This week we had two big movies releasing simultaneously viz; Kochadaiiyan starring legendary superstar Rajnikanth and Heropanti starring newbie Tiger Shroff and South import Kriti Sanon. After delivering two hits 'Highway' and '2 States' Sajid Nadiadwala returns with the debut vehicle of Jackie Shroff's son Tiger Shroff's Heropanti which raised my expectations at the onset.
However I must say the movie was quite average with some hummable tunes and a refreshing act by Kriti Sanon. Tiger Shroff seems to be too wooden quite opposite from his talented father, however he is a good stuntman and dancer.
The story is set in Jattland where the local don Chaudhary (Prakash
Raj) is having a pompous wedding for his elder daughter Renu (Sandeepa
Dhar). On the night of the wedding Renu elopes with her boyfriend
Rakesh, resulting in a frantic search for her across the village. The
goons gauge that Rakesh’s friends might have helped him in it and they
are promptly picked up by them one after another.
After a massive search, the goons manage to find Bablu (Tiger) who is
the real one helping Rakesh and Renu. Tiger, meanwhile in captivity,
tells his friends about his love interest. As luck would have it, the
love interest is none other than Chaudhury’s younger daughter Dimpy
(Kriti Sanon).
Not only is this film about how Dimpy and Tiger’s love story end up in the iconic Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge style but also about altering the moral stands of the men of Jattland who look upon women as cattle. The movie is a remake of Telegu movie 'Paragu' starring Allu Arjun.
The direction by Sabbir Khan is quite average. The fight sequences are good and innovative, full marks goes to Tiger for executing it so well on screen. The music is quite inspired especially the song 'Raat Bhar' which is a straight lift of the song 'Muktasar Mulaqat' from Teri Meri Kahani. 'Whistle Baja' song is quite catchy which has the hit signature tune from Jackie Shroff's debut movie 'Hero'.
Overall the movie is just a one time watch. If you give it a miss, still you wont be missing anything.
Entertainment! Entertainment!! Entertainment!!! and there is no one apart from David Dhawan who is the biggest Entertainer of all in the movie industry. This week we have 'Main Tera Hero' directed by David starring his son Varun, Ileana and Nargis Fakhri. Like most of David's movies in the past, Main Tera Hero is again a remake of a South Indian movie 'Kandeeriga'.
Seenu (Varun Dhawan) is a prankster who comes to Bangalore for studies and falls in love with the beautiful Sunaina (Ileana). Angad Negi (Arunoday Singh) is in love with Sunaina and won’t have anyone hitting on her. Worse still, he’s a cop.
No sooner does Seenu’s love story with Sunaina gets going than she’s
kidnapped by a Bangkok based don (Anupam Kher), whose daughter Ayesha (Nargis Fakhri) has a serious crush on Seenu.
Seenu reaches Bangkok and there unfolds the screwball tomfoolery as
both the ladies vie for his love. Angad, too, joins the melee.
There is not much of a story in the movie but the slapstick humor and some witty dialogues by Milap Zaveri does the trick. However there are few dialogues which sound quite corny but you cannot view a full on entertainment movie like this with an art house movie mindset. The songs by Sajid-Wajid are foot tapping especially 'Palat', 'Shanivar Raati' and 'Besharmi Ki Night'.
The movie belongs to Varun Dhawan and he makes good use of the platform he has received from his father. Although you do see a lot of Govinda, Aamir Khan and Salman Khan influence in his performances and dance steps, however he has definitely grown as an actor compared to his debut movie. Ileana is decent however Nargis seriously needs some course in acting. She is quite wooden and does not fit the character, maybe a better actress would have taken the fun quotient to a higher level.
Arunoday Singh, Rajpal Yadav, Saurabh Shukla, Manoj Pahwa and Anupam Kher are good in their respective roles. However, Shakti Kapoor has been totally wasted.
Main Tera Hero is a mass entertainer and it will definitely find favour with the youth and mass who love such movies. If you compare Main Tera Hero with any of David's previous movies then it is not too great however it is not a bad movie either. Watch it for time-pass entertainment.
After Siddharth Malhotra it is time for another student from Karan Johar's camp to make her second movie release. So this week Alia Bhatt comes back on screen with Imtiaz Ali's HIGHWAY a year and a half from her debut movie STUDENT OF THE YEAR.
HIGHWAY is the story of two scarred characters who by a twist of destiny come together to take a journey with no destination. In a scene Alia Bhatt's character mouths a dialogue where she says that she does not want to go back to her world nor does she want to reach the destination of the journey but still she is enjoying the journey and that I believe in a nutshell Imtiaz wants to show on the screen and I must tell you he has done it to great extent.
Like few reviewers commented that HIGHWAY as a movie is glorifying kidnapping and many people would like to get kidnapped only for an experience shown in the movie. However I must say that this is just a story of a character called Veera (Alia) who gets kidnapped accidentally a day before her wedding night by another character Mahabir Bhatti (Randeep), so passing a statements saying the movie glorifies kidnapping is wrong and out of character for most of the reviewers.
Now coming to the plot, Alia is a character who is brought up in a well to do family that believes in showing a happy picture to the outside world while keeping their ugly secrets under the carpet. She feels trapped in her own house whereas Randeep's character is someone who carries wounds from his childhood. He has not had a comfortable or happy childhood and he is haunted by the memories of his mother's miseries who was his only consolation.
So when these two scarred characters from two different strata of society meet and connect with each other over their insecurities and sorrows, thats when love blossoms. They want to be there for each other and lead an existence away from their two distinctive worlds for few days.
The story is very emotional and Imtiaz has tried to tell it with utmost conviction but he falters at few places however they are just mere speed breakers in the beautiful journey shown across 6 states. I wouldn't call HIGHWAY as Imtiaz's most accomplished works but I would say this movie had its soul in the right place.
Considering that it is her second movie Alia has grown leaps and bounds as an actor and HIGHWAY will be her career turning movie like what JAB WE MET did to Kareena's. Her child like innocence in the earlier reels and then the emotional break down she goes through during the last reels of the movie gives her an unique chance to play a character with a great graph and doing justice to such a character that too in her second movie is a praiseworthy thing.
Randeep Hooda is first rate in his subdued and brooding character. In the entire movie we see him smiling in one sequence when Alia Bhatt comes searching for him after they get separated and that scene shows how his character is also wanting her to be around him and more than her it is he who needs her. The chemistry between the two actors is good and you feel from them.
Unlike Imtiaz's previous movies HIGHWAY has a lot of moments where silence and ambient noise in the surrounding play an important role. The background score is minimal and the music by AR Rahman is in sync with the theme of the movie. Especially 'Pataka Guddi', 'Tu Kuja Man Kuja' and 'Sooha Saha' sung by Alia Bhatt.
The cinematographer Anil Mehta captures the beautiful scenery wonderfully and gives a portrait like quality to each and every scene. The supporting actors are quite good and enact their roles efficiently. Editing could have been crisper in few scenes but overall Aarti Bajaj does a great job.
On the whole don't go with an expectation to see a Jab We Met or a Love Aaj Kal just go to watch Highway with an open mind and I am sure you will not be disappointed.
Hasee Toh Phasee this week's Pre-Valentine's Day release is a sweet rom-com coming out of Karan Johar's stables but this time he is accompanied by Anurag Kashyap's Phantom Films as co-producer.
The movie is Siddharth Malhotra's second outing after Student Of The Year and I must tell you, in his second movie he seems more confident and delivers what is given to him. However the surprise packet in this movie is Parineeti Chopra who holds the movie altogether on her tender shoulders. This will be a milestone movie in both Parineeti and Siddharth's careers.
Now coming to the plot, Meeta (Parineeti) is a quirky character who runs away on the night of her elder sister's marriage where she briefly meets Nikhil (Siddharth). Nikhil meets Karishma (Adah Sharma) in the same wedding who coincidentally is again Meeta's sister and soon they fall in love.
The movie moves seven years ahead and we see Nikhil getting ready to get married to Karishma. Meeta who was in China comes back to India however she is kept hidden from her family members by Nikhil and Karishma.
In the seven days of the marriage celebrations, Nikhil and Meeta come closer and they fall in love. So what is the reason for Meeta to run away from India in the first place and why she is kept hidden from her own family are things one discover during the course of the movie. Moreover the narrative is such that the audience is kept hanging to know if Nikhil and Meeta get together or not in the end.
The movie by debutant director Vinil Mathew is a feel good story and will definitely click with the younger generation. Vinil is good with his direction and he is able to do complete justice to the story and screenplay written by Harshavardhan Kulkarni. The music by Vishal-Shekhar is quite catchy especially 'Zehanaseeb', 'Bulava', 'Punjabi Wedding' and 'Drama Queen'. The cinematography by Sanu John Varughese is good.
Performances as pointed out by me in the beginning by both Siddharth and Parineeti is first rate. In the supporting cast Manoj Joshi, Neena Kulkarni, Adah Sharma, Sharat Saxena and Jageesh Mukati shine out also the guy who keeps on singing Anu Malik songs is quite hilarious. On the whole the movie is quite entertaining and paisa vasool. At the box office the movie will be a winner as multiplex audience will definitely enjoy watching this fare dished out by Karan Johar, Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane and Vikas Bahl.
After a long wait I was able to watch Stephen Frears 'Philomena' starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan based on a book by Martin Sixsmith titled "The Lost Child of Philomena Lee". This is one movie in years that made me wait impatiently for all these days after just hearing a one liner and seeing the poster. The movie tells the true story of Philomena Lee's 50-year-long search for her son who was taken away from her and given for adoption by the Roscrea Convent Nuns. The story is a heart wrenching saga which makes you smile and moist eyed at the same time.
The plot of the story starts with a 70 year old Philomena (Judi Dench) lighting a candle in her Catholic church and remembering her son Anthony. On being asked by her daughter the reason for her being sad she confesses for the first time about her son Anthony who was taken away from her 50 years back as she was an unwed mother. The child was adopted by a family and she was not able to find her child even after several visits to the convent who kept on sending her back assuring her of finding and informing her the details.
Her daughter is leaving for work catering at a party where she overhears
Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan), one of the guests, mentioning that he is a journalist and she
approaches him to see if he will report on the scandalous story she has
just learned of from her mother. Although he initially scorns human
interest stories - and the daughter herself, he needs work as he lost his job recently as a Labour government adviser. He finds an editor
who is a potential new employer for him who wants him to get human interest stories to be employed. Martin has second
thoughts the next day and meets Philomena and her daughter, and they
start to investigate what had become of her son.
The long search that starts from Roscrea takes both Philomena and Martin to Washington and then back to Roscrea where the story started and ended.
The movie is a fine piece of heart that will make you feel for a mother who has lost her child fifty years back and who is still hopeful of finding him one day. Judi Dench gives a very heartfelt performance as Philomena and she is ably supported by Steve Coogan. The screenplay by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope is wonderful and has got a lot of recognition worldwide. The cinematography by Robbie Ryan is beautiful and so is the background music by Alexandre Desplat.
This is a must watch movie for every cinema lover who loves to see a wonderful story with great performances.
Slavery of any kind is inhuman and against the nature of humanity and still we come across it even today. There have been many movies in the past that dealt with this subject and the one that comes to mind is 'Django Unchained' that released last year.
I watched Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave about slavery in 19th century America based on a true story of a man called Solomon Northup who was kidnapped in Washington DC and subjected to slavery in the year 1841. The movie is based on a 1853 memoir of the same name by Solomon Northup who worked on plantations in the state of Louisiana for twelve years before his release.
The movie is a heart wrenching tale and I must say made me emotional in many of the scenes. The true life portrayal of Solomon Northup by Chiwetel Ejiofor is something words fail to describe. His pain, his desperation to survive, his loneliness, his hope to be free again is something very true to life and no wonder he is a mighty contender to this year's Academy Award
Coming to the story, in 1841, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a free negro working as a skilled carpenter and fiddle player, and living with his wife and two children in Saratoga Springs, New York. Two men (Scoot McNairy and Taran Killam) offer him a two-week job as a musician, but they drug Northup and he wakes up in chains, about to be sold into slavery.
He is shipped to New Orleans,
and is re-named "Platt", the identity of a runaway slave from Georgia.
Beaten repeatedly, he is ultimately sold by upscale, unrepentantly
callous
slave-trader Theophilus Freeman (Paul Giamatti) to plantation owner William Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch).
Northup manages to stay on good terms with Ford, a relatively
benevolent master which in turn is despised by the racist carpenter John Tibeats (Paul Dano) who begins verbally harassing him.
The tensions between Tibeats and Northup escalate; Tibeats attacks
Northup, and Northup fights back. In retaliation, Tibeats and his
friends attempt to lynch
Northup, but are driven away by the plantation's foreman who leaves
Northup to suffer in the noose. Northup is eventually cut down by Ford
and he later wakes up on the floor of Ford's house, being protected from
Tibeats and his friends by Ford with a gun. Ford explains that in order
to save Northup's life he must be sold to Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender).
Northup attempts to reason with Ford, explaining that he is actually a
free man but he is still sent away.
Epps believes his right to abuse his slaves is biblically sanctioned,
and encourages the slaves to accept their allegedly predestined,
divinely-sanctioned fate by frequently reading to them various
pro-slavery Bible verses, both real and fraudulent. Epps also requires each slave to pick at least 200 pounds of cotton every day, or be beaten. A young female slave named Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o) daily picks over 500 pounds and is praised lavishly, and coveted lustfully, by Epps. His wife (Sarah Paulson)
is envious of the attention her husband pays to Patsey and violently
abuses the girl at every opportunity after Epps publicly declares that
he'd choose the slave-girl over his wife, if forced. Epps repeatedly
rapes Patsey, who asks for Northup's help in committing suicide, but he
refuses.
The days pass until one day he sees a ray of hope in the form of Bass (Brad Pitt) a Canadian carpenter who is against slavery. Northup requests Bass to help him out who does so risking his life by sending a letter to his friends in Saratoga Springs. The rest of the story reveals the quest of Northup getting his freedom and returning back to his family after 12 years of slavery.
McQueen does a fantastic job by sticking true to the actual story and leaves out the reprieve and Northup’s weak attempts at objectivity completely. McQueen uses silent and lingering wide shots, and close-ups of subtle
shifts in facial expressions as mood-inducing hyphens in his narratives.
One of the most memorable scenes in 12 Years a Slave is of
Solomon, named by his employers Platt, hanging from a rope tied to a
tree, his muddy feet just about touching the soil to keep himself alive.
The frame captures other slaves going about their business. Shot from
various angles in wide sweeps, set in grey light, this image distills the terrifying banality of the slave condition at that time.
Acting is first rate whether it is Chiwetel Ejiofor or Michael Fassbender who plays his cruel master Epps or Lupita Nyong’o who plays Patsey (she even won a best supporting actor award at the Golden Globe Awards). The scene where Nyong’o has an outburst before she is whipped tied to a post is quite powerful. The supporting cast is also wonderful especially Brad Pitt in a cameo who also happens to be one of the Producers of the movie. The language used in the dialogues has the formality and grace of that
age, which makes the inhumanity of the story even more difficult to
digest.
The movie is such that missing it will be a crime. Everything about the movie for me wins, the performances, the technical aspects, story & screenplay, dialogues, costumes, background score etc...
Continuing the trend of watching and reviewing notable movies that released in 2013 (that are in the running for Oscars), today I bring forward 'Dallas Buyers Club' starring Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto and Jennifer Garner.
The movie directed by Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y, Young Victoria and Black List fame) tells the true story of a real life AIDS patient Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), whose homophobia attitude at first prevents
him from accepting the fact that he is suffering from a disease that is more commonly associated with gays. He is slowly distanced by his close set of friends and he is left to fend for himself without any help, even as the doctors tell him he has 30 days left to live.
In a bid to keep himself alive he studies and reads up materials and articles on the disease. He comes across a particular drug company that makes the anti-retroviral drug AZT that could help him live longer. However in few days he is denied any further doses of the life giving drug.
Woodroof who is desperate to keep himself alive by whatever means necessary,
after traveling to Mexico to consult with a doctor who prefers the
method of Antoine Béchamp to that of Louis Pasteur (i.e. the idea of
keeping the host healthy, as opposed to the medicinal treatment of a
sick host). He discovers that certain vitamins and proteins are more
beneficial than the doses of AZT he has been taking. So he decides to transport the as yet FDA-unapproved supplements to the United States,
and opens the Dallas Buyers Club to help similar patients like him.
The club is a provider of alternative medicines, on average much more
effective than the AZT peddled to AIDS patients for an arm and a leg.
But even though the supplements pose little to no threat to the members
of the club (who pay a fixed amount per month for as much medication as
they require), the U.S. government becomes paranoid about their efforts
to discredit the efficacy of AZT and therefore shuts them down.
Jared Leto stars as Rayon, who is transgender and becomes unlikely
friends with Woodroof, acting as a connector between him and the rest of
the individuals in the area affected by HIV/AIDS, most of them gay. The
other main role is played by Jennifer Garner, starring as Dr. Eve Saks,
who sees the rotten insides of the pharmaceutical industry and is torn
between her desire to see her patients healthy and the FDA’s
determination not to make the supposedly effective AZT too readily
available to the public. Garner is perfect in the role as a curious and
empathetic but slightly shy individual who senses her own helplessness
in the face of the regulations of a big and callous government.
Woodroof’s desperate search for answers and his humanity in helping
others who are in the same, nearly hopeless situation as him, stirs our
empathy, and McConaughey, almost unrecognizable here as an emaciated
version of the image he has cultivated over the past 15 years, is mostly
successful in the slow process of letting us care about his plight.
The movie touches an emotional chord with the audience as you see time ticking off for these characters especially Rayon's death. Vallée does a wonderful job and no wonder McConaughey has already won couple of awards for his portrayal of Woodroof so does Jared Leto with his sensitive portrayal of Rayon.
My verdict: Please watch it as it is worth every minute and money you spend on this masterpiece.
