vinay_payyapilly's reviews

The movie opens with a random accident involving a popular film star that seems to defy all explanation. It also introduces the main protagonist, Inspector Shekhawat (played gloriously by Aamir Khan). The rest of the movie details how the good inspector peels away the mystery surrounding the accident. Along the way, he also battles his own demons in the form guilt for his child's untimely death in an accident.

The movie is scripted well enough to keep you interested all the way to the end, even if the end if a tad bit tame.

Five-star performances from all the leading characters ensures that you are sucked into the mood and world that Reema Kagti creates. Nawazuddin Siddiqi gives another stellar performance to follow-up on his performance in Gangs of Wasseypur. Rani Mukherjee redeems her acting credentials after the disaster of Aiyaa. Kareena Kapoor is competent. However, it is Aamir Khan who steals the show with a highly nuanced performance which I am sure he will rate among his finest.

The music from Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy is very complimentary and at no time does it intrude, as it is want to do in Hindi films, into the story-telling. Instead it is very much part of the story-telling and at times even takes things forward.

The movie is another feather in the cap of Zoya Akhtar who has penned the story and screenplay along with the director Reema Kagti. The credits for the dialogs are shared between Farhan Akhtar and Anurag Kashyap.

After the mindless films that preceded it during the Diwali weekend, Talaash comes as a breath of fresh air and bears a promise that Bollywood is not all about assuming that the audience is a collection of sheep waiting to be sheared.

Spirit is a socially aware movie which takes on the subject of alcoholism. Mohanlal plays a reformed alcoholic TV presenter who decides to make a program on alcoholism. It is a simple movie filled with complicated characters and even more complicated interactions. The main protagonist, Raghunandan, is a writer-cum-TV show host whose alcoholism cost him his marriage. But he has managed to remain friends with his ex-wife and her new husband. The relationship between them is handled tastefully and with kid gloves. A scene where the new husband casually puts his arm around her is a master class in acting from Mohanlal. Very few actors could have pulled that scene off. Then there is the seemingly straight and mature neighbor, Capt Nambiar, played admirably by Madhu. The captain is the epitome of a responsible citizen and family man until his wife goes out of station, when he drops this pretenses and cheats on her. The comparison between the characters is not explored but lies there just below the surface – one an openly admitted alcoholic and the other a closet cheat; one secretly reviled and the other openly admired.

Then there is the poor plumber who is also an alcoholic and as far removed from the Raghunandan character that you can get but the similarities in both of them are striking.

Also contrasted are the two women, played by Kanika and Kalpana. One is educated and aware, so she walks away from a marriage she is unhappy in. The other is illiterate and unaware and stays in a marriage where her life is threatened almost every day.

The movie is a coming together of such personas and their interactions keep the story moving forward.

This may not rank very high on Renjith's list of achievement, but kudos to him for making it nonetheless.

My rating – 3/5 for content and sheer acting displays.

A disclaimer right at the beginning here, I loved the trilogy.

Okay, so Gotham has been having it good for 8 years and we join the story on Harvey Dent Day. We learn that Batman has taken the fall for Dent's death and disappeared, and Bruce Wayne has become a recluse. But a storm is coming.

The third installment of the Dark Knight trilogy is a very unworthy final chapter to what has been till now a fascinating journey. The disappointments start with the villain in this installment – Bane, played by Thomas Hardy (of Inception fame). After Neeson's Ra's Al Ghul and Ledger's Joker, Hardy's Bane seems tame and comic.

Let's face it, it is tough to make a good superhero movie nowadays. Technology has moved so far ahead that almost everybody is a Spielberg or Lucas now. It is difficult to think up plot lines and action sequences that that fresh and novel. The movie suffers from this. Apart from Hardy, almost everybody else in the movie disappoints. Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception), Marion Cotillard (Inception), Anne Hathaway, are all ordinary. Christian Bale, however, delivers a standout performance as the life- weary Bruce Wayne. Unlike the previous two installments, here he mesmerizes.

All this said, I have seen the movie twice and will see it twice more before it reaches the 30-day mark. So all in all it cant be all that bad. It does keep you engrossed in fits and starts. But as a trilogy, a benchmark has been set.

Anthardwand tells the story of a young man who is abducted as the groom to a rich man's daughter. While this may seem like it turns everything about the marriage system in India on its head, what really transpires is just the opposite.

Set in Bihar, the movie traces a side of India's flawed marriage system that is usually not looked at. It raises questions that are uncomfortable and with no easy answers.

The direction is top class with no wasted scenes. Every scene in the movie is carefully weighed and placed like a chess piece on a board. The acting is capable, but the story is so good that you don't need amazing acting to bring the story to life.

A must watch.

Murali Gopy spins a fantastic yarn about a set of people who are all heading to converge on a series of events. The actors in this play come from differing backgrounds but end up having to depend on each other to make sure they are able to salvage their lives.

There are a few places where the director slipped up which took away a lot from the viewing pleasure. First is the opening background narration by Jagathy Sreekumar which leads you to believe that he is a key played in the events to come and that the story is somehow about Trivandrum, the city. Neither is true and that leaves you disappointed in the end. Then there is the slide at the opening, which he claims that the Rubik's cube has some gazillion moves and that when it all fits together it is beautiful. The statement in itself is good, but then it gives away the end and takes away the suspense. It would rather have been more apt to have that sentence mouthed by someone in the movie, just before the end when the pieces are all finally falling into place.

But the criticism notwithstanding, the movie is a good watch and very refreshing.

There are good movies, there are bad movies and then there are movies that have all the right ingredients and fail to deliver - Dumb Maro Dumb is the third kind.

A crooked cop with all the reasons to go straight. A politician with the will to fight the drug mafia. Three innocent by-standers who were each burnt by the trade and yearn for revenge. A good villain, one you can hate. finally, not the least - Goa.

There ends anything and everything good about this movie. Instead of making a hard, gritty, dirty film Rohan Sippy and this group of writers come up with a tale that doesn't know whether it is going or coming.

Why on Earth would a hard cop rap in the middle of a movie? Abhishek is wasted in a role that fits him to a t.

Pancholi is everything you can expect from him in a role like this. But once again, he isn't given the license to become menacing enough.

The characters of the supporting cops are not allowed to develop enough to allow us to empathize with them.

I missed the last 15 minutes of an Agam concert for this crap, my loss.

Oh! and the Dumb Maro Dumb number is infinitely better in previews than in the movie.

If we were handing out awards for attempts, Balki and Paa would sweep the ceremony.

Paa has all the ingredients of a great movie. Not the least the greatest commercial actor of all time playing a challenged child. Amitabh is supported by a cast that was cast impeccably. Paresh Rawal as a retired, 'i understand the system' politician' Abhishek as a next gen politician with a very 'today' view of what politics should be, Vidhya as a strong single mother bringing up a challenged child.

But the movie fails. It is let down a sorry script, and poor direction. Then there is the eternal mistake films with kid characters make - making children mouth dialogs they would never in life.

Different is good, but it is not everything. Films are still all about story before anything else.

Good try Balki, but not there yet.