a close friend who comes out of the closet and another friend whose perfect marriage is on the rocks. The movie deals with Naina trying to find her own footing from the mess she has been thrust into.

Turning 30!!! is one of the new breed of Bollywood movies which are in English, which I was glad about, especially given this subject. The story is unique enough for Bollywood, but its actual implementation is quite tacky. Acting, editing, production, everything looks amateurish. And yet, I found the movie quite watchable as it progressed. Despite some of the absurdities the Naina character is forced to endure (literally throwing herself at Rishabh), the plot works and the ending is comforting. Turning 30!!! is a good movie to watch once, especially if you are in its target audience

In his fantastic romantic drama Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the director Michel Gondry blurred the lines between dreams, reality and memory. His next movie in French, The Science of Sleep (La Science des rêves), continues on the same course. Stephane has a overly vivid imagination due to which he sees reality as richly as his dreams. On returning to France after a long stint abroad, he lands a boring typesetting job. Things are a bit more interesting at home, where his new neighbour is a pretty girl named Stephanie, who he slowly falls for. But his graphic dream-reality mixups threaten to ruin his relationship.

The Science of Sleep deals with a very interesting concept that is creatively depicted in the movie by using stop motion animation. This sense pervades the entire movie and it feels like a daydream. Stephane has a quaint gift, Stephanie is a quirky girl and we want these two to fall in love. However, they live in this intensely boring plot that turns off even the most optimistic viewer. Watch this movie only if you find the concept interesting.

Rani is a motherless young girl from coastal Karnataka, who is married off as soon as she reaches puberty. Appanna, her husband from North Karnataka runs a gymnasium in his village and lives alone in a big house. She repulses his violent advances towards her, angered by which he leaves her locked in the house every day to visit his concubine. In an attempt to fix her marriage, Rani takes the advice of her matchmaker, a blind old woman, and prepares a love potion for Appanna. Things go wrong with her experiment and the potion ends up being ingested by a cobra who lives behind her house. Unbeknownst to Rani, the snake takes the form of her husband and starts visiting her regularly. The situation complicates when Appanna gets suspicious.

Nagamandala is a tightly written, well directed venture. It has all the trappings of a mysterious folktale told around a fire by a superb storyteller. Nagabhrana keeps the settings minimal and true to the North Karnataka environment. The movie uses several songs, 12 of them, to nudge the story forward (much like in a play). Composed by C Ashwath, the music is a winner. Prakash Rai (the husband and the snake), Vijayalakshmi (the bride) and especially Jayashri (the blind woman) have acted excellently. Nagamandala is a mystic folktale that is sure to keep you spellbound!

I watched Kismat Konnection (क़िस्मत कनेक्शन) wanting to see how the pair of Vidya Balan and Shahid Kapoor would work onscreen. Directed by Aziz Mirza, the movie is set in Canada where Shahid is a new architect looking for a break. Lady Luck finally shows up in the form of Vidya Balan, a community worker, whose community center will need to be demolished if Shahid is to succeed. (Vidya Balan here reminded me of Sandra Bullock in Two Weeks Notice.)

The plot is amateurish, and the pace so slow that you might prefer to watch paint dry instead. The music is mostly forgettable, the only solace being Kahin Naa Laage Man. Turns out that the copycat Pritam has lifted even this one from a track by The Boss. This movie can be skipped, yes, not worth watching even by the Vidya Balan fans amongst you!