total timepass...

If I have to sum up the movie in one line, its this line from this review  : 'Thappad' is not just a film aimlessly ranting about borderline domestic violence; it brings to light the years of conditioning that a woman is subjected to by her own family and the society that she lives in. The story of the movie is very simple. It starts with showing the life of a woman, Ammu (Tapsee Pannu) who is a housewife, married to a loving husband and living with her mom-in-law. She seems to have a  comfortable and contented life. Then one day at a party, when her husband is angry and drunk, he slaps here. It makes her think, and she decides to end her marriage. She faces the typical response you would expect to such a step, from her husband, from her in-laws, her mother, her brother and even her lawyer. Only her father and brother's girlfriend understand her initially. That it was not 'just a slap'. And it is not the right (even if convenient) way to forget it and move on. S...

Manikarnika is the story of one of the most famous queens of India, and a warrior queen at that. It stars Kangana Ranaut as the protagonist and that is enough to polarize the feedback for the movie 😀. There are enough people who liked it and a similar number who have a completely opposite view. My first feeling when I started watching the movie was the surprise on realising that even though I think I know enough about Indian history, I knew nothing about the Rani of Jhansi, except that her horse's name was Badal and where she had jumped from at the Jhansi fort (thanks to my travels to Jhansi). Other than that, I knew nothing about her background or her life. Even the fact that she was related to Tatya Tope and Nana Sahib, I initially assumed was a creative liberty taken by the writers! In fact, during the movie itself I checked on wiki whether that was true. And it was. It set the tone for the rest of the movie where I trusted it to be closer to history. And this also showcas...

I generally prefer watching Hindi movies as compared to English ones as Hindi movies don't require you to think. They are made in their own fancy world for pure entertainment and nothing else. And then once in a while comes a movie which is both and it affects you in such a way that you don't even realise it did. Raazi is one such movie - it is such a brilliant piece! It was enjoyable while watching it and stayed with me long after I had got out of the theatre. Raazi is the story about an Indian Kashmiri girl who is married into a Pakistani army family in 1971 with the aim of spying on the new family for India. She transforms from a college-going girl to a brave spy, willing to go to any lengths to do something for her country. The film follows her journey, with tense moments where she does things no one, even her could have imagined her doing. On the whole the movie follows a typical storyline, but the end... The acting by all the characters in the movie is perfect. As i...

I generally write movie reviews only on films I see in the theatre. But I think I am going to make an exception for Aligarh. I saw it yesterday and am still so affected by it, that I had to put my thoughts on paper. Though it would be very difficult to describe what I felt and am still feeling - all the helplessness and the sadness. Aligarh is a masterpiece, and an understated one at that. It takes a very sensitive topic and presents it to us without any melodrama. Just as it is. And it touches you. When you finish watching it, you are affected, you are sad. And not because the movie showed sadness. But because it didn’t. Aligarh is based on the true story of an AMU professor, who was suspended after being unlawfully filmed as being a homosexual. He was treated unfairly by the University and society. He fights for himself and wins but is found dead before he can take up his job at the University again. In the movie, this is shown through the eyes of a journalist who wants to brin...

A Salman movie on Eid, what can you expect:). 100 crores? 200 crores? The sky is definitely the limit here! After watching (and actually enjoying), most of Salman's movies in theatres, this time I was planning to give Sultan a miss. But rave reviews by friends on facebook tempted me and I finally went and saw it. My honest review - it was a very average movie. There have been tons of movies made like this and forgotten. But given the general level of Salman movies, this was very very good by his standards. One of those rare movies of his where you dont go 'Come on, really??!!' every 5 mins! And that is really an achievement. About the movie, it had a story line which was great. Acting was bearable except Salman's. But a star like him doesn't need to act anyways, correct? Or dance for that matter. Anushka was good, star cast good, music enjoyable. All in all, definitely a watchable movie. But my issue with not watching it was beyond that. Salman is a pa...

Let me start with the first feeling I had after seeing Udta Punjab - I have hope for the Hindi film industry! After a period of Dark Ages (the 80s and 90s), the last few years have been relatively better. We see a regular (again relatively) stream of good movies releasing once or twice a month. And that’s making me hope again:). Once in a while, you get to see a movie by a serious film maker, who believes in the art and not just the moolah . It may still be a masala  enough movie like Kahaani, but at least its different and enjoyable. And I love watching these movies! Udta Punjab falls in this category - it is not a typical Hindi movie. There is a background of the Punjab drug problem, and then there are the characters in the movie through which the problem is delved into further. The flow of the story is good, keeping you involved the whole time. The acting is superb - Alia Bhatt needs no words and Diljit Dosanjh is a natural. Kareena felt a little over the top, playing Preet ...

The badshah is back! Just when I was ready to give up on Shahrukh after years of being a fan (having watched Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, RaOne, Don 2, Jab Tak Hai Jaan and Diwale on screen!), I think I won't give up yet. And what an irony, it happened after watching the movie 'Fan':). Every year on Diwali, we would go and see the first day show of the latest Shahrukh release. Just because it was the thing to do - of course we had to see his movie in the theatre! After Dilwale I had vowed that this had to stop. I would not go for his movie, just because it was his movie. And so even after seeing the trailers of Fan, I did not plan to go for it at all. I did not even check the reviews online as I had no hope. But when I got reviews from a friend that it was worth going (online reviews don't count for much here as they are not really honest and dependable;-)), after a lot of debate and thought, I decided to go for it. (Btw it might be true for a lot of other people - S...

I finally saw a Hindi movie in a theatre after suchhh a long time, and thankfully I wasn't disappointed (surprisingly too!). Fitoor is based on Great Expectations, stars Tabu, Katrina, Aditya Roy Kapur and is shot primarily in Kashmir, with some parts in London and Delhi. When I went for the movie, I had no clue what it was about. But just before the show started, I glanced at one of the reviews and wish I hadn't. It would have been fun to see how much time it took for me to figure out its 'inspiration':). As I said above, I enjoyed the movie. Given that Great Expectations has been one of my favourite books since I was young, that might have something to do with that;-). Anyways, first things first - Fitoor is an artist's canvas. So pretty, so perfect - whether its Kashmir or Katrina. The snow and chinar and lakes and havelis of Kashmir; the paintings of an artist; or the beauty of its lead characters. Highlighting beauty everywhere was one of the goals of the...

(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...

I don't like watching Hollywood movies much. And the reason is that they make me think (and sometimes make me feel sad). Much longer than having watched the movie. And Imitation Game is one such movie. For one, it was about something I had not heard about till now. About Turin, about his contribution to the World War, about his machine, about how even though they broke the German's code, they decided not to go all out with their breakthrough, but balance out the short term gains with the long term aim; decide with their brains and not their hearts. It was very very interesting, and I think the director and the actors did a brilliant job of it all. Benedict Cumberbatch was perfect for the role and he did it justice. It was all perfect. But what I was left thinking about after the movie, was just the last 10(?) mins of the movie - what happened to Turin afterwards. The movie was about the Turin machine, and what happened after was just mentioned in passing. But that was a...

Its a bit late to review a movie seen two months back, but I think Interstellar requires one. It was a Christopher Nolan movie. I would not hold the same standards for a lot of movies, but I think his movies need to be more.. and Interstellar wasn't! To be fair - it was amazing at a lot of levels! The visuals, the creativity in the vision - linking space travel, a grim future, black holes, singularities, gravity between time and so on requires a lot of courage and vision. But it failed. And for me, it failed because it tried to do too much! By the end of it, I was confused about what the movie was trying to say and do. Was it trying to give reasons for ghosts and superstitions? Was it an emotional movie on relationships? Cooper and his daughter? Amelia and her father? Amelia and her boyfriend? Was it a science fiction? Did it want to talk about the great human spirit? Or just show an awesome visual movie? Did it have a message on the fraility of human character? Or the import...

Was it the expectations that killed it? Or was it the content? Any Aamir Khan, Rajkumar Hirani movie builds up expectations for everyone. Their movies have till now all been enjoyable, almost flawless in their flow and script. To the point that I have grown to expect the same from all their movies. And that is where PK lost out for me. PK is conceptually different and strong - using the viewpoint of an alien stuck on earth to highlight how meaningless some of our religious practices have become. But what the movie lacked was a well balanced script. It got too long, too winded and pedantic at times. There were too many typical twists and turns which made it a drag at times. For example, the multiple interactions with the guru and Aamir did not come out as natural as they could have been. And Anushka's acting wasn't natural either. I got disconnected many times from the script because of that. Also at no point did I emotionally connect with what PK, the alien is going t...

Its been a long time that I have come out of a movie theatre, affected. Given the kind of trashy movies that have been coming out of Bollywood recently (and becoming blockbusters!), Haider felt like it was from a different movie industry altogether! Before going for Haider, I had a vague idea that it was a mixture of Hamlet and Kashmir. But the way this was done completely blew my mind. We went for a 11pm show after a very busy day, and came out fully awake still, with my mind alert, awake and running in all different directions.

 The movie starts with a Kashmiri doctor taken away by the army in Srinagar, as he was treating a terrorist in his house. His son, Haider (Shahid Kapur) looks for his father after he comes back to Srinagar and finds his mother (Tabu) cavorting around with his uncle, Khurram (Kay Kay Menon). Haider's searches lead him nowhere, while his mother gets more and more close to his uncle.

 And then a stranger called Roohdaar (meaning ghost) comes to him wi...

A Salman Khan movie on Eid - take a guess on how it would do? Of course will do well, and it did...But how? Its been a couple of years since I saw a Salman Khan movie in the theatre. The reviews for Kick were surprisingly not too bad, so I thought of giving it a try and what a bad idea it was. Kick is a bad movie, seriously. Especially the first half. Its just so over the top, with random songs and sequences all over - after a very long time I was thinking of leaving a movie midway. Somehow I made it through, and to be honest the second half was a lot more bearable. So things did definitely get better. But how can such movies be made, and more importantly how can they be such big hits? I think these are questions no one can answer convincingly! Anyways back to the movie, I don't even want to get into the story as its not worth mentioning too. Jacqueline Fernandez looked pretty, though she can't act. Same for Salman Khan. The locations in the movie were pretty. And I gues...

Even though its a bit late, I think this movie deserves a review... Vidya Balan has created a place for herself in the industry - that is something no one can take away from her. I actually will go and watch a movie just because she is there. As some may say, she is the female Aamir Khan of Bollywood. And the reason for that is her attitude - I will do what suits me and what I want to do. The rest can go wherever they want to! Her last outing failed to impress - Shaadi ke side effects . But Bobby Jasoos didn't. A very different movie on a girl from a middle class family in Hyderabad with a junoon in her head to be a detective. After a tough time, she makes it big because of one of her clients who asks her to look for young people who vanish mysteriously after she does that successfully. Lot of things happen on the way, ending with her finding out the truth about the client. But the story in this movie is not the highlight though. Its a lot more about the journey of Bobby - ...

I am writing a movie review after a long time. The major reason for this is the lack of good Hindi releases recently. Anyways given this drought of watchable fare from Bollywood, we ended up going for Ek Villain without really checking out the reviews - how bad could it be? And honestly, I have come out confused. I don't really know how I feel about it. The story is about Guru (Siddharth Malhotra) - a gunda who converts to a honest and loving person when he comes in touch with Aisha (Shraddha Kapoor). But their happiness is short-lived as she is murdered, and Guru thereafter seeks revenge. The good - Its a different story, not really seen before in Hindi movies. And Siddharth Malhotra looks good, as well as does not over-act. He looks so effortless in his acting - a definite plus to the film. As was Riteish Deshmukh - as the bhola-bhala looking middle class telephone repairman, hen-pecked husband with an alternate story. He acts superbly and plays the character wel...

After a very long time, I saw a movie as soon as it released; not because Dhoom is an amazing franchise, but only because of Aamir Khan! He has single-handedly changed people's expectations from stars nowadays, plus a hope that commercial actors can also do good movies! This time though I was disappointed... The weaknesses of the movie are many. What is Katrina doing in the movie, other than have two scenes where she has dialogues? Why is Aamir making a weird face all the time? His escapades are not well-planned at all. He doesn't wear masks, how is he not recognised? Why is every action sequence shown in slow motion, and extended unto boredom? Why another 'inspiration' from a Hollywood movie? Really, it was quite a bad movie, worse than Dhoom 2 for sure. It was still bearable because it was Aamir, but still it was a pain on the eyes and the brain! The only thing I liked in the movie was the theatre musical sequence. It has been beautifully choreographed and execut...

I went in to watch Hunger Games with a little bit of skepticism, as I had not been bowled over by the last version. Not really because the movie wasn't good, but because it made me feel very helpless, seeing what the games meant! But I came out of Part 2 feeling a lot happier than before, mostly because it ended with hope. The plot moves ahead from where it left off, Katniss is now a heroine and goes around the empire as the latest winner. Even though she faces internal dilemmas and does not want to be held to the empire's principles, she nonetheless follows them for the safety of her family. Inspite of that, disturbances break out across the districts because of her. And then she gets to go back into the games, as part of the 75th celebration which has winners from the previous games. The games feel different, and even though as tough, there seems to be an alliance around her. At the end of the games, she survives, realising she was part of a plan for an upcoming revoluti...