Meenakshi Rao's Bollywood and Hollywood movie reviews

*ing: Rose Byrne, Domhnall Gleeson, Sam Neill, Daisy Ridley, Elizabeth Debicki, Margot Robbie, James Corden Rated: 8/10 The bunnies are here with their becoming animations and colourful carrot-lettuce-tomato landscape drawn diligently by the animators while Peter Rabbit and his clan of three sisters and bro-pal running amok in a farm taken away from them by a grumpy old man who ate up Peter’s father in a rabbit pie years ago. Beatrix Potter’s 19th Century creation, these bunnies in their 2018 avatar are much too raucous, ungainly, in disciplined and creatures of a chaotic world to honour the originals but for the Indian audience, not very familiar with the before of the story, Peter Rabbit is a funny animated movie which may not be a wonder but is no blunder either. The story revolves around a family of bunnies and their love for the girl next door, a village beauty who has a soft corner for wildlife, the bunnies included. The farmhouse is inherited by a stiff upper lip...

*ing: Irrfan Khan, Kirti Kulhari, Divya Dutta, Arunoday Singh, Omi Vaidya Rated: 4/10 As Irrfan battles a rare brain ailment in a hospital abroad, his latest film Blackmail rolled out this week without much ado. The film, an attempted black comedy of blackmail, deceit, infidelity and murder is no Box Office ringer even though the genre is new and worked hard upon. Irrfan is the centrepoint of the film and does not let you down even once but even his acting acumen is unable to save the film which has weak plot, too much of the same thing going on throughout the film, thus nibbling away the interest of the viewers. A middle class advertising agency employee (Irrfan) loves his beautiful wife who does not reciprocate so he makes do with other employees wives’ pictures in office if you know what I mean. He admires his wife’s beauty from a wall hole in the bedroom but one day when he returns early with dreams of romancing his wife, he finds a big burly guy in her bed. And thus star...

A Quiet Place *ing: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski Rated: 10/10 This near silent movie explodes with so much force that you are startled t the core by its unexpected pulling strings. The only explosive sounds you here are of excellence, precision, emotion and sheer survival in the face of a devastating alien monster invasion which leaves next to no humanity on Earth. Now these craftily curated monsters are predators of sound. They are otherwise blind to everything but just a tap or even whisper can bring them to the spot in seconds to eat up everything around. The near perfection of this movie lies in the fact that writer-director-actor John Karsinsky is courageous enough to nattily shape a 1 hour 95 minutes feature film without using dialogues and serenading the sound of silence in any which way you can imagine. The actors (there are only five in the entire film) walk barefoot; the wife puts up cloth chimes so that no sound comes out of them; the family talks in sign lang...

*ing: Tabu, Manoj Bajpayee, Annu Kapoor Rated: 7/10 This psychological thriller, aptly propped by heavy duty actors Tabu and Manoj Bajpayee for most part keeps you interested. It lives up to its tag, keeping the suspense up till the last two two-three shots and playing constant mind games, which means the viewers are understandably perplexed about who is the psycho in the film. Tabu, as usual, is brilliant as the mother of a three-year-old girl called Titli who is kidnapped from her resort room in Mauritius and there is no trace of her being anywhere. In fact, all through the film, we do not get to see the face of the little Titli. Director Mukul Abhyankar does a good and interesting build-up in this thriller which has everything going. Bajpayee, as an edgy philanderer, is, however, a wee bit over-stretched in trying to be histrionically brilliant as just another middle class man bored with his married life and indulging in tasteless but relentless “harmless flirting” while...

*ing: Tiger Shroff, Disha Patani, Manoj Bajpayee, Randeep Hooda, Prateik Babbar Rated: 5/10 Yes, Tiger Shroff has worked at everything here. Yes, he has managed to shed the   chikna   tag by somehow and anyhow growing some amount of facial hair. Yes, his body shames even the legendary Adonis and his abs are packed with tougher and unrelenting muscles than any other Bollywood star. And yes, he is in the middle of action — extreme, intense, prolonged and unimaginably well-choreographed action that gives this film its life and bread. But   Baaghi   2 still does not go the whole hog. It falters. It picks up, and then falters again. Till the time Tiger is fighting all the goons, he is a tiger and the film wildly kickass. But when he stops, and he often does so by going into uninteresting memories laced with un-required song and dance, the film stops too. There are too many distractions and that's what makes   Baagi   2 a less-than-its-potential action ...

*ing : John Boyega,  Scott Eastwood,  Jing Tian,  Cailee Spaeny Rated : 6/10 Robots, iron monsters, wars, destruction and a whole lot of metal clanking through your eardrums, Pacific Rim No 2 is back for all the adrenaline junkies who draw their life and breath from unmitigated metal-ism. The sequel to the 2013 edition, this uprising goes a step ahead from merely postponing apocalypse to taking the war into the land of the monstrous Kaijus, conceived and missiled by an equally crazy science junkie amid a whole lot of China town hitech gimmicks and mumbo jumbo. The visuals and the sounds emanating from this relentless metal against metal war are engaging though the non-metal lovers would wonder what they are doing in the film where humanity saver Idris Elba’s son takes on the mantle, albeit reluctantly, to save the world as the skyscraping Kaiju’s get programmed to go amok all over the place. The uprising, quite obviously targeted at New York, Hong Kong and o...

*ing:  Rani Mukherji Rated : 7/10 Rani Mukherji has matured, does not shy away from being less than ordinary or dressing down, shows up her acting talent with aplomb and dominates this finely made film from the first to the last frame. After a break from films, marriage and motherhood, Rani uses this home production to the hilt to make a mark as a rare tourettes syndrome patient who takes life by the scruff of the collar despite rejections both by society and her father. The very fact that the movie is titled Hichki shows how little we know of this rare disorder which is a vocal reaction to some electrical waves mismatching in the brain, and not at all about stammering.  She plays out this affliction with gumption. Showcasing the struggle of Rani to follow her dream of becoming a teacher despite all the scepticism around her affliction, this film with no hero or singing and dancing props, goes in the right direction of a good teacher beset with a batch of bad student...