Genre: Drama, Comedy, Action Rating: 3/5 159 minutes Director: Rohit Shetty Let’s get one thing clear – Rohit Shetty has proved amply in the past that his films (Golmaal, Singham), like Manmohan Desai’s in the 70s, are intended to titillate the grey cells – not stimulate them; nor has he ever demonstrated any pretensions to […]
‘Reach for the moon and the stars will fall in your lap,’ seems to be the philosophy followed by SRK and the people responsible for bringing the film to its title ‘Zero’. In a runtime of two-and-a-half-hours plus, Zero undergoes a series of transformations – possibly more than the number of titles thought of by the […]
Genre: Drama Rating: 3.5/5 105 minutes Director: Peter Hedges The Beautiful Woman plays a dutiful mother to her wayward son Ben (Lucas Hedges) in ‘Ben is Back’, written and directed by the latter’s father Peter Hedges. It’s Yuletide, and the family consisting of Holly Burns (Julia Roberts), daughter Ivy (Kathryn Newton) — by a previous […]
“So you’re a cop?” inquires a character midway through the film. As if on cue, comes the prompt reply, “No, worse – I’m a journalist.” One was left wondering whether the film was a case of investigative journalism… Based on the characters in the Millennium book series (this one being the fourth) by the late […]
‘Good thoughts, good words, good deeds,’ reminds father Bomi Bulsara (Ace Bhatti) to his 20-something buck-toothed son Farrokh (Rami Malek) in their London home, the family having migrated from Zanzibar a half decade earlier. That was in 1970, working as a baggage handler at Heathrow, and in the earlier moments of the film. Cut to […]
The only semblance of thuggery in the film was a half hour into the film when one started to get the feeling that it was the viewer who was being waylaid… It’s 1795 and the well-entrenched East India Company dupes a Maharaja (Ronit Roy), killing him, his wife and his son. His daughter Zafira survives, […]
The perils of viewing a sequel, if one hasn’t watched its predecessors, are quite a few: understanding the story and characters, lack of continuity, etc. In ‘Halloween’, the eleventh in the series, which began in 1978 with (surprisingly) the same title, director and co-writer David Green, ensure that the 10 sequels/remakes are bypassed. Jamie Lee […]
‘What goes up must come down’ – director Chawla gives us a lesson in quantum physics while loosely adapting his film on the 1987 Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen starrer, ‘Wall Street’. Rizwan Ahmed (debutant Rohan Mehra) is a small-time share broker from Allahabad who aims big, he sets base in the commercial capital to meet, […]
Genre: Drama Rating: 1.5/5 142 minutes Director: Vipul Shah Arjun Kapoor’s droopy eyelids and drowsy demeanour might not be the only reasons the viewer would have snoozed halfway through the film. No fewer than eight jarring songs have been sadistically inserted as timely alarms, lest the paying viewer enjoy his slumber. Fittingly, the film opens […]
When William A. Wellman wrote the story for the first ‘A Star is Born’ (1937) and won the Oscar for his efforts, little would he have envisaged that three remakes would follow – in 1954, 1976 and 2018. The most recent, and an almost faithful adaptation of the 1976 version, has Lady Gaga (born Stefani […]
Genre: Thriller, Comedy, Mystery Rating: 4/5 140 minutes Director: Sriram Raghavan The mystery/thriller genre in Hindi films has been largely under-utilised and barely exploited, save for the odd ones such as B R Chopra’s ‘Hamraaz’ or ‘Ittefaq’. But even in these, the suspense unfolded in the dying (pun intended) moments of the films. Officially inspired […]