RRR A Four Hour Bollywood Dream

RRR (2022) - IMDb

If I were to ask you what Bollywood is, how would you define it? It's not a genre, though there are some common themes in these films, and it is not really a film movement either. The types of movies made are simply too varied to be boiled down into one idea. It is after all a term for all the big budget movies from a country of over a billion people. There's going to be a lot of variance. But what if you took all of that variance, everything you could expect or even dream of from a Bollywood film, and put it in one? You would probably get something like RRR (2022). A four hour masterpiece that is truly something to behold.

RRR is kind of impossible to succinctly describe. It's got songs, action, a dance routine, the best bromance in cinema, kind of everything. In a weird way I like to compare RRR to Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. The two films came out in the same year and both feel like every genre being blasted into you in something wholly unique and beautiful. RRR is close to double the length though, so it gets a bit of an unfair advantage in the being everything category. I'm sure the Daniels would have loved to include a fully choreographed dance scene followed by a fight scene that incorporates a tiger fighting against the British empire. They probably just didn't have the time.

Honestly I think the greatest testament to how good RRR is is that it's four hours long and I have still watched it all the way through multiple times without getting bored. The modern movie landscape is packed to the brim with two hour franchise flicks that feel like they're wasting your time and then here comes RRR with double the run time and none of it feels like padding. I know I keep saying the film is indescribable but it just kind of is. There is so much to enjoy and love about it. It's on Netflix and I highly suggest watching it with friends. Go in with an open mind, trust me.

Here's a little taste of this masterpiece.

Comments

Ending Shots in Akira Kurosawa's Ran and Seven Samurai

Saying that Akira Kurosawa was a master at filmmaking is like saying salt is good on french fries. It's a given at this point. That won't stop me from writing about one of my favorite aspects of his films though, how he ends them. The final shot of a Kurosawa film is often heartbreaking and powerful. They somehow manage to perfectly encapsulate how these films end and all the emotions that comes with that. To demonstrate this, I want to talk about the ending shots of Seven Samurai and Ran . Beginning with Seven Samurai , the film focuses on a village beset by bandits. Knowing they will not be able to survive another attack, two men from the village go to plead for the help of some wandering samurai. They eventually find them and the rest of the film takes place over the multiple days of these samurai defending the village. I am cutting out a lot because this whole film is over three hours long but throughout the battle, four of the seven end up falling....

The Twilight Zone Movie Tragedy

Image Source (Quick trigger warning, this post will discuss the deaths of several real life children.) People love to talk about cursed films. The idea that some form of media is mystical and breaks everything it touches or everyone who works on it. The Exorcist is probably the most famous example of the phenomenon, with its production being famously filled with injuries and pain. The truth of these "cursed" films is that most of the time it is a combination of little care for performers or safety that results in this pain. There is no mystical reason behind it, just cut corners leading to tragedy. What happened during the production of The Twilight Zone: The Movie is one of the most heartbreaking examples of this. John Landis is most known for such feats as The Blues Brothers , An American Werewolf in London , and having a sex offender child but he should be most known for that time he ended up killing children with unsafe wo...

The Best Documentaries of Our Day Are Being Made on YouTube

Thumbnail by Defunctland Recently in a session of my film class, my professor said something along the lines of "a great documentary makes you interested in something you wouldn't care about anyway,". This was in reference to the film Snowy , a 2020 documentary film about a family's pet turtle. Her point reminded me of a very specific type of documentary. The YouTube video essay. For those unfamiliar, a video essay is an artform that has largely been created and innovated on the video sharing platform, YouTube. Films in this genre often center around one specific topic and delve into said topic with a depth that I really haven't seen anywhere else. They are almost all indie films, made by either singular artists or small teams. These people tend to write, edit, and direct the entirety of these pieces all on their own. And they are fascinating. I have watched a two hour long documentary on the origin of a sound effect from Roblox and I was intensely interested th...

Bug's Budding Film Blog

Search This Blog