The only semblance of thuggery in the film was a half hour into the film when one started to get the feeling that it was the viewer who was being waylaid… It’s 1795 and the well-entrenched East India Company dupes a Maharaja (Ronit Roy), killing him, his wife and his son. His daughter Zafira survives,…
The perils of viewing a sequel, if one hasn’t watched its predecessors, are quite a few: understanding the story and characters, lack of continuity, etc. In ‘Halloween’, the eleventh in the series, which began in 1978 with (surprisingly) the same title, director and co-writer David Green, ensure that the 10 sequels/remakes are bypassed. Jamie Lee…
‘What goes up must come down’ – director Chawla gives us a lesson in quantum physics while loosely adapting his film on the 1987 Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen starrer, ‘Wall Street’. Rizwan Ahmed (debutant Rohan Mehra) is a small-time share broker from Allahabad who aims big, he sets base in the commercial capital to meet,…
Genre: Drama Rating: 1.5/5 142 minutes Director: Vipul Shah Arjun Kapoor’s droopy eyelids and drowsy demeanour might not be the only reasons the viewer would have snoozed halfway through the film. No fewer than eight jarring songs have been sadistically inserted as timely alarms, lest the paying viewer enjoy his slumber. Fittingly, the film opens…
When William A. Wellman wrote the story for the first ‘A Star is Born’ (1937) and won the Oscar for his efforts, little would he have envisaged that three remakes would follow – in 1954, 1976 and 2018. The most recent, and an almost faithful adaptation of the 1976 version, has Lady Gaga (born Stefani…
Genre: Thriller, Comedy, Mystery Rating: 4/5 140 minutes Director: Sriram Raghavan The mystery/thriller genre in Hindi films has been largely under-utilised and barely exploited, save for the odd ones such as B R Chopra’s ‘Hamraaz’ or ‘Ittefaq’. But even in these, the suspense unfolded in the dying (pun intended) moments of the films. Officially inspired…
Genre: Action, Thriller Rating: 1.5/5 104 minutes Director: Pierre Morel The title, which is grossly misleading, refers to the flavour of the ice-cream Carly (Cailey Flemina) was about to have on her tenth birthday when she and her parents were mowed down by the gun-toting hoodlums of druglord Diego Garcia (Juan Pablo Raba). While Carly…
Genre: Drama, Comedy Rating: 3/5 136 minutes Director: Vishal Bhardwaj Vishal Bhardwaj has always been known to do the unexpected – in a typical deviation, this time he lays focus in the hinterland of Rajasthan. Adapted from a six-page story, ‘Do Behnein’ by Charan Singh Pathik in which two sisters Champa ‘Badki’ (Radhika Madan in an impressive…
For those unfamiliar with the subject – Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955) was a prolific storywriter who supplemented his earnings by penning film scripts. His writings could be acerbic and vitriolic, but more of that latter. Biographies are generally arduous to navigate, leaving the filmmaker with a tough choice – whom to appease – the paying…
Genre: Drama, Crime Rating: 2.5/5 130 minutes Director: Sanjib Dey It’s been widely publicised as India’s first multilingual film — English, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Manipuri and Nagamese — in English subtitles wherever necessary. ‘lll Smoking Barrels’ is an anthology of three stories, all based in ‘Far East India’ but disparate — by director Sanjib Dey,…
Genre: Action, Thriller Rating: 3/5 123 minutes Director: Antoine Fuqua There would have apparently been a strong enough reason for Denzel Washington to have assented to do his first ever sequel — four years after ‘The Equalizer’ which was based upon the TV series of the 80s. He reprises his role of Robert McCall, a…