Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Aurangzeb Starring : Arjun Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Rishi Kapoor Rated: 7/10 You would have thought this will be a “so-called” thriller. Not really. The story here is the ultimate winner and though a tad slow for a thriller genre,  Aurangzeb  scores with a near gripping tale of a gangster, his informer wife, his cop paramour, a huge business empire and the tale of twin sons and a stepson. Not a single character here is out of place and the supporting cast actually hold the film together. Though in a relatively small role, Rishi Kapoor as a ruthless cop with huge business ambitions, turns in a stellar performance as an understated man of no scruples whatsoever. Money is his only God and he can kill for that — kill even family! But he is just a sideshow. Arjun Kapoor, in a double role, finds his feet in a film that revolves around him. Jackie Shroff looks adequately unstable on his feet as an aged gangster missing his wife and son. On the whole, the film gets away wit...

The Great Gatsby Starrring  : Leonardo DiCaprio, Toby Maguire, Amitabh Bachchan Rated: 8/10 Gatsby has had a long precedent in Hollywood. After author F Scott Fitzgerald sold the rights of his book for a paltry $16,000 after a frustrating run in Beverley Hills, there was a 1962 adaptation  Tender Is the Night . It could not make it to the hit list. The 1974 mount starred Robert Redford but that too plummetted at the box office. But now, the 2013 version with Leonardo DiCaprio and Toby Macguire in the lead, Fitzgerald’s finally got a blockbuster he had waited for all his life. And why not? After all, isn’t this the one calling itself ‘the great’ Gatsby? For this gripping movie, you can entirely thank the intensity of DiCaprio on screen and the style of storytelling that director Buz Luhrmann unfolds. There is so much depth in the story that he needn’t have distracted viewers with that 3D thingie he has propelled for reasons best known to him. But other than that,...

The reluctant fundamentalist Staring : Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, Liev Schreiber, Kiefer Sutherland, Om Puri, Shabana Azmi Rated: 6/10 There is a scene midway in Mira Nair’s  The Reluctant Fundamentalist  in which Changez Khan congratulates his friend and co-worker for becoming the Associated President of a blue chip company in which both work. “Congratulations, you will now become associate president,” he tells his Black friend. The friend, looks right back and asks lingeringly: “And what will you become?” Though there are many defining moments in this film on the complex existence of humans in a complex world, the above-mentioned exchange is the most hard-hitting one. It comes at a time when this Ivy League ‘coloured’ man quits his firm to return to Pakistan and his roots after America, a country he loved, misbehaves with him collectively after 9/11. He is stripped, fingered and questioned for no reason many times. He grows a beard, he thinks back, he tries to fight ...

Go Goa Gone Starring: Saif Ali Khan, Kunal Khemu, Vir Das, Puja Gupta Rated: 6/10 Iluminati Films keeps its promise to its audience. It promised fun, and it delivers fun. Yes, this first of the zombies from Bollywood is surprisingly hilarious. Yes, it is gross too but when three buddies — two libidinous bewdas and one a dutiful do-gooder — get together, what else can you expect. But here, the four-letter words and all things outrageous come glossed in high tickle value and that’s what makes  Go, Goa Gone  a movie to laugh aloud with. Said Ali Khan may not be the central character of this rather  hatke  film, but as the Russian  goonda mawali  high on hennaed hair, guns and an accent you could give your life for, he towers in his small and becoming cameo. Abandoned on an island off the coast of Goa, lured into its remoteness on a rave party invite thrown at them by a sexy siren, both Kunal Khemu and Vir Das have a time of their life — but once...

Star trek into darkness Starring:Chris Pine, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Alice Eve Rated: 8.5/10 Not just for the Trekkies but also for freshers, this one is a delight through and through. It is adequately old world, charming, mixes human emotions with the inimitable Spock logic, explores the final frontier with the same gusto and also relives the Trek series in right earnestness. Add to that director JJ Abrams’ yen for fierce pace, drama and visual graffiti and you have an unbeatable combo that will soar the charts in a vertical climb. Though for oldies wedded to William Shatner, Chris Pine may come across as someone rather over the board, much too fierce to give finesse a chance, a man hellbent on quick revenge and a lad too young for the position on the USS Enterprise, there is no doubt that he too takes you where no man has gone before. His journey is full of pitfalls and a mission bypassing the “just explorers” history of his unit. A...

BomBay Talkies Starring: Rani Mukherjee, Amitabh Bachchan, Randeep Hooda Rated: 8.5/10 The four short stories by the fab four directors are very  aam aadmi  — and yet very stunning, quite apart from anything  aam  in presentation. As a genre, (a short stories’ feature film), Bombay Talkies  absolutely lives up to your expectations — not just with moving storylines but also with powerful presentation and refreshing direction to all the drama packed in the around 30-minute tales. It is a wholesome tribute to 100 years of cinema, and the way it has been woven together, similar and yet so distinct, breeds hope and promise that our cinema is not hurtling, it is rising to the occasion. And if such cinema can be made, Bollywood is actually much more arrived than its song and dance tag. Starting with a take on homosexuality, Karan Johar puts up a hard-hitting inaugural mount — very away from the larger than life family drama and over-the-top romances he i...