Posts

Showing posts with the label Netflix

The Elephant Whisperers - Review

Image
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

Action Hero

Image
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

Mission Majnu - Movie Review

Image
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

Disconnect: The Wedding Planner

Image
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

Takeover – Movie Review

Image
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

Me Time - Netflix Movie Review

Image
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

The Wrath of Man – Film Review

Image
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

The Gray Man - Movie Review

Image
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

A Perfect Pairing – Movie Review

Image
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

Black Crab – Movie Review (Swedish)

Image
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

Security - Movie Review

Image
What intrigued me to watch this movie was the online on Netflix which mentions about a “shopping mall”. My love for retail… duh. Intrigued to watch a movie about shopping and retail, decided to watch and boy, I wasn’t disappointed. I have been seen eerie Malls right from 2004 onwards when I joined Bangalore Central Mall. On the first night of opening, the CEO summoned all of us and said - “ We have a problem. The main door is not locking and we need 2-3 people to guard it .” A senior Sardar colleague, Mr. Rekhi raised his hand first. I was the second. We both sat outside the Mall all night and saw the sunrise. And mind you, we were not armed and had no weapons either though there were a few professional security guards present outside the mall. But still, to sit and guard an unmanned Mall, well, been there, done that .  Security  is a film set and shot inside a shopping mall where a former veteran who has just joined as a security staff takes full control in a rescue operation. Leaders

Love Hard - Movie Review

Image
It’s Christmas season and here is a film which revolves around the most celebrated festival in the world. And yeah, there is strong connect with the current Gen’s obsession to online dating and believing what they don’t see is also true. Getting “catfished” is often heard from the kids of the new millennium but this film takes it to an all new high. Finally, the movie makes us realise that we really like a person not because how they look or who they are – socially or physically, rather how they are and their true qualities and personal nature.  True love after all is hard. And “Love Hard” is a testimony to it. Natalie Bauer (Nina Dobrev) writes articles for a dating column for a publication in Los Angeles about her disastrous outings week after week. Her boss Lee (Matty Finochio) loves her escapades as they get great views and the audience is excited to read more and more of these. One day, she finds the profile of Josh Lin (Jimmy O. Yang) and they start chatting up. She’s intrigued b

Bunty Aur Babli 2 - Film Review

Image
There are days when we just want to spend the day lazing around doing nothing. We pick up chores which are worthless, useless and a complete time pass. At the end of the day, we regret how we lost a precious day in our lives. At times, we feel happy that we ended up the day doing nothing and smile at ourselves. BaB2 is such a regretful day in one’s life, just that the makers spent a fortune (or perhaps not) making such a film, after all. The first edition feat. Amitabh Bachchan, Rani Mukherji and Abhishek Bachchan was a cult film, in a sense that it was a combination of a mild thriller, a comedy and ending up as a drama. But the sequel neither of these and is a long bore at best.   BaB2 opens up with a bunch of rich Dilli businessmen ganging up with alcohol glasses on their hands in a pool side villa with young girls in scantily dressed clothes. The event organisers Sonia Rawat Kunal Singh lure the men to a private destination that is known by the name “Virgin Islands” where, well as o

The Guilty

Image
It’s quite often in life that we blame someone around us for something. Mostly, these are opinions and are usually not fuelled with facts and analysis. Much later, we realise that whom we felt was “guilty” of something perhaps was not. We do not remorse at the moment, nor do we proclaim loudly in public or on social media that we were wrong - I am being generic and generous here about human behaviour.  The Netflix movie “Guilty” is all about this human behaviour. As the movie ends, there could be a sense of introspection to some of us. Again, it’s mostly personal, I would say.  Joe Baylor (Jake Gylenhall) works at the call centre of #911, America’s police helpline, more as a punishment transfer for a homicide case that he has been involved in. He received a few calls, during the shift, one where a guy has been robbed by a prostitute and refuses to come out of the car to check the number plate of the car - he is terrified by the fact that such a thing happened in America (sic). He gets

Jobs (2013) - Movie Review

Image
  This movie, apparently released in 2013, two years after the demise of the legend Steve Jobs, the maverick CEO and Founder of Apple Inc. Jobs had a troubled childhood. He was orphaned as a baby by his biological parents Joanne Schieble, a speech therapist and Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian Political Science Professor. His parents Clara and Paul Jobs who adopted him not just gave him their name & identity but also the most part of their lives. He would “hang around” with his Dad in the garage and the duo would make a number of experiments using physics and common sense. As he grew up (mostly alone), Jobs grew restless and had little or no interest with pretty much anything in life including studies or building a family. Living a life of a hippie, he dropped off Reed College and wandered across the world and had his moment of truth when he was in India inspired by Zen Buddhism. He went back to the US and along with his friend Steve Wozniak started Apple Inc. as a small time project,