Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

SHAMITABH Staring:  Amitabh Bachchan, Dhanush, Akshara Haasan Rated:  5/10 It is only once in a while that such a differently abled movie comes out of the Bollywood stable to generate confusion in the mind of the viewer. Was it extraordinary? Or was it merely distinct? Was it that kind of cinema which is meant to jog your imagination and persuade you to appreciate a film? Or was it just an experiment meant to worship Amitabh Bachchan’s baritone. Director R Balki’s Shamitabh  falls in this undefined zone. It is an idea as big as truth itself, Shamitabh says in the film. It is brilliantly executed. It is well merged and it comes wrapped in pithy humour. But does it sweep you off your feet? Not at all. It is more for the mind than the heart or soul. Two persons — a dumb, short and lanky Dhanush from the hinterland of India has a very common small town dream — to go to Mumbai and become a star. What sets him apart is his singleminded passion to be a star despite t...

Staring:  Jeff Bridges, Ben Barnes, Alicia Vikander, Kit Harington, Olivia Williams, Antje Traue, Djimon Hounsou, Julianne Moore Rated:  5/10 The 17th century English fantasia is almost always captivating with all their dark and rain-drenched landscape and characters more dark than spooky. This one, in which a witch, or should we say a witch scorned, is on the path of revenge, which means all round destruction of humanity. Julianne Moore as the black witch in love with a spook who dared to marry another woman he loved, holds centrestage with all else, except the special effects, falling by the wayside. Julianne has made a career out of playing witch on Hollywood screen and in the  Seventh Son,  she flies, fumes and fights with equal vigour. She is the main character of a film which has a hero and his love interest plus a father figure trying to kill the black forces out to annihilate anything and everything that come in the way of their mission to rule the go...

BIRDMAN Staring: Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts Rated: 4/10 Birdman comes riding on a wholesome bevy of nine Oscar nominations but it stuns you, at least the Indian audience, into shock and awe.Completely out of the box, full of nonsensical, white noise, packed with more F-words than all the crazy frames put together, this one is a difficult to understand film (if at all there was any intention of understanding this one) which is riding a wave of unprecedented appreciation for entirely unexplained reasons. Set in the midst of dysfunctional theatre artists, one of whom has powers to levitate and the other to perform only on stage (obscenely rapes the leading lady under a sheet on stage with 15,000 people watching!), are fighting about something that is never understood and much out of the normal. On what grounds should Birdman  have been so well nominated also remains unexplained through the entire ...