Yearly Archives: 2015

Movie Review: Rahasya (2015)

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Rahasya3 Stars (out of 4)

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Rahasya is a solid police procedural, with an intriguing pool of suspects in the murder of a teenage girl. Inspired by a real case, the movie elucidates the way ordinary secrets can come back to haunt us.

The mystery begins when the body of 18-year-old Ayesha Mahajan (Sakshi Sem) is discovered by the family maid, Remi (Ashwini Kalsekar). Sometime between 11 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., Ayesha was murdered in her own bedroom, her throat slashed.

It seems obvious to police Inspector Malwade (Nimai Bali) that Ayesha was murdered by her father, Dr. Sachin Mahajan (Ashish Vidyarthi). Dr. Mahajan was angry at discovering his daughter’s sexual relationship with a Muslim neighbor boy, Riyaz (Kunal Sharma), and he killed her in drunken fit of rage, Malwade assumes. Never mind that Riyaz is nowhere to be found, and that the other member of the household staff, Chetan (Manoj Maurya), also absconded during the night.

The case draws the interest of Central Bureau of Investigation agent Paraskar (Kay Kay Menon), who finds the answer offered by the police too convenient. Specifically, he doubts that Sachin could have slashed Ayesha’s throat so precisely given how drunk he was.

Paraskar’s investigation — with the help of his dutiful assistant, Parvez (Abhinav Sharma) — uncovers additional motives that shine the spotlight on everyone from staff members to neighbors. It also puts Paraskar in the crosshairs of the real killer.

Menon’s captivating performance is the main reason to watch Rahasya. Writer-director Manish Gupta knows this, so he employs closeups of Menon’s face liberally, encouraging the audience to focus on his star. Detective Paraskar’s initial quirkiness is short-lived, allowing the character to establish an identity distinct from all the Sherlock clones out there. He’s meticulous and principled, chasing down each lead while ignoring his wife’s suggestion to just take a bribe and be done with it.

The mystery itself is compelling, with each suspect and theory laid out in turn. Only during Paraskar’s final reveal do things slow down. Right when the audience wants the answers, director Gupta delays with flashbacks and interruptions by the suspects. It’s not a fatal flaw, but it is frustrating.

Gupta’s spin on a true crime story highlights the dangers of jumping to conclusions. While everyone is innocent until proven guilty, those with the strongest motives may be those you least suspect.

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Bollywood Box Office: September 11-13

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It’s hard to launch new Bollywood stars abroad, as confirmed by the opening weekend returns of Hero. During the weekend of September 11-13, 2015, Hero earned $57,407 from 52 US and Canadian theaters ($1,104 average).

The most direct comparison for the debuts of Sooraj “Son of Aditya” Pancholi and Athiya “Daughter of Suniel” Shetty is last year’s Heropanti, which launched Tiger “Son of Jackie” Shroff. Heropanti‘s launch was more modest, opening in just 20 theaters, from which it earned $31,556. Its $1,578 average is quite a bit better than Hero‘s, especially considering that Salman Khan was heavily involved in Hero‘s marketing.

The weekend’s other new release of note in the States, Meet the Patels, got off to a monstrous start. From five theaters, it earned $75,597, for a per-screen average of $15,119. It will expand into more theaters in the coming weeks.

Welcome Back‘s continued success reminds us that the reason there are so many sequels in Bollywood (and Hollywood) is because they make money. In its second weekend in North American theaters, the followup to 2007’s Welcome earned another $222,273 from 125 theaters ($1,778 average). Its total earnings of $1,234,179 rank it fifth for the year. Of the three Bollywood sequels to release here in 2015, ABCD 2 is presently the lowest ranked at sixth place.

Phantom has all but disappeared from the charts, earning just $9,973 from 18 theaters ($554 average) in its third weekend of release. Its total North American earnings stand at $487,978.

In its ninth weekend, Bajrangi Bhaijaan earned $6,261 from six theaters ($1,044 average), bringing its total to $8,110,964. Drishyam took in another $1,701 from three theaters ($567 average), bringing its seven-week total to $739,005.

Sources: Box Office Mojo and Rentrak, via Bollywood Hungama

Movie Review: Hero (2015)

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Hero1.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Hero is a tired action romance that becomes increasingly immature as the story progresses. It’s not the sparkling debut that newbie actors Sooraj Pancholi and Athiya Shetty were hoping for.

The film has the stamp of its producer, Salman Khan, all over it. Pancholi plays a miniature version of a character Khan has played many times before: a morally, sexually pure hooligan who fights his way out of trouble.

Sooraj (Pancholi) is the son of a mobster, Pasha (Aditya Pancholi, his real-life father), and is himself a goon of sorts. Sooraj only steals from other gangsters, and he distributes his stolen gains to people in need, occasionally springing for a night of dancing with his crew.

It’s at a club that he meets Radha (Shetty), a truly awful person. She’s mean, vain, stuck-up, pouty, and stupid. She is also very pretty, which explains why Sooraj makes time to scold her for being a snob instead of blowing her off, altogether.

Facing jail time, Pasha has Sooraj kidnap the daughter of the police Inspector General (Tigmanshu Dulia). Of course, the daughter is Radha. Sooraj and his boys pose as police, and she unquestioningly accompanies them to a safe house in the mountains. Only after she and Sooraj have fallen in love does she discover his true identity.

The kidnapping plot ends in the first half of the film. It’s during the second half, when Sooraj and Radha try to make their love work in the real world, that things get really stupid. There’s a ridiculous subplot about Radha’s brother inventing a fake boyfriend for her, who turns out to be very real and connected to the underworld.

Radha’s disapproving father is the real obstacle, and that gets at the heart of what’s wrong with Hero. Sooraj and Radha seem much younger than the characters they are meant to portray, who are ostensibly of legal drinking age (which is 25 in Mumbai). They act more like a pair of foolish 16-year-olds, convinced that they are Romeo & Juliet born anew.

Instead of talking with her father about her feelings privately, Radha declares them in front of a packed courtroom. When that doesn’t work, she and Sooraj stage a musical production that culminates in her threatening to kill herself unless her dad approves the relationship.

At a time when “women-centric” films are all the rage, Radha is a disappointing throwback. She’s not only restrained by her father’s wishes, but she lacks initiative of her own. When a man standing right next to her points a gun at Sooraj, she doesn’t even reach out to stop him. Her contribution is simply to shriek, “Sooraj!” while her beloved dodges bullets.

Compounding the problem of the movie’s feeling of immaturity is Pancholi’s youthful appearance. At 25, he’s baby-faced enough that he’d be playing high school roles in the US. He’s also short, which makes him appear even younger alongside the giants he fights. Instead of jumping into a leading role, it would fun to see him play the hot-headed younger brother or sidekick to an established actor.

Hero‘s redeeming factors are director Nikhil Advani and cinematographer Tushar Kanti Ray. The movie is really beautiful, especially during the first half. An opening shot of boats anchored on Mumbai’s waterfront is stunning. Advani’s affinity for contrast makes shots of the colorfully dressed characters cavorting on a snowy mountainside a treat to watch.

If only Advani weren’t saddled with an outdated template (Hero is a remake of Subhash Ghai’s 1983 film of the same name) and an aging actor-producer set on crowning his successor. Here’s hoping Advani’s next film, Katti Batti, comes with less baggage.

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New Hulu Streaming Page

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I just added a new page to Access Bollywood with a list of Hindi movies streaming on Hulu in the United States. The link to the page is always accessible at the top of this site and in the right sidebar under “Other Pages at This Site”.

I’ll update the list regularly with movies newly added to Hulu as well as movies recently expired from the service. Enjoy!

Opening September 11: Hero and Meet the Patels

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Two new movies of interest to Bollywood fans hit Chicago area theaters on September 11, 2015. The Salman Khan production Hero features the big screen debuts of star kids Sooraj Pancholi (son of Aditya Pancholi) and Athiya Shetty (daughter of Suniel Shetty).

Hero opens on Friday at the AMC River East 21 in Chicago, MovieMax Cinemas in Niles, AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington, and Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville. It has a listed runtime of 2 hrs. 25 min.

The weekend’s other new release is the hilarious documentary Meet the Patels. It follows actor Ravi Patel as his parents try to find him a suitable potential bride. I really, really like this movie.

Meet the Patels opens on Friday at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago and the South Barrington 30. As added incentive, the Patel parents will be holding in-person Q&A sessions after the Friday evening show at the Music Box and the Saturday evening show at the South Barrington 30. Meet the Patels opens in more and more theaters over the coming weeks, so click here for a list of locations and release dates. The movie has a runtime of 1 hr. 28 min. Seriously, go see it.

Welcome Back carries over for a second week at all of the theaters carrying Hero, plus the Regal Gardens Stadium 1-6 in Skokie, Regal Round Lake Beach Stadium 18 in Round Lake Beach, and AMC Loews Woodridge 18 in Woodridge.

The South Barrington 30 also holds over Phantom, Drishyam, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, and the Hindi-dubbed version of Baahubali.

Other Indian movies playing in the Chicago area this weekend include Bhale Bhale Magadivoi (Telugu w/English subtitles) at Muvico Rosemont 18 in Rosemont, and Cinemark at Seven Bridges in Woodridge, and MovieMax, which also carries Kunjiramayanam (Malayalam), Yatchan (Tamil), Paayum Puli (Tamil), Thani Oruvan (Tamil), and RangiTaranga (Kannada).

Movie Review: Meet the Patels (2014)

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MeetThePatels3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Meet the Patels takes a hilarious look inside one family as the parents try to achieve their dream: getting their kids married.

The documentary starts humbly enough, with filmmaker Geeta Patel testing out a new camera during her family’s annual trip to India. Her younger brother, actor Ravi, is recovering from a breakup with a white woman he’d never told his parents about.

With his thirtieth birthday on the horizon, Ravi decides that maybe all of his relatives are on to something: it’s time for him to get hitched. He agrees to let his parents find his dates for him, drawing him into the vast web of Indian-American matchmaking services.

For anyone who hasn’t experienced said matchmaking, Meet the Patels is an eye-opener. The scale of Indian-American matrimonial infrastructure is immense. Beyond his own family’s network of relatives and acquaintances, Ravi finds his dates though a variety of specially targeted dating sites. His ultimate destination is a national convention just for single people named Patel.

As Ravi crisscrosses the country looking for his ideal woman — she must live in America, and she must like him — it forces both him and Geeta (who is also single) to examine their assumptions about marriage. Are their imagined versions of their future spouses the only possible versions, or should they be looking elsewhere? How do they reconcile their internal cultural conflicts as first-generation Indian-Americans?

Their parents — dad Vasant and mom Champa — face their own sort of reckoning. Why aren’t their kids married yet, when everyone else’s children are married and having kids of their own? They love their unconventional kids, but Champa feels as though she and Vasant must have erred in raising them, otherwise she’d be a grandmother already.

The hook to Meet the Patels is the loving relationship that the family shares. All four of them are funny and opinionated. Ravi and Geeta like each other well enough to live together. The Patels are an endearing bunch, struggling through the ubiquitous contemporary American problem of young people putting off the traditional markers of adulthood for as long as possible.

Watching the film, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between the Patels and my own family. Like Geeta, I’m the elder sister to one younger brother, who is as much a best friend as he is a sibling. We were raised by parents as devoted to one another as they were to us.

Yet I recognized the piercing familiar tone of maternal guilt when Champa complains to Geeta about Geeta’s unmarried state: “I hope you never go through what we are going through.”

Champa sounds exactly like my mom, who — upon my speculation that I might never marry — asked, “So you’re just going to live in sin, eh?” I did get married, to my mother’s relief, but my husband and I decided not to have kids. This then prompted my mother to declare in front of all the relatives at my cousin’s baby shower that she was okay with this because, “Kathy would be a bad mother.” (To be fair, she was probably right!)

Apparently, Gujarati parental guilt and Catholic parental guilt are two sides of the same coin.

Few documentaries are as funny and accessible as Meet the Patels. It’s a real treat to get an honest look inside an adorable American family. This is a must watch.

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Bollywood Box Office: September 4-6

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The big success of Welcome Back in North America taught me to never underestimate the importance of two things: long holiday weekends and Canadians. From September 4-6, 2015, Welcome Back earned $702,290 from 149 theaters ($4,713 average).

More than 20% of Welcome Back‘s earnings came from just 14 Canadian theaters. The per-screen average in that country was $10,600, compared to $4,103 per screen in the US. Both countries celebrated Labor Day on Monday, September 7, significantly boosting Sunday’s returns. Box Office Mojo lists Welcome Back‘s four-day total as $891,435.

Despite the big opening weekend numbers, I have doubts about Welcome Back‘s longevity. As of the Tuesday afternoon after its release, it has fewer than 1,200 user ratings at IMDb. At this website, my review of Welcome Back has garnered less attention than my reviews of All Is Well or Bangistan did at similar stages of release, and those were flops. Welcome Back was likely just a way to pass the time during the last long weekend of summer. Expect its business to drop significantly next weekend.

Other Hindi movies still in North American theaters include:

  • Phantom: Week 2; $82,713 from 83 theaters; $997 average; $441,509 total
  • Bajrangi Bhaijaan: Week 8; $14,970 from eight theaters; $1,871 average; $8,098,675 total
  • Drishyam: Week 6; $5,585 from three theaters; $1,862 average; $735,432 total
  • Brothers: Week 4; $2,482 from three theaters; $827 average; $673,854 total

Source: Box Office Mojo and Rentrak, via Bollywood Hungama

Movie Review: Welcome Back (2015)

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WelcomeBack1 Star (out of 4)

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Even at their best, writer-director Anees Bazmee’s movies are mediocre. At their worst, they are unbearable. Welcome Back is one of the worst.

In the eight years since the events of Welcome, gangsters Uday (Nana Patekar) and Majnu (Anil Kapoor) have left their criminal pasts behind, striking it rich as hoteliers in Dubai. Deciding that it’s time to get married and start their own families, they fall for the same woman: an heiress named Chandni (Ankita Shrivastava), who’s always accompanied by her mother, Maharani (Dimple Kapadia).

The guys’ marriage plans are put on hold when Uday’s father (also played by Patekar) reveals that Uday has another sister — Ranjhana (Shruti Haasan) — he needs marry off first. The “decent” guy they find for her, Ajju (John Abraham), turns out to be a don pretending to be something he’s not — just like Uday and Majnu.

The plot unfolds at furious pace but burns out quickly. After the first thirty minutes or so, very little that happens feels necessary. Everything else appears to be the indulgence of Bazmee’s whims. Helicopters? Camels? Vampire dance party? Check.

Welcome Back‘s story spins so far out of control that Bazmee doesn’t even try to give the film a real ending. He leaves his characters hanging in mid-air, literally and figuratively.

Watching the film becomes an endurance test in the second half, when Naseeruddin Shah shows up as yet another don, Wanted Bhai. At this point, Welcome Back descends to Gunda-level geographic incoherence. Wanted lives in a mansion on an island only accessible by plane. Yet — while on the island — Uday and Majnu are able to drive to a desert and to a mountain range. They also find a graveyard on the island, evoking more memories of Gunda:

It’s hard for any performances to stand out in a movie that requires its characters to behave so stupidly, but Shrivastava is pretty good as a gold digger. Her covert expressions of disgust while wooing the much older bachelors are funny. Kapadia is also exceedingly glamorous.

Another member of the cast stands out for the wrong reasons. Shiney Ahuja plays Wanted’s drug-addicted son, Honey, who is obsessed with Ranjhana. (Azmee doesn’t even bother explaining how Honey knows Ranjhana.)

In 2011, Ahuja was convicted of raping a member of his household staff and sentenced to seven years in prison. He is out on bail while appealing his conviction (a major difference from the American justice system, where sentences are effective immediately, and appeals are adjudicated while the defendant is behind bars).

Azmee says that he didn’t take Ahuja’s conviction into account when casting him in Welcome Back, simply believing that Ahuja fit the part. “I am a filmmaker,” Bazmee told IANS, “and I do not think about anything more than that.”

Are we supposed to believe that there were no other actors who could have played this particular supporting role? While Azmee may not be bothered by Ahuja’s criminal past, many people will be. When we see Ahuja grinding on Shrivastava in a “sexy” dance number, it’s impossible not to reminded of the fact that he was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman.

Acting in films is a privilege, not a right. There was no reason for Azmee to cast Ahuja in this role at the expense of another actor without a violent criminal past. If Azmee can’t appreciate why this is a problem, is he the right person to helm a multi-million dollar film?

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Streaming Video News: September 4, 2015

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I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with one new addition to the catalog. The 2014 Akshay Kumar comedy Entertainment is now available for streaming. Tamannaah Bhatia is really funny in the film, but many of the jokes are meaningless if you don’t understand Hindi or have a serious depth of Bollywood knowledge.

Opening September 4: Welcome Back

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After eight years, Welcome‘s gangster brothers — played by Anil Kapoor and Nana Patekar — return to the big screen for Welcome Back. The sequel opens in Chicago area theaters on September 4, 2015.

Welcome Back opens on Friday at the AMC River East 21 in Chicago, Regal Gardens Stadium 1-6 in Skokie, MovieMax Cinemas in Niles, Regal Round Lake Beach Stadium 18 in Round Lake Beach, AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington, Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville, and AMC Loews Woodridge 18 in Woodridge. (Is there really big enough demand for a Welcome sequel to warrant opening in seven Chicago area theaters? I’m skeptical.) It has a listed runtime of 2 hrs. 35 min.

Phantom gets a second week at the River East 21, MovieMax, South Barrington 30, and Cantera 17.

All Is Well carries over for a third week at MovieMax.

Bajrangi Bhaijaan sticks around for an amazing eighth week at the South Barrington 30, which also holds over Drishyam and the Hindi-dubbed version of Baahubali.

Also on Friday, Learning to Drive continues its run at the River East 21, Century Centre Cinema in Chicago, and Century 12 Evanston/Cinearts 6 in Evanston, and opens at the AMC Northbrook Court 14 in Northbrook, Regal Lincolnshire Stadium 21 in Lincolnshire, South Barrington 30, and Cantera 17.

Other Indian movies showing in the Chicago area this weekend include: