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Chehre (2021) [Movie Review]

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Dir: Rumy Jafry Starring: Amitabh Bachan, Emraan Hashmi, Krystle D’souza, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Annu Kapoor, Rhea Chakraborty. Dur : 2 hrs 19 mins Genre: Drama Rating : 8/10                 The trailer had me hooked. I couldn’t believe that Bollywood was finally experimenting with original storylines! But when I sat down to review the film I realized that it was a copied idea. As if that wasn’t enough, it wasn’t even a new copy at that! This film is actually based off a German Novel by Friedrich Durrenmatt titled A Dangerous Game . A Marathi version had come out way back in 1971; more recently a Kannada and Bengali adaptation were released. Nevertheless, Bollywood felt that it had to jump on the bandwagon and recycle this story.                 The film itself is quite brilliant. The idea is novel. It doesn’t have traditional Bollywood trappings. It dives straight into the story and then begins to explore characters and possibilities. I quite liked the selection of cast. Th
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After Life (2019) [Serial Review]

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  Directed and Written by: Ricky Gervais Starring: Ricky Gervais, Tom Basden, Tony Way, Diane Morgan, Mandeep Dhillon Dur : About 30 mins each. The whole series is only 6 episodes long. Rating : 5/10 After Life presents itself as a comedy-drama but I didn’t find it either comedic or dramatic. There are elements of comedy and drama but not nearly in enough to term it a comedy-drama. The show came across to me as a reflection on grief. It is dark both in the nature of the theme it explores as well as in its development. Each episode is carried mostly by dialogue and very little background music. Music definitely would have helped to make the episodes more memorable and the times they do kick in (mostly at the start and end) the choice of songs are brilliant and effective. Since it is written by Ricky, the series is highly sarcastic, critical of religion and pretty matter-of-fact in its dealing with sickness, age and death. Ricky’s character goes about in hopelessness after lo
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St. Joseph: A Father after the Father's Heart (Book Review)

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  St. Joseph: A Father after the Father’s Heart , Hyderabad: Don Bosco Publishing House, 2021, Rs. 150, pp. 240. The book is a compilation of articles from various authors writing about qualities of St. Joseph. They have used the litany of St. Joseph as an index and have put together articles on each of the invocations. All the contributors are Salesians from different parts of India but there a couple of contributors from abroad as well. The book lends itself to be a souvenir of the Year of St. Joseph that Pope Francis declared. Let me start out by commenting on the quality of production. The paper is of good quality and so is the design and layout. It is neat and has an attractive cover. Coming to the content, it gets rather repetitive but that is understandable considering that there is so little Biblical foundation for an exposition of St. Joseph. The articles often reference Pope Francis’ letter Patris Corde and extensively utilize Pope St. John Paul II’s apostolic exhortatio
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In Sinu Jesu (Book Review)

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  In Sinu Jesus: When Heart Speaks to Heart , ISBN 978-1-62138-221-8 (E-book) Oklahoma: Angelico Press, 2016, pp. 317. The first time I heard about In Sinu Jesu was about two years ago! A priest had come to preach a recollection to my community and had chosen to share some ideas from the book as part of his reflection. Unfortunately, I was unwell at the time and completely missed it. I heard my companions gushing over how interesting the talk was and how beautiful the ideas were. Then and there, a slight fire was lit in my heart and I became curious to find out more about this interesting book. But with a scatter brain like mine, the fire was allowed to die down and I made no attempt to find the book. In December of last year, when I went home for holidays, I happened to go out for breakfast with my cousin and a young couple who are devout believers and spiritually aware people. Among other things, they brought up this book and the spirituality contained therein. Such was the impres
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This is Us S1 (2016) [Serial Review]

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  Created:  Dan Fogelman Starring:  Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, Sterling K. Brown, Chrissy Metz, Justin Hartley, Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Sullivan, Ron Cephas Jones, Jon Huertas. Dur:  Each episode is about 45 mins. There are 18 episodes in this series. Genre:  Drama PG:  A few kisses and mildly sensual scenes. Life is chaotic. You think things are going one way when all of a sudden they start moving another way. This is one of the beauties of life – it is unpredictable. A mechanical life loses meaning pretty quickly and can become tedious but life rarely disappoints us in that regard. No matter how monotonous you try to live your life there will be something or the other that will disrupt your rhythm. This is Us is essentially a story about life. The characters are every bit human as you and me, viewers. We see our own lives reflected in their lives. We might not share a similar experience to theirs but they do not fail to speak to us about something we all share –
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Gunjan Saxena (2020) [Movie Review]

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  Dir: Sharan Sharma Starring: Jhanvi Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Angad Bedi Dur : 1 hr 52 mins Genre: Biography Rating : 6.5/10 The film aims at depicting the tough life of India’s first lady Air Force pilot: Gunjan Saxena. Gunjan served in the Kargil War of 1999. She came from a family that had patriotic blood as her father was an Army officer. Her brother also subsequently joined the army. Gunjan, uncharacteristic of most Indian girls, dreamt of becoming a pilot from her childhood. She was very intelligent and wanted with all her being to fly a plane and rule the skies. The film flippantly portrays how a young Gunjan prepares herself to achieve her goal by wearing goggles all the time in order to protect her eyes. The film could have done without such silliness but it is tolerable. Besides the young actress playing young Gunjan is adorable. The film slightly exaggerates things in order to dramatize the story and while this adds to the drama it does not shed kind light on th
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Shakuntala Devi (2020) [Movie Review]

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  Dir: Anu Menon Starring: Vidya Balan, Sanya Malhotra Dur : 2 hrs 7 mins Genre: Biography Rating : 9/10 I don’t know if you had heard about Shakuntala Devi. She is a national treasure. She was known as the ‘human computer’ and could calculate faster than the computer of those days! She travelled the world displaying her talent and in the bargain earned great fame and respect not only for herself but for the nation. She died in 2013. Her real story differs quite a bit from the film story but the essentials are depicted.   Shakuntala came from very humble beginnings but was blessed with prodigious math skill. Even without formal training she was able to compute in her head. Once discovered, her father nurtured her skill and used it to add to the family income by taking her to perform at shows and other events. To cut a long story short, Shakuntala goes on to become world-famous and even held a Guinneas World Record for mental arithmetic after successfully calculating the produ
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