Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

Cast : Anya Singh, Sachin Pilgaonkar, Prince Parvinder Singh, Aadar Jain Rated:   4/10 YRF gets ambitious here in bringing in an issue-based film high on musical notes and ditties on our Judicial, law enforcing and skewed prison systems but the film is nevertheless an interesting concept. Another matter though that the film is too well-dressed to be convincing or motivating. The pace somewhat comes from the lyrics that have not only been penned well but also sung with gumption getting you involved with their high octane notes challenging the system. Based on the plight of the thousands of undertrials languishing in our overcrowded, dingy, crime infested jails, it focuses on a group of youngsters who are caught in the Sunny Deol kind of “date after date after date” situation, some being incarcerated for more than three-four years despite not even having committed a crime or having committed a crime too small for the punishment. After they perform at an Independence...

Cast : Sidharth Malhotra, Jacqueline Fernandez, Darshan Kumar, Suniel Shetty, Kushal Punjabi, Hussain Dalal, Supriya Pilgaonkar, Rajit Kapur Rated : 6/10 A swishy pacemaker, this romantic spy thriller on a Miami to Mumbai junket pans out on the broad shoulders of Sidharth Malhotra and the gyrating sexiness of Jacqueline Fernandez. Add to that the slick dressing up of the scenes by directors Raj & DK and you have a film that keeps you and your popcorn brainlessly and aimlessly but sufficiently engaged. Malhotra plays a good guy and a bad guy, all at the same time, playing out both portions in equal measure. As an IT programmer with a big firm, a big house, a big dream and a big amount of loneliness, he is both   sundar   and susheel   but too right to be husband material for the fun-loving Jacqueline he is rooting for. As the bad guy, but actually not a bad guy, he is a crack killing machine who can do pretty much everything that the good one can’t even...

Cast : Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Bidita Bag, Jatin Goswami, Shraddha Das, Divya Dutta Rated : 2/10 I kill, you kill, we all kill — kill, kill, kill. That’s the movie in summary. And helming this killer film from the badlands of cow belt is Nawazuddin Siddiqui. It’s an impossible situation really for Nawaz, the contract killer who lives on the edge, taking contracts, humping prostitutes and enjoying his drunken stupors and fake Ray Ban collection in his ramshackle bricks-only ruin of a house in the middle of nowhere. The impossible task is to make sense of all the senseless blood and gore that he orchestrates. It’s a usual but boring violent caper from the underbelly of Bihar where unscrupulous debauchery of power and lust are the norm to kick up a film from. So you have a power hungry, beedi   smoking, sindoor   wearing jiji   (Divya Dutta is good in the role) as one power centre, battling with the totally debauched (but wife-oriented) Dubey on the other end, u...

Cast:  Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L Jackson, Gary Oldman, Salma Hayek, Élodie Yung, Joaquim de Almeida, Kirsty Mitchell Rated:   5/10 A heebie-jeebie kind of thriller action, bullets oriented drama helmed by the comic skills of a beautifully head-tattooed Samuel Jackson and baby faced top private security agent looking for redemption,   Hitman’s Bodyguard   is a film which you may want to go to if you have nothing else on hand. On pretty much a road trip from the Manchester prison to The Hague for nailing the genocide man from Belarus, it is more Jackson than Reynolds at any given time. The love-hate relationship, the jigs of the contract killing world, the histories and the geographies make this high speed, action choreographed bromance. Sought to testify against the self-styled President of Belarus, under house arrest in Amsterdam, Darius Kincaid (Jackson) signs a plea bargain with the spooks that will get his oomphy, foul-mouthed but golden-hearted wife...

Cast:  Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor, Claudia Kim, Fran Kranz, Abbey Lee, Jackie Earle Haley Rated : 3/10 Stephen King will certainly not like this filmy mould of his —  the interesting dark thriller he wrote mainly because it is un-happening despite the presence of a man in black, a gunslinger and a child with a shine. Matthew McConaughey is coolly dressed evil sorcerer, obviously there to destroy the world with his funny commands to poor humans, like ‘drop dead’, ‘stop breathing’ and ‘kill each other’. They all, obviously, obey. The last of the gunslingers (Idris Alba) is, obviously, out to kill the sorcerer but his expressions make it look like a tedious, prolonged job. The boy, obviously, is a mind reader who can jump time to see back and forth, so, is, obviously, needed by the sorcerer to destroy humankind. Well? Got the message? Obviously yes! So save some money please.

Cast : Khushmeet Gill, Manmeet Singh, Surekha Sikri, Sushmita Mukherjee Rated : 4/10 Children’s film is still a genre in need of getting its mojo right, that despite many of them being made from time to time by Bollywood. Amol Gupte is a veteran of this genre and yet he goes wrong with this one, completely wrong actually as he fails to sniff what could have worked for a story around a child who has no sense of smell. The thing about children’s films is that it needs to be essentially endearing which Sniff is not despite the cute sardar child playing the lead. Moving from the vagaries of not being able to smell, to getting the smell nodes back in a surreal chemistry lab accident, to sniffing the criminal behind car thefts in his society — everything comes across as far from real. Also, the society seems to be of senior citizens whom Gupte has rather wrongfully caricaturised. Wish he was as real with the film as the people he chose to make it around. Source: Sunday Pioneer...

Cast:  Kriti Sanon, Rajkummar Rao, Ayushmann Khurrana, Pankaj Tripathi, Seema Pahwa Rated:  7.5/10 Just like a good  barfi , this film is soft, sweet and flavourful. The endearing small-town nuances, ambience and behaviours are beautifully captured by director Ashwany Iyer Tiwari who makes a two-bit romance between a two-bit boy and girl into a wholesome, unhurried entertainer. Bareilly Ki Barfi  (BKB) is Tiwari’s second tier-III town movie after she debuted with the acclaimed and interesting  Nil Battey Sannata  (NBS). While Kriti Sanon is the centrepiece of  BKB,  Swara Bhaskar shaped NBS. Sanon is a  bindass  Bareilly  ki chhori  and plays out her role with gumption and allure. As the small town rebel who loves English movies without knowing much of the language, steals her father’s cigarettes to smoke secretly, takes pillion rides with strangers and pretty much does her own thing till it comes to marriage (o...