Jawan, Review: Eggs on the windshield You can be pardoned for believing that Jawan is Pathaan rebooted, if you walked in as ShahRukh Khan (SRK) is lying half-dead on a bed somewhere near the Indian border (with which country?) and a chinky medicine man is spending days, and possibly weeks, using all kinds of herbs and other local Ayurvedic medicine to revive him. It was exactly the same in Pathaan, where he was nursed back by a Pathaan tribe. Obviously, the makers thought once is not enough, ...

Bharateeyans-The New Blood, Review: Overboard, gored, bored Preminchukundam Raa, Premante Idera, Kalisundam Raa, Eeswar (2002 film), Lahiri Lahirilo, Sardukupodaam Randi, Nagaram Nidrapotunna Vela and Sakhiya. These are not the names of the characters or cast of Bharateeyans-The New Blood, but the names of films written by Deena Raj, collaborating with Dr. Shankar Naidu Adsumilli, a well-known surgeon based in the USA. Deena Raj teams with Naidu again for his directorial debut, at age 53, Bha...

Haryana, Review: But for Alia She is not in the film. Reading the names of the cast, you will realise and confirm this fact. But then why this head-line? Because Alia Bhatt is the premise of almost one-third of the film, the last one third, that is, and her name is mentioned at least 100 times in the dialogue. Now that is not fair, you might grumble. The film is titled Haryana, isn’t it? Well, there is a lot of Haryana and a lot of Aliana in the movie. A well-intentioned film, with seve...

Yeh Hai India, Review: NREye Indians settled abroad are called Non-Resident Indians, or NRIs. Not surprisingly, many of them still nurse feelings of love for the land of their birth, or of their fathers, and the often feel guilty pangs of separation from their motherland. Actor-producer-writer-director Manoj Kumar (real name Harikishen Goswami) made some hard hitting and box-office shattering patriotic films in the 60s and 70s, right till the early 80s, that earned him the epithet of Mr. Bhar...

Newton, Review: Gravity of the situation Had he been alive in the modern period, the British scientist would have bagged multiple Nobel prizes for his pioneering work in Physics. As it happens, the film of the same name, not a biopic of Sir Isaac, rather about an idealist in the Indian bureaucracy, has been eliminated from the race for the Oscars. A million or more Newtonians are feeling heart-broken that a film that they considered a breakthrough, and the best film made in India in recent t...