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...