Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Bajatey raho Starring :  Ranvir Shorey, Vinay Pathak, Tusshar Kapoor, Dolly Alluwalia, Ravi Kishen At:  DT Cinemas & others Rated: 3/10 Quite a misguided missile this one. For one, you expect humour, there is none. Two, you expect action, there is only a hint of it. Three, you expect good music and all you get to hear is a parody on Mika’s  Subah honey na dey  for a  Mata ki chauki  sequence. Why  Bajatey Raho  would so deliberately steer clear of its own lifeline which, undoubtedly, was to be humour, is bewildering. It is a neither here nor there kind of a film which gets caught in an extreme and unexplained bout of inanity. Think about it — despite the presence of Vinay Pathak, Ranvir Shorey, Tusshar Kapoor, Ravi Kishen and Dolly Ahluwalia (of  Vicky Donor  fame), known for their rollicking knack of inducing hilarity to any amount of lacklustre proceedings, there is hardly a sequence in which you get reason to smile, fo...

The Wolverine Starring:  Hugh Jackman, Haruhiko Yamanouchi, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Will Yun Lee Rated:  5.5/10 He is a superhero who wants to shed his immortality and die, he wants to be normal, he is unkempt and he keeps dreaming about a past love who is dead but never gone. By the looks of it, this is one sob story you may not want to associate with someone like Wolverine. But, Hollywood is on a whim these days, wanting to add mortality, normality and humanness to all its superheros, and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine also gets caught in this wave to debrief — and even ground — some of those Marvel-ous beings. But despite all the groans and the moans by Jackman, director James Goldman has been able to pull a fast one on his viewers — as in, with stunning sequences like the one he orchestrates atop a bullet train running at a develish speed of 300 miles an hour. He also adds some art to the pace by doing all that ninja stuff on white sheets...

D-Day Starring : Arjun Rampal, Rishi Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Shruti Haasan, Huma Quereshi Rated : 7/10 D- Day  is a surprisingly gripping movie despite it being one among the many in the latest rush for RA&W flicks in Bollywood. Director Nikhil Advani’s agents, however, are under toned, fierce and yet believably human. While you can count the number of sentences a very gaunt Arjun Rampal utters in the entire film, Irrfaan’s wide-eyed, mostly opened-mouthed, emotional appeal is not something that could have been ignored or, for that matter, tagged as out of place in this fast-paced D-drama unfolding across the border. The film is good because it has a lot of moments, be them emerging from a rundown  kotha  of a scarred yet beautiful prostitute played by Shruti Haasan, or the familial bonding of Irrfan’s two-bit family. As flesh to considered rawness, such sentiment seems apt in an operation meant to bring back the falsely named Dawood Ibrahim back to India, al...

Turbo Starring : Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Michael Peña, Snoop Dogg, Maya Rudolph, Michelle Rodriguez, Samuel L Jackson At :  DT Cinemas & others Rated: 5.5/10 It’s a snail we are talking about here but he is one snail in turbo mode. He wins an F1 kinda race. He is different, and, man, he is fast, unbelievably fast. The human champion is crestfallen — he is snail-shocked, he has lost the race to a snail! So, it’s a faultless animation from Hollywood, high on emotion, higher on artwork and compellingly colourful. It is also about the courage to do the impossible and the ability to defeat all odds and perceptions. It’s a captivating tale, good for children to go to and learn from. Only, don’t mind the heavy duty 3D glasses on your fragile little nose. Because, the special 3D effects are pretty cool. Source: Sunday Pioneer, 21 July, 2103

White House Down Starring : Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke Rated: 6/10 Too bad for Roland Emmerich!  Olympus Has Fallen  — much before White House — quite engagingly at that, and, with the more towering presence of Gerard Butler, as compared to a still aspiring Channing Tatum. But when it’s Roland, worry not. After all, for a man who has audacity in abundance and can dare to dote on a crazy art collection in which Jesus wears a T-shirt to crucifixion and Pope John Paul laughs at his own obituary, penetrating the White House and blowing it up while talking of secret tunnels where John F Kennedy dated Marylyn Monroe, is no difficult mission. Definitely not after expansive money rollers like the billion-dollar  Independence Day , or for that matter his larger than life eco warning to through  The Day After. This time, he makes the White House fall under ludicrous circumstances and so unbelievably easily that you get to enjoy your...

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag StarrIng : Farhan Akhtar, Yograj Singh, Sonam Kapoor, Prakash Raj Rated : 5.5/10 Milkha Singh: The Great Indian Tragedy , screamed a newspaper headline after his famous 400m race at the Rome Olympics. Aiming for gold and being in the lead for most of the lap, the Flying Sikh suddenly looked back — and fell out of the medals pedestal.  The film, too, could have won the race but loses it by a whisker. What could have been a truly inspiring story of a truly great Indian sportsperson, turns into a much too long, much too dramatised, much too song and dance version of a story inspired by a true life. Not that the real man in question — Milkha Singh himself — is minding it. After all, Farhan Akhtar has done his best to race like him, feel like him and live life like him — whether it is while he is running for the nation and the Services, or running away from painful memories of a gory Partition which took down Milkha Singh’s entire family in blood.  Inde...

Pacific Rim Starring:  Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day Rated:  5/10 Giant robots here are fighting even bigger monsters from outer space and some not so puny human warriors are simulating the fight from an underground playstation in Hong Kong. Between these manmade Jaegars and alien Kaijus, there is a fight of survival that has entered its final count down. And with the entire humanity about to fall to this 2020 final assault from spatial beings, all is dark and dingy, sobering up the mood as never before. For those not into heavy metal and heavier DNA of monstrosity from outer space, this one is not the one to nibble at popcorn. But for those sci-fi enthusiasts who do not mind all the metal and gore clinking their senses out of shape, director Guillermo del Toro is a magician with an imagination, an imagination so vivid that you could go to quite another level of ecstacy. After all, the ozone layer is completely shattered and there is not ...