Pizza 3D Review By Mayank Shekhar

Director: Akshay Akkineni
Actors: Akshay Oberoi, Parvathy Omanakuttan

Wait, I thought I’d walked into a horror film, having lowered my expectations anyway. Horror, like pure comedy, whether good or bad, has an uncomplicated relationship with its audience. You go in for the laughs in the latter, and to feel frightended at least for a few seconds, every now and then, in the former. Story is secondary. Sometimes bad horror movies make you laugh, but that’s part of the fun.
This picture starts off quite slickly, with top-rate graphic storytelling for opening credits. The background score, at least for its sound design, is of high quality. The sets look well done. And there is 3D for bonus effect.
But you know what, none of this is supposed to matter. All you need to scare the pants off the audience is to make them believe that what’s happening to the characters on screen could be happening to them. God knows, movies shot like home videos have achieved that phenomenally well: The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Actvity are only two best known (relatively) recent examples. Closer home, Ram Gopal Varma’s Bhoot and his production Vaastushastra, with their setting and situations, could rock your seat.
Given how distant you feel from the two loser type main characters in this movie, and the few scenes when ghosts appear are inserted so callously into the picture, you wonder if the filmmakers were even attempting to scare you at all. There is not a moment of effective horror. There is absolutely no humour. What’s the point then?

Singh Saab The Great Review

Rating: 3/5 Stars (Three Stars)

Star cast: Sunny Deol, Prakash Raj, Amrita Rao, Johnny Lever, Urvashi Rautela.

Director: Anil Sharma

What’s Good: Sunny Deol and Prakash Raj give exceptionally interesting performances.

What’s Bad: Tacky camera work, a drabby second half and an uninteresting romance angle are spoilers.

Loo break: Few.

Watch or Not?: Singh Saab The Great is perhaps one of recent times’ most novel masala films. Despite a multitude of grave hitches, the film is surprisingly original and intense. Being fed on a host of extremely trashy and mediocre masala films which have become Bollywood’s staple these days, Anil Sharma gives us a welcome change. Sunny Deol and Prakash Raj make the film worth a watch for their earnestness and ardour at portraying their respective roles. I won’t call this fantastic or thrilling but for its sheer unconventionality, the film had me impressed.

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Collector Karanjit Talwar (Sunny Deol) is known for his honesty in the political circles. His life comes to a standstill following a posting to Bhadori where the corrupt Bhudev Singh’s (Prakaj Raj) words is the law of the land. As Talwar tries to stop the area’s malpractices with his strict norms, the man faces the brunt of his good deeds as the villain victimized his family.
It is not long before Talwar loses his dear ones and lands up in jail framed under charges of crimes he hasn’t even committed. But the determined man maintains his will power and mental strength emerging as a social worker under the name of Singh Saab and fights Bhudev’s intricate web of evil doings. The film retells how Singh Saab reforms Bhudev and takes a unique revenge on the guy.

Sunny Deol in a still from Singh Saab The Great

Singh Saab The Great Review: Script Analysis

Satyagraha' movie review: Well-intentioned drama turned into a plodding sermon

 
Director: Prakash Jha
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor, Manoj Bajpai, Arjun Rampal
With Satyagraha director Prakash Jha once again raids the headlines, this time turning his gaze on the growing public resentment towards the deep-rooted corruption in the system. Jha borrows liberally from real events and the lives of real people, including famed anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare and the Jan Lokpal Andolan he inspired. Unfortunately Jha's heavy-handed direction turns this well-intentioned drama into a plodding sermon.

Amitabh Bachchan stars as Dwarka Anand, a principled school teacher in Ambikapur, who not only stands up for what he believes in, but verbally pummels anyone who doesn't fall in line with his strong views. At one point, his son's friend Manav (Ajay Devgn), who is staying at their home, must pack up his things and leave in the middle of the night for clashing with the old man's ideology. Rather extreme, don't you think?
When Dwarka is arrested for assaulting a district collector some years later, Manav returns to help. Along with a youth leader (Arjun Rampal), he mobilizes a truth-seeking movement led by Dwarka, who demands that the local government clean up its act and empower the people. Their campaign gains momentum when prominent TV journalist Yasmin Ahmed (Kareena Kapoor) reports from the scene. Even as Dwarka, or Dadu as he's rechristened by his swarm of supporters, goes on a hunger strike to protest the government's inaction, smarmy minister Balram Singh (Manoj Bajpai) tries every trick in the book to scuttle the movement.
Like Aarakshan and Chakravyuh before it, Satyagraha too suffers from Jha's tendency to overstuff the film with too many ideas. In his attempt to hold a mirror to our troubled times, Jha alludes to such varied incidents as the 2G scam, whistleblower Satyendra Dubey's murder, and Arvind Kejriwal's alignment with Anna Hazare's cause, linking the events with a not-always convincing thread. Apart from this, the director dilutes the film's core issue by throwing in a gratuitous romance between Manav and Yasmin, as well as an excuse of an item number for the opening credits sequence. And in what has become another Prakash Jha staple, his characters don't talk to each other, they speechify with lofty dialogue.
The story flounders as the drama builds up, and collapses like a house of cards in its clunky, overblown climax. Satyagraha, which starts off as a realistic film, gets shrill along the way and, disappointingly, offers no satisfying resolutions at the end of this long slog.
There are, however, some strengths in this endeavour, notably in the way Amitabh Bachchan and Manoj Bajpai approach their roles. Bachchan infuses Dadu with righteous anger and heart-wrenching pathos, while Bajpai, saddled with the part of a caricaturish politician, evokes the required contempt. Ajay Devgan, as the ambitious entrepreneur who finds his calling in social reform, delivers a committed performance. Kareena Kapoor, and Amrita Rao in the part of Dadu's widowed daughter-in-law, are sincere, yet stuck with boringly-sketched characters, and Rampal ably reprises the role of the hot-headed political leader he played in Raajneeti.
In Satyagraha, Jha effectively meshes the urban angst witnessed on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook with the ground realities of India's heartland, but the plot subsequently loses its way. Sadly, the director's storytelling has become so hackneyed that his cinema now merely pays lip service to issues instead of making a stronger comment.
I'm going with two out of five for Satyagraha. It may be coming from a good place, but it doesn't know where it's going.
Rating: 2 / 5