Gantumoote (2019)

[**** stars / *****]

I haven't seen a movie lately as charming and delicately affecting as Gantumoote, a splendidly-written coming-of-age Kannada romantic drama.   

Rarely is a love affair told intimately from a girl or woman's point of view in Indian cinema, her thoughts and desires bared open to the audience. Even in movies with female protagonists, a third person narrative is usually used.

Writer and director Roopa Rao's Gantumoote (Baggage) has a teenage girl's tender observant narrative at its heart.  

Movies versus reality 
Meera (Teju Belawadi, superb) is a 16-year-old growing up in the nineties. 

Meera's tryst with her first love Madhu (Nischith Korodi, good act) leads her to the discovery - the idea of love portrayed in popular movies she saw growing up are in extreme contrast to her experiences. 

In fact she initially falls for Madhu because he looks like her crush - the Hindi film star Salman Khan.

The quiet, uncomplicated charm of growing up in the nineties, first sparks of adolescent love and sexual attraction, trauma inflicted by a jealous admirer, breaking away from school friends to college, heartbreak, agony, is captured with sure-footed sincerity and heart-touching sensitivity.

Sensitive screenplay 
Gantumoote is Roopa Rao's beautiful ode to teenage love, with sensitive takes on worldly pressures, social conventions and a girl's fragile coming-of-age story.

If you thought south Indian regional movie makers rarely attempt anything remotely cinematic, Gantumoote should delightfully prove you wrong. 

Afterword 
A couple of well-made Hindi film narratives centering on a female lead include the lovely affirming drama Queen (2014) and the tense, humane spy thriller Raazi (2018). 

 As seen on Amazon Prime (India)

                                                                                                                                 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

[**** stars / *****] 

"He says the sun came out last night. 

He says it sang to him."

Would Steven Spielberg movies feel as awesome minus the John Williams score? 

The Close Encounters of the Third Kind introductory buildup scene is classic Williams, a pitch black screen lights up to suspenseful nervy music, revealing a present day Mexican desert. 

We see officials running excitedly in disbelief to discover World War II airplanes in pristine condition, since their mysterious disappearance 30 years ago at the Bermuda Triangle.     

More strange events occur over the following days. Two commercial planes brush past an unidentified flying object (UFO), even as air traffic control center personnel listen intently. 

Then somewhere in Indiana, USA, three-year-old Barry wakes up in his room to see his toys moving about in the middle of the night. When his mother Jillian chases a wonder-struck Barry down the road, an astonishing event unfolds, changing the world as we know it. 

Sci-fi cinema magic 
Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut (acclaimed French director in a rare English film role) and Melinda Dillon are among the ensemble cast who invest us in this mystical sci-fi drama like no other.  

Even the outdated special effects doesn't take the sheen away from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, that's the kind of encompassing effect it invokes.  

One of a kind
The best movies take you on a journey. As the story unfolded, was relentlessly fascinated by - what happens next? 

The audio-visual, despite the make-believe, transcended, became a part of me. 

There is yet an alien movie to match what Spielberg has achieved here, the eternal wonder, unexpected culminating calm of discovering we are not alone. 

Though Spielberg did follow it up with the bewitching E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Close Encounters of the Third Kind is an sci-fi alien drama like no other. 

Alluring, enigmatic, and strangely fulfilling. 

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

[**** stars / *****] 

The Adventures of Robin Hood radiates with the flourish of daring adventure and courage that we identify with every Robin Hood tale we know. 

Ageless trendsetter
This is how a Robin Hood movie should be, light, sunny and free-flowing in its telling, conversationally funny, without any dark, psychotic grimness in its villainy. 

It's hard to imagine another Robin Hood movie in any other space, after watching this version. 

For instance, Ridley Scott's Robin Hood (2010) -  though impressive in parts, the dark realistic treatment doesn't go with the Robin Hood's heroic, elevated persona, the origin-tale takes its time to engage. 

This is a fable and legend that needs celebrating and directors Michael Curtiz and William Keighley ensure it is so.

The best Robin Hood movie yet 
Breathless sword fighting, breezy romance, good-hearted hero vs villain duels, perky background music, crisp dialogues and good performances, The Adventures of Robin Hood is Hollywood at its classic best.

The lead Errol Flynn performance is still cinema magic, it's like Flynn was born to play Robin Hood. 

Olivia di Havilland is alluring as Lady Marian, the rest of the cast are in reasonable form, though Flynn charms his way through them all.

There are few movies of the adventure drama genre that lights up with such Technicolor radiance. 

The infectious cheerfulness of The Adventures of Robin Hood hasn't aged a day.