Genre: Biography, Crime, Thriller Rating: 3/5 98 minutes Director: Hanslal Mehta When I had first heard of the film last year, I had assumed it would be akin to a film on the Mafia, since Omerta is the Sicilian code of silence where the captured admit nothing, for fear of retribution on their families. The […]
History is almost always recorded by victors and vanquishers. A fragment of coincidence then that Shrabani Basu, while on a visit to the Queen’s summer home at the Isle of Wight in 2003, found a couple of objects which aroused her curiosity and heightened her interest in the subject – enough to pen it all […]
Take a few key ingredients, put on the gas, swirl them around in a frying pan, bring them to a boil, and serve hot. Something missing? Aha… it’s the condiments! That in a nutshell sums up the film ‘Chef’, sounding suspiciously like the first name of its protagonist Saif Ali Khan, who plays Roshan Kalra […]
In the dying moments of the film come the unintended guffaws from the audience — not the only time though — when the subject of the biopic makes a tongue-in-cheek (or should one say tongue-in-prosthetics) remark to the court that the presiding magistrate has no jurisdiction over the matter at hand. For the uninitiated, Haseena […]
To an extent, Farhan Akhtar’s tryst with musicals continues in his latest ‘Lucknow Central’. It’s a wonder that, having sung in six of his previous films, he doesn’t croon a single song in LC despite being the lead musician in his group! But moving ahead… Kishen Girhotra (Farhan Akhtar), an aspiring singer from Moradabad, is […]
Take a bow, Bomi Dotiwala! After ‘Munnabhai MBBS’, it seems any film with Munna in the title is obligated to have a carrom-playing scene – along with an oblique reference to the queen – and the doctor being ‘gently coerced’ into coming home. While returning home sozzled after being forced to retire as a chorus […]
Charlton Heston’s ‘Planet of the Apes’ (1968), almost a half century ago, set the tone for ‘War’ – the eighth overall and the third in the trilogy – a distinctly refreshing and inspired film, helmed by Matt Reeves. Following the earlier two – ‘Rise’ (2011) and ‘Dawn’ (2014) – the apes having suffered huge losses […]
The Sense of an Ending, based on Julian Barnes’ Booker Prize winning 2011 novel and adapted for the big screen by debutant Nick Payne, is all about a lonely septuagenarian Anthony Webster (Jim Broadbent)— retired, divorced and running an antiquated camera shop – trying to come to terms with his Cambridge University ex-flame, a good […]
Loosely inspired by the Bengali Ramdhanu and the Malayalam Salt Mango Tree, Hindi Medium mirrors the agony and woes parents endure while securing admission for their kids in schools. Chaudhary, in his third feature after Pyaar (and Shaadi) Ke Side Effects, has crafted a delightful and light-hearted comedy which expounds on the trials and tribulations […]
Not all books (however enthralling they may be) need to be translated into cinematic versions and Half Girlfriend — whatever that means to Mr. Bhagat — certainly needn’t have. The opening frames of the film show a desolated Madhav having been left high and dry by his not–yet–quantified girlfriend. Rewind to flashbacks — Madhav Jha […]
On 1 July 2002, after taking off from Moscow, a Bashkirian passenger airliner and a DHL cargo plane had collided over Germany, resulting in a casualty list of 271. Director Lester alongwith writer Javier Gullol have woven the story into a film which, while managing to hold your attention thorough the hour-and-a-half, fails to be […]