Film Reviews

Dhamaka Streaming On Netflix Story: Once a top news anchor on prime time TV, Arjun Pathak (Kartik Aaryan) gets demoted to radio. He views a mysterious phone call from a bomber as a sliver of opportunity to reclaim his lost glory. The bomber threatens to blow up the Bandra–Worli Sea Link unless his demands are met. With lives at stake, does Arjun salvage his dwindling career or the people held hostage on the bridge? Review: Can a journalist be trusted? Does he/she have any conscience? Remake of Korean film ‘The Terror Live’, Dhamaka is a taut hostage thriller that critiques media and unethical journalism practices. It delves into a raging issue that’s most relevant now than ever — the business of breaking news. We tend to prioritise sensationalism over substance, money over ethics, quantity over quality and success over humanity. News is manufactured and generated. All’s fair in the TRP game? A shrewd opportunist, Arjun is compelled to rethink his ideals and what he truly stands for, as he watches the mayhem around him in horror. The film unfolds over the course of a single morning within the confines of a single room. A storytelling technique we most recently witnessed in Jake Gyllenhaal’s ‘The Guilty’. The fact that this entire film was shot within 11 days during lockdown is commendable. The plot focusses on Arjun, as he tries to track down the mysterious caller and keep […]

Reluctantly accepting his fate, Eddie Brock tries to co-exist with Venom. However, it’s a rocky relationship, to say the least. Brock also attempts to revive his career by interviewing Cletus Kasady, a serial killer who doesn’t trust anyone else. But things go wrong when Cletus also gets infected with a deadly and bloodthirsty symbiote. Brock must quickly find a way to work with Venom and deal with the Carnage brought on by Kasady. Although the plot is pretty straightforward for a comic-book flick, the banter between Brock and Venom is often the film’s most fascinating element. Brock is constantly trying to quench Venom’s thirst for, well, HUMANS! leading to some amusing exchanges – even if the humour doesn’t land always. Nevertheless, Tom Hardy’s performance with the CGI character carries the film through some rough patches. Like Hardy, Woody Harrelson fully embraces the film’s quirky, often absurd tonality and certainly enjoys playing the antagonist. Together, they make some of the apparent plot holes easier to ignore. Anne Weying (Michelle Williams), Francis Barrison (Naomie Harris) and Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham). They have potentially intriguing roles but don’t get much development beyond some hasty plot beats and they end up being the story’s weakest links. In addition, the editing is shady in places, indicative of significant trimming, perhaps the right decision. The action is easy to follow and looks great in 3D without being overbearing. While the […]

SooryavanshiDirector: Rohit ShettyCast: Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, Ajay Devgn and Ranveer Singh Critic’s Rating: 3.5/5 Story: Sooryavanshi follows DCP Veer Sooryavanshi, the Chief of India’s Anti-Terrorism Squad, as he attempts to protect Mumbai from one of the worst terror attacks in history. Review: Rohit Shetty has tactfully expanded his cop universe over the years – keeping the audience engaged and die-hard fans of the genre on the edge. After the Singham series (headlined by Ajay Devgn) and then Simbaa (starring Ranveer Singh), now storms in Sooryavanshi (Akshay Kumar), amidst much fanfare, drama, and blaring theatrics. Sooryavanshi’s character was subtly announced towards the end of Simmba. The film has all the elements, attitude, style, showmanship and heavy-duty star power expected of a Rohit Shetty offering. Similar to Simmba, even this cop action saga is narrated by Ajay Devgn, who reminds us of the several terrors attacks which Mumbai has encountered since the 1993 serial blasts to the 2008 terror attack on several landmark locations in Mumbai, including The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT). The story in film unfolds as the biggest attack is yet to happen in the city, as some sleeper cells from Lashkar have been activated and it is found that 600 kilos of RDX left over from ’93 serial attacks is being used for the purpose. Enter DCP Veer Sooryavanshi, with a solid mission and a lot of garam khoon to protect […]

Director: Jay K Cast: Emraan Hashmi, Nikita Dutta, Manav Kaul, Gaurav Sharma, Denzil Smith Dybbuk has an interesting line of cast that includes Emraan Hashmi and Manav Kaul, but the film, now out on Amazon Prime Video, has too many convenient points that make it somewhat of an implausibility. Helmed by Jay K, he has remade his debut Malayalam movie, Ezra (with Prithviraj), in Hindi as Dybbuk. Hashmi as Sam or Samuel reprises Prithviraj’s role, and does a decent job of a man who gets a new posting in a nuclear waste disposable plant in – believe it or not – the Mauritius capital of Port Louis. His wife, Maahi (Nikita Dutta), is not too keen to translocate, because that would mean going far away from her parents. But she plays a sport and accompanies Sam to a really scenic city that sadly harbours a demonic spirit inside a Jewish wine box. It can emerge for its run of death and destruction only after the last of the Jews dies on the island, and Sam’s transfer coincides with the death of a rabbi, the last of the tribe there. But for some above average performances, Jay’s work looks like yet another horror story of red-eyed ghosts descending from roofs, rocking chairs, cracking mirrors and flickering lights. And the atmosphere gets eerie at the colonial bungalow in which the couple decide to live. I sometimes […]

Review By-:Sachin Sisodia Black Widow is a terribly made, utterly ridiculous, pointless, CGI fest with occasionally some good moments in it. The film has a promising and a tense opening finally giving us an insight into Natasha’s past and her background and then it opens again with some credits and music and takes another 10-15 minutes to actually kickstart it’s story and plot. The screenwriters never really settle on a particular thread and keep juggling different ideas and story beats resulting in a mess of a film. The action is cartoonish and quite pathetic. Natasha a spy, a normal human falls off a three storey bulding and hits her head twice on some pipes and gets back up immediately without a scratch. The actors do their part but the script is haywire and there seems to be a lack of creativity from the people who helmed it , everything just comes across as mundane and flat. The villain, well……. Taskmaster shows up occasionally. The film tries to tie Natasha and the villain’s stories together but it is done in such an odd haphazard way that ultimately it leaves you feeling frustrated instead of emotionally capturing you. The movie is genuinely uninteresting and is an abysmal send off for one of the most beloved MCU characters and Actors. The editing is fine , the cinematography is bland, the music is forgettable. David Harbour and Florence […]

Review By -:Sachin Sisodia Cast-: Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Ciarán Hinds, Ray Porter, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, Jeremy Irons The Highly Anticipated Director’s cut streams on HBO MAX Finally, it’s here, the long awaited, much anticipated, director’s cut of the Justice League. Director Zack Snyder finally gets the chance to tell his version of the SAME story, a chance he was sadly denied. Right from the opening credits you get a good sense of what you have signed up for, Superman’s death screams are heard loud and clear across the DCEU be it Atlantis or Themyscira. Carried by the sound design and visuals alone it offers a much more engaging opening to the film than all of the predecessors in the series . If you are a true Zack Snyder fan or an admirer of his DCEU than this is for you and specially you. Everything about this franchise and everything about Snyder ‘s artistic vision is dialed to an eleven. Resulting in a 4 hour long version that doesn’t justify its runtime by any means, glaring plot holes, heavy CGI reliant action, posing and posing, weird song choices, a slow pace, slow motion(a lot!), yes everything Mr. Zack Snyder prefers is there. A whole lot of scenes don’t add coherency to the story and plot but are purely there to satisfy the comic book fanboys. […]

Review By-Sachin Sisodia Written by Aaron Sorkin, moneyball is a sports drama that’s worth your time even if you don’t care about baseball or in a sports journey. The film follows Billy Beane the manager of Oakland Athletics who leads his team to unprecedented success via some unorthodox means. Realizing that his team doesn’t have the finances to compete with the Yankees or the red sox, Billy with the help of Peter Brand his assistant uses statistics to build a potential championship winning side. Their methods emphasize the use efficient players over star studded million dollar players who may or may not succeed. The ignored , overlooked, underplayed, missed out , discarded players whom the baseball world seems to have no use for. But Billy and Peter come up with stats and maths to find out certain attributes in them which no one can even notice, thus over time gathering and building a squad full of unorthodox and despised professionals that with time develop a into more than useful players. It’s the ultimate underdog team. This film showcases the rise of the use of sports science, which is widely used and considered a crucial aspect of every sport today. But this time Billy Beane makes it work like no one else ever could , his team reaches big heights and breaks unprecedented records, thus popularizing their “Moneyball” philosophy which later on the Red Sox […]

Sardar Udham movie cast: Vicky Kaushal, Stephen Hogan, Shaun Scott, Kirsty Averton, Andrew Havill, Banita Sandhu, Amol Parashar Sardar Udham movie director: Shoojit Sircar Movie streaming on Amazon Prime Video Story: The film pays tribute to an unsung hero — Sardar Udham Singh (Vicky Kaushal), an Indian revolutionary, who assassinated Michael O’Dwyer in London (in 1940), to avenge the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (of 1919). The former British colonial official was the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab (British India) at the time. Dwyer had said the killing of hundreds of protesters during a demonstration at Jallianwala Bagh in the city of Amritsar, Punjab, was justified. Review: First things first — If you are looking for a talky film that can light the revolutionary fire in you, ‘Sardar Udham’ isn’t it. Do not expect hard-hitting dialoguebaazi or emotional outbursts. The pre-independence drama based on true events, is a simmering observation of a man consumed by grief. The protagonist makes numbing pain his strength and silence, his voice. Loss and despair are so overpowering that avenging the barbaric crime he witnessed in his 20’s, becomes the only reason for his existence, even 20 years later. Set at the onset of World War II, the film shuttles between past and present. The canvas is massive but meaty source material on the titular character, meagre. None of Udham’s chest-thumping slogans or writings (if any) was found. Here was a man, deeply scarred, who went […]

Shiddat Director: Kunal Deshmukh Cast: Radhika Madan, Sunny Kaushal, Diana Penty, Mohit Raina Shiddat, streaming on Disney+Hotstar Sometimes, in the pursuit of true love, a life time can be too little. We spend almost two-and-a-half hours with Jaggi (Sunny Kaushal), Kartika (Radhika Madan) Gautam (Mohit Raina) and Ira (Diana Penty), and it seems endless, simply because after a nice start, the film goes downhill shockingly rapidly. And it decides to stay there. Jaggi is a happy-go-lucky hockey player for Punjab. He along with his friends gatecrashes a wedding reception where he gets inspired by Gautam’s philosophy of love of going to any lengths and decides to follow it. At the sports complex, he meets Kartika who is a swimmer. While the two initially don’t get along together, over a period of time both get attracted. While Kartika wins the swimming competition, Jaggi ends up getting heartbroken as he comes to know that the love of his life is getting married to someone else in the United Kingdom. Kartika leaves for London and Jaggi decides to go after her, break her wedding and spend life with her. Great film romances have the power to make a cynical viewer believe and become so invested in the characters on screen as to yearn for their union. Shiddat somewhere does it but gets lost in its convoluted plot. The film would have still made the cut had director […]

Critic’s Rating: 2.5/5 STORY: The story revolves around the lives of Nirmal Anand (Karanveer Khullar), an anti-diabetic drug salesman, and his Christian wife Sarah (Gillian Pinto). But, two back-to-back events—Nirmal getting diagnosed with diabetes and the death of his dog (Parie)—have a profound impact on this close-knit family, causing them to react in unexpected ways. REVIEW: Set in Mumbai, ‘Nirmal Anand Ki Puppy’ delves into the complexities that lie beneath the mundaneness of Nirmal and Sarah’s daily lives. As the film acknowledges, Nirmal is the more observant of the two, and his anxieties are highlighted right away in the opening scenes. As a parent, Nirmal is perplexed as to why his daughter is playing with a boy rather than other girls in the neighbourhood, and as the husband, he refuses to let his archivist wife work full-time because he is concerned about who will look after their children. In many ways, he is stereotypical, but that is who he is. Given that Nirmal works as a regional manager for a pharmaceutical company that sells anti-diabetic drugs, being diagnosed with diabetes had a particularly negative impact on him. While coping with the situation and the death of his dog, he makes a significant career shift that alters the dynamics of his personal and professional lives. Will Nirmal and Sarah’s puppy love blossom despite their numerous hardships, or will they be crushed by them? Written and directed by an […]

Critic’s Rating: 2.5/5 Movie streaming on ZEE 5 Story: When Sintoo (Jassie Gill) is left high and dry by the love of his life Sonam (Surbhi Jyoti), he scribbles his frustration on currency notes. The notes become viral, setting off a chain of events in the lives of Sintoo and Sonam that range from bizarre to unbelievably random. Review: The Rs.10 currency note bearing the line ‘Sonam Gupta Bewafa Hai’ became viral and fodder for memes on the internet, a few years back. The strange trend also hit headlines across the nation, as everyone wondered, who exactly is Sonam Gupta and what led to this scathing accusation, perhaps, by a jilted lover. Writer-director Ssaurabh Tyagi tries to capitalise on this viral sensation by weaving a fictional story around it. This attempt to infuse a full-fledged narrative around just one famous line is so forced that it shows in every frame of this crumbling film. Tyagi’s story is rooted in Uttar Pradesh’s small town with quirky and loud characters that represent the myriad clichés of the typical ‘small-town thinking.’ Among many other things, the film also preaches how one must think big to become big. Sintoo, like almost every other aimless youngster of the town is besotted with Sonam Gupta, who is brash, entitled, feisty and way out of his league. When she dupes him and disappears, all hell breaks loose and Sintoo gets a rude reality check. […]

Bhoot PoliceDirector – Pavan KirpalaniCast – Saif Ali Khan, Arjun Kapoor, Yami Gautam, Jacqueline Fernandez Critic’s Rating: 2.0/5 Bhoot Police out on Disney+ Hotstar Bhoot Police movie review: Despite enthusiastic performances by Saif Ali Khan and (surprisingly) Jacqueline Fernandez, the new horror-comedy relies too heavily on cliches and is stuck being mildly amusing. More funny than it is scary, Bhoot Police is undone by poor casting and an acute deficiency of Pankaj Tripathi. Starring Saif Ali Khan and Arjun Kapoor as sibling ghost-busters, Bhoot Police is the latest in Bollywood’s ongoing flirtation with the horror-comedy genre.  While it isn’t as eye-winkingly sharp as Saif’s Go Goa Gone, Bhoot Police is still a mildly amusing movie with moments of surprising emotional depth. But its over-reliance on genre cliches – expect everything from projectile vomit and wall-crawling ghouls to a creepy kid and a haunted forest – stops it from ever being more than a middling film that aims to please the masses.  Director Pavan Kirpalani borrows liberally from Evil Dead, Ghostbusters, Zombieland and The Exorcist, but perhaps the biggest inspiration – both tonally and intellectually – is Scooby Doo. Not only do the brothers Chiraunji and Vibhooti drive around in a Mystery Machine-esque van, they soon form a sort-of ‘gang’ with sisters Maya and Kanika (Yami Gautam and Jacqueline Fernandez). There is even a ‘pardafash’ moment midway through, but I won’t get into that. The mismatched duo – Vibhooti is a rapscallion […]