Naxal: Trailer

Naxal Poster 1Debaditya Bandopadhyay who had earlier directed Tapas Paul and Swastika Mukherjee in 8:08 er Bonga Local is now ready with his next film, Naxal. Featuring Mithun Chakraborty and Dhritiman Chatterjee in the lead, Naxal or Nakshal as it is pronounced is produced by Mainak Saha. The film also features Shankar Chakraborty and Gargi RoyChowdhury among others. Naxal is a tale of 2 men who were naxalites from 1967-72 and who then moved on to different paths in their life. Now 42 years later they come across each other once again. Music is by Rupam Islam and Allan Ao while Bejoy Anand is the DOP and Muhammad Alam is the editor.Continue reading “Naxal: Trailer”

Entertainment Movie Review : How To Kill The Slapstick Genre With Laziness

Silly. Brainless. Low-brow. Whatever you may call these variety, films like Akshay Kumar’s Entertainment are churned out every few weeks incessantly and the trend has been vehemently propagated by stalwarts of this cinema, such as Sajid Khan (a pioneer), Rohit Shetty (occasionally), David Dhawan (now that he has lost his charm in his second innings), Inder Kumar (with some sexual undertones) and a few others. Sajid – Farhad, the director duo of Entertainment, may well be added to the list as they have been writing the films for many of the above directors for years. Continue reading “Entertainment Movie Review : How To Kill The Slapstick Genre With Laziness”

Kick Movie Review : Definitely Not A Kick In Your Guts

kickI took an additional day after watching Salman Khan’s Kick to consolidate my thoughts about the film before I put them down here for you. As a movie analyst, it is imperative that I do not let any predilection cloud my objective point of view about the film, nor should I project my immediate reaction of it without giving it a second thought. Having said that, we can all revel in the fact that ‘Bhai’ is back this Eid. Yes, and his latest offering is directed by his long time producer Sajid Nadiadwala who makes the jump with this film. Post the debacle of Jai Ho earlier this year, Salman went all out selling Kick to the world, shrugging complacency out of himself. Rightly so. He must not throwaway the super stardom he has worked so hard for, only due to one film. Mounted on an ominously large scale, Bhai fans (read Bhai-tards) looked forward to it with bated breath. Continue reading “Kick Movie Review : Definitely Not A Kick In Your Guts”

Kick Movie Review: A GPL for its Viewers

Director: Sajid Nadiadwala
Rating: *

Now that I think about it, this is the perfect movie for Sajid Nadiadwala to make his directorial debut. What does a Bhai’s movie need anyways? Nothing except Bhai himself. The rest can be on auto pilot and his fans still won’t notice. The entertainment quotient of Bhai’s Eid releases has consistently fallen after the highs achieved by Wanted and has now comfortably settled down between I-can’t-believe-I-paid-for-this and I-paid-for-this-so-I-have-to-enjoy-this. Yet, the box office collections do not ebb. (Jai Ho was a badly publicized aberration) By the time you read this, the film will have already recovered its cost and before negative word of mouth spreads around, you will be hearing how after a 100 crore milestone, it’s set to conquer the 200 crore peak. Still reviewers like me labour on with hope that collective public opinion will change one day and good films will trounce bad films in the end.Continue reading “Kick Movie Review: A GPL for its Viewers”

Popular Male Jodis of Indian Cinema: Part 1

One of the most oft explored themes in Indian cinema is that of Male bonding. Since time immemorial, the male bonding theme was explored in various ways . i.e. through a love triangle ( 2 guys falling for the same girl), lost and found formula, two brothers or friends on the opposite sides of the law and other such oft explored themes. These themes more than often resulted in some great films being made which pitted popular male actors in multistarrers against each other in various permutations and combinations.

The first part of the 2/3 part series looks at the popular male jodis of Hindi Cinema.Continue reading “Popular Male Jodis of Indian Cinema: Part 1”

Khiladi 786 Movie Review : True to the Template

Khiladi 786

Director: Ashish R Mohan

Rating: **
In Bollywood, similar movies often come in rashes. The current trend seems to be fixated on over-the-top actioners. Ever since a few of them have done well commercially, our sensibilities have been chronically assaulted by actors who have spent more time in the gym than at rehearsals.Continue reading “Khiladi 786 Movie Review : True to the Template”

Oh My God Movie Review – Worth a watch

Coming after a series of Akshay Kumar monstrosities like Rowdy Rathore  Housefull 2 and Joker,  at first Kumar’s latest film with a title like Oh My God seemed like a warning given to the audience much in advance. However , the film turns out to be a pleasant surprise.Continue reading “Oh My God Movie Review – Worth a watch”

Ganpati Bappa Morya: Favorite Ganpati Songs

After the recent collection of Sawan/Monsoon songs I guess it’s time to pay homage to Ganpati Bappa on Ganesh Chaturthi. So here’s a brief look at some of the popular Ganpati songs across Hindi, Tamil and Marathi. The songs are a mix of personal favorites and those which are still popular among a lot of people. So without much ado here I go (songs are in chronological order)-Continue reading “Ganpati Bappa Morya: Favorite Ganpati Songs”

Housefull is full…..of nothing

Could a movie be sillier? Could it be dumber? Could the movie be responsible for people ending up stupider than they were when they entered the hall? Could grey cells actually leave in the midst of a song?

Probably not, but I hope Sajid Khan and Sajid Nadiadwala do not take this as a challenge to create something this epic at an even further dumbed down version for I believe if movies got dumber than this we might as well start throwing our feces at each other.

I will now attempt to tell you a “brief” about the story.

Two fathers hate each other, so do their entire families. They want their daughters to get married to the “richest and best” man in UK so that they can hate each other even more and rub it in the other one’s face. One of them mocks a prospect groom’s dad, he (the dad) ends up in the ICU with a heart attack due to that. The “Groom-to-be” (we shall now refer to him as GTB) vows revenge, hires Con-Man No 1 (Now referred as CM1). CM1 goes to wrong house, falls for wrong girl. GTB is not deterred and hires another con man, CM2 (who is also the enemy of CM1) goes to right house, falls in love with right girl. Of course both ConMen come with the SAME story of being the son of the SAME man and both the families who are about to give their daughters to these men haven’t the slightest clue about this. (Fucking Father of the Year Award nominees…Right?)

Anyway GTB now ends up realizing that his background story doesn’t hold well cause the con men story start to overlap. The story has a hole since the con men both claim that their father is an old man with a gun who was once a dacoit and is now the richest man in UK. (Another Father of the Year nominee! The guys here might as well get their kids married to the Yakuza clan!). Throw in a police officer who ALSO wants HIS daughter to get married to that dacoit’s son (throw another name in the mix of Father of the Year). The actual son though loves another girl who is an obese wannabe porn star and the police officer’s daughter loves another guy who ends up being the prospective “Groom-to-be” from where this story originated. They all end up marrying each other.

(deep breath)

And if you think THIS is complicated, it gets worse. Add hammy acting, sad songs, pitiable dialogues, a clown dressed in what can only be described as ice cream colors and I would have an easier time explaining the time space continuum rather than what the directors were trying to showcase in the movie.

As far as the cast goes, the only person who stands out in this role as if it is his second skin is Akshay Kumar. The role of Sunny suits him like a James Bond suit, whereas the rest of them look like they are wearing an underwear one size smaller than they should. John Abraham may be lifting dumbbells, bikes, trucks, tanks, buildings etc but he wouldn’t know acting if it bit him in the face. The time isn’t too far when he starts with doing item numbers only. The remaining men (snigger snigger) of Shreyas Talpade and Ritesh Deshmukh are only in the movie to get bit on their crotch and their butt respectively and I doubt they had any other significant scene in this movie. Rishi Kapoor and Randhir Kapoor make me feel sad and might be the reasons the Brits don’t want us their nation anymore. Moreover if the Italians saw Chunky Pandey I am sure they would follow suit and bar us from their nation as well.

The women in the movie are perfectly suited for their roles; No dialogues, just wear skimpy clothes and act like they are serious. They are all gorgeous on screen, except Asin who looks a pale shade of what Jacqueline Fernandez left over from her make-up. Asin and acting are parallel lines, not in the essence that they would be together forever, but in the fact that she would never learn acting and neither will acting touch her with a pole. She could be more irritating but then the movie would have her bald, beefed up and searching for the people who raped and killed her career. Of the other women only Jacqueline Fernandez is worth a mention and to be honest it is only because she looked by far the best of the lot. Zarine Khan as the wannabe porn star and the fourth girl who barely has three lines in the movie were just there for show of skin. They might as well have been part of the background and blended in with it.

The storyline is tough to follow as mentioned above, the direction is….well …its been directed, so that’s all you can say about that. The dialogues sound like something a 10 year old might spew out. Overall though, the movie is technically well made (aka background music, editing, cinematography etc ) and probably one of the saving grace parts in it.

But then despite all my writing and raving and ranting of “People of This World!! Please spare yourself the numbness, the dumbness and the sheer stupendity of the stupidity that is this movie…go home and read a book!” this movie will be a hit. It will rake in the millions due to people enjoying the brainless humor.

To end on the note, a hit movie is definitely not a good movie (vice versa follows suit) and this movie is not for the ones who watch films for art, its more for those who just want to sit in a hall, chomp pop corn and snigger at stupidity. Watch it at your own risk!