Midway, Review: Exactly When you make a war movie, based on facts, you might be motivated to give a slightly balanced view of events, for every country that goes to war has its reasons and its heroes. Your sympathies might lie with the nation where the film is produced, yet, unless your motive is jingoism and ultra-nationalism, you will give some weightage to the enemy’s point of view. Also, a faithful recreation means detailing and realistic characterisation, which when juxtaposed agai...

Siraj Syed reviews Incarnate: This Entity is an Omen for the Exorcist In cinema, as in most other industries, if you don’t innovate, you are dead. Innovation is an essential part of the survival kit, and if new genres are proving elusive, makers must, nevertheless, try to reformat the template. So, if you can’t re-incarnate, at least ‘incarnate’. A good example of eschewing supernatural tropes and plying atypical ropes instead is Incarnate. That it stumbles occasionall...

London Has Fallen, Review: The Butler did it If he can save the White House, can London be far behind? To be accurate, it never really fell. Yes, London Bridge was blown up. A few hundred armed terrorists, with a few dozen combat vehicles, had gained access to the city’s communications network, donned local police uniforms, blown-up most of the historical monuments and deployed surface to air missiles locked at the escaping US President’s helicopter, and all was well, until Mike B...

Satire is a tricky genre. The basic rule of effective storytelling -- at least the kind that audiences have responded to ever since stories have been told -- is to provide characters that one can relate to and feel some modicum of empathy towards. Nasty, biting satire flies in the face of this conviction. It urges you to recognize the very worst qualities in people. In a way, though, they live or die the same way any genre does; on the sharpness, cohesiveness and clarity of their observations...