Tag Archives: Riva Arora

Movie Review: Kaali Khuhi (2020)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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The Netflix Original horror film Kaali Khuhi (“The Black Well“) centers on a compelling theme but falls flat in its execution.

10-year-old Shivangi (Riva Arora, who was delightful as Young Supri in Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota) lives in the city with her dad Darshan (Satyadeep Mishra) and mom Priya (Sanjeeda Sheikh), who’s pregnant with a baby girl.

The family is called back to Darshan’s village because his mother (played by Leela Samson) is seriously ill. She was afflicted shortly after a tormented man opened up a sealed well outside of the village, letting something out.

When they arrive at the family home, Darshan’s aunt Satya (Shabana Azmi) is agitated. Shivangi sees an apparition of a girl, and the adults hear strange noises in the house. Shivangi suspects that the truth lies in a scrapbook kept by Aunt Satya that is full of horrifying drawings and lists of girls’ names. This is not a safe place, but Darshan refuses to leave, even after his mother dies.

Director Terri Samundra — who co-wrote Kaali Khuhi with David Walter Lech — goes for an eerie tone rather than out-and-out scary, but it’s not totally successful. Apprehensive characters approach every spooky sound at such a slow pace that any tension dissipates by the time they find the source. The film is only 90 minutes-long, but it still feels padded.

In all that padding lies a missed opportunity to better connect the family’s story to that of the town. The curse applies to the whole village for its traditional practice of female infanticide, yet we really only see what’s happening to Shivangi’s family. They feel removed literally and figuratively from the rest of the village, even though they weren’t the only ones to participate in the heinous tradition. As such, the theme isn’t explored as thoroughly as it could have been.

This disconnect between the village and the events at the family homestead make it especially confusing when Darshan insists that they stay, presumably abandoning their life in the city along with Priya’s doctors and Shivangi’s school. Possibly it’s the curse making him do it, but it’s unclear.

The performances are underwhelming when the most common direction is: “look concerned and move slowly.” Prolonged periods of quiet are interrupted by a character suddenly screaming, making for unpleasant sound design. And there’s a moment at the end when things get very, very gross.

The most interesting thing about Kaali Khuhi is positioning a 10-year-old girl as the protagonist. Shivangi hasn’t hit puberty yet, so she may not have gotten the “birds and the bees” talk from her parents. Burdening a young kid with the knowledge that her ancestors murdered their newborn daughters feels unfair. But Shivangi demonstrates that sometimes you have to act with courage even when you’re unprepared.

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Movie Review: Gunjan Saxena — The Kargil Girl (2020)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Gunjan Saxena didn’t set out to be the Indian Air Force’s first woman combat pilot. She just wanted to fly. While the movie based on her life — Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl — shows some of the key events in her pathbreaking career, it focuses more on how her extraordinary willpower and the support of her devoted father helped her make history.

Gunjan grew up in the 1980s wanting to be a pilot. A clever song sequence shows young Gunjan (played by cute Riva Arora) wearing aviator sunglasses and playing with toy planes to the tune of “Mann Ki Dori.” Lyrics like, “From the moment I saw you, I just can’t get you out of my head,” describe first love, but it’s love between a girl and an airplane.

Her father, Anup (Pankaj Tripathi), believes his daughter can accomplish anything she puts her mind to. He’s determined to help her, even over the objections of Gunjan’s mother Kirti (Ayesha Raza Mishra) and Gunjan’s older brother Anshuman (played by Aaryan Arora as a kid and Angad Bedi as an adult.) Mom and brother claim to want to save Gunjan from heartbreak in a world that limits the options for girls and women, but their attitudes just reinforce those limitations.

As she grows up, Gunjan (played as an adult by Janhvi Kapoor) proves herself an overachiever, topping her classes and doing whatever is required to reach her goal. Joining the Air Force’s first class of women pilots turns out to be the quickest way for her to get in the air. When Gunjan fails the Air Force fitness exam by being seven kilograms overweight, she and Anup train using a diet and exercise routine movie superstar Rekha mentioned in a magazine.

The relationship between father and daughter is the heart of Gunjan Saxena. First-time writer-director Sharan Sharma took the advice of his co-writer Nikhil Mehrotra, who previously wrote great family-oriented films like Dangal, Panga, and Chhichhore. Sharma told First Post that, given the volume of excellent source material, “the biggest difficulty in a film of this nature is deciding what should not go into it.” Given how delightful Tripathi and Kapoor are together, focusing the story on their bond was clearly the right move.

Gunjan Saxena is only Kapoor’s third lead role, and she proves herself completely capable of carrying a feature film. She makes it looks easy, whether the challenges facing Gunjan are physical or emotional.

Whatever Anshuman’s motivations were for warning Gunjan against being a pilot, he was right that not everyone would be pleased about her choice. She realizes that after she becomes the first woman at her assigned Air Force base. From petty annoyances like not having a dedicated restroom to outright hostility from some of her fellow soldiers, she faces the extent to which some men will go to exclude women from certain spaces. A scene in which Gunjan’s commanding officer Dileep Singh (Viineet Kumar) finally tells her why he doesn’t think she belongs is heartbreaking. Kapoor handles the scene with grace and finesse.

The film’s action sequences when Gunjan is called into service during the Kargil War are well-executed and thrilling. The cinematic license Sharma takes with events ramps up the excitement and emotional resonance.

There’s a lovely scene in which Gunjan discusses the meaning of patriotism with her father, asking whether the desire to fly is sufficient reason to join the Air Force. Anup — a career military man himself — replies that patriotism isn’t measured by who shouts slogans the loudest, but by whether one does their duty to the best of their ability. It’s a fitting way to distill the real Gunjan Saxena’s approach to her life and a fine way to describe Janhvi Kapoor’s portrayal of her.

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Movie Review: Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (2018)

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4 Stars (out of 4)

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Buy/rent Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota at Amazon or iTunes

By the time most of us reach adulthood, we’ve figured out that society is unfair and you only get as much justice as you can pay for. But what if you grew up without that knowledge? What if you truly believed that you could fight the bad guys and win?

Such is the case for Surya, the hero of Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (“The Man Who Feels No Pain“, MKDNH, henceforth). Born with a congenital insensitivity to pain, young Surya (Sartaaj Kakkar) spends most of his childhood indoors. His father Jatin (Jimit Trivedi) wants to protect his son not just because of his unique condition, but because he’s all that remains of Jatin’s wife (played by Shweta Basu Prasad), who died in a mugging days after Surya’s birth.

Jatin’s father-in-law lives with them, and he too wants to keep his daughter’s memory alive through Surya. Rather than keep the boy wrapped in cotton wool, Grandpa (Mahesh Manjrekar) encourages the boy to emulate his mother’s feisty streak (which we see through flashbacks as Surya imagines the mother he never got to know). Grandpa and grandson binge watch martial arts movies on VHS, with Surya acting out the moves and Grandpa teaching him how other people experience pain, so the boy can disguise his condition to the outside world.

An energetic boy with heroic instincts and an inability to accurately judge risk is a force to be reckoned with. [My nephew is basically Surya with pain sensitivity, so I speak from experience.] When the neighbors deem the 9-year-old wannabe vigilante a menace to society, the family moves away — separating the boy from his tenacious best friend Supriya (Riva Arora) and leaving her at the mercy of her abusive, drunken father.

Fast forward twelve years, and 21-year-old Surya (Abhimanyu Dassani) is ready to head out into the world. His mission is to reunite with “Supri” (Pataakha‘s Radhika Madan) and meet his hero: one-legged martial artist Karate Mani (Gulshan Devaiah). When Karate Mani’s evil twin brother, Jimmy (also Devaiah), steals Mani’s locket, Surya is finally able to put his training to the test — against the pragmatic advice of Supri and Karate Mani himself.

MKDNH is a nostalgic action comedy. It is to martial arts movies of the mid-20th century what Super 8 was to old monster movies. MKDNH‘s stunts are all the funnier for the ways reality intrudes upon them. Surya envisions the way fights will go, only for them to play out in sloppy and un-cinematic ways.

Underneath all the flying fists and high kicks is a touching story about families. Jatin wants to protect Surya physically but emotionally, too, long after Surya has become an adult. There’s a compelling subplot about Supri’s dysfunctional family and whether she will follow her in her mother’s (Lovleen Mishra) footsteps and tolerate abuse for the sake of protecting someone she loves. Mani’s conflict with Jimmy is the continuation of a lifelong battle for their father’s approval.

Yet MKDNH is never maudlin. Writer-director Vasan Bala trusts the audience to feel the story’s emotional weight and connect with the characters while always being an out-and-out comedy. It’s a difficult feat that is executed to perfection.

I don’t think there’s any way to improve upon MKDHN. It feels like the fullest possible realization of Bala’s vision, from the music and costumes to Jay I. Patel’s cinematography and Prerna Saigal’s editing. Every one of the actors is tremendous, with Devaiah and Manjrekar making the most of their delightful supporting characters without overshadowing Madan or Dassani, in his very first film role.

I absolutely loved Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota.

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