Attack-Part 1, Review: Dawn of a new Ira Ira is the new Artificial Intelligence set-up, inspired by Alexa, that is implanted in a soldier who has been paralysed as a result of a bullet wound, converting him into a cyborg. That concept was milked over years in Hollywood films like The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Terminator Genisys (2015), and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019). Then there was the Universal Soldier series, Universal...

Ripples, Review: Subtly, gently Ripples is a film about Muslim women of Xinjiang, who now live in Yiwu, and how they miss their homeland. While China is universally acknowledged as a military and economic super-power, prejudices and misconceptions about the country’s internal matters abound. One such contentious issue is the plight of the Uyghur (Uighur) Muslims, who form a large part of the population of its Xinjiang province, in the north-west, an autonomous region, like Tibet. It is...

Widow of Silence, Review: Half-lives, half-wives Since it is based on many true stories, it is easy to consider Widow of Silence as an amalgamated biopic. Though the central character and her plight may be an amalgam of several of her sisters living in the god-forsaken heaven on earth, rural Kashmir, it works as a personal story too, using the larger picture as a backdrop. Unfortunately, though, besides highlighting the suffering of women whose husbands have been picked-up and taken away, nev...

The Family Man: Say Hi, to the middle-class guy, who’s a world class spy National award winner for acting (films) and Padma Shri (civilian honour) awardee Manoj Bajpayee (Satya, Gangs of Wasseypur-1, Bhonsle) makes his digital debut in the eagerly anticipated Amazon Original series, The Family Man, which releases 20 September on Amazon Prime Video. Created by producer-director duo of Raj & DK (Raj Nidimoru & Krishna DK; Shor in the City, Happy Ending, Stree), The Family Man wil...

Baaghi 2, Review: Do we still need an army? He’s an army-man and he’s angry, first at the stone-pelters in Kashmir, and then at the drug-peddlers in Goa. In the former case, he has a bee in his bonnet. Rather, he ties a local to the bonnet on his Jeep, using him as a human shield, and drives through, teaching the militants a lesson. This earns a serious reprimand from his superior officers and a strenuous survival punishment as well. In the latter case, he conducts a master class ...

MIFF 2018, XVI: Open Forum No. 2 ...

Siraj Syed reviews ‘A Million Rivers’: Complex hOMage to simple man PURI This ‘homage’ began as a ‘tribute’ to Om Puri, counterpoised against Lillete Dubey, by writer-director Sarah Singh, four years before his death, in 2013, and was completed in 2016. We saw the film on 30th January 2017, at the Black Box, in Central Mumbai, courtesy the G5A Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Culture. When I last met Om Puri in the last week of November 2016, at the In...

28 July: Day 4 Day 4 was filled with very serious movies and a light-hearted Canadian doccie that had its first screening outside North America. I loved St Henri, the 26th of August, maybe its because of my journalistic background as we're always trying to find these little stories in the community - the hairstylist, the boxer, the shopkeeper. It's candy to the soul. This Montreal suburb, although it seems ghetto-like, has wonderful characters and the 14 filmmakers did a fine job to f...