It’s the sequel to the 2017 sleeper hit ’47 Meters Down’, where a couple of girls in a cage crash down into the ocean, with oxygen depleting. This one, for obvious reasons has a suffix: Uncaged. It involves four girls – twice the number, but with half the thrills and excitement. Mia (Sophie Nelisse) and […]
Author: Hoshang K. Katrak
Film Review: Yomeddine
‘Do animals too get judged on Judgement Day?’ asks the 10-year-old Obama (Ahmed Abdulhafiz) of his adoptive father. The naivety of the question has to be judged from the title, which translates to ‘Day of Judgement’. Beshay (Rady Gamal) is a 40-year-old, leprosy-afflicted, society-shunned Egyptian who ekes out a living at Garbage Mountain, collecting worthy scrap […]
Film Review: ANGEL HAS FALLEN
The first thing one would think upon hearing of the impending release of this film would likely be ‘Three’s a crowd’. The third in the series after ‘Olympus Has Fallen'(2013) and ‘London Has Fallen’ (2016), this latest one reprises Gerard Butler as Secret Service agent Mike Banning, personal guard of US President Allan Trumbull (Morgan […]
Movie Review-BATLA HOUSE
Disclaimers at the beginning of a film are customary, even mandatory at times. But when one appears in the middle of the scene in the film, it sets you wondering as to the intentions of the makers. It could even distract the viewer. The disclaimer in this case refers to the film maintaining a neutral […]
Movie Review-ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
A fictional film is the setting – and the excuse -for cult director Tarantino to direct his ninth feature film. Leonardo DiCaprio as past-his-prime Hollywood actor of the 50s and early 60s Rick Dalton, and Brad Pitt as Dalton’s stunt body double, chauffeur and handyman Cliff Booth come together for the first time in the […]
Film Review – SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK
“Stories have the power to hurt or heal,” says a child’s voice at the beginning of the film. In this film, adapted from the series of stories by Alvin Schwartz, one wonder what power this film could have – to hurt, heal.. or horrify! Set in 1968 during Halloween (that’s a given), in the small […]
Film Review – JABARIYA JODI
Set in Madhopur, Bihar, in 2005, with joints having names like ‘Murgh Donald’ and ‘Shotgun Shaadi Band’ (the film, incidentally, was initially titled ‘Shotgun Shaadi’) abound in this unending drama of forced marriages from the girl’s side (for a change), in cases where exorbitant dowry is demanded. Hukam Singh (Javed Jaffrey), who specializes in such […]
Film Review: Khandani Shafakhana
45 years after ‘Gupt Gyan’, the first sex education Hindi film was released, debutante director Shilpi Dasgupta comes up with a film centred around a sex clinic. A few years ago, we had well-made flicks on the subject – Vicky Donor and Shubh Mangal Saavdhan. Sonakshi Sinha plays the protagonist Babita (Baby) Bedi, who inherits her […]
ASH IS THE PUREST WHITE
This film, which lost out to last year’s Cannes winner, ‘Shoplifters’, is a riveting tale of love, sacrifice and life in North-west China, near Mongolia, at the turn of the century. Local gangster Bin (Liao Fan) is reluctantly pushed to the helm of affairs after his boss is bumped off by rivals. Bin’s moll Qiao (Zhao […]
The Lion King
CGI-created wildlife, in all its glory, comes alive in the opening frames of The Lion King, exactly 25 years after the earlier version was exhibited to awestruck audiences worldwide. The occasion – Simba, the month-old lion cub, and the newly anointed heir to Pride Lands, is greeted with obeisance by his father, King Musafa’s subjects. […]
Film Review-YESTERDAY
‘A world without the Beatles is infinitely worse’, we are told at one point in this film. Worse than what, we aren’t told. Doesn’t matter, because the film is about the Beatles, though not exactly. Confused? Then read on… Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is an amateur singer, working in a cash-and-carry in a coastal town in […]