1. The Gentlemen (7.25/10): I have liked Guy Ritchie's movies previously, so this one was on my list. The impressive IMDB score convinced me to watch it, and I wanted to see something fun anyway, but I knew my entire attention had to be on the movie, and I had to watch it in one sitting. Ritchie's movies are very fact paced with snappy dialogues and tons to characters, and you can get lost very easily. I liked it. The characters were good (especially Colin Farrell's character), the story was good and not too confusing, the actors all had swag and style. Action was nice as well and the narrative technique allowed for some uniqueness. The movie started out slowly, which lost it some points, but it gained momentum after 30 minutes and became very interesting. Another thing I disliked was that there is literally only 1 female character in the movie, and she almost gets r-a-p-e-d. But overall it was good and lived upto expectations. Special mention to the pronunciation of Phuk's name.
2. Uncut Gems (didn't finish): Another fast paced movie after The Gentlemen. I appreciated Adam Sandler's acting, but I didn't like the director's previous work, and this one had a similar feeling. One hour in I decided to stop. People were saying that this movie was causing viewers to get anxiety and stress because of how loud and obnoxious it is, but I didn't feel that. For those interested, this movie shows a different side of Adam Sandler and is not interested in pandering to all audiences, it is what it is and owns it's genre.
3. Panga (4/10): Ashwiny Iyer became one of the most promising directors for me after Nil Battey Sannata and Bareilly Ki Barfi. I was looking forward to her next work. When I found out that it was a sports movie, I was disappointed because we've seen tons to sports movies recently and all follow the same format. The director's own husband has had sports theme in his last 2 movies (Dangal and Chhichhore). But I still gave it a chance. One word I have for this movie is "inept". It is dramatically inept. It never feels like there is some urgency to the story, it never feels like anything is at stake, that there are some real issues. Everything just sort of happens. I knew what was going to happen from the very beginning, but there is still some way to make it interesting, like Dangal and Sultan. This movie feels like the writers never even bothered to make it interesting or giving it some dramatic hook. Add to that none of the performances are good, songs are terribly placed, BGM isn't impactful, and that the sport it's trying to show is not engaging on screen, at least the way it's shown here. I am sorely disappointed and will hope that this movie was just a fluke. But I am not giving it a horrible score because it is just a regular, boring type movie. No flaw really hits you, you just lose interest. I would rather go back and try to watch Uncut Gems then rewatch this movie.
4. John Wick 3 (6/10): I really liked JW2, but waited until I was really in the mood for an action movie to watch JW3. While I liked this one, I just couldn't help but see flaws here that either I didn't notice in the previous 2 movies, or they didn't let me. After an interesting first 30 minutes, filled with really great action and a good continuation of the last one's ending, this movie kind of starts losing the plot. The whole thing about going to the desert and then back to the continental is poor. The movie is just looking for an excuse to show action, of course, but story is not good, and it is noticeable. Other issues are that characters have a clear shot at killing JW but just don't for some reason. It feels like one of those action movies where the villain keeps saying he's going to kill the hero, but doesn't actually do it for some reason. The actions overall is still good and manages to distract from the poor story at places. Another issue was the excuse to have good location to have action. Unlike the first movie, where a shootout takes place in a club and naturally looks cool, here there is a big glass building with fancy visualiser background for some reason. And the ending underwhelmed too. I was kind of hoping that this one would end the series. It feels like the increased focus on worldbuilding and shorter turn around time have hurt this movie. Hopefully now the writers are using extra time to work out a better story.
Other:
Still watching 30 Rock, finished with half of the show's total episodes.