Ashdoc's Bollywood movie reviews

→ in
Tools    





Force 2 ( november 2016 )



John Abraham plays the brooding cop who still broods over his now dead wife , who was killed in the war against drugs in the first edition of the movie . So much so that he still has visions of her talking to him....And now he receives another shock ; his friend is among three RAW ( India's innocuously named covert operations agency , for the full form is 'research and analysis wing ' ) agents who have been killed in China .

But his friend has sent a clue to him that means that the person who revealed the names of RAW agents and caused their deaths at the hands of the Chinese is in the Indian embassy of Budapest , which is the capital city of Hungary . It is a job for RAW and not a cop like John , but 'Action Abraham' has the FORCE to break through all barriers and protocols and he is the one who is sent to Budapest with a lass---Sonakshi Sinha .

The action of course has started way before John even enters the screen , and it is breakneck and breathless . Once he enters , the fights hot up at double the speed . From putting the fear of hell among mean goons in dusty construction sites , to fighting with highly trained men firing accurate shots from sniper rifles mounted on helicopters---John does it all .

Sonakshi proves more a clownish character who cannot fire her gun at the nation's enemies at the decisive moment , but she proves mighty useful flashing her RAW agent I card to get inside restricted places....now do they carry an I card in foreign countries , these RAW agents ? Are they really THAT secret ? LoL . Sonakshi also inadvertently gets to fix a one night stand between John and a hot babe , but 'Action Abraham' is only pure action and not bang bang if you know what I mean....more like Rambo and less like James Bond is he....

And Rambo would be proud of Abraham's body---so powerfully well muscled that it can carry the entire weight of a film on his admittedly broad shoulders . And he has to carry that weight , for the villain ( Tahir Bhasin ) is an unknown and Sonakshi just doesn't fit the bill .

Tahir acts totally cocksure , taunting and sniggering at the two agents all the way . He is not bad acting wise . And the taunting and sniggering goes on all the time as the chase for catching him goes up and down buildings and alleyways . The firing of guns is outclassed only by the thumping of feet while giving chase to the elusive quarry . In all this , Sonakshi feels more like a dead weight chained to John....it's a manly world , this world of spies and secret agents . Women are not of much use here and our action Abraham is not even James Bond to use them for sex . He is a one woman man , and even the vision of his wife prodding him towards Sonakshi does not have much success .

The film does make an emotional pitch however , asking us to not forget the sacrifices that RAW agents have done for the country . Asks us to acknowledge the fact that their sacrifices are not recorded like those of soldiers because they have died on covert missions . Wants the names of RAW agents who died for the sake of the country to be declared so that their families can be proud of them in public . And says that India is changing and is not afraid to attack the enemy in his lair , as the surgical strike to take revenge for the Uri terror strike shows . This made me up the rating of the film from two to three stars , though some in the audience were sniggering at Bollywood's attempt to cash in on the surgical strikes .

Photography of the film is decent and the colours are okay . The music is not impactful and the one or two songs are forgettable . Acting is decent by everybody .

Verdict---decent .

Three stars .



Dear Zindagi ( Dear Life ) December 2016



Alia Bhatt plays a cinematographer in the film industry . Her career is in Mumbai but she is from Goa . Her problem is that she moves from relationship to relationship but shirks away from commitment because of past psychological issues .

Alia really likes Kunal Kapoor and he proposes to her , but because of her issues she misses the bus---she rejects him , and by the time she realises her mistake it is too late . This and problems with the landlord of the house she stays in force her to shift back to Goa , where her parents try to fix her match with various boys without success because her personal issues are with them . But by chance she meets Shah Rukh Khan who is a psychologist . He helps her deal with her past and look at life with a new perspective . He changes her relationship with her parents as she begins to look at them in a new light . Many of her therapy sessions with Shah Rukh occur in the outdoors , and even those in the indoors mesmerise Alia so much that she again falls in love....

Acting is nice by everyone , especially by Alia , SRK and her best friend ( Yashaswini Dayama ) . Because of the semi westernised settings many of the dialogues are in hinglish ( mixture of hindi and english ) . It is the kind of movie that will be liked more by women , though men won't mind sitting with them too...

Songs and music is decent and photography is okay . Alia looks cute in short clothes . SRK looks mature and wizened with a beard . Some of the conversations between Alia and SRK are endearing and the moments of bonding with Yashaswini are really cuddly .

All in all , a decent movie . I will give three stars out of five . Women will give more .



Dangal ( Wrestling zone ) december 2016



Amir Khan plays Mahavir Singh Phogat , a former wrestler who hopes for a son , because that son could potentially turn out to be the wrestler who could deliver what Mahavir couldn't---a gold medal for India in wrestling , a sport that Mahavir had to give up playing due to financial difficulties . But his wife delivers only daughters---four of them .

However one day when his daughters beat up a neighbouring boy , Mahavir realises their fighting potential and decides to make them female wrestlers who could win a medal or two for India in international competitions . His harsh training includes cutting off his daughters' hair , which is thought to be equivalent to loss of femininity in the patriarchal region of Haryana to which he belongs and is resented by his daughters . His passion for making them sportswomen in a sport dominated in India by men is not shared by the daughters , and they decide to refuse to co operate with him---until a teenage bride shows them how their father wants to make something of their lives in contrast to other girls like herself who are forced to marry at 14/15 years in that backward region of India . This makes them train for sports in real zest to make their father's dream come true .

Father makes his daughters wrestle against boys inspite of the sexual taunts that they have to face , and wins the grudging respect of crowds by beating the boys . The elder daughter Geeta goes on to win the national championship in this manner . As she moves to the national sports academy she has to train under a new coach---Pramod Kadam ( Girsh Kulkarni ) . Pramod is a highly egoistic person who brooks no interference in his method of coaching , and is dismissive of Mahavir's methods . Geeta ( played by Fatima Sana Shaikh ) is also impressed by the lifestyle of the sports academy with it's glamour and becomes dismissive of the father , growing her hair and liking the mild attraction that boys show in her newfound femininity .

This leads to a ferocious bout of wrestling between Geeta and her father , and breakdown of relations between them to the chagrin of her mother ( played by Sakshi Tanvar ) and her sister Babita ( played by Sanya Malhotra ) . But as Geeta starts losing her wrestling bouts in tournaments , she runs to who else but daddy dearest for rescue . But daddy's re entry in her training raises the ire and jealousy of her coach , and almost leads to Geeta's eviction from the academy .

So does Geeta go on to win a medal for India ? If so , then which---bronze , silver or gold ? Who is responsible for the win---father or coach ? To what despicable extent does the coach go to stop Amir from hogging the glory of Geeta's success ? Watch the movie for the answers .

The highlight of the movie are the intense wrestling bouts that are shown in the film , showing the indepth study that Amir Khan has made of the sport and it's various techniques and methods---something that is the hallmark of his style of moviemaking . As usual , it seems Amir has directed the movie and the director is a mere figurehead . For the first time in my life I started taking an interest in watching the sport of wrestling , and was watching all the wrestling bouts with rapt attention and admiring them in detail .

Even with cut hair Fatima Sana Sheikh looks real attractive and her full breasts can be made out through the tight clothes of a wrestler , a point that I noticed was not present in other female wrestlers . Now were any special efforts made for her , like padding etc ?

Acting by everyone is decent , and the haryanvi accent is well picked up . Obviously , the movie plays up to the audience's patriotic instincts and we fall hook line and sinker for that , cheering in our hearts for India when Geeta wrestles in international championships . There are no songs and music can be called okay . Photography is okay too though colours are bit dull .

Verdict---Good .

Four stars out of five .



Tee sadhya kaay kartey ( What does she do now ? ) January 2017



This movie has a name that intrigues the mind---'What does she do now ?'. Obviously it is calculated to remind us of all the old flames we loved and liked in school and college days , but whom we never got to romance because we were too young to so that . And asks us to try to bring those old flames into our minds again , by forcing us to wonder and find out what they are doing right now .

One wonders what a romantically mysterious movie it would have been if it was made in the eighties or nineties , before social media made it easy to contact old friends again . The sheer difficulty of searching for the one loved and lost would have made the cinematic journey exciting . Today in the age of facebook and whatsapp the photos and happenings in the life of old acquaintances are available to us at a click of a mouse .

But nostalgia is nostalgia , isn't it ? At a reunion of old friends Anurag comes to know of his old flame having returned to India for a short break from her residence in a foreign country , and his mind is filled with memories of the old times he spent with her while they were growing up in the same neighbourhood together . She was his close friend , confidante , and also his first love---but love was something that neither of them could confess to each other at that age , and that was the catch....

But it is not just about love , but about the times they spent as friends---he finding excuses to take her scooter to take rides with his various girlfriends in the city , she stealing her father's alcohol because he wanted to have his first drink , his father having a heart attack and she helping out like a family member in the hospital till she tired out and slept with her head on his shoulders , she scolding him for his various misdemeanours in school and college , them fighting and then making up....

But the last fight is when the relation crumbles , with she shifting to another city and later to a foreign land . But now she is back , albeit for a short while . So does the hero manage to meet her again ? And what does he want to say ? And what is her reaction ? Now that both have their own households , what is the point in reconnecting again ? To find out the answers , it may be necessary to watch the movie .

The movie makes a fine emotional bonding with the audience , with the characters on the point of tears on several occasions in the movie . And the songs are appropriately nostalgic , evoking tears of nostalgia . Reunions become not just meetings with old friends , but rewinding of old happenings and mistakes . And some of those mistakes could have been life changing , like not having expressed feelings to the right person at the right time . So is it possible to turn the clock back , and recant for some of the lapses in judgement done in the past ?

The movie has decent acting throughout , from the hero played by son of yesteryears star Laxmikant Berde to the heroine played by Arya Ambekar . Music and songs are likeable if you like them to be nostalgic , and photography is okay . It is not a regular love story , and is worth watching if you like something different .

Verdict---Good .

Three stars .



Not surprisingly, we saw a rather successful end of 2016 with the Aamir Khan starred Dangal that continues to rule the box office even after the New Year has begun. But Salman Khan's Sultan movies record of Top Opening Week Grossers of 2016 is not broken by Amir Khans 'Dangal' movie to know more about Bollywood Box Office go to Bollywood Hungama here - bollywoodhungama/news/box-office-special-features
Attachments
Click image for larger version

Name:	Sultan-1.jpg
Views:	108
Size:	118.6 KB
ID:	28513  



Raees ( Wealthy ) January 2017



This film is said to have been made on an obscure ( obscure at least to me , though probably well known to local people ) Don from the Indian state of Gujarat named Abdul Latif , though the film makers have denied this .

Gujarat has prohibition implemented in it's territory , a legacy of being the birth place of Gandhi who was totally against alcohol . But the people of the state drink heartily , and this has led to the state becoming a place where illegal liquor selling is a business in itself .

Raees ( Shah Rukh Khan ) grows up helping an illegal liquor supplier , and later moves to another seller named Jayaraj ( Atul Kulkarni ) who uses his skills to move illegal liquor from one place to another . But when Raees tries to start his own business along with his friend Sadiq ( Mohammad Zeeshan Ayub ) , Jayaraj does not take it kindly . After some convoluted happenings involving a some real violence , Raees gets to become independent of Jayaraj . But the fortuitous manner in which he is saved from getting ruined by a bigger Don named Musa is not impressive .

Later Raaes gets a chance to show his own ingenuity . When he is fooled by a couple of politicians , Raees forms his own political party and outwits them . A particularly persistent police officer named Majmudar ( Nawazuddin Siddiqui ) however decides to target Raaes and a contest of wits develops among the two .

Some of the dialogues of the film from the mouth of the two protagonists ( Raees and Majmudar ) are good , and remind of older action/crime films when dialogues from both the hero and villain ruled supreme . Raees rises higher and higher in Gujarat's criminal hierarchy while this is happening .

In the end however , crime does not pay . Raees is fooled into becoming a much bigger criminal than he thought and his career comes to an end . So he is not invincible and the aura that has been built around him in the film does not live upto it's hype . The 'baniye ka dimaag' ( brains of a sharp shopkeeper ) that he is supposed to have does not work when it is needed most .

The attempt towards the end to prove how fair minded he was sounds fake . If the film is based on a real life Don , then did he really decide not to escape to a foreign country when given the chance just because he was feeling guilty ? And was the real Don so clean that he kept himself away from terrorism ? Not believable . The attempt to prove how secular he was also sounds fake too .

Songs and photography are decent , and Shah Rukh Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui act decently too . But Mahira Khan is not good as Raees' wife , though she is extremely fair in colour . Sunny Leone is more enticing in her dance however . The film itself cannot be called a memorable film .

Verdict---okay .

Two and a half stars out of five .



Kaabil ( Capable ) January 2017



To be honest I am reluctant to see movies of physically handicapped people , and it was not easy to coax myself to see this movie in which both the hero and the heroine are blind .

Hrithik Roshan and Yami Gautam play a blind couple , who have got married recently . Hrithik gives background voice to animated movies and has the ability to speak in a range of voices and imitate several people's voices .

But Yami falls prey to the lust of Rohit Roy , brother of a local politician ( played by Ronit Roy ) . Rohit and his sidekick violate Yami's honour , and derail the medical investigation so that no evidence is found of the violation .

The police are not supportive , and one of the police officers ( Girish Kulkarni ) is openly in league with the villains . Ronit Roy is a powerful politician and no one can touch his brother Rohit .

Under these circumstances how to bring Rohit and the other violator ( Rohit's friend played by Sahidur Rehman ) to get just punishment for their heinous crime ? The manner in which Hrithik takes revenge on the villains by using his ability to imitate people's voices and causing fatal misunderstandings among them is interesting to watch .

The first half of the movie is not great with me feeling uncomfortable seeing the struggles of the couple to lead a normal existence inspite of being blind , and then the tragedy . The second half is more gripping with some real violence and revenge saga .

Poor Yami Gautam seems destined to act in roles in which she dies on screen in repeated number of films . But she continues to look good . Hrithik acts decently . Ronit Roy acts well as the lawless politician and speaks in a marathi accent as if he was born with it . Rohit Roy plays his rogue brother confidently and has built his muscles . Akhilendra Mishra is redoubtable as the father of Rohit's friend and shows fire in his eyes . The corrupt police inspector Girish Kulkarni is actually a popular marathi film industry actor and seems to be getting more and more negative roles in Bollywood as he already played a villain in Dangal .

Music is good and some of the songs are hummable . Photography and colours are okay but nothing special . The film is worth watching due to the action scenes in the second half .

Verdict---Three stars out of five .



The ghazi attack ( february 2017 )



This film is a fictionalised account of the sinking of Pakistani submarine Ghazi ( holy warrior ) during the India Pakistan war of 1971---the liberation of Bangladesh . The Indians have said that Ghazi was sunk by Indian naval warship INS Rajput while the Pakistanis have said that it was sunk either by it's own mines which it hit by mistake or by internal explosion . But the real happenings are a mystery , and thus fodder for a fiction film . The film is in hindi officially , but since many of the officers in the armed forces rely on english for orders and communication it can be called a bi lingual film .

The film starts with a RAW ( Indian spy agency ) agent ( Milind Gunaji ) giving information to the top brass of the Indian navy ( headed by Om Puri ) that the dreaded Pakistani submarine Ghazi is headed to the bay of Bengal to threaten the Indian navy aircraft carrier INS Vikrant . The Ghazi is justly dreaded because it is more advanced than Indian submarines and was capable of protecting the entire Pakistani navy from Indian naval attack in the previous ( 1965 ) war .

The Indian navy submarine S-21 is sent to challenge it , and the result is a classic battle of maneuver and countermaneuver and fire and counterfire . Even though the technology of making the film is a bit inferior by western standards , it a kind of film that authors who have written novels of sea warfare like Alistair Maclean and Tom Clancy would relish . And what it lacks in technology is made in terms of emotion and patriotism .

The Indian submarine is headed by a passionately headstrong officer Ranvijay Singh ( played by Kay Kay Menon ) . And to control his rash nature is sent another officer Arjun Verma ( Rana Daggubati ) . As if to moderate the clash between the two is a third officer Devraj ( Atul Kulkarni ) . In the first half it is the hot temper of Kay Kay Menon which dominates . From countermanding orders by high command to putting his gun on Daggubati's head , he does it all . Rana Daggubati gets chance in the sun only when Menon is out of the way . The Pakistani commander Razzaq is played by Rahul Singh , who is as wily as it gets . The Bangladeshi refugee played by Tapsee Pannu is forgettable .

As the movie heads into the second half , so do the stakes get racked up . And as the stakes become higher , so does the high voltage drama . This is film that gets better and better as it nears it's climax , which is exactly what makes for a good film .

The real winner is the recreation of the interior of a 1970s submarine , and the exact detail to which the naval atmosphere and working and language is neatly shown . But all this is understandable only to educated urban audiences , and uneducated and rural folk might be out of sync with the proceedings .

The film ups the ante of patriotism by making the crew sing patriotic songs as the film reaches the climax of tension ; songs which are faintly heard across the waves by the crew of the enemy submarine . This is not total fiction as it sounds but there have been occasions in real warfare when crew of sinking ships and downing subs have sung national anthems before everything came to an end....

By Bollywood standards of course , the film scores high on technical perfection with majestic shots of submarines going underwater and rising up again against the backdrop of the setting sun . The cat and mouse game of torpedoes being fired from various angles , the 'ping' on the sonars when they approach , the tension on the crew's faces when the torpedoes come close , the relief when they miss---all seems real . As a person who has seen Hollywood films on submarine warfare , it is familiar to me . But to an Indian who has never seen such stuff---will he or she understand it ? That is the big question .

Acting by everyone is good , but patriotic songs and national anthems are all you get as music ; in fact there are no other songs though background score is authentic . Photography is good and colours are decent .

The director has produced a real war movie that military buffs will appreciate ; a film that pushes the right buttons of nationalism at the right moments without going too far into jingoism and showing some real action under the water without the tearjearking sentimentalism that has been the hallmark of Bollywood war movies in the past---no waiting wives singing lovelorn songs and no wailing widows crying on bodies of returning soldiers . Just plain war with all it's glory and fight .

Verdict---Good .

Four stars out of five .



Anarkali of Arrah ( March 2017 )



The moffusil towns of the backward states of UP and Bihar---ashdoc's favourite haunt cinematically....physically i would think twice before going there , given the law and order situation in those parts . But that is the heart of India , and the heart of India is where ashdoc's heart lies....cinematically , of course...

So in Arrah ( or is it only Ara ) in Bihar sings a beautiful damsel called Anarkali ( played by Swara Bhaskar ) . And she also dances and sways and entices the crowd with her lascivious movements....for she is nothing but a dancing girl....

But naturally , she has truckloads of admirers who are ready to sigh on her every move . And they are ready to applaud and whistle on the words of her songs . But the harsh reality is that as a dancing girl who gyrates sexily in front of crowds , she is considered as public commodity .

And so the inevitable happens---in front of just such a crowd , a powerful politician ( played by Sanjay Mishra ) misbehaves with her and molests her under the influence of liquor . But Anarkali is not one to take things lying down and she slaps him and walks off the stage .

But the politician is too powerful to let this insult be forgotten , and he has the local police under his command . He begins to hound Anarkali so much that she is forced to leave Bihar and flee to India's capital city Delhi .

The movie was engaging enough till this point , but at Delhi it begins to drag....Bihar has way of making things interesting in the movies like no other place....
And maybe the director sensed this too , for he has Anarkali deciding to go back to her hometown and face the politician and face her destiny....

The movie rests fair and square on Swara Bhaskar's performance , and she does deliver with aplomb . Her acting is perfect as a feisty dancing girl who wants to maintain her dignity ; watch her pout in moments of happiness , and explode in moments of anger....and anger and situations for expressing it are forever round the corner . Only while on the run and in Delhi do her high spirits sag , and then the film sags too---she is the adrenaline of the film . Wearing backless blouses and arching to show her cleavage , she does look inviting....

Pankaj Tripathi is now a staple in movies showcasing UP Bihar ; he plays Anarkali's sidekick and does a decent job as always . Ishtiyak Khan plays a Bihari person who helps her in Delhi and acts fairly too . The witty poems that are recited in the movie are funny to hear .

But music is not fantastic , or maybe I am not used to the local flavour of it that is sung in the movie . Photography and colours are okay , but the ending was not as dramatic as wanted by me . The critics will applaud Swara's acting , but as a commercial film the movie is not great . I came out with an okayish impression .

Verdict---one time watch .

Two and a half stars out of five .



Trapped ( march 2017 )



Rajkumar Rao gets inadvertently trapped in a lonely apartment in a high rise in which no one lives . So no one to turn to for help . The lone watchman is hard of hearing---how very convenient for making the situation difficult for the hero....

So Rao has to survive without food water etc , and electricity very conveniently ( for the director ) goes off to make the situation more difficult . The very fact that Rajkumar is allowed to live in a skyscraper where no one else lives is too convenient for the director to make such a 'trapped' situation anyway...but yet the apartment is well furnished !!

Soon Rao throws the TV from the balcony , sets fire to many things in the apartment---all this in order to attract attention , but to no avail . He throws cardboards with 'help' written on them , and this attracts the attention of a woman .But she too creates hope in his mind but ultimately does not come up to help .

Soon he has to resort to methods of survival which make you cringe---he drinks his own urine because water is not available , kills and cooks a pigeon for lack of food even though he is vegetarian , has to fight a rat , eats even insects , and all this makes him vomit severely .

In the midst of all this he dreams of being with the girl ( Geetanjali Thapa ) he has rented the apartment for , dreams of eating food in restaurants with her , dreams of being back in normal life in the bus he travels in when going to work , dreams of being in his office....

Ultimately he manages to escape by risking his life , but by this time he has lost his girl....no matter , if you are alive the there are other girls to chase ( ashdoc's advice ) ....

The movie has been made on a super low budget . Rajkumar Rao acts and speaks in his usual bumbling stumbling manner . But the atmosphere of the film is claustrophobic due to darkness brought about by lack of electricity in the flat .

Verdict---Just about okay .

Two stars out of five .



Naam Shabana ( The name is Shabana ) April 2017



Tapsee Pannu plays Shabana Khan , who is a girl with a controversial past---she had fought back violence with violence and had to face the consequences for doing so . But the courage that she showed while confronting violence raises the interest of the country's intelligence agency , which keeps a watch on her for years because it is hoping to use her as an 'asset' to destroy the enemies of the nation . The intelligence agency's interest is further aroused by the training and expertise in martial arts that she is getting in the judo academy she attends . She is a potential fighter whose skills may come useful in defending the nation's interests .

But Shabana is unaware of this , attending college and hanging out with her friends . And happiness seems to be round the corner , with a boy studying in her college confessing his love for her . He claims that he likes her because he feels protected when he is with her because of her expertise in martial arts !!

But clearly she is destined for greater things than just protecting her boyfriend....and the opportunity to get involved in those things appears when tragedy strikes her life and she is hell bent on revenge for those who brought about the tragedy . The intelligence agency's agent ( played by Manoj Bajpayee ) strikes a quid pro quo deal with Shabana---the agency will help her take revenge on her tormentors in return for her permanent recruitment in the agency .

The first half of the movie deals with the manner in which revenge is dealt to her oppressors , but the second half is when she has to pay back the help which was given to her by the intelligence agency by fighting for the nation in foreign lands . She discovers the mindset of the agency---her hopes for getting a medal for India in international martial arts championships are belittled as a waste of life , for the agency's officers believe that the only real achievement is in saving countless innocents from attacks launched by enemies of the nation . Her every mission is supposed to be a road to death because the agency's agents are to be prepared to die in the mission .

The second half is dominated by the agency's attempt to kill an international arms dealer called Mikhail in Kuala Lampur in Malaysia , which are formidably roadblocked by his second in command Tony ( Prithviraj Sukumaran ) . It is Shabana's job to do kill Mikhail , and her boss on the mission is played by Akshay Kumar . But Akshay has let Tapsee take centre stage in every situation .

The movie has the same feel as the earlier movie from the same stable---'Baby' . The proceedings are taut and crisp , and the fights are decently choreographed . The kicks and punches seem authentic . Photography is good too and colours of the movie are decent .

The movie has songs too , and they were surprisingly good . The women dancing on those songs and prancing in the bedrooms of powerful men looked heartmeltingly beautiful . Tapsee looks deglamourised in front of them ; her job is not to look stunning but to deliver somersaulted martial arts chops on those who threaten the country .

So why is the movie called 'Naam Shabana' ? The name reminded me of the dialogue in 'A wednesday'---a film made by the same man ( Neeraj Pandey ) who has made this movie . Refusing to reveal the name of the main protagonist in that movie , a character in that movie says that he is refusing because people search for religion in a person's name . Here I will add that name also reveals the gender of the person . Here a female whose religion is made pointedly obvious gives us a patriotic high by dealing death to the nation's foes---a nice feeling indeed .

Verdict---Decent.

Three stars .



Mukti bhavan ( Salvation house ) April 2017



The town of Banaras---the heart of hinduism , on the banks of the much polluted river Ganga . But the river still gives mental peace to millions of hindus who crave for eternal salvation on it's banks . And I find cinematic peace when the camera rolls on it's wide banks capturing it's gentle flow on film . That's the reason I went to see 'Masaan' ( another movie based on the banks of the Ganges ) and I went to see this again ; to get my two hours of peace in the midst of the harsh realities of life .

The theme was appropriately philosophical for such peace of mind---Mukti bhavan ( salvation house ) , an establishment for the journey from life towards death . Such a place really exists in Banaras , but those like me who are used to living in posh hotels would forget real life peace if we had to live really there . For Mukti bhavan has the choicest of cockroaches and rats for company especially in the night . The quarters are dingy , and there is hardly any privacy .

But an old man coming to his end probably has other thoughts on his mind than comfort ; it is the journey to the other dimension that occupies his mind . Such people do come to end their days in the house of salvation in the holiest of holies on the banks of the mother Ganga . In this film Daya ( Lalit Behl ) is such a man . He gets dreams seeing which he feels that his end is near . He forces his son Rajeev ( Adil Hussain ) to take him to Mukti bhavan for the end of his days .

Rajeev has pressures of his job and the impending marriage of his daughter Sunita ( Palomi Ghosh ) , and comes only reluctantly to the bhavan with his father . Because of his pressures , back home he is an unresponsive father to his daughter and has fixed her marriage without her consent .

But as days unfold in Mukti bhavan , the father and son find time to reconnect with each other on the banks of the gently flowing Ganga . For here , inspite of lack of material comforts there is calm and peace away from the regular tensions of life . As Sunita and Rajeev's wife Lata ( Geetanjali Kulkarni ) come to meet them , the old man realises that his grand daughter is not happy with the impending marriage and advises her to follow her mind . He also tells Rajeev of his daughter's unhappiness .

Mukti bhavan is a quirky place with some quirky people . The manager Mishraji ( Anil Rastogi ) always claims that the place is full , but if he likes the guest he accommodates him or her saying that one person residing there has died thus vacating his place for the next !! Mishraji makes sure that the incoming guests eat no nonveg and have no vices , but then slyly tells the place to get intoxicants in the neighbourhood.....He always claims that a person has maximum 15 days to die here or get out , but if the 15 days are passed without dying he simply allows the guest to stay without changing the rules by changing the guest's name and identity....

A similar such guest residing there is Vimla ( Navnindra Behl ) , who is a widow who has been there for 18 years . She feels jealous of those who die quickly in Mukti bhavan while she still waits for salvation---the quirks in the film are endless , and the audience was laughing this journey to death . Daya forms a friendship with Vimla , and they begin to go on boat rides together and even sleeping side by side....was an old age romance building ? But Daya also reads meaningful poems with his son on the banks of the mighty Ganges , and the son does not want to leave it's banks until he is forced by his father....

Meanwhile his daughter has cancelled her marriage plans , but the Rajeev who has come back home is a changed man.... he does not get angry with his daughter . He even helps her learn to ride a scooter , something that he was opposed to earlier . His old father's journey to death has helped him find his sensitivity to his family again .

The film captures the sights sounds and smells of Banaras yet again after 'Masaan' already did . Photography is good , and even better are the dialogues and poems read out . Acting is at it's very best by everyone , and background score is decent---though there are no songs .

But it is an archetypal art film , and commercial film aficionados will want to give it a miss . Only watchers of off-beat films should watch it .

Verdict---Decent .

Three stars .



Begum Jaan ( Madame Jaan ) April 2017



For Bollywood , partition of the country is an endless well from which more and more material can be drawn for making movies after movies and making more money.....well , maybe the well is now in a state of drought....for this particular attempt to cash in on partition has failed to produce a movie of any calibre....

Vidya Balan plays the lead role , but she neither looks good ( the makeup is not proper ) nor is her acting any great shakes . She plays the madame of a whorehouse which lies outside a town in Punjab . She and all her girls have the tragic backgrounds that are expected of women who land up in such a place . But their stories are listlessly presented and fail to evoke our sympathy or pathos .

But their language does invite our attention , for it is filled with gutter level obscenities . Some girls have the chutzpah to fall in love with men even in their state , and one girl ( played by Gauhar Khan ) is lucky to have found a soulmate . The other who falls in love ( played by Palllavi Sharda ) is the best looking of the lot , but falls for the wrong man ( played by Vivek Mushran ) and brings disaster on herself .

Begum Jaan ( Vidya ) is a firm and tough taskmaster who runs the establishment with an iron fist , but does have a heart that cares for the girls . The girls have begun to believe the brothel to be their house , even though the outside world hypocritically despises the establishment while also lusting for the women in it .

But the entire establishment in on the verge of being felled by a stroke of ill fortune . For the partition line between India and Pakistan has been drawn exactly through it , and in order that fencing be done the brothel has to be torn down....

To do the onerous task of tearing down the brothel come two gentlemen---one from India ( played by Ashish Vidyarthi ) and one from Pakistan ( played by Rajit Kapoor ) . But their attempts to reason with the begum to evacuate the place are rebuffed by her and her tall bodyguard and powerful dogs . She also relies on the protection that the prince ( played by Naseeruddin Shah ) of the region ( for it is a princely state ) bestows on her at the price of the choicest and newest girls being dragged to his bed .

But all protection fails in front of a momentous event such as partition , and the two gentlemen from India and Pakistan employ a rogue ( played by Chunky Pandey ) and his gang to forcefully evacuate the brothel . The climax of the movie is the only uplifting part of the film....but director Sanjay Leela Bhansali is going to be freaking mad on seeing it , for it is inspired by and copied from the same event that he was to show in his upcoming movie 'Padmavat' ; the thunder of the climax of 'Padmavat' is stolen by this climax .

Acting wise , no one was great though the girls did try to act out the free behaviour and lascivious movements of loose women . Photography is good and colours of the film are okay . Songs and music is okay but nothing special .

Verdict---Not good .

One and a half stars .



Meri pyari Bindu ( My dear Bindu ) May 2017



This film has been marketed as a comedy film , but is more of a sentimental / nostalgic movie between a boy who dreams of a life of permanent togetherness and a girl who is totally commitment phobic and moves from one to another thing in life .

Ayushman Khurana and Parineeti Chopra ( called Bindu in the film ) are neighbours , and from childhood Ayushman is attracted to Parineeti . They become close friends and Ayushman hopes to be in a real relationship with Parineeti one day . But she moves off to different lands and flits like a bird from place to place . But they keep in touch and remain in contact despite the distances .

Parineeti's one aim in life is to become a famous singer and Ayushman is too eager to help out , trying his level best to let her get what she wants so that she would be pleased with him and become his....and for a while fortune really smiles on him as she comes to live in his city and is ready to shack up with him . But the album that she sings for flops and she rejects the marriage proposal that his and even her family make to her in behest of him .

One wonders of course whether such a girl ( who ties up with him when he is ready to help her out in singing for an album but dumps him the moment her album flops ) is really worth all the efforts that he makes to get her , especially when the efforts to get her include rejecting other women who are more ready . But our hero is in one sided love , and it is his one sided love and the sentiments and nostalgia and memories associated with it that makes the film worth watching up to some extent . Had he taken the more realistic route then there would have been no film....it would have been reality , and who goes to watch reality on the silver screen in the darkness of a theatre ? No one....

The movie begins in Kolkata and ends there , but it moves to other places in the middle . It is shown as a series of flashbacks as the hero is called back to Kolkata after a long hiatus , and his memories go back into nostalgia laden flashback mode when he encounters song recordings made by her on old cassette tapes . His memories move from childhood in the 1980s when he first saw her and slowly unfold till the present day....and he still has not forgotten her , while she has moved on in life....not a practical man , our hero....

But movies are made using different-than-real-life characters and often it is the impractical romantic people who give us our cinematic entertainment....and some aficionados of sentiment laden romance might find something to chew on in this film . Music and songs are decent and so is the background score . Colours and photography are okay too .

Both the lead actors look good and Parineeti acts the ever wild child wearing short clothes and changing boyfriends and lifestyles with aplomb . Acting is okay too from both . Nice timepass for forgetting the tensions of life for a couple of hours .

Verdict---okay .

Two and a half stars .



Sachin , a billion dreams ( June 2017 )



I watched this film for old times sake....today my interest in cricket is less , and time is even less for watching the sport . But I used to watch cricket on TV as I was growing up , during my college days and my youth . And for most of those years , the man my country used to ride it's hopes on in the game of cricket was Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar .

So watching the film on Sachin was a trip into the past times . And the film has been appropriately made , for it does evoke nostalgia for the bygone era .

The film begins when my world was young , for I am only a year younger than Sachin . It was his older brother Ajit who noticed the spark of talent in Sachin , and took him to the classes of coach Ramakant Achrekar in Mumbai's iconic cricketer breeding ground---Shivaji park .

The film must have given Sachin the rare chance for coming back to his roots , for today he cannot come to Shivaji park without a horde of security men . But we see Sachin talking about his early days from the very pitch he used to practice from .

The fame came at a very early age due to the record breaking partnership with Vinod Kambli , and one gets to see interviews taken with a very young Sachin still having pimples of a teenager . And from here there was no looking back .

The footage of his first test series against Pakistan is very grainy , for in those days the cameras were of state owned television . But as India liberalised it's economy in the early nineties , the the rights of showing sport were given to private TV channels . And from here on the footage of Sachin is clear and we can watch him and his sporting achievements in their full glory .

The film touches upon the highs and lows of Sachin's career and life . The footage of his matches reminds us of the time we sat in front of our TV sets viewing them . Some matches I had seen but now had forgotten . But the memories of those games were brought to life again . The joy of seeing India winning and the disappointment of seeing it losing . And once again the batting of the master....the flash of the bat and the ball racing to the boundary . The crowd shouting 'Sachin Sachin'...sheer goosebumps....

The film also touches on what we had not seen . It gives Tendulkar's personal perspective on what happened , how he felt about things . Greg Chappel ( the Australian coach of the Indian cricket team in 2007 world cup ) is the one Tendulkar seems to be most critical about . Sachin's rivalry with Azharuddin over captaincy is noted briefly . Sachin's disappointment over his removal from captaincy , and his grief over his father's death are the points where he was really low . Also when he was suffering from tennis elbow . But the lowest point in Indian cricket is something that Sachin claims to have no proof about---the match fixing scandal .

The highs---the amazing batting he did against Australia at Sharjah in 1998 , the march winning effort against Pakistan in the 2003 world cup . Sachin felt joy in other's achievements too , like when Venkatesh Prasad gave a fitting answer to Amir Sohail in the semifinal of the 1996 world cup and Rahul Dravid and V V S Laxman crafted a great partnership to win against Australia . Sachin's personal rival from Australia---leg spinner Shane Warne .

The film shows his personal life , and showcases just how much family is important to an individual's success . And Sachin got co operation from his family in bountiful amounts . His parents , his brother and his relatives stood with him in all times and situations . His wife Anjali gave up her career as doctor for his sake . Unfortunately his childhood friend Vinod Kambli probably did not get such support from his family and did not get such a good upbringing and his career drifted into nothingness , though that is not shown in the film . In fact the film ignores Kambli except in the very early stages , for today Sachin and Kambli are no longer friends .

The one dream of Sachin was to hold the world cup in his hands , but it took a long time to come . That dream was thwarted in 1996 , when India lost the semi final against Sri Lanka . Again it was thwarted in the final in 2003 , a match which Sachin calls the most important of his life . Finally it was achieved in 2011 , when the team took a victory parade with Sachin aloft their shoulders . The footage of all is to be savoured in the film .

Sachin's retirement speech forms an emotional ending to the film . He has now imposed his son Arjun with the ambition of playing cricket . Other than this imposition , Sachin has been a good father to his children . But it is his wife Anjali who is the anchor of his life . The other anchors are his mother , and God---for Sachin is a religious person whose religiosity has been brought out in the film . His personal cricket kit has photos of Sathya Sai baba .

Above all however Sachin claims to be a patriot . The nation's flag makes it's appearance on several occasions in the movie , and Sachin says that he gets goosebumps when listening to the national anthem . 'Vande mataram' makes it's appearance in the film , and the film's best song is 'Hind meri jind' .

Outside sports , what keeps Sachin ticking is friends and music and cars . And all these factors come together to keep the film ticking . Sachin's personal commentary , his wife's views , his friends' talk---all these factors give real insight into his celebrated life . Sachin says that he has lived a great life . And lucky is my generation to have watched him on TV in our life .

Verdict---Good .

Four stars .



G kutta se ( june 2017 )



I went to watch this movie because the critics are crowing about it , and on the other hand the jat community of Haryana is protesting against the film . Actually even on the first day of it's release there are only two shows of the movie in Mumbai , but I follow controversy like a bloodhound and went some distance to see the film because no theatre near my house is ready to screen it .

The movie is in the haryanvi language and even though english subtitles make the film understandable , the name of the movie is the first stumbling block---what does 'G kutta se' mean ? Kutta means dog . One thing I am sure about---whatever their defects are , the jats contribute majorly to the defence of the nation by enlisting in the armed forces in large numbers and it is due to their sacrifices that we live securely in our homes ; so I would go a bit soft on criticising them .

The director of the movie himself is a jat and has made the film to highlight the lowly status of women in haryana . The film shows women being subject to molestation , and above all to honour killing .

The film begins with a man molesting his cousin's wife while she is sleeping . Soon he joins with two others to steal a vehicle . After the attractive female in the vehicle is at the point of being raped by one of them , the anti hero ( played by Rajveer Singh ) of the film emerges out of the three men to prevent the rape . Amazingly , even though the female has just emerged from a horrifying almost rape situation , she quickly goes back to normal and flirts with the anti hero and cradles him in her lap . Before that also she begins to drink alcohol with her kidnappers even though she has been kidnapped and caught in a horrible situation . One wonders how much juvenile the direction of the movie can get at this point ? How is the female cool and acts brazenly in such dire circumstances ?

The movie then moves to the situation of a very young girl ( played by Rashmi Singh Somvanshi ) who performs some sexual acts with a boy of her age , but the whole thing gets filmed on mobile phone and MMS of her act starts circulating in the village . The parents' dire solution to the situation---honour killing what else . The older women of the village are not far behind the men in participating in this act of honour killing ; even they cannot think beyond honour and tradition . This act occurs in parallel to the death of the family dog at a doctor's clinic ; does the parallel death of the dog mean that the title of the movie is becoming understandable ? Does the title of the movie mean that women lead dog's lives in haryana , or die dog's deaths ?

The third situation is that of a good looking young woman ( played by Neha Chauhan ) who is genuinely in love . But her young man is more interested in her body than in love . The scenes showing them physically intimate are authentically real , and it is with this subplot that the director emerges on his own . As her love story also becomes public , real fear grips you knowing that her goose is cooked---for her family is baying for murder for the sake of family name ; all her mother's entreaties fall on deaf ears ; only her brother helps her in the circumstances . But she is a gritty woman of steel ; decides to pre empt her own murder by taking the bull by the horns and embark on some savagery of her own . Neha Chauhan's acting is most brilliant .

However the anti hero of the film played by Rajveer Singh ( the one who had prevented rape from happening in the first subplot ) now changes from a reasonable person to unreasonable....that's why I called him as anti hero rather than hero....and he destroys every hope that the character played by Neha Chauhan has for happiness by his sheer violence....the film comes to a gruesome end even though the gritty girl survives....so what happens in the end ? Well , this is a review not storytelling and some things are best left to watch for yourselves....

The film has the marks of the leftist mindset that has long controlled making of art movies in this land....and this is an art movie....the villains are typically caste hindus , the victims are either women as shown in this film or minorities . Some scenes are graphic in nature even after the censor board's cuts , and language is foul and full of obscenities . Director Rahul Dahiya has not held back in tarnishing the image of his own community , though of course his point of view will be that he is only showing the truth . Considering his great empathy for persecution of women , will he ever make a film about how girls from minorities are sold by people in their own community to rich sheikhs for carnal pleasures ? Probably not . A HA !!

Photography of the movie has some quality , especially the scene of the boy and girl on motorcycle with the train passing close behind and the wind generated by the train's speed billowing the girl's hair . Music is okay . Acting is decent in parts .

Verdict---Decent .

Three stars .



A death in the Gunj ( June 2017 )



This english language film made by Bollywood is set in the hill station of McCluskieganj in what was then the Indian state of Bihar in the year 1979 . Now McCluskieganj is in the state of Jharkhand , after Bihar was bifurcated later . The film is set among the Anglo Indian community , that is descendants of Britishers who had married Indians .

The main striking point of the Anglo Indian community as shown in the movie is the boldness of the women , at least relative to those times . When the position of Indian women was backward in 1979 , the women are shown smoking and drinking and dancing and flirting with men and even having premarital sex in one case . They wear western clothes denied to most Indian women in those times .

The season is winter , and cold is beginning to set in McCluskieganj at least during the night . The pleasant weather and natural beauty of the surroundings gives a relaxed feel to some scenes . Like always , I want nothing to happen in such a bounty of nature . But the name of the movie and the start of the movie ( in which a dead body is being transported ) does give indication that something is about to happen .

From the name of the movie one thinks that it is a murder mystery , and the impending suspicion that a murder is going to happen does hang over the proceedings . But the movie moves in a different direction--it shows a young man called Shutu ( played by Vikrant Massey ) being harassed and made to feel small by the others in the assembled group .

Shutu is thin and has failed in his exams and has just lost his father , but receives no sympathy from most of the group except two persons . Instead he is bullied by the character played by Ranvir Shorey , who plays a prank on Shutu in what is supposed to be a planchette and even physically bruises him in a sport . The whole film has this thread , and frankly it is not pleasant to watch . Shutu becomes the centre of the film and all attention of events is focused on him in the movie .

Ironically , in the minds of the characters assembled in the movie the importance of Shutu becomes less and less as the movie progresses . In the middle of the movie he is important to a little girl called Tani . She likes his company and his reserved studious nature and hangs out with him all the time , feeling sad that others belittle him .

But soon Shutu gains the attention of the slut of the movie , played by Kalki Koechlin . She has an extra marital affair going on with Ranvir Shorey , but he soon brings his wife there . In a fit of jealousy Kalki has a brief affair with Shutu , which includes sex . She looks good in exposing clothes and skirts , and acts well . But the little girl Tani gets angry with Shutu as he begins to ignore her company in the heat of the affair with Kalki .

There are others in the movie like Gulshan Devaiah , Tanuja , Om Puri and Jim Sarbh . They as a whole form a boisterous lot , enjoying life to the full . But they make the perfidy of not realising how Shutu must be feeling .

The crisis of the movie occurs when the little girl Tani goes missing , and you think that this must be the murder....but she is found later . But in the search Shutu goes missing too , and no one misses him because Tani is found . Later Kalki too tires of him and Tani is still sore with him . Life has no meaning anymore for Shutu as the two people who gave him some importance too forget him .

The end of the movie becomes all too clear at this point , but it also seems meaningless . What does the director want to say , that people in the position of Shutu should end their lives ? That they should not try to improve or better their lowly position ? That they have no hope ? The critics are praising the film ( which is why I went to see it ) but as an ordinary person I could not make sense of the ending .

Of course , the critics may be crowing because acting by Vikrant Massey is simply superb as Shutu . Every expression on his face and body conveys how he feels . Everybody else acts well too , and the pace of the movie is leisurely . Background music is okay , but the colours of the film are not great though photography improves as the movie progresses .

Verdict---okay .

Two and a half stars .



once i've seen an Indian movie about a couple traveling by train across India. The guy was kind of in search of a sense of life. There was this one scene of this guy drinking wine and pouring it on the cow head statue. There was no dancing or songs so i don't even know if this was Indian production. I liked it but unfortunately i dont remember the name.
__________________
You can call it the art of fighting without fighting.



Mom ( July 2017 )



Sridevi plays a schoolteacher named Devki Sabharwal who is popular with her students . Her step daughter Arya ( Pakistani actress Sajal Ali ) however refuses to accept her as her mom and prefers to call her as ma'am , the excuse for this being that Devki is also her teacher in school . Devki tries the best to build a mother daughter relationship with Arya but gets rebuffed every time . But Devki is still protective towards Arya and smashes the cellphone of the guy ( Mohit ) who sends porn videos to Arya to the ground .

On Valentine's day Arya goes to a party where Mohit and his buddy Charles again try to get Arya to dance with them . Angered by her rejection , the two combine with a criminal named Jagan ( played by Abhimayu Singh ) to rape and injure Arya and throw her in a ditch . Hell breaks lose in Devki's and her husband Anand's ( played by Pakistani actor Adnan Siddiqui ) life .

The court case against the rape accused totally fails to get them convicted , and Arya grows even more distant from Devki because the rapists had taunted her asking to call her mom again to save her when they raped her . Devki decides to take the law in her hands and ready to help her is a quirky detective named DK , played by who else but Nawazuddin Siddiqui .

The manner in which Devki takes revenge on all the rapists is quite interesting to watch , and keeps you really hooked on to seeing the movie . But the last on her list ( Jagan ) is too tough a cookie to crumble . Will he be able to wreak havoc in the Sabharwal family's life again ? And police officer Mathew who is handling the whole case ( played by Akshay Khanna ) , is onto her track . Will he arrest her for taking the law in her own hands or help her ?

Nawazuddin Siddiqui predictably gets the best lines to mouth in the movie , and as usual he mouths them with aplomb in his cameo . But best acting is by Sridevi , who is simply great in expressing grief over her daughter's rape or in expressing anguish over her inability to get justice for her in court . However her south Indian accent does stand out while mouthing her dialogues .

Photography of the film is simply great when it moves into the snowcapped mountains towards the climax . Never has mountains and snow been photographed more beautifully . Music is decent . Colours of the film are okay . Some of the scenes of violence and of Arya in hospital are not easy to watch .

Verdict---Good.

Three and a half stars out of five .



Shab ( Night ) July 2017



Shab has a lot of things going for it . Firstly , it has great background music . The songs too are definitely worth listening to again and again . Secondly , it has beautiful cinematography . Some scenes like one in which there is darkness around but lights are focused only on the faces of the protagonists , or the one in which a character slowly fades away into brightness as she passes out of the film are photographed brilliantly . Acting is good from everyone too .

Even better are the looks of the females in the film . Raveena Tandon has matured like old wine and I daresay that she looks fuller hotter and sexier than how she looked when she was younger . Her cleavage is ample and her body ampler . The other female is Arpita Chatterjee , who has a beauty of her own and looks real cute in her bob cut hair .

But the film falters on two major points . As it nears it's climax it goes nowhere , with most characters splitting up with each other rather than coming closer which would be the desired ending . The other point of course is that some of the characters are gay . While one or two gay characters would have been acceptable in the film , the number of them is four---way above the acceptable limit in a conservative country like India . Maybe that is why the audience stayed away and there was practically no one in the theatre ; the cinema patrons had probably got the gay vibes better than I had even before the film had released and not come to the cinema hall . They probably knew about the fact that director of the film Onir is gay , something that I had overlooked .

The film starts with small town boy Ashish Bisht coming to big city Delhi to become a model . But he has not lost his small town attitude and ends up only being the keep of socialite Raveena Tandon---not a bad proposition actually , considering her hotness . Her gay friend Raj Suri does give Ashish the chance to become a model , but Raveena wants to keep him for herself even though she has dalliances with other men . Ashish however falls in love with Arpita , whom he meets in a restaurant as a waitress who wears enticing clothes showing off her delicate back and her lovely armpits and her bra straps . The owner of that restaurant ( Areesz Ganddi ) is gay and has had a breakup recently with his boyfriend . In his life comes a french man ( Simon Frenay ) who has a tragic past . Arpita is a sex worker in secret , who is being stalked by one of her clients and threatened by that client's father to get out of her stalker's life . And so on and so forth...

Problem is , even though all the characters interact with each other , the intersection of their lives is mostly for the period shown in the movie and in the end they go their own separate ways . In short the film goes nowhere . There are some emotional and sentimental moments in the movie , but they do not leave a lasting impact .

The film does move at a relaxed pace , and may appeal to those who like off beat films . It is for the liberal crowd who find nothing wrong in gay relationships and have sympathy for those who are frowned upon by mainstream society , for all the characters in the film are those in whom mainstream society with find something wrong and will treat with disdain and contempt---gay men , a prostitute , a kept man of a rich woman , the rich woman who is frustrated with her husband's affairs and keeps boys . Though I like off beat films , I am not a liberal and could not empathise .

Verdict---Just about okay .

Two stars .