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There is something about “Beckett”, the recently released American film on Netflix, that sets it apart from most of the ‘man-on-the-run’ thrillers we have watched in recent times. I think it is the film’s trajectory, which suddenly turns from personal into political. Or the film’s style that mixes Hollywood’s storytelling with European naturalism and creates a fusion-like effect throughout.

An American couple—Beckett (John David Washington) and April (Alicia Vikander)—are vacationing in Greece. In one of their drives through a hilly countryside at night, the couple’s car crashes and lands on a supposedly deserted house. Still under shock, Beckett sees a woman and a child inside the house and calls them for help, but they run away. Then he finds April lying dead in a pool of blood and loses consciousness, only waking up at a hospital later.

When Beckett is taken into the local police station, the cops are pretty helpful and tell him how they would help him take his partner’s dead body to Athens. Before leaving for Athens, Beckett decides to pay a visit to the spot where April was killed. That’s when the film’s story takes a twisted turn. At the site, Beckett is shot at by a complete stranger, who then follows him to kill him. A shocked Beckett cannot find refuge in the local police station as well because he is also being shot at and chased by the previously friendly officer Xenakis Beckett (Panos Koronis) for no apparent reason.

The chase continues as Beckett runs from the countryside to Athens, discovering some secrets that land him in the middle of a political conspiracy. Beckett’s plight turns from dealing with bereavement to surviving at any cost. And as he runs to save his life, he also fights to save another person linked to his situation.

Director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino keeps the film more grounded than most Hollywood action thrillers. The eponymous lead character, Beckett, is no action hero. He’s not John Rambo from “First Blood” who sets on his attackers with masochistic flair and turns from prey to predator in a jiffy. Beckett is a common man who finds himself in an unexpected situation and takes the most desperate measures to get out of it. He is scared, has panic attacks and cannot plan on what to do next. Still, Beckett’s resilience makes him surprisingly strong and helps him win the various conflicts he is pushed into.

Beckett starts slow but picks up in the first quarter itself and maintains a steady rhythm till the end. The 1h 48mins screen time is mostly centered on Beckett, and actor John David Washington playing the role is convincing. Washington does not falter throughout the film even as his character metamorphoses from a bereaved lover to a vengeful victim. The background music comes to the actor’s aid as well. There’s a particular chase scene with jazz drums in the background whose dissonance is almost panic inducing. 

Even with so many positives, there are also a few notable shortcomings. For one, the whole conspiracy that has caused so much chaos in Beckett’s life is not given enough space. It leaves many aspects unexplained, which really bothers an attentive audience. Also, the film fails to establish a strong antagonist as it focuses too much on developing and strengthening Becketts’s character. This leaves a huge vacuum in the space where a strong negative character could have brought more intensity to the film. 

Who should watch it?
Beckett is a thriller about a man running for his life. We have seen plenty of those in our times but, still, this movie is worth watching for its variations. We are sure an action/thriller/mystery fan will definitely enjoy the film despite its inadequacies.

Rating: 3 stars
Genre: Thriller
Actors: John David Washington, Alicia Vikander
Director: Ferdinando Cito Filomarino
Run time: 1hr 48mins

I’m not into romances and love stories. They usually make my eyes roll far back into my head or cringe. I can’t remember the last time I read or enjoyed a romance novel that wasn’t literary or had some other plot going on apart from the boy-meets-girl and-romance-ensues bit. I wouldn’t have read ‘Get a Life, Chloe Brown’ by Talia Hibbert if my absolutely favorite booktuber (@paperbackdreams) and some friends whose reading tastes I like hadn’t been going gaga over it.

‘Get a Life, Chloe Brown’ is the first part in a trilogy of sorts but it works well as a standalone novel too. Hibbert has written three books and each tells the story of a different Brown sister. The second book is ‘Take a Hint, Dani Brown’, and the final one is ‘Act Your Age, Eve Brown’. Dani and Eve both make appearances in Chloe’s book and are interesting characters that you want to know more about. The little of what you get to see of them in Get a Life, Chloe Brown leaves you wanting more and it only seems fair that they each have a book of their own.

Chloe Brown suffers from fibromyalgia, a condition that leaves her in pain, accompanied by fatigue, and sleep and mood problems. Her fiancé dumps her because he can’t deal with her issues and slowly her friends too disappear from her life. She lives in a mansion with her grandmother where everything is taken care of for her. One day, after a near death experience, she decides to take charge of things. The extremely organized and meticulous Chloe makes a list. It includes things like moving out of her family home, going camping, getting drunk, having meaningless sex and other random things.

Then she meets Redford Morgan. He is the superintendent of the building she moves into. Both feel a visceral attraction to each other that they initially try to deny and suppress. But as Redford helps Chloe tick items off her list, they end up giving in to their emotions. What follows is a lot of sweet gestures, hot moments, and ultimately a misunderstanding that eventually leads to a heartwarming ending.

As far as love stories go, it’s an out and out cliché. But what makes Get a Life, Chloe Brown different is Hibbert’s sense of humor that gives Chloe a fun, distinctive and interesting voice and the sensitivity with which the story addresses the issue of abusive relationships. Hibbert also sends out a message of body positivity through her main character who is beautiful and chubby, two traits that are often considered antonyms. It’s a feel-good book that leaves you sighing, giggling, and happy.

Three stars
Get a Life, Chloe Brown
Talia Hibbert
Published: 2019
Publisher: Avon
Pages: 384, paperback

We Nepalis just love sequels, don’t we? At least our filmmakers seem to think so. Because for almost every Nepali movie that has made an inkling of profit in the past few years, there’s been (or have been) sequel/s. There’s one particular thematically romantic Nepali movie which is set to reach the half-dozen milestone in sequels.

Not that we’re complaining, but when you just put in numbers after names and repeat the same motif film after film, your lack of ingenuity starts to bore the audience, and the credibility you earned from the first film is overshadowed. Only a limited few can become Francis Ford Coppola and dish one after another “Godfather”—but even so the latter films got their fair share of criticism.

So, our YouTube selection for the week “Jatrai Jatra” (2019), a remake of the 2016 hit film “Jatra”, falls under the category of sequels gone bad. The original Jatra was a well written, well executed heist comedy that left the audience in fits of laughter in theaters and later at home via YouTube. It was an original movie with a rather unoriginal plot but with so much imagination put into it that the audience couldn’t exactly put a finger on what was wrong with the film. But the sequel—Jatrai Jatra—although staying true to its comic spirit and attempting to recreate the hilarity of the first, tarnishes its legacy.

Our lead trio—Fanindra (Bipin Karki), Munna (Rabindra Jha) and Joyes (Rabindra Singh Baniya)—are released from jail three years after their Rs 30-million incident in the first part. Having learnt a valuable lesson, they try to resurrect their lives but find themselves in shambles. The trio, united by greed and opportunity, thus part ways to try and live a normal life and get back what they have lost.

But fate has other plans. After trying a host of other jobs, when Fanindra finally ends up as a taxi driver for Taxi Sahu (Rajaram Paudel), a mishap involving his passenger for the day, Dawa (Daya Hang Rai), leaves him in possession of 10 kilos of gold. Once bitten twice shy, Fanindra wants to get rid of the gold but then his greed and the recollection of his financial and family situation gets the better of him. He decides to keep the gold and thus begins another set of comedy of errors that entrench his friends, family and a bunch of goons.

Written and directed by Pradip Bhattarai, Jatrai Jatra banks on the acting skills of its three lead characters and makes them run through confusing situations and conflicting moments to recreate the chaotic coherence presented by Jatra. But coherent, this movie is definitely not. Jatrai Jatrai feels like the makers hurried a bit too much to recreate the success of the original Jatra and in doing so, left too many loose ends

My biggest complaint with the movie is regarding how the continuity breaks and lapses, which could have been easily avoided, passed the final cut. How could a bunch of industry veterans make so many novice errors unless they were deliberate, which is clearly not the case. It feels like the makers got so cocky with the success of Jatra, they forgot that the audience should not be taken for granted.

Acting-wise, there’s not much to complain about. The trio of Karki, Jha and Baniya recreate the roles of simpletons-turned-criminals with the same sincerity. One noticeable change is that their characters have become more cunning after the jail term and it reflects in their acting. How we wish filmmakers showed more conviction to character development and not just let their principal characters enact the same tomfoolery even after so much experience. This is the problem with Nepali sequels. Once they’ve established a character, they never let them grow, which with time gets boring and repetitive.

Who should watch it?

The harsh criticism of Jatrai Jatra is the result of its comparison to the original. As a stand-alone movie, it is definitely more entertaining than most films released around the same time. Much more entertaining than let’s say 70 percent Nepali movies we’ve reviewed so far. If you like Nepali comedy movies, there's a high possibility you will enjoy Jatrai Jatra.

Genre: Comedy
Rating: 2.5 stars
Actors: Bipin Karki, Rabindra Singh Baniya, Rabindra Jha
Director: Pradip Bhattarai
Run time: 2hr 17mins

While I’ve always enjoyed good thrillers, horrors and bloodbaths weren’t really my thing. The pandemic changed that. I turned to spooky stuff to get my mind off the very real threat out there. It worked. Now, I no longer need that distraction but I find I’ve sort of developed a taste for it. Readers recommending books that made their skin crawl makes mine tingle in anticipation.

I’d heard a lot about ‘No Exit’ by Taylor Adams. Some friends said it left them traumatized and booktubers would shut their eyes, shake their heads and squeal when reviewing this book. I couldn’t find it at any bookstore in Kathmandu but I finally got the e-book. Twenty pages in, I wasn’t very enthused. I didn’t like the writing style and the setting felt a bit off but things escalated pretty quickly and left me stunned. No Exit is, hands-down, the best edge-of-the-seat thriller I’ve read in a long time.

On her way home to see her sick mother, college student Darby Throne gets stranded at a highway rest stop in Colorado because of a blizzard. There’s no cellphone signal. At the rest stop, there are four other people waiting out the storm with her. Then, Darby sees a little girl locked in an animal crate at the back of a van parked next to her car. She quickly finds out who, out of the four people, the van belongs to and everything from then on is about saving the child and ultimately herself too when the kidnapper finds out she has seen the girl.

The premise feels like that of any other thriller. But what goes down is insane. It’s creepy. The scenes are so vivid. It makes you jump, gasp, and shudder. There were multiple times when I had to put the kindle down and cover my eyes and ears to shake off the images that were forming in my head. I was visibly rattled and my husband, more than once, commented on why I was reading a book that was driving me crazy and making me shriek. Thinking about it now, two weeks after finishing the book, still makes my heart race.

It was so good (if this were a post on Instagram instead of a review in a national newspaper, I’d have put 10, no 20, o’s behind that so.) It’s definitely not for the faint of heart but if you enjoy an eerie, nightmarish read, you’re doing yourself a great disservice if you don’t pick this one up right away.

Fiction
No Exit
Taylor Adams
Published: 2019
Publisher: William Morrow
File size: 1747 KB
Print length: 371 pages