Sherlock Season 2

"Brainy is the new sexy."

Picking up where Season 1 left off, with Watson dressed in explosives, Holmes is finally able to put a face to his arch enemy, the maniacal, Jim Moriarty – played by the versatile genius, Andrew Scott. Moriarty is the perfect opposite of Sherlock, and balances the scales by becoming the world’s first consulting criminal, waging a war on the world’s first consulting detective.

We also happen to meet Irene Adler (played by the stunning Laura Pulver), Sherlock’s somewhat romantic interest/rival in A Scandal in Belgravia. Playing a dominatrix, the chemistry between the two is just way too much to handle for our dear Watson.

The 2nd Season of Sherlock, just  like the last one, a compilation of three 90-minute stories, this time loosely adapting A Scandal in Bohemia, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Final Problem showing Holmes at a professional peak but at an existential low point. Holmes might seem like a bit of a cliché (with the iconic Deerstalker hat making an appearance), but change the context a little, find the perfectly aloof and icy-pale actor in Benedict Cumberbatch, give him dialogue from some of the cleverest writers in England and a visual style that’s absolutely pulsating and always shifting, and the same old Sherlock is again riveting. Before I go on and reveal too much, go and see the 1^st season (if you haven’t already), as it is very easy to catch up on just 3 episodes per season.

STARRING:
Benedict Cumberbatch
Martin Freeman

CREATED BY:
Mark Gatiss
Steven Moffat

DATE OF RELEASE:
23rd January, 2012

EPISODES:
3

First appeared on Spydistrict, over here. They're cool.

The Lunchbox

"A must-watch that you can miss."

When movies like Dabbang (quite obviously) don’t cut it anymore, someone needs to come up with ‘food-for-the-soul’ for cinephiles, and thus we look up the cinematic brilliance of movies like Rang De Basanti, Dhobi Ghat and Slumdog Millionaire. These movies cannot be compared with each other; however they tend to be slotted in the same category. The Lunchbox goes there as well.

A bored and extremely dissatisfied housewife, an old widower close to retiring and a very eager employee come together in this piece that was apparently being nominated for an Oscar. However the plot is kind of meaningless and frankly, just a little boring but still holds you as an audience. Wait till the end and one cannot stop feeling how abrupt and insulting it is to the entire film. It almost feels like they wanted to end the movie and thus, became lazy and picked out chits from a bowl as to what should be the end of the movie.  The only saving grace for Lunchbox seems to be Nowaz.

Irrfan Khan, no stranger to Hollywood, plays the role Sajjan Fernandes intensely and brings a certain depth to his character without getting too boring, but the same cannot be said about Nimrat Kaur as she plays the role of ‘Ila’ with a lot be desired. Nawazuddin Siddiqui equates to genius.

STARRING:
Irrfan Khan
Nimrat Kaur
Nawazuddin Siddiqui

DIRECTOR:
Ritesh Batra

DATE OF RELEASE:
20th September, 2013

RUNNING TIME:
104 Minutes

Wrote this one for Spydistrict, and they were nice to let me use it for my own blog.