Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

UGLY *ing: Rahul Bhat, Ronit Roy, Girish Kulkarni, Siddhanth Kapoor, Tejaswini Kolhapure Rated: 6/10 Where there is Anurag Kashyap, there is darkness, greyness, extremities of human character and negativity in all their unimagined but intrinsic hues.  Ugly  goes hook, line and sinker into this uncomfortable but compelling zone of human ill-will, greed and unrelenting ugliness and draws you in too, this time in the garb of a police procedural around a little girl’s disappearance. You may call it ill-timed for festival season, but that’s Kashyap for you — totally and brazenly in-your-face with a mirror that you may not want to peep into even at the worst of times. His choice of characters to show you the ugly side of societal existence is apt — no one could have played the role of a sadistic, revengeful and edgy cop as beautifully as Ronit Roy does. He taps his alcoholic wife’s phone and keeps her caged in a scary marriage from where there is no escape, other than suic...

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb *ing: Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Dan Stevens, Ben Kingsley Rated: 5.5/10 It’s time to go son,” says Robin Williams — now late — and it was uncomfortable see him go. Night at the Museum is about multiple closures — Williams is very sadly gone, the Museum trilogy is over and Stiller’s predecessor night guard Mickey Rooney has signed off from life too.In that sense, you could call this one a film full of heartfelt goodbyes — Williams who committed suicide this year in August stars as Theodore Roosevelt for one last time, signing off from films and life one last time. This being his last screen presence, he gets a tribute with more meat as Theo than he did in the preceding two editions of this unique Museum saga. The trilogy itself comes to an end without too much of a bang and an unshaven (was he really that tired of this series?) Ben Stiller walking off into the night as the museum artefacts enjoy their nocturnal aliveness ...

PK Staring:  Aamir Khan, Anushka Sharma, Sanjay Dutt, Sushant Singh Rajput, Boman Irani, Saurabh Shukla Rated:  5/10 PK is an idea whose time has, sadly, long gone and the only thing new here is Aamir Khan’s complete and prolonged nudity. After the  Munna Bhai  series, expectations from Raj Kumar Hirani had risen to such an extent that fulfilling them would have been impossible and that’s where  PK  stumbles. Hirani, to me, is a fulfilled, subtle but very potent philosophy propeller showing up human failings and obsessions with a very rare stroke of everyday normality that is missed out by almost everyone. In  PK  too, Hirani tries to be the master propeller of this brand of story-telling but fails on many counts, some self-made, others circumstantial. At best, the film is a gentle mix of the  jaadu  syndrome which Rakesh Roshan propelled long back through his alien, and OMG!  which Paresh Rawal powered much more as Kanji ...

THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES Staring:  Ian Mckellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Luke Evans, Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Orlando Bloom Rated:  5.5/10 Hobbit this time is less picturesque and more combative, rather unnecesarily you might say. And your heroes are felled out here, except of course for the hobbit Bilbo Baggins and the pointed cap wizard you have seen in movies of all hues, be it  Harry Potter  or  Lord of The Rings  series, of which this is perhaps the final edition. Having said that, one has to admit that the canvas is large, the cinematography stylish and the fights perfectly choreographed. My personal heartbreak? King of dwarfs Thorin Oakenshield (played to perfection by Richard Armitage) is killed by the marauding Orcs leader. Once that happens, there is nothing much left to savour though the film ambles on for close to 15 more minutes after th...

JESSABELLE Staring:  Sarah Snook, Mark Webber, David Andrews, Joelle Carter, Ana de la Reguera Rated:  4/10 If it is Hollywood and it is haunted, it has to be an unkempt, marooned mansion in the middle of nowhere, preferably shrouded in an unvisited forest, sitting eerily quiet by the side of a placid lake. And, of course, there has to be a new occupant who gets spooked out by the evil spirit, mostly on a revenge binge. Jessabelle  follows this done-to-death holy grail of Hollywood to the T with just an added thing — the new occupant here is wheel-chair bound and she is here as daddy’s daughter. The film takes too much time to pick up the heebie-jeebie content and is felled by its predictability even though there is a cause-hunt that the victim of spirits launches with her “friend from school.” Even the end is something you figured out earlier so there is hardly any scream factor in the proceedings. Sarah Snook as the disabled girl does give in an arresting ...

ACTION JACKSON Staring:   Ajay Devgn, Sonakshi Sinha, Yami Gautam, Kunaal Roy Kapur Rated:  3/10 So you want to know where you can start seeing this movie from? I would say, the very end when the credits starts rolling — that’s the only and the highest point of this otherwise nonsensical film with no shape, form or reasonable intent. But as the credits roll, you wish they were longer, perhaps running through the length of the film. Because it’s here that master dancer, the real action Jackson starts happening — Prabhudheva comes to the show with his amazing dance moves. Other than that, Devgn despite his attempts at being a one-in-all hero (dancing, singing, trying to tickle your funny bone and, of course, beating the guts out of the baddies and also finding time to romance in between all the bullets, dialogue- baazi  and  maar-dhaad ), the film falls flat. For one it’s too OTT on all accounts — the violence is too stark, the songs too many and mostly ill...

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS Staring:  Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Ben Mendelsohn, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley Rated:  6/10 There are two big things happening to this historical — one, it unravels the biblical journey by Moses from the slavery den of Egypt to the promised land with millions of Jews who followed him in faith; and two, this oft repeated legend has been put on screen by master director Ridley Scott. On paper, he has done nothing new. I saw  The Ten Commandments  when I was in junior school. The  Prince of Egypt  which came more in Ridley’s time dealt with the same subject. And now comes  Exodus: Gods and Kings. None of the three can change the story of Moses and the journey of the Egyptian slaves to freedom walking through a parted Red Sea even as Moses holds the shepherd spectre to guide them to their promised land. So Scott could not have done much except enhance the special effects and spice up th...

BHOPAL A PRAYER FOR RAIN Staring:  Martin Sheen, Mischa Barton, Kal Penn, Rajpal Yadav, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Fagun Thakrar, Vineet Kumar, Lisa Dwan Rated:  6/10 The Bhopal Gas leak tragedy of December 2, 1984 was so potent and the plight of the victims so moving that even when a loosely stitched together caper on the deadly leak comes 30 years later, it stuns you into shame and silence — shame because it is yet again in the open for all to see that for the Indian Government the price of the life of its citizens is dirt cheap; and silence because all safety norms were ignored with impunity, Warren Anderson (played to perfection by Martin Sheen in the film) was allowed to escape and generations of families close to the Union Carbide factory continue to suffer in neglect. Ravi Verma’s docu drama  Bhopal: A Prayer For Rain  brings this unfortunate story of apathy and neglect of an entire population back to public memory as the tragedy turns 30 — maiming, sile...

MOULIN ROUGE-THE BALLET Staring:  Troupe of 80 dancers from 14 different nationalities Rated:  8/10 Moulin Rouge-The Ballet  is nothing like Moulin Rouge the real act which unfolds every evening in a windmill theatre sitting atop the Monserrat in Paris. But it is nevertheless seductive, alluring, enchanting and a wonderful tapestry of colour, style, subtlety, romance, not to talk of brilliant dancing. Without a single dialogue but holding the audience in thrall by its engaging music, sometimes dulcet sometimes on a crescendo, the way this ballet takes you back into 19th century Paris where a love story unfolds amid intrigue and duel is highly engaging. It is to the credit of PVR’s special shows initiative that such sophistry of dance and romance is brought in for the Indian viewers to enhance their taste through differently enabled shows as opposed to just Hollywood and Bollywood movies. Though restricted to just one show a week, this delightful ballet is much...

The Hunger Games:   Mocking jay Part 1 Staring:   Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, Donald Sutherland Rated:  7/10 Katniss Everdeen is back but sadly she is not really in her elements this time round. The hunger is all but gone, doused by her extremely lovelorn state after Peter is imprisoned by the Capitol. There is a rebellion that needs her fury and passion to catch fire but she has only tears and helplessness to offer. That’s not what the  Hunger Games  series were ever meant to be. Its USP has been the high octane teenage adventure pegged on a fight that’s always won by Katniss, the ultimate icon of perseverance and courage, the Mocking Jay, symbol of victory against all odds. Mocking Jay Part 1  pegs its story far away from this hue of undiluted passion. But still, and despite its slow motion activity, it grows on you. It gets serious with Catnis’ love lost syndrome and it dra...

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 Staring:  Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Jamie Foxx, Chris Pine, Kevin Spacey Rated:  5/10 Serenading stupidity seldom endears you enough to indulge entirely in fools.  Horrible Bosses 2  is not just fooliash but quite uneventfully lazy. Add all these three traits to its three masterminds — Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis as bumbling entrepreneurs Nick, Dale and Kurt — and you have quite a test of endurance at hand. I don’t know about others but I failed this test horribly, as horribly as the trio on the screen in front of me made a mess of their shampoo showers, getting economically bludgeoned by a seasoned trick master tycoon and his son. The sequel to the 2011  Horrible Bosses  original is nowhere near the predecessor though one couldn’t really glow with tributes to the first one either. But, at least it did not laze around without having too much fun, a snag that runs through the...

Staring (voice): Tom McGrath, Chris Miller, Conrad Vernon, Christopher Knights, Benedict Cumberbatch, John Malkovich Rated: 6/10 Come on let’s move it move it…. The sidekicks of the Madagaskar series have taken centrestage. And, for you information, they are pretty good at keeping the proceedings on a crescendo not just of action and adventure but also gentle humour. Of course, with Dreamworks in the picture, the animated objects are more than cute, and the situations they create are gently friendly too. For kids this thanksgiving, it is a penguin treat with the foursome holding the stage on fire. They do it all that’s common for a comic book — they fight, they spend some family time together, they travel, they have an adventure and they fight the villain with all their might, emerging victorious in the end. It’s great that the film is compatible with children’s sense of humour though the adults may just find it a tad juvenile — which, one must remind you, was never the case w...

HAPPY ENDING Staring:  Govinda, Saif Ali Khan, Ileana D'Cruz, Ranvir Shorey, Kalki Koechlin Rated:  6/10 Happy Ending  is quite a hip and happy movie, breezy about that crazy little thing called love. And no, before you jump to any conclusions about it being a mushy love story, just remember it’s Saif Ali Khan at the helm of affairs (literally) and he keeps his film much like himself — cool dudish, funny, light and wonderfully irreverent about romance. After the unexpected success of  Go Goa Gone  where the Indian zombies had you in a, well, unexpected laughter riot, Saif seems to have come of age in reading the pulse of his audience. That, and his dalliance with ‘those’ kind of roles (endearing boy-turns-confused-lover-turns-good friend-turns cool dude) throughout his career, seals the success of this one where love sits light on humour and humour sits heavy on proceedings. Indeed, a modern-day romcom, very overtly Saifish, in fact so Saifish that y...

THE EQUALIZER Staring:  Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz, David Harbour, Bill Pullman, Melissa Leo Rated:  6/10 Denzel Washington makes an edgy comeback in  The Equalizer , though one must say that this is a tad different from the roles he has done thus far. But then, Denzel excels in being different and this one is no exception. A very silent one-man killing machine for a cause, he is a tantalisingly lithe assassin and a man of very few words — so few that you can count his dialogues in the film even though 95 per cent of the frames are centred on him and his eyes. An insomniac and an agency guy who has engineered to vanish from the face of Earth, declared dead to the world, he lives like a loner, spending his insomniac nights at a neighbourhood coffee shop reading his books. Till, of course, he comes across a teenaged Russian hooker who is being tortured by her pimp. You then come to know for sure what you suspected all through —this loner ...

Dumb And Dumber To Staring:  Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Laurie Holden, Rob Riggle Rated:  5/10 You would be crazy to expect anything even slightly meaningful or reasonable or even decent from this much touted laughter-riot series. But, believe me, this one goes where no grossness has ever gone before, where no finger has ever gone before and where no irreverence has measured itself up so high. And, it’s Jim Carrey who is the master of ceremonies here, and aiding and abetting his insanity is the other king of lunacy Jeff Daniels. Together, they get into crazy situations and wild encounters which are meant to be hilarious but turn out to be only too gross. Staying in a mental asylum for 20 years just to win a gag against his buddy, then having his catheter pulled out like a tug-of-war game and then letting the cat out on his blind neighbour’s parrots, there’s nothing these two stop at. Laughter soon turns to embarrassment and then even resentment over why Carrey needs...

Kill/Dil Staring:  Govinda, Ranveer Singh, Ali Zafar, Parineeti Chopra Rated:  4/10 This is not Govinda’s movie though you fervently wish it was and that he should have been inhabiting more frames and dances and taking fun rides with you instead of trying so hard to look menacing that you feel like giving him some hard talk and telling him to do what he does best — be a good guy even if he has turned old and wants to be a respectable veteran. Having said that, there is something tolerable about Ranveer Singh with his clean-shaven looks and I-am-good act. As the fun-loving illiterate sniper with a sense of humour and quick on repartee, he holds the few moments in this movie together. His friend Tutu (Zafar) looks unkempt for most part of the film with his untrimmed French cut beard and long-line hairstyle which hides most of his face, most of the time. Parineeti as the bindaas  babe is not quite fleshed out except in her body shape and, quite frankly, she is ge...

Boyhood Staring:  Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke Rated:  8.5/10 A Hollywood movie that’s 2 hours 44 minutes long? You must be joking! That long a Hollywood movie actually holding on to its own? You must be beyond joking! And holding on to its own without any big star  ensemble ? Well, that’s the least of the stun quotient of this film, considering director Richard Linklater this time round, cooks up and executes novelties as no man has ever done before. Call it a gimmick, a mad man’s ultimate fantasy, a big experiment or an unprecedented idea, the verdict remains the same: It’s a head-turner, sheer brilliance and comes with a lot of awe and wow. Really! Who would have actually thought of investing 12 years of annual filming just to watch a boy — and the world around him — grow in real time from age six to age 18? Who would have the patience or the wherewithal or even the starcast which would be willing to give 12 years of their...

John wick Staring:  Keanu Reeves, Micheal Niqwyst Rated:  5/10 Keanu Reeves is back and the matrix this time is on an overdrive — of blood, bullets and revenge. A Russian mob boss’ son reincarnates the killer in John Wick (Reeves) by killing his dog and stealing his Mustang car. Not just that, he does the unimaginable of beating Wick up, that too just a day after he loses his beloved wife to a terminal illness. Such was the bigness of the crime that even the biggest dealer in stolen cars refuses to do business over this particular Mustang and sends the errant power drunk son of the mobster away. Not just that, even the father of this son beats him up for doing the unimaginable — stealing from Wick when he is down and out. Wick, who had retired from being a killing machine is forced to resurrect after the boy kills his wife’s last gift to him — his dog. After that, there is only the sound of bullets and a hunt for the errant boy, as John Wick has to seek revenge and n...

Beauty and the beast Staring:  Vincent Cassel, Léa Seydoux André Dussollier Rated:  4/10 Beauty And The Beast  is one of the greatest love stories to have visited the children’s storybook shelf but this French mount unravels it without much chemistry between its two main protagonists. What it concentrates more on is the visuals and they are, indeed, a delight and help in holding together this slightly stretched fairy tale without a soul or much of a love story. What would you say of a movie which is an extremely good-looking film but fails to conjure up any tender moments between the beauty and the beast? I thought that’s too misplaced and you can’t really spend so much time on groovy visuals while the beauty and the beast visit the frame together very rarely. So is it a children’s film? Not really, because it moves very slowly. Is it for grown-ups? Actually not, because of the lack of chemistry on one end and the irritating petulance of the ‘beauty’ when trap...

Rang Rasiya Starring : Randeep Hooda, Nandana Sen, Triptha Parashar Rated : 7.5/10 Both Ketan Mehta and his film  Rang Rasiya  are bold and beautiful. Based on the life and art of maverick painter of the 19th century, Raja Ravi Verma, this biopic comes with all the nuggets of emotionality, period drama and history fitting into each other as a Lego puzzle is meant to. To start with, the very idea of making a film on this controversial painter is eclectic. Then to give it bold sexual overtones is audacious but well slotted. The world, till now, has bought Raja Ravi Verma’s paintings for several crores of rupees but is still in the womb of religious limitations, something that Mehta shows brilliantly by juxtaposing an art auction against mob fury. The painter’s family is up in arms one hears, but once you sit down to view this film, you are swept away by the doctrines of life through which this eccentric painter lived and painted. He was a hero much ahead of his times...

Interstellar Starring:  Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn Rated : 8/10 Mystery thrillers unfolding in another galaxy are somewhat hard to stitch together.  Interstellar , however, has both its physics and chemistry right as it hires a single dad to navigate the light years in search of a planet that could house the dying humanity of famine and pollution-hit Earth. The credit goes to director Christopher Nolan that for the most part of its elongated existence on screen,  Interstellar  keeps you engaged and on the edge of your seat. That the story is way out of imagination and the situational sequences hang tenuously between two far removed solar systems, gives wings to Nolan’s blockbuster ambitions. But for the last 15 minutes or so of this epic three-hour science fiction, the going is both spatially and emotionally exciting. Down the line, it also emerges as a visual treat, be it the killer dust...

Nightcrawler Starring : Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, Bill Paxton Rated : 4/10 Releasing on week which carries at least two brilliant films from Hollywood and Bollywood,  Nightcrawler  doesn’t stand a chance. But for a lean week, or for those not interested in period drama or science fiction, this unscrupulous, sub-human TV journalist and his exploitations may make for exciting night entries. You may or may not agree with the way cut-throat TV journalism is portrayed both at the news gathering and news displaying levels, but one thing is for sure. Actor Jake Gyllenhaal gets into the skin of Luzo the Nightcrawler as no one else would. He is a smiling killer, a man without a conscience, a professional without scruples, a crazy success crawler, a blackmailer and a killer. Somewhere in between, he is also a footage provider mostly outsourced for bloody wire that a sagging news television channel could use for jolting its breakfast viewers into upping it’s TRPs....

Happy New Year Starring : Shah Rukh Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Sonu Sood, Boman Irani, Vivaan Shah, Jackie Shroff Rated : 6/10 Will it make money? Yes, big time! Does it make sense? No, none at all. But then, when the  kumba  of Farah Khan-Gauri Khan-Shah Rukh Khan and the like get together, they make sure they have all the fun on the sets. Some of it spills out into the screen too, often cocking a snook at what people call meaningful cinema, or for that matter, even cinema. In between all this fun and frolic, they also make a movie. The result? A  Happy New Year  in Happy Diwali time. Which means, a lot of nonsense, a lot of  naach gana , a lot of SRK and a lot of nostalgic self-indulgence. So you have a big heist in operation but behind the green room of a world dance competition; a burst of in-your-face colours alongside in-your-face dialogues; expected SRKisms like lampooned dialogues from  Main Hoon Na, Mohabbatein  oth...