The Hansal Mehta suspense thriller Woodstock Villa is an entertainer with a few surprises and it is an ideal movie for the son of Anupam Kher and Kiron Kher, Sikander to debut. The overall look of the film is made like Hollywood movie and many other sections of movie makings are inspired from Hollywood action and suspense films. The only disadvantage with the movie is its rather predictable climax.

The story of the film is about a businessman whose wife disappears from a place in night and it is said that she has been kidnapped .The one who kidnaps her asks for ransom but then the wife is killed. The body of the businessman’s wife is buried at a place and story revolved around the question who is the killer and why she was murdered.

The film has been directed very well by Hansal Mehta and music of the film is impressive but the placements of songs are abrupt. It looks as if the songs were made without looking at the story of the film.

The script and direction of the film makes the audience keep guessing and the debutant stars Sikandar and Neha Uberoi have unexpectedly performed well in the movie. The dialogues by Milap Zaveri and screenplay by trio, Sanjay Gupta, Rajiv Gopal and S. Farhan is brilliant and make the outcome of the film effective. The movie doesn’t have many striking and shocking sequences but it can be termed to be an average suspense thriller and entertaining film.

The film is different from the trend of movies in market and therefore it will catch audience’s attention. It is expected that it will do average business.

Rating: 6/10

The film “Don Muthuswami” lacks star attraction and comedy in the film is mediocre. The film has no support from music or cinematography. The film has been completely carried by Mithun Chakraborty and the script is full of errors. The performances of actors are also a major downer in the film. The film has been directed by Ashim Samanta but the Shakti Samant effect is completely missing.

The story of the film is about a Don who is from South India and one day he promises his dying father that he will mend his ways and change into a good human being. The Don hires a teacher, Jai Kishan who will help him learn gentleman’s Hindi. Don along with his men tries to learn normal ways of living.

Jai Kishan, the teacher of Don is in love with Don’s daughter Sanjana and don is in search of a right match for his daughter and he finalizes the best friend Don Vardhan’s son to marry his daughter Sanjana. Another man is interested in marrying Sanjana and he is the close associate of the Don, Preetam.

Then enters into the scene another girl Ranjana, who says that she is in love with Preetam and Preetam works hard to get away with the Don’s money. After many twists and turns, a groom gets finalized by the Don for his daughter.

The film is directed by son of Shakti Samanta, Asim Samanta and the film is not up to competition in market currently. On the same theme, the movie could have been better made. The music is also a disappointment. Mithun’s performance in “Guru” was extremely powerful and the same intensity was not completely missing in this one.
The performances of other stars Mohit Raina, Rohit Roy, Hrishitaa Bhatt are not up to the mark.

The movie will not get even average collections.

Rating: 4/10

The comedy film “Dhoom Dadakka” fulfills the need of audience to laugh and entertain themselves on some of the most common jokes and foolish sequences. The director Shashi Ranjan is clear of script in the initial hour but the second half is not equally hilarious.

The story of the film is about a Bhai meet that is being held in Bangkok and the purpose of the meet is to discuss the lowering crime rates. The criminal Fursat Lala proposes an ambitious plan on a land during the meet that will help the future generations of criminals to grow but the rival don, Mungi Lal, who is a senior criminal, opposes the plan saying that Fursat doesn’t have a successor and Mungi has a successor and so he should be given to take up that plan and bring his successor in a month to the meet.

Mungi goes in search of his successor to Mumbai from Bangkok. His successor will be who is son of his sister, Kamal but he doesn’t know where does he lives? He handles the job of searching for his nephew to a secret agent who prepares somebody else to take up to be his successor. By the time, a boy claims that he is original Kamal and another girl claims that she is also Kamal and the three youngsters try to run away taking away the money from Mungi lal.

But Mungi takes the three young people with him and asks them to come with him and say that they are his successor in the meet. By the time Fursat Lala is planning to take revenge on Mungi.

Shashi Ranjan is good in direction in the initial hour and he makes the audience laugh and dialogues are hilarious. The script has many loop holes and the audience shouldn’t look for a concrete story in this movie. Music is good. There are less number of songs in the film but are choreographed well.

The performance of youngsters Sammir Dattani, Shaad Randhawa, Satish Kaushik, Anupam Kher and Gulshan Grover is good.

The film is altogether an average entertainer and will not make average collections. The movie doesn’t have star attraction and has not been promoted and it is expected to do below average on the box-office.

Rating: 5/10

The animation film Ghatothkach does not show mythology, that it promises through its promos. The cute animation character Ghatothkach as kid is attracting most of the little kids but the film is aimed towards adults as well because it depicts a love story in animation and animated characters smooching. The script of the film is similar to Ghatothkach released in 1970.

The character Ghatothkach is important in context of Mahabharata but the mythology is missing from the film Ghatothkach- Master of Magic .The film starts with the expected adorable character Ghatothkach growing up in a jungle who has got magical powers and when he grows up he helps the love couple, Arjun’s son, Abhimanyu and Balram’s daughter, Surekha to get together, against the wishes of their enemy, son of Duryodhan.

The story of the film is about son of Bheema and Hidimba, Ghatothkach who is called Ghattu. He is blessed with magical power and he does many adventures to help and surprise people as a kid. He makes friend with a baby elephant who is saved by Ghatothkach from the attacks of wild animals in the jungle. Ghatothkach tries to teach the baby elephant various mantras that can do magic.

The stories of Ghattu reach Dwarkapuri and there the son of Arjun, Abhimanyu and daughter of Balram (Balram is Lord Krishna’s brother) are in love. The parents of both the children decide that they will marry the two kids when they grow up and the movie depicts the love story between the two. From here the movies gets more for adults then for kids.

The kids grow up, Ghatothkach also grows up to get a different look and Pandavas are defeated by Kauravas and proposed marriage of Surekha with Abhimanyu gets cancelled. Both the lovers secretly meet each other and Surekha is getting married to Duryodhana’s son Lakshamana.

Ghattu does magic and he changes his looks to look like Surekha and replaces the actual Surekha in marriage. Ghattu helps the real Surekha to be with Abhimanyu and he flirts with Lakshamana at the marriage.

There is lots of humor filled moments in the film and the movie maker has taken care to provide enough entertainment to the viewers. But many times the track gets unrealistic and too imaginary. The director has been trying to benefit from the fact that viewers are less informed about Ghatothkach but still a lot is known about mythology to the people.

Technically the film is improved over a few animated movies released earlier. The music of the film is also as per the need of the script. The director tried to put everything in one, animation, love story, music, dance, humor, romance, comedy and lots of other masala.

In the vacation time kids’ will definitely take their parents to multiplexes to watch this one. Ghattu will get above average collections.

Rating: 7/10

The movie “Janant” shows a man taking up shortcuts of evil means to get his “Jannat”(heaven) that ultimately leads him to his downfall. Like the Bhatt camp movies, the movie has the magnetism of music and a real life script that draws audience but the movie lacks grasp after the initial first – half and reason is, unconvincing twists and turns in the story , and inept performances by the lead casts.

The story of the movie is about Arjun who is into making money through the game of cards and one day he meets a girl Zoya in a mall and immediately falls in love with her. He buys a diamond ring for Zoya and to pay the debt he tries his hands in the game of cricket betting. Arjun’s father was a known police inspector who never allowed greed to get over his profession but Arjun felt that his father couldn’t get his dreams fulfilled because he was faithful to his profession.

The ambitious young man Arjun has the sixth sense that helps him take right movies in the betting business and he gets associated to a bookie mafia headed by don Abu who heads a terrorist group based in South Africa. Arjun is intelligent enough to bet on the best to make huge money. His growth in fast in the betting world and his growing heights comes as a surprise to the police that is investing the cricket betting cases.

In the meantime Arjun has no time for his love Zoya and he struggles to get to her. Zoya’s father suspects Arjun to be into a wrong business but Arjun every time escapes getting caught doing anything illegal and the girl is sure that she met a right person for herself. But one day she finds out that Arjun is into the wrong world and she tries to help Arjun out of the betting world with the help of ACP Malhotra. At the same time, the underworld don offers Arjun with limitless money and Arjun is confused which way to select for his life.

The movie fails for proper direction and script in the second half. The climax is feeble. The songs glue to the story of the movie and lyrics of the songs are also good. Song “Zara si dil me” is good. Cinematography is lovely. Real life cricket incidents like the Pakistan’s coach Bob Woolmer’s death is shown in the movie and the sequences making fun of cricketers are also shown in the movie like cricketers in dressing room and former cricketers judging television shows. The performance of debutant Sonal Chauhan is average and same can be said for Emraan Hashmi.

The movie will get viewers since it is based on a real life story and in the summer vacations there is no competition from any good movie in this weekend but the movie lacks attraction and it is not a complete three hour entertainer.

Rating: 5/10

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Cinematography: Thomas Xavier
Choreography: Chinni Prakash, Rekha Chinni Prakash
Action: Abbas Ali Moghul
Art: Aashish Ranade
Editor: Steven Bernard
Screenplay: Sanjay Pawar, Nishikant Kamat
Sound: Venu Gopal
Dialogue: Sanjay Pawar, Nishikant Kamat
Story Writer: Deepak Shivdasani

The movie Mr. White Mr. Black makes you laugh in a few scenes but not after the first hour. The movie doesn’t get helped from any section of movie making like music (except the song ‘Samundar’), screenplay and choreography. The movie is inspired from the hit movie of Sunil Shetty “Gopi Kishen” and the director Deepak Shivdasani is unsuccessful in delivering a full fledged comedy movie.

The story of the movie is about Gopi who comes from Hoshiarpur to Goa with the aim to handle over a piece of land to his friend Kishen. Kishen cheats people to makes money to help his co-sibling Divya study in London and he hides his profession from Anuradha by telling her that he is in double role, one bad and other good.

Kishen on meeting Gopi tries to avoid confrontation and Kishen is also not interested in leaving his work in Goa to reach Hoshiarpur to get the small piece of land. Then an incident happens and three girls steal diamonds that belongs to Laadla and the girls reach Goa. The story is how the land at Hoshiarpur becomes all of a sudden important for all the people in the story.

The movie start is intelligent and but many sequence are unexplained. The script has many plots that have no reason and conclusions. The stories of marriage, love and suspense gets fused up.

The performance of Sunil Shetty is same as ever and Arshad is impressive. The actresses Sandhya Mridul, Anishka Khosla, Rashmi Nigam are impressive. Ashish Vidhyarti deserve a better role. Sharat Saxena is good.

The movie has been released at the time when audience(families ) are free and enjoying the summer vacations so a light comedy is the choice of families but the movie is not that attractive and will per form below average on box-office.

Rating: 3/10

The movie Pranali has a socially awaking script that gets irreverent, becasue of the way it has been made. The movie has the biggest disadvantage that audience cannot identify with whatever is shown onscreen. The movie tries to talk about legalizing the profession of prostitution in a very unconvincing way. The debuting director Hirdesh Kamble lacks precision in implanting script onscreen and the performance of the actors (except Nargis) is unsatisfactory. Screenplay and music are equally ineffective in bringing out anything from the movie.

The story of the movie starts as a foreigner Judy is searching for a prostitute Pranali and the husband of Pranali is writing a book on her life. Then the movie goes into flashback -In a famine hit poor village, the parents of a little girl, Pranali get convinced by a priest to allow their daughter into the system of Devdasi where in the name of god little girls are forced to carry out prostitution. Many rich class people and famed men are afflicted to the Devdasi system. Pranali is handed over to the priest to carry out the system of Devdasi.

After a sequence of incidents, Pranali reaches the Mumbai red light area decides to give birth to a baby and she wants education for her child but her kid is prohibited from getting education from the place where all the socially sanctioned people are teaching their kids.

Then a NRI enters the scene and he helps Pranali to get her kid educated and he writes a book on Pranali. The NRI even helps co-sex workers of Pranali to get out of the mess and tries to get a legal sanction for the so called profession of sex-workers.

The music of the movie has been done by Pt. Birju Maharaj and the movie doesn’t deserve high class classical music. Performances of almost all the stars are below average except Nargis. Upendra Limaye, Sudha, Deepshika, Vinay Apte had low scope roles.

The movie is based on a theme that is anti social in current scenario and the movie even doesn’t match the taste of family audience. The movie will get below average collections.

Rating: 3/10

Banner: Moser Baer

Director: Samar Khan

Star Cast: Rahul Bose, Minissha Lamba, Kay Kay Menon, Rozza Catalano, Javed Jaffrey, Seema Biswas, Deepak Dobriyal, Amrita Rao

Music Director: Surendra Sodhi, Adnan Sami

Cinematography: Carlos Catalan

Art: Wasiq Khan

Editor: Sanjib Datta

Screenplay: Joydeep Sarkar

Sound: Jitendra Chaudhary

Story Writer: Samar Khan, Joydeep Sarkar, Aparna Malhotra

The movie Shourya is about an Army court martial and it depicts that the realities underneath can be very different from the general interpretation made by anybody about a situation. The story has the army background but it is not a movie that shows people going to border and fighting battles against the enemy country for its homeland .The movie depicts the battle within army, as a department that employs people.

The story starts as a Captain Javed has to face court martial for shooting down his fellow officer. The two close friends Sid and Akash are employed with the army and are given the charge to handle the case. One friend has to be in defense and other against the accused. The case is enquired and the friends reach Srinagar where the incident took place and Akash just wants to win the case but Sid gets some other meaning to his life while investigating the case.

Javed is not speaking anything about the incident that could save him and Brigadier Pratap, father of the killed officer, wants Javed to be convicted soon. Can Javed be saved? The question is answered in a very dramatic way and the movie script gets brilliant when the suspense of the story comes out.

The story of the movie keeps the audience thinking what will happen next? The direction by Samar Khan is perfect (except for a few extended scenes) and the music is ok. Cinematography is good.

The presence of Rahul Bose makes the audience feel comfortable (be it any movie).Kay Kay Menon is getting more and more powerful roles to perform and he is fine with his performance even in this one. Deepak, Javed and Minissha are also good in their roles. Like all the lead stars in the movie Amrita and Seema are just perfect.

The movie will be made popular by the audience and will get above average box –office collections as the time of release of the movie is of vacations.

Rating: 7/10

Banner: Shoman Production

Director: Shoaib Mansoor

Star Cast: Naseruddin Shah, Iman Ali, Larry Neumann Jr, Shan, Fawad Khan, Austin Marie Sayre, Rasheed Naaz, Simi Reheal, Hameed Shiekh

Cinematography: Ali Mohammad, Neil Lisk, Ken Seng

The Pakistani movie Khuda Ke Liye has a realistic theme that depicts the plight of today’s’ Muslim community that is suffering the 9/11 effect. The movie was screened in many film festivals that were held in various parts of the world and praised for its content. The movie shows, how the Muslim community is unable to make itself acceptable to the western world that suspects it to be linked to some militant group after the 9/11 event and the moderate Muslims couldn’t even survive with its extremist counterpart.

The movie depicts the confusion of two youngsters, brothers from Pakistan who are liberal in views but still they face the charges of being militant. The script of the movie has a powerful message and the script is the strongest aspect of the movie. The elder brother leaves his homeland to reach U.S. with an ambition to become a singer and the younger gets misguided to join the fundamentalist’s group. The younger marries forcibly to a woman and elder marries his cousin who lived in UK and both stories reach almost the same ends.

The elder brother is forced to stay away from his wife with whom he marries without getting sanctioned from her father and he is taken to be linked to the extremists groups by the U.S. police force after the 9/11.He is interrogated for his links to militants groups and his dreams of becoming a singer fades away as the events unfold.

The cinematography of the movie is capturing and director handled the difficult subject with perfection. No faults can be found in the movie making and same can be said for the performance of the artists in the movie. The movie is emotional and touchy and fine Indian actor like Naseeruddin Shah can also be seen making his mark in the movie. The other stars like Shan, Rasheed Naz, Fawad Khan are good in their roles.

Critically the movie has many fans though the masses won’t opt for this movie during their leisure. The movie has not been screened at many theatres and screening is restricted to a few multiplexes. The movie is good for content and is one of the finest movies from Pakistan.

Rating: 8/10

Banner: Eros Entertainment, Big Screen Entertainer

Producer: Kumar Mangat, Sunil Lulla

Director: Ashwani Dheer

Star Cast: Sunil Shetty, Tusshar Kapoor, Paresh Rawal, Upen Patel, Esha Deol, Sameera Reddy, Tanisha Mukherjee, Neetu Chandra, Sharat Saxena

Music Director: Raghav Sachar

Cinematography: Nirmal Jani

Choreography: Ganesh Acharya

Screenplay: Ashwani Dheer

For making a movie like One Two Three, a script is just not needed. The movie has three tracks and three stories and three Laxmi Narayans and all get messed up together. The movie has been made by Ashwani Dheer who is famous for making the television program, Office Office that mocked the curruption in Indian offices but this movie is not based on any such impressive social theme. The movie One Two Three makes you laugh from the start to the end (just don’t apply any logic to any sequence) and it is fun watching the movie but those who do not like the movies like Malamaal Weekly or Hungama will never be impressed by this one.

The story of the movie is about missing sets of diamond hidden in a car protected by love birds Chandu and Chandni who are working in the shop owned by Laila. The car is owned by Laila and she wants to sell it. A person named Laxmi Narayan has to collect the car for his boss and he lands at the Hotel Blue Diamond.

Another Laxmi Narayan belongs to a family of crooks but is too decent to get a headstart into his family profession. He is offered a supari for Papa and he too reaches Hotel Blue Diamond. The third Laxmi Narayan is into lingerie business and has to collect samples from Jiyaa and he too reaches Hotel Blue Diamond.
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The three stories get mixed up as the photographs of the person to be met is exchanged and the crook Laxmi Narayan get Jiyaa’s photo to kill, the second Laxmi Narayan who has to meet Laila to get a car for his boss, goes to Papa, the Don and the third Laxmi Narayan get Laila’s photographs and he shows her the lingeries meant for Jiyaa.

The audience going to theatres should not expect meaningful cinema but just have a laugh for almost three hours and they may forget the movie after getting out of the theaters. The cinematography and screenplay are average. The music of the movie is unpredictable. The title track is surviving grace for the music of the movie. The movie has a line of casts and the best of all actors were Suniel Shetty, Sanjay Mishra and Tusshar.

The leading ladies Esha Deol, Tanishaa, Neetu Chandra were least impressive as ever though Sameera Reddy was better than others. Paresh Rawal was not that dominating in the movie as he is expected to be in a comedy movie. Upen Patel, Murli Sharma were almost wasted.

The movie can be watched with families in holidays though the families deserved a better entertainer than this one as the movie is fitted with double meaning language. The movie may get above average collections at box office because it has got no competition from any other comedy movie in line.

Rating: 5/10