Tarzan (Animation) (2014)

In Reinhard Klooss’ world, Tarzan (Kellan Lutz) is not adopted by apes as an infant.  Instead, he is part of a happy rich environmentalist family called the Greystokes who are in Africa to search for a massive meteor that crashed there many moons ago.  A meteor that could be a the solution to the energy problems of the entire world and also give clues to the reason for the annihilation of the pre-historic world.

Brick Mansions

There is no other way I could think of starting this review than to pay homage to Paul Walker who left us on 30^th November 2013.  A sad day for cinema in general and more so for fast paced action cinema through which he shot to fame.  Unfortunately, he could not finish shooting for his last movie Fast & Furious 7.  We shall all miss you Paul Walker.

Samrat & Co.

The first thing that cheeses you off with Samrat and Co. is that the lead character is referred to as STD.  Apparently that expands into Samrat Tilak Dhari (Rajeev Khandelwal).  That it would send us back in time to the days of expensive phone calls or remind us of some unwanted diseases really didn’t cross the mind of anyone in the entire team.  Maybe it was intentional.

Kaanchi

A Subhash Ghai movie has to be a minimum of 2.5 hours.  Nothing lesser.  On that count Kaanchi qualifies by just a bit.  It has an excruciatingly long run time of 151 minutes.  Half way into the 2^nd half you catch yourself nodding off at least once.  If your tolerance levels are not as high as mine, this could happen about 20 minutes into the first half itself.

Revolver Rani

Anyone who refers to Revolver Rani as an absolutely nonsensical, over the top, blasé, idiotic, unbelievable, ridiculous, ludicrous, abnormal, bizarre, eccentric, gross, unexpected, unusual, weird movie is absolutely right!!! You can refer to it with any of the adjectives that I have called out but you cannot say that it is a bad movie by any stretch of imagination. Anyone who does refer to Revolver Rani as a bad movie is taking life way to seriously and is no familiar with exploitation movies.

Son of God

Any movie that has to do with the Bible or Jesus that begins with, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” has to come from a bunch of people who probably did not have anything creative to offer in the first place.  And it is that lack of creativity that is reflected every step of the way in what I can only classify as a docu-drama.

Transcendence

Transcendence - trɑːnˈsɛnd(ə)ns,tranˈsɛnd(ə)ns noun – existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level

Synonyms       superiority, supremacy, predominance, pre-eminence, ascendancy, incomparability, matchlessness, peerlessness, excellence, greatness, magnificence, sublimity, importance, rareparamountcy

Yellow (2014) (Marathi)

A review from last Saturday for this movie said that if we don’t walk into a theatre to watch such movies then there will no money coming in and therefore lesser of these movies will be made in the future.  I could not resist using the thought to begin Yellow because we will continue to have a huge chunk of the world which will download this movie instead of watching it on screen.

Dekh Tamasha Dekh

About 2-3 minutes into Feroze Abbas Khan’s second venture into Bollywood your reaction would be, “This doesn’t seem like a movie at all”.  For those unaware, FAK is a much more well known for his exploits in the theatre circuit.  It seems like the baggage from theatre has been carried over to Dekh Tamasha Dekh not just in terms of narration but more obviously in terms of cast.

2 States

The most difficult part of this review is going to be the beginning.  I have just walked out of Screen 4 @ PVR Mulund feeling overawed by the performances from 5 brilliant actors and a sincere but not so talented one.  I am also confused because I don’t feel the thrill that I felt after Highway or Queen.

Rosewood Lane

There are badly made thrillers and then there are badly made thrillers. Rosewood Lane falls into any one of those 2 categories. Directed by Victor Sava (Jeepers Creepers / Rites of Passage), Rosewood Lane is a meek attempt at a serial killer / stalker brand of movie with all the predictabilities that you can imagine.

Oculus

This is my first experience with Mike Flanagan and I must say that I enjoyed the way he chose to narrate the story of Oculus.  Oculus (the feature film) is inspired by one of his earlier works, a short film – Oculus : Chapter 3 – The Man with the Plan. It is identical to Oculus in terms of the overall plot but is different in some aspects.

Rio 2

I am at the outset going to make a candid confession.  I didn’t like Rio too much.  I found it to be too much of an avian fantasy.  It seemed force fitted into one of the most gorgeous places on earth and that didn’t go too well with me.  I found a lot of characters to be over the top and frankly the concept was nowhere close to animations like Lion King or Finding Nemo or even Shrek (not one of my favourites).

Bhoothnath Returns

Nitesh Tiwari enthralled us with Chillar Party a few years back – a movie that I had described as a must watch because of the message it tried to give and because it was entertaining (don’t forget the Chaddi March which was hilarious!!!).  This time around, his movie is packaged as a kids entertainer but it is actually meant for all of you out there who are above 18.  It is a must watch.

Divergent

The size of the Young Adult Fiction Market in 2009 was estimated at about $3 billion!!! (yes – with a “buh” – Alan Harper).  A certain Veronica Roth was terribly cued into this market at published her first book “Divergent” somewhere in 2011.  Even before she graduated, the movie rights were sold.

Jal (Hindi) (2014)

A good friend called up very excitedly about 10 days back raving about JAL.  The trailers were also cut to perfection and I was indeed intrigued about figuring out what this movie is all about.  It had Purab Kohli, Tannishtha Chatterjee and Kirti Kulhari – all of whom I believe are wonderful actors.  The support cast was also up there.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Anthony and Joe Russo are not the most seasoned directors for the big screen.  Their filmography shows 3 other full length features, the last of which was the slapstick RomCom – You, Me and Dupree.  Add to that, the fact that I have not seen Captain America : First Avenger (yeah yeah you can boo me to kingdom come).

Main Tera Hero

And he is back!!!! About a year after his biggest disaster in which he made a hash out of a wonderful Sai Paranjpe classic, he is back to being his old self. One that the sly old fella spoilt us with in the late 90s and early 2000s – usually with a certain Govind Ahuja in the lead.