Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Cast:  Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Jessie T Usher, Bill Pullman Rated:  6/10 It’s much too familiar if you can jog back your memory to the 1996 original which came in to sweep you with its own version of alien invasion, albeit with a much smaller space ship and way lesser CGIs. Independence Day: Resurgence  plies you into a much, much bigger alien ship, a behemoth as big as 3,000 miles in diameter. Naturally then, the invasion and the design of destruction is much bigger too and that’s where the film scores most — its lifelike visuals of a queen bee alien throwing death in all directions, not to mention the energy it generates to steal the core of the Earth and end life on the planet. The story, the characters, even the premise is much the same as the original version. So, in a way, it does breed familiarity but the grand scale on which it unfolds this much too similar story gives it back some punch. Just when the American President is giving a salutary spe...

Cast:  Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vicky Kaushal, Shobhita Dhuliwala Rated:  6/10 No one showcases depravities of the human mind as graphically as Anurag Kashyap.  Raman Raghav 2.0  is an all-in-one show of the debauchery of the human mind through two characters — one a mindless, certified killer who kills for the heck of it, the other a uniformed law enforcer high on abuse, and not just of substance. Together, the two script a racy psycho-thriller which stands still in some places as starkly as it runs amok with unimaginable and yet unstated violence in other. The mind games are splashed in blood and gore which the director skillfully makes you imagine more than he shows. Though the film lets out a big and clear disclaimer that this is not about the 1960s’ serial killer Raman Raghav, it draws heavily from the much documented Mumbai marauder who infamously confessed to have killed more than 40 people on the streets as also to raping and killing his sister. Here,...

Cast:  Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart Rated:  6/10 It’s around The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) and its all flabby but funny. It’s also around Kevin Hart so it was meant to be funnier, which it isn’t. But together the two script a watchable action comedy that is more comedy than action. Contacted by Bob Stone (Johnson) whom Calvin Joyner (Hart) once gave a fig leaf when bullies forcefully carried him stark naked and threw him into a gym full of people, Hart becomes crucial to a CIA mission to retrieve some code from rogue Black Badger. He doesn’t want to but is made to. Back in high school, Stone was many stones more than normal weight and an acutely obese loser. Two decades later, he is every woman’s wet dream with rippling muscles and a torso so smooth that you might slip on it. But that’s besides the point. The funny bone of the film is the chase around a project full of ifs and buts, bullets, smashed windows and an uptight FBI woman running in circles to catch Black Badger wh...

Cast:  (voices) Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Hayden Rolence Rated:  7/10 It’s rare if you can raise a finger against Disney/Pixar when it comes to their animated films, even if they are sequels. From  Finding Nemo to  Finding Dory , the animation quality has only become more polished, colourful and engaging. This time, our cute little blue host has an enchantingly put “Short-term Rememory problem” which forces her to get lost in the big blue deep ocean, losing her loving parents, and then with her mental issues go on a journey to find them across the high seas. An endearing tale wherein Nemo comes in too as do parental issues, a slimy but well-meaning octopus who is more chameleon than octopus, a short-sighted whale, some of the cutest otters and other such ocean people. As Dory does what she does best — forget, love, forget and love over and over again — you settle in with your ow-so-sweet exclamations mixing up with the popcorns through the colourful j...

Cast:  Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Daniel Radcliffe, Morgan Freeman Rated:  6/10 As a sequel, this magic heist is, well, magic. The four Horsemen are there to regale you with their antics in a cross-continent thriller as the four disappear into thin air through a terrace pipe to land all the way away in Macau. Not that they planned it or saw it coming. But once in Macau, they are made to steal the snoopiest microchip in the world by none other than Daniel Radcliffe (without the Potter magic of course) in bargain to their freedom. That’s the premise, but the film scores most on pace which never ever ebbs as the Horsemen, same old men from last time, with an addition of a vivacious girl with the fame of having taken out a hat from a rabbit eight long years ago, doing the tricks. The film directed by Jon M Chu who has in his pocket films like  Step Up 3D  and  GI Joe: Retaliation  and does a pretty decent job of ...

Cast:  Hetal Gadda, Krrish Chhabria, Vipin Sharma, Gulfam Khan, Vibha Chibber Rated:  6/10 Simple, uncomplicated and very much Kukunoor, Dhanak  is a straightforward tale of hope and goodness told through a cross-country  padyatra of two siblings, one blind but funny and the other determined but naive. The brother is blind and the sister is his light. Both are school children who make short of long walks to school bringing the Salman-SRK rivalry to the forefront in their own endearing manner. After being orphaned in a Pushkar  mela  stampede, they live in a  dhaani  deep in Rajasthan with a cruel chachi and a well-meaning but hen-pecked chacha. But they are happy despite their situation and the thread of happiness and hope runs throughout the film from which you return with a happy song on your lips. Writer-director Nagesh Kukunoor returns with Dhanak after a long hiatus and makes sure that this simple love story of siblings who take o...

Cast:  Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Diljit Dosanjh Rated:  9/10 Udta Punjab  is so crazed, crass and coked up that, like an addict, you just can’t stop watching it. It’s a highly uncomfortable film — stark, dark and real — which grips you like cocaine and makes you dive into the lowest of narco lows and then rise with the highs of the best delivered anti-drug message on Indian screen thus far. Abhishek Chaubey’s gritty gripper shows up Punjab as all the previous documentation has failed to do despite the State’s more than a two-decade-long plummet into a virtually en masse haze of narcotics, cocktail of injectable chemicals and, of course, trips on prescription drugs. There’s everything to contend with in this film — cross border smuggling, narco-political nexus, the well-oiled rustic cartels, the cleaning up bids, the cuss words, the profanities and, of course, the predicament of the State’s drug-induced population which is reeling at all levels. ...

Cast : Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Frances O'Connor, Madison Wolfe Rated : 7/10 It’s back, that scary movie which curdles your blood with just two words: “It’s true”. This time, ghost-tracker Ed Warren and his ghost-buster wife Lorraine are on a Church-handed see-over mission to England where a single mother and her three children are in the hold of an old man’s apparently evil spirit. Amid all the tearing apart of the house, the unseen ghost (for a long time) on a rocking chair, the back-of-the-head-hovering camera and all other cinematic props, this haunted movie is as good as  Conjuring 1 , perhaps scarier, which is quite an achievement in itself. The best thing about the film is that it does not scream you down with background accoustics but goes in all the good directions of a happening story, a sequence that refuses to break down and a set of actors who give you a veteran performance. Lorraine, who has almost decided to let spirits be after she senses the death ...

Cast : Randeep Hooda, Kajal Aggarwal Rated : 4/10 This too is a Korean remake, though totally divorced from the viability of Te3n. Based on a freestyle boxer’s traumatic turn of life events in the mean streets of Malaysia and the ultimate sacrifice he plans for his love, the film is long, slow, tedious and boring despite Randeep Hooda’s recent high as a people’s actor. Director Deepak Tijori returns after a long hiatus but manages only to decorate the cliches in the film and play to the gallery with the emotional monosyllables of Hooda. He, however, makes up a little bit by capturing the fighting arena and underground/illegal fight-to-kill scenarios in the underbelly of that country but other than that, there’s a sobby, sloppy and misplaced love story emanating from a security guard’s room at an entry gate where a blind girl spends her nights watching a Hindi serial. Kajal Aggarwal as the widest eyed blind girl to have visited the Bollywood screen in ages, tries to insert som...

Cast  : Amitabh Bachchan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vidya Balan Rated : 7/10 To state anything more than the fact that this film is a thrilling, gripping murder mystery would be a dead giveaway. But the beauty of  Te3n  is that despite having Amitabh Bachchan as the main character, it is not just about him.  It is a film that stands tall on its edgy no-nonsense script and director Ribhu Dasgupta’s ability to hold on to the main thread despite an unusual and slow descent into a long-winded probe through known and surprising quarters. Of course, AB is the central character of the film, having lost his grand-daughter to a ruthless kidnapper and makes a feat out of looking old, haggard, unkempt and doggedly determined to get the man despite eight years having passed after he loses Angela. Amitabh’s towering histrionics need no elucidation so it is his co-stars Nawazuddin, the cop-turned-priest, and on duty policewoman Vidya Balan who can be discussed. Nawazuddin...

Cast : Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster Rated : 7/10 Big screen fantasies with bigger CGIs and VFX have steadily become Hollywood’s bread and butter. In that genre,  Warcraft  is a high-end period fantasy where big, burly, beastly, long-horned, wide teethed monsters with poison magic and hip-hugging bead accessories, not to mention ear and nose piercings, run at you wantonly under the 3D effect, making you cringe in  excitement and anticipation. They also fight like warriors, have issues within themselves and the Orks, as they call each other, are led by a green-eyed energy sucking, environment-killing bully of a leader. They are now on to humans and their very English kingdom under a King who is, for once, not made to look like a pansy in the hands of his commander. So the fight, the politics and the treachery begin on a high note and in very many unexpected quarters too. Thankfully, it all ends on a high note too, in the process, paving a sureshot way f...

Cast:  Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Laura Linney, Stephen Amell, Brian Tee Rated:  5/10 Marvel has been the centrepiece this year with a trail of comic book heroes visiting Hollywood ever since Deadpool made his debut last year. This one, again from the Marvel closet in quick succession of the much bigger heroes flying around the screen just the other week, is not that much of a marvel as you may have expected from these shadowy monster warriors of New York city. Another matter though, that these ninja turtles hate being seen as monsters and are almost bereft of cohesion as a team once the opportunity to look like humans presents itself at their doorstep. But there’s a mission at hand after a high end criminal is freed by a misplaced scientific genius and used by a slurpy, wet, yucky alien with tentacles to wage a war against humans. There’s a lot of spatial gizmo punctuating the film, including an ozone breaking warship that needs to be assembled through a three-point de...

Cast:  Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Matt Bomer, Margaret Qualley, Kim Basinger Rated:  6/10 It’s the 70s, flary booms, long locks, a lot of cigarette (with ‘smoking kills’ warnings imported from 2016), alcohol haze, Nixonian issues and happenings that Americans may know more about than Indians. What we know better, however, are Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling and what they can do to a film. Here, they indulge in a loosely constructed bromance pivoted around a murder mystery with a tag to those 70s issues that rocked America — like environment protests and the underhand push to the auto lobby, not to mention a corrupt justice department baying, in this case, for its very own daughter’s blood. It all starts with a car crashing into the home of a young boy in the dead of the night with porn star Misty M driving it — yes you guessed right — stark naked. Of course she dies instantly and seems to have no connection with the film, till young girl Amelia hires contract bounce...

Cast:  Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh, Jaqueline Fernandes, Nargis Fakhri, Lisa Haydon, Boman Irani Rated:  4/10 You expect the kitsch. You expect the buffoonery. You, in fact, await the roller-coaster, nonsensical, loud stupid humour. But that doesn’t happen and  Housefull 3  instantly falls into the crevice of an un-happening mount sniggering on its brand value and that of its lead actor Akshay Kumar. Now Akshay Kumar is all gung-ho in the film, even emulsifying into a twin role as Sandy and Sundy, the latter a pathological rioter who turns so every time he hears the word ‘Indian’. Rest of them, including Riteish Deshmukh and new entrant Abhishek Bachchan, are all  ‘maa ki behen ki’  as the film keeps repeating sometimes in a rap, sometimes in a song and sometimes as background score just to make impact, some kind of, any kind of impact. What kills the film and all the effort of the dudes, bimbos and Boman Irani and his PJ o...