Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Cast  : Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac Rated : 7/10 From 1977 to 2015 is a big leap for humanity, as it is for humanity’s long standing obsession with the George Lucas series Star Wars. Not to disappoint, the latest episode in this spatial journey atop a battle between good and evil can safely be tagged as sustainable development. For the SW buffs, this journey is remarkable, and the fact that in every “episode” a lot of money has been made and a lot of appreciation heaped is a story in itself. And, this one is no exception. Of course, the basics are all the same — an outer space journey, multiple planets away from Earth, a bad force trying to crush the universe and all beings within it, a stiff Resistance force fighting against this wanton subjugation bid, most actors new, some old, a lot more gizmos, a trendy lingo which has grown with changing times and a heady mix of a story with past intoned in it and an...

Cast:  Édgar Ramírez, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer, Delroy Lindo and Ray Winstone  Rated:  5/10 Adrenaline wallahs , get set. There’s non-stop action here — on all routes — land, air, sea. Waves go high and tidal as surfers play with life. They jump down a 180 feet waterfall, they climb rocks more vertical than vertical can be. They engineer heists in manners that boggles the FBI — jumping off parachute-fitted scooters from 100th storey, or taking away stacks of green notes and dispersing them over Mumbai slums and Mexican have-not zones. And they are not common criminals you would want behind bars without ado. They are missionaries of an ancient Chinese cult, trying to create an equatable lebensraum all over the world. On their trail is a former extreme sportsman who has joined the FBI after losing his friend to one dirt stretch motorbike ride over cliff-hangers. So far so good. But then everything starts getting muddled. You do not understand for most part of ...

Cast  : Ranveer Singh, Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, Mahesh Manjrekar, Tanvi Azmi, Sanjay Mishra Rated  : 7/10 History. A bit muddled. But powerful. Grander than grandeur. Overwhelmingly opulent. A love story. Real, somewhat. Intense, totally. Emotional, heavily. A bygone era. Captured immaculately, almost doggedly. Costumes. Rich, royal, detailed. Jewellery, stunning, intricate, priceless. Hues, amazing. A film. Serenading Indian history. Drama. To the last detail. Some truths, some falsities and lots of cinematic liberties. Together, a saga of beauty and visuals. That’s the self-designed logo of Sanjay Leela Bhansali. That’s Bajirao Mastani — meant to give you historical wings to soar to such great heights of artistry and visual excellence that the overbearing artiness tricks you into not searching for the real, real story behind all the glitz and the glamour of an ancient tale of the early 1700s. Indeed, it’s a tale that the real contenders would applaud from...

Cast  : Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Varun Dhawan, Kriti Sanon, Varun Sharma, Boman Irani, Vinod Khanna, Kabir Bedi, Sanjay Mishra   Rated  : 6/10   Let’s face it. Shah Rukh Khan is the senior citizen in this film. A patriarchal big bro, almost in the supporting role of launching Varun Dhawan as, say, a father would his son.   And Rohit Shetty is someone trying very hard not to be, well, Rohit Shetty. He tries to be Aditya Chopra. He tries to be Karan Johar. But the more he tries to race romance, the more he gets stuck in his cars — sleek cars, sports cars, remodelled cars, racing cars, overturning cars, car chases and everything, well, car hee car!   Let’s face it again. Despite all the senior citizenry, despite respecting his recent 50th birthday, Khan is still the king of romance, the showstopper of any film he figures in. His swagger of self-indulgence, his blatant throwing of memorable lines from his earlier movies, his no-one-can-be-‘Raj’-...

Cast (voice over): Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright, Sam Elliott, Anna Paquin, AJ Buckley, Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand, Steve Zahn Rated : 8/10 The good dino is not just good. He is cute, loving, alluring and that perfect cartoon character that takes your heart away. This one from the Disney pack is about a dinosaur family which is more human than we can be they are farmers, they live in a hut, they sow maize and they get all stocked up for the winters. Mama, Papa, sister, brother and one inelegant young one who is not dino at heart. He is afraid of everything, even a critter whom he can just munch for lunch. He can’t do anything that can be termed an achievement. But his poppa thinks he is him and much more, that he will come around, that he will grow up and that one day, he will put that family mark on the stone building just like all others into he family. It’s this journey of the little one, through breath-taking visuals, emotional interludes, friendships and much more ...

Cast : Tom Hardy, Emily Browning, David Thewlis, Christopher Eccleston, Chazz Palminteri Rated : 5/10 The syrupy 60s. London. Gambling mafia. Liquid Bonds. Nightclubs. Supari killings. Love. Gay-dom. Political hypocrisy. Crime. And Tom Hardy. It’s all there on a platter for you though legends, one may say, are made of better stuff. If for nothing, you must go to see this gangster true story for master actor Tom Hardy who plays a double role so well that unless you knew before the film started that he and his brother are the same man, you would have never guessed. One a handsome, in love, good looking somewhat scrupulous Reggie who manages the crime business with a swagger all fall in love with. And the other a schizophrenic beset with paranoia, extreme violent bouts and sexual deviance. But both Hardys are breathtakingly real and put you on the edge as a gangster should. But that’s about all. The real life and times of these brothers who punctuated the 60s with their tales ...

Cast : Meenu Hooda, Ridhima Sud, Kuldeep Ruhil, Shashi Bhushan Rated : 7/10 This one is about a serious issue so director Madhureeta Anand is on solid turf — her turf. More like a docu-feature film, goes into a Haryana village rookie woman reporter and tries to get to the truth behind the more than 100 killing of baby girls — by a witch! Played to near perfection by Meenu Hooda, the witch is just a scapegoat for delving into the more widespread oppression of women — in all strata, in all societies. Anand excels in keeping the focus on the issue so intensely that the film turns out to be a no nonsense hard look at female foeticide, skewed sex ratio and women being imported from Bangladesh and Chhattisgarh to keep families going. And yet, giving birth to a girl means taking her to the grave with gruesome killing by salt. The film makes a statement and does not shy from anything that touches the issue. Be it the witch who has been drawn into the game by her unscrupulous lover bo...

Cast : Sharman Joshi, Zarine Khan, Karan Singh Grover, Daisy Shah Rated : 5/10   Some will love to hate it and others will hate to love it. Between these two extremes, this third one of the series unfolds its very own extremities with some obvious overtures steamy here was expected but Sharman Joshi lip-locking awkwardly and hiding his torso behind the silk of his woman again for pretty obvious reasons was funny, as were the slurpy kissing which Pahlaj Nihalani seems to have not seen while the scissors were in his hands.   Either that or the poor man was too stunned to react, not because of the extended foreplay but because it was all unnecessary and ill-timed and way off the mark. Be it Zarine Khan’s interlude with Karan Singh Grover or Daisy’s seduction number with the same guy way too imperfect and thus embarrassing.   Other than that, complements for keeping the rigmarole intact for a long time though those ones who have been with Agatha Christie in th...

Cast:  Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone Rated : 6/10 Imtiaz Ali’s latest with Ranbir Kapoor is a dark, brooding romance with a whole lot of existential issues, in fact it is more about existentialism than romance. Many would furiously question Ali for getting into the underbelly of the hopeless emotionalism of an incorrigible  dramebaaz  trapped in a frustrated management grad’s garb when Bollywood's most romantic pair was ready to explode with sizzling combustibility that none other can garner on screen today. It would be a pertinent query thrown at Ali but as you survive (I say survive because it was really tedious to sit through the extended theatricals and flashbacks) the first half-hour of unexplained symbolism meant to set the tone of this complex mount, you realise there’s something stark, real and disturbing that is being raised by Ali for whom realism in cinema means more than being the constructor of just a breezy  paisa vasool  romance. Bes...

Cast : Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman Rated:  6/10 A befitting finale, you would say, for this last of the split in  The Hunger Games . Those looking for a great ending to the much-loved and popular  Hunger Games  series, should troop to the cinemas for a storyline and a script that’s dazzlingly dark and edgy but nail-bitingly entertaining. The best part is that the action doesn’t let up like in the first part and the actors put up a great performance through the arena that’s meant to save the havenot Districts. Of course, fans of Jennifer Lawrence will tell you that the entire movie series would have fallen flat had it not been for Katniss. There are certain parts where one would find the film sagging but Lawrence makes each scene sparkle with her presence. The film has no qualms about playing to the gallery with war and gore. Director Francis Lawrence stretche...

Cast:  Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz,  Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Monica Bellucci, Ralph Fiennes Rated:  6.5/10 Even as the  sanskari  Bond hashtag has flooded Indian twitterati, thanks to an overzealous Censor Board going all clippy and sloppy for no reason whatsoever, the name Bond, James Bond still reigns supreme. For, Bond is still the kissing-killing sexy war machine that he used to be all those 24 editions back. The enigma around Bond has neither been shaken nor stirred for all the years that he has gulped down criminals, terrorists, drug cartel rogues or plain killers with his dirty martinis and women in tow. The swagger is undiminished and the commitment to cross continental crime chasing as strong as his love for the now deceased M. But it is her cryptic message that got delivered to her famous protégé on the eve of her murder that gives this caper its intense action sequences and 007 his newest mission. Of course, it is another ...

Cast:  Salman Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Anupam Kher Rated:  5/10 Sooraj Barjatya, not one but two  Salman Khans, the larger than life Rajshri banner and a peg on recreation of 17-year-old magic — something big, something grand, something romantic — the potential was animated, the promise complete and the box office registers all set to make some noise. After all, Prem was making a comeback, that too this Diwali. So what if he was no longer 17 years old, so what if the choco look had got mixed up with a lot of brawn, brawl and taporipanti  down the years? So what if the sweet young Salman had graduated into being Sallu  Bhai . No one could possibly be Prem as he was. Right? Wrong. This time round, the grandeur could not be faulted but it was grandeur, family time and romance without the pulse. The  Prem ratan dhan  was missing. The chemistry was struggling and the  babujis  and mamujis , the doggies and the  kaboota...

Cast:  Anna Hutchison, Andrea Whitburn, Jennifer Koeniga Rated:  5/10 For an entirely linear movie beginning and ending on not an entirely straight road, the film manages to live up to its B-grade production. A bad copy of a young Spielberg’s Duel  ( when he was just 25), the big tow truck menace that is Wrecker, goes into a deserted stretch of road between Seattle and Palm Strings with two hotties on an emotional recuperation trip that goes terribly sour once the tow truck starts following them menacingly, and to fatal consequences. The problem with the film is its near barren imagination, much like the stark barrenness of the landscape it traverses. Yes there are moments when you go to the edge of the seat wondering what’s round the next turn but pretty soon interest eases up with nothing catastrophic happening, except the truck following the red sedan in which the two friends are travelling. Any screamy film on a road-trip is always full of potential but ve...

Cast:  Bill Murray, Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, Danny McBride, Scott Caan, Bruce Willis Rated:  4/10 Well, Afghanistan is a breeding ground for all kinds of nefarious activities, including a slew of meaningless Hollywood films on subjects as divorced from Taliban as, say, music. An out-of-work, virtually vegetating old music composer and a talent manager who has nothing much to do in life except con bad but rich singers into signing launch contracts in America suddenly gets this offer to go to Afghanistan on a music tour. Even he, despite his utmost desperation for money, sees this as a crazy, non-workable idea but accepts nevertheless for reasons best shown to one and all. Though pregnant with possibilities, nothing much happens in the film which shows over the top sequences on this musician’s journey into the heart of the torn land with characters as inexplicable as the mercenary Bruce Willis who sports his AK-47 like a lollipop and utters dialogues as if in a daze...

Cast:   Vin Diesel, Rose Leslie, Elijah Wood, Israel Baldecañas, Michael Caine Rated:  4/10 It looks like Van Diesel has had enough of this witch hunt. In this, hopefully, last one of the four series, he sleepwalks through the smokey, dark, dingy crevasses of the netherworld seeking to kill the queen witch whose heart is beating dangerously despite her demise. There’s a heart all right, a really messed up one, but there’s no soul in either the film or in Diesel’s act. He looks tired of immortality, of the witches around him and even of the job he has at hand. Top this with a really tedious, unconvincing and unreasonable order of the night and you have a film which refuses to draw you in despite all the good, bad and ugly spells that the director tries to weave into a story of not many twists and turns. The queen witch is slimy, all branched up, fiery in a yucky kind of way, and quite hung up on destroying humanity. For what reason? You are never really told as...

Cast:  Shahid Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Pankaj Kapur, Sanjay Kapoor, Sushma Seth Rated:  5/10 When director Vikas Bahl made  Queen , he made history, he made music and he made a real story with which the audience connected. He also made Kangana Ranaut and her future career in the industry. With  Shaandaar,  he makes nothing and unmakes a lot. An overtly struggling fairy tale, with an overtly struggling storyline, with an overtly struggling Indian wedding, with an overtly struggling  raison   d'être,  and despite the presence of oh-so-cute-but-I-am-cool Alia Bhatt and I-am-and-will-be-Prince-Charming Shahid Kapoor, there is nothing that holds you to this attempted romance in an attempted fairyland. With Bahl, that’s doubly disappointing. Despite all the trappings of the Aesop’s genre, the grandeur of an English castle, the flock of characters meant to take you over the top and a human witch in wheel-chair bound Sushma Seth who worships money ho...

Cast : Kartik Aaryan, Nushrat Bharucha, Sonalli Sehgall, Ishita Sharma, Omkar Kapoor, Sunny Singh,Rumana Molla Rated : 6/10 The sequel follows the original to the T. At least in the subject line. Yes, it is all about girlfriend bashing. Yes it is entirely misogynist. And yes, there is no pretense whatsoever about the fact that director Luv Ranjan has had a raw deal in life where the opposite sex is concerned. But the point here is not to make it a point about the film being virulently gender biased. That it was always supposed to be. The point here is whether all that politically incorrect positioning is fulfilling the ultimate purpose that of being hilarious, tickling your funny bone and making you come out in a happy mood if you are a man, and in an unhappy one if you are a woman who can’t take jokes on yourself. Well, it is hilarious but the laughs come with an unfair amount of punctuations. The dialogues are overtly aggressive in their take on women. And that 9-minute mon...

Cast : Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, Alan Alda Rated : 8/10 Tom Hanks is the centrepiece of this film. So is the story. As is the direction. Not to mention the absolutely stunning grasp on the pace of the film which is slow, deliberate, keen on detail and yet so gripping that you forget the popcorn for those otherwise long two-hour-20-minutes that director Steven Spielberg takes to unfold a drama that is in no hurry to create a crescendo but creates it nevertheless. It is based on a true story of an insurance lawyer first drafted in by the American administration to defend a Soviet spy much against his wishes, and then used to negotiate a swap with an American spy in the cold, hazy and ruinous East Germany just when the Wall was coming up. Spielberg catches the ambience of Germany so well that you are reminded of  Schindler’s List  and the rest of the things are helmed by Hanks and his controlled histrionics. The wry humour, the quizzical looks and a languorous bu...

Cast : Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunnam, Jim Beaver Rated : 5/10 This much touted film, a Gothic story of haunted love, blood and horror, is at best a visual treat of immaculate detail. Other than that, there is too much blood, too much gore and too much anticipation of both as the hapless damsel in distress brought into a run-down three century old castle in England tries to fight the isolation and the conspiracy that is meant to eventually get her and the millions she is heiress to. Mia Wasikowska as the victim of her husband and his sister’s murky dealings hold forth with not just her Goldilocks looks but also her portrayal of a bewildered bride who has nowhere to go except in the arms of forced death. The director Guillermo del Toro known for his cine fantasia skills, leaves no stone unturned in showing up the dingy castle as the centrepiece of a scare-land he creates with twisted, bloodied ghosts and black witches which turn into smoke and...

Cast : Rishi Kapoor, Anushka Ranjan, Diganth Manchale Rated : 4/10 The film is not bad but you are still constrained to ask: Why was it made. It is a done to death story, on a done to death theme, in a done to death destination, over a done to death Indian wedding, or should a say not so done to death twin Indian wedding. Top that with unknown faces which fail to switch on the chemistry despite the boy being more chocolate than Cadbury’s and the girl being poor man’s Juhi Chawla with a height advantage. So the only thing that towers in the film are those several inches that hover over the hero who, incidentally, is marrying a girl he does not love. All the ditching at the altar is so predictable that if you had not guess from the second scene of the film, the director would have put you in jail. And then there’s Rishi Kapoor, the hotel’s impeccable manager. Why is he there? No one knows. What is he doing? Nothing of consequence. So there you go!  Source: The Sunday Pioneer...

Jazbaa Cast:  Aishwarya Rai, Irrfan Khan, Shabana Azmi, Jackie Shroff Rated:  7/10 Aishwarya Rai’s comeback movie, after her long hiatus due to motherhood, may not dazzle you as completely as her stunning beauty does, but it sure keeps you much more than mildly interested all throughout. Though an out-an-out Aish vehicle with director/producer Sanjay Gupta quite overtly in awe of her beauty and persona, it is startling how Irrfan pulls you inexorably towards his unkept, alcohol doused, corrupt character. He is a complete counterfoil to Aish and her pristine looks and yet it is no measure of his screen presence that in a woman-oriented vehicle, he takes the best position — the centre-corner seat. Despite the film being a taut thriller born out of a single mother’s battle to save her kidnapped daughter, the chemistry between Irrfan and Aish is crackling and much of the credit for that goes to man of the film, his laconic one-liners, his portrayal of self-defeatism an...

Sicario Cast:  Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber Rated:  5/10 You are told at the very beginning that Sicario is the Mexican word for Hitman. So, you know what to expect — a gun-toting, drug doused, atrocities ridden world with CIA, FBI and who all not on a dark and bloody trail of drug lords. The nexuses, the scenes behind the scene, the dusty road-trips, the unaccounted for operations, the illegal ways and means — it’s all there in abundance. At the centre of all this is a woman FBI agent who inadvertently unearths a hostage graveyard (all 46 of their decomposed bodies sewn in the walls of a drug lord’s safe house) during an operation to dig out criminals. She is promptly picked up by CIA operatives and included in a secret mission to kill the big fish deep in the heart of Mexico (Al Passo) without being told anything about what’s exactly going on. It’s all illegal, but it’s all sanctioned, she is told. There are shady men all around doing...

The walk Cast:  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ben Kingsley, Charlotte Le Bon, James Badge Dale Rated:  8/10 When a 25-year-old French juggler Phillipe Petit did a death defying, 45-minute illegal aerial walk on a sheer cable tied between the terraces of the Twin Towers, 1,400 feet above the ground, the entire world stopped and gaped. It being the 70s, YouTube was entirely unborn and all these four-and-a-half decades later can only show still pictures of the event. So when, writer-director Robert Zemeckis decided to depict this cloud-kissing, immortal moment in history in a full length feature film, it was sure to make the world gape too. That he skillfully manages to do so, all those 42 years later, and much after the World Trade Centre went down to a terror attack that tore the social harmony of the world forever, is a feat no less than the actual walk itself. If ever there could be nausea in the knees, and if ever your legs could turn so completely jelly, it is in the ...

singh is bliing Cast : Akshay Kumar, Amy Jackson, Lara Dutta, Kay Kay Menon Rated : 4/10 Nonsense gets a new, over-the-top and super hyper meaning in Singh Is Bliing with Akshay Kumar helping the highly caricaturised kitsch on just one premise — that anything he touches, even wanton lunacy, will, well, bling! Singh Is Bliing is that alag level ki incredible nonsense that amazingly and pretty often strikes a chord among our front benchers. Soon there will be figures floating around the film, calling it a Rs100 crore super duper success in the first week. But fact is that despite the incorrigible Akshay, despite his Sikh act and despite his brand of unapologetic humour, this one is really and in the truest sense a movie doting on madness of the mind, body and soul. The only thing beautiful is Amy Jackson and the only thing correct about this film is to have maintained her language issues. Other than that, of course there is no question of a plot or a coherent story, or of a...

Cast : Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels Rated : 7.5/10 Hope flutters eternal in human breast and under director Ridley Scott, it blooms unexpectedly. He lends trust to hope, campaigns for it, fights gargantuan impossibilities and manages to convince his viewers to root for his hero deserted and almost sure to die on a lonely planet millions of miles from Earth. It is refreshing to see that this spatial saga is not some deep, dark highly gizmotic science fiction heavy on machines and jargon even though a lot has been taken from NASA for authenticity. That Scott uses wry humour as the main vehicle of hope in his cryptic sounding hero Matt Damon only adds to the allure of this film. Scott was a late entrant to the show but leaves his indelible mark on the proceedings, much enhanced by their inherent positivity. Fighting a storm and being hit flat out by his antenna, Damon is inadvertently left behind on Mars for dead by a fast exiting crew inte...

Cast : Irrfan Khan, Konkona Sen Sharma, Neeraj Kabi, Sohum Sharma Rated : 8.5/10 Depending on which side you are seeing it from, you may differ or agree with Vishal Bhardwaj’s version of who killed Aarushi Talwar. But from whichever angle you see the film, the unanimous view will be that it is a cutting edge whodunit in which very few or no cinematic props, otherwise called dramatisation, have been used to delve into one of India’s most talked about perfect murders. It is taut, stark and to the point with Irrfan breathing life into a case of death most foul. As a CBI officer who was removed from the case unceremoniously and sought voluntary retirement in sheer disgust he is just brilliant. Konkona Sen as Nupur Talwar, Aarushi’s stone-faced mother, shows too much emotion on screen departing from the popular image of the lady now in jail. Neeraj Kabi is utterly convincing as Rajesh Talwar. Though Bhardwaj stitches together all the theories around the murder at length, the film,...