Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Cast : Shah Rukh Khan, Alia Bhatt, Kunal Kapoor, Atif Aslam Rated:  6.5/10 Dear Zindagi  is undoubtedly the longest therapy session that Bollywood has dared to orchestrate on screen but, under director Gauri Shinde’s expert guidance, the life lessons come with an unusual charm. That, despite the fact that there’s heavy falsafa wrapped around heavier dialogues throughout the film. That Alia’s DD ( dimag ka doctor ) turns into  dil ka doctor  in Shinde’s slick  zindagi ka masala  is in some measure due to peppy but meaningful talk, lovely music and, of course, Alia Bhatt’s near-perfect screen presence and naturalese. From introducing herself as a strong-minded, independent girl who loves things upside down in her apartment, to revealing that she is actually a messed up vulnerable girl with daddy-mummy issues, Alia gathers all the emotions with finesse and looks exceedingly beautiful too. When she is angry, when she is scared, when she is lonely, w...

Cast:  Emma Roberts, Dave Franco, Juliette Lewis Rated : 5/10 Mobile games are a rage, what with Pokemon Go blazing the charts at the moment. Nerve is something like Pokerman, a dangerous youth obsession where watchers and players are taking and enjoying the dares with huge money benefits — $100 if you kiss a stranger for five seconds, $2,500 if you steal a $3,975 dress, $10,000 if you take an aerial ladder dare and so on. Only hitch is that in the process you do things that are not legal, like shooting someone dead or the like. Hooked on to this dangerous , clandestine network are voyeuristic teens who are watchers and wanton players who are in the game. The game can’t be shut down because the server can’t be traced and if you deign to go to the authorities, the penalty is virtually fatal. Amid all this, there is a friendship, a relationship, some unrequited love and a game that you really need some nerve to get into. The film is innovative, with the times and gets i...

Cast : Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma, Mark O'Brien Rated : 4/10 Complicated aliens, indecipherable language, language decipherers, time walk abilities and a whole lot of needless scientific jargon makes this mount, well, slow and unsteady. The entire premise of the film is so complicated that you feel the need to go for popcorn breaks much before the interval. So, here you have a spaceship, an oval suspension over 12 spots in the world, including Pakistan but not India, mind you. The aliens are tentacled heptabots who never emerge from the cloudy haze of the horizon. They make sounds that the US Army thinks can be studied and deciphered by a language expert. Another issue that this expert is a woman with baby issues, a death hangover of a child who we later discover are only her peeps into the future. The problem with the film is that it is too static, unhappening and stuck with the problems of the alien language not being decipher...

Cast : Neha Dhupia Ranvir Shorey, Vidhushi Mehra Rated:  4/10 A dark, wannabe thriller the high point of which is Ranvir Shorey and to some extent the back from beyond Neha Dhupia. An odd pair, you would say and rightly so. As husband and wife, they are uncomfortable with each other and cheating on each other in different kind of ways — she with another man and he with snitching on his boss and tying up with the bad land sharks, clandestine money and illegal deals. The film is a cross between a thriller and negative human relationships and thus goes here and there before finally building up as a murder, fraud action film. Shorey, the ultimate middle class man hating middle class, cheats his office to do land deals with commissions on the side — till he lands in trouble after being discovered and sacked. The film builds on the slim moments it has and the relationship issue between the lead pair takes up too much time for the action to open up. There’s a dirty murder, an in...

Cast:  John Abraham, Sonakshi Sinha, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Genelia D'Souza Rated:  6/10 Had Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unannounced demonetisation drive not been under progress,  Force 2  would have made more eyeballs and, hence, more money. But despite daringly opening on a week that is more about queues to the bank rather than ones to the cinema halls (despite cashless transaction offers), it may not make the money it could have. Nevertheless, it is a slickly made, edgy, fast-paced spy thriller that comes with a lot of recall value — and, of course, the unrelenting muscle mania of John Abraham. In this one, his wife is dead but not her memories, the villain is of an all new make, the chase hopping from China to Budapest and the plot full of suspense. Genelia has been replaced by a much thinned down Sonakshi Sinha who, by the way, has a can’t-shoot-down hang-up which RA&W agents can only ill afford. Her partner on the hunt, is as John Abraham generally ...

Cast:  Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Samantha Morton Rated:  7/10 It’s 1926 BHP, as in Before Harry Potter. Here, JK Rowling is the maiden screenplay artist, mind you, without a book to take essence from; there’s also a politically convulsing sepia-shaded New York, born and brought up through the magical wand of the great David Yates; it’s actually a very special precursor of the Potter world in which an expelled student of Hogwarts, but a favourite student of Dumbledore, goes to New York where a brittle peace between the Magis and non-Magis are threatened by a black force of an untamed witch without form or scruple. That’s the kind of pedigree this one comes with — and makes somewhat of an impact in the seasoned hands of director Yates. The tapestry of old-time New York, far away from the very English Hogwarts, is different yes but no less spell binding. The edginess of Eddie Redmayne (remember  The Danish Girl ?) a...

Cast : Joe Alwyn, Kristen Stewart, Chris Tucker, Garrett Hedlund, Vin Diesel, Steve Martin, Makenzie Leigh Rated : 4/10 War hero Billy Lynn, a callow looking chocolate faced marine with pink lips and watery blue eyes, and his Bravo Squad take a victory walk in Texas much before the Iraq War is over. In that sense, the serenading is pre-mature with the war being far from over and re-deployments only a step away from the massively dressed up football stadium waiting to fall over these war heroes. All the noise, the song and dance (no less than Beyonce) and the rigmarole of interviews, chat shows, press conferences and music shows these war weary youth are put through is ably juxtaposed with the sound of machine guns, grenades and death in Iraq by director Ang Lee to make this uncomfortable film on wartime blues. For the Indian audience, it is far removed from their world though the Iraq War has impacted all and sundry across the globe. Seen in the American context, the silent p...

Cast : Farhan Akhtar, Shraddha Kapoor,  Arjun Rampal, Purab Kohli, Prachi Desai Rated : 5/10 Rock stars cannot come with guilt, hang-ups, ageing and mish-mash music. Rock On 2 is an avid example of that. Adi (Farhan Akhtar) has come a long way from the flashy, spontaneous, refreshing and foot-tapping Rock On days of 2008. That he has an overwhelming beard is the least of the problems. More importantly, he has had a total music shutdown, he has switched from jamming up to co-operative societies, philanthropy, Meghalaya and farmers — yes Shillong is considered the rock capital of India but rocker Adi is absolutely not here because of that. He is here to live and relive, rather tediously for the audience looking for some fun with the chords, the guilt of a wannabe musician committing suicide. Partners of his defunct rock band Magik are equally jaded. Jo (Arjun Rampal) looks unnecessarily emaciated though fat on moolah earned through judging music reality shows and running a ...

Star Voiceover:  Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Zooey Deschanel, Russell Brand, James Corden, Gwen Stefani Rated:  6/10 First, a becoming soiree on happiness and the need for it for survival. Second, a lovely animation. Third, pegged on great, old-world musical scores. And, finally, a wholesome children’s film with a message, the message being “happiness is within you, find it.” So we have these trolls living on a tree of life, hugging, kissing, singing, dancing and being happy on clockwork timing. Then we have these boo-hoo-hoo beings who just can’t ever be happy — until one day one of them gobbles a troll and feels happy for a split second. So, starts the dreadful day in the life of the trolls, called Trollstice. This is the annual day on which the poor trolls gets cooked up by an evil woman chef and eaten by the boo-hoo-hoos who have captured them in their dwelling place. All this and much more leads to a story of escape, recapture and re-escape and, finally,...

Cast:  Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Michael Stuhlbarg Rated:  6/10 Benedict Cumberbatch has many takers in India and that’s what will drive this new one from Marvel Comics this winter. No, he is not a patch on his Sherlock Holmes avatar  but he is still his usual, unusual self, so Marvel has quite a character at hand to showcase through  Doctor Strange . As Dr Strange, a celebrated neurosurgeon with a zen for the supersonic lane while behind the wheels, Cumberbatch is eccentric and edgy as ever and drives the film from all angles. Crippled in the hands after a near-fatal car crash, Dr Strange’s rollercoaster life holding the knife to name and fame ends abruptly. His journey to Kathmandu, mysticism and finally to sorcery, comes full of exciting jigs and a lot of amazing CGIs which keep this comic book character alive through the two-hour soiree punctuated with evil vs good vs saviour of humanity vs dark force vs scienc...