Review of Ishkq in Paris

Release date – 24'th May 2013

One Word which describes the film – Mediocre

Best  Dialogue – 'Pyar na keh kar ata hai , na bata kar jata hai .'

Genre – Romance

Story -Prem Raj ,Preity Zinta

Music – Sajid-Wajid

Producer - Preity Zinta , Neelu Zinta

Direction - Prem Raj

Cast – Preity Zinta , Rhehan Malliek , Isabelle Adjani

Budget - 10-12 crores (approximately) 

Before Sunrise (1995)  is a story of a young American and  a young French woman, who meet on a train and disembark in Vienna ,where they spend the night walking around the city and getting to know each other.

After 18 years Preity Zinta and Prem Raj come with a similar story where two strangers meet on a train from Rome to Paris and while chatting on board decide to spend an evening together in Paris , but with a commitment that afterwards they will never meet . 

Prem Raj who made his debut with Main Aurr Mrs Khanna has once again failed to click with the audience. I think in future he should let some expert writer write the story and just focus on the direction.

Preity Zinta was last seen in a small role in   Heroes (2008) . At 38 ,she has unsuccessfully  tried to relive the young and bubbly characters she played in  Dil Chahta Hai (2001) and  Salaam Namaste (2005) .

Rhehan who became popular in the role of Dr. Rahul Mehra in the tele-series Sanjivani  ,looked good  but the story was so simple that his role had no scope of giving any memorable performance.

Salman Khan 's dance no. ' Kudiye di Kurti ' was totally wasted as not even Salman's fans dared to watch this film in theaters .He must have done it to return the favor when Preity did an item no. in his film Main aur Mrs. Khanna.
  
Chunkey Pandey and Shekhar Kapoor in their 1 min roles were totally forgettable.

Though the film has flopped at the box office the producers won't make much loss as Colors has bought the film's satellite rights .
In a line with so many good romantic Hollywood and Bollywood films to choose from it's a waste of time to watch this average romance.
Not worth spending money on. Can be seen when it's aired on TV .

Rank - 19 (Out of the 28 films I have seen in 2013)

Review of Aurangzeb

Release date – 17'th May 2013

One Line which describes the film –  '50 Shades of Grey '

Best  Dialogue – 
" Kingship knows no kinship, Baadshahhat bhaichare ko nahi dekhti. "

Genre – Crime / Thriller 

Music – Amartya Rahut,  Vipin Mishra

Producer - Aditya Chopra

Screenplay & Direction - Atul Sabharwal

Cast – Rishi Kapoor , Arjun Kapoor , Prithviraj Sukumaran ,Sashaa Agha

Budget - 25 crores

The film is about the fight for money and power between policemen and a real estate business tycoon .

In  just his second film Arjun Kapoor gets to play a double role .With his body language, expressions and dialogue delivery he manages to show the difference in nature between the two characters .   

Prithviraj who had a bad debut in Aiyaa gets to play the role of ACP who is confused between the ideologies of his corrupt uncle and honest father .    

Rishi Kapoor , as the head of the family of policemen who are actually into business of collection has given an excellent performance .The shrewdness and cold heartedness of his character matches that of Agneepath's Rauf Lala .

Sasha , daughter of Salma Agha sizzles in her short role. With her dare to bare attitude , hourglass figure and vibrant voice (she has even sung the song Barbaadiyan ) she manages to fit among the all male cast .

Jackie Shroff , Amrita Singh , Anupam Kher and Tanvi Azmi have short but pivot  roles and manage to outshine each other .

In a line , Aurangzeb is a dark film, everyone has some hidden agenda but the story has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing till the end ,about the fate of the characters .
Good one time theater watch.
Rank - 10 (Out of the 28 films I have seen in 2013)

Review of Gippi

Release date – 10'th May 2013

 

One Line which describes the film – Not enough drama !

Best  Dialogue – 

"Hamen lagta hai hum mote hai , ugly hai ,idiot hai aur baaki sab hamse better hai , but aisa kuch nahi hai .We are all the same "

Genre – Teen Drama   

Music – Vishal–Shekhar

Producer - Karan Johar

Story, Screenplay &Direction -Sonam Nair

Cast – Riya Vij , Taaha Shah , Divya Dutta , Jayati Modi

Budget - 6-7 crores

The film is about  an overweight 14-year-old girl who lives with her divorced mother and brother and is a big fan of Shammi Kapoor's songs. She meets an older boy at her father's engagement ceremony and is attracted to him .

The story was so simple that we felt like we were watching a TV serial . We were not bored but we kept expecting more drama ,more chemistry between the teenagers which never came.    

Lalit Modi’s niece Jayati  plays the role of the perfect rich beautiful girl who looks down at Gippi and her friends . 
The lead actors have given a good performance ,especially in the scenes between the mother and daughter, but most of the  girls had  such strong accents that it looked as if they had come straight from Hollywood.

There are so many shows on teenagers on  Channel V   Suvreen Guggal – Topper Of The Year ,  Dil Dosti Dance , The Buddy Project that the film doesn't offer anything we haven't seen.

In a line even though the film is a teenage drama , some awkward scenes will make the parents think twice before watching it with their teenage children .
Time-pass for Teenagers . Avoidable

Rank- 29 (Out of the 33 films I have seen in 2013)

Review of Go Goa Gone

Release date –  10'th May  2013

One Line which describes the film – 
The Comedy of Errors

Best  Dialogue – 
'Ye India main bhoot - pret hote hai , Zombies kaha se aa gaye?'
'Globalisation , Ye phirangio ne waat laga di '

Genre – Zombie/Comedy
   

Music – Sachin-Jigar

Producer -  Saif Ali Khan ,Dinesh Vijan ,Sunil Lulla

Story & Direction - Raj Nidimoru , Krishna D.K.

Cast – Saif Ali Khan , Kunal Khemu , Anand Tiwari , Puja Gupta

Budget – 20 crores (approximately)

Raj and D.K. are engineers turned film-makers whose last film Shor in the City was one of the most acclaimed films of 2011 that earned terrific reviews from almost every critic in the country.

This time they have come up with a zom-com film which even when it makes you laugh ,gives a strong message that smoking ,drugs and alcohol kill.
The story revolves around three friends Kunal Khemu, the guy who flirts with any woman /zombie,  Vir Das  who updates every detail of his life on Facebook and wants to fall in love and the hard working, simple Anand Tewari who is constantly financially exploited by his friends. The trio go to a rave party organised by the Russian mafia in an island off the shore of Goa and their dark adventure begins. 

Most of the first half of the film is hilarious and even though the second half is predictable the film doesn't bore. 

Kunal Khemu, (who has even written  the dialogues along with Raja Sen  ) has given a wonderful performance and easily outshines Veer Das and Anand Tewari . 

Pooja Gupta adds to the glamour quotient in the film. She represents the female generation who party hard but are responsible and can take care of themselves too.

Saif Ali's accented, blonde haired, heavily-tattooed look may not appeal to the audience in the promos but with his perfect comic timing he manages to leave an impact.

The songs of the film ‘Slowly slowly’ , ‘Khoon choos le’ and   ‘Babaji ki booty’ have already become chart busters and will be played in discs for months.

In the film the characters use this line several times 'What do you know,What have you learnt?' and what I learnt after 2 hours is that 'Drugs turn you into Zombies.'

In a line even if the zombie element is not as good as shown in Hollywood films  Zombieland  or Shaun of the Dead the chemistry between the three friends is what makes this film entertaining and paisa wasool.'
Must watch for the younger generation addicted to Facebook ,Twitter or Whatsapp .
Good one time theater watch.

Rank - 5 (Out of the 26 films I have seen in 2013)

Review of Shootout at Wadala

Release date – 3'rd May 2013 

One Word which describes the film – Triple A

Best  Dialogue – 

' Baadshah ki gali mein aake uska pata nahin poochhte. Ghulamo ke jhuke hue sar khud ba khud raasta bata dete hain.'

Genre – Action / Crime
 
Story - Sanjay Gupta , Hussain Zaidi ( Dongri to Dubai )

Music – Anu Malik , Mustafa Zahid , Anand Raj Anand , Nadeem Saifi , Anjjan Meet

Producer -  Sanjay Gupta , Anuradha Gupta ,Ekta Kapoor , Shobha Kapoor

Direction - Sanjay Gupta

Cast - John Abraham , Kangna Ranaut , Anil Kapoor , Tusshar Kapoor , Sonu Sood , Manoj Bajpai , Mahesh Manjrekar , Ronit Roy

Budget – 40 crores (approximately)

Sanjay Gupta is known for his dark thrillers { Kaante (2002),Musafir (2004) ,  Zinda (2005) } but this time he has come up with a film so full of violence , cuss words and sex that it can be considered as Bollywood's answer to XXX Films.

The film is based on the first ever police encounter and outlines the gang wars as it culminates into a three-way epic face-off between the gangsters,  Manya Surve , Haskar brothers and Mumbai police.

Sanjay Gupta who has returned to direction after 8 years has left no stone unturned to make this film a commercial hit. 
The main strength of the film is it's powerful dialogues written by Milan Zaveri . Every character has a couple of lines which make the audience whistle and clap for them .

John Abraham, as the main protagonist of the film gets the best dialogues , best action sequences and the chance to romance the sole heroine in the film Kangana Ranaut . Though in the start his dialogue delivery is flat but as he works on building his body in the prison there is also some improvement in his acting. So there are actually claps from the audience when he says 'haddi se lekar kanoon tak, sab todta hoon' 

Manoj Bajpai and Sonu Sood are perfect for the role of  Haskar brothers. They represent style and power with hidden cruelity which is shown when they kill another gangster with a fruit juicer.

Anil Kapoor as the police officer  who wants to get the city rid of gangsters has given an action  packed performance .He looks fit and smart and makes us wish there were more police officers like him in real life.

Sanjay Gupta's passion for perfection can be seen when he spends over Rs 2 crores only on shooting one sequence featuring an old BEST bus from the 70s. “The sequence would have cost us under under a crore, but we had to get a vintage bus which was not available and even when we managed to get one, it wasn’t allowed to enter Mumbai city. Because of that we had to shoot the sequence outside the city, which tripled our budget and we ended up spending more than Rs 2.6 crore,” said Gupta in an interview.

There are  three  item songs, where  Sunny Leone , Priyanka Chopra and Sophie Choudhry  seem to compete with each other in showing the maximum cleavage and doing the most provocative steps.

In a  line if you are over 18 and like gangster flicks there is no reason for you to avoid this film.
Good one time theater watch .
Rank- 9 (out of the 26 films I have seen in 2013)

Review of Bombay Talkies

Release date – 3'rd May 2013

One Word which describes the film – Average

Best  Dialogue – 'Har baat ko batane ka sahi samay hota hai'

Genre – Anthology of 4 short films  

Music – Amit Trivedi

Producer -  Viacom 18 Motion Pictures , Ashi Dua 

Direction - Anurag Kashyap , Dibakar Banerjee , Zoya Akhtar

Karan Johar

Cast -Amitabh Bachchan , Rani Mukerji , Katrina Kaif ,Randeep Hooda

Nawazuddin Siddiqui , Saqib Saleem ,Ranvir Shorey ,
Vineet Kumar Singh

Budget – 6 Crores

The film started with the melodious song 'Sau sau baras ka hua Yeh khiladi na budha hua.' playing in the background . 

Karan Johar's story was totally different from his usual candy-floss romances and larger than life sets. Here we  had a  freckled face Rani Mukherji dealing with the complexities in her married life. To express the underlying tension between characters, instead of dialogues Karan has used old classics 'Lag ja gale' and 'Ajeeb dastaan hai ye'.

Dibakar Banerjee's story is  about a failed actor who while watching a film shoot gets a chance  to do a small role  in it. There is a  scene where Nawaz  practices Big B’s famous dialogues for the role before he realizes that his character just had to say one word 'A' . After the initial  disappointment he tries saying the one word in different ways and styles . Nawazuddin is a talented actor and he should continue exploring new fields rather than working in dumb films like Aatma .


Zoya Akhtar 's story is about a young boy who wants to be a dancer like 'Sheila'  but plays football because his father wants him to. This story is kind of incomplete as there is confusion on whether Zoya wants to focus on the boy's feminism or his dancing skills .

Anurag Kashyap's story was the best of the lot. Unlike his other complex  films Black Friday (2004), Gulaal (2009), and Gangs of Wasseypur  this story was about a man from Allahabad who comes to Mumbai to fulfill his ailing father’s last wish. The highlight of the film is the hero Vineet who has given a range of expressions in his 20 min role. 

The weakest part of the film was the "Apna Bombay Talkies" song which had a number of film stars but was neither melodious nor a viewing pleasure.

In a line though the film is a tribute to 100 years of cinema, all the four stories  are far off  from epic  films like Mother India (1957)  Guide (1966) , Anand (1971) ,Deewar & Sholay (1975) ,Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981) ,  Maine Pyar Kiya (1989) ,Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) etc which were universally loved  and  appreciated .
Time Pass .

Rank - 10 (Out of the 26 films I have seen in 2013)