Movie Reviews and More ...

SWAMI(1977) revisited  Director: Basu Chatterji  Cast: Girish Karnad, Shabana Azmi, Vikram, Utpal Dutt,  When my favourite library is closed for nearly two months, and I’m too old fashioned to read e-books/ kindle and the likes, what’s the option available? Discovered movies adapted from classic literature and satisfies my hunger for virtual books by watching these retro gems.  Swami is a Bollywood adaptation of a classic tale penned by the great Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. A beautiful tale about a headstrong vivacious young girl Soudamini(Azmi) who is infatuated with her next door handsome neighbour, but due to societal and family pressure gets married into a upper class joint family where her husband(Karnad) is the glorified head. Her inability to accept the new relationships and unspoken attraction to the righteous, principled and far sighted husband dwell deeper into her dilemma.  Basu Chatterji’s fine and inspiring direction makes sure it stays loyal to t...

BETAAL (2020)  Directed by: Patrick Graham and Nikhil Mahajan  Cast: Vineet Kumar, Ahana Kumra, Jitendra Joshi, Jatin Goswami, Suchitra Pillai, Siddharth Menon, Manjiri, Ankur Vikal, Pawan Singh, Akhilesh Unnithan, Ratan Nag, Baby Syna, Savita Bajaj, Meenal Kapoor and Richard Dillane.  Picture this- one fine day, or preferably at night you discover that your immediate boss has turned into a bloodthirsty zombie, how would you react? The lead actor faces this uncomfortably dangerous situation in this horror webseries.  A special squad is assigned inorder to evacuate a village, unknowingly they end up reactivating a battalion of British zombies who ruled that location centuries ago. Thereafter begins a blood soaked violent battle between the living and the dead, with survival of the fittest.  The director is known for his earlier horror attempt Ghoul(2018) which didn’t quite cut the ice with viewers, with Betaal he tries mixing age old Indian myth with a contempora...

पाताल लोक (2020)  Directed by: Avinash Arun and Prosit Roy  Cast: Jaideep Ahlawat, Neeraj Kabi, Ishwak Singh, Gul Panag, Jagjeet Sandhu, Aasif Khan, Bodhisattva Sharma, Swastika Mukherjee, Aakash Khurana, Vipin Sharma, Loveleen Mishra, Maerambam R Singh, Rajesh Sharma, & Abhishek Banerjee. Dark, gripping, thrilling and expectedly disturbing, that’s what Paatal Lok is all about. Right at the outset the protagonist played by Jaideep Ahlawat as a righteous cop explains to his subordinate about the three Loks humankind belong to viz; Swarg Lok inhabited by God, Dharti Lok by common men and the dreaded Paatal Lok for which the viewers have to take a ride through the nine chilling episodes to get acquainted with the rotten reality of our mere existence in a hollow world.  The plot centres around a failed assassination on a leftist liberal media personality, the attempt thwarted by the cops get the four assassins arrested. The cop assigned the case starts investigating and ...

KASHISH(1990) - revisited YouTube is generously retelecasting retro Doordarshan serials and one such classic is the fresh as a morning daisy Kashish (1991), almost thirty years and still so watchable and heart warming.  Directed by Kaamna Chandra it’s a simple love story actually a love hate story between an eccentric film maker (Sudesh Berry) and his heroine(Malvika Tiwari). With just eight episodes it deals with their bittersweet relationship, egos, unspoken romance and must say the director has handled it with so much tenderness and simplicity. There’s also a lovely ghazal sung by Kavita Krishnamurthy.  Nothing over the top, no sex no violence, yes there is a prospective Saas and her to be Bahu but they are so normal almost unbelievable in today’s context of tv serials! Berry no doubt had an visible Amitabh hangover but he looked dashing and fit that Mills and Boon hero slot in this romance. Malavika looked like a dainty, petite blooming flower, that husky sexy voice and s...

HUNDRED (2020): Hotstar originals streams up a comic series which tries really hard to get a miniature smile on the viewer’s face.  So why is it titled hundred? Because a young girl working as a govt employee is suddenly diagnosed with a terminal illness and told very bluntly by a doc that she has only hundred days to live ! So it’s actually hundred days. The girl prepares a bucket list / wishlist and starts ticking the wishes she so wishes to fulfil before the doomsday. Interesting? Feels like it’s been dealt in many movies, tv series, etc etc true that.  There’s nothing entertaining in this series, most of the episodes are a total snooze fest. There’s an unrelated underworld track thrown in to create some ruckus but it only adds up to your yawns. And yes, there’s the mandatory Feminazi blah blah blahing which gets on the nerves. The makers were surely half asleep while directing.  Unable to understand why a female cop is expected to look and appear manly inorder to pro...

Hmm so you can fantasise about this, just think about a chilling serene hill station, some erotic tales and lots of cleavage and skin show on display ! That’s exactly what’s in store in this webseries based on the fictional porn writer Mastram.  Set in the lovely luscious hill station Manali, a young story writer adapts the pseudonym Mastram and pens erotic tales which sell like hot cakes at the publishing house. He does that discreetly as he’s not too proud of his porn writing skills and his immediate family (a bachelor uncle) and the pretty girlfriend (Tara Alisha Berry- cute) are unaware of his skills. He prefers being known as a struggling boring story writer. Inorder to enhance his writing skills and add heaps of erotica to his story telling he starts studying subjects from around him including a neighborhood sex starved aunty, a curious Bollywood starlet, a horny female cop, a buxom village belle and many others, every woman is projected as an “sex object” here.  The sto...

Is that a tear eyed farewell to the evergreen chocolate boy (perhaps the original most successful chocolate boy) of Bollywood ? One who lived life on his own terms always in high spirits. In the last 4-5 years of his glorious life he gained more popularity as a straightforward blunt and outspoken Twitter veteran.  The late Rishi Kapoor lovingly called chintu was the second son to showman Raj Kapoor who introduced him with his magnum opus Mera Naam Joker(1970), it was his solo lead in the blockbuster Bobby(1973) that catapulted him to overnight stardom and the big league. The 70s saw an emergence of angry young men led by tall and dominating Amitabh along with Vinod Khanna, Shatrughan Sinha and Dharmendra but little chintu kept his stardom intact appearing in solo hits like Khel Khel Mein(1975), Raffoo Chakker(1975), Sargam(1979), Karz(1980) and multi starrer biggies like Kabhi Kabhie (1976), Amar Akbar Anthony(1977), Naseeb(1981), Coolie(1983) and several others. He continued to de...

FOUR MORE SHOTS PLEASE 2(2020) Director- Nupur Asthana  Prime Video /10 episodes  Cast- Kirti Kulhari, Sayani Gupta, Bani J, Manavi Gagroo, Milind Soman, Neil Bhoopalam, Sameer Kochhar, Prateik Babbar, Rajeev Siddhartha, Lisa Ray, Simone Singh, Shibani Dandekar, Amrita Puri, Monica Dogra, Ankur Rathee, & Prabal Punjabi.  The ten episodic chick flick series is so bland and nauseating that the season one appears like a classic now! From producers like Pritish Nandy and his team (most comprising his family folk) the production values are so cheap that they could invest in just half a episode shot in the picturesque Istanbul! This is a certified Indianised sasta maal “Sex and the city” phew !  The primary cast remains the same and struggles with almost the same issues making it awfully monotonous and a complete snooze fest. Inorder to sound cool and urbane they’ve added some topics like misogyny, plagiarism, premarital pregnancy, an overhyped same sex wedding, polit...

THE RAIKAR CASE (2020)  Director: Ajay Sarpotdar  Cast: Atul Kulkarni, Neil Bhoopalam, Parul Gulati, Karan K Kapoor, Lalit Prabhakar, Manava Naik, Honey Kamboj, Vaishnavi Kadam, Reena Wadhwa, Prakash Ramchandani, Rushad Rana, Ajay Purkar & Ashwini Bhave.  7 episodic mystery webseries streaming on voot select, quite edgy, thrilling, intriguing & unpredictable.  Set in the picturesque Goa, the series begins with the mysterious death of a young boy from a politically inclined affluent family of Raikar’s. Even though the initial impression is suicide, the investigating police officer John Pereira(Bhoopalam) dismisses the assumptions & confirms its murder, therein begins an hard core interrogating search for the killer who Pereira is confident is amongst the members of the Raikar Joint family. Hidden skeletons from the cupboards are exposed as the family members deal with well guarded dark secrets involving dirty politics, incest, closeted homosexuality, extra...

EK THI BEGUM (20202/MX player)  Dir - Sachin Darekar  Cast- Anuja Sathe, Chinmay Mandalekar, Santosh Juvekar, Ankit Mohan, Abhijeet Chawan, Vijay Nikam, Ajay Gehi, Vithal Kale, Nazzar Khan, Advait Dadarkar, Anil Nagarkar, & Resham.  “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” and in case the woman in question is the widow of a gangster then nobody can stop her from a bloodthirsty revenge journey.  Apparently based on true events the 14 episodic crime series takes place in the period 1986-1989 and follows the revenge saga of a woman hell bent on killing the murderers of her husband. There was already a movie planned based on this woman’s tragic tale and there is an entire chapter dedicated to her in a book based on the female participants in Bombay’s underworld.  The director relies heavily on blood and gore, there’s sex and violence in almost every episode though it’s not as graphic as the Sacred Games(2018), which is undoubtedly a reference point for this ser...

PANCHAYAT (2020/ Prime)  Dir- Deepak Kumar Misra  Cast- Raghuvir Yadav, Neena Gupta, Jitendra Kumar, Chandan Roy, Faisal Mallik, Vishwanath Chatterjee, Kusum Shastri & others.  TVF’s latest venture, a brilliantly conceptualised black comedy is not just impressive but also educational for directors who need to know how to lead a simple sweet concept and turn it into an enjoyable fun ride.  A bittersweet tale of an engineering graduate Abhishek Tripathy(Jitendra Kumar) who joins as a panchayat secretary in a remote village in Uttar Pradesh due to lack of better paying job opportunities. His initial reluctance and gradual acceptance of the low paid yet satisfying job and various comical interactions with the jolly good villagers is sure to keep viewers glued to this webseries.  Director Misra hits the bull’s eye by keeping the concept simple, relatable and the characters realistic. The humour is offbeat with zilch space for slapstick antics. Every episode(8 in...

CODE M (2020)  Directed by: Akshay Choubey  Cast: Rajat Kapoor, Jennifer Winget, Aalekh Kapoor, Tanuj Virwani, Seema Biswas, Keshav Sadhna & others.  ALT Balaji and zee5 offer a thriller series (8 episodes) with an army background.  Monica (Winget) an army lawyer is summoned to investigate a certified open and shut encounter case which involved the deaths of one army officer and two militants, while two army majors survived the same. The case gets escalated after the dead militant’s mother immolates herself outside the army headquarters claiming her sons were innocent. Monica during her investigation realises there’s much more to the case than what meets the eye and starts her wild hunt leading to shocking findings.  The director tries involving too many sub plots even though there are countable characters in the series, also in a bid to settle multiple subjects including casteism, gender discrimination, homosexuality, honor killings etc he ends up complicat...

MentalHood (2020) Zee5 / ALTBalaji  Webseries Directed by: Karishma Kohli  Cast: Karisma Kapoor, Sanjay Suri, Tilottama Shome, Shilpa Shukla, Shruti Seth, Sandhya Mridul, Dino Morea, Sameer Malhotra, Rohan Joshi, Satyen Chaturvedi, Jas Binag, Master Charlie, Master Mikhail, Baby Mihika, Master Atharva, Master Ayush, Baby Deshna, Master Preet, Master Shaurya, Master Aarash, Baby Aayushi, Amrita Puri(Sp.App.)  The queen of Indian tele soaps Ekta Kapoor collaborates with the Queen of 90’s Bollywood hits Karisma Kapoor to present a ten episodic web series preaching the trials and tribulations of motherhood which they prefer calling mentalhood. Right at the outset the lead actress mouths an awkward dialogue claiming “Motherhood is a blessing? Bhenchhod” !!! Expletives May work well in the Sacred Games or Mirzapur but in this case such lame wannabe attempts make Mentalhood appear like Gareebon Ka “Four More Shots Please” !  Based in Mumbai the plot centres around five mom...