On 30th September, 2019, the specifics of this year’s MAMI Film Festival, from 17 – 24 October, were unveiled. Having teamed up partially with Netflix and with 190 films from 50 countries, spread across 14 categories – including the prestigious International Competition – this year’s carnival promises to showcase a diverse palette of cinema –…
“It’s true – the rich are different,” these words are uttered at one point in the film. Little would Grace (Samara Weaving), brought up as a foster child, have imagined that her wedding night excitement could extend to desperately attempting to save her life from her in-laws, with her husband Alex (Mark O’Brien) being a…
“Never fall in love with the law”, warns senior criminal lawyer Tarun Saluja (Akshaye Khanna) while delivering a guest lecture to law students. This scene quickly turns to a film set where well-known but domineering director Rohan Khurana (Rahul Bhatt) is at work. Jump to his residence where assistant costume designer Anjali Damle (Meera Chopra)…
The opening frames of the film could well serve as a reminder of the recent bounteous monsoon – with IIT students running around the hostel, clad only in underpants, drenching one another as if there was no tomorrow. Maya (Shraddha Kapoor) and Annirudh (Sushant Singh Rajput) were rank holders in 1992, but are now a…
The first thing one would think upon hearing of the impending release of this film would likely be ‘Three’s a crowd’. The third in the series after ‘Olympus Has Fallen'(2013) and ‘London Has Fallen’ (2016), this latest one reprises Gerard Butler as Secret Service agent Mike Banning, personal guard of US President Allan Trumbull (Morgan…
Set in Madhopur, Bihar, in 2005, with joints having names like ‘Murgh Donald’ and ‘Shotgun Shaadi Band’ (the film, incidentally, was initially titled ‘Shotgun Shaadi’) abound in this unending drama of forced marriages from the girl’s side (for a change), in cases where exorbitant dowry is demanded. Hukam Singh (Javed Jaffrey), who specializes in such…
Director Anubhav Sinha catches the viewer unawares, opening the film with Bob Dylan’s contemplative ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, as IPS officer Ayan Ranjan (Ayushmann Khurrana) arrives at Lalgaon, in the hinterland of UP, to take up his latest assignment. On the way, amidst the chatter of folklore by his driver, they pass by a group…
When the first in the series was released in 1995 – though fairly successful – one barely had the hunch that three more would follow: in 1999, then in 2010 and now, nine years later. Sequels are rarely meant, or expected to be as lucrative as the original. That ‘Toy Story 4’ debunks this popular…
Just a tip: a couple – make that a handful – of tissues always come in handy when watching films on destitute quadrupeds. Based on the book by W Bruce Cameron, who’s also written ‘A Dog’s Journey’ (due out later this year) – the follow-up to his immensely successful ‘A Dog’s Purpose’ (2017) – it…
Firstly, classics – and this one claims to be an official remake of the 1980 Saeed Mirza original – are to be left well alone. Secondly, one wonders why this has been tagged as the ‘official remake’. There are few, if any, similarities – the essence of the two films being the angst and the…
Fifty-three years may not be a long time to reopen a case involving the — mysterious, no doubt — death of India’s second Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. That he was grossly underestimated and has been almost obliterated from public memory is borne out with the film repeatedly reminding us that though he too was…