Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Begin again Starring : Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo,     Adam Levine, Hailee Steinfeld,   James Corden Rated : 6/10 Everything about this film is quite becoming and you could start right from the centre of it all — Keira Knightley, someone you would remember oh-so-well from Johnny Depp’s Pirates...  series. In this one though, she needs no captaining and certainly does not carry the hangover of the much bigger series in which she was Captain Jack Sparrow’s secret dream. Playing a song writer of substance, dumped by her singer boyfriend and accidentally spotted singing by a drunk loser of a music company owner-producer, she flowers well into her role in  Begin Again  and goes a long way in keeping this musical together. You can call her the next big thing of the film after its scintillatingly impromptu music. Even though the film falls pretty short of capturing the music world’s real pulse, it does a good job of giving you the sid...

Planes: Fire & Rescue Starring : Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Brad Garrett, Danny Mann, Teri Hatcher Rated : 5/10 It’s a wrong month for the release of this kind of an animation film because all children are into their Unit 2 tests and not many adults will be tickled by this one, and definitely not at Rs 300 plus for a ticket. This, however, does not mean that the animation is lazy or the story out of line. Both are in place, as most Hollywood films ensure even though you could say that the mirth factor is a tad lazy. The racey Dusty Crophopper, who gave the real pace to this series, sadly seems to have lost his gear box and is out of the circuit with no replacements coming his way. In this one he, goes for a different kind of training far far away from his original want. He is at a remote garage where a retired TV star (truck) is leading a host of vehicles into reorienting their careers and not getting waylaid into depression due to failures or derailments of any kind. I...

METAL WITH EMOTIONS Starring : Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor Rated : 6/10 Optimus Prime is back but only as a pale shadow of his former self, ailing, unable to stand and disguised as a weather beaten truck at a remote Mexican junkyard, fished out by a man who lives in a mortgaged cottage in Texas and calls his barn the junk innovation centre. However, the junkyard was a safe haven from where this prime autobot had hidden himself for four years as some unscrupulous elements in the human world had started hunting them down for extinction. As these friendly sentinels are being systematically chased, trapped and destroyed by a scientist and his goons wanting to finish any alien trace on Earth, even if it is a friendly force, Optimus the power behind the entire transformer movement on Earth hides — and bades his time — till Mark Wahlberg finds him inadvertently and literally nurses him back to life. Transformers 4  is engaging fare, more machines ...