Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Starring : Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Ileana D'Cruz, Rupa Ganguly At : PVR & others Rated : 9/10 Barfi is a specially enabled film, but not at all because it is a love story of an autistic girl and a deaf-mute boy. It is differently enabled because it laughs when it is expected to cry, it sings instead of sobbing and it strikes such a perfect balance between humour and pathos that, in the process, it becomes impossibly endearing.   The soul of the film lies in many factors, the prime among them being its utmost simplicity and conscious effort to steer clear of the complications of physical and mental ailments. Barfi is a film that dotes on normalcy, a film that takes disabled life and its drawbacks in its stride. It is also a film wherein Ranbir Kapoor showcases how he is well on way to becoming the greatest of the Kapoors ever. Ranbir’s trajectory to the peak of success has been just like the man he plays in this newest venture — incredibly different. When boys...

Starring : Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, Minissha Lamba, Shreyas Talpade R ated : 6.5/10 Akki may have opted out of the promotions of his latest film Joker, but the mad mad mad mount — part satire, part humour, part  Lagaan , part  Krrish  — confuses you enough to wonder whether you should get insane enough to love it or you should sit on your intellectual high horse and be a spoiler. Either ways, none in Paglapur  gaon  would care a d**n. Beeping on the Indian map as a village in no-man’s land between three States, it has been living a life so crazy that even the biggest madhouse of yore it houses in its confines would wonder if brains are returning to their skulls. Akshay, a paranormal scientist on a NASA project to catch alien sounds on his innovative machine, flowers more like the Aamir Khan of  Lagaan  in his  dhoti-safa  outlook after his squint-eyed father fakes a terminal illness to get him back from America. That is all it ta...

Starring:  Boman Irani, Farah Khan, Shammi, Daisy Irani Every man’s dream: An adult life in the midst of bras and panties. One look at a woman, and he knows her size. Reality check: Farhad Pastakiya, a 45-year-old golden-hearted Parsi bachelor working as a bra and panty salesman, has never found love. The only women in his life are his dominating mother Nargis and doting grandmother Siloo. The world has given up on him, but Farhad has never given up hope. One day a woman walks into his shop, and it’s love at first sight. Shirin Fugawala, a 40-year-old, bubbly, straightforward, Parsi trust secretary, is Farhad’s soulmate, but destiny intervenes in the form of a demolished water tank. All hell breaks loose as Farhad’s mother Nargis realises that her son’s dream girl is her sworn enemy. The movie is produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Sunil A Lulla, Directed by debutant Bela Bhansali Sehgal, the film stars Boman Irani and Farah Khan in lead roles. The music of the movie is...

Arbitrage Starring: Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon At: DT Cinema & others Rated: 6/10 In a slew of Hollywood movies this week, Arbitrage might just go unnoticed despite the presence of powerhouses of talent like Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon. Both older than their previous films, do justice to their roles — she as a philandering tycoon’s seasoned wife and he as a patriarch juggling between billions and belles. The film, dealing with the complex world of a busy tycoon with a huge business empire about to collapse, a family he needs to periodically dote on and  provide for, and an accident gone horribly wrong — it is slow but unusually steady. However, by the end of it all, it goes away from you rather abruptly and without the customary explanation about why it detained us for over an hour and a half without giving a good closure. You could call it a family drama, a corporate whirl a secret love affair — quite a mixture if one gives it a second thought. Gere is the...