FILM REVIEWS

MAYURAKSHI --  a film review This review is for those who asked me to see the film and post a review so they can decide whether to see it or not. Apologies for not being on the page for some time and taking time to post anything! In fact, after “ Paddigton”, “The World’s Greatest Showman ” and then “ Ashche Abar Shobor ” -- there was nothing much to say apart from the fact that they failed to add any value to your precious experience of bothering to go to the theatre to expect something worthwhile other than a few hours of snoozing.  “ Mayurakshi” maybe a slight departure from it. Directed by Atanu Ghosh, who is also the man behind the story and screenplay, the film is about an aged, loving father and a caring, dutiful son trying to come to terms with the anxiety of losing one’s grip on life and loneliness that engulfs man with the fear of mortality. Atanu Ghosh has strung  some beautiful and poignant moments between father and son together instead ...

WONDER  -- a film review I’m yet to come across anybody who hasn’t seen WONDER , a family drama, now playing in town. Based on a New York Times bestseller ‘Wonder’, a novel by R.J. Palacio, the movie is about August Pullman (Jacob Tramblay), Auggie for short, a boy who shuns the world and hides behind an astronaut’s head gear to escape the stares he gets from others. Born with facial deformity at birth that is irreparable and home -schooled by his mother Isabel (Julia Roberts), Auggie steps out into the real world to join middle school at his father’s insistence for the first time in life. Needless to say, he is rejected and avoided like the plague by his peers but shows quiet courage ignoring and standing up to bullying by some.  Interestingly, his fertile and active imagination helps him surface through all the cruelty meted out to him. Directed by Stephen Chbosky, the movie gets sentimental and makes it irksome to realize sometimes how bullying in sc...

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS A 20th Century Fox movie, Murder on the Orient Express  is based on a novel by Agatha Christie with the same title and is t he fourth adaptation today of one of her most ingenious works. The 2017 movie directed by Kenneth Branagh is a multi-starrer and opens in Jerusalem with Poirot ( Director Branagh himself) solving a case there and wishing to go on a ‘oliday’ (holiday) to take a break from it all. He just wants a vacation. With the help of an associate Bouk ( Tom Bateman ) working for the Orient Express, he secures a luxurious first class cabin on the train with a bunch of characters played by several stars from Hollywood such as Penélope Cruz  as Pilar Estravados, Judi Dench  as Princess Dragomiroff, Johnny Depp  as Samuel Ratchett, Leslie Odom Jr.  as Dr. Arbuthnot, Michelle Pfeiffer  as Caroline Hubbard and many more. A suspenseful mystery, the classic predecessor in the 1974 movie directed by Sydne...

VICTORIA  &  ABDUL   -- a film review Based on Shrabani Basu’s book with the same title ‘Victoria & Abdul’, the movie directed by Stephen Frears deals with the delicate friendship between the Empress of India and a common manservant from Agra. In connection with BBC Films, Director Stephen Frears -- who has given us movies like The Grifters, Philomena, My Beautiful Laundrette and others -- deals here with the complexities of an undesirable alliance (from the British Raj point of view) between Queen Victoria (Judy Dench) who, by her own admission, is a cantankerous, fat, lame and ‘an impotent old woman’, and Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal) from India who is transported to the Buckingham Palace to present the commemorative gold coin ‘Mohur’ celebrating the Golden Jubilee of HRH. Victoria is lonely and under the hawk-eyes of her royal doctor, Dr. Reed, and Sir Henry Ponsonby (the late Tim Pigott- Smith) who hover around her at all times with some other ladies in...

SIMRAN    --  a review Here is a movie that began with a bang and ended leaving us with a sour taste in our mouth. I love Kangana Ranaut. Her “Queen” was adorable. “Tannu weds Mannu” left us asking for more. But “Simran” was a letdown. A bubble that stretched as far as the sky and exploded into acid rain. Something went wrong somewhere. And what was that? That is the question. Modeled on innumerable American stories of desperate and decadent teens messing up their lives, Simran was more an irritant than a balm to the eyes. I left the theatre wondering did I or did I not enjoy the film! Briefly, Simran is the story of a young working-woman, a thirty-year old, divorced  'Gujju-ben' with flawed English, born to a small business family in Atlanta, U.S.A. She is in the house-keeping department in a hotel but indulges and excels in weaving big dreams for herself. Since dreams are often intangible fantasies that come with an expiry date, she is caught ...

https://doladuttaroy.blogspot.in/ SHOB BHOOTUREY   -- a review Shree Venkatesh Films (SVF) has more or less been successful in their endeavours to either thrill or chill you.‘ Shob Bhootorey ’ hangs somewhere between the genres of a horror and a spooky movie. Certainly inspired by the secret element of M. Night Shayamlan’s tremendously successful movie “The Sixth Sense” in 1999, Director Birsha Das Gupta -- along with producers Srikant Mohta and Mahendra Soni -- makes this supernatural thriller to hold your attention with creepy music and hair-raising suspense. Aniket (Abir Chatterjee) desperately wants to get rid of his dilapidated, eerie ancestral home in North Calcutta but the editor of his father’s spooky magazine SHOB BHOOTUREY that told chilling supernatural tales, is quite unwilling to sell the mansion which was also the office of the old man now dead. To make matters worse, a sinister looking young woman, Nondini (Sohini Sarkar), enters the scene to t...

CHAYA-O- CHOBI – A REVIEW The man who gave us movies like Apur Panchali, Cinemawala, Shobdo, Chotoder Chobi, Bishorjon and a kaleidoscope of movies all along, has added something new on the platter this time that tastes rather bitter-sweet. Kaushik Ganguly’s preoccupation with human relationships and social anomalies is common knowledge. Some like his treatment and, then again, some don’t. An original thinker, dwelling on new concepts incessantly, writing his own script and directing his own movies, Kaushik Ganguly’s Chaya-O-Chobi , (read ’Shadow and the Picture’) is, I think, inspired by Francois Truffaut’s film " Day for Night"   where an entire film crew come to shoot at a location far from home. What unfolds is the mingling of reel and real life in the lives of some that is both painful and enlightening. The movie begins with the dedication and enthusiasm in Maya (Churni Ganguly) to make a Bengali film funded by her own grandmother. She has come all the...