The good news first: Bad Newz is not all bad. But is that good enough for a movie that aspires to be an all-out laugh riot? NO. The moments in the overlong film that sparkle a touch are way too few and far between to fully offset the repercussions of the ones that don’t. Directed...
Category: Movie Reviews
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Ryan Reynolds And Hugh Jackman Help The Movie Tide Over Its Lows
More meta than matter, Deadpool & Wolverine rips open the bosom of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, pokes fun at and pays tribute to what the 20th Century Fox era produced, and then, with an eye on an enduring reinvention that can energise and extend the genre, proceeds to transplant the two titular superheroes into its...
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Janhvi Kapoor Holds Her Own And Sails Through The Film
The fate of the female protagonist in Ulajh, an espionage thriller directed and co-written by Sudarshan Saria, is not too unlike the film’s plot. It is a tangle that goes from bad to worse. It is difficult at times to fathom what on earth is going on with and around the lady, and in the...
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Crime Drama Tiptoes Through A Minefield Of Mind Games
Taapsee Pannu and Vikrant Massey as Jwalapur’s murderous man and wife now on the run from the police, are back, riding on a script by returning screenwriter Kanika Dhillon and in the company of a new director, Jayprad Desai (Kaun Pravin Tambe?). The enterprise may not be instantly felicitous but it definitely isn’t pointless either....
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John Abraham’s Film Manages Occasionally To Tide Over Its Troughs
New Delhi: Several aspects of Vedaa, a violent caste oppression thriller directed by Nikkhil Advani from a screenplay by Aseem Arrora, sets it apart from run-of-the-mill Bollywood action movies. That is not to say it does not have its share of cliches. But it does by and large also have its heart in the right...
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Shraddha Kapoor’s Film Is Bemusing Than Petrifying
New Delhi: One too many? Maybe not yet, but Stree 2, a follow-up to the 2018 horror-comedy that inaugurated a whole series of nether-world yarns from the Maddock Films stable, takes the supernatural gender-war fable anchored by a vengeful female spirit a step further in purely physical terms but definitely not higher as a spectral-battle-of...
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Absolutely Deserving Of A Documentary Mini-Series Treatment
New Delhi: The defining attributes of the Zanjeer, Deewaar and Sholay screenplays – pace and potency – are impossible to replicate in a documentary series even if it is about the men who wrote them. Angry Young Men – The Salim-Javed Story is, however, crammed with elements that render it instantly engaging and entertaining. Produced...
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An Uncategorisable Film That Is Equal Parts Entertaining And Sobering
New Delhi: Conjuring up a life that plays out in a virtual space – in other words, setting up a gauzy existence that floats in a dimension far removed from the real and the tangible – has its wages. Vikramaditya Motwane’s inventive, sparky CTRL examines the nature and extent of the toll that burrowing into...
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IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack Review
New Delhi: The captain of a hijacked Indian Airlines plane fixes a clogged toilet pipe. The passengers applaud. No need to clap for me, the man says, I was only performing my duty. Has the hero of a Bollywood rescue drama ever been so nonchalantly self-effacing? But, then, barring its genre, there is little in...
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Vijay Carries The Film On His Shoulders
Measuring up to the aspiration that the film’s title spells out is by all reckoning a tough ask. Superstar Vijay, as is his wont, does not baulk at the challenge. He goes all out to embody what his fans believe him to be and manages to land on his feet at the end of the...