HERE, THERE & ELSEWHERE. Rocky’s reviews

Ever since we returned to Elsewhere, Rocky has been pestering me to allow him to write movie reviews for this column. “I saw sooo many films!” he says, referring to the seat-back entertainment on our recent Emirates flight. “Okay!” I tell him. “Go ahead. Just remember, you’ve only got 500 words to work with.” He rolls his beady black eyes heavenwards and sighs loudly, but gets down to work at once.

The Breadwinner : This is an AMAZING film. But sad, you know? Set in some place called Afghanistan. The men all have hairy faces and the ladies look sad all the time. Even though they’re very pretty. The story’s told in pictures, which move in a sort of jumpy way, but you get used to it. It’s called animation. There’s a little girl whose father’s taken off to jail so she’s got to sell stuff on the street, to make money for the family. But girls aren’t allowed to work in that country. So she dresses like a boy. Anyway. It’s beautiful in a strange way and I cried a lot. Definitely go see it.

Get Out : This was weird and frightening but I still watched it all the way through. I mean, it shows humans at their worst, so maybe it’s best if only animals see it? Anyway. There’s a guy who loves his girlfriend a lot. So she takes him to meet her parents. He’s black and she’s white, which is a thing that humans make a big fuss about. I have no idea why. It turns out that the parents have disgusting ideas. They want to steal the guy’s body, so that he can be their slave. Fortunately he escapes. But it’s super-scary and I had to shut my eyes quite often. Don’t see it unless you’re a very brave raccoon.

Ocean’s 8 : This was a lot of fun. Eight ladies, who all wear weird and fancy clothes, get together to steal a huge sparkly necklace. The actresses are all very famous, but I’m only a raccoon, so I don’t remember their names. You can look them up on Google. They were super-gorgeous. Even when they were crying or frowning. And the plan to steal the sparklies is so complicated that I didn’t bother understanding why it worked. But it did. And everyone’s happy in the end. Definitely go see it.

The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir: This was my total favourite. A little boy lives in a Bombay slum with his very beautiful, hard-working mother. Suddenly she gets sick and dies. The boy grows up, becomes a trickster-magician and flies to France! He wears horribly colourful clothes and plays tricks on people, but his smile is sweet. He has many adventures before coming back to Bombay. It’s a completely crazy story, but I loved it. The actor’s name is Dhanush. Never seen him before, but he’s brilliant. Forget the other films. Just see this one. Trust me. You’ll thank me.

Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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