total timepass...

(Spoiler alert) I hadn't watched the original Tanu Weds Manu and so had no context of what to expect. And I think that was a good idea, I went in the theatre with no first impressions, and came out completely shaken. What a movie! I do have some issues with it, but to be honest they are my own. The movie by itself was amazing and a must watch. TWMR (couldn't they think of a more creative name?) starts 4 years after the marriage of the boring UK doctor, Sharmaji with the fiery Tanu from Kanpur. Their marriage has soured so much that Tanu gets Manu put into a mental asylum and returns back to Kanpur. At this point you would assume that their marriage is over, and that is where you are wrong! When they both come back to India, the movie is a riot. Manu goes completely overboard with trying to get over Manu - acts crazy, flirts with her ex-boyfriends, paints the town red with their renter and god knows what all. She is just so crazy, you are never sure what she is capable o...

Piku is a tough one. To be honest, the movie is well crafted - the dialogues are individually funny, the acting is top class (Irfan and Amitabh as expected, and Deepika upping her game) and the story flows well too. But something doesn't add up! Piku is the story of a Bengali girl, Piku and her father, Bhashkor da. Her father has constipation problems and hence behaves like a difficult person - loud, irritating, eccentric, quarrelsome and so on. So in one word - highly irritating. Piku loves him and takes good care of him, but it also means balancing her own life is tough for her. Finding a boyfriend, getting married, being on a date, work et al. And so she acts as tough and difficult as her father. Then of course, is her colleague Syed; the local taxi owner (and the only normal person in the movie), Irfan - whose taxi drivers refuse to drive Piku anywhere! and Pike's aunt, Moushmi Chatterjee who provides entertainment with her very multiple marriages. All these character...

Its been a year of very different and interesting movies I must say. Byomkesh Bakshy, Piku and now Tanu wed Manu returns. Some may disagree with the last one, but I found it to be a class apart from the regular Bollywood fare. Anyways let me start with Byomkesh Bakshy - the movie blew my mind away. I went in with a clean slate, I had managed to not see any trailer and no idea at all about the look and feel of the movie. And for me, that turned out to be the deal clincher. Of course everything other than the look and the feel was perfect too, the characters, acting, story, music, dialogues. It all came together so perfectly. The story is about a new age detective in Calcutta, Byomkesh Bakshy. With his sweetheart getting married to someone else, he focuses his attention on finding out who killed Ajit Babu's father. This search takes him to Dr. Guha's guest house, the local politicians Sikdar & Sukumar, a Japanese temple, the local cantonment, a chemicals factories, Chin...