12 Angry Men (English - 1957)

12 Angry Men is a 1957 American classic, or epic, or whatever you call it, movie which deals with the complicated emotion of prejudice. It tells the story of a jury of 12 men from various aspects of the society who tries to find out a unanimous decision about whether a 17 year old boy accused of killing his father is guilty or not. From the cross examination of eye witnesses and circumstantial evidences, 11 of the 12 are convinced that the boy is guilty and they argued for death sentence. But there was one man who was not convinced that the boy was guily. Since they have to come up with a unanimous decision, those who says "GUILTY" tries to convince the person who said he had a doubt.





As mentioned before, the group consists of different kind of people. One of them has to attend a function in the evening, so he wants to wrap the things up quickly. Another person had a bitter experience from his own son, hence he believes most of the kids are bad. All these prejudices masked their ability to take the correct decision. The discussion gradually becomes an arguement and the sole person who had doubt in whether the boy is guilty or not manages to convince the other 10 that there is a chance that the boy is innocent. But there is still one person who believes that the kid is guilty, and now the situation is exactly the opposite to the situation when they started the discussion, ie 11 "GUITLY" to 1 "NOT GUILTY". The film ends with the only person arguing that the boy is guilty admitting that he can be "NOT GUILTY", and the jury moving to the court to declare their decision that the boy can be "NOT GUILTY".

The twist and turns are so engaging that you'll watch the movie without even taking a break.The dialogues will keep you glued to your seat. The entire movie is shot in a single room, but it is never going to bore you. I give it a must watch rating.

My Rating : Must Watch (****)

Body Of Lies (English - 2008)

Director : Ridley Scott

Cast : Leonardo DiCaprio, Russel Crowe, Mark Strong, Golshifteh Farahani

Body of Lies is a 2008 English Action Thriller movie directed by Ridley Scott (director of Blade Runner and Gladiator). It is based on a 2007 novel by the same name. It tells the story of three secret service men and their fight against terrorism and themselves. The focus of the movie is on a CIA Agent who works in Jordan to capture a terrorist big fish with the help of the Jordanian secret service.

DiCaprio plays the role of Roger Ferris who is the above mentioned CIA Agent. He works under the supervision of Hoffman (Russel Crowe), and he believes that for his mission to succeed, he should make a good relationship based on trust with the Jordanian General Intelligence Department chief Hani Salaam (Mark Strong). While his attempt was going on, Hoffman runs parallel operations and this irritates Hani who sends Farris out of Jordan. Once out of Jordan, he makes a masterplan which he believed will help them identify where the terrorist big fish Al-Saleem is hiding. For this purpose, they manipulated on a Jordanian architect, and without his knowledge, made him responsible for a fake explosion in the US base in Turkey.

Ferris' calculations proved correct when Al-Saleem himself made conact with the architect. But before he could make any further move, the architect was kidnapped and when forced, he informed them that Ferris could've manipulated him. When Hani came to know about all these things, he decides to play a double game. He makes a deal with Al-Saleem swapping Ferris for money. With the help of an insider in Al-Saleem's group, Hani identifies the hideout where Ferris is being tortured, and reaches just in time with his soldiers to save him and arrest Al-Saleem. Later Ferris decides to quit CIA and he convinces Hoffman that he has taken the right decision. The film ends with Hoffman ordering his operatives to abort tailing Ferris since he is now not part of their organisation.

Most part of the movie is set in the middle east and very often they mention middle east as uncivilized due to the deteriorating human condition there. Also the movie gives an inside view of how the CIA handles their Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) for surveillance and tracking, and how the militants easily fool their tech savvy counterparts by turning their back towards technology. The movie is fast, crisp, entertaining and entirely watchable.

My Rating : Good (***)

Taken (English - 2008)

Taken is a 2008 English action movie. Liam Neeson plays the role of Bryan, an unstoppable and highly trained, but retired, CIA official who follows the kidnappers of his only daughter Kim, played by Maggie Grace. The story is of a kind which we have heard a lot, but its an adrenalin filled movie with lots of action packed moments.

Kim is kidnapped with her friend while on a trip to Paris by some Albanian trafficking mafia. Before being taken away she calls and informs her father Bryan. Bryan decided to enter into the game and by exploiting all the available clues and chances, and with the help of the specially acquired skills from his earlier job as a CIA Agent, Bryan finally reaches his daughter and saves her from the human traffickers. Then he takes her back to her mom and step-dad who are living seperately from Bryan. The film ends with Bryan taking his daughter to a famous singer whose life he had saved earlier while working as her body guard to fulfill her dream of becoming a singer.

Neelson's performance is really good and a really worth attempt is made to match the films with movies like the Bourne Series. But due to the week story line, it fell a little short of that goal. But the movie is good and watchable.

My Rating : Good (***)

Dil Bole Hadippa (Hindi - 2009)

Dil Bole Hadippa is a 2009 Hindi movie directed by Anurag Singh under the banner of Yash Raj Films. The lead roles are played by Shahid Kapoor and Rani Mukharjee. Its about the story of a Punjabi girl Veera's (Rani) desire to play for the team representing India against Pakistan and to win the Aman Cup held on the Independance Day every year. So when a team selection for the Indian team happens after the ninth consecutive defeat against Paksitan, she also went to join the team, and was sent back because she is a girl. But she didn't give up and in her next attempt, dressed up as a male (Veer), she passed the test and became a member of the team. Rahul (Shahid) is the captain of the team and in the due course of the plot, he caught Veera in the men's changing room. But she convinces him by telling that Veer is her brother. And then a love story happens between Rahul and Veera, and Veer is the intermediary. During the next match, Rahul identifies that both Veer and Veera is the same person and this made him lose his concentration in the game resulting in the Pakistan team piling up a huge score to chase. But then all the drama occurs and Veera is called back to the team as Veer. Then he gets injured, but still manages to help the team win the game. In the end, he reveals to the audience that "he is a she", and convinces them that she was right in doing this double role.





The main things around which the movie revolves around are the India Paksitan cricket rivalry, contrast between Indian culture and western culture and the situation faced by women interested in sports and games in India. All these things are conveyed beautifully without any lack of continuity in the whole flow of the movie. Its an entertainer, but we've seen such things before also. There is nothing new the movie could offer. And here and there you may spot some resemblence with "Jab We Met". Also there are some unwanted elements like the roles played by Rakhi Sawant and Sherlyn Chopra who are playing two roles that looks like made for them only on special request. From the actors' side, they have all done pretty well eventhough these are not ofcourse their best performances. Last of all, there is a comparatively high preference for songs in this movie, that too Punjabi style.


All in all, the movie will come somewhere around 2 stars and 3 stars. And I'll finalize a 3 star for it just because of the humor and entertainment it provides.

My Rating : Good (***)

Final Destination 4 3D (English - 2009)

Final Destination 4 is a 2009 English Supernatural Thriller film directed by David R Ellis. Its the fourth one in the Final Destination series, and the first among the 4 to be shot in 3D. The plot is the same as in the previous movies. A group of people who were supposed to be dead in a car accident in a race course were saved due to a premonition occured to the hero. After the incident, the hero gets some wierd visions once in a while and very soon somebody from that group of survivors dies. They found out a pattern in all these deaths, and also informations about cases in which similiar kind of premonitions occured earlier. Now they are trying to save their lives, but as always, "Death cannot be cheated".




The movie has plenty of gruesome scenes including headless body, internal organs and stuffs like that. But the visual effects are really good provided you watch it in 3D. The pace of the movie is good (just about 1 hour 20 minutes) and the acting part is also ok. The plot is the same, the climax is the same, only the charectors are different. So if you've not seen the previous versions, go for it. Otherwise dont go expecting that you can see something that were not in the previous versions other than some brutal ways of death.


My Rating : Waste your time :) (*)

Blade Runner (English - 1982)

Blade Runner is a 1982 Sci-Fi moive directed by Ridley Scott starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Haeur and Sean Young in the leading roles. The plot happens in 2019, when there are the offworld colonies where genetically engineered androids (Replicants) are employed in hazardous enviornments. Tyrell Corporation, a leading genetic engineering firm develops a superior version of androids called Nexus 6 which have better emotions and intelligence. But their lifetime is kept as 4 years as a safety measure to avoid emotional developments leading to any sort of uprising. But the inevitable happens, and they were declared illegal and were ordered to be officially terminated. This process known as "Retirement" was carried out by a special group of police personnels named "Blade Runners".



Harrison Ford plays the role of a retired Blade Runner brought back to trace down and retire a group of some dangerous Nexus-6 Replicants. Following the information that these Replicants may try to attack Tyrell Corporation, he visits the company and meets Sean Young. She is another Replicant, but a better one which had undergone memory implants and she strongly believes she is a human. Based on the clues available, Ford starts chasing the Replicants and hunts down them one by one. Once he was saved by Sean after which both of them enter into a relationship. Rutger Haeur plays the role of the lead Nexus Replicant and both him and Ford will have a fierce fight towards the end of the movie. Ford was brutally attacked and when he attempted to jump from one building to another, he falls down but manages to hold on a slippery pipe. As he was about to fall down, the Nexus saves him and tells him about the plight of being a slave. This shows the level of intelligents the replicant has. And by the end of that conversation, the replicant's life is over and it retires. Ford then comes back to his place worried about Sean Young, but she is alive and both of them leave the place to a safer location.

My Rating : Good (***)

Kaminey (Hindi - 2009)

Kaminey is a 2009 Hindi Movie directed by Vishal Bhardwaj starring Shahid Kapoor (in double role as twin brothers Charlie and Guddu) and Priyanka Chopra. The approach to the story is a little different from what we used to see in usual Hindi movies. The film starts by showing the parallel lives of Charlie and Guddu. Their choice of life are in such a way that they are never supposed to cross each other. Charlie is a part of a mafia which does some business in horse racing. Guddu works among sex workers spreading information about the importance of using condoms. Charlie wants to start a booking house on his own and he is pulling strings to achieve that dream. Guddu at the same time, was staring at his girlfriend Sweety (Priyanka Chopra) who informed him that she was pregnant and her brother is a major politician cum don of the locality.



From here on, the story twists and turns and in the end, both of them cross their paths. Now both are fighting for money, and their childhood stories are being revealed. There are also instances where the links between police forces and the underworld are being depicted. The first half is a little bit lagging, but then the second half moves pretty swiftly. By the end of the movie, there are a lot of people behind the money and it ends in a shootout which was taken in a very different way. Almost all of the shooting scenes gives the viewer a 'slow-motion' feeling with lot of emotions.

The songs are good and the action sequences are close to reality. Altogether its a new kind of bollywood movie which I felt is worth watching. But unlike most of the critics who gave upto 4.5/5 rating to this movie, I'll give it a 3.5/5 because of the usual type of ending where everyone except the hero who got shot are dead. It may be the most feasible ending for a commercial movie like this, but then till the ending, it was so out of the box thinking and then all of a sudden it became like an ordinary movie - a little hard to digest. But still, it can be considered as one of the top class Bollywood movies.

My Rating : Must Watch (****)

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (English - 2009)

Its the sixth movie of the famous harry potter series. The movie presents a very good visual and audio effects even though there is a lack of action as compared to the previous parts. All the kids are now grown up and there is more romance in the movie. The entire movie is like a build up to the last of the series, the Deathly Hallows. And I hope that one will be full of action to complement this.

The movie starts with the attack of 3 death eaters on a bridge in London used by Muggles (non-magical people). Later on the day, Dumbledore picks Harry from a railway station and together they went to meet Slughorn who agrees to be the new Potions teacher in Hogwarts. Later Harry was dropped at Weasley's house where his trunk and owl were waiting for him. He was back again with his friends Ron and Hermione. Fred and George, the elder twin brothers of Ron had started a shop in Diagon alley. After attending the inauguration ceremony, Harry and his two friends happened to stumble across Malfoy and his mother. They saw some kind of a ritual being performed in a shop, and somehow manages to escape unnoticed. Malfoy was being selected by Lord Voldemort to do certain task and his mother with the help of Bellatrix makes Severus Snape vow that he will do the task if Malfoy wont be able to carry it out.

Back in Hogwarts, security has been beefed up so as to protect the school from death eaters. All the baggage of students were checked and walls were further fortified with magic. And later as per the instructions from Dumbledore, Harry tries to get Slughorn's memory regarding his advice to Tom Riddle (young Voldemort) and he succeeds in that too. From that memory, Dumbledore and Harry figure out that Voldemort has made 7 parts of his soul and kept those in Hurcruxes. Dumbledore informs Harry that they already have destroyed two of the Hurcruxes. Then they setout to find another one in a rocky island in the ocean. The Hurcrux was in a deadly potion and Dumbledore drank it. This made him very week, but he manages to save Harry from the attack of inferis from the lake in that island. Dumbledore is very week by now, and Harry took him back to Hogwarts. Then Dumbledore sends him to get Snape for help. But before he left, Malfoy arrived and revealed that he had been chosen to kill Dumbledore. By this time, he had managed to get 4 death eaters into Hogwarts. Malfoy was not in a mental position to kill Dumbledore, but then Snape arrives and much to Harry's horror kills Dumbledore using Avada Kedavra. Snape then escapes with the other death eaters. Harry tries to stop him by using a spell he learned from the half-blood Prince's Potions book he got from Slughorn's class room. But it didn't work out, and Snape reveals that he was the Half-Blood Prince.

Before leaving the castle, the death eaters create the Dark Mark and destroys the Great Hall. Then all the wizards and witches in the palaces illuminate their wands in honor of Dumbledore and in that illumination the Dark Mark vanishes. Later Harry identifies that the locket he and Dumbledore retrieved from the island was fake and somebody else has already moved it from there. The movie ends with Harry, Ron and Hermione deciding to find all the remaining Hurcruxes and destroying them.

The movie is good, except the fact that there is not much action. But then considering the fact that this is more like building up for the next movie in the sequel, we can hope for the best that one. The movie gives you hundred percent visual satisfaction. And they've handled comedy pretty well. Altogether it is going to be a nice time watching the movie.

My Rating : Good (***)

Hangover (English - 2009)

Hangover is a 2009 English movie. It tells the story of Doug and his three friends. Doug is going to marry and the 4 friends decide to celebrate it. They went to Las Vegas for a bachelor's party and had lot of boozing. Also they consumed a date-rape drug thinking that it was Ecstacy. This made them extremely out of control and the next morning they couldn't remember an incident from the previous night. Doug was missing, there is a tiger in the bathroom and a child in their cupboard. One of them, a dental doctor was missing one of his teeth too.

Then they start to trace back their previous night. It turns out that the doctor, who was living with a dominant woman married a stripper when they were out of mind and it was her kid that was there in their room. The tiger belonged to Mike Tyson. And above all, the doctor himself pulled out his tooth to prove that he is indeed a good dental doctor. But by the end they manage to find out Doug and solve all the problems. The film ends with a set of photos they took when they were under the effect of alcohol.

The movie is so hilarious that I was laughing from beginning to end. It contains a little vulgarity, but being an English movie with the story of a bachelor party it should be expected. Its not a family movie, but guys if you ever had a all out drinking party, then you should watch this. :)

My Rating : Must Watch (****)

Terminator Salvation (English - 2009)

Terminator Salvation is a 2009 English Action Movie which is a sequel of the famous Terminator series. Its a complete action filled science fiction movie which tells the story of a full fledged war between humans and machines. If you've watched the previous movies, you'll find it easier to understand and link with the concepts.

The film starts with an incident that took place in an American prison in 2003. An inmate Marcus, who was sentenced for execution by lethal injection is convinced by a scientist of Cyberdyne systems to donate his body to a scietific project. And in 2004, if you've watched Terminator 3, the skynet system gets activated and it destroys most of the humanity in an event known as Judgement day. But the remaining humans got together and started to fight against the machines in an attempt to regain control of the earth. Then the film advances to 2018 and we are in a war field with a number of human soldiers (the Resistance) lead by John Connor (Christian Bale) is raiding a skynet base. There they found out lot of human captives and it becomes clear that the machines are using these humans for the development of new type of terminators which resembles humans in the external appearance. But before the team lead by Connor can do anything the machines attack their own base with nuclear arms and everyone except Connor got killed. Before leaving the site, Connor had to fight hand to hand with a Terminator, but he survives in the end and leaves to his base. Later from the base one more person comes out and that is Marcus. He also proceeds on foot to find out someone.

After a long walk, Marcus reaches Los Angeles and there he was attacked by a terminator. But then an young lad Kyle Reese and his friend, a mute girl, came to his rescue and they informs him about the Judgement day and what happened to the world. By this time, Connor reaches his head quarters and informs his seniors about the humans he had found in the skynet base and the possible plans of the machines to create advanced Terminators. The headquarters is in a submarine and Connor was air dropped to the sea for entering into the head quarters. That was an awesome scene. From the head quarters he is informed about a particular frequency that was believed to be useful in shutting down the machines. He takes that and leaves to his base. Later Marcus and Reeves happen to hear Connor's radio broadcast and they leave Los Angeles in search of other humans. Enroute they got chased by a terminator, but Marcus manages to destroy it. They reaches a fuel station where they found out some humans, but within a few minutes, a bigger terminator arrives and takes a number of people as hostages.




Marcus, Reeves and the little girl manages to escape, but were chased by the terminators. They caught them on a bridge, and Reeves and the little girl were also taken as prisoners. By this time, the Resistance had spotted extensive movements in an area near to Los Angeles and sent two fighter air crafts for support. These fighters engages with the terminators and both were destroyed. The terminator took the hostages to its base. Marcus fell down to the river under the bridge, but manages to survive and he finds out Williams, the fighter pilot. Both of them then moves to the nearby base. Enroute they were attacked by a number of humans who didnt believe in the war. They tried to harm Williams, but then Marcus came to her rescue and this made them close to each other.

Later when they arrived at the base, Marcus is wounded by a land mine. And the people at the base were stunned to find out that he is a cyborg. But Marcus and Williams believes that he is human and Williams later helps Marcus to escape from Connor's prison. In the following fight, Marcus saves Connor from the terminators, and they make a pact. According to that, Marcus will go to the Skynet headquarters and will try to disable the defence system so that John can enter into it and can save the humans who were taken as prisoners.

The Resistance was planning to launch an attack on the machines that day. But because of this development regarding Marcus and the prisoners, Connor requests his leaders not to launch the attack. But they wont listen to him and soon after an arguement, Connor was released of all his commands. But the soldiers who were loyal to Connor refused to launch an attack and they stayed with Connor. By this time, Marcus enters the Skynet Headquarters and helps Connor to get in. Marcus comes into contact with the central system and he came to know that he indeed was a project of the Skynet and they were using him to bring Connor to the Skynet. And it turned to a trap. Even the frequency that the Resistance got was part of the trap. But Marcus refuses to accept all these and in a rage, he destroys the interface. Then he goes in search of Connor.

By this time, Connor rescued all the prisoners and was in search of Reeves. He was aware of the execution list that the machines were following to destroy the resistance. He was the second one in the list an Reese was the first one. Reese was the person in the first Terminator film who came to rescue Sarah Connor. And John knew that Reese is going to be his father. But he faces a terminator(Arnold) in the prison that was told to him before as the prison of Reese. And there starts a big fight. The terminator is so strong that whenever it gets hold of Connor, he is thrown away. Later Marcus also comes to his help and they manages to destroy the Terminator. But in this fight, Connor is seriously hurt. Later Connor, Marcus and Reese are air lifted to the base.

In the base, Connor is in a critical situation. His heart is damaged. But Marcus tells them that he is ready to sacrifice himself for the humanity by donating his heart (he has a human heart, but metal body) to Connor. In the end Connor broadcasts a radio message to the fellow Resistance members telling that eventhough they won this war, it is not yet over.

The movie is for only an hour and around 40 minutes. But its fully action packed and its worth the money you are paying. I give a 4 star to this movie.

My Rating : Must Watch (****)