Movies to look out for this week

Red [IMDB]

When his idyllic life is threatened by a high-tech assassin, former black-ops agent Frank Moses reassembles his old team in a last ditch effort to survive

Cast: Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich

Direction: Robert Schwentke



Break Ke Baad [IMDB]

Abhay and Aaliya love each other, but they want to follow their individual dreams. So they take a break from each other, but will they find each other again

Cast: Imran Khan, Deepika Padukone

Direction: Danish Aslam


Unstoppable [IMDB]

With an unmanned, half-mile-long freight train barreling toward a city, a veteran engineer and a young conductor race against the clock to prevent a catastrophe

Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine

Direction: Tony Scott



Allah Ke Banday [IMDB]

Allah Ke Banday tracks the journey of two boys who commit their first murder at the age of 12. Sent to Juvenile Prison, they return to take over the vast slums where they grew up

Cast: Sharman Joshi, Faruk Kabir, Naseeruddin Shah

Direction: Faruk Kabir



Secretariat [IMDB]

Penny Chenery Tweedy and colleagues guide her long-shot but precocious stallion to set, in 1973, the unbeaten record for winning the Triple Crown

Cast: Diane Lane, Scott Glenn

Direction: Randall Wallace



Spanish Beauty

A Hindi-Spanish coproduction about a married woman, who looks outside her marriage to bring some excitement back to her life. But things are not what they seem when her husband discovers the adultery

Cast: Barbara Mori, Christian Meier

Direction: Ricardo De Montreuil
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Movies to look out for this week

Guzaarish [IMDB]

Ethan, a magician rendered paralyzed in an accident, sets off a furor when he makes a petition to the court to end his own life.

Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai Bachhan, Aditya Roy Kapoor

Direction: Sanjay Leela Bhansali



Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I [IMDB]

Voldemort's power is growing stronger. He now has control over the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts. Harry, Ron, and Hermione decide to finish Dumbledore's work and find the rest of the Horcruxes to defeat the Dark Lord.

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint

Direction: David Yates


Shahrukh Bola 'Khoobsurat Hai Tu' [IMDB]

A flower-seller Laali's chance encounter with her idol SRK at a traffic signal and the how it makes her life go topsy turvy

Cast: Pritika Chawla, Afzal Khan, Kay Kay Menon

Direction: Makrand Deshpande

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The Social Network

Right from the word go, The Social Network makes it clear it is not going to be a lazy watch. A rapidfire exchange between a young Mark Zuckerberg and his date in the opening scene sets a fast-paced tone for this movie. It makes it clear that you, the viewer, has to pay a lot of attention to what the actors are saying. Because as you’d realize later, a lot of the movie is a boardroom drama, where lawyers grill a disinterested Mark Zuckerberg over the events leading up to the founding and growth of facebook.com

Interspersed between the boardroom scenes are events from Harvard in 2003, where a geeky, socially awkward Mark Zuckerberg launches the predecessor of facebook.com in a drunken night of coding after being dumped by a girl. In the whirlwind days that follow, we see how one of the most ubiquitous of websites – www.facebook.com - came into being.

What makes this movie special is that it is purported to be based on real events not 50 or 100 years back, but a mere 7 years back in time. And we also get to see how facebook might not be one sole man’s idea or work. In parts, the movie resembles some of the documentaries on History & Discovery channel when people are recounting the events of the day. But what makes this movie stand out is the character of Mark Zuckerberg. His mind is shown to be capable of genius – yet his actions seem inscrutable and leave more questions than answers. And fittingly, the movie never answers some of the questions – leaving you to judge whose story you want to believe,

Acting-wise, it is a lesser known cast, but they make a big impression. More than Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Zuckerberg, it is Andrew Garfield - who plays facebook’s first CFO Eduardo Saverin - who wins the acting honors. He makes Eduardo an endearing friend – and also an uncontested winner of the proxy PR battle that this movie is. Justin Timberlake delivers an admirable performance as Napster-founder Sean Parker. That part of the movie is eye-opening. Also adorable are the Winklevoss twins, who apparently are played by two different actors, but with the face of one superimposed later on the others.

The Social Network is one of those movies which have an intricate storyline connected by crisp dialogues and not much action. But it is also the story of one of the biggest phenomenon of our times – facebook ! For that reason alone, it is a must watch. Admittedly, you’d enjoy the movie a tad more if you are a little technically inclined – I know I did. But you do not need a computer science degree to understand human feelings – and isn’t facebook all about the need to be connected with everyone ?


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Movies to look out for this week

The Social Network [IMDB]

A story about the founders of the social-networking website, Facebook (based on the book The Accidental Billionaires)

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake

Direction: David Fincher



Skyline [IMDB]

Strange lights descend on the city of Los Angeles, drawing people outside like moths to a flame where an extraterrestrial force threatens to swallow the entire human population

Cast: Eric Balfour, Donald Faison, Scottie Thompson

Direction: Colin Strause, Greg Strause


A Flat [IMDB]

Rahul finds himself trapped in a flat with a ghost who wouldnt let him go

Cast: Jimmy Shergill, Sanjay Suri

Direction: Hemant Madhukar

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Action Replayy

Atrocious. Boring. A mindfuck
That is the most concise way I can describe Action Replayy. Horrendous writing, fucked-up characterizations, bad music, terrible art design and without a shred of evidence of even a single functional brain anywhere in the crew of this movie ! I am hard pressed to find one charitable thing to say about this movie – except for Aishwarya Rai’s looks. She has been looking better than ever nowadays and this movie is no exception. Can anybody guess by looking at her that she is 38 years old ?

Back to the movie, Bunty (newcomer Aditya Roy Kapoor), uses a convenient mad scientist angle to travel back in time to see if he could make his perennially-squabbling parents like each other a little more. When he lands in 1975, he realizes that he would have to man up his wimp of a father Kishan before he can take on his intimidating mother Mala and all can be well in his current world.

This story by itself could have been an interesting movie. But in the hands of Vipul Shah, it results in a horrible, pathetic piece of moviemaking which I think is unparalleled in my limited movie history. The only movie that I would consider worse than this would be Drona. From inane story elements to Aishwarya’s clothes (which look anything but the 70s) to terrible locations (what is with showing CST exterior as a location for every alternate shot) to bad music/picturization (Zor Ka Jhatka is a good song though) to the desperate lack of humour, it is a mindfuck

I have no beef against nonsensical – look this week’s other release Golmaal 3 – it is an enjoyable movie. But this is not even funny. The way Bunty goes about coaching his dad a-la Hitch, the director would have you believe it is serious. But then concepts like son singing in 4 different voices while dad lip syncs and gyrates to the songs make your clasp your head in despair. The dialogues are equally wince inducing. And you will finish watching the movie without coming across a single exciting turn in the script which will perk up your interest.

I think I have vented my feelings enough. If you still feel like you want to watch this movie, do it at your own peril. You have been warned!


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Golmaal 3

The look and feel of the Golmaal franchise has become so familiar now, that it almost feels like you are watching episodes of a sitcom. The wacky dudes – Ajay Devgan, Arshad Warsi, Tusshar Kapoor, Shreyas Talpade and Kareena act exactly the same. The new addition to the group is Kunal Khemu – who acts just as good or bad as the rest of the gang. Mithun & Ratna Pathak are the guest stars in this episode (sequel) – though I didn’t like their performance that much. The other minor characters – Vasooli etc are retained too, maintaining the Golmaal “feel”

Golmaal 3’s plot takes a feather out of the Hrishikesh Mukherjee classic Khatta Meetha where two old widowers marry and move into a single house with their grown up children. While the interactions of the original movie was fun, the Golmaal interpretation of events is a little more risqué. One of the best scenes in the movie is a wordless competition among the ‘children’ of thrusting stuff up each other’s ass – figuratively, ofcourse. It is awesome fun to watch the contortions on their faces as they imagine things being thrust into their backsides – and it summarizes the entire Golmaal franchise. Extremely low-brow comedy, but they will succeed in eliciting a few laughs out of you

The movie overall, however is a little disappointing in the second half when the director starts focusing too much on action and comedy takes a back seat. There are one too many slow motion car crashes and super slo-mo Ajay Devgan entries. Even the most ardent Golmaal fans will start yawning at all the action sequences.

And I never quite understood, why does Ajay Devgan get so much ‘bhaav’ in the Golmaal franchise ? He is not all that good in comedy – Arshad Warsi, Tusshar and Shreyas are much better at it than him. Neither does Golmaal work because of him – again the above three provide most of the fun. But he gets more screentime than any of his co-stars (not to mention, he gets the only female co-star in version 3)

Nevertheless, it is one of the those mindless movies which are proud of be nonsensical, and can be genuinely funny once in a while. And it is SO much better than this week’s big release


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Movies to look out for this week

Action Replayy [IMDB]

A young man tries to revive his parents' wilting marriage in a unique manner - travel to the 1970s when their romance was budding and make it bloom. This is more complex than he expects.

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Aishwarya Rai

Direction: Vipul Shah


Golmaal 3 [IMDB]

Did the first two have any story ? Seriously ?
Then why look for one now ?

Cast: Ajay Devgan, Kareena Kapoor, Tusshar Kapoor, Arshad Warsi, Shreyas Talpade, Kunal Khemu, Mithun Chakraborty

Direction: Rohit Shetty


Due Date [IMDB]

High-strung father-to-be Peter Highman is forced to hitch a ride with aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay on a road trip in order to make it to his child's birth on time

Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Zach Galifianakis

Direction: Todd Philips


Devil [IMDB]

A group of people trapped in an elevator realize that the devil is among them.
(this is M Night Shyamalan written movie)

Cast: Chris Messina, Logan Marshall-Green, Jenny O'Hara,

Direction: John Erick Dowdle
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Piranha 3D

It is the year of 3D. So why not a monster movie in 3D ? Lots of people dying – lots of blood and gore. And lets make it Spring Break (an opportunity for US college students to go crazy in bikinis – think the MTV Grind) – so there is lot of boobs to see too. Awesome combo right ?

Piranha 3D is a proper b-movie, filled with clichéd sequences and lots of dumb college kids – but is a very entertaining 2 hours. If you have seen one monster movie, you know how all the scripts go. A monster is unleashed, who kills couple of people on the outlying areas before unleashing an attack on the bigger population. And there will always be a hero & his family who would get trapped – but they always get saved in the end.

So the story is inconsequential. What is new is the monster. In this case, a group of prehistoric piranhas who had been trapped in a subterranean cave for a couple of million years before an earthquake sets them free in an inland lake. Too bad college kids are holidaying on the lake at that very time.

There is copious amounts of blood and gore – as the ugly-teethed piranhas strip all flesh from the body within seconds. There is a particular “wow” moment, when the screaming movie producer is pulled out of the water, with his upper body completely intact but only bones left from his hip down. The producer in question is a porn movie producer who recruits our leading man for scouting locations on the lake. The bad part is that all the full nude scenes have been cut out by the censors – and going by the internet, there were a lot of them

So it might not be a bad idea to get the international version from the internet to enjoy the full cocktail of gore and nudity. But the large screen fun of vicious piranhas attacking make up for the few snipped scenes, so if you enjoy the monster movie genre or want some mindless fun in 3D, Piranha is a good bet.


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