Jumanji, The Next Level: Low level fare Jumanji was first released in 1995, at a time when video games were the new fad. Since then, the franchise has had three forays into filmdom. The latest one is titled The Next Level, but, ironically, it is a slide down to a new low. Amateurish and even puerile, this movie is probably aimed at pre-teens, but since pre-teenagers cannot be expected to perform such adult acts as are depicted, and the story has already established several grown-ups, and only...

A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a "single effect" or mood.   A dictionary definition is "an invented prose narrative shorter than a novel usually dealing with a few characters and aiming at unity of effect and often concentrating on the creation of mood rather than plot."[1]   The short story is a c...

Charlie’s Angels, Review: Bossy angels and Bosleys A dozen or more women in breath-taking action is not a common feature on the Hollywood screen, or, for that matter, on any screen. Charlie’s Angels take on a charity thief and some invention grabbers in an adventure that takes them from Brazil to Hamburg to Turkey. Along the way, you discover that all the men in the film, bar two, are either evil or bumped off or both. There is an action overdose on occasions when it was not requi...

IFFI 50: Dying 3 year-old war victim’s last words, “I’m Gonna Tell God Everything” One of the most important and persistent crises that we face today is the crisis of war, displaced persons and immigration. The Syrian immigrant crisis has found cinematic voice through master film-makers over the last few years, as an acknowledgement to this ongoing crisis. The film, I’m Gonna Tell God Everything, borrows its title from the last words of a 3 year-old Syrian boy...

Midway, Review: Exactly When you make a war movie, based on facts, you might be motivated to give a slightly balanced view of events, for every country that goes to war has its reasons and its heroes. Your sympathies might lie with the nation where the film is produced, yet, unless your motive is jingoism and ultra-nationalism, you will give some weightage to the enemy’s point of view. Also, a faithful recreation means detailing and realistic characterisation, which when juxtaposed agai...

Last Christmas, Review: Rom-com gone tragi-com A film that is titled Last Christmas could work its title two ways, either as the last Christmas of someone who is not going to see another one, or as referring to something that happened at last year’s Christmas. Since it chooses the latter path, you presume it will be a film full of happy memories of the lead actors. Sadly, there is very little that is happy about Last Christmas. For all it is worth, the title might have had the former co...

The Current War, Review: DC Edison v/s AC Westinghouse Unless you do some background reading, this review included, you will not guess that the film is not about a conventional war but about the rivalry between Thomas Alva Edison, credited with inventing Direct Current operated incandescent bulbs, and their Alternating Current based, dynamo-run variants, developed by George Westinghouse, back in the 1880s. It’s a double-barrelled bio-pic that spouts too much jargon and is not saved by f...

Terminator-Dark Fate, Review: Terminal stillness With a title like Dark Fate, they have already let the cat out of the bag. It is bound to end in one or more of its heroes/heroines dying, meeting their dark fate. That being a given, Terminator: Dark Fate provides some impressive action and unending shape-shifts/split bodies to keep you entertained, saving the best for the last. It is a long last, and it lasts really long. Three years after defeating the T-1000 and averting the rise of the ma...

Housefull 4, Review: Emptiness to the fore In the age of the multiplex, a sign saying that a particular show is House-Full, meaning all the tickets have been sold in advance, is about as rare as discoveries of the abominable snowman. Producer Sajid Nadiadwala is a grandson who carries on the business his grand-father started, and even calls his company Nadiadwala Grandson, complete with an animated logo featuring an old man and a young child. Housefull 4 is Sajid’s fourth foray with the...

Downton Abbey, Review: The King, the butler, the chef, the assassin and the maid It’s no secret that royals are very particular about almost everything. This is partly due to security concerns and partly a result of ritualistic tradition, ed on from generation to generation. Seeing Downton Abbey not only reaffirms these facts, but also reinforces the theory that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) may be a result of regal genes, given that kings and queens make such a fuss about eve...

Maleficent-Mistress of Evil, Review: Feynix rises from the ashes When a studio like Disney decides to give it the works, it usually works. It is difficult to find fault with the execution of the plot in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, unless, of course you begin with the title itself. As viewers will discover early in the film, she is not the mistress of evil. Then you might consider the fact that there are several killings and a full-blooded war depicted, in a film aimed at young children and ...

Angelina Jolie speaks with Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan’s voice in Maleficent II Mistress of Evil’s voice has been dubbed in Hindi by Indian star actress Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan in Disney’s Maleficent II, which opens in India on 18th October, 2019. In a press meet held in Mumbai’s J.W. Marriott Hotel on a Monday afternoon, Bikram Duggal, Executive Director and Head for Disney’s Studios business in India, revealed that hers was the first, and only, name that came-up duri...

Gemini Man, Review: Clone arranger Ang Lee directed this poor man’s James Bondage? The man who made Eat Drink Man Woman, Sense and Sensibility, Crouching Tiger--Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi? No, this is the Ang Lee who made Hulk, which earned twice its cost. A VFX delight, Gemini Man is about a clone on a mission to kill a man who is a professional killer, and is also the man he was cloned from. The movie disappoints, with a below par screenplay, and few impressive d...

  Very few films showcase so much of the female anatomy for so much screen time, with the barest possible ‘coverage’, while highlighting the lives and life-styles of pole/lap-dancers/strippers. Hustlers does all that and adds a new twist to the scenario by adding a hustle to their bustle trade, drugging, conning and blackmailing their clients, to rip off thousands of dollars from their credit cards. It’s a dirty game, played with one-sided rules, providing some vicarious ...

Rambo-Last Blood: Rambo No. 5 On its last legs, rather last leg, the Rambo series takes one last shot at the franchise, extending its title from the 1982 sample, First Blood. Nobody can quarrel with this confessional finality of the moniker of Last Blood, which could not but be the last poke of the syringe, or a last bow to the bow, in a subject that has already drained itself out, and badly needed a transfusion to save itself. If Last Blood is that transfusion, it is contaminated, for it is ...

The Family Man: Say Hi, to the middle-class guy, who’s a world class spy National award winner for acting (films) and Pa Shri (civilian honour) awardee Manoj Bajpayee (Satya, Gangs of Wasseypur-1, Bhonsle) makes his digital debut in the eagerly anticipated Amazon Original series, The Family Man, which releases 20 September on Amazon Prime Video. Created by producer-director duo of Raj & DK (Raj Nidimoru & Krishna DK; Shor in the City, Happy Ending, Stree), The Family Man wil...

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This underwater horror-survival movie takes its cameras and main cast down 47 meters (going by the title) and discovers a Mayan labyrinth of caves and cages. When one cage is broken open, out come deadly sharks. Oh, they are as blind as dead bats, but as hungry as whale-sized ravens. Why did four teenage girls venture into uncharted oceanic depths, and will any of them re-surface alive? To find out, you will have to endure some amateurish story-telling and some cyclical, repetitive scares. Mi...

Angry Birds Movie 2, Review: And angry birdwatchers 2 To even begin getting lightly entertained, you will have to sit through the first twenty minutes of Angry Birds Movie 2, which are a cacophonic assault on your senses. During this testing time, you are served a machine-gun fire recap and a kind of general introduction to the birds and pigs that are going to play out a tale of spurned birdy love and its calamitous consequences. Proceedings do get more and more tolerable, and offer a modicum...

Angel Has Fallen, Review: Dad’s Bad, Banning’s Mad, Jennings’s Glad Angel here is the guardian angel of the President of the United States of America, and fallen refers to his being critically wounded and, allegedly, falling from grace. So much for ethereal and angelic interpretations of the title. Now, the subject: it is a run-of-the-mill ‘cop injured in attempt to murder a VVIP that kills all others except him, falsely accused of attempted murder, discredited, arrest...

Crawl, Review: Alligator…will it get her? If you were to consider making a film about a creature that has equally or more lethal Jaws than sharks, you would have little problem coming up with the alligator. In fact, it is a more dangerous and slimy looking being than the shark. An alligator’s jaw exerts 1,342 kg of pressure, giving it the most powerful bite ever recorded in a living animal. It can swim at 32.18km/hr, faster than the Olympic record. And the fact that it is an amph...

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Review: Good, but not as Tarantino was, once upon a time It is inspired by the murders of actress Sharon Tate and her friends at the hands of a hippy cult in 1969, only the film re-writes this historical fact. It is inspired by the super-hit spaghetti Westerns of the mid to late 60s, led by Italian director Sergio Leone, only he is never mentioned in the film. It is a satirical take on martial arts’ ‘God’ Bruce Lee, but takes an amazingly unfla...

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Review: The spirit of Sarah Bellows, and the trauma of teenage fellows Though the voice-over insists that stories hurt and stories heal, and that if they are repeated very often, they become true, any amount of repetition will not succeed in making Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark seem anything like real. Hurt, it does, heal, I wonder! It’s a horror story, pure and simple, or, rather, neither very pure nor very simple. A 70 year-old mansion has its se...

Dora and the Lost City of Gold, Review: Adorable Dora, the explora Dora is shown first as a six-year old, living in the forest with her explorer parents, and then as a sixteen year-old, studying in high school. That is highly appropriate, because Dora and the Lost City of Gold has something for all those who are in the age-group of 6-16, and some more for the older folks, who have seen 17 or more summers. The film is largely driven by the actress playing Dora, who is simply scintillating. TV...