A massive Indian epic. Operatic, unflinchingly sincere, insanely fun. Found myself thinking about John Woo a lot during this, which is a ringing endorsement. Incredibly great music too, obviously.

Trailer, though there are spoilers, accurately captures the scale and tone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgBoMJy386M

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PPV or in the theater?


I have been waiting for something like Bahubali for a minute....this is it.

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One Hundred.

The scope is too big and the music is too booming to watch at home. Gotta find the biggest screen possible.

My movies: http://russellhainline.com
My movie reviews: https://letterboxd.com/RussellHFilm/
My beer TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thebeertravelguide

Yo two dudes meet and become instant life-long best friends with different goals of crushing white colonizers with their superhuman strength and skills?


Yeah nigga this shit us hard as fuck.

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America from 9:00 on: https://youtu.be/GUwLCQU10KQ

Between this and the raves for the new Top Gun, it feels worth treating these displays of big, loud, awesome cinematic nationalism as an emerging trend. Anti-colonial nationalism is always going to play easier, and rolling either of these two historic revolutionaries - even in this incredibly fictionalized form - into something cruel and oppressive and rightwing seems pretty improbable. Or at least, not an objective of the people who made it. So RRR stays incredibly easy to enjoy.

It was really fun, in any event. I'm not sure I can agree that it was "unflinchingly sincere" though. Do you think that John Woo is working free of irony? By the third hour of unrelentingly on-the-nose storytelling, where the villains are even more hilariously villainous than you could imagine and the analogies between Ram and Lord Rama grow breathtakingly explicit, pretty much everything is happening with a healthy "wink" and the acknowledgement that they're gonna give us exactly what we want: a heroic victory by our two bros and a gruesome defeat by the colonizers.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

lol

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Get Out The Room!
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@fakewilliamkatt

"You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do!" - Olin Miller

>It was really fun, in any event. I'm not sure I can agree that
>it was "unflinchingly sincere" though. Do you think that John
>Woo is working free of irony? By the third hour of
>unrelentingly on-the-nose storytelling, where the villains are
>even more hilariously villainous than you could imagine and
>the analogies between Ram and Lord Rama grow breathtakingly
>explicit, pretty much everything is happening with a healthy
>"wink" and the acknowledgement that they're gonna give us
>exactly what we want: a heroic victory by our two bros and a
>gruesome defeat by the colonizers.

To be clear, when I say irony, I don't mean dramatic irony-- I mean the typical Hollywood ironic detachment. I think what makes Woo special-- and what makes a movie like this special-- is his lack of quippiness, his lack of "well *that* just happened" dialogue, so commonplace in American action cinema today, designed to comment on itself in an attempt to dodge potential corniness. Woo's movies, much like this movie, play in the big melodramatic conventions, and explode them to massive operatic epic levels, happy to risk being corny rather than place the filmmakers above the fray. I feel like the phrase "winking at the audience" suggests that a movie holds its self-awareness above all. Like, Marvel movies wink at the audience. Ryan Reynolds winks at the audience.

Maybe this is a different brand of wink, but I think RRR is so fully emotionally invested in its operatic emotions and its mythologizing. That's what I meant by "unflinchingly sincere"-- at no point does the movie pretend that Bheem tossing a motorcycle into the air, catching it, and hitting people with it is anything but normal (I can imagine the American remake, where Ram looks over at him and goes "uhhh did you just throw a motorcycle?"). Same with the musical numbers, same with the score in general. It feels unabashedly committed. Which is a big part of what makes it so special to me.

(Also, I wrote this at 10 PM after a long day at the movies, so if this is incoherent, my brain is mostly jelly right now, lol.)

My movies: http://russellhainline.com
My movie reviews: https://letterboxd.com/RussellHFilm/
My beer TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thebeertravelguide

>To be clear, when I say irony, I don't mean dramatic irony-- I
>mean the typical Hollywood ironic detachment. I think what
>makes Woo special-- and what makes a movie like this special--
>is his lack of quippiness, his lack of "well *that* just
>happened" dialogue, so commonplace in American action cinema
>today, designed to comment on itself in an attempt to dodge
>potential corniness. Woo's movies, much like this movie, play
>in the big melodramatic conventions, and explode them to
>massive operatic epic levels, happy to risk being corny rather
>than place the filmmakers above the fray. I feel like the
>phrase "winking at the audience" suggests that a movie holds
>its self-awareness above all. Like, Marvel movies wink at the
>audience. Ryan Reynolds winks at the audience.
>
>Maybe this is a different brand of wink, but I think RRR is so
>fully emotionally invested in its operatic emotions and its
>mythologizing. That's what I meant by "unflinchingly
>sincere"-- at no point does the movie pretend that Bheem
>tossing a motorcycle into the air, catching it, and hitting
>people with it is anything but normal (I can imagine the
>American remake, where Ram looks over at him and goes "uhhh
>did you just throw a motorcycle?"). Same with the musical
>numbers, same with the score in general. It feels unabashedly
>committed. Which is a big part of what makes it so special to
>me.
>

^
^
^
i 100% agree with all of that there.

>Same with the musical
>numbers, same with the score in general. It feels unabashedly
>committed. Which is a big part of what makes it so special to
>me.

I agree!

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

...strap in...

i had SOooo much fun with this.

(Dont let the length scare you away, it flies by.)

Unapologetically, big, bold & bananas in all the right ways that a MOVIE can be.

Its different when you can't hit pause LOL, but we had a great time.

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One Hundred.