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Drive My Car: Japan’s Most Acclaimed Film Since Kurosawa’s Dreams Is An Exasperating Gem
Drive My Car (Japanese with English subtitles, Streaming on Mubi from 1 April)
Starring Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tōko Miura,Masaki Okada ,Reika Kirishima
Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Rating: *** ½
Is Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car the most vital Japanese film since Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams? More importantly, is Hamaguchi the most important Japanese filmmaker since Kurosawa? The world’s critics’ community seems to thinks so: his other 2021 film Wheel Of Fortune & Fantasy is in my opinion a superior work , but the chances of Drive My Car winning the Oscar for best foreign film are pegged at almost-there.
Indeed Drive My Car is something we have never seen before in cinema of any language. It is cryptic and compelling, exhilarating and yet exasperating in its refusal to let us into the characters’ inner world.
Really, we can only guess at what our protagonist, a filmmaker named Yūsuke Kafuku is getting at. Is he lunging for immortality through his work? It doesn’t look like it. Throughout the 3 hours of playing time Yusuke seems disaffected from his surroundings, a state of ‘being there but not being there’ which is further compounded by Yusuke’s wife Oto(Reika Kirishima)’s auto-eroticism. Oto conjures stories during orgasm which her husband is supposed to memorize during their love-making as she forgets her stories the next morning.
In the midst of all this ruminative creative conceit, Yusuke is detected with partial blindness, just after he catches hif wife with another man in their bedroom(after a missed flight, the best fictional alibi for proving infidelity since Man invented the motion picture and the airplane).
Then Oto dies.
I thought this was the end of the movie. But as Karen Carpenter once reminded us, we’ve only just begun.And to hammer in the fact that what we’ve seen so far is just the prelude, the director plays the credit titles at this point of his linear but loopy narrative , when the inwardly-grieving Yusuke proceeds to Hiroshima to direct a stage version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.
Yusuke is assigned a female chauffeur to drive him around(Drive My Car, remember?).
The driver,an 18-year old imperturbable stoic girl named Misaki(Tōko Miura)now becomes the focus of attention , as Yusuke finds himself leaning forward from the back seat to reach out to his graceful ostensibly emotion-less driver. Their interaction is initially tentative but soon becomes an escape-route for Yusuke from the implacable fortress that he has built around himself.
Complicating the scenario even more(yes, the swirls of conundrum never cease in this mystical journey of a filmmaker into the innermost recesses of his most inaccessible emotions) is the fact that Koji(Masaki Okada) the young man with whom Yusuke had caught his wife , is also part of the Chekhov stage adaptation which Yusuke is directing.
At the end Misaki drives Yusuke to her native place where she has buried some of her own secrets. By the time we reach the end of the long drive into the darkness ,we are left with more question than answers on the creative process: Yusuke’s directorial style seems much more accessible than what director Ryusuke Hamaguchi has attempted in Drive My Car.Or maybe Hamaguchi sees himself as a superior filmmaker to his protagonist.
Hamaguchi has extracted more juice from a short story(by Haruki Murakam) than other creative minds would squeeze out of a 2000-page novel.In making a 3-hour film out of 5-page story, Hamaguchi is often seen stretching the emotions way beyond their prescribed limits. Drive My Car tells us that loss and bereavement are best confronted when they are least expected to. That we can get into our favourite car and drive through stretches of the imagination with nothing to lose except our stifling dependence on the trappings of every day living.
Drive My Car is meant to leave us wiser than before.Tragically I was left more confused about the conundrum of life after seeing the film.Can a filmmaker really deliver us from our uncertainties with his cinema? This question troubles the film’s protagonist Yūsuke Kafuku as much as director Ryusuke Hamaguchi.As a spectator I would rather not interfere.
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Aamir Khan’s Sister Plays Shah Rukh’s Mother In Pathaan

Ever since Pathaan released on Wednesday, audiences have been curious to know who is the woman who plays Shah Rukh Khan’s adoptive mother in Afghanistan. The stately lady with royal looks is none other than the late producer Tahir Hussain’s daughter and Aamir Khan’s elder sister Nikhat Khan.
Nikhat has been closely associated with the film industry and has helped her father in the production of his films like Dulha Bikta Hai and Tum Mere Ho.
Nikhat has acted earlier in the Akshay Kumar starrer Mission Mangal , Ajay Devgan’s Tanhaji and in Sandh Ki Aankh(as a Maharani).
For Pathaan, it was Shah Rukh Khan who suggested Nikhat Khan should play his foster-mother in Afghanistan who names him ‘Pathaan’. It proved to be an inspired piece of casting, as audience have loved Nikhat Khan’s cameo.
It is heartwarming that all three Khan superstars are associated with Pathaan in one way or the other.
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Anurag Kashyap’s New Film Is About Love Jihad

Love Jihad, whatever that means, is the theme of Anurag Kashyap’s new film Almost Pyaar With D J Mohabbat.
Debutant Karan Mehta plays a Muslim boy in an intense relationship with Alaya F who plays a Hindu girl.Kashyap has spared the audience none of the ugliness that such a relationship generates among social-media bouncers, the self-styled guardian of morality .
In the hardhitting powerful and pertinent film a bigot is heard commenting snidely, “These people first talk about Mohabbat. Then they talk about Mohammed.”
Happily and surprisingly, the Central Board Of Film Certification gave the film a ‘UA’ certificate with no cuts: a rare non-‘A’ film of Kashyap.
So far Kashyap and his team have kept the Love Jihad part of the plot out of all media interaction.
But the cat is now out of the bag.
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Samantha Ruth Prabhu to Star Alongside Varun Dhawan in Prime Video’s Indian Original Series , Samantha Speaks

Samantha Ruth Prabhu will be starring alongside Varun Dhawan in the Indian installment of the Citadel universe, the global-event series from Prime Video and the Russo Brothers’ AGBO. The untitled Citadel series based out of India is being helmed by renowned creator duo Raj & DK (Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK), who are the showrunners and directors.
The local installment is written by Sita R. Menon, along with Raj & DK. The streaming service also confirmed that the production is currently underway in Mumbai. After this, the unit will head to North India and then onwards to international locales like Serbia and South Africa.
Richard Madden (Bodyguard) and Priyanka Chopra Jonas will star in the first-to-launch series within the Citadel universe, which comes from the Russo Brothers’ AGBO along with David Weil (Hunters) and is set to premiere in 2023. Alongside Madden and Chopra Jonas, the first-to-launch Citadel series will also feature Stanley Tucci (The Hunger Games saga). Additional local-language Citadel productions are also in the works, including an Italian Original series starring Matilda De Angelis (The Undoing).
Speaking on her participation in The Citadel franchise for the first time,Samantha says, “When Prime Video and Raj & DK approached me with this project, I decided to take it up in a heartbeat! After working with this team on The Family Man, it is homecoming for me.The Citadel universe, the interconnected storylines between the productions across the globe, and most importantly, the script of the Indian installment really excited me.”
Samantha says she is looking forward to working with Varun Dhawan . “I am thrilled to be a part of this brilliant universe conceptualised by the Russo Brothers. I am also looking forward to be working with Varun for the first time, on this project. He is someone who is full of life and cheer when you’re around him.”
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Bollywood’s Achche Din Have Come

All you doomsday prophets, the booms-day profits are here. Pathaan has opened the floodgates again for Bollywood’s bumper bonanza at the boxoffice.And now there is only the achche din ahead for Hindi cinema.
In the next two months there are three sureshot blockbusters coming up, beginning with Shehzada. An astute devilishly impish adaptation of Allu Arjun’s 2020 Telugu blockbuster Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo.The super-popular Kartik Aaryan gives his own spin to the character. This performance will take Kartik to the next level of stardom. Kartik’s version of Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo is radically different from its Telugu version. Shehzada takes the core idea of the Telugu original and turns it into a something completely different. Kartik’s co-star in Shehzada is Kriti Sanon with whom he earlier shared superhit space in Lukka Chuppi.
Then there is Luv Ranjan’s ravishing rom-com Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar. The director’s male viewpoint on the chaos of love relationships crests to a comic high in his latest. Ranjan for the first time, collaborates with Ranbir Kapoor for the first time collaborates with Shraddha Kapoor who badly needs a hit.This film should do the trick. The winsome lead pair tries to do one another in a game of Luv This is Luv Ranjan’s Hum…Aapke Hain Con. Ranjan has in the past used the romcom space to entertain his audience to the hilt, he says this time the stakes are different. It is not something we’ve seen before.
Finally it is Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani. Karan Johar’s first directorial in six years(not counting the one segment each in Ghost Stories and Lust Stories). This time he has assembled a dream star-cast of Dharmendra, Jaya Bachchan, Shabana Azmi, Ranveer Singh and the boxoffice darling(s) Alia Bhatt. But trust me, this one is not about assembling stars into a complacent plot. The writing in this zany Romeo & Juliet is so crisp and engrossing, the experience is likely to be the visual version of a multi-flavour icrecream cone. Colour, choler and karma collide in this tragic-comic love story . Let the box office dhamaka begin from the house of Dharma.
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