Six-and-a-half decades after Sohrab Modi’s technicolor epic but commercially disastrous ‘Jhansi ki Rani’ hit the screens, comes a modern-day version with Kangana Ranaut in the lead of Manikarnika (Manu). The common runtime of 148 minutes could be a mere coincidence though. The story begins in 1828 in Varanasi where great fame is predicted for a…
Also known as ‘The Mumbai Siege: 4 Days of Terror’, the film attempts to recreate the ghastly, inhuman attacks on the iconic Taj Mahal hotel which claimed 166 innocent lives. The four-day siege on the Taj was just one of many such strikes, though it was the one which was the one to have captured…
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Action Rating: 3/5 159 minutes Director: Rohit Shetty Let’s get one thing clear – Rohit Shetty has proved amply in the past that his films (Golmaal, Singham), like Manmohan Desai’s in the 70s, are intended to titillate the grey cells – not stimulate them; nor has he ever demonstrated any pretensions to…
Genre: Drama, Crime, Thriller Rating: 2.5/5 125 minutes Director: Tigmanshu Dhulia It took almost a half century to metamorphose Guru Dutt’s iconic title (thankfully not the film) ‘Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam’ 1962 to ‘Saheb, Biwi aur Gangster’ in 2011. A sequel ‘SBG Returns’ followed a couple of years later. The more-than-moderate success of the two…
Genre: Animation, Fantasy 101 minutes Rating: 4/5 Director: Wes Anderson BFF, not so long ago, signified something else: it meant the friendly and loyal dog. Writer/producer/director Wes Anderson (Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel) takes us through a story of exile and reinforces our belief, though circumlocutorily, that BFF is still the canine. Orphaned…
Baap Aur Punya The best known sequence, till now, of Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor is of ‘Naseeb’ (1981) where the two cavort to the evocatively sung Mohammad Rafi’s ‘Chal mere bhai’. Now, in ‘102 Not Out’, their sixth collaboration, AB and RK deliver an unbridled comedy, based on the eponymous Gujarati play, written by…
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…
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…
It’s a well-known allegory that in communist dominated Russia, the citizens had to toe the line of the powers-that-be, no matter what. Taking a cue from this parable, former CIA operative Jason Mathews’ 2013 novel has been fashioned into an espionage thriller, based on Justin Haythe’s screenplay. Jennifer Lawrence plays ballerina Dominica Egorava, who breaks…
Early on in the film one of the central characters in the film mouths the dialogue “In our job we cannot afford confusion”. This line could very well have been spoken by writer-director Neeraj Pandey as viewed throughout the first half of the 160 minute film. The lengthy opening disclaimer too is understandable – after…
The info, or rather statistics, imparted to the viewers in the beginning attempts to assure them that they are in for a thriller. We are told that Los Angeles is the bank robbery capital of the world – every 48 minutes there is a bank heist in the City of the Angels. The film opens…