movie mania 8

kingdom of heaven- this is one hell of a movie to watch!a nice reinterpretation of history which shows the muslim conqueror of jerusalem in a new light...hitherto, salahuddin, more commonly known in the west as saladin had been painted as a villain in history, even to the extent of calling him the antichrist, but this movie shows him as a kind, tolerant and intelligent ruler and general...also has some pretty nice views on god and holiness...must watch...
bunty aur bubli- new concept for indian cinema...should do well on that basis and for the fact that it pits together the amazing father and son duo of amitabh and abhishake bachchan...the movie is entertaining and good timepass...the song kajrare is a fun song with aish makin a special appearance and big and small b dancing away to glory together...
naina- nicely made movie...but somehow it fails to scare you despite the visuals and sounds...maybe there is too less of thrills in the movie and perhaps the ending is too hackneyed...
thats all for now...more later...

movie mania 7

i'm back on my fave topic after a long, long time...let's begin without much further ado...
sin city- based on graphic novels by watsisname, sin city has all the wierdos and strange happenings of a potboiler...what sets this movie apart is the fact that while animators are busting their asses to make animation more realistic, sin city does the exact reverse...it takes real shots and makes it look like, well...a graphic novel! watchable...
hitch- another cute, sweet romantic comedy...will smith is good in the title role but there's nothing new in the movie...watch if you are not diabetic...
kaal- oh my god!people wearing microminis in a forest???a guy hunting with a pistol???a whole circus of tigers waylaying a jeep???for god's sake...when will they learn to put some realism into a bollywood movie??? nobody, and that means nobody ever goes into a forest wearing designer outfits...its practically impossible for anyone less than robin hood with guns to actually hunt an animal in the underbrush with a pistol...and tigers are very solitary, shy animals which only lucky people see more than once in their lifetimes...plz get real...

movie mania 6

yes i'm back...been getting too less time to watch movies...so i watched a few in fast forward mode...but those were the ones which were very fast-forwardable, i.e. they weren't worth watching in the first place...
dhoom - where in india is there a biker gang?????come on guys why do u have to copy a concept from the west if it is totally alien to us??? fine, guys love to watch fast bikes and sexy chicks but they can watch torque or some similar shit for that...nobody can expect people with bikes like that to go around unnoticed in india...one good thing about the movie is the villain who could have been hero...the character played by john abraham is something new to indian cinema...
hum kaun hain? - another "inspired" movie...this is the desi version of 'the others' which was a fantastic movie...but hkh fails in spite of big b and dimple kapadia...the simple reason being that the audience has either watched the others or can't connect to the story which is a direct import from the west...and also how much conviction does the director have when he is copying something scene by scene?
dil ne jise apna kaha - pathetic!!! hackneyed, dismal, unoriginal, uninspiring performances, plain downright stupid!!!
fida - novel storyline, decent performances, grey characters, different ending(from what is expected from bollywood)...yet the movie isn't all that good...the story meanders somewhere in the middle and the start of the climax is too hackneyed...maybe wud have been better if it were shorter instead of conforming to the bollywood standard of 2 1/2 hrs+...
king arthur - nicely made supposed true story behind the legend of king arthur and the knights of the round table...perhaps the timing is not good with so many historicals getting made these days...we have been saturated with history by now...
thats all the new movies i've watched...the other movies i saw are older ones which i've seen before umpteen times like andaaz apna apna(hilarious),chhoti si baat & sholay(the evergreen) or those that i saw for the first time like bandini(bimal roy was god!) and american beauty(great!)...more on movies later

movie mania 5

i'm back with more on my fave topic-movies!!!...so let's get started on some new movies i've seen...
gayab- aaaaaaargggggghhhhh!!!!...pathetic acting by tusshar kapoor...around whom the movie revolves...the movie could have been something but thnx to the beautiful display of acting by tusshar and antra it is NOTHING...it would have been much better had they decided to go literally on the title and obliterated the protagonist entirely...even the story takes a stupid turn as tusshar becomes a very filmi lover instead of something fresh...total crap...
raghu romeo- now this is what you call a movie...wonderful acting by everybody(except maybe maria goretti, who had nothing to do as it is)...vijay raaz is brilliant as usual with great performances by sadia and saurabh shukla...the director has really done something which you don't expect out of bollywood...great movie...
spiderman 2- the long awaited sequel to the superhero flick is out...and it does more than justice to the original...the movie is great because it shows the superhero in a very human manner...even the villain turns out to be more grey than black(same with the hero...)...if you liked spiderman you'lll definitely enjoy this...
fahrenheit 9/11- this is one helluva hard hitting documentary which is pretty indictive of bush and co...but somehow it becomes more of propoganda than a real work of art...even then it is beautifully made and it puts forth really grave questions about the person who holds the most important post in the world today...
more movies later...

movie mania 4

ladies,gentlemen and whatever
i'm back with more movie reviews...so let's kick off
lakshya -farhaan akhtar proves that he is not a one film wonder, that he can make films which are not entirely post-modernistic in outlook, that good war movies can be "made in india", etcetera,etcetera,etcetera...this is really one of the best war movies ever made by an indian though it is more about the transformation of a confused young lad into an officer and a gentleman who carries out his duty well...hrithik shows he can act, once again...preity is oh so cute as always...big b and om puri though remain unutilised...
24th day -a beautiful low budget movie which is all about homosexuality and the scourge of aids though the treatment(pun not intended) is entirely unique...the whole movie revolves around two men...worth watching!!!
the 13th floor -this is a bit old(1999) but since i saw it only recently and liked it a lot i thought i should include it here...this movie is a thriller revolving around the sci-fi concepts of virtual reality and artificial intelligence...it raises a pertinent question about the 'reality' of an AI program which beleives itself to be human...does it really exist as in COGITO,ERGO SUM...good watch...
more movies later...

Movie mania-3

once more i'm back with some new movie reviews...only two for today as i'm not getting enough time to watch new movies due to euro2004...so let's get 'critic'y...
girlfriend - aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!! this &^^*$^&*$%£&%^*& of a movie is simply unbearable....one way to put it is that if urmila loved sonali kulkarni instaed of fardeen in 'pyaar tune kya kiya' then you'd get the basic plot of this movie....same old story of an obsessed lover with the aditional angle of lesbianism thrown in for novelty...all the actors are simply pathetic!!!...the hero keeps laughing when he's distressed, amrita looks constipated when she's in the throes of the sexual act and isha is simply aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!....u feel like killing urself for putting urself through this interminable torture...
dev - this is a good movie...it could have been great but it has fardeen & kareena to bring it down a little bit...om puri and the big B are great in the 2 main characters of the film around whose conflict the plot revolves...the penultimate scene is reminiscent of brutus in julius caesar but very well done...good watching...

movie mania-2

some more movie reviews...
hellboy-what were they thinking???all right, nice special effects...nice action sequences...but there's something called a story people!!?!! i mean some gateway is opened for the gods of chaos by a supposedly immortal guy who's sold his soul to the devil to enable the nazis to win ww2 !!!! i mean how lamer can you get???sure hitler did a lot of evil things in his lifetime,but this???
van helsing-count dracula+frankenstein+werewolves+an agent of the papacy out to destroy evil...more like a ramsay potboiler than a hollywood production...dracula can't be killed by the conventional methods...god only knows why...but this movie proclaims a universal truth...the desire to procreate is the driving force of any lifeform, even if it's an evil dude who's made a covenant with the devil to become a half bat undead creature...
troy-high on hype, low on deliverance...this epic(???) movie tries to tell the tale of the famed trojan war and its heroes...it gives you a very concise rendering of the war and only two heroes and a villain...achilles, hector of troy and agamemnon, king of the greeks, respectively...the rest are just insipid idiots fighting for some reason or the other...where is ulysses(or odysseus in greek)???where are the twins castor and pollux???this is another movie which fails to live up to the book on which it is based...
more movies later...

movie mania

i have been seeing a lot of movies recently...i am not a very good critic of movies because i like very crappy movies which flop left,right and centre...i also like intellectually inspired movies in addition to intellectually challenged popcorn flicks... i like mithun movies,govinda movies and boom apart from liking shahrukh movies and above all i like mani ratnam movies,shyam benegal movies,etc....in short i like almost everything that has ever been made on celluloid...thats why i might be a very bad critic because i simply love the medium...still let us talk about some of the movies i recently saw...
yuva-over hyped instruction to the youth of india to get up and do-it-yourself!abhishake bachchan is brilliant,ajay devgan is expectedly strong and silent while vivek oberoi is an insipid nut who doesn't have a clue as to what he is supposed to be doing...disappointing by mani ratnam standards....
hum tum- 'when harry met sally' + yash raj films = rich indians strutting around the globe falling in love slowly and steadily over a period af years!!!unthinkable by the love at first sight standards of indian cinema...but over all its a wonderful movie...saif is at his charming best in a wonderful role...rani does well too...kirron kher is gr8 as rani's loving punjabi mom...gr8 movie for all of us romantics...
shrek2-i have no words for it!!! just the cast of voice talents speaks for itself(pun intended!!!)-mike myers,eddie murphy,cameron diaz,antonio banderas,julie andrews,rupert everett...it is one of the most delightful sequels i have ever seen...eddie murphy is at his best as donkey once again...puss in boots is simply wonderful with that spanish accent...the movie reinforces the moral of its prequel...it doesn't matter what you look like...what matters is what's on the inside...
enough for now...more movies later