Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Bol Bachchan Starring:  Ajay Devgn, Abhishek Bachchan, Asrani, Asin, Prachi Desai & Krushna At:  Delite & others Rated:  6/10 When Rohit Shetty gets woozy, don’t get choosy. Ones with a stiff upper lip can go take a walk in Hyde Park. The others, like you and me who don’t mind the rip-roaring mindlessness, are going for a laughathon with the totally unapologetic lot whose, well, headgear is gone to the sides  (ata maajhi satkeli)! This being a Rohit Shetty film, there are no pretensions of serious, even sane cinema, or for that matter even a single moment of sanity. In fact, the little bit of sentimentality that comes in unannounced turns out to be quite an unwelcome intrusion. Because in Ranakpur, there is no time or space for anything serious. Even honesty and dislike for falsities come with a flip side. And that’s where you have a rollicking Ajay Devgn (don’t miss his elaborate tattoo peepshow from the chest) who talks English, walks English a...

The Amazing Spiderman Starring:  Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, Denis Leary, Irrfan Khan At:  PVR & others Rated : 6/10 Spiderman is back but his web this time is woven not so much around Manhattan’s eerily lit high-rises as it is around human emotions and teenage vulnerabilities. The Hindi subtitle to this Hollywood biggie comes not just in its bewildering 2.26-hour length, but also in the way the human element is imposed on this splattering of a sci-fi, thriller, romantic mount. The length of this film does cut into its snappiness, but then the director this time is in quite a languid mood for a change. His new Spiderman in Andrew Garfield has all kinds of issues — of a lost childhood, of being abandoned by parents without an explanation, of college woes and of teenage doubts. Garfield, with his deep-set eyes and his bravado to not play all man by filling tears into them every now and then, does get going pretty well in his new spid...

Supermen of Malegaon Starring : Shafique, Nasir, Akram Khan, Farogh Jafri At : PVR & others Rated : 6.5/10 The award-winning documentary film  Supermen of Malegaon  made by Faiza Khan in 2008, finally gets a theatrical release. It is the simplicity and the honesty with which she brings you a slice of life that makes the movie fun to watch. Pegged on the dreams and inspirations of a clutch of people in a factory town, it holds your attention as the characters escape from daily routine to step into a fantasy world. Each character tries to make a point and keeps one grounded in reality — and that reality is abject poverty. To make things lively there are a few laughs, like when the town’s superhero who has just beaten up some baddies needs to go back to daily chores and gets yelled at for being late. It is sad that Shafique Shaikh playing Superman died of throat cancer last year but he will be remembered as the funniest Superman. Source: The Sunday Pioneer, July...

Maximum Starring:  Naseeruddin Shah, Sonu Sood,Neha Dhupia, Vinay Pathak At:  PVR & others Rated:  5/10 This is Maximum City for you. As Vinay Pathak tells you in the film, it has a place for everyone. And that includes even the nth Bollywood mount on the life and times of encounter cops. Though you would think the subject was strictly the forte of directors like Ram Gopal Varma, this one by Kabeer Kaushik, too, manages to get its moments though there is nothing that we did not already know about the shadowy world of trigger-happy policemen on a mission to clean a city full of unholy nexuses. Maximum ’s showstopper though is not the story but its central character. As a young cop climbing the  ab tak chhappan  ladder, he stares you down, much like his gun. He loves his wife, plays with the mall, dances with the bar girls, drinks with the team and, of course, kills with a thorough kind of finesse which makes all the blood and gore look incide...