veeresh1209

Before I start writing about the movie, I need to talk about Ramesh Aravind first. The man does not age. If you see his Amruthvarshini and this movie back to back you would not guess that they are 23, yes freaking TWENTY THREE, years apart. He looks the same, maybe better now. And he, as usual, carries this movie forward with his grace and versatility. I wish he keeps giving such performances and entertain us.

Coming back to the movie, if you are "Detective" Genre enthusiast then some or the other time you would have wanted Sherlock Holmes to appear in a Agatha Christie novel!. No? Was it just me?. Ok. But if you did (or did not !), then you need to watch Shivaji Surathkal. The movie is inspired by these two greatest things that happened to detective genre. And it does so majestically.

The movie looks inspired from one of the finest novels of Agatha Christie. But it is not a remake or an adaptation, its central theme is original. One of the problems with the detective genres is to keep the attention of the viewers till the end, else the viewer will guess the climax and lose interest in the story. The story of Ranagiri Rahasya avoids this problem successfully. It keeps you guessing till the end. Editing and sound effects add to this distraction and creates a nice recipe to be enjoyed at the climax.

Though there are chinks in the story which could impact the overall watching experience, the movie is worth your time. Hope Akash Srivastsa pens more such movies in this series. Will it be a far of thought if I say that Shivaji Surathkal can be made into a graphic novel? Only one person can answer that.

The movie starts with quoting the chaos theory - Small change at one place can cause big ramifications somewhere else. It is an interesting concept and makes you think what butterfly effect have you caused in somebody else's life. For good or for bad. Just like in physics, butterfly effect has its place in social life.

Though movie is based on chaos theory, in a sense it showcases the order that is present everywhere and how an unwanted element can cause disaster. Evan is that unwanted element in this narrative. He is a miracle child, but has his own flaws. He suffers from blackouts at life defining instances. Once he figures out the cause of those black outs and strange power that he has he tries to play God. He tries to change things around him to make them perfect but fails every-time until he figures out who is the cause of those problems.

Movie would have been much better but for its weak script and narrative flaws. Some scenes have been forced just to make way for the story to continue. At the end the movie seems rushed. The climax normalizes the way life around us works and it hurts the moviegoer's experience.

Apart from Evan's character no character sees any growth. It was not possible either. Ashton Kutcher is good as Evan but he has shown lack of range in emotional responses especially for a person who is playing God.

This movie resembles Mr.Nobody but it is a better version of it. If you are new to movies based on chaos theory then it would be a good watch.

Let me say it outrightly, I love Liam Neeson as an actor. He is a prolific action hero. But unfortunately, after his action/revenge movie Taken became a major hit, he is being typecasted for similar kind of roles. Lately his movies have been such individual centric action flicks. Commuter is no different. Infact, it is a sub-way/tube version of his movie Non Stop (2014). I hope the casting directors watch his earlier classics like Schindler's List and give him better roles.

There is nothing much to tell about the plot. Liam Neeson is a former cop who got fired from his insurance executive job. As he makes way back to his home, whose mortgage he may not be able to pay, in his usual route on a tube, he encounters a mysterious woman played by charming Vera Farmiga. She puts him in a tough spot and Liam has to do a task to come out of it. To know the rest you have to watch the movie. Do not want to spoil it.

The movie is slow paced and only picks up the speed in the last quarter of it. There are no spectacular action scenes like the ones in Non Stop. At the end you just want to go through the motions as you would have predicted the ending (2 out of 3 people would). So, in a nut shell, if you are not a big time fan of Liam Neeson, you can very well avoid watching this movie .

P.S: All the lead characters of the movie have blue eyes. That was a bit creepy.

Reboots can be tricky. While some click, most of them crumble under the pressure to shake off the barrage of comparisons that would be thrown at the movie. Last couple of years saw such horrible reboots like Jurassic World, The Mummy, Kong: Skull Island. But much like Spiderman: Homecoming, Jumanji succeeds to impress the viewers. Jumanji gets a modern age makeover where now instead of a board game it is a video game. Four teenagers with varying personalities are put together in a detention. Here they discover the Jumanji video game and enter the world of Jumanji as their avatars. Then starts the fun ride. There are enough plot holes like how did the video game end up in a high school from Alex's freak house. The movie uses time tested cliche - Four teenagers with some flaw realize their shortcomings when (literally) seen from some other's point of view. But the fun parts of the movie makes us forget them, at least till the movie ends.

The movie does not take itself seriously, and that is a huge plus point. The plot of the movie is crazy, there are man eating albino (what?!) rhinos on one side and villainous henchmen with crazy mud racing bike skills on the other side. But such craziness has been ridiculed in the movie itself, which makes you fall in love with it more.

The bigger plus for the movie has been the performance of the lead actors. All of them have created niche for themselves in the film industry. Jumanji has used such niche beautifully and built very funny characters. Parts where Dwayne Johnson(Spencer) stops to admire his own physique will have you in splits. Not to mention his hilarious display of 'smoldering intensity'. Kevin Hart is Kevin Hart and Jack Blake as a women in a man's body is perfect. Karen Gillan, who is this mean Nebula in MCU, comes up with a very charming performance.

All in all, Jumanji is a movie that you can watch without any regret. It will make you gasp, wonder and laugh hysterically. It is definitely worth a watch.

The Big Sick is a movie with very simple yet refreshing storyline. If I just have to think about its content. it is pretty good. But that's about it. Everything else is below par. The Big Sick is based on the real life story of Kumail Nanjiani. It traverses around how he met Emily Gardener, the blossoming of love between them and the tragedy that befalls their not so perfect love story. Their love story is not perfect and that's what makes it relatable. It is the flaw in their personalities that makes it interesting to watch. After they break up, Kumail moves on, with his cliched pick up line, as if nothing happened. Emily fails to reconcile with a person who has grown up in a totally different culture. They were not perfect for each other, but they could see past each others imperfection. That is how love stories work in real world. If I have talk about the dialogues then there are few simple yet realistic dialogues sprinkled across the movie. For instance, Emily's parents talking about the ratings of hospital, how everything can be bad online. But it does not seem that much work was put on dialogue writing. Especially the conversations in the Kumail family. Well as much as I liked the refreshing story, I hated the performances of the actors. The worst part is that all of them were bad. I have not seen Kumail in Silicon Valley, but he is expressionless throughout the movie. But can you blame him? He was acting as himself!! Zoe Kazan was graceful but not convincing. Anupam Kher, one of the brilliant actors around, has lousy dialogues and has not much to perform. He has been absolutely wasted. But it is Zenobia Shroff, as Kumail's mother, who comes up with the worst performance of all. Every time she was on screen I felt like this movie should end here, or I should rather stop watching the movie and go workout in the gym. At the end, there was more disappointment then satisfaction as I really wanted to like this movie yet I could not. So in a nut shell, this movie is a classic example to showcase how bad acting can dig a grave for a good story.