Movie Reviews

Even as early as about five minutes into Maaran, it’s hard to care. The craft seems to belong in a bad TV serial, and the dialogues and performances don't help either. During these opening minutes, you get journalist Sathyamoorthy (Ramki) rambling on about publishing the ‘truth’, while it gets established that his wife is pregnant and ready to deliver ANY SECOND. A pregnant wife on the cusp of delivery in our 'commercial' cinema means that the bad men with sickles are in the vicinity and ready to pounce. Sometimes, it almost feels like they wait around for women to get pregnant, so they can strike. When the expected happens—as it does throughout this cliché-ridden film—you feel no shock. The real shock is when you realise that the director credits belong to the filmmaker who gave us Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru, that the film stars Dhanush, from whom we have come to expect better, much better. Director: Karthick Naren Cast: Dhanush, Malavika Mohanan, Ameer, Samuthirakani Stre

STORY:  A young boy Midi (Varun Buddhadev) is adamant to overcome the curveballs life throws at him while trying to restore his father's glory. REVIEW:  Inspired by true events, writer-director Mridul’s ‘Toolsidas Junior’ is a simple yet heart-warming story of a father-son bond and their collective life goals. For the most part of this 132-minutes-long film, one is completely immersed in Midi’s journey to become Toolsidas Junior. Unlike other sports dramas, there are no pushy parents driving his level of dedication; rather, it’s a young boy’s own desire to achieve what his father had once wished for. Set in Calcutta of 1994, Toolsidas (Rajiv Kapoor) is an ace snooker player who proudly declares that he ''only plays for his son''. In a tournament, he hopes to defeat five-time champion Jimmy Tandon (Dalip Tahhil). Toolsidas assures his adolescent son Midi that the trophy is coming home this time, but he loses the game. That devastates the duo's heart and Midi emba

STORY: Former sports coach Vijay Barse invests his time and hard-earned money to train underprivileged kids in football, to keep them away from drugs and crimes seeded in Nagpur’s underbelly. REVIEW: There’s a pink-and-white wall, with iron fencing in most parts. It has a gate, which is locked and is being guarded to bar people from the adjacent slum to cross over to the other side where the educated and wealthy families dwell. That image, metaphorically, indicates the zone that this film is venturing into. It’s underlined further with the closing visual of the film, where an airplane is seen flying right above the hutments of Mumbai’s slum area. Nagraj Popatrao Manjule’s Jhund is not an outright sports biopic, even though it follows the usual beats of a good sports drama. The film is a commentary on what we as a society can do to help the have-nots identify their plus points and cross the boundary to leap onto the other, brighter side. Amitabh’s Vijay Borade (modelled on Vijay Barse,

  STORY:  Based on S. Hussain Zaidi and Jane Borges’ hard-hitting book ‘Mafia Queens of Mumbai,’ ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ chronicles Ganga’s rise to power and fame from a demure small-town girl in Gujarat, to the undisputed queen of kamathipura in Mumbai. REVIEW:  Women invitingly standing at the doorstep of a kotha (brothel) in the bustling bylanes of south Mumbai’s infamous red-light area Kamathipura, is a scene that is real, tragic and dramatic. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’, set entirely against this gritty backdrop of Mumbai tells the story of many a young women, who were sold off to brothels for a few hundreds, solely through the eyes of its protagonist Gangubai (Alia Bhatt). It’s sometime in the early 1950s or 1960s when a starry-eyed and naïve Ganga is conned by her own lover Ramnik (Varun Kapoor) to elope with a promise that he will pave the path for her to make it as a heroine in Bollywood. What turns out and the truth as we all know is that that Ga