Reviews

If you are fed up of the typical Saas/Bahu, troublesome Nand type dramas then be sure to give this a go.

Actually I will disclose a true story. My parents watched this drama years ago when it first came out, I remember watching only a few minutes and there was one scene that stood out that appears towards the end few episodes (the scene where Ahad Raza Mir recognises a character from his past which changes the course of the drama).

That scene really stood out for me, so when I decided to give Pakistani dramas a go I desperately hunted for this drama on Youtube.

I eventually found that scene in this little gem of Pakistani cinema.

Yakeen Ka Safar is one of those dramas that I would consider better than most movies, it's that good.

Unlike most dramas, I wouldn't have minded this drama to be a little bit longer it is that good.

This drama is just full of emotions and drama.

Hira Mani and Sajal Aly excel in the female leads whilst Ahad Raza Mir is excellent in the male role.

The very underrated Farhan Ali Agha also more than delivers the good in a supporting role.

The only thing I would say against this is that I did not like the acting of Hira Mani's husband at all.

Yes it takes time building up the drama and dynamics of the characters but this leads to a very fitting finale.

This drama is nothing new but works because of the strengths of it's main actor, Hania Amir, Ramsha Khan, Feroze Khan and the wonderful Gohar Rasheed.

I liked the opposing personalities of the two sisters, whilst one is a dutiful daughter who doesn't want to disappoint her parents (Ramsha Khan), the other is a free spirit who says and does what she feels fit (Hania Amir).

Feroze Khan (who I thought was boring in Habs) excels in this as the spurned lover who marries his lover's younger sister after she leaves him and marries according to her parents wishes.

His constant bullying of his ex lover might seem a bit difficult to watch but he remains one of the most engaging characters in this drama.

Overall nice enough little drama which doesn't fall into the trap most dramas fall into and is relatively short.

My rating for Ishqiya: 7.5/10.

OK so I might be Muslim but I only recently started watching Pakistani dramas in the past year.

I like how most of these dramas are rooted in reality and how they are so relatable to anyone who watches them.

Anyways onto the recent ratings smash, Tere Bin.

To be honest I wanted to like this more than I did given the praise it's received.

Onto the positives Yumna Zahdi and Wahaj Ali are excellent in the leads and have great chemistry.

Veteran Bushra Ansari is also great in a supporting role whilst Sabeena Farooq adds the mandatory villainy.

The wonderful Mehmood Aslam also excels in a short role but is sadly underutilized.

If this drama had been at least 20 episodes shorter then I would have had a higher opinion but this drama was stretched to 58 episodes. To fill time we have to fast forward the moments where the characters are staring into space and the flashbacks (the last 5 episodes are definitely guilty of this).

Anyways everything is wrapped up in a nice bow at the end, although we do not see the characters taking revenge against Malik Zuber, who basically disappears after taking his heinous revenge.

Anyways it is a decent enough watch, even if you do have to fast forward at some points.

My rating for Tere Bin: 7/10.

I must admit I was initially a bit sceptical about Bond's latest offering. The delayed release only further increased my fears that this movie is doomed to fail.

After finally seeing it I must admit I was a tad bit relieved.

This movie is in by no means great but it is not terrible either.

There is lots of action, as per expected with Bond (obviously to compensate for lack of a strong plot).

Craig does well as do the the rest of the recurring actors.

It does however have some shortcomings.

Jeffrey Wright, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris and Lea Seydoux all do well in their recurring roles.

Lashana Lynch is sufficient, however Ana De Armas is terrible in her role and has very little to do.

Waltz is wasted here I thought, if you bring Blofeld back at least have the decency to make him the lead villain!.

Instead of Blofeld we have Safin, who is devoid of any character traits or mannerisms a Bond villain should have. The villain was dull beyond belief.

Personally Malek was the wrong choice for the role as a leading Bond villain, he didn't have the charisma to pull this off.

Craig has said in the press that this will be his last Bond movie, in my opinion Craig is leaving at the right time before he becomes embarrassing in the role (like Moore in A View to a Kill).

In that respect, it is a fitting exit for Craig as Bond with some nicely done emotional moments.

Overall, this is not the best Bond movie but I would rank it at No 19 on my rankings of James Bond movies ranked best to worst just above Tomorrow never dies.

Back in the 70's/80's Rajkumar Kohli had a real knack for making star studded masala movies like Nagin, Jaani Dushman and Raj Tilak.

In 1987 he delivered his latest star studded offering, Insaniyat Ke Dushman, which although it was a massive blockbuster it nevertheless proved to me Kohli was losing his touch.

This is as typical a 80's Bollywood movie as they come with a larger than life heroes, outlandish villains and off course a mandatory rape scene.

This movie just really irked me from the moment it started. It had an interesting premise, a law student pitted against his mentor in a courtroom battle but sadly it is not utilized at all due to too many plot elements and lackluster writing.

Dharmendra does well in his typical action hero routine, the screen just lights up whenever he appears on screen.

Raj Babbar does well but Shatrughan Sinha looks past his prime.

Sumit Sehgal is given a raw deal here, he is basically a background set piece whilst his fellow co stars are given meatier roles.

Anita Raj, although stunning as always is really mismatched here with Sehgal and is only in the first half.

Dimple Kapadia is only on screen for a few moments, her love story with Babbar feels really forced.

Shakti Kapoor is incredible in this, he is given ample screen time to show of his villainy.

Amjad Khan on the other hand fares really badly in this movie, he looks very overweight and a shadow of his former self. In a way his role in this kind of reminded me of his role in Barsaat Ki Ek Raat but this time Khan essaying the father role.

All in all very disappointing fare given the talent involved.

I normally have very good judgement when it comes to movies and am very selective when it comes to cinema viewings but I was with someone who wanted to see this movie. After seeing this movie I am seriously considering terminating the friendship!.

I thought the original Race was quite decent so I had a brief idea on what to expect (IE lots of twists and turns) but this movie went really overboard with twists that it was hard to keep up with the plot.

That said I will try to explain the plot and twists as coherently as I can. The plot as it is revolves around a criminal organization which consists of boss Anil Kapoor, dead brother's son Salman Khan, right hand man Bobby Deol, faithful worker Sharad Saxena and Anil's twin children Saqib Salaam and Daisy Irani.

They hatch a plan to blackmail politicians by laying their hands on some information in a hard disk that exposes them in a compromising position which they would pay any money for Anil Kapoor not to leak to the media. The disk is in in a locker in Cambodia.

That is the barebones of the flimsy plot, to elongate the movies length to make for the flimsy premise there is deception and double crossing all over.

Jacqueline Fernandez meeting Salman Khan and then leaving them, then Bobby Deol introduces as his fiancée, when confronted reveals that she was hired by the twins to steal money. When truth comes out Salman, Jacqueline and Bobby decide to join hands to expose the crafty two. Then when retrieving the hard disk in Cambodia Salman taken hostage by Cambodia's army on the orders of Bobby Deol, who is in fact dating Daisy and is in cahoots with them.

Salman Khan manages to escape with the help of Jacqueline and avenges his betrayal at the hands of Bobby and the twins. After that his car is blown up by Anil Kapoor. He is informed what his uncle planned to do by Sharad Saxena.

Then in the finale comes the biggest twist of all. When the gang meet the politicians, the wrong disk is played and in the disk Salman's dying mother's video which reveals that Anil himself was responsible for killing his brother and had been slowly poisoning his bhabhi after taking her in after murdering his brother. His brother was against the idea of Anil selling drugs and hence Anil disposed of him.

Anil's demands for the politicians is that some of their land is to be reserved for his drugs empire.

Not only that Salman's mother reveals that the twins are not really Anil's kids but hers and her husbands, making Salman and the twins siblings and Anil's offspring is none other than his right hand man Bobby Deol!.

Now onto who switched the disks, it was none other than Salman Khan who had come to know that his uncle has murdered his parents and had been waiting for the right moment to expose his uncles wrongdoings.

Like me you must have been confused reading it but that is the entire plot of the movie complete with twists and turns. There was some stuff about some sort of will if I recall but by the end my head was so screwed over by the absurdity of the movie I blanked it out. Trust me I have saved you from watching this tranwreck by revealing the twists.

There are many laughable moments, like the scenes with Salman Khan flying (yes flying!).

The songs too are a disappointment, with the exception of "Allah Duhai" which was taken from the original.

The performances too are disappointing. Jacqueline and Daisy are meant to add sex appeal to the proceedings but fail miserably, particularly Daisy whose blank expressions really irked me.

The only saving grace is the wonderful Anil Kapoor, who is still the ultimate badass after more than thirty years in the industry.

I would go as far as saying Race 3 is one of the worst Bollywood movies I have seen and by far the worst movie I have had the displeasure of seeing on the big screen.

At the end hey hinted at a potential fourth addition to the series, which just proves that the makers really have no sympathy for the audience, they just want to milk every bit of money out of them.

Amitabh Bachan is a mega star who had a string of memorable movies during his heydays of the mid 70's. That said some of his movies aren't that well known. Imaan Dharam is one of those rare movies of his that I had never seen. Now that I have seen it I know the reason behind it's obscurity and that is that it is a very poorly conceived movie.

What was even more shocking was that it was written was Salim Javed, who in the previous year had written the Yash Chopra classic Dewaar and the record breaking Sholay.

The main problem is that there are two many distractions and characters that deviate from the main plot, such as Helen hiring Amitabh's character to pose as the father to her daughter amongst others.

The writers made some bad decisions with the writing, like when Shetty reveals Sanjeev Kumar;s innocence two hours into the movie and as a result he is subsequently released from jail and Prem Chopra and company are exposed. If I were the writer I would have kept him in jail until the last scene adding to the dramatic impact.

Salim's Javed's scripts are known for their great emotional moments, who can forget Jai's death at the end of Sholay. Sadly Helen's death doesn't have any impact whatsoever. The reason being that we saw too little of her considering she was the female lead opposite Amitabh.

Amitabh and Shashi didn't make much of an impact, Rekha was grossly underused as the movie gave more precedence to the stunning Aparna Sen. Sanjeev Kumar on the other hand shines as the do gooder who sets the two leads on the path of righteousness.

The songs aren't that particularly memorable either.

What Imaan Dharam does have is a wide assortment of villain actors like Prem Chopra, Amrish Puri, Sudhir, Shetty (father of Rohit Shetty no less) and Mac Mohan.

Overall I expected much more from the talent involved

Vijay Anand, who had previous directed such masterpieces like Guide, Jewel Thief and Johnny Mera Naam returned in 1980 with his most commercial movie starring two of the biggest stars at the time, Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachan.

Whilst it is good to see the pair return after Sholay, the movie itself isn't really upto scratch.

It is a very typical masala movie with the usual lost and found formula. The story as it is revolves around Japatpal (Ajit) who falsely claims himself to be the illegitimate brother of two wealthy brothers and kills them. Then he drowns their wife, leaving him with all the wealth and the responsibility of bringing up the sons of the brothers, Ram and Balram. He decides to make Ram a cunning thief whilst Balram becomes a policeman.

They get into all sorts of scrapes, meeting their leading ladies (Rekha and Zeenat Aman), getting involved with crooks before being reunited with their mother and how they seek vengeance against Japatpal forms the rest of the story leading upto a prolonged finale.

It does have some strong points, the music is superb, particularly the song Ek Raasta Do Rahee (lifted off Bee gees song That's the way I like it).

It also has the distinct advantage of having not one but 4 villains in the form of Ajit, Sujit Kumar, Prem Chopra and Amjad Khan in supporting roles.

The leads are perfectly fine but it is Ajit as the evil Jagatpal who steals the show. I remember seeing this movie as a young child and being completely terrified of him.

The only other significant movie Anand made after this was Rajput, which like Ram Balram took a long time to get made because of the star's busy schedules.

All in all one might consider this movie to be a forgettable fare from a director of Vijay Anand's calibre.

Revenge movies have been the norm in Bollywood for many decades, it is pretty unusual to find one that sticks out. In the case of Janam Se Pehle it stands out for the wrong reasons.

Janam Se Pehle sticks out because it deals with the main character getting revenge on the men who molested his mother which he has recollections of whilst he was still in her womb (yes her womb!).

The movie begins with the man (Raj Babbar) killing three of the men and the police arresting him. Lawyer (Farah Naz) is intrigued by the case and seeks to help him.

A moderately enjoyable climax, which takes place in a courtroom is ruined completely by an atrocious, rushed final scene which ruins what little tension the finale had.

Reading the synopsis beforehand I knew this was not a movie to be taken seriously, the first half is a hard to sit through because of a campy B-movie feel to it. The second half is slightly more interesting as it transpired that there was another unidentified individual involved in the assault.

This was a movie that was unreleased for years for an unknown reason and that shows, it is that unmistakable late 80's feel to it and the main leads look significantly younger.

Overall this is a pretty disappointing movie and a waste of the talent involved.

I have to admit I do have a soft spot for Bollywood reincarnation tales like this, on top of that I am also a fan of murder mysteries, needless to say I have seen Chetan Anand's Kudrat many times after being exposed to it in the late 90's.

When released it was considered a disappointment or an average success at the box office, maybe it was released too soon after Subhash Ghai's reincarnation thriller Karz, deservedly so I might add as it is the more superior movie but Kudrat is a damn fine movie in it's own right.

From the first reel we are exposed to the reincarnation element of the movie as Chandramukhi (Hema Malini) says she has been to Simla before, when she left Simla when she was only a few months old and wouldn't have any recollection of it.

There she meets psychiatrist Naresh (played by Vinod Khanna) and he is attracted to her. On meeting lawyer Rajesh Khanna she is drawn to him and can't shake off the feeling that he is her reincarnated lover Manav.

Then there is the characters of Janak Singh (played by Raaj Kumar) and his daughter Karuna (Priya Rajvansh) Janak Singh has raised Mohan as his own and has high hopes of him marrying his daughter.

Circumstances however keep bringing Mohan and Chandramukhi together.

The first half chugs along quite nicely as a reincarnation love story but however that all changes when Chandramukhi keeps Janak Singh for the first time and becomes inconsolable.

When calm she alleges that Janak Singh raped and murdered her in her previous life as Paro. Naresh desperately tries to convince Mohan into filing a case against Janak Singh, putting Mohan into a quandary as it would mean going against the very person who brought him up.

Watch Kudrat to see how the movie unfolds as Naresh and Mohan try to build a case against Janak Singh leading to some very filmy but gripping courtroom scenes.

Some people might be disappointed by the final scene in which the killer confesses the truth without the prosecution giving any evidence but the finale speech they make is so powerful I can personally overlook that.

What I like so much about this movie is how skilfully Anand reveals the twists and keeps the suspense throughout.

Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Khanna, Hema Malini all deliver fine performances. Raaj Kumar is his usual self and doesn't experiment. I suppose it was what the audience expected of him and he didn't want to disappoint them by not giving them what they wanted.

Chetan Anand discovery Priya Rajvansh is also pretty decent. Sadly she didn't find much other work outside of Chetan Anand movies. Maybe it was her distinctive voice that held her back.

A sad fact about her is that she was murdered in 2000 by Chetan Anand's own sons in a dispute over property.

They are joined by a whole host of recognisable faces in Bollywood including Satyen Kapoo, A.K. Hangal, Pinchoo Kapoor, Aruna Irani and many more.

The best thing about Kudrat however is the truly exceptional music by lyricist Majrooh Sultanpuri and R.D. Burman. Tune O Rangeele by Lata and the very catchy disco song Chodo sanam being the best of the bunch.

To sum up my thoughts Kudrat is a criminally overlooked movie and deserves to be seen by fans of Bollywood suspense thriller.

Maybe after watching Bollywood movies for almost thirty years since a young age I have become somewhat cynical to Bollywood movies. Ten years ago I probably have lapped a movie like Arpan up but as it turned out I actually disliked it quite a bit. The story goes like this, Jeetendra has to leave his girlfriend (Reena Roy) when he goes abroad for a job. In the meantime Roy's employer (the magnificent Raj Babbar) takes a fancy to her too and when she turns him down, he decides he must seek vengeance on her so he learns that Jeetendra's unwed sister is pregnant,he uses to his advantage to blackmail Roy into marrying him, which she does to save the honour of Jeentendra's family. On his return to India, Jeteendra is left devastated, not knowing the real reason why Roy ended up marrying her employer.

The second half deals with how Babbar abuses Roy, Jeetendra trying to movie on with his life and how things comes to a head when the truth comes out.

That is the basic gist of the plot, the first half is tolerable but the second half has a lot of unnecessary melodrama, most of it completely unconvincing, like whenBabbar finds out that his days of drinking have finally taken a toll on his health and he suddenly changes his attitude towards his wife andshe believes him without batting an eyelid.

Then there is the tearjerker finale, which comes completely out of the blue and serves no purpose whatsoever other than to manipulate the audience. To be honest by that point I couldn't really care less.

The one thing Arpan does have going for it is some wonderful music, courtesy of Lyricist Anand Bakshi and Lakmikant Pyarelal. Pardes mein ja kar pardesiyan and Mohabbat Ijarat baan gaye are superb.

All in all I expected better from J. Om Prakash, whose Apnanpan and Asha I actually liked quite a bit.

If you do like emotional dramas then there are better movies out there to sink your teeth into.

Completely forgettable fare

It's been a long time coming but the show is finally scraping the bottom of the barrel.

First Howard and Bernadette got married, then Leonard and Penny and now the unthinkable has happened....Sheldon has proposed to Amy!.

I used to adore the show, still get some great laughs from watching the earlier seasons. That said the past couple of seasons have been concentrating on their separate lives and the plot lines have become boring, for instance the episode where Howard and Bernadette try to get the raccoon out of their hot tub or the guys working on their guidance system in this season. For some reason the writers have forgotten that they're making a sitcom and now are trying to make a soap opera by making the characters pregnant or getting them married off.

Friends managed to send the characters off in different directions and still be very funny but it seems the Big Bang Theory writers have been less successful. I no longer have belly laughs when I watch this show, only very minor chuckles, which for a sitcom is simply not good enough.

I have stuck by the sitcom out of loyalty but the final nail in the coffin was the season ten finale, which compelled me to write this review.

I never thought I'd say this but the show has outstayed its welcome by a couple of years.

Now that the finale ended with a cliffhanger it seems they'll be at least one more season.

I can only hope the producers decide that enough is enough and finally pull the plug after the 11th season. Although I am still unsure whether I'll be watching.

I haven't reviewed something on IMDb for quite a while but after seeing Iron Man 3 today I felt compelled to express my thoughts on it. First of all let me say that this is my first 2013 release that I've seen. I really liked Iron Man and also quite liked Iron Man 2 so I was quite looking forward to seeing the third instalment. This is the first Iron Man movie Jonathan Favreau didn't direct, I really feel that if he had decided to direct the third instalment we would have been given a better movie than this debacle. All in all I frankly thought it was positively dire on all levels. The returning cast members I felt weren't really up to scratch. Special mention to Paltrow who I've always felt was badly miscast as Pepper Potts. The villains I thought were incredibly poor in this one. I really felt there was no meat to their characters whatsoever and no special character trait that would make them awesome villains. Pearce I thought was disappointing but the biggest disappointment was from Ben Kingsley. He basically did what he's been doing for years, pimping himself for Hollywood in substandard movies in insignificant roles that do nothing for his career. To sum my thoughts in one sentence I just felt it lacked the emotional power of the previous Iron Man movies, I didn't really care for any of the characters.

Without giving too much away the one thing that surprised me was the conclusion. I can only hope that my next cinema experience is better than this one, although it wouldn't have to do very much to surpass it. All in all a very bitter disappointment. My rating for Iron Man 3: 5.5/10