Don 2

My rating: 2 stars out of 5.
Starring: Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Boman Irani, Kunal Kapoor, Lara Dutta

The movie continues what was started eons back by Amitabh Bachchan and more recently by SRK himself.
The underworld wants to out Don as he is a threat to their business. To save himself and make money in addition, he chalks a mega plan which primarily includes looting a bank's vault and stealing the money printing tablets. The movie has a lot of twists and turns which are revealed with time. For this plan to be successful, he takes the help of his one-time-enemy, Vardhan (Boman Irani).
As there is nothing in the movie which will keep you on the edge of your seats, I can go on with spoilers. But for all you SRK fans, I will refrain from doing so. The movie takes the cake for direction and stunts but lacks very sadly in dialogues, which range from 'Don?''haan, autograph matt lena please' to "tumhare aur arjun ke beech mei kya chal raha hai". Too cheesy for the taste buds. Also, SRK didn't do justice to the role given to him. He was too caught up in being G.One and Suri Saab from Rab ne bana di jodi. He should stick to the lover-boy roles. He does them well, but action hero... not so much. Maybe wait for torrent for this one.

Manorama-Six feet under

My rating: 4 stars Starring: Abhay Deol, Raima Sen, Gul Panag, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Sarika Satyaveer Singh Randhawa (Abhay Deol) is a simpleton, down-on-his-luck government employee and a wanna-be writer. His one and only creation is a book titled Manorama which is a thriller and barely sold any copies. He is visited by Sarika (Manorama) in the middle of one night, who claims to be the wife of politician (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and suspects him of cheating her. She had read the book, thus thinks that he can spy, offers Satyaveer money to spy on her husband. In need of cash, Satyaveer accepts the offer. Here begins a tortuous path, which leads him to Manorama's roommate Sheetal (Raima Sen) and Minister P.P. Rathore (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) where nothing is what he believed. The movie had me spell-bound for the entirety of 138min of its run. It had subtle hints all along which all made sense by the end of it and one can only marvel at the expertise with which it was all spun together. The dialogues are exceptional and fit well with the characters, which in turn were very realistic and appropriately made less glamorous. It is off-beat and thankfully unconventional. What I loved most about this movie is the way the characters are: so very in touch with reality, the way people actually are. A very welcome respite for everyone who is tired of watching the same old over and over. I will in fact go far enough to say that it is must watch for each and everyone who enjoys a good cinema

Haunted 3D

My rating: 2 and a half stars.
Starring: Twinkle Bajpai, Mimoh Chakraborty, Achint Kaur and Arif Zakaria.

For all those who did venture to risk watching 1920, and were rewarded should avoid this movie at all costs. This movie is a remake of 1920 which was in turn remake of The Exorcist.
Rehan (Mimoh Chakraborty) moves into a new bungalow which he later finds out to be haunted by not one but two ghosts, one of a girl named Meera (Twinkle Bajpai) and her pervert piano teacher Aiyyer (Arif Zakaria). The story is that this girl existed sometime in 1930s and lived in that house. Her piano teacher had a bad eye on her and one day, finding the opportunity, he forcefully tries to take her virture, but... wait for it... the girl kills the bad guy. And if that wasn’t enough, the guy haunted her and his evil soul raped her, repeatedly. Now the story comes back on track and girl commits suicide. The “hero” (Rehan) finds this all by... wait for it... time travel, through... playing what else but the piano. As all the protagonists are prone to “rescue-complex”, he tries to save the girl’s soul in 1930 which turns into a whole lot of twists and turns with too many complications about the whole soul thingys.
I would like to add a note to all who wish to watch it, please take it in good stride. This movie has the potential to leave the audience in stitches as I was rendered by the end.

No Strings Attached

My rating: 2 stars out of 5
Starring Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Kline.
This movie can be summed up in one word as “borrringgg”.
It is about a girl Emma (Natalie Portman) who is emotion-less. She doesn’t want to feel sorrow, grief, sadness and because of that she never has a serious relationship. Adam (Ashton Kutcher) is a happy guy though he doesn’t have much to be happy about. (Its the same character Kutcher plays in all in rom-coms). They meet and become friends-with-benefits. Adam starts having feelings for Emma but they are not reciprocated and thus they end their relationship. Not much to anyone’s surprise, they reconcile and try to give commitment a shot.
Natalie Portman was a disappointing factor in the movie. She couldn’t carry out the role given to her. Perhaps if it had been assigned to any other academy non-winning actress, it would have been more believable. Ashton Kutcher is always the same. I think that after doing almost all movies on the same theme, he has pretty much grasped the role. The movie suffered from a dearth of dialogs and background score. It might as well have been a silent movie for all I care. There were too many not required characters and scenes which, if scraped, would have made it more likable. And I simply don’t understand why people feel that use of vulgarity makes anything appealing? In all fairness the movie did have a few moments which made me smile but there is nothing that a good script cannot kill.

No One Killed Jessica

Starring: Myra Karn, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Rani Mukherjee and Vidya Balan.

My rating: three and a half stars.

The movie is about an NDTV correspondent, Meera (Rani Mukherjee), who describes the Jessica Lal murder case, who was murdered by Manu Sharma, a politician’s son. It starts with the way the family and friends were affected by it and goes on to show how the almighty politicians took over and turned the case around in their favour. The second half of the movie tells the role of the media in bringing justice to the victim and family by creating a nation-wide wave of awareness about justice declined.

It was a good movie where the concept was concerned. Even the cinematography was good to some extent but the movie had its short-falls. The whole i-am-a-tough-girl-who-swears thing didn’t work out for Rani. There wasn’t an ease and a flow with which she swore. The media was hyped more than what was warranted by the plot which reduced the charm of Indianism. All in all, a one time watch.