“I never argue, I explain,” is just one of the many one-liners veteran actress Maggie Smith, as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, gets to deliver in this reprisal of the hit British TV series, which aired in Britain from 2010 to 2015. It’s 1927, and what begins as a simple story of King George…
Sifting through 500 hours of archival footage – most of it not seen before – Oscar-winning director Asif Kapadia, has constructed a lively and obsessive documentary about the world’s best-known footballer of the 80s. The film begins when SSC Napoli, a little-known football club in Italy, welcomes their newest recruit, 23-year-old Maradona on 5 July,…
“Stories have the power to hurt or heal,” says a child’s voice at the beginning of the film. In this film, adapted from the series of stories by Alvin Schwartz, one wonder what power this film could have – to hurt, heal.. or horrify! Set in 1968 during Halloween (that’s a given), in the small…
When Dr. Strange utters ‘We’re in the endgame now’, in the closing stages of Infinity War (2018), it’s possible that a few viewers would have guessed the title of this, the 22nd in the series. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo along with previous collaborators, have attempted a closure of sorts in this three-hour epic. The backstory…
Genre: Musical, Family, Fantasy Rating: 4/5 130 minutes Director: Rob Marshall The first thing one is likely to remember of the 1964 classic ‘Mary Poppins’ are the songs, especially ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’ and the wonderfully made-up ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’. Though set in 1935, the sequel comes 54 years later. Michael Banks (Ben Winshaw), a recently widowed dad…
Genre: Drama, Romance, Comedy Rating: 3/5 157 minutes Director: Anurag Kashyap Whatever Punjabis do, it’s not only without inhibition but with a great deal of spontaneity. If ‘Udta Punjab’ (2016) showcased the rampant drug menace in the state, ‘Manmarziyaan’, Anurag Kashyap’s latest — a romantic comedy — has dollops of free-spirited, licentious and overt passion….
Genre: Action, Comedy, Thriller. Rating: 2.5/5 117 minutes Director: Susanna Fogel Had it not been for the gory violence and almost continual action scenes, I would have been tempted to classify ‘The Spy Who Dumped Me’ as a screwball comedy. A spin on the title of the 1977 ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ (Roger Moore’s third…
‘Bigfoot in the Park’ ‘‘These creatures don’t need our protection, they need our absence”. This would probably be true for all non-humans but in the film its referred to the extinct dinosaurs which inhabited the earth aeons ago and which were ‘revived’ a quarter century ago by the brilliant filmmaker Steven Spielberg. It’s the fifth in…
Genre: Drama Rating: 3/5 108 minutes Director : Harish Vyas In Any Other Language Sometime during the latter part of the film, when the middle-aged couple begin to have their irreconcilable differences, the till then subdued wife utters a cliched but telling remark “Our relationship is nominal, our togetherness even more so”. Set in…
‘A Reverse Flick’ Even the most honourable of intentions at the planning stage will not always result in an acceptable finished product. Sudhir Mishra’s ‘Daas Dev’ comes to us on screen more than a decade aafter he had conceptualised a modern-day version of the 1917 Bengali classic Devdas by Sarat Chandra Chatterjee (Chattopadhyay). The text…
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…