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Madhu (Shefaali Shah), a much-married and terribly antsy housewife chooses to go get a life when her workaholic husband forgets her birthday. She buys herself a car and joins hands with a private detective (Rahul Bose) to help him solve his case. The adventure gets dangerous when she discovers the detective is actually a gangster on the run. Can the wife and mother return unscathed to sweet domesticity or is her life going to change forever?The film has an interesting premise: rich, bored housewife gets attracted to lowbrow goon and is willing to go on a wild goose chase with him. Reason? She wants to bring alive all her wildest fantasies before it’s too late to put her ordered, insipid life at stake and take risks

The film also has an interesting cast with Shefaali Shah and Rahul Boseforming an unusual couple on screen. But sadly, they fail to let the sparks fly and get the chemistry crackling. All along, the attraction between them seems fake as they spend long, leisurely hours in a distant resort, eating mutton biryani and carrot juice. Does it really take a loud burp and some rustic table manners on the part of the tapori gangster to break the ice and have the Pali Hill lady humming romantic numbers?

Also, the lady seems to be so gullible and so easy to fool, it does seem unreal. It takes her eternity to realize her companion’s true identity, even though the television keeps blaring out the truth. The duo try hard, but the romance never does light up the screen. Nor do the private lives of the mismatched couple throw up enticing moments that could hold the script together.

The film is a biographical account of Sindhutai Sapkal, a woman who became a social activist after a traumatic life. Born in a poor, cattle grazing family in Wardha as Chindi (Ragamuffin), Sindhutai was first married off at the age of 12 to a man who was 20 years elder to her and then abandoned by her husband on charges of infidelity.

Travelling through the backwaters of Maharashtra, the braveheart never abandoned hope and courage and ended up in San Jose on a fund-raising mission for her orphanage which still provides shelter to homeless kids.

Movie Review: The film works so well only because it is an inspiring story of an ordinary woman who reaches extraordinary heights by sheer grit. Sindhutai’s story is almost an allegorical tale which mirrors the fate of millions of exploited women, the world over. And her valour and will power in the face of misfortune illuminates her life story which ends up as a strong feminist parable for all and sundry.

Kudos to Anath Mahadevan for maintaining a remarkable degree of restraint in his narration. Nowhere does he try to imbue his protagonist with larger-than-life hues and keeps her firmly grounded despite her heroism. Even the performances are exemplary, specially Tejaswani Pandit’s rendition of the single mother who seeks to write her own destiny in a male-oriented society.

Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) returns in the fourth film, all set for a new adventure, one that he is forced to undertake by the delectable woman from his passionate past. His former love interest, Angelica (Penelope Cruz) abducts him and forces him on to a perilous journey with her father, the vile Captain Blackbeard (Ian McShane) to find the famed fountain of youth. The pirates ship is doggedly followed by the King of England’s privateers… who else but ex-pirate Captain Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush) who has his own private revenge story, spurring him on. The swordplay and the wordplay are easy for Jack to handle, but can he cope with the stirrings of love again.Jack Sparrow is in super form. This time, Johnny Depp takes the iconic character and transforms it into a total prankster who sets you smiling with everything he does, or doesn’t do. Of special note is his super ability to stay out of trouble… he’s hardly in the middle of a fight, assiduously avoids violence, prefers wordplay to swordplay and follows just one line: the least line of resistance. His entire body language, his dialogue rendition and his sassy attitude make him a mesmerizing screen presence. Of course, he’s brawny and brave too, but only when the situation desperately demands machismo

But Sparrow isn’t there alone to hold your interest. There’s Penelope Cruz who adds oomph and sparkle as the wannabe nun-turned-vixen, with a wild fire burning within. The flashy chemistry between Cruz and Depp literally makes the screen crackle and hiss. Add to this the colourful bunch of other characters — Barbosa, Blackbeard, the clergyman, the good and bad mermaids –and you have enough to keep the clock ticking.

Of course, like the rest of the films in the franchise, this one too could have been shorter and does tend to drag in places. But remember, there’s the legendary Jack Sparrow to revv up the drama whenever it slackens. A little low on action, Pirates 4 makes up with its wit and humour.

Kung Fu Panda works not only because of his bumbling ways as a martial arts hero but also because he is such a bundle of doubts, misgivings and apprehensions. Yes, he’s hardly your archetypal superhero and therein lies his super charm.

The first film was a winner because it not only traced the birth of a hero, but also had the philosophical underpinnings of the most-reader friendly self-help book. How to grow from zero to hero: that was the sweet and stirring sub-text of the film that won young and adult hearts alike with the antics of an overweight, ungainly panda who could have spent the rest of his life peddling noodles, if he hadn’t mastered himself….

Well, Po is already a hero now, nevertheless, he has his moments of weakness and his frailties which still need to be overcome before he can teach his new enemy the lesson of his life. Po must come to terms with his strange parentage: how can a panda be the son of a goose; so what, if the goose (James Hong) is the best dad in the world…. Time for some flashback and the arrival of the cutest baby panda on screen who makes you go all gooey with his baby talk.

The action sequences of the film, shot in 3D, do form the highlight of it, but there’s no undermining the friendship-and family emotional sequences. Perhaps, the most touching sequences of the film are the show of affection between the noodle-hawking goose, Mr Ping and his adopted son Po and the spontaneous touch-feely tid-bits between heavy-stuff Tigress and all-butter Po.

Rachael (Ginnifer Goodwin), a successful NY lawyer loves her best friend Darcy (Kate Hudson) who has invited her to be the maid of honour for her wedding. Nothing wrong with that, except that Rachael has always loved her best friend’s fiance, Dex (Colins Egglesfield), but has never been able to display her feelings for him. Trouble brews when Dex reciprocates a similar passion for the staid singleton and the conflict between love and friendship begins.If you’ve seen and savoured Julia Robert’s somewhat wicked antics in My Best Friend’s Wedding, there would be little reason why you would enjoy this pale copy of the livelier treatise on love versus friendship. Specially since Ginnifer Goodwin is such a washed out version of a girl who is in two minds whether to bother about herself or her friend. Of course, she does have the usual dilemmas when her best friend unwittingly humiliates her and uses her. Also, the fact that Dex follows her around like a devoted puppy and doesn’t think twice before having a steamy night out with her, does make her weigh her options often…. But rarely does the fire raging within force her to throw caution to the windsThe film proceeds as an unending, over-extended pre-nuptial party, where loyalties are tested and friendships are re-iterated. The threesome insists on hiding their true feelings and desires, so much so, it gets a bit irksome: all this subterfuge! The only person who displays a bit of spark is Kate Hudson who remains realistically me-centric till the very end. For the rest, there’s too much schmaltzy sacrifice to keep the drama off sleep mode.

It was during the making of “ West is West”, which is a sequel to the successful Indo-UK collaborated film, “East is East”, that British producer Leslee Udwin realized the real worth of the much acclaimed Indian hospitality.

As the film readies for release in India in June, Leslee recalls the warmth of the local Punjabi population as the film was shot largely in Punjab and Chandigarh. “The openness, warmth and pure hearts of the Punjabis was inspiring and extremely moving. This seemed like a stark contrast to the mostly cynical crews and population one is used to dealing with in the UK,” says Leslee, who is a BAFTA award winner, among other awards.

The film that stars Om Puri, Linda Basset, Ila Arun, Vijay Raaz and Jimi Mistry besides the others, is in the English cross over genre and is finally being released in India after it opened in theatres in the UK 13 weeks ago. It has even travelled to most of the prestigious film festivals across the world, including Abu Dhabi International Film festival in October last year, where it won the audience choice award.