Hostel - Review

                                                  Hostel - Same old masala flick

Hostel is the impressively incompetent debut of Hemraj BC. The film is so spectacularly bad that it hooks  you to the level that you actually want to see where the muddled narrative will go next. Hemraj, who has also written the film, serves us an incoherent mix of friendship, a love triangle, &  a bush of instantly forgettable social statements which make no sense when the theater lights zoom off.

Aditya Bikram Rana (Anmol KC), a rich brat arrives in a medical hostel. There he meets & makes two friends Shri (Gaurav Pahadi) and Junge (Salon Basnet).  Being habitual to hostel since his childhood days, Aditya is a loner but surprisingly, he does not hesitate  teasing girls and taking up chances with them.  He hates his parents, for not giving him his space & leaving him alone behind those hostels' walls.

Sooner-  Aditya, Shri & Junge build a thick bonding. They have a strict hostel warden (Sunil Rawal) to care for, who looks pretty much the virus of 3 Idiot. But boys being boys, dismiss all the rules, visit the night clubs, party hard and in between mouth some funny one liners too. Needless to say there brews a predictable love triangle between Aditya, Shri & Prakriti.  Thereby all the established clichés begin to rule - fight for the girl, fight amongst boys & every little damn thing.

One can not believe that the same production house which once produced the very sensible yet most entertaining 'Saayad', has produced this over written & over acted film. I wonder what made Sunil Rawal to bank on this film, is that those funny one liners? If that is the case, i can feel nothing but pity. Your 1.5 minutes something trailer was far more entertaining than the whole film sir.

When i was at the popcorn counter, some girls were saying Anmol matches the Korean guilt of looking handsome & that says a lot itself. Anmol definitely looks charming, electrifying but his expressions are very wooden. He is almost sandwiched by the brilliant actings of Salon Basnet & Gaurav Pahari. For the heroines - Girls if you want to see yourself acting long, please stop seeing the make up kits & start brushing on your acting skills.

I am going with 2 stars for this lazy endeavor.
2/5 Stars
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JAICINEMA

Karkash- Review

                                                                                Karkash - Review

Karkash, directed by Asif Shah, merriments gladly in its giddiness. This is a film whose brash humor requires neither taste nor brain to appreciate, and those wanting to see some wit, a clever screenplay, or stimulated performances might want to go home and watch Meri Bassai  instead.

The very beginning of the reels & we are thrown into the world of  Andy (Daya Hang Rai), Prabhat (Satyaraj Acharya) & Sandesh, who are close-knit members of their average band named Karkash, but much is not happening since they are just ditched by their lead vocalist. And there is a big band competition in the offing too. Enter Ivan (Suraj Singh Thakuri), who drinks booze like nothing, looks elite ,feds on Hindi songs. Ivan wears the much needed vocalist place in the band but does that help in any way ? No. Instead he bosses some lectures on them, slowly introducing them in the world of narcotics & crime. What happens next, sums the whole Karkash marathon.

This heavily inspired Guy Ritchie styled feel & look film slogs on for 2 hours and 8minutes, and huge portions of the film are yawn-inspiring,especially the first hours. But it's not entirely a tedious show either. Yes, it offers some  good laugh too, especially in the last hours of the film, in fact the moments spring surprises one after another. Here one wishes more & the film is over. I must say , it appears to me as if  it's just a 10 minutes fun show & rest is better forgiving.

Asif shah, taking his first ride at direction, offers us a highly promoted but less served film. He brings in everything to make it look appealing - sexy chicks, Daya Hang Rai, drug, band ,a gangster & what not! But he fails miserably.

Performance wise it's Rajendra Khadgi who towers tall. He pumps into the much needed loudness in his character. Kameshwor Chaurasiya, though in a cameo, surprisingly takes the laurel to home. He stays with you long after you walk off the hall. Here is an actor to look for. The three leading males hardly manage to impress. Suraj Singh Thakuri is a major minus of the film. Looking at his action,attitude, & diction , it looks as if he is there holidaying off 'Call Kantipur'. Looniva Tuladhar is passable.

 2.5 star for Karkash. Point five is for Kameshwor & the beautiful twist at the finale.

2.5/10
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JAI CINEMA

LOOT-Review

Prashant Rasaily (director of Acharya) once dreamt of a film called 'CROSSROAD' which had a plot revolving around a guy who is jobless and hopes to make it a big one day . Prashant was then walking through the alleys of Bhaktapur and the-narrow-escape- alleys in ASON, he was all ready to shoot the never seen before chase sequences on those dusty locations. For some reason he missed it and shelved the project. Today when i am writing this, i'm hoping he'll catch LOOT someday and will go back to his unfulfilled desire. Yes PRASHANT u planted it, watered it and left it to grow aside & now, now the other guys have come up with the very vision u have had many years back. Though the plot is slightly different this time.


Murray Kerr - a united Kingdom resident, came into Kathmandu and gave his piece about this SICK CITY. In his story , he narrates about an ambitious guy who has a wife and a son to look for. His wife dismisses his idea of living on short cuts, but he wants to cure his poverty with a jackpot that's running in his mind for a while now. Sick City started it and this guy took it far in the form of another tale in LOOT.

Now reviewing Loot-

Five different young lad has the knowledge that they can never lead straight lives -- comes one final, desperate plan made by Haku Kale (saugat Malla). Pull off one gigantic heist, they think, make a pot of money, and use it to re-script the rest of their lives.

They identify the target -- the busy Bank in Kathmandu.

So they plan and carry out the heist -- and without warning, the wheels come off their plot. Guys here's a gang where no trust game is being played, & their tragedy is that they don't realize they can be dumped by the very man (Saugat Malla) they work for.

The film has quite a few things going for it. 

Firstly, precedent: It is unabashedly inspired by Reservoir Dogs, the edgy 1992 underworld thriller with which Quentin Tarantino made his bones for both script and direction. But being inspired is not a crime. Tarantino himself was inspired by a film out of, and about, Hong Kong.

Secondly, technical excellence: Casting (Pravin Khatiwada) is just perfect, but at times Pratikraj Neaupane and Sushil Pandey look tiring - may be because they will grow later .Dialogues (Saugat Malla/Dayahang Rai/Nischal Basnet) are considerably sparser than is the norm for Nepali films, and occasionally, it sparkles with wit. Take, for instance, the scene where SAUGAT is talking the gang through the intricacies of the plan. At one point, he warns rather fool mamber Dayahang to use brain rather than physical power.

P.S:Sugat Malla and Dayahang Rai have written their dialouges own.

They both have given a towering performance, Take a bow Guys! Karma Sakya does a decent job. Sushma Karki in an item song, looks plastic. Reecha Sharma is just ok.

The cinematography (PURUSHOTTAM PRADHAN) and visual action-chase sequence (Yogendra Shrestha) have bragging moments. Purushottam Pradhan has despite a tendency to go a touch over the top, manage to carry out the frames amazingly.

And finally, the five stars themselves -- each has a character etched for him by the script and director, and all 5 of them stay within those parameters. It is also a plus that the director has the temptation to let Saugat Malla hog a substantial number of the frames -- a rather uncommon malaise in films featuring him, that only proves better for the film. Nischal, as a writer /Director knows his job well, but one wishes more taut script, a little less of indulgence in directing, a tad more ruthlessness in editing, and this film could have pulled off a badly needed box office heist. In the event, all that LOOT does is fly the balloon of hope that we cling to each time with a new comer.Here's a hope guys.

At the BOX OFFICE:

The film tries to be different from run of the mill kollywood kitsch, its own inherent 'Nepali-ness' will work wonder at the multiplexes , but a few glaring flaws will ultimately drag it down in small centers. In fact the continuous back and forth narration will work a hitch to these center's business. So it's a big multiplex where it will cut the harvest big. This one is highly entertaining.Go watch u won't regret your money and time.

4.5/5 stars

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JAICINEMA

RA.ONE:Review

Once in a while, movies compel you to write odd things. You end up with sentences you stare at in disbelief, wondering if your fingers misled you or you slipped up dyslexically, missing a crucial word or a thought. This film, the biggest budget Indian feature of all time, provides one such daft line: Arjun Rampal is the best thing in this movie.

That fact should, in itself, tell you all. Still, I'm getting far ahead of myself. Ra.One is a subpar superhero film with a mediocre soundtrack and occasionally terrific effects. For those of you looking to compare, it's well below Krrish on the superpecking order, and far, far below Robot.

It has a good villain in Rampal, a striking heroine in Kareena Kapoor and a visual effects team that, while derivative, gets the job done rather well. The problem lies in the hodgepodge script -- a congealed instant-noodles mess of mixed flavours and overzealous Bollywoodisation -- and, even more crucially, in the man.
There is far too much Shah Rukh Khan in Ra.One, and while the man can normally be counted on to entertain no matter how completely he overwhelms us with his presence, this is him trying too hard in a film that straddles the disparate worlds of Shankar and Farah Khan, and, having been made by Anubhav Sinha, falls painfully flat.
Somewhere in the script was a simple idea -- that of a video game villain wreaking havoc in the real world -- with potential for an enjoyable romp, but as the unambitious plot was scaled up to dizzying heights, much masala was injected thoughtlessly into it, as if each scene in isolation needed to be packed with every colour of cool.

The film's narrative, as a result, is disjointed and sluggish, with a mere handful of good scenes. The rest is not just filler, but lengthy, exhausting, filmi filler -- the kind of kitsch a film like this should really have left behind.
An Amelie-haired young boy (Armaan Verma) addicted to video games considers his father (Khan) a loser despite the fact that he makes high-concept games. Driven to create a game 'bad' enough to win him some brownie points, Khan's dweeby techie comes up with a villain loaded with artificial intelligence, one nearly impossible to beat.


From 'Random Access One' they start calling him Ra-One, at which point a Chinese colleague wonders if the game's hero could be called something similar. "G-One! Does it mean anything in Hindi?" he trills enthusiastically, since that's what a London-based software firm would obviously prioritise in its international products.
(Language is a constant irritant in the film. Shah Rukh introduces his luscious wife Kareena Kapoor to the aforementioned colleague's Chinese mother with "my better half," to which the lady says "Ni hao" and Kapoor diligently tosses in a "Namaste." Later, when Khan is held up by a London thug, he speaks in English while the goon helpfully talks in Bob Christo-accented Hindi. Ah well.)


The game itself, set in the year 2050 -- an ill omen for the film if ever there was one  -- proves to be unimpressively simple, considering Khan's young son starts beating it the very first time it's ever played. It consists of full-body virtual reality suits, cool as a concept, but considering you'll have to leap in the air and execute a flying dropkick instead of just pressing Up and the yellow button, seems significantly tiresome.
Like the film itself is, slavishly throwing nonsensical jargon at us instead of letting the bad guy out as soon as possible.



The only saving grace in the first half is Kareena, who dazzles even as she acts her way out of a paperbagful of stock situations. By which I mean she acts just fine, but looks absolutely jawdroppingly ravishing, better perhaps than she ever has. The hemline of her white dress is the only reason to watch the Criminal song, and the one wicked moment she has is the film's only genuine surprise.

The effects, as said, are impressive but only occasionally. The action setpieces, while visually adept, lack urgency and propulsion. The most striking effect is that of RaOne and G-One taking shape as characters in the real world, big pixelly blocks building upon each other, the Tetris-like assembly delightfully looking like graphics rendering gradually. RaOne starts out like a Neo knockoff from The Matrix, but clearly means business once Rampal is in control. Rampal's menacing, cold and can dish out a helluva piledriver – and appears in maybe six scenes in total.


The rest is for the filminess, you see. For G-One to wonder what Karvachauth is and then hug Kareena as voyeuristic neighbours cheer them on; for random pseudo-sufi yells in the background as characters feel pangs of emotion; for plotpoints to be reiterated over and over and over again. And, most critically, for embarrassingly broad 'comedy' that never ever gets a laugh. The Rajnikanth  cameo works, sure, but does so by default -- and makes no sense whatsoever.


There are people who will let this film slide. Who will say it's not bad "for a Hindi film." That if it's a hindi superhero film it'll have to add in lots of Bollywood to make it commercially feasible, and this is as good as it gets. Hogwash. For those doubters I have two words: Mister and India . I'm glad Khan stuck his neck out and gave us a project of this magnitude, one other genuinely inventive superhero movies will doubtless use to create truly special films. Ra.One, of course, is far from it.


There is but one prerequisite of a superhero film: A central character we care about. Here, as Khan flits from hit persona to persona, there is no sense of consistency. The game designer appears sometimes socially handicapped, and sometimes (in flashback) an utter charmer; G-One speaks haltingly like a robot, and then breaks into rap. The film seems to think that nothing seems to matter as long as there's enough Khan, and it becomes tragically evident that this is a project born more out of vanity than passion.

2 stars
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JAI CINEMA