Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Boss Starring: Akshay Kumar, Mithun Chakravorty, Aditi Rao Hyadiri & others Rated: 4/10 They will all wear white, because Boss is always right.’ Right? Wrong, very wrong actually! For, Akshay may be on a roll here, trying to cash in on his earlier body of work, but he takes the film into all kinds of dark tunnels from where there is no possibility of a sane emergence. Director Anthony D’Souza has tried hard to bring out a Singham from within a Dabangg and even a Rowdy Rathore from within a Joker, but despite all the silly dialogues, the exaggerated comic relief, the swagger of Akshay himself and somewhat well choreographed fight sequences, there is very little to write home about. Of course, in all such movies meant for the paisa phenk, front-row rowdy audiences, this one too has no time or place for any kind of punctuations. That’s ok, but one has to grow up from the 80s mould of film-making and package it differently to make some eyeballs steady on to the screen. ...

Shahid Starring:  Raj Kumar Yadav Rated:  6/10 It is a tricky world that this real-time film courageously propels. And one must say that it makes quite a mark on you, thanks mainly to its main protagonist Raj Kumar Yadav who plays a do-good lawyer who fights for the acquittals of innocent Muslims arrested under TADA. In real life, Shahid Azmi was gunned down in his office in a Mumbai suburb by till now unknown assailants. His death, a shocker for Mumbai, came on the heels of yet-to-be identified threat-makers who wanted him to drop the cases he was fighting.  The film, produced by thinking men of Bollywood (Ronnie Screwallah and Anurag Kashyab among others), is to the point, perfectly ambienced and taut enough to get you all emotional about a life needlessly axed. Yadav is the life of the film and he plays the role of a misguided Muslim youth picked up as a terror suspect, tortured, jailed and then released for lack of evidence despite a brief stint of terror ...

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Starring: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi Rated: 9/10 The Somalian pirates have been making news off and on, but, without making waves despite operating on the high seas. However, Captain Phillips will change all that. For, this Hollywood film is a powerful, edge-of-the-seat drama on a real-life incident in which an American cargo ship captain is kidnapped by young, two-bit Somalian pirates demanding $10 million in return. The film, besides the signature performance of Tom Hanks, is a powerful depiction of how prized a single American life is for the US Government. A unit of US precision target Seals is airdropped into the troubled waters of Somalia all the way from America to save this American aam aadmi and the way they orchestrate the surrender and a rescue mission (and I am not saying this because the Seal skipper is just too groovy) is very tautly unfolded on screen. Captain Phillips being a real flesh and blood man, who, we are told, is now back at sea desp...

Escape plan Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jim Caviezel Rated: 6/10 Jailbreaks have been staple for dream merchants but this one comes riding piggyback on two hulks of, well, can we say, the bygone era? So, when Sly meets Arnie behind bars, there can’t be any hope of saving a jailbreak even though the director tries his best to make the jailor look deadly with his freezing-and-mounting butterflies penchant. But wait, there’s a twist here, and I am not talking just about showing the good side of a jihadi! For starters, Stallone is no offender but a security expert whose sole job is to get into prisons and break out of them merely to test their safety quotients! Untill, he is sent in on the sly by his business partner for some humongous amount of money. The deal is to never let him come out! A middle-of-nowhere, floating, illegal prison with no record of existing is the last thing Stallone would have wanted to go into but he does and that’s that! A bit...

War chhod na yaar Starring: Javed Jaffrey, Sharman Joshi, Soha Ali Khan Rated: 3/10 All this aman ki aasha effort that a dapper Captain Sharman Joshi and a misplaced journalist Soha Ali try and orchestrate on the big, bad border booming with guns and rockets is quite overtly misplaced.  For one, it is a very childlike effort, too simplistic, without the promised laughs and with no ripples whatsoever. yes, Jaffrey as a Pakistani ranger does throw in some good reasons to laugh but those ones don’t hold the movie together for a long time.even the attempted spoof on Pakistan’s mismanaged affairs and their penchant for constant war against India are something like a fairytale for infants. All the antaksharis and the bonhomie that leads the Pakistanis stationed across the concertina wire does not give health to the film that had come in with a lot of promise in  week that had no competition. Why then would it become such a flob show is anybody’s guess. Source: Sunday Pi...

Gravity Starring: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney Rated: 9/10 Gravity is a marvel suspended in space, a rarest of rare gem that holds you in total thrall; a spartan wonder keeping you on the edge of your seat all through the one-and-a-half hours. Considering space is all about an endless dark dominion, there are quite a few paradoxes mounted beautifully on this short and stunning piece of cinematographic poetry directed by Alfonso Cuaron. Imagine a spatial odyssey shot in the most constricted space of a satellite module floating some 400 miles above a picture perfect Earth! Mounted impeccably on 3D FX, it is a matter of intense applause for Alfonso’s underrated genius that he could hold your unwavering attention with just two persons on the screen all through, with one of them drifting away into nothingness very early into the film. Astronaut Sandra  Bullock, the only human on the screen for most part of the film, involves you inexorably in her fight for survival amid unexpecte...

Besharam Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Pallavi Sharda, Rishi Kapoor, Neetu Singh and Jaaved Jaaferi Ratings: 4/10 If the youthful exuberance of Ranbir Kapoor, his above average histrionic abilities, his screen presence, his Midas touch and his drop dead looks fail to save a film, there must be something really really wrong with either the script or the direction. In the case of Besharam, it is a little bit of both. For one, not every film can be put into the master mould of Dabangg for it to work even if the director happens to be the same bloke. Why Ranbir would sign a film so obviously slim on a story is bewildering, considering that, so far, the lad has stood out in Bollywood for being different and choosing differently. Besharam is gauche and a wee bit unhinged, and that despite the comeback couple Rishi and Neetu Kapoor living it up as Chulbul and Bulbul Chautala. But the audience need more than just a family reunion and much more than mere attempted hilarity. And as the ...

Diana Cast:  Naomi Watts ,  Naveen Andrews ,  Cas Anvar Ratings: 6/10 Much like her life, this film on Princess Diana also deals with many tragedies, the biggest one being an over simplified encapsulation of a very brief period of her life, a period that was very intense, very messed up and ultimately very complex. Actually too complex for the black and white veneer it was made to wear. But that does not take away from your heart going out for the people's princess whose biggest snag in life was her unparalleled fame. "Can a surgery stitch up a broken heart?" She asks her heart doctor plaintively. The film tells you that Dodi Al Fayed was not even a diversion for her. He was merely a ploy for a lovelorn girl trying to make her one and only love in life jealous. Another matter though that all she manages to get from her actual lover boy from Pakistan is a deathly silence and a bigger love in the doc's life, the love for his privacy over his love for Diana. Na...

Runner runner Cast: Justin Timberlake, Ben Affleck Ratings: 3/10 Justin Timberlake, and even Ben Affleck for that,  are capable of better films. Runner runner limits them to a rather unhappening casino thriller unfolding into a mega financial scam in Costa Rica where corruption is the second name to almost everything. From Princeton to the bad alleys of fraudulent money minting, Justin almost sleepwalks through the film, in the end winning eyes closed! In comparison, as the wily and ruthless owner of the casino, The director accords some nuances to Ben's character though that too fails to save the film from ennui. It would have been much more fun had there been more twists and turns, more imaginative sequencing of events, more punctuations in a storyline burdened by inaction. Source: Sunday Pioneer, October 6, 2013

Time out Ratings: 5.5/10 Just when you are about to give up on the potential of this time travel romance with family heartbeats, the story starts unfolding and you rise above the below average looks of the hero and his extraordinary ordinariness. You realise he has a gift that transcends even his rare ability to travel back in time every now and then to reset his future. He is a man with a lot of earnest emotions, gentle humour and kindness, traits that make this movie a puller, may be a late puller but a puller nevertheless. The director does well to keep this one simple, hinged on romance and family woven together beautifully. The pace too is deliciously languid much like the Cornish moorings its draws its locational beauty from. The strength of a mother's character who is about to lose her indispensable husband to cancer is as powerfully portrayed as a dying fathers' love for his son whom he will see for the last time. In short, it is a sensitive story, told sen...