Film Review

By admin • March 6th, 2010

By Subhash K Jha
Starring: Ajay Devgan, Konkona Sen Sharma, Paresh Rawal
Directed: Ashwini Dheer
Rating: ** ½
Be Ajay Devgan and Konkona Sen Sharma’s guest. Paresh Rawaail makes the first bonafide guest appearance in our cinema.
And what pest this guest is! So many films about the guest as an intruder. But this one takes the creak. And yes [...]

By Subhash K Jha
Starring: Mrunmayee Lagoo, Milind Gunajee, Kitu Gidwani, Neena Gupta, Kanlwajeet Singh
Directed: Raja Unnithan
Rating: ** ½
A rebellious teenage daughter Kavita of a traumatized couple doesn’t know what to do with her life. So she takes off on a journey away from home with a lonely neglected but brave middleaged woman to Goa where [...]

By Subhash K Jha
Starring: Master Shams, Master Salman, Master Fayyaz, Master Jaffar, Baby Almas, and a host of brilliant walk- on actors
Directed: Irfan Kamal
Rating: ****
He’s 12, and homeless. And he refuses to adopt the swaggering amorality of his friends on the street. They call him Municipal Ghatkopar because that’s the address where he was dumped [...]

By Subhash K Jha
Starring: Farhan Akhtar, Deepika Padukone
Directed: Vijay Lalvani
Rating: ***
Desolation is a distant cousin to suburban seclusion. And from the isolation of the Modern Indian Man is born the Great Cosmopolitan Fable of the man who knows no succour from seclusion.
Karthik Calling Karthik is an interesting if flawed fable of the damned. The protagonist [...]

By: Sumesh Vasishth
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Ben Kingsley, R. Madhavan, Dhruv Ganesh, Shraddha Kapoor, Siddharth Kher, Vaibhav Talwar, Saira Mohan, Raima Sen
Music Director: Salim Merchant, Sulaiman Merchant
Story/ Screenplay/ Dialogue: Leena Yadav, Shiv Kumar Subramaniam
Producer: Ambika A Hinduja
Director: Leena Yadav
There is a probability puzzle called ‘Monty Hall Problem’ which I’ll try to fit into Bollywood’s report card [...]

By Subhash K Jha
Starring: Tabu, Ayub Khan, Vatsal Seth, Sharman Joshi
Directed: Kedar Shindre
Rating: *
It’s the other film this week Click that’s meant to be a horror flick. But Toh Baat Pakki is a bigger horror than anything this week, or in any recent week.
To think that the divine Tabu stars in it makes the blood [...]

By Subhash K Jha
Starring: Shreyas Talpade, Sadaa, Sneha Ullal
Directed: Sangeeth Sivan
Rating: **
If you can accept Shreyas Talpade as a womanizing glam photographer who clicks with the ladies, so to speak, and Sneha Ullal (remember her as Salman Khan’s under-age lover-girl in Lucky) then the underlining them of love- on-the-prowl in afterlife is chilling in [...]

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Jimmy Shergill, Zarina Wahab
Director: Karan Johar
Rating:****
Questions of religious and national identity, of the sense of right and wrong, of combating a certain isolation that comes with a behavioural disorder. But what triumphs over all the complexities unfolding in a tumultuous post 9/11 America is Rizwan Khan and his essential goodness [...]

Starring: Siddharth, Aditya Pancholi, Padmapriya,Vidya Malvade, Ankur Vikal and Anupam Kher
Director: Chandan Arora
Rating: ***
Its December 1992 and curfew time in Malvani, Mumbai’s north western suburb when Suryakant Sarang aka Surya (Siddharth) arrives back in Mumbai from an out of town trip. Communal riots have broken out in the area mostly dominated by Muslims.
Surya is stopped [...]

By Subhash K Jha
Cast: Om Puri, Shreyas Talpade, Gulshan Grover, Amrita Bedi
Directed: Vishal Bhandari
Rating: ** ½
A long-delayed film but one that comes with its own baggage of silent merit, The Hangman hinges on a rather heart-wrenching irony. A noble hangman Shiva (Om Puri) must finally execute the son on whom hinges his whole hope of [...]

By Subhash K Jha
Starring: Nandu Madhav, Vibhawari Despande
Written & Directed: Paresh Mokashi
Rating: *** ½
This is the one that went all the way to Oscar-land and came back empty-handed. So whose loss is it anyway?
Writer-director Paresh Mokashi’s tender-sweet film about the founding-father of Indian cinema Dadasaheb’s Phalke’s struggle to make the first feature film in this [...]

Starring: Naseeruddin Shah, Vidya Balan, Arshad Warsi and Salman Shahid
Director: Abhishek Chaubey
Rating: ***1/2
Two crooks on the run, Khaalujaan (Naseer) and Babban (Arshad) arrive at beautiful widow Krishna’s (Vidya Balan) doorstep. They tell her they were late hubby’s good friends at one point of time.
The duo has actually run away from their Jiju Mushtaq (Salman Shahid) [...]

By: Sumesh Vasishth
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Vivek Oberoi, Dia Mirza, Kirron Kher, Om Puri
Background Score & Music: Salim Merchant, Sulaiman Merchant
Director: Rensil D’Silva

Wake up Yash Raj & Co. and smell the coffee. Your very own blue-eyed boy Karan Johar and his men are now beating you at your own game. Film after film, [...]

By Subhash K Jha
Starring: Ranbir Kapoor, Katrina Kaif
Directed: Rajkumar Santoshi
Rating: ***

If you’ve ever wondered what on earth is on-screen chemistry here’s your one-stop all-purpose encyclopaedia on celluloid magic.
Fasten your ‘see’-it belts, as veteran filmmaker Rajkumar Santoshi sheds all his Lajja, pulls out all stops to do a wacky goofy edgeless weightless comedy of characters [...]

By: Sumesh Sharma
Cast: Neil Nitin Mukesh, Mugdha Godse, Manoj Bajpai, Arya Babbar, Chetan Pandit, Rahul Singh, Kaveri Jha
Music Directors: Shamir Tandon, Sharib Sabri and Toshi Sabri
Director: Madhur Bhandarkar
Rating: ***

Corrupt cops, dingy and over cramped cells, inedible food, lecherous inmates and an all-pervasive bhai waiting to turn you into his sharp-shooter; Welcome to the Jail straight [...]

Starring: Salman Khan, Ajay Devgan, Asin and Om Puri
Director: Vipul Amrutlal Shah
Rating: ***

Arjun (Ajay) and Manu (Salman) are childhood buddies living in a Punjab village. Arjun passionately loves music and dreams of becoming a musical sensation like Michael Jackson and perform at London’s Wembley Stadium but his family hates music as it was the reason [...]

Cast: Michael Jackson
Director: Kenny Ortega
Rating: ***

This is it. The moment has arrived. For weeks there has been widespread speculation around the actual content of the musical documentary on Michael Jackson.
While director Kenny Ortega had announced that the film would give a sneak peek of Jackson’s rehearsals for his concert series by the same name (“This [...]

Cast: Animated
Director: Pankaj Sharma
Rating: ***

More than half a dozen animated films released in 2008. However, most of them failed to make a mark, mainly because of sub-standard animation.
Now in 2009, comes the next instalment of “Bal Ganesha” and among all the animation films based on mythological themes, this is easily the best India has seen [...]

Starring: Boman Irani, Mahesh Manjrekar, Dia Mirza and Cyrus Broacha
Directed by: Kunal Vijaykar
Rating: **

Kunal Vijaykar’s efforts to make a comedy film resulted in – a few funny jokes strung together to make a storyline. It promises to be a senseless comedy that will make you roll on the floor with laughter. Sadly, it only remains [...]

Starring: Sameer Dattani, Nauheed Cyrusi and Satish Kaushik
Directed by: Rajan Waghdhare
Rating: *

A baseless film with no storyline is what Love Ka Tadka is. What else do you expect from a film that revolves around vegetarian and non-vegetarian food habits? So, it’s definitely not recommended but if you still want to know why, you may read [...]

By Subhash K Jha
Starring: Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgn, Fardeen Khan, Bipasha Basu, Mugdha Godse
Directed: Rohit Shetty
Rating: ** ½

“I’m doing action for thirty years. Comedy I’ve recently taken to, ” says Sanjay Dutt in the ‘won’-and-only explosion of dhishum-dhishum.
You got it, brother. In his first really decent and meaty role since Munnabhai Dutt gets into the [...]

Starring: Salman Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Sohail Khan, Mahek Chahal, Nauheed Cyrusi, Yash Tonk and Bappi Lahiri
Director: Prem Soni
Rating: **

Samir (Salman) and Raina (Kareena) are married and settled in Melbourne, Australia. What started of as a loving relationship which lead to a quick marriage between the two has now turned into a complicated situation what with [...]

By Joginder Tuteja
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Akshay Kumar, Zayed Khan, Lara Dutta, Katrina Kaif ,Kylie Minogue
Director : Anthony D’Souza
Rating: ****

When the makers of a film proudly proclaim their product to be at par with their Hollywood counterparts, one is bound to be sceptical. More so because “Blue” is an action film, that too set underwater, which [...]

Starring: Irrfan Khan, Manoj Bajpai, Dia Mirza, Aftab Shivdasani, Fardeen Khan, Dino Morea and Danny
Director: Suparn Verma
Rating: **

Five guys (Danny, Manoj, Aftab, Dino and Fardeen) wake up in a dilapidated warehouse only to realize that they have momentarily lost their memory due to a gas leak.
The exit doors of this factory are locked from outside [...]

Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Konkona Sen Sharma, Anupam Kher, Supriya Pathak, Rahul Khanna
Director: Ayan Mukerji
Rating: ***1/2

Next time when a star son gets an opportunity to get an author-backed role, let’s not complain. That’s because if he actually goes on to come up with as flawless an act as seen in “Wake Up Sid”, there is no [...]

Starring: Govinda, Sushmita Sen, Ritesh Deshmukh, Lara Dutta, Sohail Khan, Ranvir Shorey, Rituparna Sengupta, Rajpal Yadav and Manoj Pahwa
Director: David Dhawan
Rating: *

Govinda plays a rich husband married to Sushmita who owns the Saxena Group of industries. On the sly he has been having an affair with Dolly (Lara) an item queen who has dumped her [...]

Starring: Vinod Khanna, Akshay Kapoor, Rehan Khan, Bhavna Pani, Siddhant Karnick and Sabina
Director: Zaigham Ali Sayed
Rating: *1/2

Fast Forward narrates the tale of two best buddies Rishi (Rehan) and Sunny (Akshay Kapoor). Both are fantastic dancers.
The fun loving Sunny finds dancing a great way to express himself and is in love with Rishi’s sister Jeel (Bhavna).
(There [...]

Starring: Harman Baweja and Priyanka Chopra
Director: Ashutosh Gowariker
Rating: ***

The movie begins at Bardoli village, Gujarat where a wealthy old man decides to write his assets in the name of his grandson Yogesh Patel (Harman Baweja), the only person in the family to remember his maternal grandfather on all occasions (read birthdays).
Yogesh is doing his MBA [...]

By Subhash K Jha
Starring: Shahid Kapoor, Rani Mukherjee, Rakhi Sawant, Sheryln Chopra, Anupam Chopra
Directed: Anuraag Singh
Rating: *

Somewhere down the line in this mish-mash of Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Chak De and what-have-‘youth’ Shahid Kapoor, looking as intense as a man who has just discovered he has acute molar ache scowls at Rani and says, [...]

Starring: Salman Khan, Ayesha Takia, Vinod Khanna, Mahesh Manjrekar, Prajkash Raj, Govind Namdeo, Inder Kumar, Aseem Merchant, Sajid
Director: Prabhu Deva
Rating: **1/2

If you are crazy about regular commercial masala films leaving your brains at home, Wanted is the right choice. Wanted is a canvas painted in south Indian colours where you can get a glimpse of [...]

By Subhash K Jha
Starring: Sohum Shah, Om Puri, Mithun Chakbraborty, Sushant Singh
Directed: Ashu Trikha
Rating: **

It’s a brutal world out there. Welcome to the killing fields of Lucknow. The paths and alleys are bathed in blood. The roads are strewn with corpses. It’s almost as if the city has no respite from violence.
Baabarr is arguably the [...]

Star Cast: Arshad Warsi, Ashish Chowdhry, Aarti Chhabria, Udita Goswami,Yash Tonk, Shweta Menon, Aashish Vidyarthi, Shakti Kapoor.
Director: Ajay Chandok
Producer: Balagiri
Rating: **

Certain themes worked in the ’70s and ’80s. But they seem completely out of place in today’s times. You can’t connect with them, plain and simple. That’s the issue with Kisse Pyaar Karoon.
Kisse Pyaar Karoon? [...]

Cast: Abhishek Bachchan , Sonam Kapoor, Waheeda Rahman, Rishi Kapoor,Om Puri ,Atul Kulkarni, Divya Dutta.
Director: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra thinks out of the box and it’s more than evident now. First AKS, then RANG DE BASANTI, now Delhi 6.
A two-liner of the story may give you an impression that it’s similar to UTV’s earlier [...]