Movies to look out for this week

Housefull [IMDB]

Arush dates three girls, hoping to find his true love in one of them. Unfortunately he ends up marrying all three of them.

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Ritesh Deshmukh, Lara Dutta, Deepika Padukone, Jiah Khan
Direction: Sajid Khan


Hot Tub Time Machine [IMDB]

Four guy friends, all of them bored with their adult lives, travel back to their respective 80s heydays thanks to a time-bending hot tub

Cast: John Cusack, Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry

Direction: Steve Pink


Astroboy [IMDB]

When a scientist's young son dies, he secretly creates a powerful robot child to replace him, however the robot uses it's incredible powers to become a world famous super-hero

Cast: Nicolas Cage (voice), Freddie Highmore (voice), Samuel L. Jackson (voice)
Direction: David Bowers


Chase [IMDB]

An accused man is on the run to prove himself innocent, while the police and bigger powers hunt him down

Cast: Anuj Saxena, Udita Goswami

Direction: Jag Mundhra

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Date Night

Date Night was a movie that I didn’t think much of at first – and gave it a miss in the week of its release. However, numerous good reviews on twitter made us reconsider it – especially since this week’s new releases didn’t really have anything to offer in spite of the 6-7 odd movies releasing. And it turned out to be a decent entertainer just as promised – not a must-watch, but a good timepass.

The story doesn’t pack a gag-a-minute as it initially promises – but the leading duo sort of make up for it. Steve Carell is a little subdued here, but he still delivers a Hugh Grant-esque performance (minus the good looks and the British accent, I might add). Tina Fey is the star of the show – transforming from a boring soccer mom to a pole dancer at a strip club – she really lets her hair down and has fun

The movie is essentially mistaken identity comedy – boring suburban couple get a shock when their best friends announce that they are separating because “they have become like roommates”. Hoping to spice up their own life, the Fosters head for Manhattan’s swishest new restaurant – and when they fail to get a table there, they claim an unclaimed reservation in the name of the Tripplehorns. However, they bite more than they can chew as they find out in the evening – with bad guys with guns, rogue cops and the Mafioso for company.

The script could have done with a few more clever lines – but Steve Carell and Tina Fey make good use of the ones available – especially the scenes with a shirtless Mark Wahlberg. Both have great comic timing – and make this really unbelievable night somewhat real. The plot about gangsters and the police – especially the climax – is a little absurd though

All in all, it’s a good watch, compared to this week’s underwhelming releases –especially if you are bored of the IPL circus.


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Movies to look out for this week

The Bounty Hunter [IMDB]

A bounty hunter learns that his next target is his ex-wife, a reporter working on a murder cover-up. Soon after their reunion, the always-at-odds duo find themselves on a run-for-their-lives adventure

Cast: Gerard Butler, Jennifer Aniston

Direction: Andy Tennant


City of Gold [IMDB]

The hindi version of Mahesh Manjrekar's acclaimed marathi movie Lalbaug Parel, about the life of the thousands of millworkers when the mills in Bombay shutdown in the 1980s

Cast: Seema Biswas, Sameer Dharmadhikari

Direction: Mahesh Manjrekar


Bird Idol [IMDB]

An Indian animation effort - about a bird Hummi who tries to introduce a new kind of music by taking part in the Bird Idol competition

Cast: Juhi Chawla (voice), Shaan (voice), Kailash Kher (voice)

Direction: Jyotin Goel


Flood [IMDB]

Timely yet terrifying, The Flood predicts the unthinkable. When a raging storm coincides with high seas it unleashes a colossal tidal surge

Cast: Robert Carlyle, Jessalyn Gilsig

Direction: Tony Mitchell


Muskurake Dekh Zara [IMDB]

Vivek falls in love with Preeti, only to realize that Preeti loves someone else. But that someone was going out with Vivek's original fiance Gauri. So finally who ends up with whom ?

Cast: Gashmeer Mahajani, Twinkle Patel

Direction: Som Shekhar


Apartment [IMDB]

A new flatmate Neha, who is the simple small-town girl and perfect paying guest, but things go wrong when Preeti's boyfriend comes back into Preeti's life

Cast: Tanushree Dutta, Neetu Chandra, Anupam Kher

Direction: Jag Mundhra


Kuchh Kariye [IMDB]

Small town guy, Sukhwinder comes to Mumbai with his girlfriend in order to pursue his music. He teams up with a bunch of wannabe film-makers and actors and the foursome set about trying to make their dreams come true

Cast: Sukhwinder Singh, Suresh Chatwal

Direction: Jagbir Dahiya

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How to Train Your Dragon

Welcome to the formulaic world of animation films – where the protagonist is always the non-conformist fellow, who faces ridicule initially, but finally saves the day for everyone. And along the road, everyone learns an important lesson about enjoying life by celebrating our differences etc. However, as much as I crib about their formula based moviemaking, the zest for life and the vivacity of the animation movies keeps drawing me back to the movie halls where I spend two hours completely immersed in a wonderful world drawn by the animators.

How to Train Your Dragon follows a similar storyline, where a scrawny Viking teenager befriends an injured dragon – and discovers that dragons are much more than what they are made out to be. But ofcourse, before that, he has to endure taunts from his schoolmates and sighs of disappointment from his father. The action takes place in an imaginary island somewhere in the Nordic lands where a village is constantly raided by dragons for livestock and the fearless Vikings fight them off.

The dragons are cartoonized very nicely, and every few minutes, there is a sequence which will make you smile atleast. A movie that you will thoroughly enjoy, even though you can predict whats coming from a mile

The only reason why this movie isn’t a 4 star is because although it is made out to be a 3D movie, it really isn’t. Which is more than a little disappointing, because you keep expecting some cool 3D effects and there are multiple opportunities for doing it, but the 3D effects are just minor afterthoughts – blink-and-you-miss-it kind. And with all multiplexes starting to charge for 3D glasses, it becomes a bigger bummer

How to Train Your Dragon is a good animation movie – certainly worth your time. However, its predictability and scant 3D effects do not make it worthy of more than 3.5 stars (so don’t know why its in the IMDB top 250 movies of all time)


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Movies to look out for this week

Apologies for lack of reviews in the last couple of weeks. Moving house and ridiculous Reliance Infocomm policies means that I havent had internet access at home for 3 weeks now

Paathshaala [IMDB]

A new school teacher finds that Saraswati Vidya Mandir has more than a few things wrong with it, which he tries to change. Meant to question our current education system

Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Ayesha Takia, Nana Patekar
Direction: Milind Ukey


Cop Out [IMDB]

A comedy about a veteran NYPD cop whose rare baseball card is stolen. Since it's his only hope to pay for his daughter's upcoming wedding, he recruits his partner to track down the thief, a memorabilia-obsessed gangster

Cast: Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan
Direction: Kevin Smith


Phoonk 2 [IMDB]

The film is about an evil spirit that returns for revenge and traumatizes a family

Cast: Sudeep, Ahsas Channa, Amruta Khanvilkar

Direction: Milind Gadagkar


How to Train Your Dragon [IMDB]

A hapless young Viking who aspires to hunt dragons becomes the unlikely friend of a young dragon himself, and learns there may be more to the creatures than he assumed

Cast: Gerard Butler (voice), Jonah Hill (voice), Jay Baruchel (voice)

Direction: Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders

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Movies to look out for this week

The Hurt Locker [IMDB]

Iraq. Forced to play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in the chaos of war, an elite Army bomb squad unit must come together in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb

Cast: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty
Direction: Kathryn Bigelow


Jaane Kahan Se Aayi Hai [IMDB]

Tara is from Venus and she crash lands on Earth looking for love. She befriends a born loser who is extremely unlucky in finding love and he helps her in her quest of finding true love

Cast: Riteish Deshmukh, Jaqueline Fernandes
Direction: Milap Zaveri


Prince [IMDB]

Desi remake of the Bourne Identity, where our hero wakes up in the morning with no memory but killer instincts, and the whole law enforcement after his life

Cast: Vivek Oberoi, Nandana Sen, Aruna Shields

Direction: Kookie V Gulati


Green Zone [IMDB]

Discovering covert and faulty intelligence causes a U.S. Army officer to go rogue as he hunts for Weapons of Mass Destruction in an unstable region

Cast: Matt Damon, Yigal Naor, Nicoye Banks

Direction: Paul Greengrass


Date Night [IMDB]

In New York City, a case of mistaken identity turns a bored married couple's attempt at a glamorous and romantic evening into something more thrilling and dangerous

Cast: Steve Carell, Tina Fey
Direction: Shawn Levy

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Movies to look out for this week

Clash of the Titans [IMDB]

The mortal son of the god Zeus embarks on a perilous journey to stop the underworld and its minions from spreading their evil to Earth as well as the heavens

Cast: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes

Direction: Louis Leterrier


The Great Indian Butterfly [IMDB]

An estranged couple head to Goa in search of the elusive Great Indian Butterfly, hoping to find a solution to their problems with it. The trip brings up new questions instead

Cast: Aamir Bashir, Sandhya Mridul

Direction: Sarthak Dasgupta


Tum Milo To Sahi [IMDB]

Based on the premise that love knows no age or time, the movie tracks a cynical old man, a fresh youngster and a jaded middle-aged couple - how they all find love (again)

Cast: Nana Patekar, Dimple Kapadia, Sunil Shetty, Vidya Malvade

Direction: Kabir Sadanand


Sadiyaan [IMDB]

A period film about two mothers, one hindu and the other muslim, separated during the Partition

Cast: Rekha, Hema Malini, Luv Sinha (Shatrughan Sinha's son), Rishi Kapoor

Direction: Raj Kanwar


When in Rome [IMDB]

Beth is a young, ambitious New Yorker who is completely unlucky in love. However, on a whirlwind trip to Rome, she impulsively steals some coins from a reputed fountain of love, and is then aggressively pursued by a band of suitors

Cast: Kristin Bell, Josh Duhamel
Direction: Mark Steven Johnson


Pankh

Partially based on the story of Ahsas Channa (a girl who played Shahrukh's son in KANK), it shows how child artists face an identity crisis when they grow up. And for some, the end is catastrophic

Cast: Maradona Rebello, Lilette Dubey, Bipasha Basu

Direction: Sudipto Chattopadhyaya

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