1917, Review: One shot wonder, real-time revolution War films can be about nations and nationalism, or soldiers and their sagas. While the former promote jingoism, the latter tend to be anti-war, by personalising the narrative and addressing personal trauma of the protagonists, while universalising their sentiments. 1917 belongs to the second category. It is a technical marvel, but never wavers from the plight of its main characters. All the awards and encomiums it has garnered, raising expec...

Downsizing, review: Mini We Once in a while, a movie comes along that renews our faith in creative writing and the ability of cinema to rise above its own decadence. Maybe it took a dozen ‘shrink’, ‘little’ and ‘antman’ films, from 1957 to 2015, to inspire the writers of Downsizing, the title itself a pun, but the resulting effort has a fresh new feel about it. After setting up a very interesting premise and some smooth as silk spellbinding VFX, the film th...

Siraj Syed reviews The Founder: Hey Mac, watch out for that Burger! Your McDonald’s burger is not going to be same again. Neither are the fries, or the softees. This is a biopic (read ‘Based on a true story') about the Kroc behind the arches, an American salesman known to the world as Raymond A. Kroc, who consolidated and expanded the two-store enterprise to, nearly, what it is today. Not the founder of the pioneering and iconic fast-food chain, he was more or less solely res...

Siraj Syed reviews Allied: Two Allies, Both Spies, One Cries, One Dies There are a few things to like about Allied. Then there are a few things you don’t like so much. At the end f the report card, you might end up with as many –ves as you mark +ves, which doesn’t get you anywhere, really. Brad Pitt’s third war movie in a row and Marion Cotillard’s sequence of big projects promises you CasaBlanca, but gives you Morocco instead. Almost everything in the film is co...