Mili, Review: Chilly A remake it is. And an ideal vehicle to draw boundless sympathy from audiences for the lead actress, Janhvi Kapoor. For who would not root for a girl locked in a freezer chamber and subjected to temperatures of -12 degrees to -18 degrees Celsius? What if hypothermia sets in, and she freezes to death? No chance. Mili is producer Boney Kapoor’s mini Titanic tale, minus the boy, and killing her would be like committing suicide. So, once the premise of a girl battling s...

Batla House, Review: Policeman with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Distinguishing one police thriller from another is becoming an increasingly difficult task. He is part of an incident/encounter that results in deaths of alleged criminals. The officer’s marital life is disrupted due to his erratic working hours and heavy post-traumatic stress. Having had enough, the wife threatens to leave him. The incident creates controversy and he runs afoul of the powers that be. Most of his higher-...

Junglee, Review: Don’t hunt the elephant Every 15 minutes, one elephant is filled for its tusk. In Junglee, a prize pachyderm who inhabits a sanctuary, with tusks so long that they intersect at the edges, is targetted, by an international gang of hunter-smugglers, who hope to make a fortune by selling its ivory to a Singaporean-Chinese buyer. But when they attack the unsuspecting sanctuary-owner, they are taken on by his veterinarian son, who, when off duty, is Rambo+Bruce Lee incarnate...

Love Sonia, Review:  Sister’s sibling search sifting sordid sex surroundings Official statistics show that there hundreds of thousands of sex workers in India, and many of them are below 18. Being a sex worker is not a crime, but soliciting and living of the earnings of sex workers are clear crimes. That does not deter the ‘businessmen’ who run brothels and sex rackets. 270 girls/women go missing every day in India and most land up in the flesh trade. Only 1% of them ma...

Raid, Review: Concealing ceiling Let us warn you in advance that this film is not about an army raid or a guerrilla foray into another country. ‘Raid’ here refers to an operation launched by an Income Tax (the original ‘IT’) official, with the help of his co-workers and the police, to unearth wealth that has not been accounted for and stowed away as ‘black’ assets, evading income tax, by a legislator. Based on a true story, and set in 1981, the movie has ju...