Motley Melodrama Celebrated Iranian Majid Majidi’s first film set outside Iran, ‘Beyond the Clouds’, has the master filmmaker capturing the sights and sounds of Mumbai’s slums and shanties, the red-light areas and prison cells – all against the backdrop of poverty and probity. After their parents’ death in a car crash, Aamir (Ishaan Khatter) is…
Unrequited Love The tagline, ‘This is not a love story, but rather a story about love’ threatens to wear thin after a while; but National award-winning director Shoojit Sircar reuniting (Vicky Donor, Piku) with his favourite writer Juhi Chaturvedi manages to hold the viewer’s interest. Varun Dhawan plays 21-year-old Danesh (Dan) Walia, interning in various…
‘Comedy Of Terrors’: “Shake it up”, says Irrfan Khan’s boss, an order the former follows verbatim. Abhinay – son of Marathi and Hindi screen veterans Ramesh and Seema – Deo’s (Delhi Belly) latest, ‘Blackmail’ is a delightful take on infidelity which goes acutely out of hand in a vortex of blackmail and three deaths. Dev…
Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Drama Rating: 2.5/5 121 minutes Director: Mukul Abhyankar ‘An Over-Cooked Plot’ During the investigations, Mauritius top cop Buddhu (Annu Kapoor) pensively remarks to his investigating officers “Bahut saare loopholes hain”. The viewer is left wondering whether the words refer to the case or the script. A couple, Sushant (Manoj Bajpayee) and Aparna…
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Sci-fi Rating: 3.5/5 90 minutes Director: John Krasinski ‘The Eerie Sounds of Silence’ While the title ‘A Quiet Place’ could be a misnomer; it’s definitely an understatement of sorts. The premise begs the question: “What if – – -?” “What if aliens take over the world, as Hollywood has been threatening…
Genre: Drama Rating: 3.5/5 118 minutes Director: Sidharth Malhotra “The defect is in my speech, not in my intellect”, says newbie teacher Naina Mathur (Rani Mukerji) to her adversary, senior colleague Wadia (Neeraj Kabi), a few minutes into the film. That just about sums up the style and substance of Hichki. Mathur suffers from Tourette’s…
“Based on true stories”, claims the info during the opening credits, even as the film portrays the events during a single ‘search and seize’ raid in Lucknow in 1981. Amay Patnaik (Ajay Devgn) is an upright (both physically and morally) Deputy Commissioner of Income-tax — a couple of elaborately staged scenes during the opening frames…
The political predicament in the Middle East has been at the forefront of humanity since the past several decades, exacerbated by the Munich Olympics massacre in 1972, followed by the evacuation of hostages at Entebbe, Uganda on 4 July 1976. Within a year of the latter, three films were made on the Entebbe incident —…
‘What the eyes behold the mind may not always agree with’. Debutant director Arjun Mujerjee has woven three tales (each of them with a dark and intriguing past) leading to a denouement where writer Althea Kaushal strives to link them all up. The ubiquitous lower-class Mumbai chawl (Maya Nagar in this case) is the setting…
The Saga of the Shahanshas is an attempt by Adi F. Merchant to chronicle Firdausi Toosi’s poetic magnum opus – The Shahnameh, in prose. Shahnameh or the Book of Kings is the world’s longest epic poem written by the Persian poet Firdausi of Toos between 977 and 1010 CE. Any attempt to translate it from…
At one point in the film, one of the central characters utters “All parents are liars.” ‘The Valley’, presumably titled due to its setting in the Silicon Valley, California, narrates the story of first-year college student Maya (Agneeta Thacker) — a second generation Asian American — striving to cope with cultural differences. Neal Kumar (Alyy…