It was a couple of years back when I had a conversation with Nikita Naiknavare, the founder of Pune’s first rooftop cinema, on what inspired her to come up with this unique concept in a country where cinema halls are the incumbent mode for the masses. What she explained to me was in direct resonance…
Uri : The Surgical Strike | Review
If you are a regular follower of Indian politics, then you will surely have come across the copious amount of memes with ‘Kadi Ninda’ (strong condemnation) as the punch phrase. For the longest time, an average Indian politician cut a sorry figure post the umpteen infiltration and terrorist activities perpetrated on our soil. They came…
Bumblebee | Unchained Melody, 80s vibe and a resurrected Franchise
If you are introducing your 18 year old cousin to the Transformers universe, you should start with the Bumblebee and probably show snippets of Optimus Prime fighting valiantly as Earth’s defender. The issue plaguing the Transformers movies have snowballed due to 2 main reasons. Michael Bay and his obsession with CGI antics and the faltering,…
Netflix’s latest thriller ‘You’ is surprisingly good !
Even in her disturbed existence, writer Sylvia Plath had lurid observations on murder – “Why do we electrocute men or murdering an individual then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled ‘enemy’ ?” It is true that taking someone’s life is a horrid, despicable business but murder is not…
Is ‘The Mule’ Clint Eastwood’s first ever comedy ?
If you dare categorize the world using Clint Eastwood’s career, you would end up with three distinct groups – the ones who know him as an actor, the ones who know him as a director, and the ones who know him as a performer. As you expand yourself by assimilating more than one facet of…
Black Mirror : Bandersnatch | A week after the world united to save Stefan
(Spoilers included) Few days back the official Twitter handle of Netflix created quite a flutter by sharing that nearly 45 million accounts have watched the latest original “Bird Box”. What seemed like a subtle chest thumping, turned into a squabble among naysayers who discussed the relevance of such a data where the completion percentage is…
Bird Box | Review
John Krasinski’s breakout sensation of 2018 A Quiet Place created an immersive experience of sensory deprivation, putting us in the middle of a world where an alien species used sound as its primary device to hunt anything that made even the slightest of noises. So, you basically had to walk on tip-toes, making sure that…
VFX is the true HERO in ‘ZERO’ | Sidharth Iyer
It’s nearly the end of the year and 2018 has clearly belonged to content-driven cinema as far as Bollywood is concerned. Be it the runaway hit of the year Andhadhun, or a family comedy in Badhaai Ho, the spy thriller Raazi and even an experimental piece of cinema like Tumbbad. 2018 also witnessed film critics…
KGF : Chapter 1 | Review
Unlike Bollywood, Hollywood encompasses the entirety of the United States. To be more specific, any feature film produced by the houses registered under Cinema of United States falls under the ambit of Hollywood. The story of Indian Cinema is far more diverse. Of approx. 2000 films every year, Bollywood makes about 1000 which is just…
Zero | Review | The best Khan movie of 2018
That title was a click bait, I concede. But everyone cannot be as honest as Aanand L. Rai, who covertly insinuated us to have ‘zero expectations’ from the movie by naming it ‘Zero‘. However, it is not as bad as the other ‘Khan movies’ this year. But if your benchmarks are ‘Race‘ and ‘Thugs of…
Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse is spectacular !
The 1962 debut of your friendly neighbourhood web-slinger almost didn’t happen because one of the original editors Martin Goodman thought that the audience would find the subject of ‘spiders’ distasteful. As luck would have it, writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko convinced Goodman to put the character into one of their failing Amazing Fantasy…
What else am I bingeing on? Stand-up specials on Netflix
A joke where the Holocaust is the punchline rarely got any approbation a decade or so ago. But with an ever changing palate and people exposed to a heterogenous array of content, we have the risqué and the innocuous coexisting. The joke in question is from a Netflix special done by Anthony Jeselnik, the king…
