Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Satya2 Starring:  Puneet Singh Ratn, Anaika Soti, Aradhna Gupta Rated:  4/10 Ram Gopal Varma weaved some stunning magic with Satya, setting quite a high standard for the bhai log movies on which many others tried to shape their ventures. Satya was an iconic film, almost perfect, comprehensive, edgy, emotional, stunning, violent and slick all at one go. It established Ram Gopal Varma’s name in the industry in such concrete terms that all his misadventures in the following decades still did not diminish his fame with this genre. He consolidated his magic with Company which was another gem from the Varma closet, for some even better than Satya. For me though, all the song and dance and simple relationships that he clothed in Satya were the most memorable and Varma’s best ever. By dishing out Satya2, Varma has done best what he has been doing ever since Satya and Company. He has worked hard at undoing any support he may still have had left among his audience not just a...

Thor: The Dark World Starring:  Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgård Rated:  5/10 Eighth from the Marvel Comics stock, this one carries on the legacy of Thor though the ring of familiarity breeds a little bit of contempt.  Contempt as in you know whats coming, including the dashing hammer that keep flying into the hands of the superhero at apt times. Thor 2 is glorious though just too whiny about having lost his lady love to Mother Earth. Anthony Hopkins as the Asgard king is imposing, laconic and captivating. The story remains the same — saving an attack of the dark forces who have risen yet again from the belly of the galaxy, this time to plunge into ultimate darkness Mother Earth, and of course to down Asgard and rule the universe. The device to do this is an amoebic gaseous force which has been unleashed after eons of being trapped in a spatial boulder — accidentally freed by Thor’s love interest who is an astr...

Krrish 3 Starring:  Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Kangna Ranaut, Vivek Oberoi, Rajpal Yadav, Mohnish Behl Rated:  7/10 Ok guys, it is a different Krrish this time — handsome of course, but more importantly, renewed by technology, quite splashy with his antics and totally fabulous in the VFX zone. But in all this splashy splendour orchestrated in minutest detail by Rakesh Roshan over three years, also lies a slight problem — all this Hollywood makeover, this wide-angled pan shots which you see in movies like  Jurassic Park , this heart-stopping highrise jumps and the gravity defying aerial antics, somehow, take away from the human element in the film. Even Spiderman has to go through some emotional ones but Hrithik, the chiselled body wonder in this one, somehow sleepwalks through this aspect, this Diwali. Yes, he is stunning, becoming and what not and also lives up to being a superhero but there is very little of him in the film. His water-dangling green eyes...

Mickey Virus Starring:  Manish Paul, Elli Avram, Manish Choudhary, Varun Badola, Puja Gupta, Nitish Pandey Rated:  5/10 If you have been one of those couch potatoes getting high on the Manish Paul antics, over-the-top anchoring and general fooling around on the small screen, you might like his 70mm version instantly. If not, and if you are a discerning cinema viewer, you will see the many viruses plaguing this maiden upload by this budding TV star. First, and just for clarity, this one is not a comedy but a thriller. However, because Mr Paul’s image is highly induced with tomfoolery, director Saurav Verma does the comic relief as starters and gives you a main course of a modern thriller around hackers, dirty money and shadowy figures — from faceless power brokers in the portals of power to law enforcers, the taint is flying all around. In fact, it is a pretty tight plot which, strangely, loses it without notice and gains it back with equal brevity. Hanging around t...

The Fifth Estate Starring:  Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Brühl, Anthony Mackie, David Thewlis Rated:  5/10 As WikiLeaks was all about Julian Assange,  The Fifth Estate  is all about Benedict Cumberbatch. Hold on, wasn’t that the baddie in the latest  Star Trek  mount? There, he made a huge impact and here too, as Assange, he takes all your applause. He simmers, explodes and generally blows you away by his dogged, devious but determined demeanour which leaves you definitely uncomfortable about being with a fellow so silently ferocious. Apparently, in real life, Assange is said to be pretty much the same though he has been highly critical of the film which shows him up as an unscrupulous revolution maker leaking classified documents which rocked Governments all over world — all the way up from the US. But sadly, there is not much about the history of  WikiLeaks here or how the story unfolded for this website which was new and beyond any form of...