PODCAST THIS YEAR - A-TO-ZED BOLLYWOOD MOVIE REVIEW
- Maalik AND Aap Jaisa Koi AND Panchayat 4
- Saiyaara - Great 2025 Movie but not a generational movie
- Dhadak 2 - Oh Love Why o love
- WAR 2 - Spyverse on Steroids.
SAIYAARA - 4.25 Stars. PG.
Directed by - Mohit Suri
Starring - Ahaan Panday, Aneet Padda
Have made a hit podcast and talked enough. Everyone has talked enough. The movie was successful in a different way. When a love story becomes successful people start staying away from it because it's too cringe to associate with it. That's when you know it's worked.
New kids who actually know how to act! A script borrowed from one of my favorite Hollywood movie and that's why I cut 0.25 points from it. But still very fresh new faces with good treatment of a subject which is hard to mess up. But still it was a great attempt and after a long time you had a love story that makes you cry and feel something. Good job.
Can't help but think the society has come to a point where they cry and beat their chest, if a young guy behaves like a decent human being. That's what this movie is about, if our hero was not a Young Indian Male everything he does is like any decent human being would do nothing special. But we all cry tears of joy and pain for him. Is that the bottom? If the same thing is done by a girl friend, a wife, a husband, a grand parent and parents this is not a movie.
Good music good direction and good acting with a heart tugging story what else is needed from a complete masala love story!
WAR 2 - 2.5 Stars. PG
Directed by - Ayan Mukerji
Starring - Hrithik Roshan, N. T. Rama Rao Jr., Kiara Advani, Ashutosh Rana, Anil Kapoor
This is one great document of what is needed to make a spy thriller. When you have made enough of them you tend to throw everything into one. Let's say you are a 'Halwai' who has figured to make a sweet (Mithai) that caters to certain patriotic testosterone driven audience .. umm.. yea let's keep going with the mithai analogy. You are like I know I have made 5 different patriotic RAW spy thrillers why not throw in all the ingredients together don't leave out a single one. What happens? Yes, WAR 2 happens.
Hrithik is talking Japanese and a wolf is falling in love with him, no place on globe is left that they don't go and fight. Sometimes they just talk in one country and then go for dinner in a different one, that is like quarter a globe apart!! Umm.. need immigration and visa... come on who are we kidding this is remember a mithai with everything in it? NTR Jr joins the fun, he needs equal screen time with not much to show for it. The surprise is their is hardly any love between Kiara and Hrithik and I will argue the love story was stronger of the main couple (Hrithik and NTR Jr) and I was disappointed they did not include a mouth-locked kiss of both at the end as the credits roll that would have been a fitting end to this Spyverse on steroids.
One original thing they added for future is a B2 Bomber over a Airplane with Hrithik and NTR doing "chaiyya chaiyya" in-between the planes. Overall it was an awesome adventure I want to know if someone took their elementary school kids to the movie, did they enjoy it?
DHADAK 2 - 4.5 Stars.PG.
Directed by - Shazia Iqbal
Starring - Siddhant Chaturvedi, Triptii Dimri
Now I am getting into controversial territory by putting this up there with great movies. I for one felt choked up in the movie, Siddhant who gave a few duds come up with an inspired performance. You can tell the kid has put a lot into his role, he doesn't look like your typical Dalit kid but it's Bollywood you can't be casting the right people for the role. He does a great job overall to put the movie on his back. It helps that the movie has some great music especially - ये कैसा इश्क़ है
"दर्द दे सात समुन्दर ; सारे इस दिल दे अंदर
जाऊ किस और कलंदर में
तू मेरी हज नमाज़ा ; तू मौला दी आवज़ा
जाऊ फिर क्यों मंदिर मस्जिद में
Tripti .. this kid is a mystery am I biased because she was in the horror show called Animal? But then she was great in Qala and Bubbul. ahh.. bingo.. the girl is a serious actor with a Bollywood face. As soon as she tries to act like a Bollywood actor trying to prance around trees and look cute she fails at it and when she does a serious take she is awesome. In this Dhadak she is the upper caste interest and fits the part okay, but shines through in some hard hitting scenes when she is given substance.
The love story of invisible people who are a majority but still are invisible is an interesting and daring take and seems like has been inspired by a south Indian movie... dare I say Tamil movie. The same so called south Indian movies I used to slam. Obviously I was wrong, they also make great movies that never get highlighted. Makes sense only stupidity is ostentatious and I fell for it thinking that's all south has to offer in movies. So racist! More of a rant on me a little later.
To complete the Dalit masterpieces, this joins Laal Salaam and Article 15 as one of the great cinemas.
MAALIK - 4.0 Stars. PG13
Directed by - Pulkit
Starring - Rajkummar Rao, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Manushi Chhillar, Saurabh Shukla
Rajkummar listens to this blog and decides to do something different than the same old middle class 'buddhu' boy who falls in love routine. He is an actor and he pulls it off. A typical 90s Bachchanesque Agneepathish drama on underworld don. Rajkummar pulls it off in style. Good song that I can't get rid of from my head.
A little too bloody and gory for no reason and a little too predictable and a little too simplistic with not much of a new twist or creativity but it was made in raw old school formulaic style and it works.
AAP JAISA KOI - 3.5 Stars. G.
Directed by - Vivek Soni
Starring - R. Madhavan, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Ayesha Raza, Manish Chaudhary, Namit Das
An out and out liberal dream sequence of a love story. For once Madhavan plays an ordinary lallu guy generally reserved for Rajkummar. Approaching middle age and unmarried as he hooks with Fatima Shaikh the more outgoing gal. All this is good untill by halftime you start finding out this looks kinda copied!! Funny thing is it's copied by the maker Karan Johar from another of his own films called Rocky aur Rani ki love story. The Bengali liberal family and the Punjabi orthodox butting heads and some feministic lectures all together with low cost less comedy more drama packaging. That's why it did not reach a 4 star level but it also has some good music and good serious treatment and acting. Well done.
SITAARE ZAMEEN PE - 3.0 Stars. G
Directed by - R. S. Prasanna
Starring - Aamir Khan, Genelia D'Souza
The movie is only on youtube paid to rent. The selling point is that the special ed characters are all real and not made up. They act with a lot of happiness and warmth. The movie has been made in many languages the original being spanish, I had watched the hollywood version and it was similar but less caricatured.
Aamir is reluctant basketball coach who is punished to coach the special ed students. Genelia brings the cuteness to the movie as Aamir's love or should I say problematic relationship. Aamir acts very caricaturish as if he is in a graphic novel, no you just need to act normally.. huh. His character is designed to take all the blame in the world and everyone else in the movie is one dimensional good which makes the movie very one dimensional. Still it's good fun to watch.
TEHRAN - 2.5 Stars. PG13.
Directed by - Arun Gopalan
Starring - John Abraham, Neeru Bajwa, Manushi Chhillar
John bhai is a great guy he has figured how to act and what makes him look better. He is the only star who is secure and does not care about more money and more success. It shows in his patriotic films not being jingoistic pandering to the powerful.
Having said that very few patriotic films work and this is not one of them. It is heavy on realism come on John or Arun whoever decided that we just use Persian as the medium of language in Tehran! Yes it's good for authenticity but hard to understand and get into the emotions when you are watching the movie on a third installment eating cereal and trying to respond to your cricket buddies gossip texts. Well it seems more of me problem than the movie itself. But come on they needed to grab my attention and they did not.
HOUSEFULL 5 - 1.5 Stars. G
Directed by - Tarun Mansukhani
Starring - Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh, Jacqueline Fernandez, Sonam Bajwa, Nargis Fakhri
The franchise that went 5 more movies than it should have. Utter garbage called comedy. Kabhi kabhi lagta hai ye desi logo ka comedy level itna gira hua kyu hai... fir aaine mein shakal dekhta hu to desi dikhta hai... fir chup ho jaata hu.
There is no one who does not show up in this thing and everyone sucks everyone hyper ventilates and thinks being a joker and making faces is comedy. Well... this thing has 5 installments so I guess I am the minority here.
INSPECTOR ZENDE - 4.5 Stars. G.
Directed by - Chinmay Mandlekar
Starring - Manoj Bajpayee, Jim Sarbh, Sachin Khedekar
After thinking about Housefull and getting depressed on the state of hindi movies, thank god I get to write about Inspector Zende. All is well! A subtle creative genius this movie is. It is about the same Charles Sobhraj the 80s criminal who has been made into cult figure for murdering scores of women. I don't know why every ghatiya person has to appeal to masses as something special... umm... well I will take it back the same can be said about almost every political leader world over who is killing the independence of the very people who are cheering them on.
Anyways back to Inspector Zende and the creativity, the movie twists the names of characters to make this into a comic book style comedy on how a real life inspector nabbed a real life criminal but the way they have done it is with subtle comedy and twisting the entire thriller into a comic-thriller. I have never seen this treatment before and deserves an applause. Awesome job.
SONGS OF PARADISE - 2.5 Stars. G
Directed by - Danish Renzu
Starring - Saba Azad, Soni Razdan, Zain Khan Durrani, Taaruk Raina, Lillete Dubey, Sheeba Chaddha
Life and times of Nuur Begum nightingale of Kashmir, kind of a documentary of the singer whose most of the work was burnt in a questionable fire. The movie is done with a lot of love and lot of hard work. I feel guilty to give it a low ranking but it lacks entertainment and hence I said watch it like a documentary. The acting is of a high degree and Saba Azad is a great actor along with Soni Razdan and Lillete Dubey who just is on a different planet emoting like she is not herself but transformed into a kashmiri aunty body. All of them speak fluent Kashmiri accent and it feels great to see people put in the work for a small budget movie that they know most won't watch but the 'love of the art' forces them not to do a shoddy job.
METRO IN DINO - 3.0 Stars. G.
Directed by - Anurag Basu
Starring - Anupam Kher, Neena Gupta, Konkona Sen Sharma, Saswata Chatterjee, Pankaj Tripathi, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sara Ali Khan, Ali Fazal
Too many stories and too many couples with none of the story going beyond a certain level of cliche. An old couple love story is the only one that is a little out there and also the cringiest, I don't know why they think getting old is still about being young and stupid. If old person is sitting and brooding maybe that's what they enjoy why do we have to believe they will still want to go after their childhood sweetheart and want to have an affair? Is that the only goal of every stage of life? Maybe just maybe old person has "matured" not that many do but just saying.
Sara and Ali fazal are the young couple who are trying out a long distance relationship as they want to live their dream. Again the young guy always wants to make music and hates corporate job... come on guys hardly anyone actually wants to do music. Also I hate it when the movies show the only reason to follow your dream is to make money. The only definition of success is to make money. I would love to see them show that he makes music for himself still continues to be in love with music while working a day job and earning a living. If you want to do something then you have to do it as a career otherwise it is useless for you, that's how it is portrayed. I counter it - I say if you love something do it without any expectation of money, because if for you music was about becoming a singer that people love and give you a lot of money for, you don't love music but you only love money.
Enough of the rant but this made me realize actually it's not a bad movie it is just a very disjointed story telling that does not flow well.
Aankhon ki Gustakhiyan - Trailer
Directed by - Santosh Singh
Starring - Vikrant Massey, Shanaya Kapoor
I think Shanaya Kapoor is somebody's somebody but she is cute kid and acts pretty well. Vikrant is always good but I think he underplayed the blind guy act on purpose. Maybe it was conscious decision to not make blindness the highlight and hence he almost goes around like he is not.
It is a very ridiculous love story involving blindness and sometimes false blindness. In the end it drags a lot and keeps going in circles with cliched things like someone always over hears other people that they are not meant to hear and hence all the drama. But if you like old school love stories it is pretty good one.
KAALIDHAR LAAPATA - 4.0 Stars. G
Directed by - Madhumita
Starring - Abhishek Bachchan, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Daivik Bhagela, Nimrat Kaur
Abhishek Bachchan is on a mission to do web releases with substance. It suit him, it is way better than doing a Housefull-5. Kaalidhar is a gaon ka aadmi who thinks he did everything for the family but he realizes he is not needed once Alzheimer's hits. Abhishek does good but Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub takes the cake. The kid who mentors Kaalidhar and teaches him lessons he never learnt in life is cute though unrealistic. Again the stupid old people wanting to fall in love with some childhood sweet heart hits again in this movie. what's up with movie waale old people!
SARZAMEEN - 1.0 Stars. PG13.
Directed by - Kayoze Irani
Starring - Prithviraj Sukumaran, Kajol, Ibrahim Ali Khan
There are some movies that just break you. It takes time to recover. I saw a poster in my daughter's room saying - 'When you think of quitting, think of the reasons you started in the first place.' I don't know why I started watching every hindi movie, umm... well I remember now. Oh well ... i will continue, but come on man... can Ajay and Kajol stop making their own productions? Why do they have unlimited money?
Kajol this time finds some Telegu hero Prithviraj to join her in making this cringe fest. The couple who's son has fallen to the dark side (terrorism) and returns back with many questions and doubts. Army Vs terrorists, Nation Vs Son, Love Vs My patience. All are on the block.
All was okay and we were going through the motions with Ibrahim Ali Khan just going through the pains of learning how to act along with Kajol's hyper act, BUT THEN at the end they pushed it to a different high or should we say a low. Somehow Mom, Dad and Son are all fighting in the same place and holding hands even though on opposite side. It is all a blur but that was the point I was like THATS IT.. I am human .. I CANT TAKE IT. If this review don't make no sense so does the movie.
DETECTIVE SHERDIL - 3.5 Stars. G.
Directed by - Ravi Chhabriya
Starring - Diljit Dosanjh, Diana Penty, Boman Irani, Ratna Pathak Shah, Chunky Panday, Banita Sandhu
Its a very regular detective solving a murder in London or somewhere similar. The difference is the treatment and Diljit. He keeps playing harmonica and it creates a funny light theme to the murder and detective work. Diljit with his heavy punjabi accent also sounds very authentic and is charming in general and makes the atmosphere a light hearted fun thriller. Otherwise it is whodunnit along with a few surprises but its a great time pass movie.
MAA - 0.5 Stars. G.
Directed by - Vishal Furia
Starring - Kajol, Ronit Roy, Indraneil Sengupta, Kherin Sharma
Devgans have a plan to kill all of us, especially the movie watching public. Scratch my last comment about Kajol movie, that patriotic cringefest was from some other production, THIS stupidity is Devgan movies, written as DevGN.. I think showing how much stupidity has seeped into production work. Changing English alphabets on Hindi words is going to change money making ability of a movie, that's how bad things are.
Kajol was told either patriotism works or horror, she is like let's do both and kill these movie goers. Bhoot pret and stupidity is soaked into our psych that doesn't mean we now double down on it! Let's throw in the national time pass of making women trapped in this notion that there is something very supernatural about being a Maa and trap her in the house specifically in the kitchen.
Arrghh... you know what forget it. I should be constructive. Kajol behen - You need to walk to Karan's place (I am sure you guys live nearby) knock on his door and tell him to make another K3G and give you that Karan Johar style makeover again. You will get people to watch you and get interviews etc and you will stay away from Dvgan movies. Will help EVERYONE.
LOKAH - CHAPTER 1 CHANDRA - (Malayalam) 4.5 Stars. PG.
Lokah - Chapter 1 - Chandra - Trailer
Directed by - Dominic Arun
Starring - Kalyani Priyadarshan, Naslen, Sandy Master, Arun Kurian, Chandu Salim Kumar
Kalyani is a Star, yes she is daughter of Priyadarshan so basically a Nepo baby but SHE IS AWESOME. What a great Superhero ohh her style, her look .. this kid is just my superhero. Her BF is a perfect foil to exhalt her superhero-giri, a young average kid trying to get a girl to like him finding out she is not "A Girl" beautifully done, their relationship is just so cute. Also the great thing about the movie is - these kids are actually kids the BF has pimples on his face they are like really young kids not the polished perfect bodied Bollywood hunks who act kiddish. The movie kind of devolves into the American web series "Heroes" which is disappointing as they try to create sequels, but whatever happens with the sequels this first Lokah and Chandra was special as special as "El" from Stranger Things one of my favorite female superhero character.
Now for the rant on me, I promised before. Like an idiot. like a stupid racist idiot I kept on criticizing over the years "South Indian" movies and my south Indian friends kept getting annoyed at me and because of that I gleefully doubled down on my criticism not realizing just Like North India is not one entity how can South be? Malayalam movies are great! so must be others. I also found out Dhadak 2 was a Tamil movie remake so technically my criticism is only about Telegu and Tamil popular cinema that creates utter non-sensical stuff. So going forward don't expect me to change anything accept me hating on 'Tamil, Telugu popular fan-oholic movies' that they make. thank you.
JOLLY LLB 3 - 4.0 Stars. G.
Directed by - Subhash Kapoor
Starring - Akshay Kumar, Arshad Warsi, Saurabh Shukla, Amrita Rao, Huma Qureshi
I am coming back from lunch at work, my lunch friend has now told me 3 times that he liked Jolly LLB 3, I feel like it's more a threat than a mellow suggestion from him. So there you go I can't say anything bad about it, anyways I am not into fearless journalism crap. That's not for me. Not that I had anything bad to say about it.
The movie tugs a few strings at your heart, the direction and story telling is taut. When you can wrap up the entire philosophy and message of a movie in one line you know you got a clarity of purpose when you create a product. It's third edition and probably the best one for this franchise. I think one and two had Arshad and Akshay and now both show as Jolly in this one. Saurabh Shukla was the star in earlier ones and he doesn't disappoint in this one either. Story of a fight for a farmer's house who just doesn't want to sell. Low and behold she has a choice, the audacity of the poor man not to want money!! Fight and preach Jolly fight and preach.
TEST - 2.0 Stars. PG.
Directed by - S. Sashikanth
Starring - R. Madhavan, Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine
How can a movie go from developing into a 4 Star movie drop into a 2 star movie? If you want an answer watch Test. If you want to keep it at 4 Star just watch half of it and walk away. Don't look back, don't finish it suppress the urge to culminate everything, just live with the tease but nope, humans all too humans, they will want to finish it and then you will pull your hair why did I!
Movie starts with a beautiful problem of a aging test star who is not accepting he is past his prime, his inner turmoil is boiling over to his family and loved ones, his deceased coach's daughter is his fan and understands him but is not close to him to give advice. In addition to that she has her own issue with her Hubby who is a crazy genius and they have their own financial troubles, both imperfect households at 2 spectrums of financials. ahh so well done, and that's it. Madhavan decides to become crazy after that and the entire plot devolves into one of those Madhavan the villain movies. Such a shame. Siddharth is a good actor and shines through and the beautiful Nayantara is good in her pivotal role as the woman stuck between 2 men and a kid.
Son of Sardaar -2 - 2.5 Stars. G.
Directed by - Vijay Kumar Arora
Starring - Ajay Devgn, Mrunal Thakur, Ravi Kishan, Neeru Bajwa, Sanjay Mishra, Deepak Dobriyal
One of the kids at work annoyingly said - everything is money, all I care about is money. Then it made me think, this kid is not wrong from his perspective he is just saying it out loud what people always think. Son of Sardaar did not need another sequel but you know what, for most people everything is money, so someone thought it will still make me some money just create one more. So we get one more. As you know DevGNs are out to kill us, Ajay bhai - trust me you are not a comedian you just embarrass yourself trying to make comic faces. Not that I hate you, but just letting you know. The movie is so childish, boorish, and stupid that even the great Mrunal Thakur managed to look completely idiotic and acted the worst she has ever done. Mrunal behen please stay away from these popular cinema stuff.
Not that everything is bad, the movie has some good scenes and jokes, especially Ajay becoming a soldier to get Mrunal's daughter married and the great comic timing of Ravi Kishan with 2 of his punjabi brothers save the entire movie. They are hilarious. So go ahead and watch it while you do your dishes.
It is true that bollywood movies sometimes are made on set, at the end you will notice out of nowhere a chandelier falls on a person just because they needed that character out of there! I mean it can't be in a bound script it has to be thought right then. Director must be like - this is the last day of shooting and we do not know how to end the movie any ideas? A clap boy must have said drop something on her and injure her. AND that what was done. Just saying in case you watch please watch the climax and feel the emotion of "what the heck!"
WEB SERIES
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OFFICER ON DUTY (MALAYALAM) - 3.5 Stars.
Directed by - Jithu Ashraf
Starring - Kunchacko Boban, Vishak Nair, Priyamani, Jagadish
Another Malayalam thing I watched, am I turning Malayalam? Why is this hindi movie blog covering Malayalam stuff? should I be sued for it? Anyways remember the friend who threatened me with 'Jolly LLB 3 being good" same guy asked me to watch it, so you know I had to.
Again small budget but more real than any you will see. The Officer played by Kunchacko Boban unlike tamil and telugu superstars actually know how to emote and look vulnerable. But overall the thriller regarding missing girl is a little bloody and gory. The villains are so cool and ruthless in case you are going to watch some crappy web series in hindi I would say go for this one instead.
BA#@#$DS OF BOLLYWOOD - 2.0 Stars. PG.
Ba#@#$ds of Bollywood - Trailer
Genre - Action / Comedy drama / Satire
Directed by - Aryan Khan
Starring - Bobby Deol, Lakshya Lalwani, Raghav Juyal, Sahher Bambba, Anya Singh
Sorry but this show put me off a little, too much glitter and glam around SRK's son directing a show, and my personal bias was - probably he didn't do anything but just used his name. Supposedly he wrote and directed it. But if he could I think this would be it.
When Bollywood tries to make a spoof on themselves it is still self indulgent and smug. Karan Johar plays himself trying to make fun of himself, Bobby kind of playing SRK and the list of whose who goes on. Anyone who does not want to be in bad books of SRK better come and show their face in his kid's show. All critics have to like it etc... not this one you know why? Because SRK doesn't know me. Power of being unknown.
Don't get me wrong, if you are a bollywood buff watch it, every star will make a visit, and it is about so called bollywood lives that I had zero interest in, but if you want to watch a spoof on bollywood it's an okay show to watch. I stopped it after second episode but it was just me.
