With Queen of Katwe, Mira Nair has, as in Mississippi Masala (1991), put Uganda once more on the world map. Based on a true story, QoK is a simplistic tale of an 11-year-old who is plucked from virtual obscurity to being a global chess player. It’s 2007 in the poverty-stricken slums of Katwe, in Kampala,…
It’s a trilingual film, produced simultaneously in Tamil (as Devi) and in Telegu (as Abhinetry). Krishna (Prabhu Deva) proposes to practically any female in his multinational company, where he works as an executive. His repeated attempts to woo modern, hep girls perpetually end in dismal failure. Resorting to marrying a village belle (Tamannaah), but embarrassed…
If a modern-day film with a legendary folktale as the backdrop and boasting of 15 tracks qualifies as a musical, so be it. Let’s check that out later. Mirzya is purportedly based on the lines of immortal sagas such as Heer-Ranjha and Sohni-Mahiwal. Munish and Suchitra are pre-teen classmates, bonding over everything — travelling to…
A second sequel, 15 years after the original is by Hollywood standards not an unduly long interval. But, perhaps it would, if the subject is romance and subject is romance and at the core of the film is a 43-year-old childless spinster. Bridget (Renee Zellweger) celebrates her 43rd birthday all by herself. But at a…
In ‘Raaz Reboot’ we are shown a couple Shaina (Kriti Kharbanda) and Rehaan (Gaurav Arora) in Romania, in Dracula’s homeland Transylvania to be precise — an extremely noble gesture on the part of the filmmakers to forewarn us! Rehaan has chucked a job in India, one through which he could buy a house within three…
‘Pink’, as the title suggests, denotes femininity and the film is all about feminism – women’s rights, social mores etc. in a country where a girl’s character is decided by her dress and the time she returns home at night. Fine-tuning the legal system in India is no easy task for a defence attorney up…
Based on the 2012 novel by ML Stedman and spanning 32 years – from the end of WW1 to 1950, LBO is as evocatively emotional as it is refreshingly riveting. Shot in New Zealand and Australia, LBO tells the story of Tom Sherbourne (Michael Fassbender), who, after his stint in the Great War, takes up…
600 feet can be more than just a distance – it could spell the difference between life and a gruesome, horrifying death. Texas girl, Nancy Adams (Blake Lively) has dropped out of medical college after her mother’s death due to a long bout of cancer. She sets out to visit the beaches and surf the…
Daniel Dafoe’s 1719 influential novel — by the same name — has undergone a sea-change (pun intended) in the 297 years since it was published. Kesteloot’s film gives Dafoe’s beloved tale a new dimension — a 3D one. Crusoe (voice of Yuri Lowenthal) gets marooned after escaping a shipful of buccaneers. Stepping on an island…
‘Wrong Side Raju’ is partly based on the 2013 BMW hit-and-run case in Ahmedabad, involving Vismay Shah. Simpleton Raju Bhambani (Pratik Gandhi) is a driver in the country’s biggest law firm, whose owner Amitabh Shah (Asif Basra) shares a tempestuous relationship with his son Tanmay (British-born Kavi Shastri — last seen in ‘Neerja’, as the…
Sully is a vivid portrayal of the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ as it was called when Capt. Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger and his First Officer Jeff Skiles heroically landed an Airbus 320 in the icy waters of the Hudson River on 15 January 2009. Failure of both the engines after the plane struck a flock of…