New Delhi: Traditionally considered unfavourable for film business, the first weekend of the year is devoid of any big-ticket Indian movie releases.
For Hollywood fans, American musical comedy Pitch Perfect 3, directed by Trish Sie and starring Anna Kendrick, Anna Camp and Rebel Wilson, comes to India this week. Empire magazine calls it a tired retread of better jokes in the first two movies, that drags along to an admittedly heartwarming conclusion. But it’s a good thing this caps the trilogy because it’s coasting on fumes. The film only truly comes alive in its performance scenes, which is as it should be, and a succession of pop hits guarantee toe-taps in the cinema. Music, at least, never lets these girls down, even if the rest of their lives—and their movie—fails to live up to what’s on stage.
Crime thriller All the Money in the World, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, Mark Wahlberg, Romain Duris, Charlie Plummer and Andrew Buchan, is a stylish kidnapping thriller, says Variety magazine. Plummer, who replaced actor Kevin Spacey after the latter battled multiple sexual assault allegations, is easily the best thing about a film that is technically accomplished, yet a bit too mechanical in the way it sets up and executes the high-stakes kidnapping at its center. One can’t help but feel at times that Scott has become a little too comfortable behind the camera, serving up awesome compositions while somehow missing the humanity at the center of it.
Supernatural horror film Insidious: The Last Key, directed by Adam Robitel and starring Lin Shaye, Angus Sampson, Leigh Whannell, Josh Stewart and Caitlin Gerard, is fairly adequate, with a few decent scares, says IGN, and another great turn by Lin Shaye as the unassuming but deeply heroic ghostbuster Elise Rainier. But compared to all the other films in the Insidious series, and to other horror films in general, it’s clearly a bit of a letdown. It’s hard to feel suspense for people we don’t know much about, and Insidious: The Last Key compounds that lack of suspense by being yet another prequel.
The small and mid-sized local films releasing on Friday haven’t inspired any reviews yet. These include Hindi movies Kabaddi and Udanchhoo, Tamil horror film Onaaigal Jakkiradhai, Tamil drama Saavi, Telugu drama Saradhi, Kannada romantic actioner Bruhaspati, Kannada drama Nammavaru, Malayalam romantic film Eeda, Malayalam film Sakhavinte Priyasakhi, Malayalam comedy drama Diwanji Moola Grand Prix, Marathi drama Ye Re Ye Re Paisa, Bengali sports drama Boxer, Soumitra Chatterjee-starrer Prayas and Assamese romantic comedy Hosa Prem.