Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3: Grotesque? Yes. Burlesque: Yes. Statuesque? Yes. Humouresque: No. Maze: Yes. Amazing: No Bhool Bhulaiya literally means a maze or labyrinth, in Hindustani language. This one refers to the Adventures of a Fake Ghostbuster and his Pygmy Partner, who collapses at the slightest sign of danger. They are as fake as the royal family they are summoned to, to perform the task of busting the ghost of a princess, who was imprisoned in a large room, with heavy padlocks, 200 years ago. ...

Tiku Weds Sheru: A ‘Senior’ artiste weds a ‘Junior artiste’ By all accounts, Nawazuddin Siddiqui is a senior artiste. He ranks on the high rung and is 49 years old. That he started as a junior artiste is now stuff that legends are made of. Avneet Kaur is said to be 21, though I find that hard to believe (17-18 is more like it), did a couple of film roles and a couple of cameos. By comparison, in terms of age and experience, she is a ‘junior’ artiste. In th...

Vadh, Review: Some people deserve to be killed Taking the law into your own hands and getting away with crimes is becoming a recurring thread in Indian cinema. On the heels of one such film, Drishyam 2, comes another murder story, where the audiences’ sympathy lies with the protagonist, who, a law-abiding citizen otherwise, is pushed beyond his limits of tolerance, and ends up killing a man and disposing off his body. Whereas some schools of thought may ascribe to the theory that crime ...

Bachchan Paandey, Review: Gangsters are best played by real-life gangsters Why would you choose a name like Bachchan Pandey, unless you thought you could cash-in on the franchises called Amitabh Bachchan (name of a real life actor) and Chulbul Pandey (name of a reel-life character, played in several movies by Salman Khan)? Point is, does a superstar himself, like Akshay Kumar, who plays the title role, need these props? Leaving the Paandey behind, ‘Bachchan’ is made to speak some ...

Har Kisse Ke Hisse Kaamyaab, Review: Many parts, many holes, no whole, no soul In one scene of Har Kisse Ke Hisse Kaamyaab, the protagonist, an actor who goes under the screen name of Sudheer, cannot get his lines right, because he has not had a swig of his favourite brew, and gives retake after retake. We see him do seven/eight retakes, after which, mercifully, the film-maker goes into a montage, with only music, after which it is revealed that he had given as many as 32 retakes. Mercifully,...

Shimla Mirchi, Review: Chilly? Don't be silly! Several highs dot the career graph of director Ramesh Sippy, right from his debut in 1971 as a 24 year-old, with the remake of A Man and a Woman (Claude Lelouch, France, 1966) under the title, Andaz. Crests include Seeta Aur Geeta, Sholay and Buniyaad (TV series), relative high points were reached with Saagar and Shakti, and troughs bogged him down when he attempted Shaan, Bhrashtachar, Akayla and Zamaana Diwana. Completed 19 years after Zama...

P se Pyaar F se Farraar, Review: On a killing Alarming statistics at the end of the film reveal that killing of young men and women who elope or marry into other castes or religions increased by 769% last year. Reports of such barbaric brutality, called ‘honour killing’, appear in the newspapers and on TV channels regularly. States in the North, North-west and central parts of India are most severely affected. So, in the footsteps of Sairaat (Marathi) and Dhadak (Hindi), we have a...

Red carpet personalities attending the Diorama International Film Festival, New Delhi, 2019 15 January 2019: Sudhir Mishra, Neetu Chandra, David Dhawan, Boney Kapoor, Chitrangada Singh, Anubhav Sinha, Rumi Jaffrey, Ambassador Of Spain, Rafael Kapelinski 16 January 2019: Dariush Mehrjui, Giogio Franchini, Alka Yagnik, Philip Cheah, Rituparna Sengupta, Rumi Jaffrey, Mozhgan Taraneh, Actor, Iran, Rafael Kapelinski, Sanjay P Chahuhan, Rahul Mitra, Shaad Ali, Ajit Andhare, Utpal Acharya, A...

Fryday, Review: Thank Devil, It’s Friday A water-purifier salesman has until Friday to make his first sale, or else face the sack. A ham actor has only the Friday to make his extra-marital catch, since his wife is away for just about a day. The twain meet at the actor’s home, where the married fan of the hero is about to give in to his seductive moves, and then all hell breaks loose. Umpteen Gujarati and English plays in Mumbai have tried and tested the formula, usually with succ...

Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain, Review: Show me that you love me Delhi-born director Harish Vyas makes his Hindi film debut with an adult love story set in Varanasi where the only thing adult about the theme is the fact that the lead actors are husband and wife and gave a grown-up daughter. In fact, the issue it addresses till three quarters of the film has rolled by is the lack of demonstrative love between a conscientious postal clerk and his devoted wife. Enough to keep you curious and sensitised...

Newton, Review: Gravity of the situation Had he been alive in the modern period, the British scientist would have bagged multiple Nobel prizes for his pioneering work in Physics. As it happens, the film of the same name, not a biopic of Sir Isaac, rather about an idealist in the Indian bureaucracy, has been eliminated from the race for the Oscars. A million or more Newtonians are feeling heart-broken that a film that they considered a breakthrough, and the best film made in India in recent t...

Siraj Syed reviews Anaarkali of Arrah: Item girl--“Spite ’em girl, Bite ’em girl” Ten minutes into this loud and raw film, you know you will root for the protagonist, an item girl plying her art in Arrah, a small town in the eastern Indian state of Bihar. An item girl is a woman who wears garish costumes, sings, dances, cavorts, titillates and tantalises on stage, to a public, sing-along audience, that joins her full-of-double-entendre lyrics, lusts after her and drool...

Masaan (a.k.a. Fly Away Solo), Review: Burning bodies, tormented souls Set in a city known as the holiest cremation ground in India, Masaan is made with fired-up creativity, and has won encomiums it richly deserves. Seven years ago, a documentary was made on life at the ghats (banks) of Varanasi (Banaras), of which Kashi is a part, where a large number of Hindu devotees from all over India bring their dead for cremation, and immerse the ashes in Ganga, their holiest river. The rites are perf...

UVAA, Review: Yuvanile delinquents It pains you when an apparently well-intentioned film, made with limited resources, pads it up with trivia and inconsequential trappings, thereby relegating the very issue it set out to highlight. UVAA is good example of undisciplined writing and inconsistent direction, which makes smart moves off and on, only to hit new lows regularly. The film is a tale of five teenage friends who are constantly up to mischief and pranks, sometimes of a serious nature, bu...