Grand Masti (2013)

Genre: Comedy/Drama

Starring: Vivek Oberoi, Aftab Shivdasani, Ritesh Deshmukh, Manjari Phadnis, Karishma Tanna, Maryam Zakaria, Bruna Abdullah, Kainaat Arora, Pradeep Rawat, Sonalee Kulkarni, Suresh Menon

First step, collect all the famous gags and jokes from American Pie, Mr. Bean and Austin Powers movie, put them all together one after the other, hope that the audience has never seen those movies in the past, add loads of skimpy bikini clad girls and voila! Amar (Deshmukh), Meet (Oberoi) and Prem (Shivdasani) are good friends who have now moved on in life and are all married. Amar is unable to make love to his wife anymore ever since his son, Pappu came into this world. Meet's wife is his senior at work who is too involved with work to give him any attention and Prem's wife is extremely occupied with the house chores to spend time with him. Frustrated, the trio decide to attend their college re-union without their wives so they can get lucky with some college girls and once again re-live their happy days. The movie is an assortment of sleaze and random jokes that do not seem to blend with the story and exist only to supposedly entertain. An over-load of nonsensical humour coupled with horrible performances and a non-existing story, creates the perfect environment to walk out of the movie in the first 30 minutes itself. Yes, there is loads of eye candy in the movie to ogle at and if that is your objective of watching the movie then go ahead, else avoid at all costs.

Thumbs up: Nothing

Thumbs down: No story, too much sex

Rating: 3.0/10

Butterfly on a Wheel (2007)

Genre: Drama/Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Gerard Butler, Maria Bello

What happens when your perfect life is put to test and you see everything you have lived for falling apart? Neil (Butler) and Abby Randall (Bello) are happily married with an adorable daughter. Like any other normal day, they set to work only to realise that they have been carjacked by a lunatic with a gun. Tom (Brosnan) has kept their daughter hostage with the 'planted' babysitter and threatens to harm her if they don't do exactly what he asks them to do. He somehow doesn't seem to be behind their money and never actually tells them what he wants and leads them on a wild goose chase across the city. Although the movie is built on an interesting plot with a strong star cast, it fails to deliver and doesn't quite seem to click. The story has it's bits of thrills, twists and turns but it seems too far-fetched and hard to believe. Based on too many assumptions and co-incidences, it is not the kind of story that can hold your attention for too long. Had they utilised the plot outline to draft a more solid script, perhaps this movie would have been a true thriller than what it actually turned out to be.

Thumbs up: Good star cast

Thumbs down: Not a very enticing story

Rating: 6.2/10

Man on Fire (2004)

Genre: Action/Drama/Crime/Mystery

Starring: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Marc Anthony, Radha Mitchell, Christopher Walken, Mickey Rourke

In Mexico City, an infamous gang is known for kidnapping the children of rich parents and extorting money from them. Most of the times, the children don't come back. In fear that his daughter might be in danger, Samuel Ramos (Anthony) hires John Creasy (Washington) to protect his daughter at all times. Creasy has a perpetual drinking problem that takes a toll on his mental life and also affects his work. Creasy finds a friend and a daughter in Lupita 'Pita' Ramos (Fanning) and takes a liking to her and realises that she could be the reason he would want to live and not put a bullet in his head. Pita gets kidnapped in spite of Creasy's best efforts and her kidnapper demands money. The Mexican police gets involved in the kidnapping and the situation goes out of control with the kidnapper announcing that he Pita would not come back. Creasy decides to take the situation in his own hands and starts to hunt down Pita's kidnapper and seek revenge. The movie is a remake of a novel with the same name and a 1987 movie re-make of the novel. The biggest chink in the movies armour is its extremely long run time that makes the movie very slow and dragged. It is an average action and mystery movie that you can watch, enjoy and forget but by extending it's run time to two and a half hours is unwarranted and only makes the movie a bigger task to watch. Denzel Washington does justice to his role but is not exceptional or someone you would remember for this role. A good enough entertainer that could have been better.

Thumbs up: Decent story and mystery

Thumbs down: Extended run time

Rating: 6.5/10

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Genre: Crime/Drama/Adventure/Mystery

Starring: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Dencik, Toby Jones, Stephen Graham, Simon McBurney, John Hurt

Set in post-war Britain where global super-powers are trying to harness as much intelligence as possible in the midst of the cold war and the possible outbreak of world war 3. The head of British Intelligence, Control (Hurt) sends an agent Jim Prideaux (Strong) to Soviet Hungary in order to get some high-quality information. Jim gets shot in Hungary and the incident sparks a diplomatic outrage with Control being evicted from the agency along with his right hand man, George Smiley (Oldman). Percy Alleline (Jones) now becomes the head of the 'circus' along with Bill Haydon (Firth), Roy Bland (Hinds) and Toby Esterhase (Dencik) as his support team. Percy starts sourcing his information via an operation called 'Witchcraft', information that Smiley and Control had earlier avoided since they don't trust it's credibility. Smiley is asked to join the circus back to investigate a claim by an MI6 operative, Ricky Tarr (Hardy) on a possibility of a mole in the agency and unravel the mystery behind it. The movie is a complex, thrilling and twisted spy tale that involves a whole lot of jargon, layers and side stories which all culminate to a thrilling end. It tries to be as close to reality as possible and it fulfills it's motive to a large extent. The performances in the movie are exceptional but the execution of the plot is where the movie failed to come out completely. It's complexity has gone against it, making it a little hard for the average audience to follow and appreciate. Had it been more simple with a more thrilling climax, the movie would have recieved far more appreciation. The end to the movie was not all that splendid and the outcome is more or less predictable. If you want a James Bond without the gadgets and action and only raw suspense, then the movie ticks all the right boxes for you.

Thumbs up: Performances

Thumbs down: A bit too hard to follow

Rating: 7.4/10

W. (2008)

Genre: Drama/Biography/Historical Event

Starring: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, James Cromwell, Ellen Burstyn, Thandie Newton, Richard Dreyfuss, Jeffrey Wright, Scott Glenn, Toby Jones, Bruce McGill

George W. Bush was probably one of the most controversial, joked about and hated US President in modern history. His take on Iraq and Afghanistan as well as his foreign policies on Middle-Eastern countries has long been debated and not always considered to be in the best interest of the American citizens. George Bush Jr. (Brolin) was born and brought up in a political family. His father, George H. W. Bush (Cromwell), was a senator and eventually became the 41st President of the United States of America. George was never known for his dedication and focus in his youth and was a heavy smoker and an alcoholic. His life was in a complete disarray for quite some time with him not able to get a secure career and depending far too much on his father and his political background. From there on, it was history. Being a Texas boy, Bush had a typical way of talking and walking and was often labelled as the 'Cowboy President' for his brash behavior. The movie seemed to have poked fun at George Bush but not in a humorous way but a more subtle, sarcastic and multi-layered manner. The movie also reveals how Bush took the call to bomb Iraq simply with motive of tapping into it's oil reserves and on unverified intelligence information. The movie focuses on Bush's life as a college boy right up to the Iraq war and includes many aspects of his personal as well as professional life. It does not seem to be a very serious take on his life and the movie seems to have been made with half-hearted efforts. Not the best movie to watch on Bush but still very informative.

Thumbs up: Josh Brolin's impeccable performance of George Bush

Thumbs down: Not a very serious take on his life

Rating: 6.3/10

Madras Cafe (2013)

Genre: Crime/Historical Event/Action/Drama/War

Starring: John Abraham, Nargis Fakhri, Rashi Khanna, Siddharth Basu, Ajay Rathnam, Prakash Belawadi

The Sri Lankan Civil War was a long fought battle between the Sri Lankan Government and a rebel group whose demands were a seperate Tamil state. The movie is based on the Indian intervention in Sri Lanka and the eventual assassination of Ex Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi. Major Vikram Singh (Abraham) is assigned an operation under the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and relieved of his army duties. The task is to get the rebel leader, Anna (Rathnam) to lay down his arms and accept peace talks with the Sri Lankan government. He encounters a British journalist, Jaya Sahni (Fakhri) who has come to Sri Lanka to cover the conflict. Vikram learns that Sri Lanka is far more complicated than he thought with multiple double-crosses, information leaks and the constant threat to his life. The story of the movie is very strong and an almost identical representation of the actual events except for the character of Vikram Singh. The names and identities have been mildly altered in order to not portray this as a movie based on true life events, but as a work of fiction. Performances have been extremely strong but the casting of John Abraham seems to have been an obvious mistake. He is unable to carry the role of Vikram Singh and having an actor who is more 'normal' would have helped rather than having someone who looks like an on-screen hero. A good political thriller but it had tremendous scope of being much better.

Thumbs up: Great Story

Thumbs down: John Abraham's casting

Rating: 7.4/10

Batman & Robin (1997)

Genre: Fantasy/Action/Science-Fiction

Starring: George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chris O'Donnell, Uma Thurman, Alicia Silverstone, Michael Gough, Robert 'Jeep' Swenson

In continuation to the Batman series of movies, this one sees a change in star cast and a drastic change in the way in which the story is put in place. Bruce Wayne aka Batman (Clooney) has a new sidekick called Robin (O'Donnell), a continuation to the previous Batman movie. Batman and Robin keep having differences of opinion on how they should go about fighting crime and this creates serious cracks in their relationship. Mr.Freeze (Schwarzenegger) is the new villain in Gotham City and is out to steal diamonds in order to keep his suit running. In parallel, Dr. Pamela Isley (Thurman) is a botanist and a nature lover who gets transformed in one of her experiments as Poison Ivy. Along with her strong and bulky sidekick, Bane (Swenson), Ivy wants to get rid of all industries and let Mother Nature flourish once more. The movie is made with a highly amateurish outlook and is probably the worst Batman movie to be ever made. When you transform a cartoon into a movie, some amounts of sensibility and maturity needs to be added but this movie seemed like a direct transfer without any thought going into it. George Clooney failed to live up to the expectations of his character and most of the stories are baseless and lack the sensibility that the previous movies had. Avoid at all costs.

Thumbs up: Uma Thurman for being the only person who did justice to her character

Thumbs down: Bad story, horrible performances

Rating: 4.9/10