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Baby, Review: Premature
A Wednesday director Neeraj Pandey’s film Baby was previewed for the press on Thursday. It is made under his Friday Films banner and reunites Akshay Kumar with Pandey, after Special 26. Baby is an espionage action-thriller, in a genre similar to his earlier two outings, but much bigger and more ambitious in span.
Ajay Singh Rajput is a leading officer in an elite counter-intelligence unit of 16 men, informally called ‘Baby’, because they have a time ...
Dolly Ki Doli (Dolly’s bridal palanquin), Review: The Milky Way
Dolly Ki Doli is about a cheat called Dolly, and her support gang of confidence tricksters. Their modus operandi is that Dolly’s so-called brother Raju identifies prospects, then Dolly and the gang lures these eligible bachelors into falling in love with Dolly, leading on to marriage. On the wedding night, Dolly serves drug-laced milk to the groom and his immediate family, ensuring they fall into deep slumber, and the...
The Imitation Game, Review: Every spectator is a winner
Before the publication of Oxford mathematician Andrew Hodges’ ground-breaking 1983 biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma, the British mathematician who played a crucial role in breaking the Nazis’ Enigma ciphers during World War II and laid the groundwork for modern notions of artificial intelligence, was little known outside of scientific circles. Hodges’ revelatory account detailed how a man who should have been a ...
The Theory of Everything, Review: A Practical Treat for Everyone
Among the most brilliant theoretical physicists of his era, and maybe since Einstein, Stephen Hawking turned 73 last week. From 1979 to 2009, he held the post of Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, the chair held by Isaac Newton in 1663. Professor Hawking has over a dozen honorary degrees and was awarded the CBE in 1982. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Science. Besides hi...
Paddington, Review: Please see this film. Thank you.
In 1956, a BBC cameraman bought a small toy bear left alone on a shelf in the iconic Selfridges store, London, for his wife Brenda. Named Paddington, after the train station close to Michael Bond’s home, the bear inspired him to write eight episodes in just over a week, featuring the bear from Deepest Peru. It was published as a book in 1958. Meanwhile, the station was made famous when ‘4.50 from Paddington’ was published,...
American Sniper, Review: Kyler instinct--all hits, no misses!
Clint Eastwood told BBC arts editor Will Gompertz recently that he was not fond of the war in Iraq, but was "always sympathetic to veterans". At 84, he is quite a veteran himself too. It’s been a long time since the Rawhide series (early 1960s), Sergio Leone’s Italian spaghetti Western that made him a star (Fistful of Dollars, 1964), the hard-hitting cop that was to become a prototype (Dirty Harry, 197...
Taken 3, Review: Haven 3--End of the road for fugitive Mills Kills
Liam Neeson returns as ex-CIA agent Bryan Mills in Taken 3, aka Tak3n (no spell-check required), the latest film in the vengeance-driven action franchise. Once again, his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and her mother Lenore, Mills’ separated wife (Famke Janssen), now married to Stuart St. John (Dougray Scott) are in peril. Lenore is found dead in Mills’ home, with her throat slit, and Mills holding a knife. Obviously,...
Big Eyes, Review: Submissive painter and harmful charmer, making waifs
Big Eyes! Horror? No. Psychological thriller? No way. Comedy? In part, yes. A biopic about a hypnotist? Close, but it’s about a painter. So this painter had really BIG eyes? Wrong. Her eyes were of normal dimensions, but she had a fixation for painting young children with their eyes disproportionately big. So where’s the story? In 2003, writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (Man on the Moon, Auto Focus,...
Unbroken, Review: Life of Pi meets Bhag Milkha Bhag meets Forrest Gump
I know, Milkha was a real character and the others are fictional, so where does Unbroken meet these other three? Endurance against all odds at sea was seen in Pi, a small-town boy running for international glory was Milkha and Forrest Gump too ran a similar trail, albeit with the added dimension of a man having a mental condition. In the end, we will have to give it to Unbroken for originality, because it is largely true t...
The Woman in Black, 2—Angel of Death, Review: Hammer misses the nail
The Woman in Black, 2: Angel of Death (TWIB 2,-AOD) is made by the same production team behind the original Woman in Black, with a screenplay by Jon Croker, said to be based on Susan Hill's novel. There is a book called The Woman in Black: Angel of Death, but it is a novelisation of the film by crime writer Martyn Waites, from Jon Croker’s screenplay. So the sequel does not owe anything to the original. Versi...
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, Review: Lancelot, Camelot, Huge Ackman and Amen!
In this year’s Hollywood Christmas release, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, 'Santa Claus' is symbolically replaced by a whole team of entertainers, “eleven”, at director Shawn Levy’s last count. The star-cast includes two veterans who are no more—Robin Williams and Mickey Rooney—and inanimate objects and creatures by the dozen, who make-up for Rudolph,...
The Hobbit—Battle of the Five Armies, Review: 5 times the fight fest, in 4DX and 3D
*So snow comes after fire, and even dragons have their endings.
*Where there's life there's hope.
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
The film opens where The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug left off: the dragon is on his way to attack the town of Esgaroth on the lake. People flee in terror, while Bard the Bowman struggles to escape from prison in order to help fight the dragon. the dwarf king Tho...
The Babadook, Review: Spook or self-help book?
It’s a ghoulish game! It’s a bed-time horror story! It’s a horrific riddle! It’s Babadook! It’s a self-help book! Not to be confused with Indian/Middle Eastern mystics/sufis/sadhus who go around under the nomenclature of Baba, or (prodigious?) male babies who are affectionately so called, Babadook uses the horror genre to try and conquer the demons within. But heaven help her if any single mother has to take the Baba...
Jessabelle, Review: Voodoo in the Bayou
Jessabelle, co-incidentally similar in its title and name of its central character to another recent horror film, Annabelle, follows the time-tested setting of a country house surrounded by a lake (bayou, in this case) and woods, where a solitary woman faces demons that have a bone to pick with her, and with her kith and kin. It has a great-looking heroine with a starry presence, but a plot that is almost absent for 3/4ths of the film, convoluted when i...
Badlapur Boys, Review: Noble cause, familiar ploys
After films about cricket, hockey and football, here comes one about the indigenous game called ‘kabaddi’. The Badlapur Boys (BB) is named in the tradition of league games, getting popular in the India of the 2000s. A group of kabaddi hobbyists try to seize the opportunity to bring fame to the remote village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh by participating in a kabaddi tournament and hoping to win against top-ranked ...
IFFI Goa 2014, Festival Diary, Part III
A bit of luck meant that I got a room at Hotel Neptune Deluxe at an affordable rate. My room was on the fourth floor, and, for an inexplicable reason, the lift only serviced floors 2 to 4, in the five storey building, where only floors 3 and 4 were occupied by the hotel. A staff-boy helped me carry my luggage till the second floor, and I settled in Room 116. The number has significance for film-buffs, for Secret Agent 116 featu...
Badlapur Boys is a film about an old team-game, set against the water crisis in rural India
Synopsis
‘Kabaddi’ is a contact sport, born in ancient India, and has since gained popularity in the international sports arena as the only game that requires a strong combination of ‘knowledge’, ‘concentration’, ‘strength’, ‘stamina’, and ‘combat skills’. Our honest attempt has been to revive the spirit of the game, in the film, ...
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About Siraj Syed
 Syed Siraj
(Siraj Associates)
Siraj Syed is a film-critic since 1970 and a Former President of the Freelance Film Journalists' Combine of India.
He is the India Correspondent of FilmFestivals.com and a member of FIPRESCI, the international Federation of Film Critics, Munich, Germany
Siraj Syed has contributed over 1,015 articles on cinema, international film festivals, conventions, exhibitions, etc., most recently, at IFFI (Goa), MIFF (Mumbai), MFF/MAMI (Mumbai) and CommunicAsia (Singapore). He often edits film festival daily bulletins.
He is also an actor and a dubbing artiste. Further, he has been teaching media, acting and dubbing at over 30 institutes in India and Singapore, since 1984.
Bandra West, Mumbai India View my profileSend me a message
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