Naam Shabaana (Movie Rating:6.9/10)

Naam Shabaana (Movie Rating:6.9/10)

Frenetic pace all through its 142 minutes. When it comes to the final denouement you wonder if there's yet another ending... Bit of a climax-anti... 

Guest appearance of Akshay Kumar and Elli Avram will give you an extra thrill. 

Manoj Bajpayee gets to play M, Q and MoneyPenny all rolled into one. He's good.  

Tapsee Pannu, as the badass female agent with eleventeen lives emotes natural, though her left eye seems injured throughout the movie... Or is it some opthal-deformity. Her demeanour is 'Khunnas' and a pyt on top. 

The villian is just a prop, sadly... Hasn't much build up to make his villany palpable, and his cronies mimic comic.

The plot, simple and quick, yet unimpressive. What's great about the movie is its pace... Breakneck. What's missed is a heroine because Tapsee is in an androgynous avatar... Something missing in there... 

Phillauri (Movie Rating: 6.33/10)

Phillauri (Movie Rating:6.33/10)

Empty your bladder before you enter 'who killed phillauri' parts 1,2&3 stitched together with a terribly placed interval. 

Steady pace upto the interval and you begin to believe this will be a crisp direction... Alas, the ghostly apparitions exceed your popcorn megabucket. Anushka is brilliant with those expressive eyes. DiljeetD has a meaty role with above average performance. 

Life of Pi, fame, Suraj with bee-stung lips and a 'champu' personality as the groom to be is irritable. MehreenKPeerZ, the pretty face bride has a small role.period. 

Back and forth in time technique drives the story and multiple plots very well until the interval which is much before half time. The drag then starts until the end credits. 

Two love stories,a tree-ghost and  the inking of poetic transformation  is noteworthy yet. Punjab with its rich cultural folk content is resplendent. 

Avoidable if you can. 

Anarkali of Aarah (Movie Rating:8.0/10)

Anarkali of Aarah (Movie Rating:8.0/10)

Angst of a nautch girl, the breathtakingly beautiful Swara Bhaskar, emotes this erotic singer-dancer lifestyle with razor sharp exactitude. Sanjay Mishra as the powerful, corrupt, lascivious politician is convincing and effective. Swara, with shades of Madhuri Dixit in her looks is femme fatale for her detractors... The plot of revenge is played out penultimate with a song and a dance to decimate her rival. The message goes clear, when a woman says no or she doesn't say a yes, keep your dirty hands to yourself... 

Set in Ara, the lingua franca is Bihar-va and the double-entendre songs are *raunchy-edge-of-rural-erotica*... 

To those uninitiated,Nautch Girls have in the yesteryears been, dancers and not whores... the screenplay justifies this every bit... 

A must watch for those with a conscience and polished taste...

Badrinath ki Dulhaniya (Movie Rating : 6.75 /10)

Badrinath ki Dulhaniya (Movie Rating : 6.75 /10) 

Electric performances, by Varun Dhawan. Plural because he emotes small town badass, waxes tremens delirium in bewafa love and ups the ante in his new age machismo.. 

Alia Bhatt is Scoville content 10 and spices to go with the 'mirchi' role she carries off effortlessly... The Bhatt panache. 

Social message movie, with the script wandering to the edge of boring in a few scenes, is otherwise a racy track of romance-rama... 

The end credits song is hummable to home and the next morning... And more 

Overall an above average fare.... Could have been a bit tighter 

Commando 2 (Movie Rating: 7.5 /10)

Commando 2 (Movie Rating:7.5/10)

Action stations on richter scale of 9.99 with VidJam in his ripped muscle avatar beating the intestines out of bad guys in amazing fight scenes. The opening scene fight sequence makes your legs twitch in sync as he pastes the hooded goons with unbelievable momentum. 

Other character artists add spice to pepper budding lust-romance. A tangy twist halfway alters the flavours of this Comman-d(o)rama.

Adah Sharma, plays a sexy southern siren policewaali, and her performance gets better with advancing minutes. 

Esha Gupta must be doing right things to bag the meaty role.... Lustrous locks, sashaying dresses and seduct-intelligent. 

The plot unfurls post de-monitisation and the edge-of-seat viewing brings you from the National Anthem to the interval to the denouement before you can say 'Wow'. 

The ending, though beautiful is a sudden shift from glamorous, sheen, outdoor-indoor to the realistic, rural-bereft-of shiny-floors Indian setting. Could have been shade less grey. 

VidJam is eye 👁 candy for the ladies, so floss up and stare. 

Logan (Movie Rating:7.0/10)

Logan (Movie Rating:7.0/10)

Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart, both give a stellar performance in their X-Men Swan song episode. Action scenes remain captivating. The ageing and slowing down of an erstwhile great Wolverine is shown with deliberation. 

Failing invincibility and a probable daughter, whom he's avoiding warming up to for fear of her being targeted later. Professor X,aka Patrick Stewart similarly heads up to his exit with display of immense power hours mind. 

Pace is slow and may test your patience. The end has surprises waiting for.

Not the best of the X-Men series.