Movie Reviews

Film: "Victoria No. 203"; Cast: Om Puri, Anupam Kher, Jimmy Shergill, Preeti Jhangiani, Sonia Mehra, Kamal Sadanah, Javed Jaffrey, Tora Khasgir, Rajesh Khera; Director: Anant Mahadevan; Rating: ** Of the two remakes released this week, "Victoria No. 203" is slightly better than "Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag" but not good enough to strike gold at the box office.

Film: "Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag"; Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Mohanlal, Ajay Devgan, Sushmita Sen, Prashant Raj, Nisha Kothari; Director: Ram Gopal Varma; Rating: ** No, this isn't the worst re-make you're likely to see. Nor does Ram Gopal Varma's "Aag" claim to have the wherewithal, the stock, substance and spice of Ramesh Sippy's "Sholay". Let's just call "Aag" an interesting revisionist version of "Sholay" and be done with it. The biggest mistake we can make while watching Varma go back to his favourite film is to look for signs and symbols from the past.

Film: "Dhokha"; Cast: Muzamil Ibrahim, Tulip Joshi, Anupam Kher; Director: Pooja Bhatt; Writer: Mahesh Bhatt; Ratings: *** Not every potential terrorist belongs to one particular community. Yes, it sounds like a brutally vulgar adage in this day and age of murderous rage.

Film: "Mathadu Mathadu Mallige"; Cast: Vishnuvardhan, Suhasini Mani Ratnam, Sudeep and others; Director: Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar; Producer: K. Manju; Music: Mano Murthy. "Mathadu Mathadu Mallige" comes as a surprise offering from a mainstream filmmaker like Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar. The film about a Nandigram, a special economic zone (SEZ), in Karnataka is the director's fervent plea against what he considers reckless globalisation.

Film: "Heyy Babyy"; Cast: Akshay Kumar, Vidya Balan, Fardeen Khan, Riteish Deshmukh, Boman Irani; Director: Sajid Khan; Ratings: *** When it doesn't try to be funny, it's funny. And when it's not funny, it's quite heart-warmingly touching... honestly! Picture this. A TV anchor, who has made a career out of spoofing, satirizing and savaging Hindi film conventions, decides to direct a film where three certifiable studs - check out their huffing harem of haseenas of every hue and colour preferably blonde - wake up one morning to find a baby on their doorstep.

Film: "Alibhai"; Cast: Mohanlal, Gopika, Navya Nair and Innocent; Director: Shaji Kailas; Music: Alex Paul; Producer: Antony Parambavoor. When a star does a film just to please his fans, he often ends up disappointing everyone else in the audience. This is what happens to Mohanlal's latest film "Alibhai", an Onam offering for his fans.

Film: "Marigold"; Starring: Salman Khan, Ali Larter, Nandana Sen; Directed by: Willard Caroll; Rating: ** Two things puzzled me deeply at the end of this aesthetically-shot benign cross-cultural romance between a B-grade Hollywood actress and a Bollywood choreographer. Why does Salman insist on being called Prem or Sameer in most of his films? A homage to his two filmmaker buddies Sooraj Barjatya and Sanjay Bhansali?

Film: "Buddha Mar Gaya"; Starring: Anupam Kher, Om Puri, Paresh Rawal, Mahbanoo Mody-Kortwal, Rakhi Sawant; Directed by Rahul Rawail. Decades ago Kundan Shah killed us with laughter in his "Jane Bhi Do Yaaron", a comedy about a corpse that needed curious manoeuvring. To his credit, Anupam Kher plays an inert deathly-still corpse in Rawail's crude film as convincingly as Satish Shah did in Kundan Shah's film.

Film: "Heartbeats"; Cast: Indrajith, Simran, Manasa, Manikuttan, Govindan Kutty, Anoop Chandran and Jagathy Sreekumar; Director: Vinu Anand; Music: George Peter; Producer: Joly Joseph. Director Lal Jose's hugely successful campus caper "Classmates" has inspired a crop of imitations. "Heartbeats" is one of them.

Film: "The Blue Umbrella"; Cast: Pankaj Kapur, Shreya Sharma; Director: Vishal Bharadwaj; Ratings: *** There's a quaint wintry feeling to Vishal Bharadwaj's new film that comes not from knowing-it-all about filmmaking (and god knows, after "Maqbool" and "Omkara", he is qualified enough to strut around as a know-all) but from entering the dark tunnel of non-knowing, to explore an uncharted territory and emerge into a light that's illuminating and un-experienced.

Film: "Chak De India"; Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Shilpa Shukla, Sagarika Ghatge, Chitrashi Rawat and others; Director: Shimit Amin; Ratings: *** 1/2 First things first! "Chak De India" is an outright winner. A triumph of the spirit, and of craftsmanship! While director Shimit Amin of "Ab Tak Chhappan" fame has crafted a film with immense staying power and exceptional integrity and gusto, the thought-process behind the endearing endeavour harks back to a series of well-crafted Hollywood films about team spirit, the low-spirited team and the burnt-out disgraced and exiled coach who motivates the team and galvanises his own dormant spirit into a wide-alert status.

Film: "Kaafila"; Cast: Sunny Deol, Ammtoje Mann; Director: Ammtoje Mann; Rating: * Marooned on a beach after a ship sinks, the stunned survivors of this shipwrecked drama of the damned look around askance wondering what to do next.