Joker… Always has been a fascinating character. Made more fascinating by the likes of Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger whose performance made people sit up and take notice. Unfortunately, Jared Leto’s Joker was a huge let down. With such a long list of memorable performances, I was curious what Joaquin Phoenix would bring to the role.
Well after seeing this film, all I can say is… This dude DESERVES an Oscar for his acting.
Let’s get to the film.
Story/Plot:
The film is a bit sparse on the story since this is more of a character piece showing the breaking down of a disturbed man into insanity. But that’s not a bad thing. This film doesn’t have huge action set pieces, or typical superhero / comic book film type world ending scenarios. Do not go in expecting a big bombastic actioner. This film quietly portrays the lead character heading into the mouth of madness with no one around him giving a damn.

Direction & Cinematography:
Todd Phillips has directed films such as Road trip, Oldschool, The Hangover trilogy and (My favourite) Starsky and Hutch etc. is a good enough director by Hollywood terms but he has managed to surpass himself this time. In Joker he has used silence and music as a tool to show the state of mind of the lead character as well as the chaos in the world around him. With his competent direction we slowly see Gotham city lose its collective heads in the background of this fellow Arthur Fleck slowly go mad.
The cinematography of this film is exquisite. Every frame is a like a poster waiting to be framed. The pathos of Arthur Fleck and his suffering is a canvas for the way the camera captures every frame. I like films which are not shaky cam, film WELL, not tiled in angles all over the place and this film looks old school (pun not intended). This film looks like it was filmed in the 1980s.

Acting:
Pheonix is already quite a strange dude and this film has to be his crowning glory. He has given many masterful performances in films such as the Gladiator, Her, The Master (he he) But Joker is his best acting performance until date. It really feels like he is Arthur Fleck. Not an actor playing the role. I will be surprised if he doesn’t win an Oscar for this performance.

Overall:
This film is DARK and depressing. It’s a MUST WATCH for true fans of the Joker character. The film’s plot elements deal with a lot of relevant topics. Mass vigilantism, crumbling of government and infrastructure etc. So the film hits REALLY hard at times. No wonder the people in USA are scared that this film will give rise to a new type of Joker crimes/shootouts/killings. The film by its end can shake up even the most stone hearted of viewers.
Not to mention this HAS TO be a lead up to the new BATMAN reboot. Without any spoilers, this film if NOT connected to the upcoming film is a HUGE lost opportunity for the WB DC film world. Any Batman film which follows this one will be beyond Epic. If I get the news that the Robert Pattinson film is a follow-up to this one, color me EXCITED!

Rating : 10/10. A Must watch for fans of JOKER, Good character study films and Great cinema in general. This is what cinema is all about. It’s there to show us something, which will shake us to the core and force us to question our own selves and sanity. That’s great cinema.
What are you waiting for? Just go SEE the damn film already!

Released in 2017, IT was a brilliant film. However, due to deluge of new films and shows, I barely remembered anything about it. Not to mention it’s very easy to mentally mix up stranger things and IT, especially since they share 1 cast member in a lead role.

Therefore, before seeing part 2 of IT, I had to re-watch the first part and BOY am I glad I did so!
IT Chapter 2 starts off with the re-emergence of Pennywise the clown after a gap of 27 years. The 13 year children in the first part are now all grownup and must come back to Derry to face the clown.
The first thing that really good about the film is the casting. Every adult version of the child actors look PERFECT and there is no break in believability. They look like they grew up and its completely believable.
Part 1 was great due to the amazing acting and performances by the child cast and fortunately, this film doesn’t lose anything despite adults now leading the film. The 1990 version suffered from an issue of the adults being REALLY boring. Not the case this time. The thing I was dreading the most was how much the adult actors will be able to emulate their child versions and they have gotten it done PERFECTLY.
Then there is Pennywise the clown. He is the villain most horror movie villains wish they were… He is scary, menacing and the stuff of nightmares. They haven’t overdone his role for this part despite the huge positive reception of his character in the first part. The thing with such popularity is that the producers try to overdo it and the villain becomes a joke (Kylo Ren anyone?). but Pennywise comes in seldom but when he does, he manages to scare the on screen characters and real life audiences at the same time.

The film itself is VERY plot heavy and there is a LOT of things that happen. This is not your quick one and half hour typical jump scare fest. The film runs for almost two hour and 40 minutes and there is a LOT going on. If you have not seen the first part in a while or at all, it’s a good idea to see that. Its available on Netflix. Without remembering details from the first part its sort of difficult to understand what’s going on and when in this one.

This was a 5 hour film that’s been split into two halves so it makes sense to be very closely connected to its prequel.

As for the book adaptation, this part shows/references a LOT of things that happened in the book version and not in the first part but we assume they took place somewhere in the background. So for people who haven’t read the book (most people I assume) the things they show sometimes can be a bit confusing, references like ‘beep beep’ make much more sense to the book reader. In a way you can say that they have added in lots of easter eggs for the hard core crowd also.

The ending is a bit drawn out and they went the Return of the King route with multiple false endings to give it a sense of grandeur and it’s the right decision for this story. This is not just a horror film, it’s a coming of age film, it’s a film about friends and the meaning of life and how things change. So that sort of thing does take some time to wrap up.


Rating: A solid 8/10. VERY good sequel to the first part. Combined with Part 1, this becomes the best-adapted Stephen King novel until date on the big screen.

Action Director Asked: “Sir, how much action do you want in the film?”
Director Sujeet: “Yes.”
Saaho is the next project by Baahubali star Prabhas and curiously, they spend a good amount of time in the opening setting up the scene before Prabhas makes his grand entry.
There is no point in trying to summarizing the plot, as this is a film like Race where the plot twists and turns every few minutes.
Without giving away any spoilers, lets me just start by saying that Saaho as a film is overcooked and way overdone. It’s like the makers tried to cram in 1 full season of content in 1 film. That is not to say the film is bad or unwatchable.
Let’s start with the positives. Prabhas for the first time is doing his own dubbing in Hindi and the difference is remarkable. Despite his south tinged Hindi, his own voice matching his mannerisms perfectly is a treat to watch. If you are a fan of the star Prabhas then you won’t be disappointed with the film. Though the film lacks those clap clap moments, which Baahubali 1 and 2 provided, there is a LOT of Prabhas and his acting. Not to mention him doing lots of fights and action.
Coming to the leading lady of the film, Shraddha Kapoor has not looked this good in any of her Bollywood films. Somehow, the south Indian makeup artists or the filmmaker’s vision of their leading lady really do justice to the actresses. Notice how all heroines look much better in south films than Bollywood ones! She is there in the film to be eye candy and to look REALLY good in the songs. Plot wise she hardly makes any difference and is somewhat similar to Priyanka’s role in Don 2.

Before we get to problems of this film, let me just say that I somehow enjoyed the film despite all the issues which I will list below.
Well, for starters the film needed a better director or an editor. The Editing is SUPER choppy and very very bad especially in the beginning and whenever the film goes into plot explanation mode the editing is very abrupt and does not flow at all.
The Film, as I mentioned before is VERY overdone. It has too many side plots, characters and things happening to keep track of. The first half of the film itself looks like a self-contained film and I would have preferred it if like Baahubali and KGF, they had split this film into 2 parts. Each part could then be of 2 hours each and not seem SO jam-packed. The runtime is 3 hours almost including the interval and by the last 20 minutes it seems to oversaturate the brain and the audience can’t appreciate the stunts and action which come at a relentless pace without any respite or dramatic pause.
The climax especially is insane. It’s like every Fast and Furious films ever made all jammed into a single sequence with a good dose of the Matrix thrown in for the heck of it!

So finally if you can power though a plot, which is made way way over complicated and feels like 4 seasons of Game of thrones thrown in together. Along with high-octane action scenes which are cut together to speed things up and doesn’t pause at the right moment for the audience to take things in, then this film is for you…
I personally liked it, I might have to see it again to fully appreciate the 2 or 3 huge plot twists that they introduce over the course of the film. It will come to Netflix soon, so even if you miss it in theaters, it will be online sometime before the end of the year.

Rating: 6.5 /10. It’s an enjoyable action film but might have been better if split into 2 parts.

I normally don’t review TV shows, but this one is an exception. Directed by Anurag Kashyap and his regular partner in crime Vikramaditya Motwane , Sacred Games is based on a novel by Vikram Chandra. This review is for the Hindi Version. I haven’t yet seen or plan to see the English dubbed audio. Also I haven’t read the novel yet, so I am review the series based on its own merit.

A Note about other reviews/Opinions. It seems most if not all the reviews are just first impressions and the people reviewing and writing about it haven’t actually seen all the episodes instead basing it on the first two episodes. Which is a pathetic way to review a show. Which can only be talked about after seeing all the episodes.

So here is my review based on ALL the 8 episodes of season 1.

Sacred Games is a thriller mixed in with a rise to power story of an ex-Mumbai based gangster. Peppered in are elements of real history of our country. This show is made and designed very much to be an Indian Narcos. Which is great. It’s about time India’s seedy criminal underbelly got the non-Bollywood treatment. So we have lots of swearing of the most filthy kind, nudity of men and women and lots and lots of blood and violence. It’s sort of refreshing to see the extreme portrayal of gang violence which can’t be shown in Bollywood films due to the censor board.
The Acting :
Saif is really good as the Sartaj Singh a sort of down on his luck rookie type Cop. He plays his role with conviction and realism. There is none of the fake Bollywood sheen to his acting; it’s a very raw portrayal of a cop. Probably due to the content, I would say this is saif’s career best performance. It’s nice to see how a main stream star has taken a Web Series role which has none of the usual things that stars do, such as singing, dancing or romancing.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Ganesh Gaitonde is an ex-gangster of the Arun Gawli kind. He has played this sort of role before for Anurag’s own Gangs of Wasseypur. Therefore, this isn’t such a departure for him, but he too plays his role with a strength and conviction which lends credibility to his larger than life gangster persona on screen.
Radhika Apte looks convincing as a RAW agent, but she is also the weakest part of the lead casting. Her acting is fine, but somehow her body language is far less convincing. Maybe real life RAW agents are like this, but as far as other actors are concerned in the show who look like they are REAL people, she stands out as the one with the least convincing portrayal.
Rest of the cast is pretty good and as I mentioned before, everyone manages to be convincing in their acting and you forget these are actors and see the performances as if they are real people. Which is the best thing for a project like this.

The Story :
Since I haven’t read the novel, I don’t know where the story is going. But so far it’s all about cops, ministers, gangsters, religion and a murder mystery. On paper, that’s VERY standard fare. It’s the typical collection you expect from any political thriller.
But what REALLY shines about the story is the parts about how the gangster Ganesh came to be. His origin story as it were. These sections are shown in flashbacks and Nawazuddin Siddiqui is in his element during these scenes. In addition, this part of the story, to me is much more interesting than the thriller that is unfolding during the present time.
Saif’s cop thriller story isn’t bad, but it is a by the numbers thriller. Offering nothing-new story wise. Only great performances make these sections more bearable.

The Direction :
As mentioned before this series is divided in two sections. Saif’s cop story is directed by Vikramaditya and the Gangster story of Nawazuddin Siddiqui is directed by Anurag.
Both the sections have some tonal variation which works well for the series overall as one is a Story narrated by the gangster and the other is of events unfolding in the present day. The tonal shift is not jarring but rather works well somehow.
By far anurag’s directed sections are far better than the sections of saif. It’s more appealing, bloody and in your face. It’s like he got three or four times the budget of his previous films and he went to town with the blood and violence. Rather satisfying to see. Direction and tonally, this is the closest he has come to Martin Scorsese’s style.

Overall :

This is a series produced by Netflix and it is aimed at a worldwide audience. So even though there is some smatterings of a song and dance, some cheesy dialogs, most of it is designed to compete with the rest of the world’s best.
The good news is. This show doesn’t disappoint. It is not artificial. People speak in all sorts of different languages and they haven’t tried to make them speak fake English. Which is a big departure from how previous foreign funded Indian projects have turned out to be.
The action and violence is raw and gritty. It shows how the city of Mumbai / Bombay in the 80s and 90s really looked like without demeaning the city. The dialogs are very realistic.
It remains to be seen where the story leads as this is only the first season. So more on that when season 2 arrives.


Rating :
8/10. If you like, gangster movies and thrillers this series is right up your alley. Fans of the director’s previous works will NOT be disappointed.
This is the content Anurag Kashyap The director of Paanch, Black Friday, Dev D and Gangs of Wasseypur deserves and should be making instead of bull crap like Lust Stories and Bombay Velvet.

Conclusion :

Minor Spoilers. VERY Minor.
The show ends on a cliff-hanger. So be warned. If you want to see something with a satisfying conclusion, odds are… you will have to wait for the better part of this year or the next for the next season. Most of the questions raised in this season are not answered and only a slight hint is given to the rest of the story. I don’t know how many more seasons are planned. But this one does it job. Which is leave you with sort of an anticipation for the next season, not quite satisfied but not left hanging so midway that it will anger you. A perfect job by the makers and Netflix to make sure audiences tune in for the next season.


#intense #dark #gangster #mustWatch #wellActed

Season 2 Review :

I really enjoyed the first season of Sacred Games and was eagerly waiting for the next season despite all the delays and the metoo fakery going on behind the scenes.

Come August 15th and the second season was live at 12am. I didn’t binge it all at once and took 2 days to see all eight episodes. I do this so that my mind doesn’t get overloaded and the review can be more objective.

There are mild spoilers ahead. So be warned.

The first few episodes, nothing really happens. Like serious, they run, they party, nothing moves ahead plot wise. It’s like the writers had enough material for 4 episodes and somehow needed to pad in the rest. That’s not to say its badly made, but it’s all just a wee bit pointless.

Coming to pointless, the most useless character this season is Saif’s Sartaj Singh! Even Gaitonde’s henchmen do more stuff than he does. He is traumatized, he doesn’t get a single thing right till the LAST episode and he is basically a burden on the screenplay.

The Gaitonde section has now lost its epic ‘Scarface’ theme and has moved into silly ‘Agneepath’ territory with smuggling and more stupidity. It’s no longer raw, but he is controlled by the Indian RAW!
Next 4 episodes do move the plot a bit forward with the most interesting character being that of guruji who is part osho, part hitler… Atleast he adds some sort of life into the boring proceedings so far. In the present Sartaj Singh is still being a huge moron…

Thing only heat up in the last two episodes. I liked these two episodes the most as almost the entire payoff of season 1 happens in these episodes and a LOT of unanswered questions get their resolution during this time.

The last episode is not as satisfying as it could have been and let me just say this…
THERE IS NO POINT in seeing this entire season until they assure us that there will be a SEASON 3. Its like seeing Back to the future 2 without any promise of part 3. Or seeing Matrix Reloaded before they confirm the next part. Let’s just say, hold your horses, this season is barely OK as it is and without the next season, it will not give any sort of satisfaction.

Rating: For me season 1 was a solid 8/10. This season is a more tepid 6/10. Not unwatchable but ultimately in the end, it’s pointless to see right now.

More Spoilers, but still MINOR ones.

P.S : The way they sort of wrap up characters in this season 2, I feel they know there will be no season 3. That’s it, the END. Because plot wise everything is sort of wrapped up and answered. But the show ends without any resolution and there is REALLY not enough material for another season. But maybe leaving the show hanging was the plan all along? But trust me, seeing this will only add to the feeling of despair as the ending is REALLY not satisfying in the least bit.

Mission Mangal, a depiction of India impossible achievement. Or is it?

From the trailers I knew since this is an Akshay Kumar vehicle, it will be low on facts and high on emotions. I was wrong. SO wrong. It’s NOT at all that.

It’s a VIDYA Balan vehicle, which is high on emotion with some minor sprinkling of facts.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine film. It is well made, entertaining and if this was a fictional story (like Antariksham 9000 KMPH), I would have given it a high 8 or 9.

However, this film is based on something we (Indians and more specifically ISRO) have already achieved in real life. The film’s main protagonists are Akshay and Vidya and the antagonist is an ex-NASA dude portrayed by Dalip Tahil. So what if such a person doesn’t exist in real life. Doesn’t matter, to make a fun film we need villains! We can’t make circumstances or the limitations of technology the villain. NO SIR, We need a half-firangi type telling us how much better NASA is…

Coming to that point, they portray the Mission Mars team as a bunch of newbies and under dogs who magically through home science make this mission possible. It’s like they decided to spit in the face of ISRO’s very REAL and VERY VERY brilliant scientists who made the impossible, possible.
Sorry, the Mars team never started in a run-down warehouse with noobs as project heads. I don’t mind a bit of fictionalization, but they have made our brilliant scientists look like morons who depend on strange poori bhaji inspiration to plan the mission.

It sounds like I didn’t like the film, which is true, I really disliked the first half!

The film starts with a huge failure to give dramatic tension to the start of the film, but in real life NO SUCH failure occurred! Then the screenplay proceeds to pull everything down, from the budget allocation to role of the ISRO leadership who are shown as a bunch of nitwits who get convinced and cajoled by our Akshay bhai into letting him allocate chandrayaan 2’s budget to his mars mission.
Its ok for R Balki to take the very real achievements of Arunachalam Muruganantham India’s Padman and make him a north Indian with wife issues, but this takes it to a WHOLE new level. This film shows that all of India’s ISRO scientists work on emotion, one happy birthday cake reminds them of why they want to be scientist in the first place and they get inspirations from sailboats and innovate while driving through traffic!

Point being, if you want a light hearted entertainer, this is a great film to watch. It’s high on country wala love but gives very little love to the actual science that got us there. That is not to say the very little technical stuff they DO thrown in as an afterthought is not factually correct. It is. But they pay so much less attention to technical stuff, such as the sensors, the actual propulsion engine on the probe, it all revolves around the characters and their home lives. They never even show the actual building of the probe, the issues faced while manufacturing, coz we have desi scientist who are caught up in their personal drama!

Coming to the desi scientists shown in the film, there are way too many characters and they are not able to play to anyone’s strengths. A LOT of time is wasted showing Vidya Balan’s family with ZERO pay off in the end. How can there be any pay off anyway? It’s about mission to mars, not how the lady managed her household post the mars mission! Rest of the actresses have been given ONE single plot line which go nowhere. This is the problem of focusing on their personal lives rather than their technical ones. Tapsee has an injured soldier as a husband, again adding exactly ZERO to the story. One lady is going through IVF so that they can get that sweet IVF AD cash! Rest of the characters are just as one dimensional! Sonakshi plays a character who wants to goto NASA by filling up a form. HUH? NASA only takes American citizens or Green Card holders! I feel the film makers got confused between getting into NASA and getting into an American college! Sharman Joshi is shown as an over grown man-child who is a virgin, his only defining characteristic is that he is a virgin! They don’t even bother to show HOW he solves his part of the technical challenge of fitting in all the sensors in a single lens! In reality somehow our brilliant minds DID achieve this, why was it so hard to show any of those things?

To me one of the BEST scenes in the film was when Askhay’s character shows pic of how India launched its first rocket, taken on the backs of cycles and bullock carts (its real). APJ Abdul Kalam was the man who made that possible. I clapped in the scene. I wished the entire film was like that. Showing the REAL story of how we got to mars rather than this soppy mess.

Not be the Dalip Tahil here who keeps praising NASA, but the series ‘From Earth to the Moon’ (I know it’s a 12 episode series) was entirely factual based docudrama. But what do we Indians get after we did something EVEN more magnificent than NASA, we get a fictional drama with soppiness, crying, singing and dancing. Something which if the REAL ISRO people see, will slap their head and laugh at stupidity of Bollywood.

That is why I was thoroughly dissatisfied with the first half. The second half has a wee bit more technicality. The ending is very science based and that part of the film, I did like a bit more.
It’s not that I hated the film, I am actually recommending the film because if you haven’t seen the documentaries about how we got to Mars, this film has some sprinkling of facts and is well made soap opera style rendition of the mission to mars. They even have a catchy tune called mangal mangal to get the scientists up and painting (yes… they have to paint their own offices, coz India so poor).
To be honest, by the end I had tears in my eyes. But those tears were not due to something the characters did or said or the great screenplay. But it was when they showed the REAL people who achieved the real thing without any of these emotional gimmicks or silly shortcuts. Heck I teared up by just seeing the documentary on the subject. While I know that a Hindi Bollywood film cannot be a docudrama and be commercially successful, but it can be more technically driven when the subject matter is all about science and our (India’s) brilliance at it.

Rating : 6.5/10. As I said, as a purely Bollywood film its pretty good. Its hilarious, funny and entertaining. The people who had NO CLUE of India’s success in Space (there are many such people) will at least see this film and come to know what we have already achieved in 2013.

Conclusion: I hope someday Indian cinema will make a film about space, which will inspire young people watching it, to become a scientist someday. All this film can hope to achieve (other than box office money) is to inspire filmmakers to make better cinema. To marry screenplay and technicalities while still making it entertaining!

P.S : The Acting! How can I forget the acting! Akshay is GREAT! I am a huge fan of his recent renaissance. Vidya Balan is really good as a mother of 2 and project leader on the MOM mission!
On a side note, I like her now that she is fat and not trying to be a heroine but an actress. Suit her well… Both the weight and the gravity it brings to her acting – HEY! Had to crack atleast one science joke! Come on now!

Lets Talk about ‘The Boys’. Streaming now on Amazon Prime, the Boys is a look at superheroes who have a dark side to them. It’s like they took popular DC Superheroes and showed how they would if they were real people.
But this is NOT a superhero show, it’s a show about people who have a grudge against them and want to take them down.
The production values for this show is really good and doesn’t look or feel cheap at the least. The supes in the show feel like DC hero's alternate versions . There is a version of Superman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman (who is butt of all jokes for being pretty much useless).

Be warned this is definitely a show for kids. The rating is clearly 18+ and with good reason. People die in the messiest way possible; there is shocking amounts of gore all throughout the eight episodes. Not to mention there is a lot of swearing and rough language.

PLOT/Story

Coming to the plot and story, this show is abased off a comic book and the plot flows really well, but there are times when the pace is REALLY slow. Sometimes it takes an entire episode for things to happen and its clear that the showrunners are looking for a multi season format. Having said that, despite it slowness, by the end of the first season they definitely do not keep the audience hanging in the air. The show ends on a sort of cliffhanger but brilliantly does so by resolving the season’s primary conflict. That’s EXCELLENT story writing. Something the makers of LOST should have done.
The end provides all the answers to this season’s plot but establishes so many more new plot lines to be resolved in the future season.

Acting

TV shows have hit or miss sort of acting, this show thankfully is a HIT. Every actor embodies their role to perfection. This show has a version of Superman going by the name ‘Homelander’. The actor who plays him does an excellent job of playing up the goody two shoes who is actually totally ruthless and nasty. But the real stand out here is Karl Urban. This is an actor who hasn’t yet gotten that famous despite being in Thor Ragnarok and Star Trek. He plays the main character of ‘Billy Butcher’ to perfection. Snarky, nasty, rude and slightly unhinged, Butcher is the perfect foil to these superheroes.

Overall

I binged this show within 2 days. I rarely binge, I didn’t even see Stranger Things season 3 that fast. So this show is definitely worth a watch if you are bored of Superheroes being the good guys in the DC shows. This is the perfect time to release this show actually. Due to the MCU superheroes are a worldwide phenomenon and that is the premise of this show. But in it the superheroes are also real people, who are flawed and have their own agenda other than doing good for the society.
So post an Avengers Endgame world, enjoy this dark take on supers.

Rating : 8/10. Thoroughly entertaining and VERY WELL made.

This is a full spoiler review because I REALLY doubt any one has NOT seen the original Lion King and this film has no significant difference in story or plot. By significant, I mean NONE. This film is exactly the same as the original, except worse. So much worse.
I WAS REALLY excited when I learnt that a so called ‘Live Action’ Lion King remake was in the works. On release, I went to see the film First day First show! Sadly my excitement slowly drained away within the opening scene.

Lets find out why…

The epic scene of the Simba being held up in the shaft of light. The scene which is still in pop culture 25 years later, that scene is completely messed up. No shaft of sunlight is visible and the whole thing has no stay to feel the epicness!

The problem with this film is that it’s TOO realistic. Credit where credit is due the VFX is astounding. The rocks, the trees, all CGI look real! Not for a microsecond throughout the film does anything not look real. But that’s where it all ends. They went for the VFX so much that they forgot the heart and soul of the film. The animals look real but when they speak, it seems unconvincing. Then they start singing and it looks absolutely ridiculous. Imagine if the animals on Planet Earth 2 started to sing! How stupid will that look?
If only they had kept the animals a bit more stylized and not tried to make it look like a Nat Geo documentary gone wrong, it would have all been so much better.
Not to mention the hum drum voice acting!

Zazu sounds like a late night show host trying to be funny. Oh wait, he is a LATE night show host! John Oliver might look like a bird, but his voice took me out of the film totally. Mufasa is still voiced by the original voice actor James Earl Jones, but his voice somehow has less of a rumble now!
Rest of the voice acting is forgettable. The worst is SCAR. His voice is so not menacing or evil or smooth. It’s just so mediocre. Leaves no impression at all…
Coming to the musical part of the film, every song that worked in the original has no impact here, because in animation they could do so much MORE! Imagine that… the 1994 original feels like a more lively complete version. This feels like it lack life despite looking so damn good. ‘I just cant wait to be a king’ Was so cool and trippy in the original, in this they tried to do it all realistic and it utterly failed to create that fun!

Then we have Timone and Pumba… Timone is a Meercat who looks like he will try and sell me an KIA car! Pumba the warthog looks disgusting and is not at all lovable like in the original.
The most iconic scene in Lion King is the one where Mufasa is visible in the clouds.
Guess what… they butchered it. BADLY.

Mufasa is visible for barely a second in one lightning strike among the clouds. Then it’s all random clouds and his voice. ZERO impact. Next is the Simba returns scene… that too is spoiled by some random black person screaming SPIRIT in the background…

To sum it all up, the film lacks all the dramatic moments of the original, it’s all there but done WAY worse and with ZERO impact or feeling. If you felt this would be good to see with your kids, then go ahead, but the thing is… it’s better to show them the original. Because your kids will never understand why the Lion King was such an icon. A legend among animated films (or films in general). This film is so ho hum and lack lustre that none of the scenes or dialog stand out at all. Not even Hakuna Matata! I actually feel sad for the next generation for whom THIS film would be the Lion King and not the original.

Also, they filmed ‘Can you feel the love tonight’ In BROAD DAYLIGHT! Who makes these dumb decisions?

Rating : 5/10. Barely worth a watch. Just re-watch the original on Blu-Ray or Netflix!

Season 1 of Stranger things was the best nostalgia trip of the 80’s packaged in a mystery and adventure. Season 2 felt a bit stretched out to me.
Now we have Season 3 out on Netflix.
I took a while to review this since I didn’t binge watch the series. I saw 2 episodes a day. This was done purposely so that the show doesn’t overwhelm me.
This show is one of Netflix most popular shows and really well known. So there is always high anticipation for the new season. I didn’t see any of the trailers to keep it spoiler free.
Lets start out with, this is better than season 2 but not as good as season 3. The story is still upside down related and the writers have had to REALLY stretch out the concept to still take place in Hawkins Indiana. They do this by introducing a huge shiny new mall in the sleepy old town. But I feel the next season should move to new locations rather than sticking with the same out place.
The characters are all growing up really fast and a lot of time in the show is spent detailing their love lives. This is something the duffer brothers are not really good at. Every scene which was between a couple, be it Mike and El or Hopper and Will’s mother Joyce was painful to watch and really not as engaging as the other part of the adventure.
Next we have the bad guys, since this is set in 1985, the Russians as the villains makes total sense, but they are badly underutilized. Not to mention there is such a random Terminator-ish character who accomplishes nothing is also an excess which we could have done without.
Stranger things is slowly going past referencing or feeling similar to 80’s nostalgia to in your face 80’s references. Which is not as interesting.
But not all is bad! The season is pretty good and plenty entertaining, although I felt the first few episodes were very slow and not much takes place. It picks up pace halfway through the season.
Rating : 7/10. This is a must watch for fans of the show and anyone who is new to this, do binge the previous 2 seasons as this is NOT a standalone sort of series.

You've Got a Friend in Me! – The signature song of the franchise starts off the film. The only problem is, Toy Story 3 ended pretty much PERFECTLY! So what was the point of this film other than to sell more toys?
Well… after having seen the film, it does seem more or less pointless. But before we delve into that further, let’s discuss the positive aspects of the film first.
The rendering quality of these Pixar films has become phenomenal! Many things look photo realistic and it is a treat to the eyes. I re-watched all three film in the past 2 days and the jump in technology from part 1 until now is too evident.
The story continues from where we left off the toys in part 3 and overall it’s more of the same. It’s not bad, but it does get a bit repetitive.
The music and voice acting is as always-top notch and the direction is pretty much on point.
But somehow the third part reached a series high and now although the fourth part doesn’t sour its legacy or derail THE FRANCHISE, it feels very needless. We already got a very good emotional happy ending in the previous part, if they make 2 more of these and give us a even more tear jerker sendoff to the toys, then I might see this film differently, but till then I see this as the sequel that’s good enough but not great like its predecessors.
There is not much to talk about without spoilers so all I can say is that, if you like Toy Story films, you will not come out disappointed, but I did feel that part 3 was tremendous and they should have let it rest with that.
Rating : 7/10. Pretty good for a family watch.

I first heard about ‘Ode to My Father’ in an article about Salman’s next film Bharat. It is an official remake of the aforementioned film.

I saw both of the films and this is not a comparison but I will definitely reference to the strengths of the Korean original and the Bollywood remake.

Lets begin with, this is not going to the biggest film Priyanka chopra has walked out of, not even close. I don’t know what Sallu thought he was making but this isn’t even innovative just derivative!

Let’s talk about the strengths of the film Bharat.

This film is comparable to Forrest Gump. It follows the story of one ordinary person who gets into extraordinary situations and somehow manages to come out on top. As films go, this isn’t a bad film. It just lacks the focus and strength of its original source material. But to the director’s credit Ali Abbas Zafar has managed to reign in Sallu and not let him fly around like a superhero (Here is looking at you RACE 3). Sallu plays a common (albeit extraordinarily fit) man. He is not seen doing his typical stunts and action for almost all of the film, which was a pleasant surprise.
The film does seem disjointed, for example, Disha Patani who appears in the first segment of the film and for an item song is never seen or referenced to in the film again. Same for the interesting co-stars seen in the oil pipeline segment. There is no happy reunion in the end, not much thought to try and make a coherent story which all comes together in the end. But I will not hold that too much against the film, often times in real life nothing comes full circle and people we meet over the course of life just plain disappear. So inadvertently, they do manage to make it seem realistic.
Katrina looks better in this than she did in Zero. Her acting is fine too but I am puzzled as to why Salman kept touting this role/film as the biggest one Priyanka has walked out of… The heroine role can be done by just about anyone and has very little impact on the story!
The track Zinda is really good and works very well for the film. Overall the background music is mostly fine, despite having some really silly sound fx to illustrate the comedy factor in some scenes.
The annoying part of the film is the REST of the songs. They are really not good and bog the film down. Seeing Sallu dance in a merchant navy officer’s uniform to some random song was a huge waste of time and doesn’t do anything for the film or the audience entertainment.
Then there is the fact that in the original film, we find out the motivation of lead character at the end of the film, which is a surprise and hits the audience emotionally. This film on the other hand makes Sallu’s motivation crystal clear in the very beginning. Incase someone missed it, they reiterate on it. Then Jackie Shroff playing Sallu’s father, also repeats it multiple times just so the people seeing the film know the character motivation VERY clearly.
This removes a layer of mysticism to the character. We know exactly what he is doing and why. Also there are sequences where it is made to look like the lead character is about to die, but we already start the film with him fit and fine so what’s the point of those scenes?
The tagline says the journey of a nation and a man together or something like that… well I doubt India much remembers 90% of the fictional things that happened in this film. There is a indo-Pak reunification effort shown in the film which is a direct adaptation of a similar scene from the Korean original, but here is the thing… in the Korean film they are showing something that REALLY happened. Every Korean remembers it and seeing it onscreen made them cry. The reunification shown here never actually happened so for emotional impact it leaves us the audience stone cold dead. It’s nice to see the characters rejoice but we as the people are only seeing that as a film not revisiting that from our memory! Such things weigh the film down and it cannot get past the lack of ambition or innovation by its makers.

Overall, if you are a Salman fan, this film is a treat for Sallu fans. If you can’t stand him, skip it!

Rating: 6.5 /10. Fine for a one-time watch. I much rather RE-watch Ode to my father which is an excellent film or even Forrest Gump, one of my favourite films of all time!