Patiala House

In marketing parlance, hype is defined as “an ingenious or questionable claim, method, etc., used in advertising, promotion, or publicity to intensify the effect” or simple put exaggerated publicity; hoopla. And why are we discussing the concept of hype? Isnt this supposed to be a blog that reviews movies and not give a lecture in marketing and choicest terms. You would be right on both counts. But how in the blazes am I supposed to explain a character called Askhay Kumar who is the least talented of all actors that Bollywood has to offer today but is still one of the highest paid actors around – and if sources are to be believed – THE HIGHEST PAID ACTOR in Bollywood today. It has been nearly a decade that we saw AK with any semblance of acting talent left in him. I am referring to his comic timing in Hera Pheri which has since then deserted him. In what can only be described as a desperate attempt to try and portray himself as a versatile actor, our man has attempted Patiala House and has come up with one of THE most insipid performances that one could have expected out of anyone. The only way he is going to get somewhere is if he ensures that the producers pick up a cast who is worse than him. On current form, it would still be difficult for AK to make any headway.

Gurtej Kahlon (Rishi Kapoor) is a man who is obsessed with the idea that all Brits are part of this large scheme that is ensuring that he and his family are treated like second grade citizens. And everything can be sorted out by shouting and screaming of course. Now all of this stems from a series of racially discriminating incidents in South Hall and the death of a key member of the community which is often referred to as Mini Punjab. Gurtej takes it upon himself to get him and his people a right to a first grade citizen life. Only, somewhere along the way he also forgets that his mission has been achieved a long time back. He continues to run Patiala House like a dictator would with no one in the family or for that matter the community being allowed to have a mind of their own. He also doesn’t let his own son Parghat Singh Kahlon aka Gattu and eventually aka Kaali (Akshay Kumar) pursue his dream of playing cricket (which he is damn good at) for England. Gattu now runs a store in South Hall. Till Simran (Anushka Sharma) and Zeeshan (Devansh Daswani) walk into his life and start asking questions. Along with the rest of the oppressed family they force Gattu to take his 2nd lease of life (he gets a call 17 years later) seriously and go for the trials. Obviously you know what will happen next.

Nikhil Advani doesn’t seem to have learnt from his CC2C debacle or for that matter his previous 2 attempts. Maybe they should make it mandatory for people to have experience before they get into mainstream direction. To make matters worse, he also takes the credit for writing the story. Its fiction but there should be some logic or consistency in the story. How can the cricket board of a country decide to sack every single player for lack of performance. At least call it out as some fraud or match fixing allegations. Just sacked. Right from the insipid titling of the movie one can make out that the next 150 minutes are going to be a bit of a challenge. There are moments when the screen light up with Anushka’s smile (does anyone in Bollywood have a better one today) and some quirky moments and yes the overall concept is endearing but that doesn’t qualify it to be even an average movie. Rishi Kapoor, I thought for the first time took his role a bit too seriously and was just that wee bit over the top. Dimple shows her class in the 3 minutes of screen time that she has and does a far better job of it than AK. I have said this earlier and I say this again – Anushka Sharma is the next big thing in Bollywood. Solid talent and huge levels of talent to boot. A bit over the top here but only a wee bit and that too in parts. Other than that, music is the only saving grace of Patiala House. Shankar Ehsaan Loy again delivers a solid performance here. Overall a 4 on 10. Oh and yes, a minor highlight of the movie would be the actress who goes by the name Selina Hotwani. How Hot I say. Have a lovely weekend folks

Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EqgIh5lEu8&feature=fvst

Biutiful

I was done with watching Yeh Saali Zindagi and was desperate to actually watch some quality cinema. I knew there was a show for Biutiful @ 2030 @ PVR Mulund but as luck would have it, I was the first person to ask for a ticket. Luckily a 2nd guy came in. Here was a guy who wanted to see the movie for a second time. And he told me a story about how the movie was being screened @ the Miami Film Festival and the organizers were forced to screen it twice because of the response. Ironic that against 400+ people in each show @ Miami, we were struggling to get 4 in a show. Luckily we got to our minimum requirement of 6 to run a show and I got to watch two of the best on screen talents that this world has seen in the past few years. Both who personify the term intensity on the big screen. Both who believe in the concept of perfection like very few I have ever seen. They go by the names of Javier Bardem (Uxbal) and Alejandro González Iñárritu.


Uxbal is a 40 something man who struggles to make ends meet. He lives with his children Ana (Hanaa Bouchaib) and Mateo (Guillermo Estrella) in a matchbox houe of sorts somewhere in Barcelona. They live away from his wife, Marambra (Maricel Álvarez) because of her addictions and inability to take up the responsibility of the children. He makes his living by supplying cheap illegal immigrants as labourers or for doing odd jobs. His key contacts are the Chinese – Hai (Cheng Tai Shen) and his gay partner Liwei (Luo Jin). The Chinese supply him goods which he sells off on the streets using his African contact base. Other than all of these, Uxbal also has a peculiar skill. I really do not know how to explain this better and so I will put it as simply as I can. Uxbal can talk to the dead and communicate their final thoughts to their loved ones. He is called upon quite often to do this. He isn’t supposed to charge anything for it but accepts any money given because of his financial situation. Uxbal has prostrate cancer and has another 2 months to live.

Iñárritu, in his 4th movie, continues exploring his favourite concept – DEATH. This time around, he narrates the story in a fairly straight forward manner unlike 21 grams where he made sure that people who understood the movie hadn’t taken their eyes off the screen for a split second or like Babel where each of the 4 stories were linked to the other in some obscure or not so obscure way. This one is much cleaner but then it is Iñárritu right. So there has to be a certain amount of – for lack of any other word – poetry – on screen. I cannot describe Iñárritu’s direction in any other way with my limited knowledge of the English language and even more limited knowledge about the movies. Every single cog in the wheel seems to just come together to communicate the essence of pain that a father goes through when he knows that his children are going to be without someone to depend on when he moves on. Or the emotions that a deranged mother goes through thanks to her inability to cope up with addiction. Not forgetting to mention the desperation of an illegal immigrant to ensure that her family’s future is secured. An extremely poignant representation of emotions. Truly a very well made movie. Extremely slow but very well made. 8 on 10 for the movie. 9 for Bardem. But I don’t think he will be able to pip Colin Firth for the best actor at the Oscars.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1483905305/

Yeh Saali Zindagi

It beats me. It beats me completely. Does the use of profanity through a movie make it spunky enough? The likes of a Good Fellas – which coincidentally holds some kind of a world record for the maximum number of explitives in a movie – doesn’t become a great movie because of the profanities. It has a lot to do with the other aspects of the movie such as direction and acting to begin with. And it would be fair to assume that someone like Sudhir Mishra who has given us the likes of Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin and Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi would know better than that right. Surely an amateur critic like this one doesn’t need to point out these basics to the immensely talented director. But this amateur critic continues to see enough and more articles in the tabloids (cannot call them newspapers) that scream out from the front pages that likes of Yeh Saali Zindagi and No One Killed Jessica are creating waves with the audiences coz they are spunky movies. Does anyone pay any attention to consistency these days? Sudhir Mishra would definitely be embarrassed to see the end result of his latest so called potboiler. To point out something very basic, Priti (Chitrangadha Singh) calls Arun (Irrfan Khan) from a Bombay Vodafone number and not a Delhi number. Considering they have been in Delhi for a while and that Mobile Number Portability is not equal to circle portability as of now or when the movie was made, surely someone should have given some thought to that.


Arun is a CA par excellence who is required to keep Mehta’s (Saurabh Shukla) books in order. When Mehta cheats him of his share of the adjustments he stops working for him much to Mehta’s disgust. Mehta almost kills him but Arun refuses to join back. In the heat of the moment, Arun also decides to ask Priti to marry him. Arun had met Priti a while back when he was recovering money for Mehta from a borrower. He was instantly taken in by her but for some reason has never voiced what he feels for her to date. He now finds himself in a situation where he walks into a restaurant to see Priti coochy cooing with Shyam Singhania (Vipul Gupta) although Shyam is about to get married to Anjali who is the daughter of the Home Minster Verma. Now Verma is responsible for getting the local don, Bade (Yashpal Sharma) into jail. Bade is taken care of @ Tihar Jail by the local inspector Satbeer (Sushant Singh). He also has a soft corner for Kuldeep (Arunoday Singh) who wants to get out of the illegal business and go straight. He hasn’t been spending quality time with his wife Shanti (Aditi Rao Hydari) who is anything but peaceful about it. Completing this Egg Bhurji is Chhote (Prashant Narayanan) who is Bade’s transvestite younger brother and wants to eliminate Bade at the earliest and get his hands on all the money lying in various international bank accounts.

As mentioned earlier, Sudhir Mishra has tried to sprinkle this melee with several profanities and slang words which can be associated with Delhi but falls significantly short on the basic attributes of direction and acting. Chitrangadha Singh hasn’t acted in her life since Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi (Maybe even there she had very little screen time to probably notice). No idea what the big deal is about Arunoday Singh and Aditi Rao Hydari. They are decent but nothing as great as the tabloids seem to be calling out. YSZ saves a lot of face thanks to the immense talent of Irrfan Khan, Saurabh Shukla, Yashpal Sharma, Sushant Singh (very under rated) and Prashant Narayanan who come up with sterling performances in their respective roles. Average music and bad editing round up this mish mashed movie which could have been made so much better. 5 on 10 at best.

Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXuLeso_jbg

Inside Job

I have never reviewed a documentary before. I know there is always a first time for everything but I am a wee bit circumspect about how to go about doing this. There is no cast you can credit for acting or bringing the concept to life in a manner that blows your pants off. It’s actually representation of fact right? And therefore even more difficult to leave the audience with a feeling of actually having watched a movie. The capability of using factors such as editing should be even more in case of a documentary than a feature film is what I would assume. Do let me know your inputs. Would be more than glad to hear them out. Now, I wasn’t going to let my thoughts prevent me from watching “Inside Job” because I like documentaries anyways. And if it was about the Financial Meltdown that the world faced in 2008 then I am even more interested. So there was no option actually in the matter. I guess I will figure out how to get better at reviewing them as time goes by.

Narrated beautifully by Matt Damon in the ice cold, sarcastic style that he uses in most of his movies, Inside Job (IJ) takes a hard look at not just the time that the bubble burst around the 15th September 2008 with the Lehman Brothers collapse but also at the entire process that led upto it and more importantly what next? The documentary is divided into 5 parts. “How did we get here” – that covers the period from the Great Depression (1929) all the way upto the dot com bubble bursting (Y2K) – which talks about how the guys in power actually went about setting laws that were bound to fail sooner than later. “The Bubble” is Part 2 which covers the period of FY 2001 – ’07 and deals with how the entire concept of a the boom in the economy was a figment of people’s imagination. Part 3 is aptly titled “The Crisis” which covers FY 2008 and how one by one the big guys who were all in cohorts with each other slowly but surely started disintegrating. What gives IJ the edge over a lot of documentaries that I have seen in the past is that it doesn’t stop at this. It goes ahead into Part 4 which deals with “Accountability” and how the people who were responsible for the entire shit that we are in have actually gotten away scott free. And most importantly, it goes into Part 5 titled “Where are we Now”. Here the makers of the documentary give a clear call to action to almost everyone concerned by showing that despite the meltdown there is almost nothing that has been done about Financial Crimes. Shocking to say the least.

Inside Job clearly touches a chord within you that I have come to associate with good documentaries such as Farenheit 9/11. The extent of research done to come up with this Oscar nominee from last year is superb to say the least. And the makers have also managed to connect the dots to aspects such as how the education system is being influenced to move us in the wrong direction with respect to Financial / Corporate Governance. An aspect that has probably never been covered before. Even for the financially challenged like this amateur critic, IJ does a fantastic job of breaking down the complications of the industy into smaller understandable units through use of graphical and figurative representation. Excellent use of music enhances the overall feel as well.  At the end of 120 minutes, my respect for the United States (which was always low) has gone down even further. The part that’s worse is that nothing has been ever done about penalizing politicians in any part of the world. And sadly enough nothing will ever be done. Sad but True. But a must watch definitely. 7.5 on 10 definitely. Whether it would win an Oscar or not I am not sure coz I haven’t see the other ones. Definitely a front runner.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi751502873/

Scoop

“Never miss a Woody Allen movie if you have the choice” is a mental note that I had made a long long time back. I have kept upto the mental note to date. All of last afternoon post the doctor’s visit was spent in bed thanks to the antibiotics which put me off to sleep. I wouldn’t have gone to sleep had there been something reasonable playing on the tube. But the evening did have a silver lining on one channel. Zee Studio was screening “Scoop”. And adding to the eccentricities that a Woody Allen gets to the table, it stars who I consider the hottest Hollywood star – and I mean super sizzling flash point of water hot – Scarlett Johansson. Suddenly my flu had taken the back seat and almost disappeared – momentarily. About 2 hours later it was back to torment me and the antibiotics kicked in and started doing their job.

Joe Strombel (Ian McShane) is a dead man. Dead as a Dodo. In fact he is about to be buried. And in a different plane, he is being taken by The Reaper or Death (Pete Mastin), on his boat which is probably on its way to the ass end of nowhere. On the boat, Joe bumps into Jane Cook (Fenella Woolgar) who as you would have guessed by now, is also dead. Jane has a strong doubt in her head that she has been poisoned by her boss Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman) who is the millionaire son of a Lord. Jane used to be Peter’s secretary. She also believes that she was murdered because she was on the verge of confirming that Peter Lyman is the dreaded Tarot Card Killer whose resume of serial killing has recently crossed double digits. The journalist in Strombel is unable to control his instincts since he believes that he is onto something. But how can a dead journalist make any difference to the scoop of a lifetime???? Simple. He jumps of the boat of dead people. He is bound to appear somewhere after that right.

Sondra Pransky (flash point of water sizzling – Scarlett Johansson) is studying journalism and is living with her friends in London. She is an absolute amateur. So much so that she lands up getting laid by famous director Mike Tinsley (Kevin McNally) and doesn’t get anything out of him. But her life is about to change really quickly thanks to her visit to see a magic show. The Magician Sidney Waterman a.k.a. Splendini (Woody Allen) gets her on stage for his disappearing act. But Sondra is not alone in the Chinese Box. She has company. Company in the form of extremely famous but recently deceased Joe Strombel. Strombel quickly passes on the message of the scoop of the century to Sondra and urges her to take up the case like an investigative journalist would. That’s when Sondra decides to go under cover and befriends Peter Lyman as Jade Spence along with Sidney acting as her father Mr. Spence for lack of any first name. As the Tata Sky information bar would say “hilarity follows” over the next hour or so in the Spence’s attempts to expose Lyman.

A movie that is shot in typical Woody Allen style. Eccentric, unstable, funny. Woody Allen has never changed his style of acting no matter what role he is playing. He continues to awe his audiences with his capability of doing the same thing over and over again but still getting a fabulous response. One can never tire of him I guess. Scarlett Johansson can act reasonably well – yes I was watching the acting as well – but she does get a bit over what is required many a time. Hugh Jackman is quite good in his portrayal of Peter Lyman – very British – although he is Aussie by birth. Extremely watchable whether you are a Woody Allen fan or not. Easily a 7 on 10. One more if you if you dig Woody Allen.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2146763545/

Utt Pataang

If it has Vinay Pathak in it along with the usual stage performers union thrown in, one is bound to make an assumption that the movie would be a good one. And you are also quite certain that these movies will not last beyond a week coz for some reason people don’t quite see the star value – which is what sells in India. Having said that, we did have 2-3 great movies last year without any star value whatsoever – a trend that is slowly but surely picking up in India. A trend that debutante director, Srikanth V Velagaleti doesn’t quite capitalize on with some loose direction and loads of errors on consistency. Add to that his inability to hold his own with classy actors such as Vinay Pathak and Saurabh Shukla and you have yourself the version of a Parsee Akuri that has gone horribly wrong coz it wasn’t made by a Bawa. Yes, it is edible. But it could have been so much better than what it eventually turned out to be. Long way to go Shrikant Saar.


Ram (Vinay Pathak) is your average loser 35 year old – and I wonder why there are so many such movies releasing these days; maybe just to remind me that I am slowly but surely getting to a place that is referred to more often than not as “over the hill”. I hereby make a humble request to the people who are responsible for driving Bollywood and for that matter Hollywood to please move focus to much more lucrative options such as movies on the average 25 year old bimbette / dude. Nevertheless, Ram is getting over a break up with Sanjana (Mahie Gill) who is a foul mouthed (both in speech and smell), ambitious woman. She dumps Ram for someone else and is now chasing Ram to get her stuff back. Ram’s detective friend Nandu (Saurabh Shukla) is dead against Sanjana coz he senses a stench when she is around – and that’s not due to her smoking or abusive habit. He just doesn’t like her.

One evening, Ram gets a call from Nandu asking him to meet up ASAP. He reaches the Polo club and has to wait for over an hour before Nandu shows up. Nandu has been pushing Ram to get over Sanjana and find someone new. But Ram thinks his days of “picking up women” are long dead and gone. The impromptu Nandu then goes ahead and asks the girl on the next table, Koel (Mona Singh) to join them for dinner and promptly disappears after a few minutes, leaving Koel and Ram to get to know each other. Koel has just left home that morning after breaking up with Pranay, her boy friend for six years because she finds a cigarette butt with a lipstick mark on it in the back seat of the car. Did I forget to mention the used condom she finds as well… er… sorry. After some small talk and getting Koel to feel better about her life in general, Ram gets her home to sleep…. In the guest room yaar…. Corrupt minded people I say. What follows is a whole lot of confusion and chasing woven with some healthy and clean comedy.

Vinay Pathak and Saurabh Shukla are very good as always. Vinay Pathak also has a double role in the movie with the other one of an underworld don obsessed with French. The rest of the cast is extremely passé. Mona Singh hardly has a couple of dialogues which she delivers in her usual average manner. Mahie Gill goes one step closer to my opinion of her being highly over rated. She hasn’t come remotely close to her Dev D performance ever. Is this another case of succumbing in the shadow of your best performance? Stop thinking about being like Paro my dear Ms. Gill. You cannot have a role like that ever again. Delnaz Paul is at her irritating best as always. She should seriously stop acting – the sooner the better. Overall, a very loosely made movie as mentioned earlier. Could have been much better. 5 on 10 I say.

Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-N3rEAszYg

Sanctum

If I remember the date correctly, it was 21st December 2010 when I visited my first site for stalactites and stalagmites called the Ngigli Caves en route from Margaret River to Freemantle. We walked down about 50 metres into the earth I am guessing. At the lowest point which changes guard once every 4 hours (coz you are not allowed to stay below for longer than that time), the lady mentioned something which came back to me in a flash when I was watching Sanctum last nite. She said, “We are but a small speck”. In the same vein but with an impact and a situation that is vastly magnified, Frank (Richard Roxburgh) says to the rest of his team when all the chips seem to be down, “There is no god out here. This place doesn’t give a rats arse about us. We are just bits of dust passing through”. Sanctum is littered which several such slap on the face dialogues. One more that comes to mind is, “Panic is the vulture that sits on your shoulder”.


Frank is leading a team of half crazy nitwits whose thrill in life comes from the what most of them describe as “going where no one else has gone before” – not like Star Trek mind you. But think about it. Most of the other frontiers in life have been been already explored right? The only ones left are underground. Spelunking (cave diving) is even more unpredictable that most other adventure sport. It is a combination of mountain climbing, rappelling, abseiling and one could throw in diving as well for good measure. Things seem to be going quite well for the set of cave divers who have been @ the South Pacific's Esa-ala (Papua New Guinea to be precise) for 34 days now. Some of them haven’t seen daylight for the past 2 weeks. So the fatigue is getting to them for sure but they are hell bent on cracking the entire system of Esa-Ala at the earliest. The core team includes Frank’s son Joshua (Rhyss Wakefield), their mad financier Carl (Ioan Gruffudd), his girlfriend Victoria (Alice Parkinson), the systems expert Crazy George (Dan Wyllie) and Judes (Allison Cratchley). Things do take a nasty turn when a cyclone comes in and floods the entire team out leaving the team with no other choice but to find their way out. En route they are pitted against their worst adversaries to date – Nature and The Unknown.

One must credit Sanctum with great advertising and a trailer that led most people to believe that it’s a James Cameron movie. Although it is produced by Cameron, the director is Alister Grierson who is a movie old but has picked up a topic that hasn’t been explored too much earlier and comes out on tops. I would love to watch the making of Sanctum to actually figure out how some of the underwater shots and those in the crevices have been taken. Sanctum is a movie that comes to you straight out of a picture postcard. Its beautifully shot and has all the right ingredients for an edge of the seat thriller. You will not complain about being short on action for sure. Warning however that it does get gory in parts and is not meant for the light hearted. Well made and must watch for the action fan – 7 on 10.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1483905305/

Alpha and Omega

We have had animations movies about almost every living creature in the world to date but I guess somewhere someone missed out on wolves. There has been the odd reference here and there or a significant importance in movies such as Jungle Book but never a full-fledged animation dedicated to wolves and their nuances and obviously some adventure and a couple of love stories thrown in. Cute right? Not very though. Anthony Bell and Ben Gluck – 2 amateur directors in the field of animation come together to try to capitalize on the market gap as one could call it. But unfortunately come a little bit of a cropper. The movie is an OK watch and has its moments but the overall execution of animation and 3D falls woefully short. Nowhere close to the ones like we have been seeing of late.


In the Wolf World, family structure is everything. At the high end of the pack you have your Alpha wolves (either male or female). Serious, strong and they mean business. At the other end are the Omegas. Pretty much diametrically opposite. Fun loving, always upto mischief and their main role is to break up fights whenever they happen. In Wolf World they are kept quite busy. Especially if you are caught between the Eastern Pack in the valley and the Western ones in the hills. And times are not too great. Food is running out quickly and that is leading to major differences between the two packs who are led by Winston (Danny Glover) and Tony (Dennis Hopper). Winston calls for the meeting to figure out the way forward and they decide that the only way out is for Tony to honour his commitment of getting his Alpha daughter, Kate (Hayden Panettiere) married to Winston’s Alpha son, Garth (Chris Carmack). A marriage that would get the families together and bring peace to the land. Kate agrees to do what is right but a relocation exercise gets her moved from the Jasper National Park to one in Idaho. But she is not alone. With her is Humphrey (Justin Long) who is an Omega. The two have grown up together and Humphrey has always liked Kate. And is obviously thrilled that he has a chance now. But Kate needs to get back to the park to prevent the packs from shredding each other up. Along the way, they are assisted by a goose Marcel (Larry Miller) and a duck, Paddy (Eric Price) who play golf in the Idaho Park.

As I had mentioned earlier, it is the animation and the 3D where this one falls woefully short. Like when her mother tells Kate that she looks very beautiful, one really cannot make out the difference. The only entertaining part of the movie seems to be when Marcel and Paddy are on screen. Quite funny. But the shots of Humphrey Air Guitaring and some unnecessary melodrama in the end don’t quite add too much value to the movie and are definitely over the top. Even the wolves howling don’t seem anywhere close to real. No surprise that it didn’t make it to the Oscars this year or that it wasn’t released earlier in this year. I cant give it more than 5 on 10. But kids may like it a bit.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3345090329/

The Longest Yard

Never been much of a fan of Adam Sandler and this movie doesn’t really do much for his position on my rating scale (not that he would care). And by this I don’t mean Adam Sandler cannot act. Its just that I cannot keep up with his goofy, slapstick ways of putting himself on screen under the pretext of comedy and qualify to be a good actor. Add to that his capability of taking obnoxious roles such as Little Nicky and making a complete fool of himself on screen. Having said that, he is fairly successful thanks to his brand of comedy being popular with a fair portion of the audience I guess. And even in my books he is miles ahead of the absolutely despicable Ben Stiller.


Paul “Motley” Crewe (Adam Sandler) is a washed out quarterback from the NFL. He was, if I remember correctly, the first player from the NFL to be officially indicted and tried in a court of law for shaving off points in a game. Crewe had managed to get himself into a compromising situation with some not so compromising people it would seem. But it was never really proven in a court of law. He walked away a free man but a much hated man. Throwing a game away and getting caught in the bargain is the biggest mistake any sportsman can make surely. He now finds himself in a situation where he has a rich wife (a very slutty looking Courtney Cox after her boob job) who considers our hero (if we can call him that) to be her boy toy but there is this hole in his life which just doesn’t seem to get filled. That hole is usually called love which is definitely missing in this relationship.

One fine day, Paul decides that he has had enough of this and takes off with his wife’s Bentley, gets into a fight with the cops and some civilians too en route and finally after a high speed chase crashes the Bentley (ouch! Ouch!! Ouch!!!) into a melee of cop cars. A classic example of extremely cruel direction. Before you know it, Crewe finds himself in a Texan Correctional Facility (Cannot call them jails any more is what I hear) where he is given a rather crude welcome from the Captain of the gaurds – Knauer (William Fichtner) who asks him to keep away from the football field during his stay there. A few minutes later he finds himself in the Warden Hazen’s (James Cromwell – don’t ask me what he is doing in the movie) room who wants Crewe to hop on board the Football band wagon and consult the Team of the Gaurds who apparently are hot property in that part of the world. He now finds himself caught between the devil and the deep blue sea and add a third element which is an entire jail full of criminals who don’t really like him. Now how in the blazes does he get out of this situation?

The Longest Yard is the kind of movie you would watch on a Thursday evening because its playing on Star Movies and you are too darn tired to sleep and too darn tired to do anything else. You just lie down on your bed and gaze at the TV screen and maybe glance towards your mobile phone to see if you have received a message that maybe more interesting. Now its not a really bad movie considering that its about a sport and about a bunch of criminals beating a bunch of cruel gaurds in a game of touch football and you feel all good at the end of it all. And you really cannot expect “quality” cinema from the likes of an Adam Sandler and Chris Rock pair. You do get several slapstick one liners and a few good ones thrown in to retain the title of a comedy. And at the end of the day despite the lack of direction, you feel reasonably satisfied. 5 on 10.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi821428505/

Killers

If director Robert Luketic wanted to classify Killers as an Action movie, then somewhere along the way he has gone grossly wrong. Random gun fire and mindless attempts at killing someone with some eye candy thrown in as garnish and a love story to boot does not an action movie make. And definitely not when you have Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl in the lead. It becomes a bit too much to associate action with. Add to that the limited talent that the two of them have. Mr. Luketic seems to have got that X factor of an Action movie wrong this time around. Maybe he should stick to the standard formula of Romantic Comedies that has got him so much success to date – and good RomComs mind you. Everyone of them in the 5.5 to 6 on 10 range. The likes of The Ugly Truth & Legally Blonde. Oh yes, he did make a non RomCom and a good movie at that called 21. Not surprising that he could not follow the same levels with Killers – Ashton Kutcher replaces Kevin Spacey – like duh!!!!


Jen Kornfeldt (Katherine Heigl) has just been dumped. Now why would anyone dump someone as gorgeous as Heigl is beyond the comprehension of my limited intelligence – but for now lets assume that it is possible. She had planned a vacation with her boy friend and her parents (maybe that explains why she was dumped) who she is extremely close to. She adores her dad (Tom Selleck) and absolutely loves his moustache. Needless to say, she is extremely protected and her mother (Catherine O’Hara) doesn’t quite agree with the whole concept but plays along. The vacation, however proceeds as planned and they are off to Nice, France.

Spencer Aimes (Ashton Kutcher) has a license to kill – no he is not James Bond – he works for the CIA or something like that. He has killed 13 people to date and is on his 14th assignment in Nice, France – now how is that for a coincidence. He has been trained right from college. Ideal candidate. No parents. No attachments. The usual mix. He bumps into Jen in the elevator. One thing leads to another in a matter of a few hours and he falls for her. Oh and yeah – he completes his 14th assignment also parallel – slick I must say. But that’s not it. Before you know, he has walked away from his role in the agency despite his contact Holbrook (Martin Mull) warning him otherwise, and hang on – THEY GET MARRIED!!!!!!! That’s where I thought the story was going haywire and it spirals down to god knows where after that.

Consistency has never been the mark of Luketic so I will not go down that road. But at least he has always given us a story that can be watched. This one was all over the place like the aftermath of an air crash with the debris spread over a few square miles. Katherine Heigl is the only person in the world that I can associate the words pretty and hot in the same thought / sentence but seriously she should stop getting into standard roles of the submissive, paranoid, cute, control freak who keeps getting Knocked Up (all pun intended) in every damn movie!!!! Surely, if she tries hard enough she can get roles that demand acting of her. No comment for the rest of the cast. I give this one 4 on 10 of which 2 are because I am in love with Heigl :P – even more so in this one – she looks completely sizzling – drool drool drool drool.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3390441241/