As Good As It Gets

Apparently Mumbai is cold these days; I mean literally! Now being a hot-blooded Bong that I am, sub-10 degrees temperatures turn me into this lazy, useless person, with an unhealthy attachment to the quilt, with, wait for it, a TUB OF ICECREAM!

Now the only thing better than tucking into bed on a weeknight with multiple scoops of the BR Bavarian Chocolate icecream, is tucking into bed on a weeknight with multiple scoops of the BR Bavarian Chocolate icecream AND BACK TO BACK AWESOME MOVIES!

Remember a few months back, I went gaga over a Bong movie, Autograph, the debut venture of a school senior of mine, Srijit Mukherjee. Now I watched his second film, Baishe Srabon, a psychological thriller and a tribute to all the unsung poets whose talent went unnoticed (*sniff sniff). While not as soul-stirring as his first movie, this one is gripping enough to make up for Raima Sen’s cringeworthy acting. I would have so loved to play her role as the sassy journalist, in an on-again-off-again relationship with the intelligent, yet somewhat uncouth lead detective. Sigh… some dreams remain unfulfilled. Make that TOO MANY dreams remain unfulfilled.

I followed it up with this year’s highly-acclaimed movie The Descendants: a remarkably nuanced take on a middle-aged man’s struggle with his dysfunctional family. The last movie which touched the audience with a similar theme was Sam Mendes’ American Beauty that depicted everything wrong with the modern American society. While Kevin Spacey won me over as an impressionable teenager, George Clooney’s drool quotient is unmatched. For a man who represents evergreen bachelorhood (but does so infinitely more gracefully than our very own Salman Khan), he impeccably portrayed the typical American father-of-two, who simply can’t get his act together, or his family for that matter. And the salt-and-pepper hair just makes him all the more sexier, if that was possible.

Is it weird that depressing movies manage to make me happy?