This film by any other name would have been just the same. The film begins impressively with a high-angle shot of a cremation in a village. Cut to a village simpleton Phullu (Sharib Hashmi) staying with his mother (Nutan Surya) and sister Tara (Trisha). Phullu runs errands for the women-folk of the village, doing their […]
A confession at the outset would be in order: though musically inclined, I am neither a fan nor an aficionado of the rap denomination of music. All Eyez On Me is the short-lived but eventful life led by rapper, actor, lyricist and activist Tupac Shakur (Demetrius Shipp Jr.) — his mother Afeni (Danai Gurira) was […]
Isn’t that taken for granted or rather, the accepted standard, the unwritten covenant that one should love one’s family? In the film Love U Family, written and produced by Vipul Devani and helmed by Sachindra Sharma, the makers have gone to great lengths to depict the natural ties of a family — and its binding […]
If you want to spend a tranquil, placid three hours with your beloved, this is the film for you— buy a ticket or two and send your mother-in-law to the cinema. Still interested in reading the review? Then read on… Shiv (Sushant Singh Rajput), the quintessential cocky Punjabi boy with the six-pack chocolate-boy looks goes […]
Move over Batman, Spiderman, Superman—-! In the DC comics, Wonder Woman is of Greek nationality. In this, the first female superhero film in 12 years and the first to be directed by a female director, the protagonist is the gorgeous Jewish, Israeli–born Gal Gadot (Fast and Furious, Batman v. Superman : Dawn of Justice). It’s […]
Ostensibly Manisha Koirala’s comeback film — after her doughty and victorious fight with the big C — Dear Maya is about love, languishing and loneliness. The film begins with shots of 15-year-olds Ana (Madiha Imam) and Ira (Shreya Singh Chaudhry) in Loreta Convent, Shimla, reading aloud an amorous passage from a romance novel. Ana has […]
Adapted from the TV series Baywatch, which premiered in 1989 and aired throughout the 90s through to 2001, Baywatch the movie, in alliterative language may be described as having sun, sand, surf, swimsuits, skin but no sex, and well, certainly not sleazy. With such an overt title and especially with its television predecessor, one barely […]
Following in the footsteps of her mother Aparna Sen, Konkana has crafted (written and directed) an immensely watchable debut film. McCluskiegang, four decades ago, was a prosperous town in Bihar (now Jharkhand) with a sizeable number of Anglo-Indians. In the Christmas holidays of 1978, Nandu (Gulshan Devaih) along with his wife Bonnie (Tillotama Shome) and […]
The fifth and latest in the Pirates franchise coming six years after the last is also the shortest in terms of running time. It’s back to the familiar premise as the perpetually sozzled—obviously on Caribbean rum—Capt. Jack Sparrow (Johny Depp, on familiar territory) is shown botching up a bank robbery attempt : he’s found asleep […]
A walk down memory lane will reveal that not so long ago (a half-century or so), Kashmir was the preferred location for – and synonymous with – Hindi romantic films. Shammi Kapoor’s Junglee, Kashmir Ki Kali, Jaanwar, and younger brother Shashi’s Jab Jab Phool Khile are some of the films that come immediately to mind. […]
Explorers are a restless, transient tribe of people; they seldom pay heed to reason, relying on their own impulses and acting accordingly. David Grann’s 2009 real-life book (based on his 2005 article on the same and published in the New Yorker magazine) on the explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) has now been translated onto the […]