Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

CAST:  Madhavan & Ritika Singh RATED:  7/10 She’s a Chennai ki  machhli wali  and he is Delhi ka out of run boxing coach. She is all  bindas, bahadur and bohemian and he all anger, frustration and sarcasm. The two meet and a lot of boxing happens, eventually. That she (Ritika Singh) is a real-time kickboxer and a mixed martial artist shows up in her demeanour on the screen where she plays a reluctant pugilist. So, Ritika as this much-derided coach’s protégé is a perfect choice for this role. She shows she has the kick and the punch to act, even if she could not deliver much of a punch in the Asian Games and similar competitions. She has the looks and the screen presence which, along with Madhavan’s seasoned histrionics, makes this one a movie to be with. But it’s not all because of the crackling chemistry between these two that the film clicks. It clicks because it is no-nonsense about the subject it is dealing with, slick in presentation, punchy...

ASTERIX THE MANSIONS OF THE GODS CAST:  Roger Carel, Guillaume Briat, Lionnel Astier, Serge Papagalli and Florence Foresti RATED:  7/10 Those ones from Gaul have all the magic, and the potion, and the verve, and the nerve and the bumbling simplicity that takes your heart. Unless, of course, you are Roman, more precisely, Julius Caesar. If you are Caesar or any of his cronies, you would be employing all your life and strength to somehow bring down a small, angelic village in the middle of nowhere merely to breathe a sigh of relief. For, these superstars from Gaul are a constant threat to the Romans even though they would care two hoots for anything outside the boundaries of their forest which they do not want disturbed. We have grown on Asterix comics and many generations have similarly been with Obelix, Cacophonix and Dogmatix, not to mention Druid and Asterix himself, enjoying their antics much like Tintin, Haddox and all the blistering barnacles that come along...

Cast:   Akshay Kumar, Nimrat Kaur Rated:  7.5/10 True stories are rarely made, and made well, in Bollywood though the trend has somewhat picked up in the past five years, what with  Paan Singh Tomar, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag  and  Special 26 making quite a splash. Airlift,  based on a true life 1990 saga of what is touted as “the world’s biggest war zone air evacuation” was waiting to happen on the big screen but it took 26 years to make it. Thanks to Akshay Kumar’s clearly controlled acting and no-nonsense production, the wait’s been worth the while. Simply put,  Airlift  is a gritty, slow moving, close to reality tale that makes very little attempt to play to the box office. And that’s where it earns its biggest points. Though you may accuse the film of going slow in the second half and some song and dance that wasn’t really needed, there’s no denying the fact that the situation that unfolded when Saddam’s trigger happy troops invaded Kuwait...

Cast:  Chloe Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Liev Shreiber, Maika Monroe Rated : 6/10 Many would find this alien science fiction too slow moving for its genre and bereft of combat action most of the time, but those looking for  hatke,  story-oriented and humane sci-fi, this one is the one to go for. A young adult film in which a sister is on a relentless search of her baby brother who has been taken away by the military after an alien ship parks over Ohio and creates mass destruction in five waves. The visuals around this destruction — the tsunamis, the earthquakes and the avian flu are stunning and on a big scale, not to mention, the most arresting part of the film. Sadly however, for the action takers, this gets over fast and the rest of the film trudges along the gun-toting high school teen's search for her brother. The sinister element that makes for the most in such films has its presence,  though in a hushed manner. The blood and the gore and the intoler...

Cast:  Tushar Kapoor, Aftab Shivdasani, Mandana Karimi Rated:  1/10 This one needs to be rushed to Sablok Clinic for correctional interventions. For, despite being termed as a sex comedy, there is neither any worthwhile sex nor comedy in this third one from Ekta’s stable. Tusshar Kapoor is unbearable as usual, this time with eye focus problems every time he sees red. And every time he sees red, you see red too, literally. Giving him company in this limp sex comedy is his partner in crime Aftab Shivdasani and the latest entry in Bollywood kitsch films Krishna from  Comedy Nights Bachao . Together, they “do” it in Thailand, making not porn but “dirty films”by taking off clothes of perennially orgasmic women to clothe “ nangey bachey  in Ethiopia” or some such. The problem with the films are many: First, it is horrendously un-comic; second, as it has no content whatsoever for laughter, it hams and yells endlessly; third, there is nothing remotely sexual, funni...

Cast:  Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, Matthias Schoenaerts Rated : 6/10 It is a sensitive film on an uneasy subject — a sex change situation way back in the 1920s when radiation of the private parts and exorcism were the only known ways to deal with what that generation considered an “unGodly affliction” officially classified as perversion and insanity. But look beyond this bid for gender transformation, Oscarite Eddy Redmayne ( Theory of Everything ) scripts an incredible love story that happens only once in a century, maybe never again. That it is a real love story of a husband who wants to be a woman and a wife who loves him through this anguished metamorphosis is the main force of this fascinating tale of emotional and physical transformation of a man to a woman. Not many may know that Lily Eble, the main protagonist of this sensitively made film, has been the driving force of the transgender movement across nations and ages ever since her diaries got published in 1...

Cast:  Samuel L Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh Rated:   6.5/10 When with Quentin Tarantino, you’ve got to be in the mood — in the mood for extreme but artfully constructed violence. In this one, the eighth one from this master director’s stable, violence is more vocal than action oriented. And, for most part of the film, it has been shoved into a single room of a back of beyond haberdashery in remote, snowbound West. Decked with flashbacks and chapters, all the blood and gore is mostly showcased on the lone woman in the film (Jennifer Leigh) who gets badgered with such nonchalance that you cringe at every blow she gets on her battered, blood oozing mouth. As violence goes, such extreme forms, as Quentin might say, flowers best on a woman. The rest of it is mostly suggestive and not really in your face till Jackson decides to narrate to an old, “white” father how he killed his only son in cold blood, making him crawl naked in the snow, compelling him to d...