Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Cast  : Aamir Khan, Sakshi Tanwar, Fatima Sana Sheikh, Sanya Malhotra, Zaira Wasim, Suhani Bhatnagar Rated  : 9/10 When Geeta Phogat won the Women Wrestling Gold in the 55 weight category at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, women’s wrestling came to be known, somewhat. In 2016, when Aamir Khan made a movie on the Phogats, their long due stardom finally came of age. That’s because Dangal is a rare sporting movie from Bollywood where drama, song and dance does not overwhelm the reality of the true story of struggle and achievement. With a perfectionist Aamir Khan at the helm, you would not have thought otherwise. But, Dangal has an added aura of achievement of the underdog, a simple story of woman wrestling in Haryana where the male-female ratio is shamefully shocking. But Dangal does not drive that in forcefully. It skillfully depicts it through the incredible story of the Phogat family with Aamir playing the no-nonsense, obsessed yet vulnerable and path-breaking pa...

Cast:  Ranveer Singh, Vaani Kapoor Rated:  6/10 Production qualities: More than slick, very YRF. Locale: Most romantic in the world, very YRF. Drama: Modern romcom, very YRF. Music: Titillating, very YRF. Production House: Extremely reputed, YRF. Director: All about Bollywood’s best  mohabbatein , very YRF. Love story: Very not YRF. That’s because Aditya Chopra’s  Befikre  largely forgets that the heart is a vital organ for such movies, and focuses solely on hi-tech polish, packaging and preening about romance being a YRF patent, howsoever misplaced, howsoever misconceived. This was Aditya’s first outing after his father, the grand man of romance, passed away and overall only his 4th directorial venture. After  DDLJ, Mohabbatein  and  Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Befikre  was eagerly awaited, more so after Karan Johar’s botched up, hung-up money-spinner  Ae Dil Hai Mushkil . After all, the  padshah  of energy Ranveer Singh wa...

Cast : Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Gina Rodriguez, Dylan O'Brien Rated:  6/10 The April 2010 British Petroleum rig fire has been tagged as the world’s worst environmental disaster in living memory. An unstable oil rig, off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, burst into flames after some greedy and unscrupulous BP officials decided to ignore safety issues and begin deepwater rigging for oil after keeping information from the captain. The result was catastrophic. After the rigging pipe exploded, spewing oil, water and mud, 11 crewmen died in the unrelenting blaze and the rest fought a courageous battle for survival. The flames could not be brought into control and remained ablaze for 87 days. Almost all the marine life in the area perished and the atmosphere turned asphyxiating.  The damage, experts say, has been irreparable. This fast-action film by director Peter Berg, encapsulates those tense moments with finesse as unrelenting as the blaz...

Cast:  Kate Beckinsale, Theo James, Tobias Menzies, Trent Garrett, Lara Pulver Rated:  4/10 Fifth in the series of wars between blood drinking vampires and ready to kill lycans (werewolves), this one has the maximum weak links. The premise is wafer thin. Lycans on the hunt of a hybrid pure blood who has the deadly combo of lycan-vampire blood running in her blue veins, daughter of the legendary vampire warrior mother Selene (Kate Beckinsale) who has been the central character of all the Underworlds thus far. Now this daughter is a shadowy figure who visits the screen only in the recesses of her mother’s mind, so barely makes an impact or a statement even though she is the reason why the fight is on. Then there is this inevitable war between the vampires and the lycans that had to be there to make any kind of Underworld story. However, this must-war, if you can call it so, comes in fits and starts and is poorly executed, falling as it does into a messy blood and gor...

Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh Cast :  Arjun Rampal, Vidya Balan, Naisha Khanna, Jugal Hansraj Rated:  5/10 Kahaani 2... is not a patch on Kahaani — in any which way, except for Vidya Balan. She is as brilliant and as solid as ever, this time as Durga Rani Singh. From playing a pregnant woman in search of her missing husband in Kahaani, to the complicated plain Jane on a quest to save a child abuse victim in this one, she leaves no frame empty, emoting a range that seldom sits comfortably on one person. Yes, she is the central character as she is meant to be. And yes, she does justice to this pride of place given to her in most of her movies, be it The Dirty Picture, Hamari Adhuri Kahani or Kahaani 2. But even she fails to enrich Kahaani 2 simply because the all round predictability of this Sujoy Ghosh thriller kills it quite summarily. Kahaani was a treat, what with the suspense killing the audience instead of the film, till the every end and then climaxing into a hi...

Moana Cast voiceovers : Auli'i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Rachel House, Temuera Morrison, Jemaine Clement Rated:  8/10 There is a reason why this absolutely lovable animation film from Disney is the movie of the week despite Kahaani 2 being propelled as the Friday showstopper. That’s because while Durga Rani Singh is on a quest that is linear, Moana is on a journey full of colourful myths, deep sea voyager thrills and characters that endear you forever. Last but not least, Moana is the most compelling story by Disney in a while, a story that does not get lost or cowed down by all that picture perfect colour, landscaping and animation. Based around a Polynesian myth of the great ancient seafarer race, a bumbly but well-meaning demigod and a pesky princess chosen to deliver the stolen heart of Te Feti to Goddess Nature burning in angst across the deep blue and stormy ocean, Moana is a treat to be with — at all levels. It has verve, vivacity, charm and chemistry, all in equ...

Cast : Shah Rukh Khan, Alia Bhatt, Kunal Kapoor, Atif Aslam Rated:  6.5/10 Dear Zindagi  is undoubtedly the longest therapy session that Bollywood has dared to orchestrate on screen but, under director Gauri Shinde’s expert guidance, the life lessons come with an unusual charm. That, despite the fact that there’s heavy falsafa wrapped around heavier dialogues throughout the film. That Alia’s DD ( dimag ka doctor ) turns into  dil ka doctor  in Shinde’s slick  zindagi ka masala  is in some measure due to peppy but meaningful talk, lovely music and, of course, Alia Bhatt’s near-perfect screen presence and naturalese. From introducing herself as a strong-minded, independent girl who loves things upside down in her apartment, to revealing that she is actually a messed up vulnerable girl with daddy-mummy issues, Alia gathers all the emotions with finesse and looks exceedingly beautiful too. When she is angry, when she is scared, when she is lonely, w...

Cast:  Emma Roberts, Dave Franco, Juliette Lewis Rated : 5/10 Mobile games are a rage, what with Pokemon Go blazing the charts at the moment. Nerve is something like Pokerman, a dangerous youth obsession where watchers and players are taking and enjoying the dares with huge money benefits — $100 if you kiss a stranger for five seconds, $2,500 if you steal a $3,975 dress, $10,000 if you take an aerial ladder dare and so on. Only hitch is that in the process you do things that are not legal, like shooting someone dead or the like. Hooked on to this dangerous , clandestine network are voyeuristic teens who are watchers and wanton players who are in the game. The game can’t be shut down because the server can’t be traced and if you deign to go to the authorities, the penalty is virtually fatal. Amid all this, there is a friendship, a relationship, some unrequited love and a game that you really need some nerve to get into. The film is innovative, with the times and gets i...

Cast : Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma, Mark O'Brien Rated : 4/10 Complicated aliens, indecipherable language, language decipherers, time walk abilities and a whole lot of needless scientific jargon makes this mount, well, slow and unsteady. The entire premise of the film is so complicated that you feel the need to go for popcorn breaks much before the interval. So, here you have a spaceship, an oval suspension over 12 spots in the world, including Pakistan but not India, mind you. The aliens are tentacled heptabots who never emerge from the cloudy haze of the horizon. They make sounds that the US Army thinks can be studied and deciphered by a language expert. Another issue that this expert is a woman with baby issues, a death hangover of a child who we later discover are only her peeps into the future. The problem with the film is that it is too static, unhappening and stuck with the problems of the alien language not being decipher...

Cast : Neha Dhupia Ranvir Shorey, Vidhushi Mehra Rated:  4/10 A dark, wannabe thriller the high point of which is Ranvir Shorey and to some extent the back from beyond Neha Dhupia. An odd pair, you would say and rightly so. As husband and wife, they are uncomfortable with each other and cheating on each other in different kind of ways — she with another man and he with snitching on his boss and tying up with the bad land sharks, clandestine money and illegal deals. The film is a cross between a thriller and negative human relationships and thus goes here and there before finally building up as a murder, fraud action film. Shorey, the ultimate middle class man hating middle class, cheats his office to do land deals with commissions on the side — till he lands in trouble after being discovered and sacked. The film builds on the slim moments it has and the relationship issue between the lead pair takes up too much time for the action to open up. There’s a dirty murder, an in...

Cast:  John Abraham, Sonakshi Sinha, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Genelia D'Souza Rated:  6/10 Had Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unannounced demonetisation drive not been under progress,  Force 2  would have made more eyeballs and, hence, more money. But despite daringly opening on a week that is more about queues to the bank rather than ones to the cinema halls (despite cashless transaction offers), it may not make the money it could have. Nevertheless, it is a slickly made, edgy, fast-paced spy thriller that comes with a lot of recall value — and, of course, the unrelenting muscle mania of John Abraham. In this one, his wife is dead but not her memories, the villain is of an all new make, the chase hopping from China to Budapest and the plot full of suspense. Genelia has been replaced by a much thinned down Sonakshi Sinha who, by the way, has a can’t-shoot-down hang-up which RA&W agents can only ill afford. Her partner on the hunt, is as John Abraham generally ...

Cast:  Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Samantha Morton Rated:  7/10 It’s 1926 BHP, as in Before Harry Potter. Here, JK Rowling is the maiden screenplay artist, mind you, without a book to take essence from; there’s also a politically convulsing sepia-shaded New York, born and brought up through the magical wand of the great David Yates; it’s actually a very special precursor of the Potter world in which an expelled student of Hogwarts, but a favourite student of Dumbledore, goes to New York where a brittle peace between the Magis and non-Magis are threatened by a black force of an untamed witch without form or scruple. That’s the kind of pedigree this one comes with — and makes somewhat of an impact in the seasoned hands of director Yates. The tapestry of old-time New York, far away from the very English Hogwarts, is different yes but no less spell binding. The edginess of Eddie Redmayne (remember  The Danish Girl ?) a...

Cast : Joe Alwyn, Kristen Stewart, Chris Tucker, Garrett Hedlund, Vin Diesel, Steve Martin, Makenzie Leigh Rated : 4/10 War hero Billy Lynn, a callow looking chocolate faced marine with pink lips and watery blue eyes, and his Bravo Squad take a victory walk in Texas much before the Iraq War is over. In that sense, the serenading is pre-mature with the war being far from over and re-deployments only a step away from the massively dressed up football stadium waiting to fall over these war heroes. All the noise, the song and dance (no less than Beyonce) and the rigmarole of interviews, chat shows, press conferences and music shows these war weary youth are put through is ably juxtaposed with the sound of machine guns, grenades and death in Iraq by director Ang Lee to make this uncomfortable film on wartime blues. For the Indian audience, it is far removed from their world though the Iraq War has impacted all and sundry across the globe. Seen in the American context, the silent p...

Cast : Farhan Akhtar, Shraddha Kapoor,  Arjun Rampal, Purab Kohli, Prachi Desai Rated : 5/10 Rock stars cannot come with guilt, hang-ups, ageing and mish-mash music. Rock On 2 is an avid example of that. Adi (Farhan Akhtar) has come a long way from the flashy, spontaneous, refreshing and foot-tapping Rock On days of 2008. That he has an overwhelming beard is the least of the problems. More importantly, he has had a total music shutdown, he has switched from jamming up to co-operative societies, philanthropy, Meghalaya and farmers — yes Shillong is considered the rock capital of India but rocker Adi is absolutely not here because of that. He is here to live and relive, rather tediously for the audience looking for some fun with the chords, the guilt of a wannabe musician committing suicide. Partners of his defunct rock band Magik are equally jaded. Jo (Arjun Rampal) looks unnecessarily emaciated though fat on moolah earned through judging music reality shows and running a ...

Star Voiceover:  Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Zooey Deschanel, Russell Brand, James Corden, Gwen Stefani Rated:  6/10 First, a becoming soiree on happiness and the need for it for survival. Second, a lovely animation. Third, pegged on great, old-world musical scores. And, finally, a wholesome children’s film with a message, the message being “happiness is within you, find it.” So we have these trolls living on a tree of life, hugging, kissing, singing, dancing and being happy on clockwork timing. Then we have these boo-hoo-hoo beings who just can’t ever be happy — until one day one of them gobbles a troll and feels happy for a split second. So, starts the dreadful day in the life of the trolls, called Trollstice. This is the annual day on which the poor trolls gets cooked up by an evil woman chef and eaten by the boo-hoo-hoos who have captured them in their dwelling place. All this and much more leads to a story of escape, recapture and re-escape and, finally,...

Cast:  Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Michael Stuhlbarg Rated:  6/10 Benedict Cumberbatch has many takers in India and that’s what will drive this new one from Marvel Comics this winter. No, he is not a patch on his Sherlock Holmes avatar  but he is still his usual, unusual self, so Marvel has quite a character at hand to showcase through  Doctor Strange . As Dr Strange, a celebrated neurosurgeon with a zen for the supersonic lane while behind the wheels, Cumberbatch is eccentric and edgy as ever and drives the film from all angles. Crippled in the hands after a near-fatal car crash, Dr Strange’s rollercoaster life holding the knife to name and fame ends abruptly. His journey to Kathmandu, mysticism and finally to sorcery, comes full of exciting jigs and a lot of amazing CGIs which keep this comic book character alive through the two-hour soiree punctuated with evil vs good vs saviour of humanity vs dark force vs scienc...

Cast : Ajay Devgn, Sayesha Saigal, Erika Kaar, Abigail Eames, Vir Das, Girish Karnad, Saurabh Shukla Rated : 5/10 Pepperfry or some such would have sold Shivaay as a slow juicer. But once the juice starts flowing out of the droopy eyes and flexing biceps of an overly supplemented Ajay Devgn, and his slick action soiree, there is no stopping the edgy rollercoaster jumping nations from all the way from India to Bulgaria. So you wonder why Devgn, who is actor-director and producer of this film, took around an hour to get to the point. Generally, he is not so daft, or wayward for that matter. But in Shivaay, he first introduces a stunning but prolonged sequence of his mountain and cliff jumping prowess which establishes him as the superhuman being with super duper Himalayan powers, as someone whom Lord Shiva himself has given the strength to throttle the life out of anyone who messes with him. But once his daughter is kidnapped by the Russian paedophile and flesh trade mafia in a...

Cast : Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Fawad Khan, Deepti Naval Rated : 4/10 Why oh why can’t anyone in Bollywood — big or small — make a simple, heart-touching romance? Like Yash Chopra used to? Why does Karan Johar — whose film as director we had been waiting for, for so long, had to have such a complicated relationship status for  Ae Dil Hai Mushkil ? What was Aishwarya Rai doing there at all? A stunning shaira in Venice who is game for emotionless romps in the bed? She is a shaira for God’s sake! She had to have emotions, if nothing else. Why did she leave husband Shah Rukh? Karan? Anyone? In fact, why did Shah Rukh Khan even make that one-minute outrageous appearance as a victim of unrequited love? Couldn’t have looked more irrelevant, ridiculous if I may say so. And then there was Ranbir Kapoor. Why did he have to behave in such a retarded manner, trying to be a cute lover out of school almost? What was wrong with Anushka? Well, what the fish! ...

Cast:  Gong Yoo, Ma Dong-seok, Jung Yu-mi, Kim Su-an, Kim Eui-sung Rated:  5/10 There are zombies and zombies and zombies in this Korean film which has grossed the maximum money this year if Korean film industry figures are to be believed. The story, as you would have guesses, revolves around a train journey to Busan and the centrepiece of this crowded film is a father-daughter duo. The zombie attack happens while the train is on its route and the director has done well to keep the attack the only focal point of the story which gets mushy here and there only to add meat to the tale. The outbreak starts after an infection woman passenger, bitten on the leg by a zombie, infects fellow passengers. And if that is not enough, as the hapless passengers seek refuge on a midway military station, to their horror they realise that the entire Army unit which was supposed to save them, is infected too. In the middle of all this zombie-ness, the father is shown trying his bes...

Cast : Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders, Aldis Hodge, Patrick Heusinger Rated : 6/10 Much like Mr Mission Impossible, you can’t view Jack Reacher as any hero other than Tom Cruise. He may be ageing, screen tired and too much of a veteran to light up the fisticuffs and the agility needed for Lee Child’s series of books, but Cruise is Reacher and Reacher Cruise. So, this film on one of the 20 bestselling action thrillers written by Lee Child, is a tad slow, somewhat different from the novel and the second one on screen after the 2012 outing brought in the gold rush. For those who have not read the novel, the action and the thrill would be more than enough to stay with; for Tom Cruise diehards, it might come across as flawless; and for those avid Child readers,  Never Go Back  on tape would seem to be a neither here nor there movie on a novel which has been intricately woven and excitingly narrated. As Reacher, an ex-major in this one, Cruise portrays a lonesome wanderer doin...

Cast:  Tom Hanks, Irrfan, Felicity Jones, Ben Foster Rated : 6/10 Dan Brown’s movie adaptation of  Da Vinci Code was a washout — a slow spoiler which killed the constant edge the book kept you on. But  Inferno is just the opposite, confronting the book in edginess, thrill and momentum cheek by jowl. For those who have read the book earlier, the film will bring old-time joy. For those who haven’t,  Inferno,  the film, will keep you rooted. Tom Hanks, who couldn’t really save  Da Vinci Code  from slow, unmoving death, is at the centre of all the rolling excitement in  Inferno.  As the good old professor Langdon, he hits memory loss and wakes up in Florence all the way from America, not knowing why and how he arrived there overnight and why he is so full of visions of Dante’s hell. The director has done well to keep the suspense and the chaos over a manic billionaire’s twisted attempt to kill off more than half the humanity to save t...

Cast:  Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans Rated:  7/10 For those who have not read this stunning bestselling book of the same name by Paula Hawkins, I can’t say much about the film as it will kill all the fun. For those who have, the film is a good patch on the book even though you may know what happened and who did it. The drunken haze that the main character is in has been very well portrayed by the towering British actress Emily Blunt who dominates the frames, the sentiment and the trajectory of the entire film. A weak actor would have spoilt it all but Blunt keeps the film alive and kicking till the very end. Had it not been for her brilliant acting, the film would have been waylaid by innate slowness and all the back and forth technique that the director has used to keep this murder mystery in a staccato mode. This ploy takes away from the pace somewhat and that’s not what you would have wanted from the film. However, it i...

Cast:  David Oyelowo, Lupita Nyong'o, Madina Nalwanga Rated:  6/10 Every once in a while, an inspiring sports film comes along to warm your hearts but such biopics are generally on popular sports like football or cricket. This one is on a niche sport and so all the more heartwarming. This one is from an abject slum town in Uganda which breathes squalor as none other, so the achievement it sports makes it even more heart-warming. This one is about a girl who is illiterate, who sells maize, who battles poverty with her strong-willed mother on a daily basis and who has no dreams to make a difference to her and her family’s life before showing up her brilliance in chess, and so it is extremely heart-warming. There are many more reasons that warm up your heart to this one by Mira Nair. She serenades the struggles of an under-privileged girl who rises to become a national champion and a master of chess from an odd corner of the world where only NGO stories and welfare sc...

Cast : Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Chris O'Dowd, Judi Dench, Samuel L  Jackson Rated:  6/10 It’s thrillingly Tim Burton all the way — weird, edgy, exciting, adventurous, magical and, of course, about extra-ordinary beings on Earth. At the centre f them all is Miss Peregrine who is as eccentric as Mary Poppins, a fierce mother to her peculiar crop of children, a transformer with an ability to relive past time as well as turn into a bird at the drop of a demand. Played to the hilt by Eva Green, Miss P’s character is much like the female version of a Johnny Depp role in full bloom and does most of the arresting in the film which otherwise dangles on adventurism of the monster-going-to-devour-the-gifted kind. The spooky and haunting ambience that Burton lends to the film keeps the crescendo going all through. Burton’s uncanny ability to understand and celebrate the gifted outcasts makes this film worthy of a watch. Other than the intimidating Miss Peregrine, there is a c...

Cast:  Harshvardhan Kapoor, Saiyami Kher, Om Puri Rated:  4.5/10 Rakesh Om Prakash Mehra. Gulzar. Shankar Ehsan Loy. Anil Kapoor’s debutant son Harshvardhan. Saiyami Kher, a star niece. And, a story based on Punjab’s famous folklore of Mirzya-Sahiba. What more could have been needed to make a splash, an expansive, romantic, musical, arty flash? But  Mirzya  is a spectacular waste of a canvas, as stunning a waste as its otherwise stunning visuals. Why Mehra opted for a comprehensive slow-mo to exaggerate every action, every gesture in the film, why he chose to overpower a simple love story by overbearing canvas art is bewildering, as bewildering as Anil Kapoor’s decision to allow his son to debut in a film in which he was made to compete with the brilliance of a derived landscape drawn out of a colourful and earthy Rajasthan on one end and a stark but stupendous Ladakh on the other. Needless to say, the poor boy struggles to show himself up against such an i...