This movie has an engaging story and a cast of very impressive actors. Yesteryear romantic hero Emraan Hashmi has showed that, unlike his early movies, he does not need to kiss in order to make a lasting impression on the screen. His transition into a character role that requires a firm presence has been a smooth one, and he has done a great job of adapting. Akshay has not just lived up to his name but has also given us what we expected from him, a bankable superstar through his performance in the movie.

Noteworthy among the actors is Abhimanyu Singh, who is also worth mentioning. All shot featuring this actor had made a memorable impression and left a mark on the audience. Unfortunately, no one in the Hindi movie industry will be willing to put forward the necessary funding and story for Abhimanyu to be able to showcase his talents.

Abhimanyu Singh, is a happiness center of the movie.

Diana Penty, one of the two female leads, is an adornment, although I just have a feeling that she has potential, which just needs some lucky script. But she adds glamor and can match Akshay in height. Nushrratt Bharuccha is effervescent presence, but lacks glamor quotient, unlike Diana.

It is difficult to comprehend why the media is giving an inaccurate representation of the story and production of Selfiee. It would be unwise to depend solely on Social Media posts for an opinion that is not influenced by any outside factors. Generally, one can anticipate established print media to give accurate reviews in their written material. Nevertheless, a certain slant can be seen in their analysis of the movie.

Hindi movie viewers are not obligated to understand the details of the original Malayalam movie. Comparing the Hindi version, Selfiee, with the Malayalam version, Driver’s License, is unnecessary. To the Hindi audience, the most important criteria for rating a movie is how well the movie has been adapted into Hindi. Point to be noted is, the Hindi name, Selfiee is trendier than realistic sounding Driver’s License.

Selfiee is definitely a movie worth watching and is quite an interesting story. When movies with negative media coverage come out in theaters, they often struggle to recover due to the limited amount of time they have to rely on word-of-mouth. By the time people gain knowledge that the movie was really good, and they make the decision to watch it, it has already been taken off the screens.

Good, but low-profile Hindi movies unfortunately do not get the benefit of word-of-mouth advertisement. In Multiplexes, it just has a week or two to get out the word and get in the crowd.

As Disney+Hotstar are promoters of the movie, it is likely that the movie will be available on their platform in the near future. This movie has the potential to do very well on OTT platforms and will have watcher who will enjoy the show.

It is certain that those who have watched Pathaan must be feeling deceived. The promoters began spreading fake previews on Social Media, with numerous video clips of huge crowds of fans filling cinemas and dancing in the Theaters. The promoters of Pathaan also bought tickets of their own shows worth crores of rupees, falsely creating the illusion of a bustling crowd and making it seem like the movie was really good. These tricks created a false sense of hype and enthusiasm, something that would have made the infamous Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels very pleased.

Now, this is how it works.

People who buy tickets online need to select how many tickets they want prior to seeing the seating layout. Prior to visiting this page, you’ll need to click on the “Time” of the show, which will be in Red and display as “Filling Fast.” When you pick the type of ticket and quantity of tickets, most of the seats will become red. If you select 4 tickets, those 4 seats will be shown as a group, and you can buy them right away. But when you enter the theater, you find that most of the seats are almost empty. They have cheated you with red empty seats all around.

To decide to watch a movie and then finding it unsatisfactory is bad. But to rush to see a movie, like Pathaan, touted as the movie of the century and then finding it an absolute crap is distressing.

The Pathaan promoters have cheated on you and also the sellers have cheated on the viewers via all the online ticket selling sites on the net or the app.

In my review of Pathaan earlier, link here , I noted that these cunning marketing devices, which cheat the public, demoralize the movie goers. A visit to any multiplex is expensive, and when viewers experience a disappointment, it can have a negative impact on the reception of other movies, even those that are quite watchable.

The marketing ploy adopted by the promoters of Pathaan will be a punishable offense in any other businesses like Banking and Stock Market.

The movie Selfie is will get gradual success despite its poor quality reviews. Selfiee is much, much preferable to that Pathaan trick. This review is my way of spreading the word about the movie and encouraging people to go see Selfiee.

Despite all the negative you have heard and read about Selfiee, this movie will not disappoint you. In fact, it will surprise you that you will let out a few genuine laughs after a long time.

We know Brendan Fraser through his movies like The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Bedazzled, to name a few from his long body of work. I like his work in Bedazzled, where Fraser is in multiple roles, paired with the beauty with a British accent Elizabeth Hurley. Fraser’s action-oriented movies, like the Mummy Series, do not showcase his acting chops to a great extent, but this humor movie – Bedazzled – has certainly shown his range.

The Whale – opens with Frazer teaching an online class on how to write. The anomaly is, while all the students are visible on screen, Frazer’s place on the screen is dark – for he has closed his laptop camera on the pretext that it does not work.

The reason for Frazer’s dark spot is that he does not want to show himself, for he has grown fat and ugly, and he fears his students will judge him cruelly in his abject sorry physical state. So Frazer knows he is practicing hypocrisy. On one hand, he is instructing his students to be real and authentic in their writings while he, as a teacher, is hiding behind a lie.

Frazer is guilt-ridden about his lies and also onetime in the past, he had had a same-sex relationship with a student for which he has abandoned his wife and daughter. His partner now dead and Frazer now alone to wallow. He comforts his guilty conscience by re-reading an essay, incidentally written by his rebellious daughter, who, in the essay, has trashed the book Moby Dick, a classic written in 1851 by Herman Melville.

Frazer identifies with the irreverential essay on Moby Dick by his daughter who, in her essay, has alluded that the author, Herman Melville, as Ishmael, has had a same-sex relationship with another character Queequeg, and the book is a guilt-trip by the author who tries to atone his guilt by the singular focus to search and kill a white Whale.

Frazer identifies himself with the subject of the essay, as it is true of his own same-sex relationship and he is as fat as a whale. Also, he finds the writings of his daughter coming “straight from the heart” with true feelings. He concludes this as true writing, which he conveys to his students finally after he opens his own camera and comes clean of his hypocrisy.

The movie ends with Frazer’s partial reconciliation with his family and daughter, and full disclosure to his students on how he looks on camera.

They show Frazer character as monstrously fat, probably a wonder of CGI or makeup or both. The belly protrudes from the body and droops. That looks real when compared to how fat people look. Contrast this with actors in many other movies who appear fat by wearing paddings underneath their clothes or costumes. Their fat belly appears blown out and up. This looks contrived and fake. Gravity works on everything, including a protruding belly.

The movie gets the looks and the atmosphere right. Appropriate to the subject of the story; the guilt, the abandonment, the lonesome existence, the immobility of Frazer, and the imminent doom of such a life and living, the art directors of the movie have created an air of gloom. Most of the shots are indoors and in low light. Even if when the camera shows the outside, it is just the porch or through the window – either way; the climate is heavy and dull.

With – The Whale – I think Brendan Fraser wants to turn a corner, away from actions and humor. His latest attempt successfully adds one more genre to his repertoire. It is a commendable attempt, not only by Brandon Fraser’s acting but also by all who helped in creating this movie.

The Whale is a movie lover’s delight, for it is a lesson on character creation, set design, cinematography, and music, besides deftly using an allegory of an allegory as underpinnings of the story.

In the movie – Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat, the character of DJ isn’t necessary, except if that character is a device to hold some intervening narratives and help in the story’s culmination.

‘Almost Pyaar’ packages a surprise – Aalia F, who is a gifted actress. After years of watching 30-plus-old actors and actresses masquerading as 20-year-olds, here is one fresh and comely face who is actually in the mid-’20s and as time and opportunities present themselves, she can be the one rising star of this decade of the ’20s.

Aalia F is talented and has star qualities.

‘Almost Pyaar’ is a well-shown story. It uses the concept of parallel lives and weaves two plots that play in tandem. At first, this way of storytelling in Hindi movies might confuse the viewers, but as the scene progresses, things get clearer. I liked the fact that the writer and director of the movie, Anurag Kashyap, did not consider his viewers as idiots and dumbed down and over-explained everything.

‘Almost Pyaar’ is almost there as intelligent storytelling and good acting, and, thanks to who-so-ever chose the actress, she is the star of the movie and a star in the making.

—————-

I did think that ‘Gandhi Godse Ek Yudh’ will be a refreshing watch. For one, the director is Raj Kumar Santoshi, a filmmaker with a good pedigree. And two, this is a what-if movie with lots of curiosity factor.

The best thing about the movie, which I would like to state right off the bat, is – Gandhi. I have watched Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982) several times, and Ben Kingsley as Gandhi had become a standard in movies. In fact, whenever Ben Kingsley acts in any other movies, as an Indian, one cannot escape seeing a Gandhi in him.

But Raj Kumar Santoshi’s casting director got the best Gandhi to date. This Gandhi is the exact Gandhi. The actor Deepak Antani not only represents Gandhi to the tee, but is able to project Gandhi as one sees Gandhi in the old newsreels.

Deepak Antani is the best Gandhi.

The character of Godse does not look like Godse, which we see in the old pictures, but Chinmay Mandlekar is an accomplished actor who fulfilled a hard task – much more difficult than Gandhi – at least in this movie.

We limit the violence of the character of Godse to just firing three shots at Gandhi. But when the character of Godse gets extended, as in this movie, the source of violence has to come from the demeanor and the eyes. And mind you, when the compromise occurs at the end, the same Godse who has portrayed violence, has also to portray the pathos in the end.

So, one can see Gandhi’s character traversing a straight line. But Godse’s character has to start at a point and rise to some boiling point where he shoots Gandhi, and thereafter in the “what-if” part of the movie, the character has to descend the temperature and lock steps with Gandhi.

Though I regard Deepak Antani as the best Gandhi, both in looks and acting, to date, equally and slightly more, I consider Chinmay Mandlekar as a wonderful actor who had the most difficult part in the movie and which he delivered.

Deepak Antani breaks Gandhi’s portrayal yardstick, but Chinmay Mandlekar establishes Godse’s portrayal yardstick. And Aalia F silently steps in as a new face of the ’20s.