Jai Gangaajal movie review

"The wine is old but it doesn't taste better."

It is unfortunate, rather sad, that this film contains the name of and is considered a sequal to an immensely greater film 'Gangaajal'. There are stark similarities between the two and yet, this one is nothing but a failed rip-off of the original. When you watch 'Jai Gangaajal', you cannot help but remember similar scenes from the first movie and you wonder how enthralling they were. Inadvertently, you compare them and you find that the one folding before you right then is a tomfoolery.

Aligarh movie review

"The movie suffers because the makers lack belief in the theme"

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I am perplexed at the superficiality with which few films are revered just because they have an underlying liberal or modern view of the society at large. Such themes, although important on a social basis, are those that mar the objective discourse of a movie and throw you into vicarious yet peripheral emotions. Aligarh is a victim of this very flaw- both in filmmaking and the subsequent reception. 

Neerja movie review: It moves you and it gets you to care.

It gets you to feel the impact

It's a difficult task to review a movie that tells you about great lives. This is because while you may be reviewing the movie, people tend to feel that you are judging the person. When I say that Manjhi was an utter disappointment and that Airlift didn't have an impact, they feel that I am flunking them  just so I could project superiority while all the time, I am stating facts. Fortunately, this problem wouldn't crop up here because 'Neerja', much like the Neerja Bhanot herself, would endure the memories of people who have witnessed it.

Fitoor Review: Great expectations, Small Impact

What the Dickens just happened? As a rare feat in the romantic movie genre of Bollywood, there seemed to be a coherent, enthralling story and suddenly there was a jump in time and we were left with nothing short of stones talking to each other. First they were bent on ruining Shakespeare and now Dickens! Well Done.

Great expectations, Small Impact

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Saala Khadoos review: Too peppy for a boxing movie

Saala Khadoos review: Too peppy for a boxing movie

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The banner of being a 'Raj Kumar Hirani film' does little to save 'Saala Khadoos'.  It is one of those films that try to do too many things and end up doing none right. The fact that it is a boxing movie and is so pepped up with an all too bubbly protagonist and quirky subplots doesn't help either.

Manjhi movie review

Source: indiaopines.com

All good things come to an end and so it has once again with Manjhi. The ongoing saga of how great an actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui is, has been left exposed to the harsh truth from the very first scene where he falters in delivering a heartfelt cry on the death of his character Manjhi's wife.

Ship of Theseus review

Source: http://prabhatrayal.com/

If you have seen the Indian version of Ship of Theseus, you would know that it begins with Kiran Rao 'presenting' it. As per her, she did not get her husband, Mr. Aamir Khan, to present it because then a large number of people would have gone to watch the movie and they would have been 'disappointed' by it. Supposedly, the makers and critics seem to believe that 'Ship of Theseus' is for a select audience because it is symbolic and artistic, one that is intellectual enough to see the ideals of self, identity and paradox that the film offers. But, for most part of it, IT'S A SHAM.

Au Hasard Balthazar review

All cinema isn’t drama. Sometime, someplace, some blessed moment it gives you something so close to reality you feel like witnessing life itself on the screen in front of you. Au Hasard Balthazar is one such saintly film, a blessing in disguise.

A Girl in Black review

At its most intimate level, A girl in black is an example of a perfect story, sequential, smooth and logical. Within the first 8 minutes, you get to meet the characters that are going to matter, you get the setting and the plot begins to unfold. A magical yarn keeps all of these intact unless we get introduced to the big conflict and for the rest of it, your heart yearns for the resolution.

Late Spring (Banshun) review

Simplicity is perfection. Few films in cinema reach the level of being so definitive despite being so discernible. But then, few directors in cinema reach the masterclass of Ozu.

The life of Oharu (Saikaku ichidai onna)

"When you return to your homes, you can tell everyone how you met a real goblin cat." The titular character of the movie tells that to a group of pilgrims who try to gauge the story of her life by raising a candle to look at her face. Oharu is a victim, a survivor of tragedies and vicissitudes that either break a person or make them insensate. But nothing breaks her, as she rises from the ashes of the fires the society sets her on and chooses life over obliteration each time.

Piku movie review

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There are questions that we choose not to face in our lives and if someone still wants to pose them, they better make them guised enough not to make us take them head on. Piku, almost surprisingly, succeeds in doing just that without any hullabaloo.

Gabbar is Back review- A war of 'Brands'

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Salman Khan made Dabangg and changed Bollywood for ever. Something tremendous happened after that- everyone started thinking they could be Salman. Gabbar is Back is another such failed attempt at bringing up a larger than life figure on the celluloid under the guise of a battle against corruption.

Ramdhanu (The Rainbow)

Source: bengalimovies.in

Has it come to this? Or has it always been this way in big cities? I remember my admission procedure and it was plainly based on whether the student can interact at all. I even remember saying 'फूल ' in-front of the Principal when he asked me what a flower was. Guess things have changed a whole lot since then, for better or worse.

In the Mood for Love ("Fa yeung nin wa")

In the Mood for Love- A work of art married with reality.

Source: pbs.twimg.com

"an age of blossom

affectionate as the moon

bright as the snow

splendid is living"

There are times when a film makes you question the superiority of morality over happiness. There are times when a film leaves you in awe of the things that the most powerful form of art has carved on the screen before you. And then there are films that justify each and every shot you went through with close attention to detail for the 100 minutes you sat watching it.  "In the mood for love" offers you all of these and more.

Hunterrr

Source: Filmihungama

With the way things have been going about in Bollywood, a film like this was certainly due in the mainstream cinema. What actually surprises the audiences is that for a large part of it, Hunterrr is not a Bollywood film. The boldness and downright lurkiness of the protagonist and its depiction on the celluloid isn't something Indian cinema produces everyday and thus is a consequence of Hollywood influence.

As the theme goes, the central character of the film is Mandar (Gulshan Devaiya) who is a vasu i.e. a player. He has learnt and pretty much mastered the act of being a hunterrr since his boyhood with help from his cousin Dilip (Sagar Deshmukh). When this addict finally decides to get married after he realizes he is old enough for his age to be 'unclish', he gets rejected by several girls when he mentions about his past affairs. Enter Trupti (Radhika Apte) who herself has had affairs in the past and our hunterrr seems to have found an ideal match for himself. The story then is about his frustrations and his longing to be completely honest with the girl he has fallen for, for the first time in his life; And his fear of rejection at that for the first time in his life too.

The story progresses in a highly non linear fashion but there isn't any confusion created and so much credit goes to the screenplay. By doing this, the film talks about the events that have shaped Mandar's character and things he has kept bottled up through his life. You know that at some point, this 'adult-comedy' as people are calling it will get serious and you will get that necessary dose of 'Indian-ness' that is obligatory in a movie. And you do get it; but with a finesse and subtlety that makes you applaud the way the actors and the director (Hashvardhan Kulkarni) find a solution for doing that without much hue and cry. The best aspect of this film is how it catches the mentality of the macdonalds generation of the country and shows them in a light that despite all their shortcomings, you tend to care about them.

Although there isn't much attention dedicated to the technical aspects of cinematography or makeovers, there are some superb background tracks that keep up with the tone of the movie. The performances of most of the actors, including our hero, have been either kept to a minimum so as to depict the sexual aspects of their personalities as the dominating forces or maybe because it is the best they can act. But look at Radhika Apte and look at how far she has come from Rakht Charitra to Badlapur to Hunterrr. She is the perfect balance between an outgoing metro girl and a 50s bollywood heroine and she even acts to that level. Whatever Gulshan lacks in his words, Radhika makes up for it, bringing about actual, intense and dramatic sequences whenever she gets the camera. Hunterrr is thus, although unintentionally, the birth of a future star.

Bandwidth Verdict- Apart from some uselessly incorporated sequences, it could have been a must-watch film. But if you can handle that, this just might be your cup of tea.                                        

NH-10

Source: filmibeat

It's a crude comparison to make but in the finale of the epic 'Invasion' story-line of WWE (then WWF), Shane Mcmahon himself fought in an elimination match to save the alliance that he owned then. The move was described as "putting his body where his money was" by Jim Ross I guess. Anushka has done the same as a producer in NH-10.

Anushka Sharma is the Nicole Kidman of Bollywood. She is a professional actress; and that is not a generic word in Bollywood because too few actresses are actually professional enough. Anushka knows how to be the talk of the town and that too for respectable reasons. She knows how to make powerful statements at the right time and how to shed away any weights that might hinder her ascent to the top. And it is safe to say that if she does not fall into any dreams of marrying a businessman and living a life far from B-Wood with charity institutions, she could very well become the Greatest Indian Actress of all time.

But I don't write all this simply because of NH-10. It is a good movie though; dark, speedy and most importantly real (mostly). The credit for all that goes to the director Navdeep Singh to have pulled all this in a convincing and believable fashion. If you forget for sometime that you know Anushka, it may look like a real story unfolding in-front of you. That is until the climax where the Heroine emerges from ashes and lets the audiences know of Woman power. It is a story of a couple Meera (Anushka) and Arjun (Neil Bhoopalam who is 'discount Rajkumar Rao' ), who are caught witnessing an honour-killing crime with Satbir (Darshan Kumaar) as the main villain. It is this old old story in an old bottle and yet it feels like a fresh one.

With the country charged with emotions of Woman power, the film tries to exploit the problems the 'woman of the metro' faces today. Things like that do turn boring sometimes but what's good about this film is that it never makes an issue out of it. There are no moral preachings by Anushka's character, no long monologues trying to depict her predicament even though it would have been good to see Anushka acting those things out. But she tries to do all that with emotions and not words and does a good job at that. Rest of the times, Meera means business.

You will not find any good music in the movie nor any picturesque sequences from a cinematographic point of view. The characters have no make-overs too; they act what they want to look. Look at Deepti Naval who plays a Sarpanch in a village. She doesn't look like one until she speaks and after that she looks nothing else. Except for this, there is no real acting in the movie. By this, I don't mean other actors haven't acted well but that it doesn't feel like acting and it appears they really are those characters. That however, is not a compliment.

All in all, NH-10 is nothing new except for a believable and real protagonist in Anushka.

Bandwidth Verdict: If you are an Anushka fan, watch this. If you are not, watch this to become one.

Dabangg

Source: wallpaperhdfree.com

Salman Khan is Bollywood; Bollywood is Salman Khan. In a show of Kaun Banega Crorepati, the great Amitabh Bachchan once remarked how films that were larger than life were made at his times so that people who turned to the screens after a hard day's work could find solace in a hero who had the world at his disposal and for once could forget the hardships of life. Those hardships still persist and thus, Salman's movies persist too.

And Salman has brought something uniquely original to Bollywood with Dabangg. He has brought style to Robinhood, spice to the anti-hero and awesomeness to the downtrodden cop whom the industry has degraded since its very inception. He plays Chulbul Pandey, a cop who is all that I mentioned above and more. With an Uttar Pradesh setting, he throws around multiple colours of his personality so much so that his flamboyance is reason enough to fall in love with this movie. But things don't stop here. There is an antagonist in Chhedi Singh (Sonu Sood) who is almost a match made in heaven for Chulbul. And then there is Sonakshi Sinha in her debut role of  Rajjo, who is volumptuous by present standards, but is so easy on the eyes and more so on the screen that even the camera seems to fall in love with her and can't choose between her and Salman whenever both are in the same frame. She seems so comfortable to work with as a co-actor that the chemistry crops up of its own when she is involved.

Dabangg is a style statement all the way. The belt-buckle twist, the goggles on Salman's back, the undodgeable insults bring you a fresh new form of heroism. The songs, the fights, the emotional confrontations and the sheer ball-fights are all so stylish that it is a sin to miss any minute of it. Dabangg has some of the most rustic yet memorable one-liners, a tradition that seemed to have died post the 70s bollywood but is revived now, and moments that will forever remain a treat to the eyes. One such sequence comes during an item number when, for pretty much the first time in Cinema, the hero comes out uninvited at the villain's lair but he comes out grand and not only that, he goes on dancing with the girl of the moment with steps that will be immortalized in Indian weddings. This moment is going to be a turning point in movie-making for days to come; people will try to imitate it, recreate it and replicate it but they would not be able to create the same magic again.

Chulbul Pandey in the movie is a hero; he can't really exist and neither does he try to. Salman doesn't try to make his greatest character a common man. He wants him to be a super-hero. He aspires for Chulbul to solve all his problems just like that; without any hue or cry. Salman seeks solace from his predicaments in real life by doing all this in reel life as Chulbul. And this is one of the most important things that cinema stands for. Salman Khan does all this without preaching a word about any higher morality and this is why audiences love him and this is why we will always adore him.

Bandwidth Verdict: If you like Bollywood, always keep a copy of this flick with you; who knows when you feel like having a solid dose of fantasy.

Haider

Source: Naturallyblabby

Sometimes in a movie, you love what the mind likes and at other times, you like what the heart loves. If your movie watching does not fall into any of these criteria, then this review is not for you.

With all due regard to people who appreciated this movie, for me it was a below average flick and should not have garnered the sort of acclaim and appeal that it did.

I haven't read Hamlet, which although should have facilitated my viewing of this film for as they say, "The Book was better". Still, seeing Haider (Shahid Kapoor) as the Kashmiri boy fighting to avenge his father's killing and what he does with this rage of his just doesn't get things going for me at any point of time. And I consider Shahid a good actor but Haider is not a good enough role. There are just too many 'topics' that are supposed to mould Haider in the movie but none of them gets the screen-time enough to show any impact on his character. Haider ends up, in a way, a by-product of everything that goes on in the movie instead of the supreme protagonist he is supposed to be.

Vishal Bhardwaj as a director does bring those dark shades into his characters but here they are just slow but not dark. Even the dialogues given to actors of the caliber of Irfan Khan, Tabu and Kay Kay Menon do not sink in enough to let the audiences feel connected with the theme. Tabu plays Haider's mother Ghazala, who seems to have moved on after his father's demise finding solace with her brother-in-law Khurram (Menon) but even an important role like this has been sidelined to show I don't know what. The only believable character in the movie is, surprisingly, that of Shraddha Kapoor who plays Haider's love interest Arshia.

The technical fields are also not anything to talk about. The shady cinematography and lukewarm choreography leave much to be asked. The fight sequences are plain and do not invoke any emotions whatsoever. Haider's makeover is classy though and full points where they are deserved. The tragedies don't get enough frames to make the viewer care for the people in the film. The movie is a letdown on multiple levels.

To add to all this, there is some unusual physical tension between the characters of Ghazala and Haider which is crude and irresponsible film-making to say the least.

Bandwidth Verdict: The Bandwidth Review 'slams' this movie. It is not worth the effective three hours time of anyone, however free he/she might be.

Queen

Source: Filmibeat

There is a sense of sheer pride and happiness you feel when some form of art depicts exactly what you feel like; when your own frequency tunes with that on the screen and when your heart makes an extra beat every time you see the pulchritude of real life on the celluloid. Queen provides you all of this and more; much much more.

For most of it, Queen is not about the plot. A girl Rani (Kangna) who gets dumped by her fiance a day before her marriage and her struggle to get out of this trauma has Bollywood written all over it. But look at this movie and look at Kangna who chooses to do this 'getting over' by embarking on a solo honeymoon that she had been planning for so much time. And as someone said so aptly, sometimes we travel to discover the world and sometimes to discover ourselves, Kangna's journey, and I say 'Kangna' instead of saying 'Rani' because I don't think any other actress could have pulled this off so beautifully; Kangna's journey is a landmark in Indian Film-making and would be remembered for all times to come whenever good movie-making is talked about.

A beautiful aspect of Cinema is that you don't really know who will come out of nowhere and deliver a masterpiece. As of Kangna, it is known how good she can be with her films like Tanu weds Manu, Fashion and Ganster. But Vikas Bahl, with his second directorial project only,steals the show like very few Indian directors ever have. His screenplay based on his observations of what really is the life of a Delhi girl can be guessed by his remark- "first half, Rani gets over the guy, and in the second, she gets over herself". The film, although made in a small budget and that too with great difficulties in production, has some of the most classy cinematography and stylish sequences one can find these days. All this coupled with some awesome background score makes it, pretty much an 'All Time Great' film.

And I am not joking when I say this. If ever you feel like watching some authentic method acting in a Bollywood movie, look at the sequences when Rani gets drunk and loses her inhibitions going all out about her world and her dealings with the people who constitute it. Kangna has cemented herself as the real queen of Bollywood with this film and as an actress, the makers can bank on for a combination of terrific acting and good looks.

Queen is pretty much the film of the decade for me; Not merely because it is so very enjoyable but also because it does not try to preach the ever so boring saga of  radical Feminism to the audience. It is a real victory of womanhood without any pretentious sage like female lead uttering cliches like " that is how a woman is always treated" blah blah blah. With Queen, Bollywood has grown up from an infant who keeps crying when he/she needs something to a thoughtful child who knows what he/she WANTS and knows how to get it.

Bandwidth Verdict: There are films without which there is something missing in our lives. Queen is one such film.