MOVIE REVIEWS

And Howard does well with the material. As Hank’s Professor Robert Langdon is called upon to save the Church from killings/bomb threat,there isn’t a second where the film’s pace slacks. Langdon and a scientist who has gotten involved,Vittoria (Zurer),have just a few hours to prevent the Vatican City from being blown up,hours set against a meeting of the college of Cardinals to select the next Pope,and Howard gets across both the emergency and the evilness of the threat facing the Church.

That threat is from the “Illuminati”,based on a 17th-century group of scientists like Galileo,whom the Church hunted down and persecuted for “contradicting” its basic principles. The present-day Illuminati are seeking revenge,and in a delicious irony are planning to blow up the Vatican using antimatter – a substance that existed at the beginning of creation. Vittoria and her team were working on the antimatter,and the Illuminati stole a vial,enough to set off kilotons of explosion.

There are obvious allusions to science encroaching on areas which the Church considers exclusively its,man playing God,men of god being just like any other men,the need for Church to reinvent itself,and the Church being under a bigger threat than ever before. What’s unclear is why the Illuminati don’t just do what they are threatening to rather than strewing clues across churches in Rome,for the precise purpose of Langdon — the thinking man’s Indiana Jones — to crack. Particularly when the identity of the man behind the Illuminati isn’t that difficult to guess.

For its focus on the Church and its guarded attacks on its pedantry,it’s clear why Angels & Demons would ruffle some feathers. However,even more than The Da Vinci Code,it’s ultimately faith that conquers. The film ends with a new Pope taking charge,and a crowd that’s been waiting outside – “disregarding” a bomb threat and a murder right in their midst in St Peter’s Square — roaring in approval.

And let’s not forget that the film passed muster with the official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano,which called it “harmless entertainment which hardly affects the genius and mystery of Christianity”. The paper suggested moviegoers could make a game out of finding the many historical inaccuracies in the plot. Take that!

My Sassy Girl
Director: Yann Samuel
Cast: Elisha Cuthbert,Jesse Bradford
A series of apparently true stories posted by a guy called Ho-sik Kim on the Internet describing his relationship with his girlfriend are the basis of My Sassy Girl. As per the dictionary,sassy means either of two things — rude and impudent or lively and spirited. One can argue that only a guy in love can see all of those qualities in one person.

But then,one can argue a lot — like how does turning up for your boyfriend’s job interview drunk and proceeding to discuss your sex life not mark a depth from which a relationship will take more than a phone call to rise; or deciding to abruptly call it off for a year with letters placed in a “time capsule” buried under a tree to be opened 365 days later not be just a tool to give the film a “maturity” it desperately aspires for.

For all its allusions to romance and the things that make Jordan (Cuthbert) beguiling,almost everything about My Sassy Girl seems forced. Her eccentricities,his normality; her mood swings,his cheeriness; her bouts of profoundness,his poodle-dog consistency; even the film’s frequent use of “speed” effect,when the story itself is crawling from one Jordan event to another.

Charlie (Bradford) seems to be around just to carry Jordan home after the many nights she passes out drunk,and he does it without a complaint even when hauling her up countless steps. He asks no questions even when it is clear that strangers dropping her in that condition at night is a fairly commonplace event.

All is brushed under the thick carpet that she is not like other,normal girls,and an even thicker one of it all being destiny. How sassy is that?

shalini.langer@expressindia.com