Friday Film Wrap: Crowded week sees small releases
The run-up to period drama Kalank next week is cluttered with small releases
NEW DELHI : Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai? starring Manav Kaul and Nandita Das directed by Soumitra Ranade is a flat attempt to update a classic, say Scroll. Despite some comic relief, the film is overwritten. There is no distinct visual language that could say as much as the words. The everyman struggle, more specifically the middle-class Indian whom Albert equates with the crow, is always relevant. But the treatment makes the film seem like a treatise.
Mystery thriller The Tashkent Files starring Naseeruddin Shah and Mithun Chakraborty directed by Vivek Agnihotri is a second-hand history lesson in third-rate politics, says Film Companion. It spends 145 minutes passing off a dinner-table debate as a national enquiry into Lal Bahadur Shastri’s death, takes almost two-and-a-half hours to reveal that it believes a famous opposition leader was the one who had Shastri poisoned, only to eventually admit that the “historical authenticity of the claims" is not proven.
Blackboard VS Whiteboard starring Raghubir Yadav directed by Tarun Bisht is a prime example of how not to go about bringing to light the many fallacies in India’s public education system, says Pune Mirror. It’s obvious that the film’s intention was more to provide social commentary than achieve cinematic mastery, but it fails on both counts, thanks to its awkward and misguided messaging.
Mystery thriller Paharganj starring Bijesh Jayaran directed by Rakesh Ranjan Kumar manages to showcase the world of drug cartels and the overall situation of the area in question, but the story has been dragged beyond a reasonable extent, says The Times of India.
American superhero film Hellboy directed by Neil Marshall starring David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane and Sasha Lane is just lousy, says The Hollywood Reporter. Bloated, vastly less funny than it aims to be and misguided in key design choices even when it scores with less important decisions, the film does make bold choices that might have paid off under other circumstances. But these aren't those circumstances.
There is also American supernatural horror film Pet Sematary directed by Kevin Kölsch starring Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, and John Lithgow. In the book, with 300 pages of motivation, you can just about swallow the plot, says Empire magazine. But in the film this is impossible and you have to sit impatiently through scenes after silly scenes before the zombie attacks start. Pet Sematary has ambitions to be more than just another zombie flick, but it finally comes over as being more like a precis of its source novel than a proper adaptation of it.
Tamil action drama Rocky The Revenge starring Nassar and Eshanya Maheshwari directed by KC Bokadia is what 80s staple revenge dramas are made of and could have worked in today’s time had a little more attention been paid to the narration, says The Times Of India.
Tamil crime drama Gangs Of Madras starring Daniel Balaji and Bagavathi Perumal directed by C.V Kumar is a violent and effective revenge saga, says Cinema Express. For a film about revenge, drugs, and gangsters, the 'A' certification fits perfectly and the violence in GoM is clearly its calling card.
Marathi comedy drama Wedding Cha Shinema starring Mukta Barve and Bhau Kadam directed by Saleel Kulkarni is pleasant and appealing, says Pune Mirror. The film has little conflict, compete absence of negative characters, and while that may be a downside as far as the standard rule dramatic narratives go, it’s also what’s appealing here.
Several releases this week haven’t inspired any reviews yet. These include Tamil films Watchman and Zhagaram, Telugu romantic drama Chitralahari, Kannada movies Kavaludaari, Night Out, Virupaa and Jai Kesari Nandana, Malayalam romantic thriller Athiran, Malayalam comedy drama Madhuraraja, Marathi films Kahi Kshan Premache and H2O, Bengali dramas Tarikh and Tui Amar Rani and Gujarati suspense drama Kachindo.
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