Shimla mirchi, the Indian capsicum, is not supposed to be spicy – not even pungent. Ramesh Sippy’s film by the same name, released after more than five years of completion, stays true to the meaning! Avinash (Rajkummar Rao) is on a holiday with his family (all women!) to picturesque Shimla where his eyes dwell on…
“DDLJ jaisa ending hoga kya?” asks a character, referring to the blockbuster of the 90s. This is just one of the many films alluded to in Amar Kaushik’s latest, written with wittiness by Niren Bhatt. The theme of male ‘premature’ issues seems to be captivating audiences of late. Just a week after ‘Ujda Chaman’ hit…
‘P se P, F se F’ refers to Article 15 of our Constitution, which enshrine clauses pertaining to ‘discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste and sex’, much as the recent ‘Section 375’ which referred to IPC’s section on sexual assault. ‘Based on continuing true stories’, is what we are informed. Sooraj Mali (debutant Bhavesh…
Any film of Shah Rukh Khan romancing in Europe must inevitably fall in the shadow of that incorrigible romantic Yash Chopra’s ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’ — 22 years ago. In Imtiaz Ali’s ‘Jab Harry Met Sejal’, the director spouts the same tale (Jab We Met) of the girl severing her betrothal and marrying another. A…
Phillauri is the story of a friendly but confused ghost and age-old traditions, peppered quite liberally with Punjabi folk songs. Kannan (Suraj Sharma – Life of Pi) is a Canada-returned Punjabi boy due to marry his childhood sweetheart Anu (a comely Mehreen Kaur Pirzada in her first Hindi film). But as the disinterested Kannan is…
Sequels have their own quirky way of exacting interest from potential viewers, especially if the earlier film has been more than a moderate success. Three years after Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania starring Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan hit the screen, comes the second in the franchise, though not a sequel with the lead pair unchanged….
A well-intentioned plot, some none-too-brilliant casting and more than a few gauche movements are what make up The Space Between Us, a film set in the near future. Innovative entrepreneur Nathaniel Shepherd (British veteran Gary Oldman) brings to fruition his long-cherished dream of setting up a human colony in neighbouring planet Mars. The only hiccup…
Director Sanjay Gupta has always shown a penchant for adapting, or taking inspiration from foreign films — his first directorial venture Aatish (1994) was based on the Hong Kong film ‘A Better Tomorrow’ (1986). Eight years later he remade Tarantino’s cult ‘Reservoir Dogs’ into the hugely successful ‘Kaante’. Now comes ‘Kaabil’ — part ‘Blind Fury’…
Shaad Ali’s (Saathiya) tryst with the romance genre continues. This time he’s opted to remake Mani Ratnam’s Tamil version of ‘OK Kadhal Kanmani’. Adi (Aditya Roy Kapur), a video-game designer from Kanpur, meets Tara (Shraddha Kapoor), an architecture graduate at a friend’s church wedding. The two don’t have any compunctions about communicating and relaying phone…
Released with barely an ado, Haraamkhor is the story of 15-year-old Sandhya (Shweta Tripathi), a small town schoolgirl infatuated with her school teacher Shyam (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), even as 12-year-old Kamal (Irfan Khan) secretly pines for Sandhya. Goading him on is his confidant Minto (Mohammed Samad). Writer-Director Shlok Sharma, in his debut feature film — one…
Apparently set in the distant future, the starship Avalon is on a 120-year journey to ‘Homestead 2’ – a distant colony planet of Earth. During the voyage, due to a systems failure, passenger Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) wakes up from his hibernation within 30 years, 90 years too early. The 5000 passengers and 258 crew…