Tamasha (2015)

When I was a teenager the most common opinion about Indian Film Industry was that it never tries anything new, never experiments, the characterization and dialogues were all clichés and you never needed an astrologer to predict the story. If by any chance somebody experimented it was usually called an ‘Art Movie’ which was generally a miserable portrayal of human suffering and a sure shot box office bomb. But the scenario changed now and Hindi film industry has start playing with new ideas and it works, most of the time.

Coming back to the movie in question; Tamasha must have been a tough movie to make for the director, what he didn’t realized was it was tougher to watch. It’s always nice to watch a different and thought provoking movie but the makers never realize the agony the viewers had to endure to accomplish his dream.

While watching the promos it was difficult to understand the story, it is no better when you watch the actual movie. The movie is about two individuals who meet and decide to do things differently than the old fashioned way, they never revel their background or the real self, they keep pretending to be the person they like, so far so good, then they decide that they will never meet again but of course as it if going to happen, they meet again and complications start.

To be honest the story is actually good, but the director falters in the execution, the first time hero and heroine meet is in Corsica, France. The location is actually nice but the director made it a point to show all the interiors and exteriors of the town as if we were watching a travel show instead of a movie. The first half drags to some extent so as to reach an appropriate interval, we think the movie is going to get pace now but again the director takes all the time in the world to again establish the new settings, add to it the incomprehensible soliloquies (taking to himself) uttered by Ranbeer Kapoor supposedly having some deeper meaning which frankly I couldn’t get, take you to the extent of leaving the theatre, add to it the fascination of director-actor duo’s to build an complex character like they did in Rockstar which is seriously irritating.

Make no mistake Imtiaz Ali is a tremendously talented and able director, some sequences of the film are genius like the scene where Ranbeer narrates a story to his family, but just to give the feel of theatre inside the movie became the waterloo of Imtiaz Ali.

The movie is more of a portrayal of Ranbeer Kapoor’s talent than an entertainment endeavour, watch it at your own risk.

Never compromise entertainment for the sake of art Mr. Director.

Rating **.

Spy (2015)

Let me start with an easy question. What is one common thing between the following movies: Mission Impossible-Ghost Protocol, Fast and Furious -7, The Great Gatsby, The Amazing Spiderman and Spy? Well although I have cut short the list but you must have guessed it by now, all those movies have a famous Indian actor/actress in it. Nargis Fakhri gets her two scenes in this action comedy, including a knife fight with the leading lady of the movie. Not bad considering the benchmark set by Anil Kapoor.

However coming back to the movie in question; Spy is the story of Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy) an overweight, ignored and insulted desk bound CIA agent whose primary responsibility is to assist field agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law) for whom her admiration touches borders with love. However when Fine is killed during a mission and identities of all the top agents of CIA is reveled than Cooper takes the matter in her hand and tries to stop the sale of a nuclear warhead (of course). The storyline about a desk bound agent (Get Smart -2008) or an altogether untrained person (Bad Company -2002) going on an espionage mission is not a complete novelty, still this movies makes an entertaining watch due to its humour and some fabulous performances by Melissa McCarthy and Jason Statham. The transformation of mild mannered McCarthy into fierce ass kicking, mean and abusive agent is a treat to watch, same stands true for the comical performance of the year by Jason Statham, his scenes with McCarthy will bring the house down.

The story is somewhat predictable yet doesn’t bore you, supporting performance are good and action is not over the top but nice.

On the down side there is one really distasteful scene featuring one man’s genital which should have been avoided by the director as it doesn’t serves any purpose and is simply gross.

Ignoring the above mentioned issue the movie is a nice watch if you don’t mind foul language, coz believe me it is full of it.

Rating. ***1/2

Note: The movie may feel offensive to few people so please don’t watch it with children or anybody who couldn't stand Game of Thrones .

36 Hours (1965)

One thing about World War II (1939-1945) movies is that we can’t get enough of them; I tried to count the number of movies Hollywood has made on the subject and failed miserably. Being so much obsessed with one event in history gives a rare glimpse of American psyche, they love being a winner and they were clear winners of the greatest battle ever fought in the history of mankind, hence the obsession. However one must give credit to them for coming up with diverse topics every time with the backdrop of war.

Now before we discuss this particular movie in question a little background would be helpful. The turning point of World War – II is considered to be the success of Normandy attack on 6 June 1944 by Allied forces on the beaches of France (Than controlled by Germany). Germany knew there was going to be a full blown attack on them, however where and when? Nobody knew, the allied forces were preparing for this battle since 1943 and made every effort to confuse the enemy by providing false information to the enemy about their plan which was codenamed Operation Bodyguard.

The movie is about Jeff Pike (James Garner) a U.S. Army Major; he is sent to Lisbon to meet a source, but instead is sedated and abducted by Germans on 2 June 1944, as Pike has attended the last briefing on the impeding attacks he knows everything about the allied plans and strategy. German army knows that it will take a lot of time to get information from him by the method of torture, so they plan an elaborate scheme to get the information. They send him to a dummy hospital in Germany, where when he wakes up everybody tries to convince him that six years have passed since he went to Lisbon, and Allied forces have won the war, do they succeed in convincing Pike and are able to get the desired information forms the crux of story.

To tell you the truth sometimes excellent premises like this are screwed up big time with uninteresting screenplay and lame storytelling, which to my relief is not the story here (pun intended). If Germany would have got conclusive evidence in advance that Allied forces were going to attack Normandy it would have deployed most of its forces to those French beaches and the result of World War – II would have been much different from what we know about it now. An excellent book on similar setting, ‘Eye of the needle’ by Ken Follett would make an entertaining read as well, however Yash Raj Movies took out all the interesting parts of the book, retained the love story and made a horrible adoption called ‘Fanna’.

The beauty of the movie not only comes from the excellent premise but the way the story progresses, not only the detailing used to fool pike is interesting, so is the countersues taken by Major Pike to mitigate the damage, add to it the way a junior officer wants to remain the good books of his senior officer, personal gains over the overall well-being of the country, and voila you have a classic.

Please watch this movie if you have even a slight interest in War/Spy/Thriller movie genre, you won’t be disappointed.

Rating ****.

Drishyam (2015)

Drishyam is an exceptional movie, a rare delight for people looking for quality entertainment, it is a thriller woven around family.

The protagonist of the story (Ajay Devgan) is a 4^th grade fail, cable operator in a small town living with his wife and 2 daughters. Although he is not well educated but he is an extremely smart guy, much of his knowledge is derived by movies as he is an avid movie buff, who watches movie every night at his office. One morning he returns home to find that his family has accidently killed one guy who was trying to blackmail his daughter. He ask his family to refrain from reporting the incidence to Police and starts doing the cleanup, and as soon as he realizes the boy they have killed was Goa Police I.G’s (Tabu) son he starts building up an elaborate plan to defend his family against Police, and how he achieves it forms the rest of the story.

The beauty of the film lies in it being honest to the concept, no unnecessary side tracks, no melodrama, and no guilty conscience about doing the wrong thing. There is hardly any scene in the movie that is irrelevant to the story, last such movie I saw with such perfect screenplay was ‘Samay: When Time Strikes’ (2003).

The director has followed the principle of Chekhov's gun throughout the movie. This principle states that whatever thing you show is a story/drama/movie should have some use in the story. Like, if in a play there is a gun hanging on the wall as a show piece, than it must be fired during the show at some time, otherwise there is no point in hanging that gun in the first place. In this movie as well the director has used everything to carry forward the story; everything that looked as trivial initially has its importance.

The movie is an official remake of 2013 blockbuster Malayalam movie ‘Drishyam’ by Jeethu Joseph. The only unfortunate part about the movie is the arrogance of the makers of the original Malayalam movie, as they claim it to be an original story, and to my knowledge have even categorically denied that it is inspired by ‘The Devotion of Suspect X’ a best selling 2005 Japanese novel by Keigo Higashino. The official rights of this novel have been purchased by Ekta Kapoor for a movie to be directed by Sujoy Ghosh.

However as I have read it (English translation), I can say the movie is indeed inspired by the above mentioned novel, the basic premise and lot of story elements have been taken from that story. It is just like the case of ‘Five Point Someone’ and ‘3 Idiots’ where the makes declined that the movie has anything to do with the novel, but the person who has seen the movie as well as read the novel knows the truth. I am not against inspiration, but proper credit needs to be given to deserving party.

Leaving that blemish, this is a fantastic movie, don’t miss it.

Rating: ****

Minions (2015)

Hindi movies have had a long history of brutally sidelining and ignoring its supporting cast, it is just the protagonists (Hero and Heroine) that matter, rest are expendable, hero’s sister is there to be raped, their father and brothers are there to be killed, and mother to be blind. Comedians have a parallel track rather than them being an integral part of the story. We have never bothered about them till date, so what has changed?

To some extent there have been two important turning points in contemporary Hindi cinema which have actually given some importance to these much deserving character roles, first being, Paresh Rawal’s role in ‘Hera Pheri’, which not only gave much acclaim to the versatile actor, but also for the first time made a supporting character more loved one than the leading actors, and secondly the entry of Amithabh Bachhan in supporting roles, which made film makers write specific roles for him. What followed was a string of talented character artistes making it big in this industry.

Similarly there have been two recent events in Hollywood, where some supporting characters got so much admiration from fans that they got themselves their own private movie. First being ‘Penguins of Madagascar’ and second being movie in question ‘Minions’. Both animation movies I must add.

People who have watched ‘Despicable Me’ - I and II, will swear that the best thing about them were Minions. However even for people who haven’t watched the previous movies there is no problem while watching this movie as this is a spinoff cum prequel to those two movies.

First things first, to make a movie where the language spoken by title characters can’t be  understood by people is a problem, you can understand only a few of their words like, ‘thank you’, ‘bob’ and of course ‘banana’, however while watching the movie you never feel the need to understand what they are saying, and that adds to the charm of the characters and movie. You don’t get what they are saying but you laugh your lungs out during most of the time. This movie has scenes which will bring the house down with laughter.

The story of the movie is about a tribe of Minions whose sole purpose of existence is to find a baddest (intentional spelling mistake) villain and serve as his/her henchman. Do they succeed in doing so make the rest of the movie.

I have been waiting about six months for this movie, so when the choice came between watching this movie or much appreciated ‘Bahubali’, I made the tough call, and never regretted it for a minute; to tell you the truth, I was felling down and low for a couple of days and I desperately needed something crazy and hilarious, which exactly it was, rather than going for an action packed drama I chose the idiotic yet adorable, and cute as hell Minions. People are going to become fan of ‘Bob’ after watching this movie that I can guarantee.

If you are a minion fan than this is a must watch movie for you, if not, then watch this movie and become a fan. Go Bananas.

Rating ***1/2.

Dil Dhadakne Do (2015)

We love to compartmentalize, it makes our life easy and give legitimacy to our biases, and it helps us to form opinion without bothering about the detail, but when something happens which is too much different to be categorized we panic, it is this state of mind which confuses us and tells us that there are things in this world which are beyond your comprehension.

Dil Dhadkne Do may well fell in that particular category, don’t get me wrong the movie is beautifully made, well written, directed and acted, but still on some level it makes us uncomfortable about how the super rich behave and so the movie falls in danger of getting highly polarized reviews.

The movie is about a celebration that takes place on a ship for 10 days on the occasion of 30^th marriage anniversary of Kamal Mehra (Anil Kapoor) and Neelam Mehra (Shefali Shah) with their children and friends. What starts as a showcase of their artificial love and affection within family, starts breaking up one side at a time, with a lot of sub-plots that range from a modern version of Romeo – Juliet, to return of old flame of a married woman,to a rich guy falling in for a girl way below his status and with a different religion. But hats off to the director as even with these entire off repeated plot ideas you never feel bored, simply put, excellent writing with excellent direction.

No actor in the movie gave a bad performed and I am talking about a lot of actors; still if I had to pick better performaces I will pick Anil Kapoor, Shefali Shah, Ranveer Singh, Farhan Akhtar and even a small girl who gets something like 4 lines in the overall movie. That still leaves us with decent performances from people like Priyanka Chopra, Anushka Sharma, Rahul Bose and a lot of other supporting characters.

Music is all right, nothing special for my taste, with sole exception being ‘Galla Goriyan’, beautifully choreographed as well, and in a single shot, something in the lines of ‘Raabta’ from ‘Agent Vinod’ and ‘Chale Jaise Havaen’ from ‘Main Hoon Na’.

The movie never bores you, it is engaging even though it is lengthy, humor is amply available, but the movie still remains a watch for people with a little bit of taste and a little bit of intelligence, so people who loved ‘Dhoom-3’ you know what to do.

P.S: There is a little bit of surprise for Aamir Khan fans in the movie.

 Rating ***1/2.

Tanu weds Manu Returns (2015)

 

Let me start by saying that this is the ‘Movie of the Year’ for me, and if anyone wants to make a sequel, please take tuition class from  Anand L Rai, the director of this movie.

The movie starts off 4 years after where the last one (Tanu weds Manu) ended. The prequel in itself was a surprise hit, nobody knew the director at that time, Kangana Ranaut was considered an ordinary performer, no other big cast and the only selling point for the setup was R Madhavan and some soulful music; however this time Kangana Ranuat has become centre of attraction after winning a well deserved National Award for ‘Queen’, the director than went on to make ‘Raanjhanaa’ another marvelous love story/drama while introducing the much talented Dhanush to Hindi movie audience, and R Madhavan has been as reliable as ever.

Kudos to the writer of the movie as the story actually moves forward while the prequel acts as a base unlike the other franchise running in Indian industry, every other sequel movie has little in common with the previous movie and could well be a standalone film, but that is not the case here, you need to watch the previous movie to understand this one, to understand the character motivation and standing.

I need not say but Kangana gave another knockout performance after ‘Queen’, worth mentioning point being she is outstanding in both the roles, the way she carried herself as a Haryanvi girl is just astonishing, this character feels like her second skin, another award worthy performance, Deepak Dobrial as Pappi is a livewire, he is superb from the word go, he will bring the house down with his performance, in an honest award competition I will bet on his winning best supporting actor, however the beauty of the movie is that there are still couple of more actors in the movie who gave outstanding performance, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub as Chintu, the guy better known for his performance as the best friend of Dhanush in ‘Raanjhanaa’ is amazing, Rajesh Sharma (No one killed Jessica/ Khosla Ka Ghosla fame) for his single dialogue when he confronts his whole clan to support his sister is clapworthy, Jimmy Shergill although didn’t got as métier role as the previous movie, still manages to get notices and even K K Raina as Madhavan’s father is hilarious in the scene where he breaks the tube light with a wiper.

R Madhavan keeps his cool throughout the movie and extends his character from the previous movie and still able to impress in spite of all the above mentioned excellent performances.

Some of the memorable sequences from the movie include when Tanu and Manu meet with physiologists, when pappi bhaiya confronts Manu just before interval, the tube light breaking scene, and when Manu introduces himself with the other Kangana (Datto).

The director has proved his mettle once again, surpassing the expectations from the previous movie is not an easy thing to do, and same goes for the writer and dialogue writer as well. Music is another plus point for the movie, ‘Banno’ and ‘Ghani Bawri’ standout, even the super hit from the last movie, ‘Saddi Gali’ makes special appearance in the movie, but hold your breath, as a garba song.

All and all, missing this movie is your loss, if you don’t want two hours of refreshing movie experience with ample does of laughter and a story which keeps you glued where you keep on wondering what is going to happen next, than that is your call, a sad one but still your choice. Go for this one with your family.
Rating ****.  

Avengers : Age of Ultron (2015)

I have always believed that a movie should be considered good or bad in the context of expectations that movie has raised among its viewers i.e. a great romance track inside of a suspense flick doesn’t work for me, similarly a movie supposedly about reservation in India i.e. ‘Aarakshan’ suddenly becoming about private tuition in the second half is as close to fraud as a movie can reach in this business.  But when did delivering a movie as expected became a bad thing, may be today for me.

Marvel Cinematic Universe popularly known as MCU is currently having a large number of hit franchisees under its belt; Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Avengers, Guardians of Galaxy, Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter, Dare Devil with only exception of Hulk being a non profitable venture. Future projects include next installments of Thor, Captain America, Avengers, Guardians of Galaxy, and continuation of Agents of SHIELD, four more TV series with Netflix, introduction of new super heroes like Ant Man, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Inhumans and a possible reboot of Spiderman. Not to mention a few short movies here and there and tie in comics.

Avengers: Age of Ultron had been a keenly awaited movie worldwide and probable will reach 1 billion dollar mark as well. The movie has been released in India before USA which shows the importance of this market. However coming back to the question of expectations, does the movie deliver on them? Yes it does and that exactly is my problem.

I have watched all the above mentioned movies/ series, and found one thing in common, give or take it becomes repetitive, in the movies there will be a new villain with new power and the hero will come and defeat it with his super powers, add a few tangy dialogues and a lot of special effect, with a hint of corny emotions and voila the next movie is ready.

Some Spoilers ahead

How this Avenger movie is different from the last one is a difficult question to answer, like last movie we have a super villain ‘Ultron’ in place of ‘Loki’, we have its ‘robot’ army in place of ‘Chitari’ army, the last villain wanted world dominance, this one wants world annihilation, we have similar conflict among the band of super heroes, we have a big fight with all the super heroes fighting the army, even we have the same ‘Thanos’ is the post credit scene as the last one. So in the next movie the same structure will be there with ‘Thanos’ in place of ‘Ultron’ and a lot of new super heroes will be joining the band wagon with required or non required skills, but in the end it will be more or less same.

If you have been following on all the movies that certainly you should watch this one too, and of course it is a well made movie, the humor comes in bits and pieces, but is still good, but as a whole the movie is a little week on story line and lacks coherence, like the reasons ‘Ultron’ gives to destroy everything is hardly effective, storyline between Hulk and Black Widow looked forced on the narrative and is as off repeated as cliché go, hell it reminded me of ‘Ek Tha Tiger’, leave everything and run. Even the bath Thor took went over my head like a missile. Having too many characters to deal within allotted time is a tough task anyway. Although I liked Jeremy Renner’s performance and character development and voice of James Spader is as mesmerizing as ever.

Spoilers end

However the movie is not boring, and can be a reasonable watch, but don’t expect anything you haven’t seen before. I always appreciate a basic conflict in the movie storyline which was seriously missing here, maybe ‘Captain America: Civil War’ will satisfy me on that front, but till then, I had enough of super hero drama, its time to explore other genres and read a few good books.

Rating ***. 

Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!

 

As a child I could never get enough of suspense movies or TV shows, and as a matter of fact it is still my guilty pleasure, so generally as soon as a new suspense movie is announced I become restless with increased heart rate and start counting days till its release.

Detactive Byomkesh Bakshy! got my attention with its very first promo, the movie looked visually stunning, and with world war II as backdrop it created the desired on intended audience.

However it is difficult to review a suspense movie without divulging details of storyline. The movie is about Byomkesh Bakshy who is approached by Ajit (his future sidekick) requesting him to investigate disappearance of his father. What starts as a simple case of blackmail, starts getting complicated with each passing minute.  

My friends who are privy to western entertainment won’t miss the similarity between the characterization and style of Byomkesh Bakshi and Sherlock Holmes, either by way of being mercilessly logical with limited amount of emotion, but what however distinguish them are the human touches given to the character by the director. For instance just after Byomkesh finds his first dead body he vomits. Story of the movie is first rate, but the culprits are editor and director, the failure to develop chemistry between the lead pair and friendship between Byomkesh and Ajit is poor work considering the fact that at the end of the movie Byomkesh proposes to a girl while there has been no emotional connect between them till that point. But the biggest letdown is the fact that interval if far more thrilling experience than the climax when real culprit is revealed. This happened due to desire of the director to create thrill in those parts of the movie where it was not needed.

Notwithstanding the above mentioned criticism it must be said that the director and writers did a fantastic job for most part, the dialogues pinch you like needles, every angle of the story has been explained, proper logics given most of the time, and add to it the performances of actors and the occasional humor that pops out unexpectedly in the most extraordinary situations, special mention needs to be given to the scene where Byomkesh and Ajis asks for tea while sitting in a house filled with dead bodies.

The story is complicated and requires some intelligence so people drawn towards Ekta Kapoor serials are strongly advised to avoid this movie, rest of the crowd who appreciate whodunit stories (with some avoidable flaws) are advised to watch it, it is no ‘The Usual Suspects’ or ‘The Sixth Sense’ but still leaves you craving for more, and on the most important note, a sequel if intended will be more than welcome.

Rating **1/2