This blog entry is part of my "movie recommendation site suggestions". Read more about that here.
Sholay
This was the first film that I watched from my list compiled from suggestions from various movie recommendation sites. Actually this may be the first movie from India I have ever seen. And when I think about it, I find that kind of shocking considering how many films I have seen an the fact that India is in competition with the United States as the country with the most prolific production history of movies. Maybe despite that not many of them have very universal appeal. I'm not sure why else I haven't had too many brought to my attention before, but here I go.
Sholay was the top recommended Indian movie to me on Netflix, but now that I look into it I'm not sure how personal of a recommendation it was. It appears as though this film is one of the most famous and successful to ever come out of the huge world of Bollywood cinema. My girlfriend had even seen in before in a film class. It's what they'd call a Curry Western. I guess after western style movies that were produced in Italy were labeled Spaghetti Westerns, westerns produced in other countries were labeled with popular indigenous foods as well. Check this link out.
The movie is fun and features a lot of what I kind of expected to be in a Bollywood movie including a long running time, several big musical numbers, lots of melodrama, and a few goofy characters. There were some strange, sordid moments evocative of the type of thing you'd expect in a Spaghetti Western too like a completely sadistic bad guy, and a battle with an amputee.
I'd say I was just slightly disappointed since Netflix was constantly throwing this in my face under my recommended movies as one of the very top from their entire catalogue. Still I had fun and am interested to keep checking out what else I can find from Bollywood or India in general.
Rating: 8/10