Jason Bourne is set 10 years after the previous film and follows the further adventures and spy-giri of the titular hero.
Normally if there is a gap within sequels, I binge watch the older movies to get caught up on the story. I have seen the Bourne trilogy but it’s been a while. For example I re-watched X-men first class and days of future past before Apocalypse came out and so on…
But this time I purposely kept away from the Bourne trilogy. A lot of people today will not remember anything in those films. I wanted to see how standalone this film is…

The good news is, you need not see ANY of the previous films at all. The story is very self-contained. Everything that happens makes sense within the context of the film and for new audiences its not confusing (one of the biggest issues with X-men Apocalypse).

Matt Damon is consistent as Bourne, who is no longer memory wiped and confused. He is much more confident as his memory is all back and he is kicking ass left, right and center.
As is expected in these movies, something the CIA does or did in the past runs afoul with Mr. Bourne and then he goes on a rampage to resolve the issue.

The movies pacing is good, acting is decent all around and the score gives the movie a good sense of flow.

Now coming to the negatives of this film.

This film is EXTREMELY clichéd and predictable. The film makers have tried VERY hard to not be condescending to audiences and to not spoon feed them information, but somehow the film is still very predictable.

I went to see this film with a friend who isn’t that well versed with Spy flicks in general, even he kept predicting dialogs before they happened.

Now this might be my personal experience, but I feel movies such as these have a very limited space to play within and to keep the tone and feel consistent, they have to constrict the dialogs and what varieties they can go with. What it means is, they have run out of options and creativity with the scenes and dialogs.
This hurts the film a bit, there are no good twists in the plot and it’s too linear and not very exciting or edge of the seat.

The fans of the series will not be disappointed but there is nothing to put this movie over the top either.

This would be ranked the lowest in the Bourne series. This is NOT counting the terrible, Bourne Legacy. That is the worst film in this franchise.
But kudos to them for not keeping any plot points alive for a sequel. They sort of wrap up this movie within itself.

I wish I could see a team up, Avengers style for Jason Bourne, Ethan hunt and James Bond in a Oceans 11 type spy caper. Now that would set the box office on fire !

Rating : 6.5/10. A decent time at the movies with this above average Spy flick. It’s way better than James Bond and no-where near as fun as Mission Impossible.

Since this week there are SO many bad films in the theaters, like Ghostbusters (ugh) and The critically and generally maligned and big bomb The BFG (who cares anymore!)

I decided to see a movie that’s been on my catalog for a while.

Mr Bachchan’s TE3N.
The film is about 2 kidnappings 8 years apart. Is the original kidnapper back? The Grandfather of the previous victim and the cop assigned to the first case rush to find out…

This movie is a remake of Korean film Montage.
I had seen Montage back in 2013 and this film is barring a few scenes, exactly the same.
The biggest difference is In montage the victim’s Mother was the lead, here it’s the victim’s Grandfather to suit Amitabh Bachchan.

The poster of this film looks strangely like Inception or the recent Dr. Strange. Why is there a road upside down in it? I knew this was a kidnapping drama, but the poster is ‘strange’ none the less!

Over all the film is quite good. It follows all the same beats and plot points of the Korean original with minor tweaks to suit Indian culture.

The highlights are Mr Bachchan’s acting as a grieving grandfather and the Nawazuddin’s portrayal of an ex-cop turned Padri.
I can’t give much point to story OR direction as it’s a remake and it not that hard or innovative to do a scene by scene remake.
The cinematography is very organic, low key and realistic.
The pacing is bit slow but it’s the intrigue of the who is the kidnapper and what’s going on.
spoilers Aside, the movie made the plot very clear by the end. The Korean original did a much Worse job of explaining what’s going on. This remake improves on it by some degree.

Overall you can see the Korean original or if you prefer Mr Bachchan, you can see the remake, both have the exact same plot so either is not better or worse than the other. The Indian remake has the added benefit of familiar actors doing a very good job.

Overall Rating : 8.5/10 IF it was an original film. That my rating for Montage.

Final Rating : 7/10 for this film. Minus 1.5 for the remake angle.

P.S : Vidya Balan looks way to chubby (and too cute) to be realistically a police officer.

The new star trek reboot series has had its ups and down, the first one was good, the second one disappointed a lot of people, so how does this new film compare?

When this movie’s trailer had come to the tune of Bestie boy’s sabotage, lot of people had said that this was an Effect of Guardians of the Galaxy and it use of classic tracks, but star trek 2009 also used a bestie boys track and this time they managed to integrate it into the film rather well.

This movie is the closest they have gotten to the spirit of the original Star Trek films without losing its sense of newness and wonder. This movie isn’t as rushed as the 2009’s film and definitely not as clichéd or random as the previous ‘Into Darkness’.
This is actually the BEST film in this reboot series.
This movie has gotten everything right.
Right from the emotions, to the story, the plot, the action and the FX. Not the least the Music. The theme from the first reboot movie carries on and the music really takes the movie forward.
Acting and Character wise, star trek has always been important as an ensemble piece, it does have its male lead in Kirk and female lead in Uhura, but this time the writing is VERY solid and everyone in the core team has something important to do.

Without giving away the story or the twists, this movie is about one mission and doesn’t have the helter-skelter feel of the previous two movies.

It’s also obvious by now that Justin Lin the Helmer of Fast and Furious, Fast 5, Furious 6 among others is a far better director than J.J Abrahams and he adds a very fresh and new factor into this movie. It has it absurd moments, but it’s so well-crafted that the movie shines at these moments!

Mild spoilers Ahead:
The sequence with the multiple Kirks on a bike and the part where Sabotage plays in space with explosions all over the place is amazing and some more screen time on that section would have been nice.
As for negatives, I don’t have any. The movie doesn’t leave any chance for nitpicking, it starts strong, follows up rather well and ends with quite a bang.
For Star Trek fans, this movie is going to be quite a ride, maybe new comers to this franchise will get a bit lost in the past lore, but this movie isn’t meant for non fans anyway.

Rating : 8.5/10

P.S: They added Nimoy’s passing into the script and made a small plot point as well. That’s very creative writing while paying homage to the Character inside the movies as well. It’s a great send off for the older Spock.

Sultan Movie Review :
It took me a few days to get over the trauma of seeing Great Grand Masti. But Finally managed to catch salman's latest

It is said that critics don’t like salman movies, but keeping the actor apart from the characters he plays, his movies are not bad. The last few were pretty good.

This one is his best one yet. Sultan is the closest we have come to a desi Rocky type movie, complete with training montages, life threatening injuries and love interest, this is a sports movie done right.

From the opening scene of Salman designed for whistles and claps, this movie keeps chugging along till it actually gets good in the second half. The acting is decent all throughout, with Salman taking a bit of effort to stay in character and not behave like his usual self. Could another actor have done a better job ? probably, but this was sallu’s starring vehicle and he did as much justice to the role as he could.

Being a yash raj film, this has quite a few songs which slow the movie down and 2 of them look VERY out of place. The second half gets really interesting, its gritty but it could have gone further.
The music and theme song was decent and if someone hasn’t seen Rocky type movies, this formula will work better on them.
Overall a decent film, not overly melodramatic or cheesy.

Rating 7/10. Sports fans would love this, apart from the obvious Sallu fans.

Great Grand Masti Review : Or How I got tortured in the name of film reviews.

Need I say?
This movie is terrible.
It’s horrible.
Its misogynistic and nightmare inducing.
But it’s still better than Mastizaade & Kya Kool hain hum 3 !!!!

This movie can be best described as a relic from the 90’s. Made by Indra Kumar, the plot is some nonsense about a haunted bungalow and 3 dudes wanting to do great grand masti there. Who goes to village to do masti ? they never heard of khap panchayats ?

As expected, the acting is suitably horrible, the actors look like they are regretting ever doing Masti. But as this is Vivek Oberoi’s ONLY way to earn a pay check, they agreed to do it!

Having said that, the first 1 hour of the film is somewhat enjoyable, its pathetic jokes, but the comradery of the trio makes it a bit funny. But once the ghost is introduced, this film goes downhill fast and never recovers.
Songs are bad, the story is crap, the dialogs are left from B-Grade 90’s movies. The three wives and the other characters are caricatures and simply not funny.
All in all, it’s of expected quality.

Rating: 4/10. Fan of such stupidity might enjoy it.
Others, just avoid big time and Play Pokemon Go :)

This movie is going to get bad critical reviews!
The previous movie which came out in 1996 wasn’t well reviewed either, but it was dumb, fun and eye popping back in the day. Its also one of my FAVORITE movies of ALL times. I must have seen it more than 20 times.

This new sequel takes places 20 years after the original and the aliens are back! It’s up to David levinson played by Jeff Goldblum and team to save the day – again.

This movie majorly suffers from Transformer-itis, with a good measure of Blow up the Queen to kill all drones syndrome thrown in for good measure. So is this movie terrible and unwatchable?

Not exactly, there’s good and bad.

Let’s start with the good parts.

It’s great to see quite a bit of the old cast coming back. Former president President Whitmore played by Bill Pullman is back. So is previously mentioned David and his Jewish Father. New cast members included Dylan Heller who is Will smith’s character’s kid from the previous movie. It’s good to see them all together again. The plot moves along swiftly and the movie doesn’t take too much to pick up and get going. The music is fine, the action is passable and the FX is great.
Also, the film makers are self aware and they know what kind of movie they are making, thats one good thing about the film. It sometimes DOESN'T fall for the cliche. But only at times!
Now comes the problematic part. Since the last 20 years visual FX has gotten a LOT easier. So easy, that every director over does it these days. From the new Terminator to Star Wars to this movie, the FX seem TOO much. There is too much going on in the screen, the eye can’t focus on any one cool thing. There is 100s of cool things happening on screen! This is where the direction falters. It’s the film makers job to direct the eye to something meaningful, rather than have everything blowing up and thrown at your face all at once. This is Michael bay’s transformers formulae and this film also suffers from it!
Then comes the rather hack job of editing. The first movie was 2 and a half hours long and had great character and human moments in-between all the spectacle. This one is rushed, it feels rushed. There is NO build-up to the alien’s arrival. The build-up was the BEST part of the first movie, the anticipation of seeing those shadows covering those cities. They got rid of all of that awesomeness.
There is a sudden school bus full of children thrown in good measure, the whole kids plot line comes out of NO WHERE and it feels like their introductions were left on the editing floor.
There is no time to think in between the action, it’s all rushed and going at break neck speeds. They should have spaced out this movie by at least 15 more minutes.
The plot and story is absurd but that is one thing I was expecting all along. They do try to build more mythology about the aliens and their intergalactic war. But it all seems a bit Star Wars-ish.
Some actions or things that happen don’t follow logical choices but that is fine, given it’s a big dumb movie.

I didn’t hate this film, it kept me entertained, but it is far from the brilliant original film.

Fans of the first part will like it, new-comers to the genre might not get it.

Rating : 6/10 . See if you like Sci-Fi, but go in with low expectations and it will be fine!
P.S: They left the door open for the next part and I doubt it going to be made…

Udta Punjab.
This movie is India’s answer to Crash. Like other ensemble piece such as ‘Mumbai meri jaan’, this film follows the story of 3 or 4 main characters and how their lives are affected by the drug problem in Punjab.
Let’s start with the positives first, this is a VERY powerful film…
The message in the film is very definitely anti-drug and it does not in any way endorse the use of drugs. But it manages to send this message without being preachy or overly morose. There are a lot of tragic-comedy scenes in the film and it also definitely has a VERY dark sense of humour at times.
The first half is very well paced and fast moving. The story is involving and engaging, but then the second half slows down and the movie drags on for a while before coming to its inevitable conclusion. Despite the story, the characters are at times half-baked and clichéd and only a few times do they manage to be deep and rewarding.
Breaking Bad this is not, when it comes to character development.
Coming to the acting, Shahid Kapoor straight out rips off ben kingsley’s performance in Iron man 3 as the British actor Trevor. His mannerisms, facial expressions, hand movements are all reminiscent of that character. Maybe the films makers told him to do so, I don’t really know. His acting is not bad at all, it’s just a bit of a rip-off. But despite this, he is able to portray a man gone down the drain who slowly gets back his mojo (he literally says he got back his mojo).
Kareena Kapoor-Khan’s character is reminiscent of her roles in Chameli and Dev. She does her role well without taking us out of the movie. She actually looks more attractive without the glitzy makeup of her normal roles. She also plays a more central role than the trailers would indicate.
Alia Bhatt does a tremendous job of playing a daily wage earning laborer. Her makeup shows her sun damaged skin and her acting shows her damaged soul. Despite her young age, she is an actress who has true range in this often shallow industry and is not afraid to look un-herione like. she is not just de-glam in this film; she is made to look like a normal laborer. Her face and features are of-course too pretty to completely hide her beauty, but that is also used a plot point and it the later revelation of her character's origin works well and rounds off her character quite well.
All other roles are done well enough by the actors and the secondary characters are believable, but their Punjabi dialog is hard to follow for those who don’t know the language.
The film also has a surprisingly high gore value, especially towards the end. It’s very brutal and realistic. It’s a little surprising to see such a gory movie in Bollywood, but it’s a welcome change from so called action movie who don’t have the guts to show gore at all.
Now the bad parts, not that there are many of them…
The editing is a bit choppy at times, characters teleport from place to place (or so it seems because of the editing). As mentioned before, the pacing of the second half gets slow, especially a lot of footage is covered over one night’s incidents and it almost felt like the movie will end within the span of that night (like NH10). Thankfully the next morning dawns and the movie catches is pace again.
Other than this… the movie is quite well made.
Now let’s come to the reason this movie has gotten infamous. The swearing and the drug abuse depicted, as well as the story which deals with the narco-political angle (a word used often in the movie itself).
The swearing is quite natural, though normally Bollywood films don’t depict this vulgar reality of life. People swear and they swear OFTEN. I would go so far as to say, they didn’t show enough swearing! People in real life,swear more often to express their anger, frustrations and disappointment.
As for the plot of drug abuse… Most people are not aware of the drug problem in the country. If there is any truth and factual basis behind the story, there is little wonder why the politicians will be rattled by this exposure of something, which most of the aam junta are unaware of.
Overall, as a film, it has its flaws, it’s not the best film ever made, but it’s a VERY important film.
People need to go and watch this film. Despite it being pirated before release, I hope people go to the theatres and see the film on the big screen like it was meant to be seen.
Rating : I would give this film a 6.5/10 just on the film making alone. But adding extra 2 points for the sensitive but crucial subject matter and the sheer guts of the filmmakers to make such a film.
Final Rating: 8.5/10.

The Conjuring 2 Movie Review :
Based on the real life events in Enfield, England. 1977. The Conjuring 2 Follows the further adventures and investigations of the Warrens.
BUT the thing is… This isn’t a typical horror film.
Spoilers:
NO ONE dies during the course of the movie! Huge surprise, no one died in the previous Conjuring movie too.
The scares are genuine, the acting is good and this movie has surprisingly involving humane moment sprinkled throughout its runtime.
This movie, just like the previous part is not by the numbers.
Sure the movie has its share of clichés and typical jump scare moments, but the difference between this and other low grade horror films is that they actually SUCCEED in scaring you, making you feel for the characters and making you care for them and how the climax takes shape.
Overall it’s more of an investigative adventure than a just horror film.
The acting by the two leads and then four children is VERY solid and you start to believe them as real people.
The direction by James Wan of Fast 7 & SAW fame is meticulous and perfect. The music is adequate without being overbearing. All in all, a well put together film.
Fans of the horror genre who liked the previous movie will njoy this one a lot.
Rating: 7.5/10. Must watch for horror fans.
P.S : Wait for the end credits where the play the REAL tape of the incidents in the movie. This audio was scarier than anything in the movie. Because this audio is REAL.

Warcraft Movie Review:

I REALLY wanted to like this movie! I REALLY did, but from the first trailers, it seemed a bit iffy…

This movie has been critically panned almost worldwide and with good reason too.
I don’t base my views on other critics, but there are some major problems with this film.
The basic one is that… this film is a prequel which we had no need for! The entire events of this film should have been the first 15 minutes of the film.

Let’s go step by step.

First off, the story and setting is confusing to new audiences and unlike LOTR and Star Wars, the film makers don’t manage the world building effortlessly. I found myself a bit lost during the first 30 mins or so. I still can’t name the cities or the main characters.
The movie starts with them, going from place to place, confusing the audience and killing any kind of anticipation of the orc raids. Plus, the orc raids are not shown at all, we can’t even connect to the peril they pose!

Then comes the story itself. It’s a bit weak, despite this huge premise, the story falls flat.
The acting is amateurish at best and despite the effort taken in costume and sets, the scenes all look a bit fake and not realistic (Like LOTR – Made in 2001!)

Paula Patton plays an attractive half human, half orc character. But how did she come to be? it’s not made clear, since it seems human have never encountered orcs before!
Who were the other species in the movies? Dwarfs, elves? They have nothing to do, they are not explained properly or used in any impactful sort of way.
Characterization is mostly improvised through dialog and we come to understand important character moments because someone says it out loud in dialog…

The writing of the film is to blame for all these issues!
Then comes the pacing of the film. This film has very uneven narrative, sometimes things happen fast, sometimes it get too slow. Some of the plot points are completely confusing and seem like it was written by a 6-year-old trying to fix the script!
For example, a book important to the plot is conveniently located via ghost/ convenient plot point of some ancient power, which leads to no great revelation, just more confusion!
The ending has no build up, the villain and his twist is out of the blue and seemed forced and clichéd.

Now finally I come to the good parts of the film.
Some action sequences are decent. The visual FX is good at times, VERY video gamey at times.
Overall I have nothing too good to say about this film. Despite how much effort, hard work and time it went into making this film, it’s quite a disaster.
Duncan Jones the director has made some GREAT films in the past, but his step into big budget action adventure is more of a misstep than a success.
This entire movie sets up for sequels which we are not going to get… so it’s pointless seeing this film!

Rating: 5.5/10
(Would have given it 3.5, but out of respect for the hard work needed to make such a film, giving it 2 points more)

Verdict: Avoid! Unless you are HUGE world of Warcraft fan and this movie makes 100% sense to you!