Review: PADMAAVAT

BORIYAAT

(Pretty looking but boring as hell!)

2.5 stars

Mini Review:

The story of a beautiful, faithful queen and a lustful invader

who will stop at nothing is told in three very long hours. The

costume drama is beautiful and Rajasthan is a great setting

for this tale of Rajput valor. But the talk of pride and glory is

so endless, it makes you want to run into your sword out

of sheer boredom. But Ranveer Singh makes a brilliant

hammy villain, and Deepika is luminous.

And you say to Sanjay Leela Bhasali, 'Kuch naya batao!'

Main Review:

Sanjay Leela Bhansali has a penchant for controversy, whether

it was the ‘pinga’ song sung by the Peshwa queen in ‘Bajirao

Mastani’ or the ‘Ghoomar’ dance in this film. There was also the

question of did the king dance to a very colloquial modern

‘vaat lavli’ song. But the Marathi ‘manner’ remained a TV debate

and angry newspaper articles by ‘conscience keepers’.

This time, the Rajput Moral Police took to burning theatres and

tearing down posters thinking their Rajput pride would be hurt if a

Muslim king were shown romancing a Rajput princess. If only they

had seen the film! Their anger would have been turned into sheer

boredom of a costume drama that goes on and on and on.

Stiff Upper Lip And Everything Else!

That Sanjay Leela Bhansali can make things look good is not

in contest. Visually, the film is beautiful. But when you hear the

tiny (yes, he’s so thin, he could be counted as half a Rajput)

Shahid Kapoor play Maharawal Ratan Singh and talk about

Rajpur pride and glory and principles and code of war, he just

seems like he’s playacting. He talks so much about the ‘Rajput

Shaan’ (pride of Rajputs), you begin to pray for Shakaal from

‘Shaan’ the 1980 film to show up and save us from the lecturing.

Plus, he’s so stiff, you wonder if they used extra glue used for

his moustache twirl and used it on his neck.

The howlarious part is his terrible, terrible dialog: Tumahre

haathon mein meri talwar achhi lagti hai!' (My sword looks

very nice in your hands!). In this age of Internet memes and

hashtags, you burst outlaughing and say, '#TWHS!'

Deepika Is Luminous, But She Was Better 'Mastani'

Deepika Padukone mostly has tears in her saucer eyes, and it’s

funny to see how she bends down to hug her boring husband.

She carries her clothes beautifully, but you wish there was

something more to her than the adoring looks she has to give

to Shahid Kapoor (who looks comical when he’s impaled by her

arrow), and bores us to death with his endless dialog.

The Film Belongs To Khilji!

Ranveer Singh saves the film with a lot of hamming and we

love him for that. He looks like he had fun playing the demented,

wicked  Alauddin Khilji. And his dialog is so bad it is good. Plus,

kudos to Bhansali for showing a very interesting sexual angle

to this villain. Takes courage to do that. Ranveer’s wild dance

is just fab, and so are his deeds: his suspicious nature when

he changes the food plates, him strangling the nephew… And

the women in the audience sighed audibly, lustfully when he’s

sleeping topless in the tent or bathing or…

The other characters, like Jim Sarbh who is slave to Khilji, Gora

Singh the Rajput SenaPati, Rawal’s first wife Nagmati, Badal’s

mother are all great supporting cast, but Ranveer Singh simply

lights up the screen, even if he’s shown lovelorn, waiting for

morning to come…

He also makes the audience laugh out loud in complete empathy

when Shahid Kapoor shows up to say goodbye in one scene.

Ranveer throws down the lotus flower (‘Padma’ means lotus)

in disgust and says, ‘Why do you have to turn up every time I’m

hoping to see Padmaavati!’

That summed up this overly long, tedious, but beautiful film for me.

Take a bow Ranveer Singh, your hamming saves this film.

(A sanitised version of this review appears on www.nowrunning.com )

Review: THE COMMUTER

BEEN THERE, SEEN THAT.

1.5 stars

Mini Review:

It's Liam Neeson. So you'll love everything about him. But then he gets on the same train you've seen in so many movies. And you know something is going to go wrong. It does. And like Harrison Ford who throws terrorists from his Air Force One, Liam Neeson will save the innocent from the baddies who seem to have the eyes on him... It's been done to death, and Liam Neeson's earnest 'good guy who has a background of violence' cannot save this film.

Main Review:

How many train movies have you seen? From Gone Girl you watched recently, the train films are everything from Taking Of Pelham 123 to Great Train Robbery back when the movies were just being made, you have watched everything. Even Steven Seagal has a movie where he saves the world by killing all the terrorists on a train with some activated nuclear device...

So when they show you Liam Neeson taking the train every day, you know something bad is going to happen on the train. It does. And he gives it his all. But the CGI is so thoughtless and tacky, Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani had better sfx...

The mad walk up and down the train that Liam Neeson does drove me crazy. I started counted the number of compartments and then did the count of 'does he really go up and down the entire train'. It just got boring. I wanted him to say, 'Release the Kraken!' just to help us get over the scanning travelers...

The passengers are all initially boring. They try really hard to be suspicious the moment the hero begins to search for the person with a stolen bag. This transformation is accompanied by music that seems to come from a generic music bank marked: action film where villains have surrounded the hero. 

Yes, people get thrown out of the train, there is broken glass, there are frightened people, there are red herrings where we think this could be the bad guy and turns out to be creepy but not the person...

It goes on and on and the story gets more unbelievable. You just sigh when you realise who the bad guys are and are actually relieved that the film is over.

You know you have to wait for the film to be shown on your tv when critics yawn audibly and yawn some more at the screening. 

Review: MY BIRTHDAY SONG

Idea Accha Hai. Much Required In Its Execution

2 stars

Mini Review:

Is it is guilt for the one sexual encounter that keeps Rajeev

Kaul awake or has he really killed the girl? The film is a

psychological thriller which is rather interesting, but feels

dragged despite its short running time of 95 minutes. Sanjay

Suri looks traumatised enough as Rajeev Kaul but is that

enough? This film has a decent supporting cast but needed a

huge pay-off at the end. So much thrill for so little an end…

Main Review:

First time director Samir Soni makes an interesting point

with this psychological thriller: Is Rajeev Kaul’s guilt about a

passionate encounter with a stranger driving him crazy?

Or has he really not done anything and is stressing out for no

reason at all?

It’s Rajeev’s 40th birthday and the weather is odd. It’s raining in

December. And Rajeev is feeling like a man out of place at his

own party. The problem here is that there’s no explanation given

why. We have to assume. And if these are not his friends, why

has his wife Ritu invited them? The guests at the party say inane

things (expositions, really) like, ‘He made so much money in

advertising that he bought this farmhouse.’

They introduce the seductress (Nora Fatehi) as, ‘My sister’s friend’.

Who brings their sister’s friend to a party? It just sounds wrong in

Hindi on many levels.

The Groundhog Day idea of repeating the events again and

again in order to make us begin to believe there is a possibility

that something big is about to happen. We get to see plenty of

weird: The appearance of Pitobash in odd situations makes us

believe that is Pitobash actually appeared in your life (even as a

friend), then there’s something seriously wrong with it. The other

thing about this repetition of events, we get to see Sanjay Suri

drive and drive and drive and drive his car. In inadvertent lighter

moment as an audience, you begin to feel like the harassed Delhi

commuter, but the drive scenes do nothing to push the story

forward. Neither does he have any epiphany about his situation.

It’s just driving around.

The idea that the girl seems to meet the same end, no matter what

should have been shown more instead of him driving again and

again. That would give us a deeper concept of ‘Karma’  and how

‘debts need to be paid’ that the film is attempting to tell. But the

filmmaker adds inane things like Rajeev suspecting his wife of

infidelity because he has cheated himself seems really trite.

And the film ends rather tamely even though it could have been

a powerful and emotional payoff.

It’s a great attempt. But the film had a long way to go on script

level before it became awesome. The music is unusual and

different from the elevator music that cinema today is churning

out by the heap.

(this review appears on www.nowrunning.com)

Review: VODKA DIARIES

Naam Toh Soch Liya. Film Toh Soch Lo Bhai!

½ star

Mini Review:

It’s one thing to want to make a psychological thriller
and another to make it so badly that the audience begins
to wish someone actually slap or beat up the protagonist,
Kay Kay Menon. The whole film revolves around him, and
even though Shutter Island did the same, there can be no
comparison of that prison of the mind story with this
ghastly, cheap remake that ends up looking like an episode
of a TV crime show.

Main Review:

You watch Kay Kay Menon go through the motions of being cop

husband to a poet wife with amusement, and then begin to

wonder: why are they ‘holidaying’ up the mountain when their

own home is just down hill? That’s five minutes into the film!

And if they were on holiday, why is the wife complaining about

him always putting work first? Where did he go running off to

leaving a gorgeous wife (Mandira Bedi) to write poetry? Why

does she have the energy of a corpse? Why is she trussed up

in a saree when the snow is piled up high everywhere? Costumes

apart, you’re already wondering what is the worst that could

happen after such a ghastly mistake? But you’re in for a surprise.

This may be the first of many mistakes…

The film has been shot in a picturesque snowbound small town,

but there is nothing remotely cinematic about the characters

who look like they’re extras from TV cop shows and who should

not be given speaking parts. Including the assistant to the

protagonist who talks so much it’s annoying. And the ‘jokes’

he wants to crack are so lame you wish he were dead instead

of someone who’s been cheating on their girlfriends…

He’s called Ankit (Sharib Hashmi). Every time Kay Kay gets

exasperated Ankit shows up and then vanishes after giving gyan.

You wish he were the victim next for his awful screen presence.

Looks like the filmmakers did not think of practical things in a film:

How does a fancy ACP have no control whatsoever on the

investigation? How does a small town up in snowbound land, have

a ‘forensics’ team that shows up at different crime scenes without

a problem? Is the hotel called Vodka Diaries, or the event at the

hotel nightclub? What do they think they are doing by destroying

snowmen? Why is his poet wife missing? Why does she suddenly

behave like some jealous harpy when Kay Kay shows up as

Rishi Gautam? It’s an assault on the senses, and not in a

good way.

You wonder what Raima Sen is doing in the film, trying to

be mysterious? Is she a dead person too, now haunting

Kay Kay? You wonder which publisher publishes fiction in that

odd size? You wonder why Mandira Bedi carries an empty glass

up to her room instead of a bottle (like most drunk people would

choose to)? And the reveal is so pathetic, you begin to groan

when Kay Kay removes the intravenous line from his hand.

Obviously the filmmakers have never had an IV inserted in their

hands. Removing it is mind-blowingly painful. Just like this film.

(this review appears on www.nowrunning.com )

 

Review: DARKEST HOUR

The Actors Shine Bright 

3 stars

Mini Review:

We've all seen Dunkirk, and although it was visually and musically spectacular, it went into the realm of fantasy more than giving us the horrific reality of war. This film is like a prequel to Dunkirk as well as a brilliant portrayal of a man who was universally hated. Acting with prosthetics has become a 'thing', but to be able to cut through the hatred for the character and become an inspiring figure makes for a great film.

Main Review: 

The film is set in the middle of World War II, where Western Europe is shown woefully ill-equipped to fight the ruthless Nazi war machine. Their air strikes are deadly and their army is remorseless. Their Navy has all but decimated every other allied warship and is ruling the seas as well. In such a setting, a WWII freak like yours truly is taken to the British Parliament where politics take center stage. Clement Atlee, the Prime Minister has just lost the vote of confidence and they are all dreading the choice: Winston Churchill. 

Now Indians have a horrible history with Churchill. After all, he didn't care at all about us, and hoped that the Bengal famine would wipe us 'vermins' out, so walking into an almost biopic made the Indian part of me hope they would have made him out to be hateful as well.

It isn't.

Gary Oldman makes you smile with his joy of discovering the two meanings of the Victory sign, makes you mad when he is rude to Lily James who plays his secretary, makes you wish your loved ones were gentle the way he softens when he shares a sweet moment or two with his wife (Kirsten Scott Thomas who is just brilliant in her not so big role). I enjoyed watching his political opponents squirm, and I wish I knew more about him and the foxy Viscount Halifax and Neville Chamberlain. I wanted to read more about how he thought, what he really cared for when I was watching the film. What about Cicero and Shakespeare that drove Winston Churchill's statesmanship. What were his patriotic ideals? 

We see Churchill turn the tide around when he manages to cleverly manipulates the parliament, knowing full well how they hate his guts. He has a reputation that he wakes up with Scotch, has Champagne with lunch and ends the day with Scotch again, and consumes wine in the middle of the day while smoking cigars non-stop. The King hates offering him the Prime-Ministership because he has ruined the relationships in India and elsewhere. With so much political opposition, and a country on the brink of a huge loss in the war, Winston Churchill manages to take decisions that look horrible. He once again sacrifices the lives of 4000 soldiers at Calais to drive the German attention away from Dunkirk where more than 300,000 soldiers have been pushed to the beaches. He has to prepare the island country for a German invasion. 

The story is engaging, to say the least. But those with only cinematic interest, the story will seem lengthy. Yes, there are liberties taken with the story telling: the one black person in the train happens to quote Shakespeare back at Churchill. And I doubt in real life Churchill would have respected that. But the fact that Churchill traveled the London Underground to get a feel of the pulse of the common people is brilliant.

There are many villains in a war. And those who suffer when their loved ones don't come back have a different story to tell than the ones who had to make that decision of sending more young people to die. This film is about that decision making process. About the man who wore the burden of the world on his shoulders, and would not give up because he knew, there was no negotiating with the tiger when your head is in its mouth. 


   

Review: KAALAKAANDI

There's Nothing Kaala About The Film.
Neither Is There any Kaand.

1 star

Mini Review: 

If you think a story like Delhi Belly could be replicated 

or something ‘as cool’ could be made, Kaalakaandi 

will disappoint you. Three random stories in one 

night in one terribly pretentious film that tries too 

hard. Fails. 

Main Review:

It would have been fun had the doctor told Saif he had 

‘Lympho Sarcoma of the Intestines’. At least we would 

expect some fun. And they do have film references in the 

film. This way it is neither fun, nor serious. It is plain trying 

too hard to be ‘kewl’. 

And why are they all speaking English? There is barely 

any Hindi in the film. and that too in a Police Station where 

by their ‘Urban film hai, so characters are speaking English’ 

logic, the cops in Mumbai speak Marathi laced Hindi. 

Running parallel to Saif’s ‘let me do strange things because 

I’m going to die’ story is the story of a girl going abroad for 

a PhD whose boyfriend wears her thong on his face. Again, 

trying too hard to be cool. If he doesn’t want her to go 

abroad and thinks she’s going to seduce men by wearing 

thongs, would he be wearing her thong on his face? If he 

wants her to laugh by wearing her thong on her face then 

he wouldn’t be whining... Looks like they wanted to get 

the ‘this is dental floss’ dialog into the film. Meh!

 
Deepak Dobriyal and Vijay Raaz are at the heart of the 

third parallel tale. They’re ‘hafta collectors’ for a bad guy, 

wondering what it could be if they took the money instead 

of giving it to the boss. Of course there is a sharpshooter 

who wears guns like some gunslinger from a cowboy film. 

Sigh. Even though a gunslinger driving away in a Nano is 

funny, at least make the guns like they’ve been in use for 

25 years! The shiny guns look like they’ve just arrived 

bubble wrapped from Amazon. 

The stories are so asinine you know that it was ideated 

when the ‘team’ was doing what Saif tells the doctor he’s 

going to do...

The stories are so painfully predictable in their ‘coolness’ 

you expect the photographer girl to say ‘I’m a lesbian’, 

just to check that box... 

Only the person who did the special effects earns his salary. 

The rest is self-indulgent silliness. 

(this review appears on www.nowrunning.com )

Review: MUKKABAAZ

ISME एक्सन HAI, रौमांस HAI, बदले की आग HAI,

पोलटिक्स BHI HAI, जातिवाद है, AUR साला GAALI भी डाल दिए HAI,

यु.पी KI ऑथेंटिक खुसबू KE LIYE

2.5 stars

Mini Review:

Based on a true story of a hotheaded pugilist who wants to prove he is better than everyone else in the ring, Mukkabaaz puts its fist in many pies: boxing, romance, caste wars, defiance and revenge. Anurag Kashyap brings alive small town Uttar Pradesh brilliantly. But the fist through so many pies laced with too many songs becomes a feast too difficult to digest.

Main Review:

Actor Vineet Kumar deserves kudos for working hard - physically
that is - to play the part of a boxer from Bareilly, who wants that
one chance in the ring. He’s getting to be 25 years old and he will
soon miss out on competing for the state level championships,
let alone compete in the Nationals. The one big obstacle in his
path is his coach, who tends to treat boxers as his man-servants.

Hotheaded Shravan Singh falls instantly in love with his Coach’s
niece. It’s a multi-layered problem right there. The coach is
Bhagwan Das Mishra, an upper caste Brahman who is also the
local heavy, and so powerful he could make or break Shravan’s
career. Shravan is of course belongs to the Rajput community,
but as Bhagwan Das Mishra puts it scathingly: Any low caste lad
can put a ‘Singh’ after his name and assume a higher caste.
For Shravan proposing marriage would be outrageous. His
hotheadedness too makes him say, ‘We’re boxers, here to train,
not to do odd jobs for you while you lie in the Sun.

Of course he gets bashed up. After bashing up his coach’s
men. He gets bashed up several times because this is not
complicated. There’s more!

The coach’s niece loves him back! This love story is all eyes and
no words, and Anurag Kashyap’s direction is marvelous here.
The small town innocence - her saucer large eyes, his almost
brave but essentially shy ways of showing love - is most amazing.
When he realises that she loves him back, he is ready to defy the
world (especially her uncle, who has blacklisted Shravan).
His act of defiance, a wild dance at his friend’s wedding is perhaps
the finest scene in the film, and I feel terrible that it may be
shadowed by the cameo appearance of the star Nawazuddin
Siddiqui.

Yes, there’s violence on every level and the director could have
made it very ugly by simply showing the rape of the niece as
well as her mother as it oft times happens in reality, but he
doesn’t, and thankfully too. There is enough violence in boxing.
And in the perpetually angry hero needs to learn to curb his
volcanic feelings. The coach and his methods are violent too.
Sticks and bricks and steel rods used on unsuspecting
bodies make for incredible violence.  

And everything is broken by songs. The official site says there
are eight songs in the film. Feels like there must be over fifteen.
He’s training, there’s a song. She’s watching him follow her
around, listen to the song. His daily routine, there’s a song.
He’s emotional, let there be song. She’s emotional, listen to
a song. He’s attending some wedding (and we know he’s
from ‘ladke walon ki taraf se’ or the groom’s side, but that
wedding manages to add nothing to the screenplay except
get Nawazuddin his song and show us how UP weddings are)
there are not one but two songs. He’s pummeling someone in
the ring, here, listen to a song. He’s wandering about angry and
confused and searching for someone, there is a song. The
training song is apt, but the rest are local noise.

Zoya Hussain as Sunaina is incandescent. Jimmy Shergill
as Bhagwan Das Mishra is the best villain, but what's with his
Horror film eyes? Vineet Kumar plays Shravan Kumar Singh is
amazing. Shravan and Sunaina's dads are stupendous. And Ravi
Kisen, is a star. Watch them bring the hotch potch editing of the
story alive. Then ask yourself, who repeats the daily routine
sequence twice? And that too without change?

Now Anurag Kashyap has given us some amazing cinema. But
this khichdi of romance and revenge and sports and politics
created by several writers is on many levels just a mish mash,
tasty in parts but still a pandering to the image of ‘Anurag Kashyap
knows small town North India’. I wish I could have loved this
movie more. Then realised, I didn't care for any character enough
to love the film.

P.S. अनुराग भईया का नामे ऐक ठो संदेस: वासेपुर से काहे निकल लीये ? फेर आओ। रोमांस कर लेना इंस्टाग्राम पर। लाइक कर देंगे। फिलम में गोलीऐ ठीक लागती है।

(this review sans hindi appears on www.nowrunning.com )