Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Starring : Saif Ali Khan, Riteish Deshmukh, Ram Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Tamannaah Bhatia, Esha Gupta, Chunky Pandey, Satish Shah Rated : -1/10 Forgive me people — ladies, gentlemen and, of course, dogs — I apologise for being a fellow human of Sajid Khan. Also, forgive me if I recede into spluttering expletives. It’s just a hapless reaction to this incorrigible director’s brutal rape of both human and canine proprieties through his latest mount Humshakals . Really, Sajid needs some dog training. He needs to learn — and learn quickly — that you don’t pee on other people’s head from rooftops if you are human, and you certainly don’t do a man’s leg even if you are a dog on heat. And, most importantly, whether human, dog or of any other species, you don’t bring a dwarfed and henna-ed English prince into the picture receding into insane Punjabi and saying that even his first marriage made more sense than the proceedings around him! But then, as the courts would have ruled, if you we...

Chef Starring : Jon Favreau, Sofía Vergara, John Leguizamo, Scarlett Johansson Rated : 4.5/10 Chef-centric movies in Hollywood come in regular intervals, at least one every two-three years. The template never changes — gentle, somewhat spaced out men more obsessed about the leg on their plate than on the bosom in their bed. They also carry with them a dash of humour which is used as marinade here and there. This one, too, is similar in all these aspects. The chef here is portly, so obsessed about serving his own menu that he gets fired by the restaurant owner, only to have a blast in life on a food trawler, dishing out the breads to long queues.Yes, you could call this one an out-of-job, and out-of-sort cook’s road trip through across the heart of America — from Miami to California. Though there is nothing special in the theme, or even in the way the film unfolds, there are enough moments in it to keep you breezily interested.  True to a family drama, it has a rekindled l...

How to Train Your Dragon 2 Starring: Jay Baruchel, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera Rated: 6/10 How you wish you had all those dragons for friends! They are big, they are small, they are jovial, they are loyal and above all else, they can make you fly as no human has ever done before. Returning to the big screen after three years of the original making quite some noise in Hollywood, this one engages you instantly with all those visual delights, colours  and landscaping, not to mention a story full of messages — that loyalty, friendship and family is important. As an adult you may have been more intent on overseeing the popcorn, but your children will love this one — it has been kept relatively simple and the humour is in tune with a child’s tickle. The light-hearted adventure has some romance thrown in too, just for breaks. Director Dean DeBlois does well to not jerk your memory too much by simply gliding into the end part of the first one ...

Grace of Monaco Starring: Nicole Kidman, Tim Roth, Frank Langella, Parker Posey Rated: 6.5/10 Nicole Kidman, the centrepiece of this languid yet intense film on the legendary Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, is chiseled not just in looks but also in the role she plays. You can see that the cameraman has a fascination for her face and the same goes for the director who allows his screen to be dominated sometimes with her glass-lucent eyes, sometimes with her more than natural lips and at other times with her intense moods that dot her face at all times. Other than the fact that Grace Kelly, the American actress who married Monaco’s prince and left acting (despite Alfred Hitchcock’s constant pleas to her to return to the big screen) to be her kingdom’s one and only icon, was quite a fairytale story with hidden dark secrets, doubts and court intrigues which brought the small and economically dependent colony to a virtual war with the might France. The film, as said earlier, is h...

Edge of tomorrow Starring:  Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson Rated:  7/10 To see Tom Cruise die as Major William Cage so many times, so relentlessly and so at-the-drop-of-a-gun could have become jaded, not to mention disturbing and defeatist. But that’s not the case in  Edge of Tomorrow . It is quite an edgy, explosive, don’t-you-breathe kind of a sci-fi thriller that Tom Cruise anchors. Which, of course, is expected from Cruise and his  Mission Impossible  kind of projects except for the fact that here he is fighting aliens who are rather indulgently called Mimics, a tag that defies their deadlier than deadliest image. But once they hit the screen, there is no time to look around so pulled you get into the ET-humanity war in which Cruise is an media military officer tricked by the general to go into combat — quite unprepared, quite raw and not quite soldier-like. But dying over and over again and progressing into battlefield i...

Blended Starring:  Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore Rated:  5/10 Adam Sandler and his single parent issues are no stranger to Hollywood and this one comes from the same stable. Hence, it’s all very similar and predictable. Single dad of three growing girls (they all look like boys having made to undergo haircuts by their dad’s barber), meets harassed single mother of two brat boys. Man a delivery boy at (oops) Dick’s and woman a closet settler of rich and famous. Both in a state about their states, both grappling with parental realities, both lonely and both seeking company only as a break from parenthood. The premise is all set for a lazy romance, with family thrown in in good measure. And as we all know, Sandler does the right things in movies of this genre — teaches the boys baseball, tries to be a mother to embarrassed girl with teenage issues, loves his dead wife, lives and works for his children. Then there is Drew Barrymore with all that angelic beauty, blon...

The Raid 2 Starring : Iko Uwais, Arifin Putra, Oka Antara, Tio Pakusadewo Rated:  7/10 Why on Earth would you go for an Indonesian crime film and why on Earth would it seek an India release?  Raid 2  summarily tells you why. Besides being the most violent film ever made by any director in any corner of the globe, it is also one which leaves you gaping in astonishment about its blood-curdling lure. You might choke, puke and even forget to breathe at the amount of blood that is let out in this two-and-a-half-hour crime saga, but the overwhelming feeling is of shame about getting hooked on to such blatant show of blood-soaked brutality. Consider this: As a man is being cut into innumerable pieces, his eyes gorged out, his head battered by a baseball bat, his lip yanked out all the way to his chest and beyond by an axe, his leg vein cut slowly and steadily and his limbs broken into limpness, the audience stands up in ovation, clapping at the savagery and chanting “a...

Maleficent Starring:  Angelina Jolie, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple Rated:  5/10 Maleficent  is an Angelina Jolie affair all through, sitting well on stunning landscape of the magical Moors of those good old days when kings and humans co-existed with fairies and other such magical creatures. Taken for a ride by a human thief, fairy Maleficent turns into revenge mode but is unable to rise above her innate goodness of being — even after the thief-turned-king cuts off her wings and leaves her angry, hurt and defenseless. The story is languid and merges well with all the colour and the visual treat that the cinematographist has so alluringly laid out for you. Other than that, what stands out in this somewhat tweaked Aesop’s fable is the stunning make-up that Jolie sports. Her angular cheek-do resembles the cliffs of the Moors that she used to soar before being deceived and dumped by her human lover. She is imposing all thoug...

The Nut Job Starring : Will Arnett, Brendan Fraser, Gabriel Iglesias, Liam Neeson, Katherine Heigl Rated:  5/10 The rat colony is in for a harsh winter — the chill, the hunger, the lack of food and a hunt that is getting the rodents into risky human territory. But no, this is no dark animation film full of pathos of suffering. It is one of hope and humour, one of determination to get to, well, those nuts that will carry them through the cold. The pack is cutely animated and quite alluringly sketched, coming up to general Hollywood standards. But this is a South Korean make with even a cartoon of its world famous bad boy Psy. He comes in at the end and potters around Gangnam style, trying his best to engage you in the flowing credit lines. As for the film, it is okie-dokie types which your kids on vacation may like to spend time with.  Source: Sunday Pioneer, 1 June, 2014

Children of War Starring : Raima Sen, Riddhi Sen, Rucha Inamdar, Victor Banerjee, Farooque Shaikh & Pawan Malhotra Rated : 8/10 First comes the disclaimer. And then the reality. The stark, heart-wrenching, stinking, bloodsoaked and oppressive reality of war, the reality of subjugation, the reality of suppression, the reality of sub-human endeavour to crush a population through the oldest instrument of war — rape. It’s a global instrument you have seen over the centuries, from the primitive times actually. In the modern world, it happened in the Bosnia-Serbia conflict and now is now being unfolded by Boko Haram Islamists in Nigeria who have abducted women and children for sexual slavery and race alteration as a tool of war. Back in 1971, when Bangladesh was being born, wombs were being enslaved with unheard of violence on captured Bangladeshi women at Pakistani concentration camps, worse than Hitler’s killing nooks. Director Mrityunjay Devvrat has captured it all and to su...

Godzilla Starring:  Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins Rated:  6/10 Godzilla , as the title of this monster movie suggests, is big, burly and quite with the muscle power. Only, it plays too much of a waiting game to bring Godzilla, the ultimate saviour, into full glory. Director Gareth Edwards, known for his finesse and acumen with the larger than life Monsters mount, gets too bogged down by human quibbles in this one to unveil the real showstopper — the biggest ever monster fight between Godzilla and two rogue dinosaurian behemoths — till very late into the movie, actually till the very end. This waiting game played out over a whole lot of environmental mumbo jumbo about tsunamis not being caused by earthquakes but monsters waking up in the belly of the Earth, and the frequent switch from continent to continent makes Godzilla wait for his own arrival in his own movie. But once he arrives, he is awesome, bigger than i...

Mighty Raju Rio Calling Starring:  Mighty Raju, Maria, Cheeky, Moby, Daniel, Don Pedro, Luca Rated : 7/10 This one is a perfect school vacation thriller that children will flood to the halls for. Mighty Raju, who was till now only a Chhota Bheem friend, is for the first time making waves on the big screen, and how as a hero! Though Indian animation has to come a long way before it attains the high standards of Disney, it’s the power and popularity of Mighty Raju that will take this fun-filled and simple cartoon film to a good box office. The topicality that the director has tagged to this venture (Mighty Raju is helping Rio save itself from the mafia-terrorati just before the FIFA World Cup) adds to the spunk of the film and one could see a lot of children forgetting the popcorn and flying with their favourite Raju all over the cinema hall. Do take you little one to the movies for this one, put together with a lot of chutzpah, colour and endearing antics.  Source: ...

Manjunath Starring : Sasho Sattiysh Sarathy, Divya Dutta, Seema Biswas, Asif Basra, Yashpal Sharma Rated : 6/10 Manjunath’s cold blooded killing is a blot on the nation’s conscience and a film on him — as other whistle blowers — was long time coming. The unassuming, slightly edgy but a brilliant student from IIM Lucknow, he was sent into the mad fields of Uttar Pradesh where he discovered the Rs 20,000 crore fuel mafia and dared to expose them. Of course, he was done to death, by a rogue petrol pump owner who was somewhat a friend but the cause for which Manjunath lost his life — unpunished corruption — needed a total recall which this film does with elan. Stories of such brave soldiers of India are quite potent in themselves to need a cinematic push or licence for drama. Director Sandeep Varma has done well to realise that and has put a minimum of artistic licence into his venture and to great effect. The flesh and blood of the film is Manjunath himself played brilliantly ...

Million Dollar Arm Starring : Jon Hamm, Aasif Mandvi, Bill Paxton, Suraj Sharma, Lake Bell, Alan Arkin Rated:  6/10 Inspirational sports films are a genre in themselves, moreso if they are based on real characters — like the ones the  Million Dollar Arm  propels — and even more so if such rags to riches athletes come from a poverty-stricken and tumultuous India. A truck driver’s son and a lad from a non-descript village in the belly of India pitch the ball well enough to win a reality show and a chance to go to America and play some baseball in a professional team. The hundred thousand sights and sounds of India, viewed by a foreigner, are engagingly depicted in the film where a baseball marketing agent comes to scout for two pitchers who can save his company from going kaput. The interwoven love story, the quirks of a callow Indian in America and a callower American in India, the wry humour of well informed coaches, the humility and inborn servility of aspiri...

Yeh Hai Bakrapur Starring : Anshuman Jha, Asif Basra, Suruchi Aulakh, Faiz Khan, Yoshika Verma Rated:  5/10 This one is a very Indian satire on superstition and its popularity in small-town India. As satires go, this one catches your attention and keeps it glowing till very late into the movie. The humour around situations triggered by some poverty-stricken men making money out of a bakra (he is called Shah Rukh Khan and Allah ka bandaa) are hilarious and at the same time compel you to not just laugh at the situation but also put some thought into the hows and whys of, as a population, being carried away by falsities. But for the end, in which the director loses it, Bakrapur is worth a watch. It has some interesting one-liners and balanced cacophony to keep it going.  Source: Sunday Pioneer, 11 May, 2014

The Amazing SpiderMan 2 Starring:   Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Sally Field, Jamie Foxx Rated : 7/10 If it is Spidy, it has to be amazing. After all, it’s the web that he draws you into from which there is no escape. In this one too, Spiderman is his usual sure self — indulging in aerial antics that take your breath away, saving the city of New York as if there is no tomorrow, palpitating with romance of a girl whose father has strictly asked him to stay away, angsting about his past and going all out for friends in need. Never mind if his secret nightmares around his parents and his relationship with his aunt May (played to perfection by a very controlled Sally Field) take some time out from the real story behind Amazing 2, because in this one Spiderman tends to be a little self indulgent and to some good emotional effect. The director has done well to weave in the romance as beautifully as he has webbed in the action sequences much of which show you Spiderman ta...

Kya Dilli Kya Lahore Starring:  Vijay Raaz, Manu Rishi Chadha, Raj Zutshi, Vishwajeet Pradhan Rated:  5/10 Vijay Raaz is one actor who has given meaning to cameos in most film as no other side actor ever. His has been a short but striking journey of small but powerful roles on the big screen. With this directorial debut, he has only enhanced his reputation of being a brilliantly edgy Bollywood professional. The film is a distinctly different effort on Indo-Pak aman ki aashaa among — of all the people — foot soldiers of the armies on either side of the border. The harsh realities of the Hindus who crossed over from Pakistan and the Muslims who quit India are laid bare through the awesome histrionics of Raaz and Manu Rishi, two men who dominate the screen from start to finish. It is a difficult proposition to tie up a movie into just two characters so it is to Raaz’s courage that he could limit his firstborn so intensely to a duo and a dilapidated house on the barren...

Revolver Rani Starring:  Kangana Ranaut, Piyush Mishra, Vir Das, Zakir Hussain Rated:  5/10 After  Queen , expectations around Kangana Ranaut and her films went viral. Riding on that, this one which is not so queenly will make some money, much to the chagrin of discerning cinema goers. Sitting through the first half, being thrown all over the Chambal ravines with gun-toting  moris  and moras , you wonder why would this be happening at all. But post-interval things get interesting and even riveting in parts. Had the film begun with the last scene, gone into flashback and then devoted the second half to payback time, it would have been a different story altogether — one you would have loved. But director Sai Kabir fell into the trap of trying to grab a sequel and this keeps him and his film in non-blockbuster zone. Not to say though that the actors do not do justice to their characters — they all are well fleshed out and they all render to the best of ...

Kaanchi: The Unbreakable Starring : Mishti, Kartik Tiwari, Rishi Kapoor, Mithun Chakraborty Rated : 4/10 Kaanchi , the film, is the result of veteran director Subhash Ghai’s breezy self-indulgence on big screen. It is completely old world which means completely slow in modern terms. However, it deals with the issue of woman empowerment through Ghai’s angelic find Mishti. As expected, she comes from a picturesque village in the hills, about to be taken over by an unscrupulous corporate-politician family led by none other than a completely deceitful and ruthless Mithun Chakraborty with Rishi Kapoor as his crazier younger brother with a passion for music, women and  paisa . Mishti looks stunning and does well under the wings of Ghai but the film, despite the nostalgic rollback into Ghai songs down the ages and a much fatter Mahima Chaudhry dancing full blast to recreate the magic, is out of tune.   Source: Sunday Pioneer, 27 April, 2014

Brick Mansions Starring : Paul Walker, David Belle, RZA Rated : 5/10 Had it not been one of those Paul Walker movies that have come much after his shocking death in a road accident, it would have been consigned to criticism of being a run-of-the-mill, playing-to-the-gallery ghetto film in which the footage is grabbed more by David Belle than Walker himself. And, the ghetto here is a cordoned off area in the heart of the city where crime is rampant and the residents victims of being forgotten by the administration. Paul Walker’s role here is not too meaty though he is the cop in demand, an undercover narcotics policeman going after the goons responsible for his father’s death in uniform. And, his target is Bricks Mansion, the area where law is non-existent. Belle, as the acrobatic resident of this area, fighting against drug trade, is a delight to be with. He brings pace and zen the film as Walker gives him safe passage. One wishes there was more of Walker in this one.  ...