TechCrooks™

SPOILERS ALERT Bollywood Diaries wends its way through territory that Mumbai films have charted before, most notably in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Guddi . It, however, takes a circuitous route that instantly pushes it away from the obviously cliched pathways. First-time director K D Satyam delivers a narrative triptych that is shot through with interesting twists. For the writer of Rajan Khosa's acclaimed children's film Gattu, Bollywood Diaries is, however, not as marked a departure as it might seem on the surface. The three individuals that Satyam zeroes in on are, in an important respect, not unlike the protagonist of Gattu, a small-town street kid who wants to send his kite soaring in the sky above all others. This freewheeling tale of impossible dreams and unfulfilled desires also directly recalls Chala Murari Hero Banne and Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon . The former was about a small-town man, the latter about a nondescript girl who stakes all for the sak...

In The Revenant , a period drama reaching for tragedy, Leonardo DiCaprio plays the mountain man Hugh Glass, a figure straight out of American myth and history. He enters dressed in a greasy, fur-trimmed coat, holding a flintlock rifle while stealing through a forest primeval that Longfellow might have recognized. This, though, is no Arcadia; it's 1823 in the Great Plains, a pitiless testing ground for men that's littered with the vivid red carcasses of skinned animals, ghastly portents of another slaughter shortly to come. The setting could not be more striking or the men more flinty. The Revenant is an American foundation story, by turns soaring and overblown. Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ( Birdman , Babel ), it features a battalion of very fine, hardworking actors, none more diligently committed than DiCaprio, and some of the most beautiful natural tableaus you're likely to see in a movie this year. Partly shot in outwardly unspoiled tracts in Canada and Arge...

SPOILERS ALERT It has been six long years since Tere Bin Laden mopped up a neat pile from the box office. Why, then, does the sequel to the whacky comedy feel like such a rush job? A quick verdict: Tere Bin Laden: Dead or Alive is more dead-on-arrival than alive. If not an outright washout, this sloppy send-up is far too limp to run the distance. Like the 2010 sleeper hit, the follow-up is the handiwork of writer-director Abhishek Sharma. So one expected it to possess some of the spark that had helped Tere Bin Laden punch well above its weight. As it transpires, most of the punches that Tere Bin Laden: Dead or Alive throws are woefully feeble. The film takes ages to spring to life. When it does begin to show some signs of vitality, it flails about aimlessly. In the dying minutes of the first half, Tere Bin Laden: Dead or Alive raises a few laughs as a series of mistaken identities sparks some serious manic mayhem. But post-interval, the film, despite many explosions and g...

SPOILERS ALERT Words do not make poetry, Aligarh University professor Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras (Manoj Bajpayee) tells Delhi journo Deepu Sebastien (Rajkummar Rao) well over an hour into Hansal Mehta's Aligarh . Poetry, says the sexagenarian protagonist, is what springs forth from between the lines - the pauses and the silences. Aligarh , as pointed and poignant a portrait of loneliness as any that Indian cinema has ever produced, is unwaveringly true to that dictum. Mehta's treatment of an emotive theme is sensitive and sedate; the film's impact is searing. Aligarh is equal parts a powerful character study, an incisive social commentary, a tragedy of harrowing proportions and a cautionary parable about a society rife with contradictions. The story, an introductory disclaimer asserts, is inspired by real events modified on the basis of related media reports and legal proceedings. The film is set in the months following the 2009 Delhi high court ruling that held Art...

As it turns out, fighting zombies does nothing to improve on the original Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Austen's heroine from Pride and Prejudice . In Pride and Prejudice and Zombies , a character claiming to be Elizabeth Bennet (Lily James), wields swords and other deadly blades, fires guns and occasionally flashes a leg in order to stomp on a zombie head. Battling the undead keeps her, friends and family safe from the flesh-eating hordes, but the character has been so radically transformed from Austen's that Elizabeth already feels like a goner. The movie is adapted from the 2009 novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, who hit commercial pay dirt with a catchy title and the fusion of two ludicrously opposed, nominally irreconcilable cultural touchstones: Austen and zombies. With tongue in cheek and a copy of Austen's novel of manners apparently by his side, Grahame-Smith added a zombie apocalypse to the Bennet family concerns, peppering the chatter about balls, romantic prospects and the ...

"The city flourishes when its great institutions work together," says the cardinal to the newspaper editor during a friendly chat in the rectory. The city in question is Boston. The cardinal is Bernard F. Law and the editor, newly arrived at The Boston Globe from The Miami Herald, is Martin Baron. He politely dissents from the cardinal's vision of civic harmony, arguing that the paper should stand alone. Their conversation, which takes place early in Spotlight , sets up the film's central conflict. Encouraged by Baron, a small group of reporters at The Globe will spend the next eight months (and the next two hours) digging into the role of the Boston archdiocese in covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests. But the image of two prominent men talking quietly behind closed doors - Law is played with orotund charm by Len Cariou, Baron with sphinxlike self-containment by Liev Schreiber - haunts this somber, thrilling movie and crystallizes its major concern, wh...

SPOILERS AHEAD An aspiring singer Dolly Pandey (Nidhi Subbaiah) has a no-nonsense attitude towards life, roughs up eve-teasers, rides a bike and has guys sweating it out when she is around. A local toughie Vicky Shukla (Rajneesh Duggal), who contests elections, indulges in fights, but wears his heart on his sleeve, and a local rich boy, Kabeer (Arjun Bijlani), who now lives in Mumbai and runs an event management company. These form the trio in this romance. With a poorly written and predictable story and screenplay, replete with cliches and humour, Direct Ishq gets nowhere even after it is over. Even the love story appears confused. The characters are flimsy, paper thin and trite. The situations in the film with the hero and his set of lackeys are oft-seen. The dialogues brimming with English words intended to be funny, end up having the opposite effect. Although the heroine is supposed to be an aspiring singer, the music in the film is third rate and jarring to the ears. The titl...