Cinema, Karam, Kapi

What happens when a person builds his or her business with a certain tenacity, has a repute of being self-made, going through all odds in life, who is eventually brought down by the same lenders or investors who helped him or her grow the business?  He / She fights it back and goes all out to ensure the business they built brick by brick, is retained somehow.  That’s the story of Charlie Crocker (Jeff Daniels) in this web series in Netflix. Charlie celebrates his 60 th with almost the entire who’s who of Georgia, Atlanta in tow. Much to everyone’s envy, Charlie who lives a high life, doesn’t disappoint the glitterati on his big day.  He was once married to Martha (Diane Lane) and is now living with his second wife Serena Crocker (Sarah Jones), after offering a settlement to his ex-wife and their teenage son.  Trouble brews when the Raymond Peepgrass (Tom Pelphre), the manager at Plannersbanc who lent Charlie’s business to fund his dreams along with his Boss Harry Zale (Bill Camp) deci

The Oscar winning documentary is about elephants and their non-biological parents - the elephant herds. Set in the picturesque Mudumalai forests in the Tamil Nadu – Kerala border, the 40-minute film showcases the mutual love of elephants and humans.  Bomman has grown all his life rearing elephants in the forests. Raghu, an orphaned elephant arrives at the Mudumalai Elephant camp which is managed by the Department of Forests, State Government of Tamil Nadu. The reserve brings up elephants which have lost their way and their families due to herd movements. It also treats ailing elephants by loving care givers and veterinarians. Bomman offers milk and food to Raghu daily and spends all day playing and managing the baby elephant. A good wash for the elephant, which includes a detailed scrub and rinsing it in the flowing river water, could take a few hours. In the night, he sleeps in the same make-shift thatched tent where Raghu lives, always under his watchful eyes.   Bellie was widowed wh

There are times when 15-20 mins in to a movie, you wonder whether you should have chosen this movie to watch; perhaps skip (if its on OTT) and walkout if it was a theatre. There are times, 30-40 mins in to a movie, when you wonder whether this movie should have been made at all. Action Hero is one such.   No, really. I never write negative reviews about movies – Over 125 here in this blog and counting. But this one deserves a special mention. What a mockery of the audience this is! Maanav Khurrana is a Superstar and is shooting for a sequence in Haryana one late evening. As with all heroes, he is seen shouting at his PA and is rehearsing for an action sequence. Since he is not emoting enough, his PA says that the delivery of his Lamborghini is delayed. Angered, the Action Hero proceeds to beat up the baddies with the crew clapping hard once the shot is over.  The hero is then shown his Lambo and he takes it for a spin. Vicky Solanki, a fan of the Hero and brother of the local politicia

Off late, there have been so many films about former RAW Agents and their lives. Mission Majnu is one such. Released on Netflix on 20 Jan. ahead of India’s Republic Day, the film is gaining a lot of positive response from viewers.   Taariq (Siddarth Malhotra) is a devout Muslim residing in Lahore, Pakistan and works at his uncles’ tailoring shop. He falls for Nasreen Khan (Rashmika Mandanna) at first sight, though she is vision-impaired. The two have their Nikkah solemnised by both families although her father is initially reluctant and is not pleased with Taariq as he doesn’t have a “real job”. The story moves slowly for us to understand that Taariq is indeed an undercover agent, Amandeep Singh, living in Pakistan for a few years now.  Indira Gandhi’s Government test fires Nuclear Bomb which irks Pakistan. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto decides to build and test a Nuclear site, however without the rest of the world knowing about it. He decides to join hands with noted scientist Ay

What happens when you know nothing about an interesting start-up business and still go ahead and attempt doing it, guessing some angel will help you succeed? The film shows how and why it may not work all the time! Otis is a playboy living in Nairobi and has trouble inheriting his family business. He flirts with many girls and ends up dumping each one of them, time and again. He is also a father to his daughter but his ex-wife has moved on in life. He is pitching his business idea to a potential Investor Dele but the latter is not convinced if Otis is trustworthy. His partner Khalid is also not sure of Otis’ acts and doesn’t trust him much. That’s when Otis proposes to Dele to allow him organise his wedding in a grand manner in Kenya. After much reluctance, Otis and his fiancé agree to this.  However, Otis has no clue whether he can pull this off by his own, so he invites his friends Richard & his girlfriend Celine, TK, Judy and Khalid to the Kenyan resort a few days before the wed

Artificial Intelligence, may sometimes result in to natural stupidity. With all due respect to machine learning, automation techniques and the innumerable scientists and engineers who code on computer data, at the end there is always a human intervention that is required to stop an accident or even an apocalypse from occurring. Takeover is a movie about this.  Mel Badisson (Holly Mae Brood) is a student with acute computer skills who hacks in to the server of a local military to avoid them from using the aerodrome from flying, atleast for a few hours a day. And her motive – is to minimise the noise harm to animals in the surrounding. As she grows up, she turns up an ethical hacker, while front-ending herself as a system security specialist, that is ensuring her clients computer servers are safe from viruses and commercial hackers who demand money in lieu of letting go off their systems.  In one such case, Mel intervenes in to the servers of Rotramax, an autonomous Bus development compa

All of us want some “me time” every now and then. In the context of working men vs. stay at home women, it is almost like a privilege that is showered on the latter by the earning male member of the house. It is not just unusual but also societally inappropriate for a father to be a house husband and rear the family while the lady love gets to work and earns the dough. The film “Me Time” is a typical characterisation of one such stay-at home dad, his wife, two kids, a long lost friend and how eventually it makes sense of the much-hyped “Me Time” that many of us crave for, quite often.   Sonny Fisher (Kevin Hart) has a daily routine; get the kids ready to school, make breakfast for his wife Maya (Regina Hall), drop the kids at their school and undertake voluntary work at the same school, which he feels is a part of community service. Regina’s boss at the architecture firm Armanda Zavala (Luiz Gerard Mendez) feels very high of her and in a party, not just does he showers praises on her w

There is nothing bigger than a remorse when one loses his/her child. In this fictitious account of one such man, we see emotions flying from a loving dad in memory of his son.   Mason Hargreaves (Jason Statham) is a crime warlord with his group of colleagues Mike (Darrell D’Silva), Brendan (Cameroon Jack) and Moggy (Babs Olusanmokun). While overseeing one such heist of a Cash Truck, his son Dougie (Eli Brown) is shot down by the masked perpetrators. He is also shot down to death, though he recovers from the wound. He joins the Cash pick-up firm Fortico through the influence of team leader Terry Rossi (Eddie Marsan). Though he barely passes the required tests to join the fleet, he somehow scrapes through the marks. His colleagues Dave Hancock (Josh Hartnet) and Dana Curtis (Niamh Algar) are suspicious of his motives but none are able to find out anything about his past. The company’s trainer Haiden Bullet Blaire (Holt McCallany) names the new joinee as H and is part of the crew to pick

Dhanush appears briefly in the film “The Gray Man”, his first Hollywood outing but creates an impact with the morality the character displays. The Netflix movie was released on Fri. 21 Jul. 2022. . Mark Greaney’s novel by the same name has been adapted in to a film which has been bankrolled by the Russo Brothers company AGBO and released worldwide (sic) on Netflix. The film stars Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, Jessica Henwick and pan-Indian star Dhanush among a host of characters. The film opens up in a prison in the US in the year 2003 when a CIA agent Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) accosts a lifetime prisoner (Ryan Gosling) and asks him to operate as a mercenary, taking directions from the agency to “complete tasks” from time to time by the high command. He is code named Sierra Six, perhaps indicating the number of predecessors he has. Cut to 2021, the scene is now set in Bangkok where Agent Six has to kill a supposed traitor who is sharing critical and confidential information per

There’s nothing called the perfect match in the world – a couple in love, a geek and his device, a musician and his composition, a spin bowler and his catch and so on. But something that really pairs very well – being a foodie, I can bet you – is Wine with it’s right combo (of foods). A Perfect Pairing is not exactly a documentary on Wine tasting & pairing, rather a breezy movie about a fairly imperfect couple who eventually end up a great pair. Fairly cinematic stuff, unrealistic in life at most time. Hell yea, it’s a feel good movie after all. Lola Alvarez (Victoria Justice) is a Sales Manager at one of the top Wine Import firms in the US and is getting ready for a promotion as a Sales Director soon. After her recent divorce, she wants to take a break before another hook-up. Celebrity Chef Hamish (Nicholas Brown) loves her knowledge of wines and gets her win a big contract for her firm and she’s about to present her newest idea to her Boss Calder (Craig Horner) in the Team Meetin

A war which is unending, sabotage by those whom one trusts, enemies within and to top it all, a biological war in the making by spreading a man-made virus stored in a vial – I am not referring to the ongoing Ukraine crisis coupled with the Covid-19 led lockdown which is celebrating (sic) its 2 nd   anniversary today in India. Operation Black Crab is a movie set somewhere in Scandinavia where a fighter reaches her destination for just one reason – Hope!   We have seen war movies and many of them. From classics like Ben Hur to the current times’ Outside the Wire, 2 Guns and so on, there has been enough and more where soldiers and fighters use various weapons, fly across regions and use sophisticated guns and revolvers among others. But Operation Black Crab is different. The soldiers use skateboards. Legends! Caroline Edh (Noomi Rapace) skates all the way across an archipelago to deliver a courier to the “base” on the other side which would perhaps end the war. Or so she thinks. The singl