Intrusion

Vampire Owl: So, who is the real intruder around here?

Vampire Bat: Freida Pinto plays the one who goes through the intrusion.

Vampire Owl: I remember her from some of the interesting films of past.

Vampire Bat: Freida is indeed better than almost every Bollywood actress here.

Vampire Owl: Bollywood has never been known for quality in acting.

Vampire Bat: It has never been known much for the plot either.

Vampire Owl: There is nothing that I want in a movie than a good plot.

Vampire Bat: Well, they can give a good story, but not a good plot.

Vampire Owl: Well, they are limited in talent due to acting being family business.

Vampire Bat: You don’t inherit all skills just like that.

[Gets a vegetable puffs and three cups of white tea].

What is the movie about? :: Breast cancer survivor and immigrant from India, Meera Parsons (Freida Pinto) and her husband, architect Henry Parsons (Logan Marshall-Green) have moved from Boston to an isolated area of New Mexico, as latter had designed a new house using all her skills. Meera continues to be concerned about the possibilities of cancer returning, as she finds something near her breast while showering. She tries to keep things secret from her husband, even though he has been very supportive and has made sacrifices throughout his career in the past. At night, after having dinner outside, they return only to find their home being broken into. Detective Stephen Morse (Robert John Burke) suspects that it is someone they knew as the laptops and mobile phones are the only things which are missing from the house. As they are basically in the middle of nowhere, there is nobody to call for some quick help, and he finally installs some security cameras to be sure.

So, what happens with the events here as we just keep looking? :: Meera has another check-up and finds out that there is no signs of cancer returning, much to relief of both of them. But they wake up at night due to some strange noise, but they are not able to turn on the lights. He goes to check on the generator and finds out that it has been smashed. He finds out that there are intruders in the house, while Meera is tied up and gagged. They manage to escape with the men being shot down, while the intruders are also supposed to be responsible for the disappearance of a girl named Christine Cobb (Megan Elisabeth Kelly), all of them coming from the same family which lives in a poor neighborhood. Two of them died in the spot while the remaining person died later in the hospital. Meera remains in trauma after the incident, but Henry asks him to move on, as the last person also dies in the hospital. Meera wonders if there is something wrong, considering the way Henry was dealing with the situation, but there might be more than what meets the eye about the same. Will the two stay together after knowing the whole truth?

The defence of Intrusion :: The movie works as an effective mystery work rather than going the full thriller mode. There are secrets in here, and they are revealed as the movies progresses firmly. The location is really good, and we have the feeling of that this could be a perfect place for some strange and mysterious things to happen. We keep wondering if something is behind all of these, at all times, as clues are given to us at regular intervals. There is also the reflection of human inherent evil, even on people who are supposed to be not the bad guys. The tendency to be evil is shown as always there. The human mind is a paradise for evil, and as one goes through different situations, divergent ways of evil are released, as seen in this movie through seemingly perfect people. Most of the times, it looks like a standard, decent effect, even though it wouldn’t claim for a lot, with enough awareness on its own existence, and where the strengths lie. It goes on in a straight forward manner, with out ups and downs.

The claws of flaw :: The movie could have been made in a more thrilling way in comparison to how it has progressed as of now. We do have a guess about the twists which are to come in the end, and there are clues which we can understand better than the main character can. Even with its shorter run-time, the movie still feels long, as things do not pick up the pace at any moment, until the final revelation and realization. It doesn’t use the home invasion elements to advantage either, and the surprise element could have been strengthened, maybe with the use of better elements of shock. There could have been those moments which raised the level of the movie, but this one just manages to go on at the same level at all times. The movie doesn’t have enough to go this long, and one and a quarter minutes would have been enough for this one. One would wonder how this one would work if some more effects were added here, with lighting or with the sounds at night. There was chance for some horror elements, especially as this has the psychological elements – the home invasion could have easily been scary enough to make an impact.

The performers of the soul :: Freida Pinto has things in control here, and we know that she is capable of more than the usual Bollywood actors and actresses, most of them being there just because of their parents, uncles, aunties and grandparents. It is nice to be in quality movies and come up with a role of relevance every time, she seems to continue to do the same again and again. This movie is completely about her, as it is up to her to discover the secrets about what has been happening around here, especially a few things which are not going to make her happy in any way. This is something that good actresses rarely get in Bollywood, and she has another work to remember, rising above the overall strength of the movie itself. Logan Marshall-Green plays the next important role, and it is the one other role of significance that is there throughout the movie. The other characters are of very low significance, and one person who becomes important in the end is Megan Elisabeth Kelly, played well for a very short period of time.

How it finishes :: Intrusion manages to be interesting enough with Freida Pinto at the centre. There is no questioning her skills at any moment, but some opportunities are being missed out, as you look around here. Not to be confused with Intuition, which is a Spanish thriller, this one would focus on the location more than anything else to gain what it wants. It also provides the much known idea again, that things are not really what they seem, especially with the rich and influential people who wear the masks. Even though engaging in its own slower path, one has to remember that this is not exactly the home invasion movie or psychological thriller that you would expect, as this one has its own deviations. The short description and divisions into categories won’t do this one complete justice, as categorization needn’t be that exact. But you watch this one for Freida, and enjoy another ride which brings the surprise. After all, different tastes call for different kinds of surprises.

Release date: 22nd September 2021 (Netflix)
Running time: 92 minutes
Directed by: Adam Salky
Starring: Freida Pinto, Logan Marshall-Green, Sarah Minnich, Robert John Burke, Yvette Fazio-Delaney, Clint Obenchain, Mark Sivertsen, Megan Elisabeth Kelly, Hayes Hargrove, David DeLao, Brandon Root, Bonita King, Josh Horton

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@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

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Spider-Man: Homecoming

Vampire Owl: Do they mean to say that Spider-Man will finally come home?

Vampire Bat: I don’t see why not. Home should be where the heart is, and we know how much that it makes everything changing.

Vampire Owl: Well, it doesn’t matter if he come home or not, as there are so many superheroes who have overtaken him in the recent past.

Vampire Bat: Yes, I remember him having ruled the superhero world around here. Superman, Batman and Spider-Man were three big heroes.

Vampire Owl: You see how well Thor: Ragnarok managed to do better than this one at the theatres.

Vampire Bat: It is not really that strange. The Spider-Man that everyone loved, was not this teenager who is more irritating than an undead zombie filling a bucket with a hole.

Vampire Owl: Yes, I remember how irritating he was in Captain America: Civil War.

Vampire Bat: Then, he is also at a low level of heroism compared to almost everyone in the Avengers list.

Vampire Owl: Yes, I am sure that he is too much dependent on Iron Man. And he is like our first known superhero. It is such a shame.

Vampire Bat: At least, he is named after the spider and not the bat.

[Gets three cups of masala tea with Nice Time biscuits].

What is the movie about? :: Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton)and his salvage company take the contract to clean up the city after the events of The Avengers, but their operation is taken over by the Department of Damage Control (DODC), a combined venture of Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) and the United States government, much to their dismay as they had set everything for these operations. Now out of business, and left with not many options to come back to track, Adrian and his team keep the Chitauri alien technology they had already managed to take from the site, and use it to create and sell advanced weapons. At the same time, the incidents of Avengers: Age of Ultron also happen, and there is Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-Man (Tom Holland) who gets invited to all the action during Captain America: Civil War – he is very much excited about the same, but has to get back to Midtown School of Science and Technology to continue his studies.

So, what happens next in the movie? :: Peter used to be part of United States Academic Decathlon, but now, he spends more time looking for action, keeping on checking with Stark’s employee Happy (Jon Favreau) to see if there is chance for any more of the Avengers missions, but he doesn’t reply to the same. His best friend is Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) who supports him in all things, and is the only one in college, and the only person among his friends and family to know his secret identity. His classmate and opponent Eugene Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori) wastes no time in making fun of the two, and also his talks about doing internship at Stark Enterprises. Peter doesn’t care though, as he has fallen for a senior girl named Liz Allan (Laura Harrier), and has a few friendly neighbourhood Spidey jobs to do almost every day. He helps people in need using the costume which Tony Stark had provided for him during the battle against Team Captain America.

And what is to follow next in this adventure? :: After stopping criminals from robbing an ATM using the advanced alien weapons, he comes across a deal, and is taken away by Adrian in his Vulture form and dropped in a lake, only to be saved an Iron Man armour programmed to keep track of the Spider-Man suit. But it is not just Vulture that stands in Spider-Man’s way, as the Shocker (Bokeem Woodbine) has also been unleashed. Peter realizes that something huge is going on, and that it is in Maryland as shown by the tracker he set on one of the villains – this leads to Parker rejoining the decathlon team and traveling with them to Washington DC for their national tournament, but with villains with alien technology, one has to wonder if this is too much for a friendly neighbourhood spider-boy to handle – but you can never predict that well as far as our superheroes are concerned; for Ant-Man is the smallest big one!

The defence of Spider-Man: Homecoming :: There are those usual Spider-Man action here again, and it works most of the time. Tom Holland as Spider-Man seems to get into things very well. Earlier, in Captain America: Civil War, Spidey was one irritating creature, and now things have managed to be better. The beginning with his own shots of the adventure with Avengers is pretty bad too, but the villain and his superior ideology to Peter and Tony is a boost, as we have a better antagonist than those in those usual superhero movies. It is nice to have Spider-Man there though, as what could Marvel Cinematic Universe be, without its greatest superhero of all-time? There is a certain funny side that works at times, but not throughout the flick – also, the movie does keep us guessing about what is to happen next, with a clueless superhero gets into his job. The one heroine whom we might be looking for in a sequel, should be Zendaya as Michelle Jones. Before we get things to be better, lets go through the Spidey stuff for its third series of movies.

The claws of flaw :: Everything in this movie seems to happen for one reason or the other, and Spider-Man has to prove himself to the one rich egoistic superhero just because he has money to spend on everything. This does make one wonder if Vulture is the real hero who takes these away from the millionaires and gives it to the people. Even Marisa Tomei seems to have been chosen for Iron Man, as you notice how quickly the age of the aunties of Spider-Man are falling – the first franchise of the century had the actress playing this role in her eighties, then the next one close to her seventies, and in this third group of movies, we will have fifty-year old aunty! Even the leading actress is pretty much not interesting, with her character being there for what seems to be ready to bring that twist about falling in love with the villain’s daughter – it is such an old thing, even for Bollywood; there is the need to change it. Well, the two are poles apart in everything on screen. The action and the tale are not much smarter either.

How it finishes :: Most of us who have grown up reading and watching Spider-Man more than any other superhero will find it strange to have this kind of an irresponsible hero in the Spider-Man suit. The Spider-Man we knew as the supreme one from Marvel, the other two big names Batman and Superman being part of DC, has been brought to be part of a second grade list here, under Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man, Black Panther, all of whom we who are here at this part of the world never really knew during our childhood. He-Man had a position far above these people, and even our own inspired creation in the form of Shaktimaan. Now, when we see Spider-Man in this form, it makes us wonder more than anything else, and the box-office of this superhero here which is just under Thor: Ragnarok is more because of the left-overs of the Spider-Man of early 2000s, and The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel, more than the result of Marvel’s new cinematic universe.

Release date: 7th July 2017
Running time: 133 minutes
Directed by: Jon Watts
Starring: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Laura Harrier, Marisa Tomei, Michael Keaton, Robert Downey Jr, Jon Favreau, Donald Glover, Tyne Daly, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jacob Batalon, Isabella Amara, Angourie Rice, Tony Revolori, Garcelle Beauvais, Kerry Condon, Michael Mando, Hemky Madera, Bokeem Woodbine, Logan Marshall-Green, Kenneth Choi, Hannibal Buress, Martin Starr, Jorge Lendeborg Jr, Abraham Attah, Tiffany Espensen, Selenis Leyva, Tunde Adebimpe, Michael Barbieri, Ethan Dizon, Martha Kelly

<— Click here to go to the previous review.

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

Prometheus

prometheus (2)

Enter the most significant flashback to 2012, and welcome Prometheus, the Greek titan who is credited with stealing the fire and giving into humans. The punishment of Prometheus for this generous act is the most significant and the most interesting part of his tale, and it is a major part of ancient as well as modern works of literature and art. He was immortal and thus open to eternal torture, an opportunity which someone like Zeus was not supposed to miss, as he was tied to a rock, and each day an eagle would test its beak on his liver and eats them, which would then grow back to be eaten again the next day. Prometheus is said to be freed at last by the strongest of the Greek heroes, Heracles a.k.a Hercules. So how does Prometheus fit in this movie? Well, he is the symbol of human quest for knowledge, and also that of the risk of unintended consequences. The Modern Prometheus was used as the subtitle by Mary Shelley for her 1818 Gothic horror novel Frankenstein with its hero attempting something which was not supposed to be done according to the divine will, thus creating life which is not just abominable, but too strong for him to end. Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus can take it better, as Doctor Faustus crossed the limits himself, and paid for it with a lovely, intellectually superior soul for dinner in the inferno that night as Mephistopheles, Lucifer and Belzebub are concerned.

The movie does the same, it is the story of a search to another world in a ship was rightly named Prometheus, even as I think the name Icarus would have also done good, considering the fact that they are going after a thing which could burn themselves as well as their world. You can have your own wings of fire, but they will eventually burn out – Icarus could at least drink water before he died, but for the seekers for something bigger than sun, one can’t be so sure. The biggest advantage of the movie is that it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn’t provide the viewers with answers, making them use their brains as well as wait for a possible sequel with all the answers. There are also times when one should stop searching for answers and logical explanations for everything, as there are things for which there is no suitable explanations, for the world was not built on science, and controlling life and nature is just a distant impossible dream. Therefore, those who watch the movie will have to understand the mystery and accept the fact that it has to remain the same. There are things that you shouldn’t and couldn’t understand. The other group of people who oppose this movie are the trolls of the worst kind, who are always looking for attention, pretending that they know everything with their off-topic nonsense.

Another thing about the mystery is that if you do understand what you are not supposed to understand with the help of stupid logical explanations, there would be disasters, and you would end up being nothing more than another Greek mythological figure, Sisyphus who was forced to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to see it roll back down, and to repeat this action forever – no you won’t get to be Naranath Bhranthan, as he was divine and intellectual, and you will be termed fools. He pretended to be mad, but in your case, there might be no need to pretend as long as you keep seeking things that you shouldn’t. You can keep searching for something which is not supposed be found and shall never be found, therefore initiate a meaningless action similar to that of our Sisyphus. Why should one create such a cruel situation for oneself in a world which is complete in itself unless human beings won’t interfere with the progress of natural life with too much science and technology? Wonder why the so called rational minds are so proud and prejudiced that they can’t accept what they can’t understand; unfortunately, that well has the devil prepared his webs of sin and lies. Just see how much destruction man has brought upon the planet by seeking the wrong things rather than God. Lets learn from it, and stop searching for the wrong answers and cease asking the wrong questions.

As a spaceship is seen to depart from a world similar to Earth during an unspecified time period, and a humanoid alien drinks a vial, then starts to disintegrate and then fall into the waterfalls under his feet and his remains would seem to create some biological transformation on the world. In 2089, Peter Weyland, the CEO of Weyland Corporation, funds an expedition to a distant moon LV-223 on the spaceship Prometheus on a mission to find the creatures who predated humanity, calling them the Engineers. The Prometheus lands on the moon near a large artificial structure. The place looked good enough to live, as if someone already lived there, or someone was supposed to. During an exploration, they find a huge number stone cylinders which are arranged in an orderly manner, a large and a monolithic statue of a humanoid head reminding of the large stone-heads of the Easter Island of Chile. From a corpse of a large alien, a head is taken which is later found to be similar to that of humans in the DNA. There would be questions to be asked and some of the answers would come at a price, including th total annihilation of the human race on Earth. The only thing which is predictable is the presence of alien life forms which would attack humans, and even form a parasite-provider relationship with them if possible; something which will end in the same mode as the original Alien movie.

Noomi Rapace plays the protagonist, Elizabeth Shaw, an archaeologist, and a firm believer in God who keeps the crucifix close to her heart and the mind. No, she was never like Alien franchise’s own alien destroyer, Ellen Ripley. This one is a more believable character for sure, and there can still be questions about her being another Ripley as the series get a second part. She had faith and it kept her making the right decisions, and also helped her in being the one sensible person out there. She has kept her beliefs in that time of turmoil, and what kept her strong is that symbol of faith which she carried. In a society which was so advanced, and might have surely persuaded her to leave it by hook or by crook, she held on to it like any righteous person would do. It is her faith that makes her the true protagonist, and considering the person she is portrayed to be, the lack of it would have ended whatever was good in her, just like it can be seen in the other characters. She survives the alien creature coming out of her stomach, and also the death of her lover; she even stops the alien life forms from destroying Earth, something which was made possible by her faith and belief, which the other lacked. She searches her own God even when looking for the so called superior creatures; she is a noble soul and the heroic character, a lady knight for the mankind against the aliens, a title which she might truly gain by the end of the franchise.

Charlize Theron as Meredith Vickers has another villain-like role for her after her evil queen in the worst movie of 2012, Snow White and the Huntsman, in which she was the fairest of them all, and Kristen Stewart who played Snow White looked pale and useless. She is still not that evil this time, as she is just trying to take control all the time, and remain the lady in command throughout the mission. There might still be questions about her being real human, with her decisions which is without emotions, these doubts only proven wrong when she comes out drop-dead-gorgeous out of that tube like chamber in which she was cryogenically frozen in a hyper-sleep and then again when she tries to save herself, something which a machine would have cared about less. She looks incredibly beautiful throughout the movie, and still working her character to its strong, selfish motives. To be frank, she was rather good in some of her decisions, and I would be deeply saddened to say that they have killed off the character with a spaceship on her head – still there is a little hope in the second part, as she could have fallen into some pit when the spaceship crashed on her; well, they brought back significant characters in Fast & Furious 6 and G.I.Joe: Retaliation from the dead, and so it is there for giving a chance.

Michael Fassbender scores as David, the android robot whose action leads to the death of Elizabeth Shaw’s lover as well as her impregnation with the alien. He works for Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), and both act together in their logical need for immortality for the boss. Along with great performances from the case, the movie continues to score with its mind-blowing CGI and the 3D which can be termed optional. There is nothing about Prometheus that a sensible person can hate, and when the movie takes unexpected turns and take to a least expected universe, learn to live with that, because it is for the good. It is evident from the fact that sensible critics did give the movie a good rating. James Cameron, the director of Aliens, has said that the movie is great. There might be a few people who think otherwise, and their problem should be the inability to take in the awesomeness, and this one was clearly out of their comprehension, as they gave away all their imagination and creativity to the demon of logic. Prometheus doesn’t wander around people like you, slaves of logic, it is for the people who dare to create their world and live in it without going with the modern barbarians looking for nonsense logic and talk bad about everything which remains beyond their tiny brains. These people can stop playing dogs and asking for bones. Prometheus is a brilliant start to something new, and if it was released before Alien, it would have been the top grosser of the year or even the decade.

Release date: 8th June 2012
Running time: 124 minutes
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green

prometheus copy

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.