POPULAR BOLLYWOOD
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GUILTY: 4.0 Stars. R. (THRILLER / DRAMA)
Director: Ruchi Narain
Stars: Kiara Advani, Taher Shabbir, Akansha Ranjan Kapoor
An actor is born. Take a bow - Kiara! There is this one movie that makes you known for your craft, for Kiara this is it. She is legit. From the first scene you can tell she is in it, the character and her or not 2 separate people. Just for her you got to watch it.
The movie is pretty slick thriller about an alleged rape. I am not a fan of bollywood's obsession on this topic, but I won't rant about it. The positive is - all characters are in the grey, there is no side that is out and out great or evil. The treatment is not bad either. The movie moves at a good pace. She said, he said. Can we believe anyone around us? Are our social biases hindering our judgement? Why would he do it? It is an ok movie and Kiara made it a must watch.
PANIPAT: 2.0 STARS. PG. (ACTION / DRAMA)
Director: Ashutosh Gowariker
Stars: Arjun Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt, Kriti Sanon
Now India has reached this point that anything you show as a historical with Hindu Kings who are invincible, great, with no semblance of negative trait who is going against a Muslim villain then ANYTHING goes. By anything I mean passing Arjun Kapoor as a historical 16th century warrior!! Come on now... you can't be serious. The movie falls flat right there, add to it no semblance of in depth analysis on history by Gowarikar. Well... he probably didn't want to get beaten up by goons so he would have decided to just make a super hero movie. Sanjay Dutt can play Sanjay Dutt not a muslim invader but atleast he looks menacing villain which I guess was the point of the movie. He sleep walks through the role. So sorry to see an accomplished director go to waste.
SHIMLA MIRCHI: 1.5 STARS. (DRAMA)
Director: Ramesh Sippy
Stars: Hema Malini, Rajkummar Rao, Rakul Preet Singh
Rajkummar Rao looks so young seems like the movie was in the making for a long time. I have no idea why the movie is named Shimla Mirchi.... well it is supposedly shot in Shimla. Let's get to the real problem - Hema Malini. I am not sure if she ever was a great actor, but please Hema Aunty, let's just call it quits. Rakul Preet Singh is good as always. Rajkummar does the same things he does.
The movie is a love story with a twist of Hema Malini falling in love with her daughter's lover. Yes, you read it right. If you think it is interesting plot, Hema Malini kills it in a few scenes. I think the movie is supposed to be a comedy, and I did laugh but not because of comedy, but because it was too embarrassing to see what is going on. Actually there was one scene that was kind of funny, when people come to talk about Hema Aunty's daughter's marriage and she thinks they have to ask for her to get married!
MADE IN CHINA: 3.0 STARS. (THRILLER)
Director: Mikhil Musale
Stars: Rajkummar Rao, Boman Irani, Mouni Roy
Rajkummar Rao plays the younger submissive kid of the business Gujju family. He is married to this beautiful girl and she pushes him to do bigger things and go chase his dreams. He has fire to do something big but is scared to take the leap, until he does take a leap without telling his family about it. He goes off trying to eradicate people's sexual problems by giving them a shady Made in China product.
I don't divulge so much of a story of a movie but I thought to make sure you can decide on this one you should know. It is a typical low budget movie which is not bad anever reaches a crescendo either. It is pretty good but meh...
TANHAJI: 2.0 STARS. (ACTION)
Director: Om Raut
Stars: Ajay Devgan, Saif Ali Khan, Sharad Kelkar
Ajay Devgan stays Ajay Devgan... lets say Tanhaji as played by Ajay Devgan. To add to it Saif plays just like Saif in a negative role. No one looks a period character. I don't think it is their fault, they were never told it is a historical and they have to get into character. They are flying in the air doing impossible stunts pushing big cannons. One is bad, one is good, another affair which had no depth to it.
COMMANDO 3: 3.0 STARS (ACTION)
Director: Aditya Datt
Stars: Vidyut Jammwal, Adah Sharma, Gulshan Devaiah
Vidyut is probably the best fighter in the Industry, only Tiger comes second to him. But Vidyut is class of his own. Having such a big asset he could be Jackie Chan of India but he is not, and blame goes to directors who make drab duds around him. He mouths some good one liners and fights awesome, some of his tricks are straight out of Jackie Chan's moves. In earlier movies he was saving animals, saving a girl from an entire village and was more like a Rambo. This one they tried to make it too big,and too patriotic that it became stale. There was nothing new, Indian agent trying to stall a terrorist plot and somehow ends up in London in pursuit of one terrorist. The movie goes too much high tech and loses Vidyut's presence. His fights are awesome though. In this Corona days you can fast forward and watch the cool fights.
MARJAAVAAN: 4.0 STARS. (LOVE STORY)
Director: Milap Zaveri
Stars: Riteish Deshmukh, Sidharth Malhotra, Tara Sutaria
If you want to go old school, go old school... पूरी शिद्दत से। ... Gulshan Kumar is a name who knows how to go old school. This is the best ode to old school Heart break, Love story, Action, AND Dialogue-baaji.... uff. Cheap front bencher thrilling dialogue-baaji... just watch the trailer, it is full of one liners... I loved it. No it has nothing new,but it is done with lot of love for old school movies, not a spoof but make one more with full honesty. में मरूंगा मर जाएगा दोबारा जनम लेने से डर जायेगा. If that makes you smile go watch it. The movie also reminds me of the Manmohan Desai era of movies that always were based on communal harmony brotherhood and it used to always show minority culture's beauty. Amar Akbar Anthony, we would lovingly watch Anthony' speaking tuti futi hindi to father of the church, we loved shayari of Akbar. We loved coolie's Iqbal as our leader going hadtaaal! and singing ... mubarak ho tum sab ko haj ka mahina na thee meri kismat ke dekh madina! We as a nation have come to hate a lot.
Siddarth Malhotra has found his niche, he is going to make one face of heartbroken young man.... the best impersonation he can do of Deewar ka Bachchan and not do anything else. He has found it and I like it. Watch it, clap and whistle and have fun.
PAGALPANTI: 1.0 STARS. (COMEDY)
Director: Anees Bazmee
Stars: Anil Kapoor, John Abraham, Ileana D'Cruz
The name is correct, it is Pagalpanti. There is nothing in it, you will be paagal to watch it. Maybe you will laugh at complete stupidity going on but otherwise over the top acting of almost everybody with no comic timing is the hallmark of this movie. There is pretty good plot, lot of characters. There is not a scene that is not packed with funny stuff, but somehow you are embarrassed than being entertained. But liberal use of fast forward option can make any movie watchable, who knows you may enjoy it.
The plot is that John Abraham has bad luck and it is contagious, and where he goes bad luck follows. Anil Kapoor, Illeana, Pulkit, Arshad... all are accomplished at comedy but everyone is loud and louder and loudest.
The BODY: 2.5 STARS. (THRILLER)
Director: Jeethu Joseph
Stars: Emraan Hashmi, Rishi Kapoor, Sobhita Dhulipala
I have a problem with actors coming to the set and asking what are my lines? without asking who am I playing! Rishi Kapoor, an accomplished actor just goes through the motions as if he is regular guy. You are playing a cop investigating a case!! Anyway, I am sure that is not the major flaw of this movie. Normally dependable Emraan disappoints. I am sure this is a copy of a European movie, generally they make these movies that run over a night in a hospital with no one around except for 5 people (to save cost I guess). The production cost is horribly cheap and the plot is ok. During Quarantine time, you can give it a shot. In regular times... no way.
The movie is about Emraan's wife dying and then the body disappearing from the morgue.
GOOD NEWZZ: 3.5 STARS. (COMEDY)
Director: Raj Mehta
Stars: Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor, Diljit Dosanjh
Every quarter I bring up one movie that has all it's good scenes in the trailer and they reveal everything in the trailer. I don't like watching trailers because they give away everything. Well, this is one of those movies. Well made pretty funny movie, but the trailer has all the funny lines and the entire story. Surprisingly it was nice to see Kareena after a long time, watching her I wondered why do female leads disappear when they are pretty good and why do male leads overstay! Sad.
Diljit does his regular punjabi comedy and Akshay is a little off color in his comedy. Over all not a bad time pass movie. It has an interesting plot of sperm exchanged by mistake and now mismatched couple have to match!
THAPPAD: 4.5 STARS. (DRAMA)
Director: Anubhav Sinha
Stars: Taapsee Pannu, Pavail Gulati, Ratna Pathak Shah
aah.. Mr Anubhav Sinha, Sir you are getting in the top echelons of my short list of directors. Yes, you don't know but that is a big accomplishment. This blog is followed by Millions.... umm... thousands.... umm... fffine.... hundreds... OOKK... scores of people. So take a bow you have made it. Mulk, Article 15 and now Thappad. That is a troika that can make anyone proud.
The simplicity is the hallmark of this movie. It is daily life, lines we say daily in our household, lives we 'the good sensitive people' live. AND so much is wrong with that life. Every line is so obviously regular and still so well thought out and so hard hitting at the same time. You would think abusive relationship is bad, physically abusive really bad, but otherwise we are programmed to just keep going.... for what? If we think and work on it we can become better humans, every day we need to work on becoming better person. We are here and living might as well try till we die. We actually try our hardest at work, in public, and in every sphere then why not at home. Very well done. Watch it.
PATI PATNI AUR WOH : 3.0 STARS. (COMEDY / DRAMA)
Director: Mudassar Aziz
Stars: Kartik Aaryan, Bhumi Pednekar, Ananya Panday
I keep waiting for Kartik Aryan to give a breakthrough performance,but it is possible this is it for him. Nothing wrong with it he is pretty good at his craft. He is UP ka regular guy working in a regular job when he finds the 'woh' and he wants to do things for 'woh' and patni is not as exciting as the woh. Movie has a very simple straight forward script, not much changes it is very predictable with some twists at the end. Not all movies need to be creative genius, it goes on a good pace and ends on a high. The biggest surprise of the movie is Ananya Panday, she gives a very good performance! The kid is coming off a movie called 'Speed' you can't go lower than that, but then you bounce back with this!! Pretty impressive. Well played girl.
DABANGG 3 : NEGATIVE 1 (ACTION)
Director: Prabhu Deva (as Prabhudheva)
Stars: Salman Khan, Sudeep, Sonakshi Sinha
Sallu has done it. No one ever broke my air tight rating system from 0 to 5. There are many movies that grate on me, and I have to survive them just because I am dedicated to the fans of this blog. I had sleepless nights thinking how can I give this movie a 0, it will be grossly unfair to all those movies that I gave 0 before this one!! Finally I had to give in and admit that once in a while there will be a movie that will break me. So here it is - ladies and gentlemen I give you the first negative ranked movie of this blog.
Salman does his thing of being chulbul and ohh is he annoying!!? they take previous danbanggs and pick scenes and put all these scenes and lines and just use them again. Let's use them in a way that is the worst possible way. Worst part is Salman doing his shy but brave but funny routine of Dabangg which is not working anymore. It is horrible. They try to show teenage chulbul's life!! a 50 year old salman shying away from teen girls she is getting married to. oh boi... then there is this villain (who actually was the only good thing in the movie) who has an obsession of hanging people from high points and then talk for very long time with CGI worse than 1970s movie Mard. Anyway... even during corona times... you can skip this one.
MARDAANI 2 : 3.5 STARS. (THRILLER)
Director: Gopi Puthran
Stars: Rani Mukerji, Sunny Hinduja, Vishal Jethwa
Rani Mukerji is a good actor, she somehow was always overshadowed by Kajol. In 90s I thought Kajol was the greatest female lead I ever saw! but we were living in her world. If you take yourself outside of that world and look at her performances - they are unwatchable, loud and over the top. There are these actors who in their era just put a spell on us, but outside of that spell you watch them and you are like what the heck is this person doing. List is long from Raj Kumar, SRK, Rajesh Khanna, Dev Anand, to Kajol.
Anyway the first movie was pretty gripping and well done. This one is similar in effect to the first one. I wish they would not have taken the topic of Rape which makes me cringe. It seems to help the cause of perpetrators of crime and not the victims, the way hindi movies show it. Outside of it, Mardaani is pretty taut thriller with all the necessary ingredients in it. It is a good well made movie.
BUDGET MOVIES
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BYPASS ROAD : 3.0 STARS. (THRILLER)
Director: Naman Nitin Mukesh
Stars: Neil Nitin Mukesh, Adah Sharma, Gul Panag
Neil is acting and someone called Naman is Directing hmm... sounds like all within the family. It has all the characteristics of a thriller except for being an actual thriller. Don't get me wrong it has hugely complicated plot with twists etc. BUT who the heck background scored this one?? Who puts 70s Don music in car chases anymore? You gotta watch it for the 70s thriller music score... it is hilarious. You don't have to wait long it starts in the first scene itself.
The movie is about a murder of an employee of a tycoon who seems to be involved with her... or maybe not. Who did it, why etc... etc..
JAI MUMMY DI : 3.0 STARS. (COMEDY)
Director: Navjot Gulati
Stars: Sunny Singh Nijjar, Sonnalli Seygall, Supriya Pathak
2 mummy's are fighting since they used to be best friend in college. they are somehow neighbors and their kids have fallen in love. Both families are figuring how to navigate this problem. Sunny Singh is good as always, Sonali is ok too but the 2 Moms are just one dimensional and annoying. Supriya Pathak is wasted and Poonam Dhillon was never a great actor. Both have same lines and same expressions and nothing moves forward and don't hold your breath because movie ends and you are still wondering what happened.
YEH BALLET : 4.0 STARS. (DANCE / DRAMA)
Director: Sooni Taraporevala
Stars: Julian Sands, Achintya Bose, Danish Husain
2 Indian slum boys doing ballet, is not a movie people create out of thin air, unless real life creates it and then people make a movie about it. This real life story of 2 boys who are discovered by an American ballet great is a beautiful sweet movie about how things can happen in a way you can never script. Ballet great comes to India looking for a job in teaching and finds a home. Julian Sands is brilliant as a grumpy, sad and mean teacher. Both the kids are awesome too, I think one of them is playing himself. Very good change you will never see this again so might as well watch it.
MOTICHOOR CHAKNACHOOR : 3.0 STARS. (COMEDY)
Director: Debamitra Biswal
Stars: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Athiya Shetty, Vibha Chhibber
Another small budget movie with name stars. Athiya (Sunil Shetty's daughter) puts in a little more effort but she does not fit the role entirely. She is ok, star kids have it easy, but so do all of us kids who had parents who gave us things on a platter. So let's not complain and hope she improves. Nawazuddin does his job. Movie is about Athiya's only dream of going abroad, that she feels can only be completed by marrying an NRI. When nothing works she is trying her last ditch effort on this old lame neighbor from Dubai, or is he? Again movie never reaches a high, it goes and gets done.
BHANGRA PA LE : 3.0 STARS. (ROMANCE)
Director: Sneha Taurani
Stars: Sunny Kaushal, Rukshar Dhillon, Shriya Pilgaonkar
Both are in opposite teams, both love Bhangra and both fall in love. The movie runs in 2 parallels, the grand Dad's love for Bhangra and the present day grand son's love for Bhangraa. The director could not stitch together the huge canvas he was painting. It was pretty interesting plot but it kind of got lost in the narration back and forth. For the effort I gave an extra half point. In the end Love of Bhangraa does not trump 'Love'
DHEET PATANGEY : 2.5 STARS. (DRAMA)
Actor: Ali Murad, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Hardik Sanghani, Priya Banerjee, Shivin Narang, Tilotama Shom
Sometimes the philosophy of a movie trumps a movie. 4 friends embark on fulfilling their dreams because one of them might have cancer. So they decide they won't find who it is, and instead go live their dreams. mmm... a little too heavy. It starts in 1984 when India Won the world cup, and it has all the events of world cup scripted in it.
ARTSY
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LOVE SONIA : 4.0 STARS. (DRAMA)
Director: Tabrez Noorani
Stars: Abhishek Bharate, Riya Sisodiya, Mrunal Thakur
Strictly in the 'artsy' category it gets rave reviews. It is inspired by true story, it is horrifying how much human trafficking is connected in the world. In essence it is a story of poverty stricken farmer who in his low moments decides to sell his brother's daughter and later finds out her own daughter leaves to find her sister and get her back. That starts the extra ordinary journey of Mrunal Thakur, who is an exceptional actor. It is tragic and heart breaking so only if you are into this stuff, go for it.
GHOST STORIES : 4.0 STARS. (THRILLER / HORROR)
Director: Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Banerjee, Karan Johar, Anurag Kashyap
4 Directors 4 ghost stories. Technically only one was a traditional ghost (Karan Johar), others interpretation were a little out there. None of the story is below par, but none reaches a level where you are scared, which I guess is a good thing. If Karan goes for a very traditional story, Zoya goes for spirit that needs things kinda story, and obviously the weirdest and complete wacky is Anurag Sir. I am biased because he is my favorite, but you gotta watch his ghost to be 'weirded' out. A small childhood mental stigma creates an adult monster, it is put into a story in the most 'Anurag Kashyap' way possible. Dibakar Banerjee goes for the 'Zombies' interpretation of a Ghost and is pretty effective at it.
