The low-grade aesthetic isn’t as much a creative decision as a sign that somebody on this production decided to keep a firm handle on the budget. The title says it all: unable to improve on or add anything to the Korean source, the filmmakers have decided to keep it brief.

The filmmakers have aimed to deliver a puerile movie, and, in fact, will be offended by any discussion about Housefull 3 that does not involve its box office prospects. We are in the mythical “critics will hate it but audiences will love it” zone, and since the movie aims to be nothing more than a weekend moneyspinner, it is accordingly forgettable and disposable.

The most engaging scenes are the numerous shootouts and chases, especially one in which Veerappan and his men escape yet another STF attack through a vast area of red hillocks that resemble ant-hills. Men, women and children perish like flies and there are gut-wrenching torture scenes, but the real violence is felt by the ear-drums.

The set-up is convincing, and Radhika Apta’s central performance as Mahek makes it doubly so. Apte has been steadily building up an impressive portfolio of performances, and she is in top form in Phobia.

Waiting is too sparsely plotted to realise its ambitions, but Menon, who has co-written the film with James Ruzicka, does raise important questions on the dilemmas faced by the family members of comatose patients. Who decides the treatment methods, and when is it time to stop waiting and move on? A less neat and more rigourously written movie would have waited for the uncomfortable answers to these knotty questions to come less easily.

At almost two-and-a-half hours, in spite of collapsing cities, new characters and a Wolverine cameo, X-Men: Apocalypse offers so little over such a long running time.

‘Sarbjit’ is a tragedy in capital letters…The loud and insistent melodrama takes away from the pathos of the central character’s story.

Tony D’Souza’s film about Mohammed Azharuddin plays out like an episode from the TV show ‘CID’.

Despite strenuously ignoring its tremendous potential for black comedy, Money Monster ticks along on the assured turns by its star leads. Julia Roberts is especially lovely as the dream producer who, in a less toothless movie, would have been the real monster in the studio.

The movie wants to say something poignant and profound about the need for sons to accept their father’s decisions, but it doesn’t have the material to do so. Still waters are meant to run deep, but in Dear Dad, they remain still.