Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Highway Starring:  Randeep Hooda, Alia Bhatt Rated:  6.5/10 This one is a slow burner, a real slow burner. But it burns bright all through, thanks to the directorial chutzpah of Imtiaz Ali. He has done this movie after a long hiatus and he has dared to be different  different and slow, challenging the audiences to be drawn into what could easily have been an unending long and needless road trip in an uncomfortable bus. But it is all kudos to Imtiaz’s way of building up a story in the most un-Bollywood style that he manages to turn it into a gripping saga which keeps the audiences, even the restless sceptics for that matter, in the loop of interest. It is also to his credit that he has moulded the young and fresh Alia  Bhatt’s gestational histrionic skills to come to life in a very surprise package. Though Randeep Singh Hooda as usual gives in a controlled but powerful performance as a have-not abductor, it is by all means a through-and-through Alia Bhatt ...

The Monument’s Men Starring:  George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, Cate Blanchett Rated : 4.5/10 It seems this week was reserved for slow starters, and Clooney’s latest falls in this category too. However, despite it being a Clooney-directed and Clooney-acted film, you could call it a much too usual movie on a much too unusual subject. However, so slow and unhappening are the proceedings that even the tag of it being based on a real story fails to excite you too much. Six out of shape servicemen are strewn together by Clooney for a mission with a difference — to save the heritage of the Jews from Hitler’s killing ambitions. He wants to destroy all their cultural legacy and wipe off their past— paintings, sculptures, treatises and literature — everything is stolen by the Nazis and stored in salt and coal mines. The men have to find these artifacts and restore them to glory. They do so but with very less impac...

Pompeii Starring:  Kit Harington, Emily Browning, Carrie-Anne Moss, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje Rated:  5/10 The canvas is big and the period drama full of possibilities. Imagine a love story between a moneyed lady and a barbarian slave brewing under the nose of an unscrupulous Roman senator — and a volvanic mountain about to explode all over the city of Pompeii! But again there is much more in the movie around explosions and visuals of natural calamity then there is about either the impossible love story or the ambience of the Roman empire. Yes, it is a visual treat all visuals need to be essentially pegged on a viable storyline which, in this one unfortunately, is slim. Good for those who like the grandly commissioned period drama that Hollywood often churns out at leisure. Source: The Sunday Pioneer, 23 February, 2014 

Robocop Starring:  Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson Rated:  5/10 Here comes another Robocop — all that machinery marinated in human emotion and sensitivity, all that talk about how machines are the only way to save the world — peacefully and without casualty, all that talk about the billion-dollar dreams of a science corporation and its merciless CEO, all that talk about a doctor who can do wonders with dying or maimed humans. However, neither the robot nor the maimed supercop inside it make much of an impact in this latest one from the  RoboCop  series. He is bombed out by gangsters and his wife signs on the dotted line of the CEO to save whatever is left of him — a part of his brain, his lungs and heart and one hand. What they do to this mass of flesh and how they tamper with his brains and emotions puts the film on the right path but for the machine buffs, there is too much human element to this one. A good one for those wh...

*ing: Sidharth Malhotra, Parineeti Chopra, Adah Sharma Rated: 6.5/10 There is nothing usual about this love story — it is neither overly cute, nor overly romantic, nor even a cohesive tale of two hearts. By normal romcom standards too, this might just as well been recommended to a correctional facility.  Yet, it is a delightful tale of two strange people meeting each other in stranger circumstances, and then meeting again after seven years in much more bizarre circumstances. A regular but good looking guy not wanting to do anything right with his life (like becoming an IPS officer as his father would have wanted) is marrying a pretty Gujju babe but runs across the bride’s crazy runaway sister who returns to script another heist on her beloved father. And when things happen, they happen as haphazardly as they should from a girl who is a top physics scientist with a drug addiction, speaking in Chinese and going into staccato trances as and when. ...

*ing: Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, Eric Bana Rated: 6/10 Reality shows from intense war zones are usually moving propositions. After all, real things have happened to real people and they are mostly blood-curdling — something which the audience savour. This one all the way from Afghansitan is no different. It holds you tight and leads you on to the blood splashing zone with a strange kind of hypnotism not hindered by intrusive background scores or even too many dialogues. Basing his premise on a botched up operation deep into the Afghan mountains which ended with one survivor and four casualties, the director has done well to stick to basics and keep it as real as cinematically positive. Mark Wahlberg who plays Marcus Luttrell, the man who survived it all in real life, does well on screen to keep you engaged with his journey.  This war zone is captivating, it is meticulously strewn together and it has kept all its fact sta...

*ing: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell Rated: 5.5/10 This is Emma Thompson’s movie and that’s quite something for an achiever who’s co-star is none less than Tom Hanks, that too playing Walt Disney himself in a Walt Disney movie! Hanks, known for easliy monopolising a film much like Aamir Khan on our side of the world, has little to do in this one and excels in what he does, only as a side-dish to Thompson who plays Mrs P L Travers, the eccentric, introverted and meticulous writer of the unforgettable Mary Poppins. Having turned down Walt Disney for more than 20 years, Mrs Travers finally succumbs to financial pressures to sell the rights of her book to Disney, but with a lot of riders. The film which leaps out of a cherry blossomed apartment in London to the Walt Disney Studio in Beverly Hills, is a delightfu journey of tussle between a stiff Englsih writer and the scriptwriters’ artistic licence. Travers, however, will have none of it and mostly has her way. She ...

One by Two Starring:  Abhay Deol, Preeti Desai, Darshan Jariwala Rated:  5.5/10 It is super slow and some would even call it a kill of your precious time. But for Abhay Deol fans, this one is one out of the box performance by him in a romantic comedy in which the hero and his leading lady meet only once — and that’s in the end. “I am  pakau ,” may have become a bored to death Ajay Sharma’s life that sucks, both for the audiences too. There is very little to draw sustenance from this one. No much to choose from a dreadfully boring but well meaning loser and dreadlocked dancer who can only dance as successfully as she can take away the bottle from her single mother. The modernity is all there as are the profanities, which, incidentally, flow into your disgusted system in a gaseous form all the way from Deol’s backside, but still he is good as always. How relevant is his film is a matter of debate, not going his way at all. Perhaps, it could have done well had ...

I Frankenstein Starring : Aaron Eckhart, Yvonne Strahovski, Miranda Otto, Miranda Otto, Bill Nighy Rated : 5/10 They made him human but could not give him a soul. The same can be said about this film too which lacks in soul. As underworld movies go, this one too comes with all the relevant special effects, the dark tones, the almost ethereal churches rising into the horizon with their stunning stained glass paintings, the gargoils and, of course, the demonic demons. But the story barely scratches the tip of viability, involvement and viewer engagement. Aaron Eckhart who plays Frankenstein comes to you all 200 years old, seething, revengeful and yet clueless about a whole lot of things, including how to take the movie forward on his stitched up shoulders, body and face. He roams the dark alleys, barges into the demon territory, gets abducted and imprisoned by the gargoil queen and amid all this there is a war raging to. Not to mention a bit of mumbo-jumbo about an “electrica...

12 Years A Slave Starring : Chiwetel Ejiofor, Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch Rated:  8/10 It is stark, it is moving and it is hugely discomforting. But  A Twelve Years Slave  is a masterpiece in a uniquely nagging way. Encasing America’s darkest part of history when slavery made a mockery of human dignity and ripped apart basic sensitivity, it makes it all the more painful to know that it’s based on a real story written by the slave who was once a “free Negro” living happily with his wife and two children in New York. Duped by two White tricksters into taking up an assignment in Washington DC, he is abducted, tortured, sold and taken to Louisiana as slave Blaat, a runaway from Georgia. It’s a more than stunning performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor who plays Blaat. His eyes draw you into the deepest of emotions which churn inside you as you go through his agonising journey and incredible freedom after 12 years of sub-human existence under master...