Shalini Langer
Indian Express
Most Divergent Takes
- Entourage (2015)1.0 vs TRM 5.1-4.1
- Pagalpanti (2019)0.0 vs TRM 3.9-3.9
- Mechanic: Resurrection (2016)1.0 vs TRM 4.9-3.9
- Pacific Rim Uprising (2018)1.0 vs TRM 4.8-3.8
- Gori Tere Pyaar Mein (2013)1.0 vs TRM 4.8-3.8
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2026 · Indian Express
If 28 Years Later which came out last year was startling in its visual imagination, its cinematic leaps and its sublime use of Ralph Fiennes's talent, this second part is more contained and less ambitious. As long as Fiennes occupies the screen as Dr Ian Kelson, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is at its most powerful.
Disclosure Day
2026 · Indian Express
Set aside these disappointments though, and Disclosure Day can be fully enjoyed for a thriller, involving the works – from a world 'on the brink' to deeply kept State secrets to braveheart renegades. Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor are magnetic, with she being funny and empathetic, he sincere and gullible, and both people the world can lean on easily for comfort.
Backrooms
2026 · Indian Express
This certainly innovative horror of Parson's imagination works best when it leaves us to try and put two and two together, scrap it, and try all over again. What gives Backrooms its punch is the sense of the inexplicable and yet the familiar – we have all been here, walking into a long, dark corridor with lights humming overhead or flickering. It's when Parsons tries to give Backrooms a worldly – even 'scientific' – explanation that the film fumbles.
Crime 101
2026 · Indian Express
A faster wrapping up of the ending, a simpler plot around the moving of diamonds, lesser pretentiousness about the class divide, and a world that is more grey than the film's preferred black and white – and Crime 101 would be home and dry.
Ready or Not: Here I Come
2026 · Indian Express
Treading Get Out territory, but not as much a social commentary as it would like to be, Ready or Not is a comic-horror flick that is not shy of blood, gore or pushing the envelope, but isn't finally as good as it promises to be.
The Furious
2026 · Indian Express
Kenji Tanigaki delivers a taut actioner with superbly choreographed action scenes staged everywhere from the backside of a pickup truck to an ice factory to a wrestling venue to even under sliding desks at a police station.
Hokum
2026 · Indian Express
This dark film – in story, and particularly in treatment – gets almost everything wrong when it comes to pacing, neither giving its actors any room, nor letting its characters grow into people. Hokum mounts one so-called scare after another without ever reaching the audacity of that moment.
Passenger
2026 · Indian Express
Almost everything expected of a horror film, from blood to gore to jump scares, happens in the film. Almost everything that you know will come to pass does. Passenger doesn't have much patience for subtlety.
The Devil Wears Prada 2
2026 · Indian Express
Meryl Streep doesn't miss a beat as she reprises her role from 20 years ago as the imperious, icy, terrifying Editor-in-Chief of fashion magazine Runway. However, times have changed, and so her Miranda must weigh her words more carefully. The Devil Wears Prada 2, with an original screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna, is on firmer ground here as far as the plotline goes.
Michael
2026 · Indian Express
For, this film about one of the greatest entertainers and pop stars of all time exists happily in his Neverland, to never take a peek at the dark side. Director Antoine Fuqua known for his action films, and screenwriter John Logan...deliver you Michael Jackson the sequinned performer, and barely touch upon Michael the child who never had a childhood, Michael the adult who never grew up, Michael the alleged child abuser who could not shake off the charges.
Normal
2026 · Indian Express
The problem is that the town is meant to be hiding a dark secret, and it's not as dark as Normal imagines. In fact, for whatever it's worth, the suspense is diluted right at the start when some Yakuzas in Japan kick off the story with chopped fingers and severed heads. Normal certainly is easy if you care little.
They Will Kill You
2026 · Indian Express
A pastiche of Quentin Tarantino, minus that director's sharp dialogue and incisive score, this film directed by Kirill Sokolov is blood and bore. However, there is a difference between there will be blood, and blood will be there.
Masters of the Universe
2026 · Indian Express
Masters of the Universe is smart about playing up the contrasts, particularly a sequence where Adam dreams of encountering Skeletor in different scenarios on Earth, including in pinstripes at work. However, Masters of the Universe is too eager to rush into fights, with no coherence about where and to what effect the battles are being waged – just that they are.
Tuner
2026 · Indian Express
Seemingly discordant storylines are strung together into a pleasing whole by director-co-writer Daniel Roher, largely due to the effortless charm of its cast. Some keys remain out of tune, but Tuner manages more harmony than chaos.
Obsession
2026 · Indian Express
Barker taps right into Gen Z's au courant crisis and places Obsession in the irresolute territory where love is an all-consuming but never-consummate emotion. The problem is that Barker doesn't know how to flesh this out into a feature length. Once the premise is established, the group of Bear and Nikki, and their friends Ian and Sarah, seem to go over the same lines and scenarios again and again.
The Sheep Detectives
2026 · Indian Express
The Sheep Detectives is slow getting off the ground, and some of its lines are not either funny or engaging when George is having his heart-to-hearts. However, it is surprising how meaty this story turns out to be in director Kyle Balda and scriptwriter Craig Mazin's hands, with all the charms and notes of an Agatha Christie mystery.
Fuze
2026 · Indian Express
Fuze doesn't really want to, or give us time to, dwell on the thin politics it covers itself in. This fast-moving caper sweeping across London, with some good-looking men of honour and dishonour in feverish action, can be enjoyable despite it.
"Wuthering Heights"
2026 · Indian Express
You may be left wondering as the Emily Brontë classic about an obsessive-destructive love and hate relationship is repurposed as an overwrought, oversexualised, oversimplified Valentine's Day release. Instead, Fennell is focused on shocking, titillating, obsessing with textures and surfaces and liquids, and impressing with the film's unquestionably visual lushness, but for all their secret, fervid encounters, Robbie and Elordi hardly set the windy, wet, bleak Wuthering Heights on fire.
Shelter
2026 · Indian Express
Nothing is particularly bad; but nothing is particularly striking either in Jason Statham-starrer Shelter.
Send Help
2026 · Indian Express
Rachel McAdams gets a film that lets all aspects of her shine, without distractions of any sort; all women exasperated with playing nice and 'looking nice' to bosses get their day in the sun (and sand); and all men are shown how defenceless they are not wearing the pants.
Greenland 2: Migration
2026 · Indian Express
And an exhausted audience out of any viewer. Only if you want to see Gerard Butler do his braveheart thing again, and a teary Morena Baccarin play the second fiddle, and son Nathan tag along, being alternatively hugged and asked 'Are you okay?'
The Drama
2026 · Indian Express
Helmed by its terrifically charismatic leads, with a script that in fact never loses sight of their ordinariness, The Drama woos you over one gentle step at a time. However, the non-linear cuts in the storytelling are jarring and disconcerting, and while the basic idea is strong, some set-ups seem staged more for laughs than real insight.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
2026 · Indian Express
There is a lot of information, and tonnes of electric wires and cables hanging about to make us take note. But should we ascribe the word 'intelligent' to this mess? That is a stretch.
GOAT
2026 · Indian Express
The film is too loud, too frenzied, too pyrotechnics-obsessed to blinding and deafening effect. The confusion is apparent—GOAT is unclear whether it aims to be a film for children about dreaming big or a film for adults about aiming big.
Project Hail Mary
2026 · Indian Express
What starts off as a scientific mission to save the Sun is, at the heart of it, essentially a feel-good buddy movie. However, Project Hail Mary's insistence on being sunny side up, in the face of the darkness coming mankind's way, dilutes the urgency that is fuelling this desperate mission.
The Bride!
2026 · Indian Express
Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! doesn't believe in leaving anything unsaid. That The Bride! and the Bride don't wilt under these expectations is the powerhouse performance by Buckley, who is game to every mercurial emotion demanded of her role. The Bride! too works the best when it is not trying too hard.
Hoppers
2026 · Indian Express
This latest Pixar animation is a frenzied exploration of an idea that could have been told ever so simply, with not much humour or a catchy song or two to lift it. Somewhere along all that digging, the film loses sight of its central message.
Toy Story 5
2026 · Indian Express
The fifth iteration of this profitable Pixar franchise is way past its game and, more importantly, has lost its sense of play. Another Toy Story, with little meat on it but a Taylor Swift song and a $250 million budget — making the fifth film among the costliest animation movies ever made — is as good a story of excess as any.
The Amateur
2025 · Indian Express
In this film that has so much stuffed into a basic tale of revenge that it can barely give time to anything, everything is almost as wispy as vapour, not the smoke-and-mirrors look director James Hawes is going for.
One Battle After Another
2025 · Indian Express
Paul Thomas Anderson's vision is unsparing, for both sides in this apparently eternal face-off between the rebels and the system — even as life carries on, unironically. The irony of these real and imagined borders renting America is captured by Anderson in all its fullness – from its absurdity to its tragedy.
Baaghi 4
2025 · Indian Express
One star for surprising us every time we think Ronny surely has butchered enough, Sanjay Dutt surely can't be doing his maniacal laugh one more time, the film surely has shown all it wanted to till it springs up again, God's name surely can't be taken more in vain particularly inside a church, and for having someone declare: 'I will marry you Chaakoo.'
Bhool Chuk Maaf
2025 · Indian Express
For a long time, Bhool Chuk Maaf looks and feels like the poor man's Brahmastra. Yet, this need not have been such a stew of Ghat meets Groundhog Day.
The Conjuring: Last Rites
2025 · Indian Express
There is too much happening to too many people to make any sort of a coherent narrative, so much so that the demon-fighting itself is crunched. Even so, the Warrens, who have boldly gone into so many haunted homes, deserved a better send-off than this.
Sinners
2025 · Indian Express
Michael B Jordan is effortless as the two men from whom we can't tear our eyes away, who are as many parts good, grieving men trying to do some good as cool-headed businessmen. He packs both charisma and raw strength here.
The Bad Guys 2
2025 · Indian Express
The Bad Guys 2 ensures audiences across ages will be entertained. This breezy sequel distracts very well with ultra-smooth, ultra-likeable, ultra-witty characters and dishy romance, though the plot gets unnecessarily twisted when the story heads into space.
Snow White
2025 · Indian Express
Sadly, all that blood, sweat and tweets don't reflect in this bland adaptation with passable songs, and sub-magical actors. In trying to be everything, Snow White falls between these two mirrors, without shattering any glass ceiling.
The Housemaid
2025 · Indian Express
Sweeney, her glamour tamped down for the most part, and Seyfried are what keep the wheels oiled – with Elizabeth Perkins as Andrew's snobbish mother making a threesome. However, the mild and mildewed Sklenar (It Ends With Us) is hardly worth the sweat the three expend on him.
Avatar: Fire and Ash
2025 · Indian Express
Cameron builds and builds on what is now a familiar template. However, you may find yourself wishing it also took some breaths. You want to see more of them together than the Sullys, their largely predictable duels, the family's familiar arc, and some tedious dialogues.
Zootopia 2
2025 · Indian Express
The "lessons" at the heart of this film are perhaps too on the nose. But that is not necessarily bad for a film that is meant for children. Zootopia has bark but also bite.
Predator: Badlands
2025 · Indian Express
Fanning, in her two varied roles as Thia and Tessa, shoulders well the responsibility to nudge Badlands towards better times — even as her sawed legs carry the film jauntily over the finishing line.
Mickey 17
2025 · Indian Express
Mickey 17 is no Parasite and, while it falls in the science-fiction category, it's no Snowpiercer either. South Korean director Bong Joon Ho's latest film still dabbles with exploration of class and how removed are the top 1%, but it has too many ideas mixed up for one clear picture.
Superman
2025 · Indian Express
You go in expecting to enjoy a handsome man wearing his undies over his tights, flying around and doing saving-the-world stuff. You get an Interstellar-level show-and-tell universe. If all that sounds a bit much, it is.
F1
2025 · Indian Express
Put one in the other, and you have a film that whirs by briskly – almost making you forget there is nothing much under the hood. You will come away wanting more of Formula 1 and, yes, more of Pitt.
Marty Supreme
2025 · Indian Express
Chalamet sheds the evocative vulnerability suggested by his slender frame and pretty looks to give us a youth whose ambition and talent will burn whatever and whoever stands in his way, who is supremely confident that he is meant for bigger things, and who is not afraid to wear his desperate hunger on his sleeve.
Lilo & Stitch
2025 · Indian Express
The best part to be said about Lilo & Stitch is that it is serviceable. The worst part is, that it should have been so much more. Perhaps too much has changed since 2002 to expect quietude to be the heart of a mainstream film.
Final Destination Bloodlines
2025 · Indian Express
If Bloodlines packs enough surprises to give you chills down the spine, it is because Death is stalking a close-knit family. But that is also the most disturbing aspect of the film. Beyond a point, it's hard to chuckle at the thought of a woman losing her husband and all her three children in the space of a few days.
Dhurandhar
2025 · Indian Express
Despite the many, many characters Dhurandhar introduces to give us a sense of Lyari's power, crime, political and family dynamics, the plot is fairly comprehensible. Most of the time though, Dhurandhar I is all about which of the three current and ageing hunks – Ranveer Singh as Hamza, Rampal as the ISI's Major Iqbal, and Sanjay Dutt as Karachi police encounter specialist Choudhary Aslam – can land and stand how much blood and gore.
Jurassic World Rebirth
2025 · Indian Express
The best Edwards and Koepp can hope for is awe, and Rebirth does capture that – till it decides to go on and on, and starts repeating itself. Together, they have a film that keeps the heart both pounding and beating, with emotions that seem real and friendships that are tender.
Nuremberg
2025 · Indian Express
Written for the screen and directed by James Vanderbilt, once known for Zodiac and most recently for Scream, Nuremberg is burdened by the past, informed by the present, and not wholly committed to either. This uneven tone, between what it hopes to be and what it is, runs through not just the film but also its performances.
Black Phone 2
2025 · Indian Express
Black Phone 2 has nothing. What we have is a starved-for-scares horror film that goes around in circles, between three dead children, The Grabber and the aforesaid siblings Gwen and Finn, with all of them doing the same thing over and over.
28 Years Later
2025 · Indian Express
It may not be storytelling at its best, but you may not care, so stunning is 28 Years Later in how it looks and sounds. The ending is rushed and, a lot of it, an appendage. However, entertained you are – and anticipating what comes next.
How to Train Your Dragon
2025 · Indian Express
However, ultimately, How to Train Your Dragon is a trip down a familiar memory lane. And at a time when few can resist cashing in on a franchise, a conceit that does not belong in that innocent world that Hiccup and Toothless helped create.
Moana 2
2024 · Indian Express
The songs of Moana 2 are mostly dead in the water, and the jokes even more so. Moana 2 is as new as it gets these days – that is, not very new – in the era of sequels, prequels and multiverse-quels.
Kraven the Hunter
2024 · Indian Express
But here we go again, with Kraven dusted out of his supervillainy from Spider-Man comics with this origin story that starts emotionally strong but never soars to the kind of kinetic energy a superhero film such as this requires. Taylor-Johnson, in his first such high-stakes solo lead, has a long way to enter superhero heaven. There is little we have not seen before or seen done better.
Mufasa: The Lion King
2024 · Indian Express
Mufasa: The Lion King is a fitting tribute to the big cat who gave us Simba. The lion born "without a drop of nobility in his blood" must earn his mane and name, and this film gives Mufasa a story and arc that allows him just that. However, the songs are a letdown too — nowhere close to the magic of those 1994 film's evergreen numbers.
Wicked
2024 · Indian Express
By the end of Wicked's 2 hours and 40 minute length, with a second part to come next year, one can be pardoned for feeling that way as the oversung, overwrought, over-frenzied musical around the land of Oz tests every bit of one's patience. While the film is adapted from a Broadway musical now running for more than 20 years, most of the songs are ear aches – and by the end, a headache.
Venom: The Last Dance
2024 · Indian Express
Director Kelly Marcel manages to evoke a sense of fleeting loss, which is not as easy as it seems in a film of this nature. With a hardly Tom Hardy, Venom never carried any real sting.
The Idea of You
2024 · Indian Express
The Idea of You has no idea of how to take it forward, or to even leave it sideways. It just drifts along, only randomly hitting some right notes. Of the film's many crimes, the worst may be suggesting Hathaway is past her prime.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
2024 · Indian Express
That is the kindest way of saying that big is not always better, more not always merry, and loud is just loud. Rest is Hollywood, special effects that feel special once in a while, and a franchise that needs to let sleeping creatures lie.
Kung Fu Panda 4
2024 · Indian Express
Awkwafina is a hoot, as always, but Davis is surprisingly ineffective, failing to evoke the irresistible charisma that marks the best of villains. In the many battles that result, it's easy to lose attention and hard to care, knowing pretty well how the story goes.
The Wild Robot
2024 · Indian Express
The Wild Robot uses a hand-painted animation technique, part classic Disney, part Hayao Miyazaki. The images are striking, whether it is the desolation of Rozzum 7134 or Roz (Nyong'o), a walking, talking robot trained to complete every task demanded of it, hanging by a twig off a cliff in a bid for a goodbye, or sitting alone in a swirling snowstorm. And Nyong'o in her mechanical delivery that slowly loses its edges as she becomes 'The Wild Robot', at home in the jungle, Pascal in his rendition of a lonely fox that longs for family, and Connor as the nervous gosling who must find a new home, don't let this journey feel long.
Article 370
2024 · Indian Express
Mixing facts with fiction, and some convenient untruths, Article 370 presents the government of the day's scrapping of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir as a masterclass in State craft. However, from the encounter of Burhan Wani to the Balakot strike, Article 370 offers us only one perspective on an issue that continues to defy simple answers.
Inside Out 2
2024 · Indian Express
In telling simply how there are all these emotions within us, and that it is up to us to make of it what we will, Inside Out 2 is a winner.
Dune: Part Two
2024 · Indian Express
Part Two is bigger, bolder and more beautiful; its vistas of shimmering sands and chilly shadows creating an impossibly perfect setting for a story that can never settle down for one thing. In all respects, Part Two is a superior effort, an exemplar of cinema's imagination and possibilities, from the grandeur of its landscapes to the intimacy of its characters.
Despicable Me 4
2024 · Indian Express
Despicable Me 4 is driven solely by the purpose of cashing in, with a plot that is as inconsequential and as scattered as the minions swarming around, and with none of the laughs and little of the warmth.
Pagalpanti
2019 · Indian Express · Nov 2019
Some good actors have lent their names to this mess, for what can't be any other reason than money and the hits somehow against Anees Bazmee's name.
Joker
2019 · Indian Express · Oct 2019
Joaquin Phoenix is the embodiment of nervous, anorexic energy in his role. He just doesn't act with his face — with or without the joker paint. He acts with his entire body, with its ribs sticking out, its back abnormally arched, its legs leaning away from him, its feet gliding from under him, its arms flailing about.
Hustlers
2019 · Indian Express · Sep 2019
When Hustlers is focused on the women, particularly behind the scenes at the strip club, it's refreshing.
Chhichhore
2019 · Indian Express · Sep 2019
With a very confused idea about who is a 'Loser' or what it means to be one, and a very fixed, '3 Idiots', template on making a crowd-pleasing college-life film, director/co-writer Nitesh Tiwari follows up on his super-successful Dangal with a disappointingly average Chhichhore.
The Lion King
2019 · Indian Express · Jul 2019
A faithful remake...In The Lion King, the technology Jon Favreau wields has got another update, to deliver every single, wind-blown hair in the beautiful manes of Simba and Mufasa.
Toy Story 4
2019 · Indian Express · Jul 2019
Even for Pixar, this fourth part seems a lazy concession to the exigencies of a profitable enterprise — though the studio with the magic touch does even this better than most.
Spider-Man: Far From Home
2019 · Indian Express · Jul 2019
Right till the end, the film's heart remains in the right place, whether it's the brief moments Peter can steal for MJ, the times he reaches out for someone to talk to, and the short sequence that shows he is ready to be what the film always intended him to be: Tony Stark.
Avengers: Endgame
2019 · Indian Express · Apr 2019
Having laboured over setting up the final battle in Avengers: Infinity War, Directors Anthony and Joe Russo get their act together to give a proper, emotional, funny and, yes, even spectacular, send-off to a cast of characters we have come to know (and, mostly love) over 22 films and 10 years.
Us
2019 · Indian Express · Apr 2019
The Jordan Peele directorial is terrifying but muddled...If Get Out portrayed the deep fears of the two delicately poised races, Us goes deeper into the inner-most fears of us all. Us vs them. Us vs us. US vs the world. And the wall vs us.
Hellboy
2019 · Indian Express · Apr 2019
David Harbour of Stranger Things does a fine enough job as the brick-red man who emerged from the depths of hell with sawed horns on the forehead, a tail and a metallic hammer-like appendage for an arm.
Dumbo
2019 · Indian Express · Apr 2019
In a world full of wondrous things, wonder is the thing in shortest supply. Burton had a chance to make you believe that a pregnant caged elephant, who has spent her life in circuses, could look at soaring birds through a barred window in envy and what may result is an elephant with flapping ears for wings. He squanders it.
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
2019 · Indian Express · Mar 2019
The story of Hiccup and his Night Fury called Toothless seems stretched and contrived, full of noisy battles, and stuffed with just too many fire-breathing giants.
Bumblebee
2019 · Indian Express · Jan 2019
The film's centrepiece, an Autobot called Chris, makes you feel for every pummelling he takes from the Decepticons chasing him across planets.
Aquaman
2018 · Indian Express · Dec 2018
Director James Wan seems in an incredible rush, not lingering over any important characters or vital plot points but diving head first into yet another undersea clash.
Bohemian Rhapsody
2018 · Indian Express · Nov 2018
Rami Malek puts in an astonishing bit of work getting Freddie right (especially with those teeth), and makes light work of it, his eyes reflecting the hunger the film never sweats to show.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
2018 · Indian Express · Nov 2018
Where Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald scores, and full marks to both JK Rowling and recurring Harry Potter director David Yates here, is in putting their imaginations on screen.
The Grinch
2018 · Indian Express · Nov 2018
The film is at its most entertaining when the night that Grinch strikes eventually draws near.
First Man
2018 · Indian Express · Oct 2018
It's Ryan Gosling himself whom Neil Armstrong may have approved of. Gosling also efficiently navigates the various roles expected of him.
Venom
2018 · Indian Express · Oct 2018
Tom Hardy film dissapoints...The good-looking and talented Tom Hardy, who should be a walk-in for this role, inhabits it half-heartedly as an unshaven, unwashed reporter who botches the one investigation any newsman with half his credentials would know how to approach.
Crazy Rich Asians
2018 · Indian Express · Oct 2018
An enjoyable affair...Michelle Yeoh as Eleanor, the stern matriarch of the Young family, is quite credible, aware at all times about the hard battle she has waged to be accepted too, and the thin foundation on which this rests.
Laila Majnu
2018 · Indian Express · Sep 2018
Much ado about nothing...Laila Majnu is set in modern-day Kashmir. A Kashmir without guns, gore, government — and, but for one misguided soul, Kashmiris.
Paltan
2018 · Indian Express · Sep 2018
All sound and fury signifying nothing...J P Dutta's Paltan doesn't allow JP Dutta his usual blood and gore and glory of war.
Halkaa
2018 · Indian Express · Sep 2018
Nila Madhab Panda gives us a film about urban wretchedness in easily digestible drawing-room gollops.
The Spy Who Dumped Me
2018 · Indian Express · Aug 2018
While Mila Kunis is an actor with good comic timing of her own, it's Kate McKinnon who walks away with the film.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
2018 · Indian Express · Jul 2018
om Cruise's Mission: Impossible – Fallout offers not just action that sizzles but action we can largely follow, happening to people we grow to care about.
Skyscraper
2018 · Indian Express · Jul 2018
Rawson Marshall Thurber is more intent on showcasing Dwayne Johnson's indisputable superhuman, but also much exposed, talents.
Ant-Man and the Wasp
2018 · Indian Express · Jul 2018
Having delivered a surprise hit with 2015 film Ant-Man, director Peyton Reed again banks on the fact that the biggest strength of his Marvel superhero is his ordinariness and likeability.
Isle of Dogs
2018 · Indian Express · Jul 2018
Isle of Dogs is disappointing, in the stereotypes it wields, in the history it seems not to care for, in the clever jokes it can't resist succumbing to, and ultimately in its treatment of the four-legged species it seems devoted to.
Sicario: Day of the Soldado
2018 · Indian Express · Jul 2018
Sicario: Day of the Soldado really comes alive, in the blood, sweat and tears of the Mexicans seeking "paradiso", one way or another, across an increasingly dangerous border.
Hereditary
2018 · Indian Express · Jun 2018
The Toni Collette starrer is a film of breathing, tangible horror...
Incredibles 2
2018 · Indian Express · Jun 2018
The highest points of the film and its acutest observations -- even if predictable -- remain Mr Incredible Bob Parr's struggles with reconciling to the success of his wife, Elastigirl Helen, in a new superhero role.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
2018 · Indian Express · Jun 2018
It's a film of our times. As scientists underline that we are now into the 'Anthropocene epoch' -- or a human-influenced age, for the first time in Earth's history -- and as man plays God with nature, Fallen Kingdom does well to catch on.
Deadpool 2
2018 · Indian Express · May 2018
It is all too confusing in the beginning, and much too smart at times — again — for its own good. But as Ryan Reynolds gets other people to match his wits against, Deadpool 2 starts hitting the spots it wants too, much more effortlessly than its prequel.
High Jack
2018 · Indian Express · May 2018
As is the bane of many a Hindi film, High Jack repeats one joke too many, and in seeking an ending where its characters all look good in that much-told rich-vs-poor tale, does ultimate injustice to them.
Hope Aur Hum
2018 · Indian Express · May 2018
Hope Aur Hum doesn't believe in subtlety when it comes to drumming home its message of old giving way to the new, saddling Naseeruddin Shah with the burden of making audiences hope that, surely, there is something better around the corner.
Raazi
2018 · Indian Express · May 2018
Meghna Gulzar paces the film well, fleshing out the characters who make up the Sayed family, into which Sehmat is married, and then gradually turning up the tension as the bride's cover wears thin.
102 Not Out
2018 · Indian Express · May 2018
No doubt it's great to see a film about two old people. But we have seen both Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor in that avatar in better films (Piku especially, and in Kapoor & Sons) before this.
Omerta
2018 · Indian Express · May 2018
Hansal Mehta's Omerta, starring Rajkummar Rao, is a surprisingly passion-less, rote incident-by-incident telling of the story of a man who is part of one of the most shameful chapters in India's terror history.
Avengers: Infinity War
2018 · Indian Express · Apr 2018
As Thanos sits with "glorious sunshine" playing on his face -- a sad fellow eventually after getting what he wanted -- the second part of this cinematic battle is already on the drawing board somewhere..
Rampage
2018 · Indian Express · Apr 2018
We have seen experiments go more spectacularly wrong before. Rampage tries to go one step further by starting with monsters in space and ending with monsters on the ground. But the film then does little with any of its three.
A Quiet Place
2018 · Indian Express · Apr 2018
John Krasinski employs very few tricks in this simple story, except perhaps using children too often to turn up the horror.
Pacific Rim Uprising
2018 · Indian Express · Mar 2018
Guillermo del Toro, still enjoying his Oscar, has to take some blame for this metal-on-metal havoc, which he helmed the first time around as director (Pacific Rim, 2013) and now shepherds as producer.
Hichki
2018 · Indian Express · Mar 2018
While Rani Mukerji is good as always, the actors who play the students are also natural and without any artifice, with the film cleverly dodging stereotypes just when you suspect one around the corner.
7 Days In Entebbe
2018 · Indian Express · Mar 2018
The most satisfying scenes in the film involve Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin (Ashkenazi) and Defence Minister Shimon Peres (Marsan) discussing their options, driven largely by political one-upmanship.
Tomb Raider
2018 · Indian Express · Mar 2018
Rarely has an actress gone through more physical battering, even if to establish herself as an action figure. It's hard not to feel for that very sensitive face and that delicately lean frame, which though -- surprise, surprise -- emerges none the worse for wear.
Lady Bird
2018 · Indian Express · Mar 2018
In one of the warmest affirmations of love, family and friendships on screen, Greta Gerwig tells the story of a 17-year-old's one year from high school to college, as she rediscovers who and what she is.
Game Night
2018 · Indian Express · Feb 2018
A combination of some nifty directing, winsome acting, and some genuine laughs make Game Night as entertaining a film as one with such limited goals can get.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
2018 · Indian Express · Feb 2018
...there is no doubt that in putting a greying, foul-mouthed woman, in shapeless overalls and bandanas, in frazzled hair and cutting no slack, at the heart of this story of sort-of revenge, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, has given McDormand the definitive words of this gone year: "This time, the chick ain't losing."
The Shape of Water
2018 · Indian Express · Feb 2018
That The Shape of Water has 13 Oscar nominations indicates that the love story largely floats above the problems with the film — buoyed to a large extent by a timorous, luminous, powerful Sally Hawkins.
Hostiles
2018 · Indian Express · Feb 2018
The trenchant Christian Bale, always an actor who can make everything he does seem important but remote, struggles to portray a battle-hardened Captain of the Union army.
Phantom Thread
2018 · Indian Express · Feb 2018
This Daniel Day-Lewis starrer is visually delightful...With Daniel Day-Lewis declaring Phantom Thread to be his last film, it adds a secondary layer of sadness to this story about an artiste learning to "take it easy".
The 15:17 to Paris
2018 · Indian Express · Feb 2018
The 15:17 to Paris isn't really an original Eastwood story. But it's easy to see what would attract him to this real-life tale about three ordinary Americans, two of them off-duty soldiers, foiling a possible terror attack aboard a train in 2015.
Maze Runner: The Death Cure
2018 · Indian Express · Feb 2018
The Death Cure can't really explore this to any great length given the limitations in which it operates, and given that at least twice, it has to turn to cranes or helicopters to lift a train coach and bus full of children out of harm's way as a plot turner. Still, as this franchise too winds to a close, some marks to it for trying.
The Commuter
2018 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
After a lot of fighting and punching, little of which has got to do with why this story was set on a train, the film makes its way towards a conclusion that many would have long guessed.
12 Strong
2018 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
...this is a film about back-thumping American heroes, who volunteer for war seeing the WTC towers go down, after saying weepy goodbyes to dutiful wives and children, and remain good, unquestioning people at heart miles away in enemy territory.
Darkest Hour
2018 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
Darkest Hour can't avoid comparisons with The Crown, where John Lithgow's Churchill reluctantly confronts mortality, and faces questions regarding own leadership. Several actors from the Netflix series pop up here in crucial/similar roles.
Downsizing
2018 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
Rarely has a film about life seemed less life-like. Waltz in his half-demonic wide smile does stir some motion, but more and more of his roles now seem a parody of the original in Inglourious Basterds.
Paddington 2
2018 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
Ben Whishaw's Paddington is a creature of just the right amount of vulnerability and grit. But it is Hugh Grant who is a find here, mocking himself, showing his age, and rocking a neat number in a pink outfit.
The Post
2018 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
Tom Hanks turns in another impressive performance, more impressive for often being just one of the many men in smoke-filled newsrooms. But it is Meryl Streep who just steals the show from right under their noses.
The Greatest Showman
2017 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
Where this film, with some talented star wattage, completely flops is in living up to any of its exalted claims. Of showmanship, of storytelling, of being glorious, or of even "a million dreams".
Ferdinand
2017 · Indian Express · Dec 2017
John Cena is a good choice to play Ferdinand. He steers nimbly around the jokes about a bull's weight, size, and most hilariously, that one, about being a bull in a china shop.
The Foreigner
2017 · Indian Express · Dec 2017
What is Jackie Chan doing in a film about the festering resentments in Northern Ireland, and a strained peace accord? Being a 'Chinaman'.
Wonder
2017 · Indian Express · Dec 2017
Don't miss this Julia Roberts and Jacob Tremblay starrer...In any lesser hands, the film could easily have become either too exploitative or too maudlin. Instead, Chbosky, the co-screenwriter of Wonder, just gets what the book is about.
Murder on the Orient Express
2017 · Indian Express · Nov 2017
The film is all about Kenneth Branagh, his improvisations, and his morality take on a place and time far removed from the present.
Coco
2017 · Indian Express · Nov 2017
Like many animations before it, Coco is about finding yourself while never losing sight of your family. Disney finds a way to tell this story differently, in an un-American setting.
Justice League
2017 · Indian Express · Nov 2017
The film's smartest move is to recognise that Gal Gadot is the beating heart of this enterprise.
A Bad Moms Christmas
2017 · Indian Express · Nov 2017
While promising to be a film about how much pressure mothers bring upon themselves over hosting the perfect Christmas for the family, it ends up about resolving mother-daughter conflicts through some very cliched characters.
Geostorm
2017 · Indian Express · Oct 2017
Geostorm talks about a desert called 'Registan' in Afghanistan. Much, much later, the film ventures towards Mumbai as the world is collapsing only to show a distraught slum boy trying to save a street dog (where have you seen that before?).
Victoria & Abdul
2017 · Indian Express · Oct 2017
Unfortunately, as told by this film, through Ali Fazal whose Abdul is as two-dimensional as a cardboard, with as little insight into the man transported into an alien world, Victoria and Abdul plays out exactly like a fantasy.
Blade Runner 2049
2017 · Indian Express · Oct 2017
You will walk away impressed from 2049, mesmerised by its reimagining of Earth, delivered by the multiple Oscar-nominee cinematographer Roger Deakins. But you probably won't care much for this cold, radioactive, and fairly heartless, Earth.
American Made
2017 · Indian Express · Sep 2017
In American Made, Barry Seal, played by Tom Cruise, is a hot-shot young pilot, who smuggles Cuban cigars on the side, sometime in the 1970s. The CIA spots him, hires him to take pictures of Central America's Communist battlefields, flying really low and really risky.
American Assassin
2017 · Indian Express · Sep 2017
A better film would have done something with the fact that the man Mitch and Hurley end up fighting is a product of the very system that sets people like them out into the world, to ask no questions and do all the bidding. However, American Assassin has little time for such ruminations...
It
2017 · Indian Express · Sep 2017
What saves the film from collapsing is the acting by the children, who are effortlessly natural, whether they are just being boys or just being scared kids. As the object of their combined admiration, but with horrors of her own Lillis is both boldly aware and heartbreakingly fragile.
The Hitman's Bodyguard
2017 · Indian Express · Aug 2017
In parts, and very small parts, the banter between Samuel L Jackson and Ryan Reynolds, two indisputably charismatic actors, is funny and makes you forget a lot else that is going around them.
The Dark Tower
2017 · Indian Express · Aug 2017
Matthew McConaughey, as the source of the evil that stands contrary to all such good things, slithers through the film in clothes as slick as his gelled hair, and a face that is tanned leather. Some things remain constant, even in multiverse.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
2017 · Indian Express · Jul 2017
Apart from the two leads, played by DeHaan and Delevingne, the film doesn't do any justice to any of its other actors. Be it Owen, reduced to the kind of showy military uniform that never comes to any good or a kohl-eyed Hawke, who will hopefully return if this film spawns into a series.
Berlin Syndrome
2017 · Indian Express · Jul 2017
The pace is so unhurried, and Shortland captures so much of the passing time in slow motion and caressing visuals, that it takes away from how humiliating her situation is for Clare.
Munna Michael
2017 · Indian Express · Jul 2017
This Tiger Shroff, Nidhhi Agerwal, Nawazuddin Siddiqui-starrer is a whole dance-action genre has nothing great about it. Tiger Shroff as Munna Michael dance, Munna fights, Munna dance and fight together, this is what he is doing in the film.
Dunkirk
2017 · Indian Express · Jul 2017
Christopher Nolan is telling you about defeat, the blood, sweat and tears of it; how it settles into your bones, sets in your face, moves your clawing fingers, hardens your scared heart. The writer-director, who loves playing with time, again tells the story of that week in a non-linear sequence.
War for the Planet of the Apes
2017 · Indian Express · Jul 2017
It is an impressive film, technologically astounding, and it is a hardworking film, with the camera striving to capture every puff of the nostril of its apes. But that doesn't necessarily make it a particularly great film.
The Big Sick
2017 · Indian Express · Jun 2017
If a film can still be made where a person spreads the prayer mat and then dances around it playing video games, where Anupam Kher can play a Pakistani dad, where one can say that he doesn't know whether one believes or not in Allah, and where a mother can pack meat biryani for the road, all is well.
Cars 3
2017 · Indian Express · Jun 2017
For most of its run, it never gets off the beaten track, following the predictable course of a Hollywood film. In an inspired turn of events that will harm many a heart, Cars 3 breathes a new life into this franchise, even making what is likely to follow worth the wait.
Despicable Me 3
2017 · Indian Express · Jun 2017
The film relies on humour and poor visual gags to fill the gaps. And when these run up short, the fact that Despicable Me is essentially on the same page since the first film is more and more obvious. It's hard to see what Despicable Me 3 is getting at.
Baywatch
2017 · Indian Express · Jun 2017
Priyanka Chopra sizzles as Pamela Anderson did once dressed in slinky dresses, twirling a drink and throwing grand parties, she must do so for the sake of all the women "back home" not given their due. She adds the real oomph in this tame Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron affair.
Wonder Woman
2017 · Indian Express · Jun 2017
Gal Gadot bursts onto DC Comics' superhero scene with Wonder Woman, an old-fashioned good vs an evil film that has a scale, that has an ambition, that has the required full-blown finale, but, above all, that has a heart of gold.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
2017 · Indian Express · May 2017
Let's just say don't go in expecting more, and you won't get less (and even get a surprise or two with Javier Bardem).
The Salesman
2016 · Indian Express · Mar 2017
In this delicately crafted story of life, marriage, everyday violence -- and kindness -- writer-director Asghar Farhadi proves once again that there are few filmmakers like him in turning the camera inwards.
Life
2017 · Indian Express · Mar 2017
In Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal's film, the bodies keep piling, the sacrifices keep multiplying, the alien keeps growing, and the story keeps shrinking.
Beauty and the Beast
2017 · Indian Express · Mar 2017
Beauty and the Beast remain safe and secure within its Disney-defined dimensions; its infantile proclamations about a gay character and mixed race couples even further underlining what goes for risk-taking in that world.
Logan
2017 · Indian Express · Mar 2017
Hugh Jackman bids goodbye to X-Men universe and his role as Wolverine with Logan, which perfectly wraps up his film journey.
Lion
2017 · Indian Express · Feb 2017
There is nothing glorious about poverty, and every time you fear Garth Davis may resort to a trick like that, he stays away.
The Ghazi Attack
2017 · Indian Express · Feb 2017
Rana Daggubati and Kay Kay Menon film could have been an engrossing crisis-at-sea drama but the film is so busy slaying Pakistanis that it loses sight of its core strengths.
Running Shaadi
2017 · Indian Express · Feb 2017
Despite a novel idea and a fresh pairing in Taapsee Pannu and Amit Sadh, this film fails to engage you.
The Space Between Us
2017 · Indian Express · Feb 2017
The film has many "facts", and a smattering of alternative facts...
The Great Wall
2017 · Indian Express · Feb 2017
The film is an excuse to showcase the expertise of ancient China when it comes to warfare, to the "barbarian" West.
The Founder
2017 · Indian Express · Jan 2017
The Founder focuses too much on the business side of things -- including a passing reference to Coke sponsorship of menus -- to give us an insight into the man whose ambition now feeds "1% of the world's population" at any given time.
Passengers
2017 · Indian Express · Jan 2017
With space travel offered up as the new adventure tour, Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt are actually accidental astronauts. And that is a real disservice to the impressive science of Passengers.
Sing
2016 · Indian Express · Dec 2016
Things go wrong, some threateningly bulky bears get involved, and relationships face minor crises. But all is well that ends well. Particularly when you can leave with a tune on your lips and a spring in your steps.
Assassin's Creed
2016 · Indian Express · Dec 2016
This film has perhaps the most well-cast video-game movie ever. Unfortunately, the script, performances or dialogues cannot keep pace.
Arrival
2016 · Indian Express · Dec 2016
Arrival's most acute observation is how common language isn't the only key to keep communication going, but the film appears to not notice it.
Wajah Tum Ho
2016 · Indian Express · Dec 2016
Murder and rape, bosoms and hairdos and an unintentional critique of how television news function, Wajah Tum Ho is an unruly mess.
La La Land
2016 · Indian Express · Dec 2016
Love is a many-splendored thing. But really all it needs is a girl in a yellow dress, against a violet-hued evening sky, in the soft light of a lamp-post, with a boy carrying her strappy blue heels.
Moana
2016 · Indian Express · Dec 2016
Where Moana consistently hits the mark is the expanse it allows its heroine -- the length and breadth of an ocean -- with the film and the future of the world almost entirely resting on her shoulders.
Shut In
2016 · Indian Express · Nov 2016
There is so much potential in this Naomi Watts film, but it's incomprehensible...
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
2016 · Indian Express · Nov 2016
With Eddie Redmayne's deliciously shy Newt Scamander, the delightful sister duo of Tina and Queenie and no-maj Jacob, JK Rowling has done it again.
Rock On 2
2016 · Indian Express · Nov 2016
Rock On 2 was all about a generation, about love, about growing up, even chasing dreams. But this time round, Farhan Akhtar, Shraddha Kapoor, Arjun Rampal and Purab Kohli film has other plans in place.
Doctor Strange
2016 · Indian Express · Nov 2016
Everything is forgotten in the brilliant Inception-like reimagining of cities, streets and buildings that the film deploys, as The Ancient One and her pupils battle out Kaecilius and his lynchpins in different dimensions.
Trolls
2016 · Indian Express · Nov 2016
http://www.hindustantimes.com/movie-reviews/review-of-trolls-by-rashid-irani-an-animated-romp/story-dlk9nduoI0qr3dtbe5DywI.html
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
2016 · Indian Express · Oct 2016
Tom Cruise's Jack Reacher should have taken his own advice and "never gone back" down this well-trodden path.
The Accountant
2016 · Indian Express · Oct 2016
Director O'Connor has factored in mathematics too to give us a hero who multiplies numbers as fast as he eliminates people, who beats himself literally to sleep while gazing upon a Pollack fixed on the ceiling.
The Girl on the Train
2016 · Indian Express · Oct 2016
Emily Blunt brings such a raw, pained, mortified portrait of an alcoholic to live that it's a shame that the filmmakers fail to recognise this as essentially her story.
Saat Uchakkey
2016 · Indian Express · Oct 2016
Old ghosts and new dreams survive side by side in this Manoj Bajpayee, Vijay Raaz film as we get to see Old Delhi like we have never seen it before.
Queen of Katwe
2016 · Indian Express · Oct 2016
Queen of Katwe's power lies far from the distant, ascetic tournament halls that Phiona finds herself in. It lies in the streets, drains, sludge, tattered windows, door-less, roof-less houses that she inhabits when away from that world.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
2016 · Indian Express · Oct 2016
Unlike other films of a similar nature, of kids with unnatural or supernatural powers, here the children, very young to almost adult, never look like they can make their way out alive.
Bridget Jones's Baby
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
Bridget doesn't have an easy time having that child. It is a labour -- of love, still -- for the rest of us too.
The Magnificent Seven
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
Fifty-six years later, Antoine Fuqua movie seems way past its sell-by date, and without bringing little new to the table.
The Shallows
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
Blake Lively starrer can seem repetitive, and a little pointless in the talk that Nancy has going with the seagull and later with a camera.
Sully
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
In a film with an end as well known, the challenge always would have been to bring some newness. Eastwood's pacing does the trick, but even so, in bits, Sully is a stretch and sometimes rather obvious in its heavy-handed intentions to honour a hero. Even one as celebrated.
Skiptrace
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
The Jackie Chan film builds towards a buddy partnership as action remains unimaginative and the laughs few.
Don't Breathe
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
While the film manages to smartly get back on its feet, it is clear Alvarez got greedy and extended Don't Breathe past its ideal running time. The thing is — and here is what makes Don't Breathe the standout horror of this year — you may be holding your breath till the last.
Mechanic: Resurrection
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
Jason Statham tries hard to stay upbeat with his adrenaline rushing avatar. But somewhere in the middle he gets trapped in bad script and forced action.
Nine Lives
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
It is a desperate attempt at making the audience laugh.
Pete's Dragon
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
With this film, there was a chance to tell the story of a town that changes when it manages to capture a dragon, but the film doesn't have its heart set on it.
Ben-Hur
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
While Bekmambetov couldn't be faulted for trying to keep a distance from the 1959 version — and who wouldn't, given its monstrous 11 Oscars — where Ben-Hur ultimately fails is in how far it seeks to travel. Its ending even further dilutes whatever little impact its sympathetic viewing of Biblical characters may have generated, showing it up for half-hearted at best.
Jason Bourne
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
Matt Damon's Jason Bourne is back again in Donald Trump-era war against terror. It is not as much about how many lives saved, as leaving them dead.
Suicide Squad
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
Jared Leto's Joker tries as does Margot Robbie who brings up the rear, literally, of Suicide Squad but Will Smith-led Suicide Squad is unmanageable.
The BFG
2016 · Indian Express · Jul 2016
The BFG is a winsome tale from Roald Dahl, a writer who hardly went in for easy, simple pleasures. Steven Spielberg is a director whose heart lies in such delights. The movie is true to Dahl's story and Spielberg's spirit.
Lights Out
2016 · Indian Express · Jul 2016
Sandberg, who extended his own impressive short by the same name into this extended film, should have let this one rest. Can't always have the lights on.
Star Trek Beyond
2016 · Indian Express · Jul 2016
The film doesn't bother explaining why the universe across planets may be after it. Not that anyone is asking that question, for Star Trek Beyond is much too busy pitting Kirk and company against Krall (Elba) and his lot.
Ice Age: Collision Course
2016 · Indian Express · Jul 2016
More than ever, Ice Age is intent on finding love for each of its characters, who go about expressing it in a manner that is absolutely human-like.
The Secret Life of Pets
2016 · Indian Express · Jul 2016
The film ends up being about two hostile animals in mortal peril till they literally come out swimming.
Free State of Jones
2016 · Indian Express · Jul 2016
Gary Ross's film does well to juxtapose telling of Knight's story with the trial his mixed-race descendant is fighting in the same state "85 years later".
The Legend of Tarzan
2016 · Indian Express · Jul 2016
David Yates movie gives us a believable reason to revisit the tale of the man raised by apes.
Independence Day: Resurgence
2016 · Indian Express · Jun 2016
Some of the fights are impressive, most of the destruction routine and a large part of the dialogue perfunctory.
The Conjuring 2
2016 · Indian Express · Jun 2016
That nun/nut keeps popping up at various times, and The Conjuring 2 does an unsatisfying work of tying it up with the rest of the story.
The Nice Guys
2016 · Indian Express · Jun 2016
Both Russell Crowe as the washed-up, rough-edged bouncer-on-hire Healy, and Ryan Gosling as the cynical, heavy-drinking private investigator March are good and cleverly cast.
Alice Through the Looking Glass
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
You realise that the only reason Through the Looking Glass is different from its many special-effect summer counterparts is its fascinating characters sprung from the book.
X-Men: Apocalypse
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
Continuing with the strength of this franchise, Apocalypse ensures each of the mutant characters gets a solemn, credible background.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
This film is more content playing on its old, successful themes, including a Windex spray, and even inveigles a wedding between Toula's still-squabbling parents under the flimsiest of pretexts to justify the title.
Money Monster
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
Julia Roberts is especially good as her role almost entirely involves emoting through her voice, but even George Clooney nicely moderates his charisma to appear desperate and downright unlikable in parts.
1920 London
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
An infinitesimal number, hopefully, do so chasing an "aatma" that resides in a locket in this Sharman Joshi, Meera Chopra starrer...
Captain America: Civil War
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
The Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr film is as competent a montage as Marvel has been mounting lately, without breaking any new grounds.
10 Cloverfield Lane
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
A SORT-OF sequel to J J Abrams's found-footage 2008 hit Cloverfield, the film steers clear of it but for the name. In reality, it is a much, much cleverer take on the horror-film, end-of-the-world genre where what lies outside is as dangerous as what is brewing within. And comes just before this summer's blockbusters get ready to hit us.
The Man Who Knew Infinity
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
Well, as anyone who has sat down with a set of seemily incomprehensible numbers and watched them fall into place will know, it is not unlike a spiritual feeling. Ultimately, you could say the film is bigger than the sum of its parts. Should Ramanujan agree.
The Huntsman: Winter's War
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
One wishes one could say for its star cast, impressive as it is. However, if the dazzling, imposing Theron is missing but for a few minutes of snarling venom at the end, the others are, to say the least, far from fairy-like.
Before I Wake
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
Haunt, of course, is a euphemism, for this creature inspired by Munch's Scream generates all but a few giggles.
The Jungle Book
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
It's a little more reminiscent of the jungle and the book than the 1967 Disney classic, a lot, lot darker, and yet, ultimately as exuberant, with a surprisingly strong and novel message at the heart of it, in a story that already didn't lack for them.
Demolition
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
There are many reasons to be worried about the moral centre of Demolition, and none of those concerns the aforesaid friend, played by Jake Gyllenhaal as a vacuous Wall Street type looking for meaning after his wife dies in an accident.
Kung Fu Panda 3
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
The DreamWorks animation says it more effortlessly in action, drawing out each of its village-full of characters with warmth and detail.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
2016 · Indian Express · Mar 2016
Supermen may need a bit of it all, but science, faith or fairy tale, nothing can rescue this one. - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/movie-review/batman-vs-superman-dawn-of-justice-movie-review-one-and-half-stars/#sthash.3GrxczT2.dpuf
Bus 657
2016 · Indian Express · Mar 2016
There is only one vehicle of consequence in the film, though several give it chase. That is the bus, route no. 657. Shot, teargassed, spray-painted, crashed, almost burnt, bloodied. It never leaves our sight.
Eye in the Sky
2016 · Indian Express · Mar 2016
At first, it seems the film, written by Guy Hibbert, is clearly showing up the politicians for wavering over the fate of the girl, and for the military being more clear-eyed about these matters. The icy Rickman, with the cutting inflexion he puts on the word "minister", and the icier Mirren barely disguise their contempt at the dilly-dallying.
Triple 9
2016 · Indian Express · Mar 2016
Trying to decipher whether all of it amounts to anything, you may appreciate the fact that Triple 9 is as mixed-race as it gets, with no obvious stereotypes.
The Program
2016 · Indian Express · Mar 2016
Ben Foster starrer makes an equally compelling case of how even "the world's most tested athlete" got away with cheating for so long.
45 Years
2016 · Indian Express · Mar 2016
This is a film though about few words, and most of the action happens in the way the gaze of the two lead roles changes, how she tentatively returns his embrace when they are dancing, the ferocity with which she strikes the piano keys, and moments in which they don't lock eyes but when they let their eyes drop.
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
2016 · Indian Express · Mar 2016
As far as bucks-for-bangs goes, 13 Hours doesn't disappoint.
Carol
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
While Blanchett not surprisingly is great as this very rich and polished yet dangerously brittle woman who starts off as the more confident and even a tad pushy one in the affair, Mara is a revelation as a girl who is as vulnerable as she is generous.
The Revenant
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
Leonardo DiCaprio, as DiCaprio does, gives this film all he has got, and more, as he crawls, strips, grunts and grates, and is butchered and butchers in return, for revenge.
Spotlight
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
Mark Ruffalo's film is a gripping portrait of what happens when institutions decide they are bigger than the people who make them.
Trumbo
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
The film is a fascinating account of how show business works, where success ultimately subverts everything else.
Deadpool
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
Ryan Reynolds is good though, fulfilling all that's required of him in a role where he must surpass at everything, whether standing up, horizontal in air or lying down.
Fitoor
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
Katrina Kaif starrer spares no one, not Kashmir, not Delhi, not London, not Kashmiris, and not even poor Pakistan, which somehow finds its way into this tale essentially about love traversing social divides.
The Choice
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
Considering The Choice begins with a grim visit to the hospital and that very portentous line -- "The biggest secret of life is making decisions" -- you can guess what that actually is.
The Finest Hours
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
Chris Pine as the anchor of that boat and hence this film is an effective choice, a good-looking, clean all-American hero with the shiny eyes one can't ignore.
The Boy
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
The worst part about The Boy is just when the premise starts to work, thanks in large part to praiseworthy acting by all its main protagonists particularly the boy's aged parents, director Bell loses control.
Room
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
The first part of Room ends with Jack's flight -- almost too quickly. The rest, dealing with their life in the world outside, is more predictable, more practical.
Joy
2016 · Indian Express · Jan 2016
...the film belongs to Lawrence, even if she is perhaps a little too polished. As Russell struggles to get a grip on her role, she at least falls in step pretty efficiently — whether Joy is deeply crestfallen or completely overwhelmed.
The Hateful Eight
2016 · Indian Express · Jan 2016
The Quentin Tarantino's film, unfurled as "chapters", feels like an actual short story for a cold winter day.
The Danish Girl
2016 · Indian Express · Jan 2016
Director Tom Hooper gets everything right. The problem is that his Einar/Lili is etched in the same perfect strokes. You are impressed, you are not moved.
Point Break
2016 · Indian Express · Jan 2016
It's not just presidents who are bleached of colour. Even thieves must center their wickedness on something as concrete as concern for the earth.
The Peanuts Movie
2015 · Indian Express · Dec 2015
The film remains true to Charles Schulz's drawings and pen strokes -- down to the two-dimensional sketches even in 3D -- and his characters.
Legend
2015 · Indian Express · Dec 2015
In this "notorious true story of the Kray twins" — the gangster brothers who briefly fancied themselves as kings of London in the '60s — the knockout punch isn't dealt by Tom Hardy raised to the power 2. It is the Kray mother (Jane Wood) in her bedraggled nightgown, mousey hair, wrinkled cleavage, and a firm grip passing along cups of tea.
The Good Dinosaur
2015 · Indian Express · Dec 2015
The idea is great, the animation is excellent — from the great floods to the small water droplets dripping off a dinosaur — and there is a clear, broad message thrown in — all no surprises for Pixar. However, this offering from the animation powerhouse falls the shortest on one of its strongest suits, the story.
Silver Linings Playbook
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
It's how well the characters are etched, in white and grey and the varying shades in between, that makes the first half of Silver Linings Playbook, directed and written for the screen by David O Russell from a Matthew Quick book, such a delight.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
2015 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
Mockingjay – Part 2 works again because Lawrence, who has grown as much as Katniss through the course of this series, brings forth the right mix of vulnerability and steel required of her. It's a rare achievement on screen for a heroine to be so consistently a person than a woman, making no concessions to her so-called feminine self.
Spectre
2015 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
This dreary, and thanks to the Censor chief, sex-less film has Daniel Craig's solemn Bond shooting up the world during a confusingly circuitous route towards the 'SPECTRE'. That, Bond fans know, stands for Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion, a global terrorist organisation encompassing almost all Bond villains.
Secret in Their Eyes
2015 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
A tighter film would see Billy Ray deploy much cleverer and subtler methods than he does in his pursuit of Marzin/Beckwith. However, that is about the only wrong note Secret in their Eyes strikes.
Hotel Transylvania 2
2015 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
There are two running gags in Hotel Transylvania 2, and both are not directed at the children. One deals with overprotective parents, the other with over political correctness.
Burnt
2015 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
There are ghosts to be slayed, debts to be paid, beatings to be had, but however much Bradley Cooper's character insults and assails, a helping hand and at least three people in love with him are never too far away.
Rock the Kasbah
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
Rock The Kasbah tries many things without any sense of history, geography or, less ambitiously, irony. The furthest Rock The Kasbah gets towards stirring anything is Murray's thinning hair.
The Last Witch Hunter
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
Shot, sliced, struck, splayed; saved, sailed, smiled, strayed; and carried on. For Vin Diesel to start at one end of that trajectory and appear unscathed at the other is par for the course. Now imagine him as witch hunter Kaulder, with special powers and immortality. Witch, witches, or witch queen — which has a chance?
Bridge of Spies
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
...the politics comes with dollops of morality and sweet sentimentality, all coming together in the person of — yes — Tom Hanks.
Crimson Peak
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
Little makes sense in this visually rich film from that director of the horror Crimson Peak excess Guillermo del Toro, that has ideas as wispy thin as the ghost -- or is it ghosts? -- that populates it.
Sicario
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
'Sicario', which means hitman, would suffer if Emily Blunt wasn't playing that role. But it also suffers for putting her there, as the outsider in a film with few people without blood on their hands.
The Martian
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
Glee is the underlying narrative of from this surprisingly optimistic space tale the director who gave us Alien. 'Man stranded on Mars' is just the setting.
The Intern
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
The only time the movie shows some originality is when Ben leads three other staff members to break into Jules's mother's home to delete a mail from her mother's inbox that she sent unintentionally.
Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
Shorn of the tension of being locked in, The Scorch Trials is just one long dash through a series of similar landscapes and awefully tiring zombies.
Pawn Sacrifice
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
After watching 'Pawn Sacrifice', the game, that involves kings, queens, knights and bishops, but essentially two players poring over a small table, will never look the same again.
Black Mass
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
Covering the events between 1975 and 1992, the movie is essentially about FBI's arrangement with Depp's character that was only used by the latter to further his criminal run.
Everest
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
The film is shot beautifully, and in 3D, the dips and highs of the glorious peak are eminently watchable.
We Are Your Friends
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
There are parties, indoors and outdoors, lots of dancing, and plenty of gyrating bodies. How much you come away knowing about the music that is moving those people is another matter.
She's Funny That Way
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
Wilson is repetitive and tiresome, Poots grossly inadequate, Hahn again underused, the dialogues flat and the punch-lines absent.
Hitman: Agent 47
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
It is a film where the most delicately handled is 47's suit, that he hangs up carefully at the end of every blood-splattered day.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
2015 · Indian Express · Aug 2015
The problem is that Cavill and Hammer don't light any sparks, together or apart, good as they look in the sharp suits.
Fantastic Four
2015 · Indian Express · Aug 2015
When Fantastic 4 becomes Fant4stic, you do know the reboot you are getting. Yes, they are younger, right out of school.
The Gift
2015 · Indian Express · Aug 2015
Edgerton and Bateman put in very good performances in a story that depends entirely on our inability to trust their characters.
Shaun the Sheep Movie
2015 · Indian Express · Aug 2015
After 130 seven-minute television episodes, starting eight years ago, Shaun the Sheep has made it to the big screen. Despite the size and the scale (85 minutes), and the transition to the big city, directors-screenwriters Mark Burton and Richard Starzak retain the innocence about a flock of sheep and their beloved farmer, down to the no-frills stop-motion animation and the no-words story but for some baas and murmurs.
Vacation
2015 · Indian Express · Aug 2015
The funniest part doesn't involve any body part though but a broken heart. By the end of it, you may even find yourself cheering for the Griswolds. However, in this case the journey may not be worth the destination.
Minions
2015 · Indian Express · Jul 2015
There is an intrinsic problem with this film about creatures who exist just to serve. When it actually gets going, Minions finds it hard to hold down a thought, let alone a relationship.
Pitch Perfect 2
2015 · Indian Express · Jul 2015
Actor Elizabeth Banks's directorial debut hopes to cruise on the surprise success of Pitch Perfect, but a completely random script, held together by a few scenes of actual delight, lets down her effort. If the singing is few and far between, drama is virtually non-existent with any such scenarios either wished or laughed away.
Terminator Genisys
2015 · Indian Express · Jul 2015
...runs virtually on the same lines as the first Terminator...
Spy
2015 · Indian Express · Jun 2015
There are fewer sights as exuberant as Melissa McCarthy on a roll. And that includes her rolling. The actress is again at her swearing, fighting, kicking best here, letting it all hang out as a CIA desk person who finds herself out in the field.
Entourage
2015 · Indian Express · Jun 2015
Larsen confesses he has never ever seen any of the films he has funded. We of course have no such luck.
The Age of Adaline
2015 · Indian Express · Jun 2015
When snow meets hypothermia meets electricity in The Age of Adaline, it always results in miracles. One such chance encounter leaves Adaline (Lively) with the gift of never ageing. However, that's not the problem with The Age of Adaline — not at all. For explanation for the science of it has been conveniently left for "2035"
What We Did on Our Holiday
2015 · Indian Express · Jun 2015
...somewhere along the way, the all-too-familiar story among all-too-familiar characters loses sight of what children can do and what they probably won't. That's a damage the film never recovers from, as its grasp of children is the best thing going for Hamilton and Jenkin.
Maggie
2015 · Indian Express · Jun 2015
Were Brad Pitt of World War Z to meet Brad Pitt of A Tree of Life, you could have Maggie. Almost. For, while Terence Malik hangs heavy over this film, Hobson — who was a part of Malik's A Tree of Life — jettisons the symbolism long enough to give us a warm, working family strained by a zombie scare.
Poltergeist
2015 · Indian Express · May 2015
Almost entirely a copy, and with hardly any improvement over the old Poltergeist, this is a film where nothing appears new. Except for the use of 3D and a strategically used camera-mounted drone. The first is pointless, the second ridiculous.
Tomorrowland
2015 · Indian Express · May 2015
Yes, out-of-work NASA engineers do breed daughters brimming with insatiable curiosity (Interstellar). Tomorrowland also seeks to imagine parallel universes, time-space conundrums, and ecologically worn end-of-world scenarios. However, that's where the similarity ends. Where Interstellar is about man's quest for answers and the price it takes, Tomorrowland is a more run-of-the-mill affair about two worlds that is least interersted in the in-betweens.
Mad Max: Fury Road
2015 · Indian Express · May 2015
This ridiculously glorious rebooting of the Mad Max films of late '70s and early '80s by the director is a celebration of a world gone feral, and women gone sublime. And that's not all women do here, even when dressed in wisps of delicate white. They command troops, drive war rigs, ride motorcycles and wage wars, apart from being "breeders" for a dictator ruling his kingdom by depriving his people of water.
Danny Collins
2015 · Indian Express · May 2015
Danny Collins reveals itself right at the beginning — "Kind of based on a true story a little bit." They had to try, so hard. And sound like it, so hard. For when the John Lennon (the emphasis theirs) is the fulcrum — or more precisely an actual letter written by him — you can't be flippant about anything while still making a film about an ageing rock star who has lived flippantly.
While We're Young
2015 · Indian Express · May 2015
A delightful and witty comedy, it warmly embraces the likes of us while gently treating those others, ribbing both and mocking none.
Wild
2015 · Indian Express · Feb 2015
The film sticks to the format of the novel in telling Cheryl's story in flashbacks that go back and forth and sometimes are even just visual images.
Love, Rosie
2015 · Indian Express · Feb 2015
Early on a condom gone literally wayward, explaining the pregnancy, promises a more adventurous film than it eventually turns out to be. But what do we know? It is Valentine's Day weekend after all.
The Boy Next Door
2015 · Indian Express · Feb 2015
There is murder and surprising amount of gore, car crashes and knife-wielding, but none of the brewing sexual tension or fraying tempers that could have made this film different.
Mr. Turner
2015 · Indian Express · Feb 2015
Long after Mr Turner has ended, you realise you can't claim to understand the man known as the "painter of light" any better. But then, the point may be just that.
Mortdecai
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
The story is predictable, the jokes flat, and the action put there because, well, you can't very well have a heist otherwise. But more than anything else what Koepp (who has not written this film unlike his other work) invests in are the characters.
American Sniper
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
The film, based on a book co-written by Kyle himself, will make you flinch at both the relentless fighting and the unilateral view the Americans in its midst have of it.
The Imitation Game
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
There were 159 million million million possibilities each code generated by Enigma entailed. In the normal course, it would take 20 million years to decipher. Turing's team and his machine did that in two years, giving us what would become the modern computer, cutting the war short by an estimated two years, and saving approximately 14 million lives. But that's not what this film is about, making it better than other films on the Enigma. It is about the one life it couldn't.
The Theory of Everything
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
While it goes on to tick all the events in Hawking's life after this, we see neither the trauma of a man talking about the beginning, the end, and then the timelessness of time when counting days himself, or the bitterness of him fathoming the expanse of the cosmos trapped in a body restricted to a wheelchair. His deductions, derived after long, lonely and presumably agonising hours of work, are reduced to warm flashes of brilliance.
Big Eyes
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
Burton picturises this domestic drama in bright colours, as well as in dark studios, with their mounting claustrophobia. He also tries to portray this as a feminist drama, with Margaret essentially fighting a system where women don't count for much. But his heart is really not in it.
The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
The Woman in Black 2 isn't as scary as its prequel, assumes most of us have watched the first film, and sees a surpring number of deaths. You also wish some of the story was about the children separated from parents put through horrors. However, the focus almost entirely is on Fox.
Unbroken
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
As a lesser known chapter of World War II, Unbroken is a welcome addition. However, as a particularly special chapter of it, Unbroken required us to care for Zamperini more than we may end up doing.
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
2014 · Indian Express · Dec 2014
Stiller's films have acquired this irritating habit of talking out a joke to death. Being funny is one thing, assuming no one else is is another. And just when you think Levy and company may finally be done, it's evident they are far from.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
2014 · Indian Express · Dec 2014
In story terms, nothing much happens in The Battle of the Five Armies.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1
2014 · Indian Express · Nov 2014
In which Katniss takes the backseat — you can call Mockingjay – Part I that. For, having split the final book into two films, there is little to do in the third edition of the Hunger Games franchise but build up to the finale next year.
The Equalizer
2014 · Indian Express · Nov 2014
This is far from Fuqua's own Training Day and Washington's other impressive body of work, but The Equalizer is a good reminder of what we may be missing.
Dumb and Dumber To
2014 · Indian Express · Nov 2014
There isn't much Carrey and Daniels can get wrong here that isn't wrong already. However, even if the story was a little better, there is something quite pathetic about wrinkled, greying men on the wrong side of 40 behaving like their selves from the right side of 20.
Boyhood
2014 · Indian Express · Nov 2014
We have already seen Linklater's love for letting his characters drive the story rather than the other way around. However, in Boyhood — beginning with the first shot of Mason (Coltrane) lying on the grass, his arm stretched at an odd angle behind him, looking up at the sky — the biggest presence is the absence of a "driving force", quite like in real life. It's because life happens when you are busy doing other things...
Nightcrawler
2014 · Indian Express · Nov 2014
'Nightcrawler' is no 'Taxi Driver', and Lou while a reflection of our full and empty times isn't really a product of it.
Interstellar
2014 · Indian Express · Nov 2014
THE height of dramatic tension in 'Interstellar' involves two spaceships competing to dock onto the same space station. That's how cerebral Christopher Nolan's latest film is. That's after he has taken a swirl through a twister of a wormhole, but before he rolls into the unfathomed depths of a blackhole. And while other filmmakers would be content imagining just one other world, he gives us three — with own skies, gravity, surfaces, and climates.
Gone Girl
2014 · Indian Express · Oct 2014
For, if there are two sides to every story, few are held as dear as in a marriage — both of which the book perfectly understood. The problem always was going to be how to translate its gradual transitions as well as unexpected twists onto the big screen. In that, Flynn, also the screenwriter, couldn't have asked for a better director than David Fincher, the clever exponent of tense relationships, misogynist protagonists, orchestrated violence, and people living double lives (Se7en, Fight Club, The Social Network, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo).
Annabelle
2014 · Indian Express · Oct 2014
...in comparison to The Conjuring — with its fantastic cast of actors and its sub-text of research and years of pain — Annabelle pales.
Left Behind
2014 · Indian Express · Oct 2014
"GOD works in mysterious ways," says Chloe (Thomson) right at the beginning of Left Behind. Indeed. Otherwise what explains this dud of a film based on, what some Christian circles call, 'the Rapture'?
Deliver Us from Evil
2014 · Indian Express · Sep 2014
Deliver Us From Evil, after a taut, thrill-filled start, goes slack, gory and repetitive till finally ending in an over-the-top, extended exorcism that leaves us none the wiser on what the fuss was all about.
A Walk Among the Tombstones
2014 · Indian Express · Sep 2014
What can you say about a film that so swears about its cerebralism as to discuss sickle cell anaemia at some length, and then picturises a disturbing sequence of a 14-year-old being admired by two sexual predators against an astonishingly and unironically sunny number?
The Maze Runner
2014 · Indian Express · Sep 2014
Readers of the book have praised the film for being better than it, and there can be few greater compliments. However, Ball's biggest achievement is letting us see the children at the heart of this coming-of-age story.
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
2014 · Indian Express · Sep 2014
Joseph Gordon-Levitt part doesn't have the chills of the cannibal Elijah Wood, Alba's pouts have clearly outlived their usefulness, the 3D is entirely pointless, the voyeurism even less disguised now, and there are no little girls who need saving to connect this film to any normal human emotion calling for a normal human response.
Life of Crime
2014 · Indian Express · Sep 2014
The film itself could do with some bit of tightening, but while they are on screen, it's a pleasure to watch each one of them. Particularly Aniston, who once again shows that she clearly understands what she represents and how to make the most of it.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
2014 · Indian Express · Aug 2014
Super-rich men who have had accidents in super-secret labs and now live in super-size castles in super-solitude are rarely up to any good.
The November Man
2014 · Indian Express · Aug 2014
And there you thought it was going all nice and simple with a brutal -- what else? -- Russian general-turned-politician with a rough taste -- what else? -- in the ladies.
The Expendables 3
2014 · Indian Express · Aug 2014
Specifics don't matter, and a thermonuclear bomb and CIA black ops are background noise in a film that's about bullets, biceps, blasts and lot of blah.
Hercules
2014 · Indian Express · Aug 2014
Hercules would be little more than a series of wars and body pile-ups strung together -- even if Ratner does manage to surprise once in a while.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
2014 · Indian Express · Jul 2014
This may be the best work from director Wes Anderson...
Planes: Fire & Rescue
2014 · Indian Express · Jul 2014
Unlike the flat Planes, Fire and Rescue has more of a storyline, even if it's largely predictable and packs in unnecessary details such as an old RUV couple on their second honeymoon. The fires are as fierce as any in a real film about real people, and Fire and Rescue appears serious about portraying the heroics of the men its planes represent.
Begin Again
2014 · Indian Express · Jul 2014
Begin Again is almost hopeless in the cliched characters and story plots it trots out. Music, Dan says, can lend even mundane things a meaning. It does, it does.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
2014 · Indian Express · Jul 2014
The sequel to 2011′s well-received Rise of the Planet of the Apes is not just an astounding achievement in special effects — though there's that too, from how the apes communicate to emote to swing from trees to wield weapons to ride horses and battle. It does one better in propelling the story towards its inevitable war and its inevitably bleak finale. In the mindless destruction they wreak on each other, the men and apes can't be told apart — a fact that the film underlines unfailingly, at the threat of repeating itself.
How to Train Your Dragon 2
2014 · Indian Express · Jun 2014
The story soars and the Vikings go further and higher to newer and well-imagined lands with details doing justice to the film's 3D branding, more characters come in, including strong women roles, and the film again packs in a fair amount of surprisingly tender scenes and touches. It doesn't even have to throw in a joke, so smooth does this tale run. The scene where a masked creature in blue glides into view over clouds is breathtaking.
Grace of Monaco
2014 · Indian Express · Jun 2014
Any woman put in that situation of "sacrifice" can understand what Kelly is going through. And despite all the pancake, the cornball dialogues, the cheesy "royal decorum training" and the unabashed distortion of historical facts, Kidman realises and conveys that. It is Grace of Monaco's only strength.
X-Men: Days of Future Past
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
Quite like its name, Days of Future Past may just be that — about interesting enough to keep dipping into the pool, but not good enough to not see in it reflected glory.
Godzilla
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
...a film whose only redeeming feature is that Binoche and Cranston shoulder part of its acting line-up – but just partly. Taylor-Johnson and Olsen cringingly pale before the big man, and that is despite the fact that Godzilla is nowhere in the picture (literally) in the first half.
Fading Gigolo
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
Gigolos, menage a trois and a Hasidic Jew court. Can a film actually have all three and yet be a warm, funny and romantic story about loneliness? The talented Italian-American actor John Turturro manages this with a deft touch, wry humour, unjudgmental kindness, some lovely music and a surprising sensuousness.
Million Dollar Arm
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
It's taken nearly six years making it to the big screen, and while Million Dollar Arm is not too ambitious in its pitch, it has its heart in the right place.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
It's hard to keep the amazing coming, but somehow, Marc Webb manages it yet again, two years after The Amazing Spider-Man and not so many years later that people have forgotten Tobey Maguire doing those same tricks with more or less the same material. The primary reason is Andrew Garfield, who brings good looks and innocent charm, goofy spunk and enough heart, as well as dollops of romance, to give us a Spider-Man more close to our times, when being nerdy is not nearly as bad.
Oculus
2014 · Indian Express · Apr 2014
Oculus's success as a horror thriller lies in how well it keeps its characters and consequently the audience on their toes. It raises the questions that matter without letting you feel settled about any of the answers it offers.
Noah
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
Crowe is very, very effective as the man who has borne the burden for a very long time, and the only one with the shoulders to do it. Connelly matches him every step of the way, particularly when Naameh finds herself increasingly distant from Noah.
Muppets Most Wanted
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
None of the other characters makes a mark, with Ms Piggy (Jacobson) cutting a particularly sorry figure given that marriage to a reluctant Kermit appears to be her sole agenda for this film.
Looper
2012 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
TIME travel is a conveninent science fiction tool,allowing many a story to cut corners and jump loopholes. Not here. In Looper,it's a starting point to tell a story about actions,consequences and choices — the smaller moments,not 30-year back-and-forth travel,which bend and shape lives.
3 Days to Kill
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
as Costner suffers though a lot else, including witnessing childbirth by a woman who is no more than a stranger, it's Heard who may get the best career bump. If this is a celebration of absurdities, she is the one dressed for the party.
Dallas Buyers Club
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
McConaughey lends Ron both the swagger an outlaw hero such as him needs and, because we can't put the image of the actor as the golden-boy behind us, the sense of the uphill battle he is waging. It is also surprisingly true to the real story of Ron Woodroof, fictional as it may seem at times in the extent to which he goes.
The Monuments Men
2014 · Indian Express · Feb 2014
It should have been an effortless performance for a man who has made that word entirely his own in film after film, including a couple directed by himself. Where from then this laborious effort and this creaking film, despite the little-known jewel of a story from the greatest war the planet has seen? The actor-director and co-screenwriter drowns it in not only very cliched characterisations but in very strange and half-hearted flippancy contrasted with amazingly soporific speeches.
Saving Mr. Banks
2014 · Indian Express · Feb 2014
It's a delight to watch the wooing of Travers by the Disney team, also including the scriptwriter of the Mary Poppins film Don DaGradi and the lyricist-musician duo of the Sherman brothers. She spars over everything from Mr Bank's moustache to the dancing penguins, and it's a nice observation into what an artist feels letting go of his or her life's work. One can see the little girl in that ageing woman almost at every turn.
12 Years a Slave
2014 · Indian Express · Jan 2014
NEVER one to shy away from human privation, be it in Hunger or Shame, McQueen offers here in one horrific scene the brutality of slavery and the helplessness of blacks against their white masters.
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
2014 · Indian Express · Jan 2014
...this film produced by Anant Singh and based on the South African leader's autobiography by the same name, treats its subject with that delicate reverence, bathing him in drippling sunlight and framing him more than once as a heroic figure against scenic backdrops of his loved land. It sacrifices small details for a rushed narrative, and a deeper understanding for a biopic that touches upon the many chapters of Mandela's eventful life without touching anything closely.
American Hustle
2014 · Indian Express · Jan 2014
...It's easy to see why the film is scooping those awards. For it may be about two con artists, an ambitious FBI agent, and a showman, if do-gooder politician, but rarely will you see character sketches as detailed about largely middle-aged people dealing with "the art of survival".
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
2014 · Indian Express · Jan 2014
There's nothing that comes as a surprise in Walter Mitty, least of all the tiresomely predictable daydreams he goes into as the film opens. And his discovery of his true self happens with too few wrinkles, and with too unlikely a hinge, to make an impression.
The Wolf of Wall Street
2014 · Indian Express · Jan 2014
The Wolf of Wall Street isn't about Belfort the stock manipulator who cheated poor people of hard-earned savings. It isn't really about Wall Street either. It is about the culture that allows one to breed the other, and vice-versa.
Walking with Dinosaurs
2013 · Indian Express · Dec 2013
It's sad then that such magnificent creatures have been laid unnecessarily low by the dialogues humans have saddled them with.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
2013 · Indian Express · Dec 2013
If A sequel takes four years coming, chances are it will be more cloudy than meaty. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 lives true to that fear, with a riot of colours for imagination but nothing in either the story or the dialogue to match up to it.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
2013 · Indian Express · Dec 2013
Jackson builds up quite a spectacle as he conjures up different lands, particularly the Lake People. However, as was the case with The Unexpected Journey, his eye appears to have moved from the characters to the circumstances they find themselves in, and you often long to care for some of them.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
2013 · Indian Express · Dec 2013
As movies of this budget, bandwidth and expectations go, Catching Fire is not exceptional. But it can't be dismissed either. And that is good enough.
D-Day
2013 · Indian Express · Dec 2013
Parallels have been drawn with A Mighty Heart, even Zero Dark Thirty, but that's only because all three films are set in what passes for Pakistan. However, D-Day's imagining of Karachi is entirely Indian and far more intimate. Advani should take a bow, as for the most part, it works.
Delivery Man
2013 · Indian Express · Nov 2013
Delivery Man, actually a remake of Scott's successful French-Canadian film Starbuck, plays it straight, stolid, sentimental and sanctimonious, to middlingly satisfactory but highly expected results.
Bullett Raja
2013 · Indian Express · Nov 2013
For 'Bullett Raja', the extra 't' for emphasis, is a potboiler with little pretensions to realism but much too close a connection with Dhulia to entirely jettison it too.
Gori Tere Pyaar Mein
2013 · Indian Express · Nov 2013
Let's just say you should be grateful Karan Johar doesn't see an India beyond the metros more often. For when a Johar production heads to a village, as 'Gori Tere Pyaar Mein' does, it is the sort of village where people dressed in tie and dyes hang around to fawn over the city slicks who will deliver them from a collector.
Man of Steel
2013 · Indian Express · Jun 2013
What is the most disconcerting part about Man of Steel though is its uneven pacing, unsure of whether it wants to be a blockbuster or a film about a man finding himself, or a boy growing up with scary powers, or a man finding his feet. It achieves none of the above credibly, being too loud (in all senses of the word) when it comes to the bang and too obvious when it comes to the pangs, and being always very, very solemn, trying very, very hard.
The Great Gatsby
2013 · Indian Express · May 2013
Luhrmann, who also co-wrote the screenplay, stuns you -- and not in a nice way -- with this introduction to Gatsby's world and with later how Gatsby makes an appearance himself.
Iron Man 3
2013 · Indian Express · May 2013
The action sequences are spectacular, particularly the destruction of Stark's sea-cliff home and the skydiving scene where Iron Man rescues people who have been thrown off the US President's plane. Stark also gets a chance to be back where he started and to see if he can do it all over again, with the help of a child. - See more at: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/movie-review-iron-man-3/1108053/0#sthash.i78UbdwG.dpuf
The Croods
2013 · Indian Express · May 2013
...you don't wander about that much as the journey, complete with fantastical plants and animals, is interesting and funny enough -- that too, without any songs.
Desi Boyz
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Dhawan Jr hasn't learnt a lesson from Papa Dhawan on how to make you laugh in spite of you. He unleashes a Desi Boyz holding everything in spite.