Housefull 2 (2012)

Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance

Starring: Akshay Kumar, Ritesh Deshmukh, Shreyas Talpade, John Abraham, Zarine Khan, Shazahn Padamsee, Jacqulien Fernandes, Asin, Randhir Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor, Johnny Lever, Chunky Pandey, Mithun Chakraborty, Boman Irani

Bollywood comedy needs a serious lecture from Charles Darwin. It seems the theory of evolution applies to each and every entity on this planet except for the Indian film industry and especially its comedy genre. Jai (Talpade) is a bachelor whose parents are visiting Mr. Chintu Kapoor (Rishi Kapoor) and his family asking their daugher Henna's (Asin) hand in marriage. Chintu insults his father and throws him out of the house, much to the anger of Jai. Chintu does not want to get his daughter married to just anyone and demands a rich son-in-law, perhaps maybe even the son of JD (Chakraborty). Chintu's elder brother Daboo Kapoor (Randhir Kapoor) is also looking for a groom for his daughter, Bobby (Fernandes) and has similar demands as his younger brother. Daboo and Chintu are not on talking terms and always try to do something to outdo the other. Enter Jolly (Deshmukh) the son of JD who is good friends with Jai. To get revenge on the Chintu, Jai and JD hire Max (Abraham) to go to Chintu as JD's son and marry their daughter and dumping her before the wedding. Max ends up going to Daboo instead of Chintu and hence the duo now hire Sunny (Kumar) to get the real job done. Jai wishes to marry his sweetheart Parul (Padamsee) and Jolly wants to marry JLo (Khan) but is too scared to talk about his true love in front of his father. The movie is a complete mess of characters with all the male leads constantly switching roles and partners to make, what could possibly be, the worlds biggest botched movie. As all Indian comedy movies, this one too thrives on a complicated and confused story, bad humour, bikini babes and too many stars. It really isnt any different from any other Hindi comedy movie that you might come across and does not even attempt at being so. Charles Darwin, I call thee to come down here and give a lesson or two to these mindless mortals!

Thumbs up: Zarine Khan looks hot, Shazahn Padamsee is hot, Asin sizzles and Jacquelin is every mans wet dream

Thumbs down: Hopeless plot, bad humour worse acting

Rating: 4.9/10

Pantone Album Covers

Amazing work by the British Designer David Marsh. You can check it out more at: http://davidmarsh.sketch360.com/

The Iron Lady (2011)

Genre: Drama/Biography/History

Starring: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Alexandra Roach

Based on the life of Britain's first female Prime Minister and the person to hold the office longest in the 20th Century, Margaret Thatcher (Streep) is often known to have been responsible for changing the face of British economy. Thatcher was elected from the conservative party and was elected at a time when unemployment, high demands of trade unions and fiscal deficit was ho unding the British government. With her agressive stance and conservative policy-making, Thatcher soon transformed the country into a profit-making economy and went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. The movie transits between 2008 Thatcher and Thatcher back during her active political days. Margaret is now old and often hallucinates about her dead husband Dennis (Broadbent) and talks to him, imagining him being present all the time. The movie is extremely slow and takes its own time to move and develop. The first quarter is impatient and you want the movie to progress from showing an old Thatcher to showing her active days and move onto something that the audience want to watch and the movie promised to show. Perhaps if the movie focussed more on Margaret then and had little of Margaret now, the movie would have been widely acclaimed by all. Streep has put on a fabulous performance, one of her best in the past few years but sadly the slow pace of the movie, doesnt support her effort in a manner it should to make it an exceptional work of art.

Thumbs up: Meryl Streep's fabulous performance

Thumbs down: Slow, very slow

Rating: 7.0/10

Barb Wire (1996)

Genre: Action/Crime/Drama/Science-fiction

Starring: Pamela Anderson, Victoria Rowell, Steve Railsback, Temuera Morrison, Jack Noseworthy

Have you watched a movie with the lead performer being someone who should never actually be in that role? Like an industrialist, a sports persons wife, an ex-politician or in this case, a porn star. The year 2017, the entire United States is engulfed in a civil war with Steel Harbour being the only free city in the country. Barb Wire (Anderson) is a mercenary and the owner of a bar in Steel Harbor. She struts her stuff, shows too much cleavage, has her legs exposed at all times, flaunts a 17" waist and can perform insane stunts wearing skin-hugging tight leather outfits. And there is something about a pair of German contraband contact lenses that can allow anyone wearing them to pass through a retina scan without any problem and a whole bunch of people trying to get their hands on it for a variety of reasons. There is too much skin show, in case I forgot to mention that, with everyone speaking in loud whispers with a thick, seductive and I'm-too-sexy touch added to it, especially Miss Anderson. The movie is a complete washout and although I would like to say that the movie is good enough at least to ogle at Pam, that too does not quite happen. The plot is badly glued together, randomly evolving and does not quite get to you even after pausing the movie and thinking about it for half a day. Is there enough already to suggest this is avoidable?

Thumbs up: HAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHA

Thumbs down: I'll write a blog post about that

Rating: 3.6/10

Kahaani (2012)

Genre: Drama/Thriller/Crime/Mystery

Starring: Vidya Balan, Parambrata Chatterjee, Saswata Chatterjee, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui,

Good performances, an enticing storyline and a superb climax is just what the doctor ordered to make a good movie. Vidya Bagchi (Balan) arrives in Kolkata from London to look for her husband who mysteriously disappeared suddenly. Her husband, Arnab came for an assignment to Kolkata and suddenly stopped answering telephone calls and any form of communication. A local police officer Rana (Parambrata Chatterjee) agrees to help her in her quest to seek her husband. The hotel in which she claimed her husband was staying in denied him ever checking in along with the National Data Centre (NDC) the company in which he was supposed to have been working for. Suddenly Arnab Bagchi does not exist and nobody, right from his parents address, school records, professional records do not seem to match the claims made by Vidya. What does emerge is Arnab's uncanny resemblance with Milind Damji, a man with a shady past with an obscure link with Arnab. Vidya realises that in order to get Arnab, she must find Milind but Khan (Siddiqui) the commander-in-chief of the NDC warns her to step out of it or she might lose her life. The movie is very gripping and keeps you wondering and glued to your seat right till the very end. No matter how many theories you might cook up half-way through the movie, it would all go for a toss once the climax is out. The only low points was the forced romance in a true Bollywood style, which thankfully was without any unnecessary song sequences. The movie is beautifully shot against the backdrop of the Bengali festival of Durga Pooja which adds power and aggression to the movie and a huge scoop of character. Vidya Balan has shined once more with some superb acting and has definitely made a mark for herself in the industry, if Dirty Picture hasn't already done that.

Thumbs up: Astounding performances, gripping plot

Thumbs down: Climax might seem a bit far-fetched too few, forced romance scenes.

Rating: 8.5/10

Minimalistic Album Covers

Is quite old, but is good to show up here again. Lovely work by the artist Ty Lettau.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Genre: Drama

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Brad Dourif, Sydney Lassick, Danny DeVito, William Redfield, Christopher Lloyd, Will Sampson

Define 'A true, epic, American drama movie?', Answer; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. If there ever can be an example to show how the most simplest of story lines can be made into something very interesting, then nothing can be a better example than this movie. Randle McMurphy (Nicholson) a mentally unstable criminal, apprehended for raping a minor is sent to mental institution for evaluation. He does not appear to or behave in any manner that might suggest he suffers from an illness but needs to undergo treatment nonetheless. His ward is run by the strict Nurse Ratched (Fletcher) who rules rather than runs the ward like a queen and the patients her subjects. She shows indifference towards their pain and emotion and forces them to take unpleasant medication. McMurphy, being less crazy than the rest, realises the nurse's nature and tries to take steps to make his ward members' life better. From gambling with cigarettes, taking bets on escaping, hijacking the bus for a fishing trip and watching baseball on a television that is switched off, McMurphy does it all much to the displeasure of the nurse. The movie is known worldwide for being one of the few movies to have won all major Academy Awards and rightly so. The performances were outstanding, the plot is extremely simple but executed with finesse. It shows how a rapist, branded insane, could do things that even educated and sane individuals could not; he brought them joy. The movie might seem to trudge along with no objective, but believe me its worth all the effort at the very end. This blog celebrates 500 reviews with this movie. A fitting choice I must say.

Thumbs up: Outstanding in every aspect

Thumbs down: 5 major Academy Awards; this section shouldn't exist for this movie

Rating: 8.8/10