TheMovieManiac

  There’s a different kind of satisfaction when a movie you’ve been waiting for delivers. Superman  gives you exactly that. With the James Gunn directorial being under the scanner due to its teaser and trailer drawing mixed reactions, the film had a lot to prove. After watching it, I can confidently say – it lives up to the hype.    One gamble James Gunn takes is choosing to go with a considerably lighter tone as compared to a typical DC film. But the beauty of the film lies in how well he executes this. The light tone blends well with the movie. The humour lands and doesn’t feel forced. Directing an origin movie has its own challenges, but Gunn carries out the task pretty well. The film sets the platform for promising sequels and hopefully a new era for DC. The movie does get emotional occasionally. However, the emotional aspect is not overdone, and is added at just the right amount. It makes you build a connection with the characters and feel for them.   The ...

Merry Christmas  seemed to hold a lot of promise for a Sriram Raghavan movie, but it errs in a variety of compartments making for a below par film. One of the flaws was casting Katrina Kaif. Her limited range of emotions and sombre dialogue delivery do little to enhance the screenplay. On the other hand, Vijay Sethupathi is the polar opposite, bringing his A-game in terms of acting. He effectively nails the dialogues, despite hindi not being his mother tongue, which makes it all the more impressive.    Merry Christmas  devotes almost the entirety of its first half in building up a tense atmosphere, one of the rare components in which the movie succeeds. Although slow-paced, the initial half has an air of mystery surrounding it, keeping viewers intrigued with the hope that it all culminates later. The romance trope between the two protagonists seems slightly overdone, and it would have probably made sense to draw curtains on it a bit earlier. As a result of this, the ...

When one has a stellar film resumé comprising of  Sanju, PK,  and  3 Idiots,  the audience expects excellence of the same standard whenever they walk into theatres to watch a movie directed by that particular director. With Dunki being Rajkumar Hirani’s much-awaited collaboration with Shah Rukh Khan, the expectations were set sky-high, and the movie is a curious case for deciding whether the expectations were met or not.    In short, the film centers around a group of five friends who aspire to go to London in a bid to earn money and acquire a wealthy lifestyle to come out of the clutches of poverty and financial despair.    The film’s initial half, which is focused on primarily being comical, turns out to be quite hit or miss. The humor doesn’t land quite a few times and comes off as cringe. Some completely avoidable scenes could’ve been removed to cut down on the run time of the movie, which does start to feel like a drag towards the business en...

With Animal being Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s third directorial venture following the highly idiotic Kabir Singh and Arjun Reddy, I was skeptical Vanga would again resort to taking the route of displaying unnecessarily controversial stuff on the big screen as a tactic to take a satirical whip at his critics, or the ‘woke batch’ – 3 hours of the protagonist doing the most nonsensical things being made to look epic by the background music which blasts at full force at any random time of the movie without regard to the circumstances (Kabir Singh summed up). But boy was I proved wrong. Animal is a well directed film which delivers everything it promised – a violent, gory and disturbing presentation of a toxic father – son relationship, albeit not free from its shortcomings.   The first half of the movie is its better half, although it has it flaws. After the opening half an hour, the film transitions into a slightly puzzling delineation of past and present events which makes it somewhat diff...

  Breathe: Into the Shadows draws viewers in from the very first moment with its enigmatic intro theme and from that moment on, it is an endlessly thrilling ride to the very final episode. The backbone of the series is marvellous performances by each and every member of the cast and a stunning plot . Abhishek Bachchan and Amit Sadh are the stone pillars of this series, with Abhishek effortlessly nailing the role of Dr. Avinash Sabarwal, a psychiatrist. He simply brings out his best and delivers a performance to remember for the audience. On the other hand, Amit Sadh plays an unsmiling and short tempered cop Kabir Sawant. Amit doesn’t have many dialogues, and masterfully displays a wide array of emotions while at the same time amazingly maintaining a stern expression throughout the series. I must say this is Abhishek Bachchan’s best performance till date - he is nearly flawless while at the same time, there is an unspoken ‘fight’ between him and Amit Sadh about who will im...

Lootcase packs the sheer brilliance of Kunal Khemu, Ranveer Shorey, Vijay Raaz, Rasika Duggal and Gajraj Rao into one. Perhaps this astounding and incomparable cast is what makes this movie so spectacular, and that too in a genre in which Bollywood regularly struggles with, and is almost always abysmal, be it Total Dhamaal or Golmaal Again . The movie is one of the rare gems in comedy genre and proudly stands tall in front of all its competitors. Often, comedy movies lack a good plot in a bid to increase the humour segment, but Lootcase wonderfully manages both the plot and the humour. It succeeds effortlessly on these two counts. The movie is so beautifully made that you won’t realize how time passes, and stay engrossed in all of the casts’ antics. Although everyone in this movie is marvellous, Kunal Khemu delivers an absolutely eye catching performance which places him a notch above the others and makes this movie undoubtedly the best performance of his career yet. The fact that he...