zero movie review

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Zero movie review: Shah Rukh Khan blasts off into a very strange space

Zero movie review: shah rukh khan is magic in aanand l rai’s film, katrina kaif and anushka sharma are charming. rating: 3.5/5..

Babita Kumari storms out of her bathtub. The movie star is late for a public appearance and has decided to go as is, alarming her handler who frantically interjects, asking about her clothes, hair and makeup. She sticks to her t-shirt and boxer shorts, wears her hair down, and then declares herself so fair she doesn’t need to care about makeup. The heroine is a hot mess, and played as she is by Katrina Kaif, there’s the heft of honesty to the line about her complexion. India would let a fair-skinned girl get away with murder — or at least lipsticklessness. Zero is a film about preconceived notions.

One of Babita’s biggest fans is Bauua Singh, a man from Meerut who showers the movie screen with banknotes and yells, “Bring on all three of your Khans, here I stand meri jaan.” Shah Rukh Khan — one of the three Khans Bauua challenges — plays this coarse and cocksure dwarf, defined by defiance. His outlook is devil-may-care because he believes god has already done his worst.

Watch video review here:

Directed by Aanand L Rai, Zero is for those who don’t fit in. It is a strange film, one that lets Shah Rukh Khan do what he does best — by way of swooning overture — but also a film that takes him where we wouldn’t expect. Zero becomes odder and odder as it goes along, and while the end is impossible to take seriously, the entire film is meant to be a fable. Even in the movies, it is the misfits who stand out.

Like too many of us, Bauua Singh is bred on the movies. When told he isn’t sophisticated, he claims to have watched enough English movies to feign class. In one scene, where Singh is bursting at the seams to break into a dance, he barks for a Shammi or Rishi number, neither of which the DJ has. A ballroom awaits. His entire body wriggles with anticipation, for this Hindi movie man cannot possibly make a grand romantic gesture without song. His final instruction to the DJ is plaintive: play any damn Kapoor song. It’ll work.

And it does.

Anushka Sharma plays a NASA scientist named Aafia Yusufzai Bhinder — in a nod to Malala— and she can’t help marvel at this impudent man. Singh, like Bart Simpson, calls his father by name, and is as rude. Khan, however, renders obnoxiousness loveable, and his character’s biggest win with the scientist may be the lack of pity for her cerebral palsy. To Bauua, she’s a girl who didn’t give him the time of day, which astonishes him, since everyone stares at the dwarf; his own father suggests he be used as a sideshow attraction. To her, he is a massive change from the deference she has earned, and the overcompensating politeness she routinely faces due to her condition. Soon, the lady is drunk on him. Even the name Bauua, from her struggling mouth, sounds like a burp.

There is more to this little man besides insolence. He’s magic. He looks up at the stars and swipes at them dismissively — as if toying with intergalactic Tinder — and as he counts down from 10 to nothing and waves a finger, stationary stars turn into shooting ones. Now this isn’t a trick he can do much with, but it does dazzle his outer space lady who fears what moons this man may shatter if he so casually breaks stars.

The first half of Zero is flat-out fantastic, an unabashed charm-offensive from Rai, Khan and the film’s writer Himanshu Sharma. The dialogues crackle with spontaneity and inventiveness. Bauua Singh is routinely whipped by his father (a superbly grumpy Tigmanshu Dhulia) and when this threat is made with the family lying under the stars, Singh asks ifhis father now wears a belt with his boxers or if he now intends to whip him with the naada, the elastic band holding up the shorts. Sticks and stones don’t hurt this hero, though names go some way in denting him.

It is as the film continues, and gets more fanciful, that the seams start to show. Rai is aiming high with this fable, but gets caught up in issues characteristic of his cinema. The film threatens to become yet another romanticisation of an obsessive hero who refuses to go away, and to take no for an answer. Rai aces the small-town milieu, but as the film outgrows Meerut, its wit dries up while the drama heightens. This is where the film should have embraced the lunacy and gone entirely bonkers. The melodramatic approach robs Zero of its essential lightness, and the metaphor becomes clumsier. Yet there is something fascinating at heart: a woman, tired of a man, literally imposes space on him.

Sharma infuses a sense of pride into her character, a scientist who has given her heart away, and only lets her vulnerability slip out in glances: in the way she looks at Khan when cradling his face, say, or the way she desperately laughs in order to prod happiness out of her distraught father. Her speech patterns are a bit inconsistent, but one can’t doubt Sharma’s commitment to the part. Kaif, meanwhile, plays an intensely self-aware part, that of the lovelorn, cheated-upon superstar, and the actress has infectious amounts of fun giving her vainglorious character a serrated edge.

Shah Rukh Khan measures up. The visual effects lack continuity and he looks more like a dwarf in some scenes than others, his deformity sometimes more pronounced while he looks like a spookily smooth tiny-Khan in other sequences. The actor glosses over this with a dominating performance and tremendous energy. Bauaa Singh is a severely flawed character made irresistible by his pluck, and it’s remarkable how much Khan brings to the part. And he remains the best lover in the business.

Ladies, enforce your knees. He might be wearing an outlandish Dhoom 3 costume, he might have hair like Razzaq Khan, and speak in English so fractured it doesn’t let him lie about his age. Still that Shah Rukh charm is dashed hard to deny, and, as he boasts to his lover in the film, those dimples aren’t store-bought. This is why romantics across the country are safe no matter how limited the DJ’s repertoire. Any Shah Rukh Khan song will do

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Zero Movie Review: Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif Get A For Effort In Outlandish Film

Zero movie review: shah rukh khan cannot be faulted while anushka sharma gets full marks for effort. katrina kaif tries her best..

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Abhay Deol, R Madhavan, Sheeba Chaddha, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub

Director: Aanand L Rai

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 5)

Outlandish in more ways than it can possibly orchestrate without going into frequent tailspins, Aanand L Rai's Zero , a superstar vehicle with wildly wobbly wheels, is a monumental mess. The film possesses a certain scale for sure, the visual effects create the desired illusions and an energetic Shah Rukh Khan lends the vertically challenged male lead a degree of charm and chutzpah but it is let down by a hopelessly muddled screenplay.

The unlikely Meerut-to-Mars voyage of the protagonist, Bauua Singh, is undermined by a slew of whimsicalities that defy logic and an uneven tone that borders on the gratuitously facetious. The heavy-handed humour that it generates hinges on the character's lack of inches. Not funny at all. If that isn't sickening enough, the film brings in a woman grappling with limited motor skills for the purpose of mirth and emotional manipulation despite this individual being a person who has discovered water on the surface of the red planet.

Zero is also purported to be a romantic drama about a dwarf seeking his place in the sun and employing means fair and foul to get there but at no point does the often unlikeable man's tribulations strike a genuine chord. Take SRK out of Zero and it would be just big-budget twaddle masquerading as a movie with a difference.

Zero Movie Review: Shah Rukh Khan in a film still. (Image courtesy: YouTube )

The garrulous hero , a man not averse to conflicting impulses by way of a defence mechanism against the constant ridicule he faces on account of his short height, makes up for his perceived inadequacies with an unending torrent of words. He has an avid listener in his best pal Guddu (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), a man of severely weak eyesight who carries a large torch in order to 'see' things.

Bauua takes on far too many avatars to be convincing. His 'superhuman' qualities do not bestow on him either bionic strength or the zeal of a crime-busting crusader. Instead, they turn the dwarf into a lover, a fanboy, a runaway bridegroom, a dancing champ, a guinea pig for a scientific experiment and an accidental spaceman who stands in for a chimp that plays truant. The character, endowed with the magical ability to literally pluck stars off the sky, is constantly on the move but the film he is supposed to power never reaches the point of propulsion.

Zero opens in Meerut - in the first sequence, the set makes the Uttar Pradesh town look like the Wild, Wild West - where Bauua has repeated run-ins with his exasperated father (Tigmanshu Dhulia) while his mother (Sheeba Chaddha) has a hard time shielding him. The 38-year-old matriculate's repeated attempts through a matchmaker (Brijendra Kala) to find a bride for himself also yields no results. He is at his tether's end.

Bauua's life changes when he chances upon the wheelchair-bound Aafia Yusufzai Bhinder (Anushka Sharma), a brilliant half-Pathan, half-Punjabi space scientist whose ambition is to see India in the forefront of the global mission to send a manned spacecraft to Mars. For him, it is love at first sight - he mistakenly presumes that the amiable Aafia is his equal because she is the first girl he can look her in the eye. For her, his antics are mere temporary diversions. She is only on a brief visit to the land of her birth from the space centre where she works in the US.

Zero Movie Review: Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma in a film still. (Image courtesy: YouTube )

Bauua first humours Aafia by dancing Shashi Kapoor-style to Humko Tumpe Pyaar Aaya (a robust Kalyanji-Anandji composition from Jab Jab Phool Khile , about a humble Kashmir boatman who falls for a rich tourist). Then he gets a full-on love ditty staged in a hotel corridor complete with Holi colours and rain machine-induced showers.

Before the first half draws to a close, Bauua's obsession with a troubled, a hard-drinking movie actress Babita Kumari (Katrina Kaif) leads him astray. A day before his wedding to Aafia, an inebriated Babita, coming off a painful breakup, kisses Bauua smack on his lips for all of three seconds. He turns his back on Aafia and scoots.

Zero Movie Review: Shah Rukh Khan and Katrina Kaif in a film still. (Image courtesy: YouTube )

Post-intermission, Zero flies too high and too helter-skelter to make any real sense at all - you watch with steadily declining interest solely because a superstar is at the heart of the effort. If nothing else, Zero is Bollywood's first film that does not wind up with a desperate race-against-time reunion in a railway station or an airport but on the launchpad of a spacecraft headed for outer space.

If only the film hadn't been so utterly spaced out and the physical disabilities and shortcomings of the two principal characters been treated less cavalierly, Zero might have added up to something more than it eventually does. It yields no percentage because of its unacceptable, insensitive central premise that defines a four feet-something man and a cerebral palsy-afflicted woman primarily in the light of what they lack. Their drawbacks drive the drama but the constant harping on what they aren't at the expense of what they could be can only leave is cringing.

For Bollywood fans, Zero offers a parade of luminaries - Sridevi, Karisma Kapoor, Kajol, Rani Mukerji, Juhi Chawla, Deepika Padukone and Alia Bhatt in a party scene, in which the hero seeks to demonstrate the unique talent for doing a rapid-fire countdown and sending stars streaking across the night sky and Salman Khan along with choreographers Ganesh Acharya and Remo D'Souza in a passage that has Bauua win a dance competition without breaking a sweat.

Zero Movie Review: Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan in a film still. (Image courtesy: Instagram )

Of course, in this latter sequence, we do not see any of the other contestants. Understandable: giving the dance stage to extras would amount to waste of precious footage in a 164-minute film designed for a Bollywood megastar exploring new pastures. After all the film also has to account for Abhay Deol and R Madhavan in walk-on parts.

Shah Rukh cannot be faulted. He gives his hundred per cent to liven up Zero , but for a film running on empty that is only a zero-sum game. Anushka contorts her face and angles her lips to deliver her lines - Full marks to her for effort. Katrina, who inevitably makes her entry with an item number, tries her best to convey the angst of a public figure whose life is a series of mishaps.

Zero , riding on SRK's back, reaches for the stars. But its astral ambitions are thwarted by a lack of imagination and genuine understanding of the minds of people struggling to ward off undeserved ridicule and earn rightful recognition. But whoever expects such niceties from a movie that rarely rises above the level of unalloyed bilge?

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Zero’ On Netflix, Where An Italian Teen Uses His Power To Disappear To Help His Neighborhood

Where to stream:.

• Zero (2021)
• Stream It Or Skip It

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One of the things we’ve been enjoying about some of the European productions that have come to streaming services of late is that they represent the diversity of the countries they represent. These are populations that have been in their respective countries for decades, but most programming coming out of European nations either ignores them or uses people from those populations as minor characters. Zero is one of the first Italian shows that puts the country’s Black population front and center. Read on for more.

ZERO : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In the reflection of a puddle, we see a teen running, with another teen going after him with a gun, calling him an “asshole,” among other things. The teen says in voice over, “Until a few days ago, I was like the Invisible Man. Nobody noticed me until… they arrived.”

The Gist: Omar (Giuseppe Dave Seke) lives in a neighborhood in Milan called Barrio; it has mostly an immigrant population, and as he says in voice over, it’s largely considered invisible by the city’s population. When he was young, he was given a bracelet by his mother when he was a kid, but his mother is no longer around; he misses her, but gets creeped out when he sees a painting of her in their apartment. A photo of her playing basketball wearing the number 0 is how he likes to remember her.

He lives with his father and sister Awa (Virginia Diop); their building is going to be redeveloped and they potentially will get kicked out. Omar is doing what he can, working jobs like delivering pizzas, though he wants to move to Belgium and pursue a career in art, drawing manga with Black characters like his hero Zero.

On one delivery, he gets locked in a penthouse apartment as the couple in it have a breakup argument. Sometime later, out comes Anna (Beatrice Grannò); the two of them connect by the indoor pool (!) about doing what they want to do and not what others want them to do. She wants to be an architect, for instance.

She also tells him about the “broken windows” theory of how neighborhoods go downhill; it sticks in his head when he sees yet another scooter on fire in the Barrio. As he tries to put it out, a guy named Sharif (Haroun Fall) starts chasing him with a gun, thinking he set the scooter on fire. Omar is trapped in an abandoned warehouse, then he grabs his mother’s bracelet and disappears.

Sharif comes and sees Omar at the pizzeria the next day, fascinated with Omar’s disappearing powers. He thinks they can do a lot of good in the Barrio with Omar’s abilities. After Sharif leaves, the pizzeria gets a call from Anna, who wants to invite Omar to dinner that night.

Omar goes to her apartment and finds that it’s her birthday party; but Anna finds her and they connect once again. But when he realizes he dropped his mother’s bracelet, he runs to where he lost it; but Sharif has gotten there first, and sees Omar’s disappearing powers firsthand.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Zero is sort of like  Heroes , if only one person had powers… and it took place in Italy.

Our Take: Zero  is not only a sci fi drama that has a comic artist as its hero, it’s created by a comic artist, as well. Roberto Marchionni, known by his pen name Menotti, is the show’s creator, and it’s fun to see that Omar is not only talented but wants to make manga featuring Black heroes his career. The idea is that, due to his powers, he and his manga character Zero will sort of become one and the same.

Seke embodies Omar’s determination and resilience very well; the fact that he isn’t intimidated by Anna’s wealth or status and immediately gets to know her as a person is believable because of the warmth Seke brings to the role. We don’t have a complete picture of Sharif, but we liked what we saw from Fall; he’s not playing Sharif as a thug, more as a guy who knows an opportunity when he sees it.

But what really got us intrigued by  Zero is that it’s being matter-of-fact about the fact that its hero and a lot of its cast are Black, which is a big deal for an Italian show. Not many Italian scripted series, at least the ones that have crossed the Atlantic to the U.S., have featured a Black star, much less a mostly Black cast. It’s an acknowledgement that, like many European countries, Italy’s population has become much more diverse over the past few decades, and the children of these immigrants, as Italian as anyone else, are an integral part of the country’s future. A growing population segment of the country is being represented with stories that put them in the forefront, and that’s a great thing.

Because Omar is going to use his powers to help protect the Barrio neighborhood, it seems that  Zero will explore issues the immigrant population in Italy face every day, from crime to the wealthy white people either finding them invisible or thinking of things like the “broken windows theory” that are essentially telling these people that their problems are their fault. The show has drama and emotion, but still tries to keep things on a medium-high tension level, which should make some of the more issue-oriented aspects go down more easily.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Sharif sees Omar disappear and reappear as he tries to get back his mother’s bracelet, and he smiles at the possibilities.

Sleeper Star: Virginia Diop is fun as Awa, who gives Omar the usual little sister business, but also cries on his shoulder at the prospect of having to move out of the neighborhood and start over if they can’t make rent.

Most Pilot-y Line: At what point was Sharif going to tell Omar that the gun wasn’t loaded? He didn’t even mention it when he went to the pizzeria to see him the next day.

Our Call: STREAM IT.  Zero is a fun superhero show that’s not only grounded in real life, but explores a population that hasn’t been represented in Italian shows to this point.

Should you stream or skip the Italian series #Zero on @netflix ? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) April 22, 2021

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream  Zero  On Netflix

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Zero Movie Review: A Bizarre Story That Leaves You Stumped, And Eventually, Sad

Director: Aanand L. Rai

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Katrina Kaif, Anushka Sharma

The truth is that I'm still trying to understand Zero . The story begins in Meerut and somehow moves to Mars. It's so bizarre and implausible and incoherent that I kept wondering if pages in the script went missing or too many scenes were slashed or if I'm just missing the point. There are so many ferociously talented people both in front of the camera and behind it, starting with director Aanand L. Rai , writer Himanshu Sharma and of course superstar Shah Rukh Khan. But I walked out, feeling like Dhritarashtra from the climax of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro . I could only ask: yeh sab kya ho raha hai?

The beginning is smashing. We are introduced to Bauua Singh, a 4 foot 2-inch ball of cockiness and charm. It's Shah Rukh grabbing the riskiest role of his career with both hands and owning it one hundred percent. Bauua is at half-mast only physically. What he lacks in height, he makes up with attitude, swagger and a wicked sense of humor. In one scene, he's sitting in the women's bathroom and he tells someone: aajao aunty main toh bachha hoon. He occasionally rails against the universe for loading the deck against him at birth but Bauua doesn't feel sorry for himself and he doesn't allow you to do it either. Most importantly, Bauua dreams in 70 mm. When he falls in love, he says: sapne size dekh kar nahin aate. Is liye is chote se aadmi ne aapka dekh liya.

And this is precisely where this promising premise derails. Cinema is all about suspension of disbelief. And for more than 25 years, Shah Rukh has made us believe that any woman can fall in love with him. But here Aanand and Himanshu set up a match so outlandish that your eyes roll up into your brains. Aafia is a globe-trotting, world-famous scientist who has discovered water on Mars. She even tells Bauua, " Main tumhari league se bahut bahar hoon. " And then of course she falls for this vertically challenged, uneducated man because, she says, " Mujhe ganwar pasand hai. " Aafia has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheel chair so she is one of the few people who match Bauua's eyeline. Basically, the film suggests that all her accomplishments are flattened by her condition. She and Bauua are equal.

ALSO READ: RAHUL DESAI'S REVIEW OF ZERO

I think Aanand and Himanshu are attempting here to create a fable-like love story that suggests beauty in incompleteness and how two seemingly disadvantaged people can make a whole. But they aren't willing to fully let go Shah Rukh's heroism so he must have a romantic ballad in which he wears a tux and stretches his arms. At the end, he's also established as a brave patriot. Anushka Sharma's inconsistent and clumsy rendition of cerebral palsy doesn't help either – for a far better take, see Kalki Koechlin in Margarita with a Straw . Incredibly, Katrina Kaif does much better as Babita Kumari, the Bollywood superstar lost in drink and a fog of sadness after being dumped. Babita is brittle and fully comprehending of the ugliness behind the spotlight. With constantly running mascara and a bottle in her hand, she's a mess. Katrina hits all the right notes. It's her best performance in years.

These characters are individually interesting – there's enough material here for another film about Bauua's fractious and superbly funny relationship with his dad, played nicely by Tigmanshu Dhulia, whom he calls by his name, Ashok. But the connective tissue between these people is so thin that the narrative starts to wobble precariously. Which leads to compensation through cameo – Salman Khan arrives to shake a leg. There's a Bollywood party scene featuring a line of stunning leading ladies including the late Sridevi . But with each scene, we get further and further away from Aanand and Himanshu's core talent, which is creating rooted worlds about real people, that are propelled by rich emotion. Eventually we end up at a space center in America where a gun, a chimpanzee and a baby occupy the same stage, and later, a character utters this classic line: According to you, c himpanzee ki family usse Mars nahin jaane de rahi hai .

Zero strains for sweep and scale. The visual language suggests a glamorous fairy tale. The VFX is convincing and I loved the Ajay-Atul ballad Mere Naam Tu. But the rest of this film left me stumped and eventually, sad. Because when artists take such ambitious creative risks, you are really rooting for them to succeed.

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‘Zero’ review: Honey I shrunk the romance

In zero, srk’s characteristic outstretched arms get smaller, as does his height, the creative ambition gets bigger but the film stays resolutely middling.

Updated - December 21, 2018 05:20 pm IST

A scene from the movie ‘Zero’

With Shah Rukh Khan films, these days its becoming more about what could have been than what we eventually get to see. There is that initial disruptive spark, that desire to disturb the universe that eventually peters down in the two-and-a-half-hour odd runtime to get safely bottled into the well worn and the long familiar. Do I then see the glass half empty or half full?

SRK’s latest  Zero , which could have been that rare film about the insecurities, dreams and aspirations of imperfect people, their resistance to support even while searching for emotional anchors, their inability to connect with others because they haven’t quite bonded with themselves. It could have also been a fantastic opportunity to cut down to size the larger than life romantic persona of SRK, to bring his brand of love and longing down to the grassroots so to speak. I did see heartening glimpses of it in  Zero —the ‘ Mere Naam Tu ’  song and dance on the wheelchair seemed to point at the possibility of love, leading to sex, for all and not just the able.

On the flip side, take the physical conditions of the leads—Bauua’s (SRK) dwarfism and Aafia’s (Anushka Sharma) cerebral palsy—away and the film ends up playing on the same old tired trope of commitment phobia. All encapsulted in the talk of  koyal ,  ande ,  ghonsle —about the cuckoo laying its eggs in somebody else’s nest. It’s about a far too often seen transformation—in this case of Bauua, who always wants to run away but finally decides to stick it.

• Director: Aanand L. Rai
• Starring: Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif, Shah Rukh Khan, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Sheeba Chaddha, Brijendra Kala
• Run time: 164 minutes
• Storyline: Short statured Bauua Singh finds love, or something like that, in cerebral palsy affected NASA scientist Aafia Yusufzai Bhinder but hankers for filmstar Babita Kumari

Zero  kicks off with a comedic sequence that doffs its hat to the American Westerns, Luc Besson, Anurag Kashyap and Imtiaz Ali et al—more Farah Khan than Aanand L. Rai. It’s the 70mm, picturesque, filmi Meerut that is Rai’s, and writer Himanshu Sharma’s, own. The town where women dance to ‘ Aaja sanam madhur chandni mein hum ’ at a ladies’ sangeet, the internalised aggression, irreverence and roughness of its denizens, the nice spread of a strong supporting cast that we should have ideally been served much more of--Tigmanshu Dhulia as Bauua’s father, Sheeba Chadhha as the mother and Brijendra Kala as the marriage fixer—and some of Rai’s tart lines delivered with sharpness by the performers.

To be fair SRK does fit in well with this motley crowd with his wicked, obnoxious, self-obsessed, crude Bauua and seems to be enjoying playing the pest. But I suspect there is the larger effort here to assimilate and channel what SRK seems to have stood for the writer-director duo—like the falling star motif that I identify deeply with  in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa . Bauua seems like a deliberate variation of  KHKN ’s blemished and fallible Sunil. Only there the defects were internal, that most of us could empathise with. In  Zero , the defects are physical, propped up by special effects but lack a strong emotional connect.

There the plot remained believable, here things spin out of control, careening in all kinds of strange directions, specially post interval—a lovesick, smudgy-eyed heroine Babita (Katrina Kaif is very likable and is perhaps made for such batty roles), a confused Aafia (an earnest and invested Anushka Sharma), a baby, a chimpanzee, a rocket to Mars and a retinue of stars marching on in cameos that is so  Naseeb  and  Om Shanti Om , well past the sell-by date to elicit any wows any more, even though it may bring the late Sridevi back in all her gorgeous glory on screen.

Then there are the scripted moments, that make you smile in their subversiveness—the jibe at Muslims not getting the American visa. SRK as Bauua sporting the ultimate Brahminical symbol, the  janeu , even rolling it on his earlobe when using the toilet and invoking  Mata Rani all the time. It’s as though SRK is deliberately pointing out to some commentators and critics (remember the debate post  Raees ) that he is not just about embracing his Muslim identity on screen. Touche!

Published - December 21, 2018 11:56 am IST

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Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie - Reviews

Alt title: jujutsu kaisen 0.

Zero to Zero

Cranking out a movie adaptation of a current mainstream shounen seems like it's becoming the more and more popular thing to do, so why not take advantage of the existance of a spinoff that adds nothing to the world or characters. Under such a popular IP, it's sure to make a quick buck regardless of it's quality, so this kind of thing is easy to shit out with a big return on relatively low investment.

That prospect may sound good, but it sounds even better if you're MAPPA and you have some idle slave labor to throw at it and not pay. Thus Jujutsu Kaisen 0 was born. 

--intermission--

Hey everyone! Before we officially start the review, since you're all here after the official blu ray and streaming release of the movie, I might as well mention that the English Voice actors for this film made about 200 dollars each, even though this movie made millions. This is the fault of crunchyroll. If you support workers getting paid fairly, please join me in boycotting crunchyroll. Cancel your subscriptions and switch to other methods of viewership. They can't get away with mistreating their voice actors.

--end intermission--

This film has all the same kind of animation and visuals as the main series. There's nothing special or unique about the artstyle, it still looks like bleach but without any personality or individuality. The dull and washed out color grading, bad lighting and shading, and poorly composited backgrounds are back here too. There is no sense that this is a movie production besides the fact that it played in a movie theatre, which gets me thinking that the ugly art is not due to time constraints, and the people working on it are just not that talented in anything but actual keyframe animation. The keyframe fight animations themselves are of course, still good, because the animators would have even less than nothing to eat if they weren't, and hey if that's what you want out of art, just good animation without anything else added to the visual or intellectual experience of the medium, then I guess this is for you.

The story of this movie is extremely simple and predictable for a movie, but what's more, there's nothing original or interesting about it. It uses the exact same premise as the main series to start out with, just a bit less interesting, and then fail to build off it just as much. Yuuta is an alternate universe Shinji from NGE with a dark secret that nobody knows: there's an evil spirit following him around that kills people. Eventually, way too late for this to take place in a world with actual humans with eyes, some people figure that out and take him captive so he uh... for the greater good of humanity and shit. But then one man has the bright idea to train him up instead of keeping him captive or killing him, and everyone listens to him because he can basically fart and kill them all. Yeah. It's Gojo, and it's not a different version at all, he's absolutely no different, but you know it's the past because he has a white bandage on his eyes instead of black. Very distinct. He goofs around, acts wacky, and never interferes with the plot except for when the characters who would actually be compelling would struggle at all, in which case he saves the day by shitting out a big energy blast and everything's cool.

The main character can't control his power at first, but then he does it by doing it. This way, we don't have to expand upon this premise in an intelligent way and instead just go right into the braindead shounen action, and a few people he meets join up with him to help him fight hollows... or demons... or whatever.

Then an evil guy who wants all the people to die shows up and he tries to beat him but fails, but it's ok because he gets an emotional powerup and then Gojo finishes it, because having a character struggle and overcome something realistically is something that would be way too interesting to happen in this show.

Does any of this sound familiar yet? It should, because this is the exact same plot as the show. A few names have been changed around, but really nothing's different, all the same characters are here and they're the same as they were before. We don't get to expand on them either, we learn nothing new. If you think that sounds like a waste of time then congratulations, you watch things with your brain turned on.

The main villain's motivations are as shallow as the calcium buildup on a glass in a crummy dishwasher, as is the rest of the plot in this movie. He's a sorcerer, whose role is to protect humanity, that wants everyone that isn't a sorcerer to die. And what self respecting sorcerer wouldn't want to commit genocide on the people they were conscripted to protect? Exactly. Geto feels the same way. To the point of actual racism against people that aren't sorcerers, even though the only difference is um... I forgot actually. What's special about sorcerers? Can't anyone be one? Yeah. Your guess is as good as mine.

The only redeeming quality the main character has is that he's not special or talented to begin with and he's just unfortunate, and has emotions, which instantly makes him a better main character than the one from the main series, except I guess the author realized this so he ruined him by instantly powering him up using emotions, and deciding that he actually had a hidden power because he's the chosen one at the last second so he can just do shit other people can't. That very well destroys any relatability or investment we had in this character now doesn't it?

Yet another addition to something with zero sense of individuality and nothing of substance besides pandering to the lowest common denominator of anime viewer who just wants to see an overpowered character flip around and watch a flashy effect every once in a while, but gives no shits about writing or good character development.

If this is your first anime movie, you might like it, but if you've ever seen a shounen before, you've seen this done better. In fact if you've seen Jujutsu Kaisen, you've seen this. It's the same plot. There is nothing different. The only difference, the ONLY difference is the main character shows human emotions, but to a very limited degree.

Note: I watched this movie before its official release in the west.

SPOILER FREE REVIEW 

I was very lucky to see the movie subtitlted in the cinema today and i can say its truely worth it. The plot, charater development, animation and sound were superb. After watchng the first season of Jujutsu kaisen i fell in love with the unique style Jujutsu kaisen brings and Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is no different.

Jujutsu kaisen 0 movie lasts 1 hr and 45 mintues. Its filled with funny gojo moments, boobies talk and a kickass story for Yuta. The fighting scenes are incrediable like always. I just wish there was more fighting scenes however, we have to remeber in Jujutsu Kaisen season 1 theres about 20 episodes that last about 20-25 mintues which gives us lots of time for character development and long fighting scenes.

If you are a Jujutsu kaisen fan its defintely worth watching the movie even if you've read the manga as Mappa brings everything to life with the sharp animation. 

P.S - There are end credits, enjoy!

Premise, to fully understand this movie, you should watch it, after watching the 1st season of Jujutsu Kaisen and after watching the first 5 episodes of the 2nd season

I have to say I was a little disappointed with this spin off/prequel film, even though I didn't expect the masterpiece of the century, some choices made to direct it left me very unsatisfied.

Plot : the story is very simple, it tells us about the protagonist Yuta, how he found himself attending the institute of occult arts and how he faced the Geto threat, the part where they deepen the Night Parade of the Hundred Demons, already mentioned several times in the main series, is beautiful, some things may not match up with the main series, but this unfortunately happened because the author hadn't set his story well at the time.

Personages : Yuta : better protagonist than Itadori in many ways, I'm not crazy about this character but it's not bad Maki : honestly I find her unbearable, she is always ready to blame anyone and she have a bad character, but in the main series she is much improved Inumaki and Panda : They are nice characters Gojo : Here we can see many more facets of his personality, even though he remains the same as in the main series Geto : main antagonist of the film, without having seen his and Gojo's past, many of his choices would be incomprehensible, although I still can't understand how he could become so corrupt inside, strong and calculating, I liked his role as an antagonist, his classic villain speeches, a little less

Sound : the music at the beginning of the film is fantastic and gives us some nice osts during the fights, especially the one between Yuta vs Geto, but in general I expected more from the film, I also find the final ending very normal, instead on the side of voice acting si great as always.

Animations : I was quite disappointed with the animation of this film, although it gives us some well-animated fights (like Yuta vs Geto or Gojo vs Miguel), it didn't seem to have the production of a movie, but rather that of an anime series, it is this I'm sorry considering it's Jujutsu Kaisen, but I must say that this time I noticed some slightly improved designs compared to the 1 season, and I really liked how they made the Rika curse.

Scriptwriter/Director : Here we come to one of the low points of the film, other than that it didn't feel like a film, but a very long episode focused on Yuta, the biggest problem is that this film really lacks a central part that connect everything, it starts with the presentation of Yuta and his studies at the occult institute and then they throw us directly into a final part with the bad guy who declares war, the construction of how they do it is bad, they should have added half now more movies to write everything better, and also the direction was very flat, except for the beginning and some moments at the end, it seemed to see a succession of cool scenes without a real logical thread.

Verdict : Despite some criticisms that I have thrown at this film, I still recommend watching it to better understand some concepts of the Kaisen jujutsu world such as the protagonist Yuta or the Night Parade of the Hundred Demons, they could have done much better, but in some ways it still remains a enjoyable movie.

If not for the AMAZING, OUTSTANDING, WONDERFUL, GORGEOUS, pretty sure expensive animation, this is a total waste of time to watch.

Imagine your average trahs romance, just replace it with POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, you know, friends are the only way out, you can do anything for them! You get stronger if they are killed and similar shit.

Basically that's the movie. Motivational trash.

Literally if it wasn't for the animation nobody would ever give it a high score.

Animation rally is good. I guess there is some compilation of fighting scenes - the ones that you watch the movie for.

Anime Review #24 -  Jujutsu Kaisen 0 (Movie)

I saw this movie in the theaters today and it was better than I was expecting! Now I'm going to regurgitate when I wrote on my Letterboxd right after the movie lol<3

(spoilers + my cringe opinions ahead)

I honestly really liked Yuta. I liked him wayyy more than I like Itadori lol I almost wish Yuta was the main character in the show instead of Itadori.... lol But then again I’m also a sucker for when the innocent quiet nice boy goes crazy<3 Like I thought that the fight scene where Yuta just randomly gets OP when fighting Geto was kinda hot LOL. The way he just materialized a megaphone and used that speaking curse power and was super fast. We love it. I love the abrupt switch from nice and normal to crazy with power!! (I wish Maki and the others had been watching though :( it’s more fun if other characters SEE another character being cool) Anyway, I thought Rika-chan was cute too! A little special grade curse<3 we love to see strong females winning, even though she died and became a curse... but still!!! Though it all would've been MORE fun if Yuta was a girl so then him and Rika-chan could be little childhood lesbians<3, but it was still cute I guess lol I always want them to be lesbians…

Anyway I LOVE Maki <3 !!! I get it that she’s weak and she's just a first year or whatever, but I wanna see my girl be super strong with power and defeat the Zen’in clan!!! She’s a girlboss!!! I honestly think Maki is my fav character out of all of them. I like Nanami too, but he was barely in it. I don't even think he said one line, and if he did it wasn't neccessary to the main plot at all lmaooo. I also like Miwa LOL. She’s barely a character but i like her, what can i say. Her blue hair and asymetrical bangs are fun. (You really need to watch the show before the movie in order to understand what's happening since most of the characters from the show are in it.) I also thought the concept of Yuta cursing Rika and being bonded was fun! A curse helping a sorcerer breaks the mold of it usually being jujutsu sorcers vs curses. Though I know this concept isn't anything new lol. Basically every Shonen main character is an 'exception' or 'rare case' to whatever the drama is with "good" vs "bad", sooooo ya. Even if it’s been done before a million times in a million different ways,,, I still eat it up every time. Even with Itadori being the host of Sukuna, it’s a similar concept but Itadori's character is kind of bland to me LOL. As I said before, I liked Yuta better🤷🏻‍♀️ But whatever. The point is,,, I thought that the movie was good! :)

The soundtrack was good too. I liked that punch scene between Geto and Yuta with the funky eletric guitar sounds. Very cool! I also liked that Yuta had bonding moments with Maki and sushi boy, who's name I can't remember, but not the Panda LOL. Stupid kung fu panda quit oogling at girl's boobies!!!!

Gojo with his blind fold off reminds me of the meme photo of young Miley Cyrus with her scary blue eyes that stares blankly into your soul. He looks way hotter wearing the sunglasses than the dumb blind fold but whatever. Him and Geto should kiss in a gay way.

Ok that's it :D

ZeroZeroZero Review: It's a family thing

Amazon's epic tale of how 5,000 kilos of cocaine affect far more than the buyers, sellers and brokers..

What to Watch Verdict

At the end of the eight hours of ZeroZeroZero you'll have to ask yourself — is this sort of thing *really* going on around us all the time?

A gripping story that's at times hard to watch.

The locations are epic.

So is the acting of everyone on screen.

The Mogwai soundtrack is perfect.

Sometimes the brutality is just a little too much.

Fair warning: You're going to want to set aide the better part of a day or two for ZeroZeroZero . This is one of those series where the story is told so damn well — and the episodes themselves are so masterfully pieced together — that you just have to keep going. No matter how brutal things get. No matter how bleak it may seem. If the characters somehow soldier on, so, too, must you.

The premise of ZeroZeroZero is simple. The head of an Italian Mafia family has been living in exile for years. He wants to get out of his hole in the ground and regain his former stature by getting 5,000 kilograms (that's about five tons ) of cocaine into the system. That sort of buy requires a lot of capital, though, so he gets others to invest in the purchase. Like it was a sports team or something. The coke comes from a pair of brothers in Mexico. The two ends work through a family's shipping company out of New Orleans.

Buyers. Sellers. Brokers. The triad that makes up a major international, wholesale drug operation.

The series is based on the 2016 book by Roberto Saviano and was developed for Italian and French TV, plus Amazon. The result is eight gripping hours spanning three continents, countless deaths, double- and triple-crosses, and an unyielding need to get the deals done.

Watch the fantastic series ZeroZeroZero on Amazon Prime Video.

ZeroZeroZero — it gets its name from the purest form of Italian pasta flour, and slang for pure cocaine — is told from three points of view. There's the Italian crime family in Calabria, in Southern Italy. They're the ones buying the cocaine. There's the Mexican side of things, which is mostly about the specially trained soldiers who are tasked to combat the drug trade — but it's also about the Leyra brothers, who head up the cartel producing the drugs. And there are the Americans — the Lynwood family — who run a shipping business out of New Orleans that facilitates the movement of mass amounts of cocaine.

The brutality is just part of doing business.

Each episode does a masterful job of hooking you, and I didn't even pick up on it until I was a few hours in. We start with the elderly Don Minu (Adriano Chiaramida) meeting with other families and guaranteeing a major shipment of cocaine that will bring everyone a lot of money, and allow him to come out of hiding for the first time in years following a protracted mafia war. Don Minu's grandson, Stefano (Giuseppe De Domenico), is in the mix, but he's in it for revenge — Don Minu years ago killed his own son, Stefano's father, to stop the war. (Though we don't learn that reasoning until later in the series.)

Then we see the Mexican special forces surveilling a meeting between the Leyra brothers and Edward and Emma Lynwood (Andrea Riseborough, who you know from Birdman and Oblivion with Tom Cruise). They're the father and daughter with the shipping business who will make sure the cocaine (which is hidden at the bottom of cans of jalapeño peppers) makes it from Monterey to Gioia Tauro in Southern Italy, three weeks and 6,000 miles away. As the soldiers are about to close in on the kingpins, one of them quietly alerts someone on the Leyra's payroll. The dinner breaks up and the shooting begins. The Leyras and the Lynnwoods escape, but not before Edward Lynwood (Gabrielle Byrne) takes a round in the chest.

That's when time slows down, and we flash back — rewind, really —  to get the whole storm on what's actually happening. It's a simple, subtle trick (and certainly not a unique one), but it's an effective device. You're roped in. Something bad is going to happen, and now you want to see what it is.

The Italian side is the trickiest of the three to follow. First Stefano wants to stop the shipment from ever making it to Italy, ensuring that his grandfather is disgraced once more an his new business partners will turn on him. (And in this world, that can mean waking up to find yourself being eaten alive by starving hogs.) Stefano is strong. He's clever. But maybe a little too clever and not experienced enough. He's working with the rival Curtiga family but quickly finds enemies on all sides. Don Minu is old but not naive. He sees what's coming and forces Stefano back to his family's side — at least until the Curtigas make it plenty clear that either the shipment does not make it to Italy, or Stefano will have to kill Don Minu himself. There's a lot of back-and-forth here, and a few too many characters to follow things easily (plus it's all in Italian). But it's intriguing as hell. Who's going to come out on top? Or at least lose less?

The Mexican side is brutal. No two ways about it. Manuel Contreras (Harold Torres) leads the squad of special forces. They hunt down and kidnap one of the Leyra's men and throw him in a hole for some good, old-fashioned shock-torture. But instead of hearing the screams, Manuel puts in his earbuds and takes in the teachings of an extremely religious podcast. It's maybe not his happy place, but he's doing evil in God's name, and this is how he copes. Ultimately they get the location of the dinner, where things start going down.

The ship full of cocaine leaves for Italy, and Manuel and his team are tasked with boarding it off the coast and stopping the drugs. There he finds Chris Lynnwood (Dane DeHaan), Emma's brother who's been kept out of the family business due to Huntington's Disease, which killed their mother and has secretly started to show in him. Chris stepped up, though, because his father ultimately died from the stress and shock of the attack at dinner, and someone has to make sure the shipment makes it to Italy. And Chris grew up on the large container ships, so he's suited for what's about to happen.

The Mexican commandos fastrope down to the ship, knock out Chris and warn the captain — a longtime friend of the Lynnwoods — that they need to shut down all tracking and disappear as they cross the Atlantic if they want to make it.

One problem with that, though: Stefano paid the captain 1 million Euro to make sure the shipment doesn't make it to Italy. How do you do that? Force an engine fire and abandon ship after knocking out Chris again. Except Chris knows these ships, remember? And he's somehow able to put out the engine fire himself and signal for help, ultimately ending up in Senegal, along with his wrecked ship and $60 million worth of cocaine hidden in the jalapeños. Emma flies in and they make their way across the Sarahah to Casablanca, getting caught up with ISIS along the way.

Meanwhile, Manuel and his crew — after killing their captain and saying to hell with the Mexican Army and getting some serious religious direction — decide to become the Leyras' dedicated paramilitary group. (They don't really give the brothers a choice in the matter.) They're ruthless and brutal. Mass executions to make a point seem routine. They recruit dozens of young men and train them as they were trained. (Maybe not as well, but well enough to be effective.)

But as is the case any number of times in ZeroZeroZero , strength isn't a one-way thing. Who has the upper hand at any given time depends on who's willing to go further. Who's able to see what's coming, or who's able to react the quickest. Who's willing to do whatever they have to do to ensure what needs to be done is done. And that's what's so incredible about the final scene of the series.

Manuel in one chair, a bloodbath left in his wake. Emma sits across from him, sandwiched between two bodies. If she blinked during the meeting — or as she twice walked through the courtyard strewn with bodies of men, women and children — I didn't see it. She simply completely the transaction, prepared for the next one, and went on her way.

The brutality — the death and destruction and transnational fuckery — is just part of doing business. It is the business. And for the three groups in ZeroZeroZero — the buyers, the sellers and the brokers — all that carnage is just a family thing.

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'Zero' film review: Keep your expectations at zero

Entertainment bollywood.

Ludicrous romance seems like a vanity project for showcasing Khan

Also in this package

• Katrina Kaif’s ‘Zero’ character unveiled
• Anushka Sharma calls ‘Zero’ all heart

You would expect a love story to transport you to another fantastical world, but the makers of ‘Zero’ seem to have taken this memo too seriously.

‘Zero’, a love story centred around a cheeky dwarf Bauua Singh (Shah Rukh Khan), a small-towner from Meerut who ends up on a US mission to Mars in an orange suit to win over his lady love, will leave you spaced out with its ludicrous twists and turns.

It’s one of those romances where you walk out of the cinema scratching your head in disbelief at the carnage of creativity that you just witnessed. Somewhere, you even grit your teeth and rant at the two dimwits on the big screen who deserve each other for being collectively stupid in love.

While ‘Zero’ begins on an interesting note with Khan owning the role of a Bauua Singh with gusto and gumption, it’s the second half that derails completely.

Khan is in his element as the short-statured Singh. He doesn’t let his height define him or his existence. He’s conceited, but Khan injects a sense of lovability into his character with his trademark charm and charisma.

However, all that good work crashes and burns when he collides with the two women — a wheelchair-bound scientist Aafia (Anushka Sharma) and a troubled Bollywood star Babita Kumari (Katrina Kaif). Mind you, it isn’t Sharma and Kaif’s fault.

Their characters make sense individually, but together they make absolutely no sense. The courtship between the erudite Aafia and high school dropout Singh seems stilted and forced. There’s absolutely zero chemistry between this pair. Fortunately, Singh’s toxic relationship with the attention-seeking Kumari is a bit more believable. Kaif, in her limited screen time, makes her presence felt as an emotional train-wreck, while Sharma does a neat job of playing a prodigious mathematician. But together their emotional proximity to Singh seems a bit forced.

What isn’t forced is the smattering of witty lines. The irreverential jokes by Singh and his best pal, played wonderfully by Mohammad Zeeshan Ayub Khan, make a smooth landing as you laugh with them and not at them. But that’s just a sliver of a silver lining as this whole film comes across as a vanity project for showcasing Khan’s different shades as an actor and his tall stature.

All of that would have been forgiven if the second half of the film didn’t venture into the ludicrous territory. Singh qualifying to be a Mars-mule in the US was the proverbial last straw.

While credit has to be given to director Aanand L Rai for normalising disability in a romance, it is best to keep your expectations at zero to enjoy ‘Zero’.

Director: Aanand L Rai

Running time: 175 minutes

Cast: Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif and Shah Rukh Khan

Stars: 1.5 out of 5

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Amazon Prime’s Addictive Thriller ZeroZeroZero Depicts a Global Drug Deal Gone Wrong

Before users are brought into play, the high stakes game of the cocaine business includes the buyers, sellers, and dealmakers. “ZeroZeroZero,” an addictive new international thriller from Amazon Prime, uses a big cocaine deal gone wrong as the spark for international drama that spans three continents. The cocaine was made in Monterrey, Mexico by the Leyra cartel, was set for transport by a boat owned by dealmakers from America (played by Gabriel Byrne , Andrea Riseborough , and Dane DeHaan ), and was on its way to Italy where the crime syndicate will distribute it to the world. In the series’ first episode, “ Sicario: Day of the Soldado ” director Stefano Sollima blows up this deal and hooks us in with Mafioso family drama, high-stakes chase scenes with Mexican cartel, and a dramatic shootout in the climax. All the while, everyone’s aspirations are established, along with a disturbing sense of what they’ll risk to get what they want. 

Adapted from the book by Roberto Saviano , “ZeroZeroZero” tells these different stories in alternating big chunks; sometimes the arcs will intertwine (and lead to a flashback) and sometimes an arc will be off on its own for a while. It helps keep the stories focused, and helps you keep track of most of the characters who might suddenly die—the show is primed for attentive viewing even more than binge-viewing, but you’ll want to follow its eight hour-long episodes to the end either way. I recommend doing so in doses, even though the show is held together by so many great twists that you might find yourself just watching one episode after the next.  

The weakest of the three storylines belongs to the Americans, and it’s telling that the story could still thrive on its own were “ZeroZeroZero” chopped up into three different movies. Andrea Riseborough stands out with in her performance as Emma Lynwood, the older sister (and daughter to Gabriel Byrne’s Edward) trying to keep up the Lynwood family drug deal; her presence is shown to be an abrasive break from the very gendered roles of drug dealing, where Mafiosos refuse to get women involved, and the cartels are shown to put nearly-nude women to work to cut the cocaine. Like many people in this saga she can disappear and reappear from the events, but Riseborough is one of the most stable dramatic forces, working through a bizarre adventure that takes her and her brother Chris (Dane DeHaan) to Senegal and Morocco, where her unblinking management skills prove necessary in trying to keep the deal alive. DeHaan’s Chris is a bit more unwieldy, especially with a backstory of a family disease that has him frantically trying to not lose his prescriptions in the process, and eventually tearing up rooms and screaming in bouts of capital-A Acting.  

Far more subtle is the story involving the the Italians, who have their own bubbling drama that rises to the surface. The series’ penchant for gorgeous, extra wide shots of each story’s horizon are the best here when detailing the peaceful cliff sides and small villages that Don Minu  (Adriano Chiaramida ) has right outside his underground bunker, where he has been ruling in seclusion. Don Minu’s hotshot grandson Stefano (Giuseppe De Domenico) forces him out of hiding with the deal, especially as Stefano tries to take over; the two enact an old school vs. new school drama that works in its slow-burns, as they tactfully try to trap and kill the other. Each time that Don Minu, or Stefano, are lead somewhere unknown for a meeting, it feels like it could be their last moment, and the script’s reoccurring chorus of someone shifting allegiances especially pops here within the stakes of their gruesome family backstory. 

This is revealed to be a business where you can either control or be controlled, and Manuel (a quietly insidious Harold Torres) embodies that with his own arc of rising from a church-going special forces sergeant nicknamed “Vampire” to aspirational Mexican cartel leader, who uses his professional training as a way to dominate Monterrey with his own army of men who are armed, fast, and loyal. Manuel’s arc takes “ZeroZeroZero” to some very dark, unrelentingly bleak places, but it too works as a study in evil, disconnected from the other two major stories. His story gets bigger and bigger as he starts to gain control, especially as Manuel builds his army with dozens of men training for war, and yet it always comes back to the wavering power within Torres’ stoic presence. Sometimes it’s the haunting look of a stone-cold, sociopathic tyrant, but in a few weaker dramatic beats its the look of someone whose established intricate conscience dissipates with each tactful act of brutality. 

“ZeroZeroZero” takes the moral stance of a Martin Scorsese project, in that it stands back from such various degrees of evil, and lets God sort them out. To become enmeshed with such villains in a high-paced story can be invigorating at first, but it flags when the series proves to share little insight into its focal subject, as if withholding the massive research that clearly inspired the series and the book. Instead, though episode one features Gabriel Byrne’s cheesy voiceover getting didactic about on drug dealing, the show is more reliant on its confident narrative style, of endless betrayals and bids for power, all while trying to give some gritty coolness to the business at hand.  

An expansive and bleak epic like this is rounded out by its filmmaking vigor, of which “ZeroZeroZero” has plenty of. Its action scenes can burst into some genuinely thrilling car chases, shootouts, and shocking kills, all which make some of its hokier visual missteps (like the way it always suddenly goes into dramatic slow motion to switch arcs) easier to forgive. “ZeroZeroZero” prevails in creating a rich world with its interconnected nature; its scope becomes a weapon itself, sobering you up with just how far everything goes. It’s the kind of thriller that makes such a deep impression because it can think big and small at the same time, uniting three gripping individual stories into one massive saga.

Whole season screened for review.

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Through his relationships with two wildly different women, a vertically challenged bachelor with a larger-than-life persona must discover his purpose. Through his relationships with two wildly different women, a vertically challenged bachelor with a larger-than-life persona must discover his purpose. Through his relationships with two wildly different women, a vertically challenged bachelor with a larger-than-life persona must discover his purpose.

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• Trivia SRK's character was shot using Forced Perspective, which is a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. It is the first time a Bollywood film used this technology.

Pandey : What brings you to Delhi in this storm Mr. Singh?

Bauua Singh : Bachelors at 38 aren't scared of storms.

• Crazy credits Veteran actress late Sridevi who has a cameo appearance in the film is given a tribute during the opening credits.
• Connections References Jab Jab Phool Khile (1965)
• Soundtracks Mere Naam Tu Vocals by Abhay Jodhpurkar Lyrics by Irshad Kamil Music by Ajay Gogavale & Atul Gogavale

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Zero Reviews

Zero is a wild film that imagines a classless India in which a small town dwarf gets with a rocket scientist and a movie star, rejects them both, goes to Mars, and returns. It's the most misunderstood film of Shah Rukh Khan's career.

Full Review | Dec 22, 2023

Thank the cosmos for Bollywood's dimpled wonder, his charisma and enthusiasm undiminished by his 53 years, because without him, Zero has little going for it.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jan 29, 2021

The heavy-handed humour that it generates hinges on the character's lack of inches. Not funny at all.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 21, 2020

Too ambitious in its vision and indiscriminately illogical, Rai falters in exploring both inner spaces and outer space.

Full Review | Jul 29, 2019

The film might be the worst reminder of SRK's incompetence in completely inhabiting a character.

Full Review | Mar 11, 2019

Zero is a funny film backed by a unique storyline and embellished with interesting elements like space travel that you may not have seen in Bollywood films before.

Full Review | Jan 17, 2019

Zero is all heart. It probably won't work if you start thinking about the probability of it all, but after a wobbly half-hour I found the film easy to embrace.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 15, 2019

A star, falling, once the count reaches zero. And crashing down to earth.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 15, 2019

[Characters] are individually interesting but the connective tissue between them is so thin that the narrative starts to wobble precariously.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 15, 2019

All of that would have been forgiven if the second half of the film didn't venture into the ludicrous territory. Singh qualifying to be a Mars-mule in the US was the proverbial last straw.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jan 15, 2019

In Zero, the defects are physical, propped up by special effects but lack a strong emotional connect.

Full Review | Jan 15, 2019

The first half of Zero is flat-out fantastic, an unabashed charm-offensive from Rai, Khan and the film's writer Himanshu Sharma... It is as the film continues, and gets more fanciful, that the seams start to show.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 21, 2018

A movie that probably sounded interesting at the concept stage but ends up being irretrievably outlandish in its execution.

Full Review | Dec 21, 2018

Zero has lofty ambitions but when it comes to delivery, it falls too short.

Shah Rukh Khan is experimenting with each film and must be admired for his zeal to attempt something out of the ordinary and not playing it safe. He has given it all to the film and makes you believe in Bauaa's madness.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 21, 2018

Inconsistency plagues the movie...while the film has a wealth of references to Bollywood and its stars, these details don't compensate for a story that starts with a beautiful plot, but takes off on a bizarre ride.

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Srk’s ‘zero’ lands nowhere with its shoddy script, the second half of ‘zero’ made us feel stupid for even hoping that this movie could be anything other than its title.

Camera: Shiv Kumar Maurya

Video Editor: Kunal Mehra

Video Producer: Chandni Sharma

SRK and his die-hard fans all are wishing for one more Chak De India and understandably so. His last few films haven’t exactly been flawless, and so, the wait is on for that one film with that one role that will make SRK invincible again. Sorry to break it to you, but Zero isn’t that movie.

Zero ’s hero is a dwarf, adtees saal ka ‘ launda ’ who is seeking a bride. Bauua is self-aware, and repeatedly mentions how the world makes fun of people like him and think they belong only in a circus. But his give-a-damn attitude and the extra swagger he adds to his walk to keep duniya and his own dad’s misgivings about him at bay wins us over. When Bauua starts hanging out with a NASA scientist in a wheelchair, who suffers from cerebral palsy, we surely get excited, looking forward to how this pans out.

Bauua’s object of desire, however, is top actor Babita Kumari, aka Katrina Kaif; who, I daresay, is playing herself. She is even nursing a broken heart, courtesy a fellow actor named Kapoor. Go figure!

Now, here are three characters, all judged by society on the basis of their physical appearance. And so, we feel a little hopeful about the proceedings. The premise definitely seems promising as an honest and refreshing examination of relationships.

The second half, however, made us feel stupid for even hoping that Zero could be anything other than its title.

What writer Himanshu Sharma and director Anand L Rai give us is a confused, shoddy story that just doesn’t know what to do with its three principle characters or where to take them.

From Meerut ki galiyaan to glitzy award functions to outer space, Zero is a disastrous ride that crash lands in the middle of nowhere. This is no Chakh De! but rather, ‘chuck it’!

It’s not that the performances are bad. In fact, SRK gives it his all and Katrina Kaif doesn’t hold back either. However, we are forced to suspend our disbelief and surrender to the contrived plot which has everything from a dance competition to a space adventure-ready chimpanzee. The set-up is too huge and the pleasures dwindle too soon.

It’s 1 Quint out of 5 for this lost ride!

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Topics:    anushka sharma      shah rukh khan      katrina kaif  .

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Kate Siegel Opens up About Her Make-Or-Break ‘V/H/S/Beyond’ Moment

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When Kate Siegel set out to make her directorial debut in the upcoming anthology film, V/H/S/Beyond , she did so with a sky’s-the-limit mindset. She was already going as big as possible with a sci-fi tale penned by her frequent collaborator and husband, Mike Flanagan ( Doctor Sleep ), so something as silly as a budget wasn’t going to stop Siegel from making the most incredible UFO story fans of the franchise have ever seen. Siegel’s installment, titled Stowaway , follows Alanah Pearce ’s Halle Halley, a mother and physicist whose UFO dreams come to life when she stumbles upon a mysterious craft in the middle of the desert. After crawling inside the ship, all hell breaks loose for Halle, and Siegel wanted to capture every ounce of the chaos.

Still, when working on a project like this one, a filmmaker isn’t necessarily rolling in the cash, as the spooky anthology series is known for doing things on a limited budget. During a chat with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff at the movie’s Fantastic Fest premiere, Siegel revealed that, while she could reel herself in on certain aspects of the movie-making process, there was one part that would’ve been “a deal-breaker.”

“It was that I wanted the back half to be in zero gravity ,” Siegel explained. “That was a deal-breaker for me. I was like, ‘If Kate can’t go to space, then what’s the point of the revolution?’” Luckily, with a little movie magic and know-how, the director was able to push beyond the potential deal-breaker and see her vision come to life.

“ And the way I ended up doing that was I used something called a trinity head, which is a gyroscopic crane head, that I put on a Steadicam operator. A gyroscopic crane head, what it does is it goes side to side, and it can pan 360, and it can do a full twist, and it is operated by your DP at monitor. So, he has two little wheels, Michael Fimognari was spinning them, and then my Steadicam operator, who had this on a long pole, could move also. And so all of a sudden, we could get a flow.”

It’s All About the Float in 'V/H/S Beyond'

"floating a person is very hard.".

As those who learned about the practical zero gravity effects used by Fede Álvarez in Alien: Romulus will know, there’s a lot beyond the wires that go into making a float look real. Fully understanding this concept and wanting to keep it as real as possible in appearance, Siegel said:

“We spent a lot of time working on the float, and you can sell it with a few things. The question is, where does she go? Floating a person is very hard. I didn’t want there to be wire work because you feel the gravity almost in wires, and also we couldn’t afford wires. We didn’t have that kind of safety or stunt, but we had one wire stunt, but she gets thrown into the filaments. Anyway, so we did a thing where we had a dummy made of our actress, and I was like, ‘Just have her float gently. Just that moment of her leaving frame. We’ll sell it.’ And then when she ends up grabbing the camera by the window, she’s on two giant apple boxes on a furniture dolly and rolled up so that she could lift her body for short periods of time. We tried that from a bunch of different angles just to sell it just a little bit.”

In the end, Siegel says that she didn’t need people to be sold hook, line, and sinker, but that she was hoping that they’d be sold just enough for that suspension of disbelief to take hold throughout the segment. “I just wanted people to get permission to buy in," she explained. "I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to do it 100% and that people could be like, ‘Well, her hair didn’t…’ or, ‘Her clothes didn’t…’ but I just wanted them to buy in enough.”

V/H/S/Beyond arrives on Shudder on October 4. Stay tuned at Collider for more from Fantastic Fest.

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For a booze-free brunch, make zero-proof Bellinis and bloody marys

Even before I quit drinking, I had a lot of questions about the legitimacy of a booze-filled brunch. As someone who enjoyed alcohol a bit more than the average bear, I should have been thrilled there was a socially acceptable excuse for slamming back cocktails at 10 a.m.

But even for a meal that makes it OK to start the day with a stack of butter-and-syrup-drenched cakes (it’s totally fine as long as they’re cooked in a pan!), the excuses for a.m. vodka seemed a little flimsy.

Ostensibly, my reason to imbibe on Sunday morning was that a little “hair of the dog” would ease whatever pain I had inflicted on myself on Saturday night. But if I wasn’t functional enough to take off my shoes and makeup before passing out facedown on my couch at 5 in the morning, how was I supposed to wake up six hours later and make myself pretty enough to eat eggs in public?

Nearly a decade after my last drink I can still viscerally feel the memories of hangovers past. They weren’t all brutal, but it was equally as hard to motivate myself out of bed with an uncomfortable one. If boozy brunches were really meant to cure hangovers, they wouldn’t be trying to lure people outside into direct sunlight.

It’s less dangerous to venture into the wild for brunch now that I’m sober, but I’m still not crawling out of bed, doing my hair and makeup, getting competently dressed, and walking 15 to 30 minutes to stand in line to eat anything , even if it comes with a complimentary basket of minimuffins. Sunday mornings are for lingering in bed, lazily milling about in my pajamas and mustering up the energy to clean, followed by plopping down on the couch to read and watch TV for as long as I can manage. If “brunch” is happening at all, it’s happening in my living room.

A bloody mary doesn’t need to be boozy or bottomless to be enjoyable. In fact, it doesn’t even need to be confined to the ritual of “brunch,” especially since it’s not the best thing to pair with whipped cream or hollandaise. It’s essentially a whole meal in a glass as is, with every ingredient being so aggressive, you need to wonder why vodka needed to be involved at all. If anything in it is helping with a hangover, it’s the vitamins and antioxidants in the tomato juice, the electrolytes in the olive brine, or the horseradish that smacks you in the face and clears up your sinuses. Even if you garnish it with Slim Jims or a bunch of tiny hamburgers on a stick, bloody marys are probably still better for your sleepy Sunday body than a pile of fried chicken on a waffle doused with maple syrup.

With or without the alcohol, bloody marys are made for laziness, which is the most paramount factor to consider when weekends are involved. Dump the ingredients in a pitcher, give it a good stir, and you’re ready to rock. It also just so happens to get better and better the longer it’s allowed to sit, meaning that you can (and should) whip the recipe up the night before so you’re ready to rock come Sunday morning, no matter what physical shape you’re in.

Of course, not all brunches are meant to be casual. There are also fancy brunches, which I still refuse to partake in unless I’m dragged kicking and screaming. Fancy brunches are everything I hate about brunch turned up to the highest setting: the attire, the presentability, the expectation to be chipper and social when my body demands to be beneath warm blankets and purring cats. But if there’s one thing I can appreciate about a fancy brunch, it’s the mimosas and Bellinis in fancy glasses, and I always love an opportunity to drink anything out of those. Just because I’m doing crosswords in flannel pants covered with set-in tomato stains doesn’t mean I’m not a sophisticated broad deep within my heart.

Fortunately for the glamorous and unmotivated, classic “champagne” cocktails have always been superlatively simple to make, requiring nothing more than pouring and stirring. They’re also easy to make nonalcoholic by replacing the sparkling wine with sparkling white grape juice, which results in a sweeter drink, or zero-proof bubbly, which I prefer for its dryness. My local booze-free bottle shop, Hopscotch in Baltimore, offers multiple varieties of the latter, with more than one priced at under $20, rendering the mental gymnastics needed to rationalize cocktails-before-noon irrelevant.

So go ahead and enjoy a bloody mary with those eggs or a Bellini with your cereal on a Tuesday, and keep that blissful lazy Sunday spirit going all week long.

Virgin Bellini

The original Bellini cocktail is made with fresh pureed white peaches, which have a short season. A puree made with yellow peaches – either fresh, canned or frozen – will yield a drink that’s just as delicious. And if you’d rather skip pureeing fruit altogether, bottled peach nectar will work nicely in a pinch.

2 ounces chilled peach puree or peach nectar

4 ounces chilled nonalcoholic sparkling wine or sparkling white grape juice

Pour the peach puree or nectar into a champagne flute; top with the sparkling wine or grape juice, and stir gently with a bar spoon. Serve right away.

Yield: 1 serving

Where to buy: Peach nectar can be found at well-stocked supermarkets and specialty shops.

Substitutions: No nonalcoholic sparkling wine or grape juice? Try sparkling tea or sparkling apple cider. Want this drink with alcohol? Use prosecco or other sparkling wine in place of the nonalcoholic sparkling drink.

Variations: To turn this into a mimosa, use fresh orange juice in place of the peach puree or nectar.

Notes: To make peach puree, halve and pit a ripe, juicy peach (no need to peel). Place it in a blender and puree until smooth. If making peach puree from frozen peaches, defrost them completely in the refrigerator, then puree as much as you need.

Virgin Bloody Mary

This nonalcoholic Bloody Mary is best when its ingredients have had time to mingle, but it’s still fantastic when whipped up on the fly. It’s also a cocktail that benefits from your personal touch, so feel free to tinker with the measurements (like upping the horseradish or hot sauce for extra kick) until your palate is pleased.

One (46-ounce) bottle tomato juice

½ cup dill pickle brine

½ cup olive brine

⅓ cup Worcestershire sauce

¼ cup prepared horseradish

¼ cup fresh lemon juice (from 1 to 2 large lemons)

1 tablespoon hot sauce, such as Tabasco or Crystal brands

2 teaspoons celery seed

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon fine salt

Celery stalks, skewered olives, pickle spears, Slim Jims and/or lemon wedges, for garnish

In a 2-quart pitcher, stir together the tomato juice, pickle brine, olive brine, Worcestershire sauce, horseradish, lemon juice, hot sauce, celery seed, pepper and salt until well combined. Cover, and refrigerate for at least one hour and preferably overnight.

When ready to serve, pour the cocktail into glasses filled halfway with ice. Add the garnish(es) of your choosing, and serve.

Yield: 12-16 servings (makes about 8 cups)

Make ahead: The drink mixture needs to be prepared and refrigerated for at least 1 hour before serving.

Storage: Refrigerate for up to 1 week.

Variations: If you prefer a boozy bloody mary, add 2 ounces vodka for every 4 ounces of the mix, or to taste.

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Zero Movie Review: Shah Rukh Khan's Zero has several factors going for it but sadly, the weak, flawed and lacklustre screenwriting is all that you recall. This one’s an epic disappointment.

Zero review 1.5/5 & rating. watch zero official trailer video, listen songs, movie news updates, movie review and checkout public movie reviews soon., zero review {1.5/5} & review rating.

ZERO is a crucial film for varied reasons. The main reason being, it’s the first collaboration of Shah Rukh Khan and Aanand L Rai, who has a hat trick of hits to his credit [TANU WEDS MANU, RAANJHANAA and TANU WEDS MANU RETURNS].

Unlike their previous ventures, the stakes are high this time. The actor features in a role he hasn’t portrayed earlier, while a significant part of the second half has space travel interwoven in its screenplay. Naturally, the expectations are colossal.

Without giving away the minutest details of the story, here’s the spoiler-free plot: Bauua [Shah Rukh], a 38-year-old man, lives with his family in Meerut. He comes across the profile of Aafia [Anushka Sharma] at a marriage bureau and decides to woo her.

Aafia doesn’t show interest in Bauua initially, but falls in love with him subsequently. Bauua backs off. A few months later, Bauua is shocked to see Aafia at his residence.

Bauua’s father [Tigmanshu Dhulia] decides to get Bauua and Aafia married and a reluctant Bauua agrees too. Meanwhile, Bauua had signed up for a dance competition where the winner will get to meet the superstar, Babita [Katrina Kaif].

An ardent fan of Babita, Bauua ditches Aafia on the day of marriage. What happens next, forms the remainder of the film.

To begin with, the story [Himanshu Sharma] hinges on a wafer thin plot. The writer has integrated space travel in the narrative and you may argue [and rightly so] that it’s this aspect that drives the story away from predictability. However, the writer fails to knit a compelling, riveting and captivating screenplay that stays with you.

ZERO appeals in bits and spurts and a few moments in the first half do grab your attention, make you giggle and bring a smile on your face. A few individualistic sequences do catch your attention, but you realise, as the narrative progresses, there’s something amiss.

You invest hopes in the post intermission portions, hoping that the writing and the emotional quotient - the hallmark of Aanand’s previous movies - will change the scenario for better. Unfortunately, the writing goes for a toss as the fun portions fall flat, romance seems superficial and emotions appear fake.

What saves ZERO, besides the performances of its principal cast, are some sharp and witty lines. But the bitter truth is, great lines or individualistic sequences in a disjointed screenplay are forgotten once you exit the theatre.

Aanand L. Rai’s direction is a far cry from his previous works. In fact, the incredibly talented storyteller is known to make you smile, laugh and make you moist-eyed in his well-packaged movies. Everyone who recalls his works will be wondering, how did he okay a half-baked screenplay this time? Too many questions cross your mind as the drama unfolds and you soon realise, it’s a screenplay of convenience.

The graph of the film goes haywire in the second hour. Generally, you don’t complain about the length of the film / run time if the proceedings and sequence of events keep you hooked, enthralled and mesmerised. Sadly, ZERO lacks the power of a strong and cohesive script.

Ajay-Atul's soundtrack is a big plus. ‘Mere Naam Tu' is, undoubtedly, the best track. The song featuring Salman and SRK is a treat for the fans of the two superstars. Cinematography is brilliant. The DOP captures the various moods and locales to perfection. The production design is top notch. A special mention of the VFX, which matches the global standards.

Shah Rukh is the lifeline of ZERO. He is in supreme form. The actor deserves 10/10 for a performance that’s absolutely fantastic. Anushka nails the part. There’s no doubt that she’s amongst the best and her act in ZERO reiterates the fact. Katrina surprises you with a stunning performance. Some moments in the second half give her ample scope to shine.

Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub is dependable, contributing to the fun quotient. Tigmanshu Dhulia is perfect. Brijendra Kala is hardly there. Abhay Deol and R Madhavan hardly contribute.

ZERO features Sridevi, Kajol, Rani Mukerji, Alia Bhatt, Deepika Padukone, Karisma Kapoor and Juhi Chawla in an inconsequential sequence.

On the whole, ZERO has several factors going for it: star presence, winsome performances, energetic soundtrack and of course, it’s timed during the Christmas and New Year vacations. Sadly, the weak, flawed and lacklustre screenwriting is all that you recall after you’ve watched the much-awaited movie. This one’s an epic disappointment!

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Zero Movie News

Tigmanshu Dhulia recalls Shah Rukh Khan sleeping on bus passage during Dil Se shoot, picking up chairs for actors on set of Zero: “Yeh sanskar hain uske”

Katrina Kaif reveals that she was dying to play Anushka Sharma's part in Zero: "My audition for the role of Afiya moved Aanand L Rai; Shah Rukh Khan advised that I should trust him"

#AskSRK: Shah Rukh Khan takes a funny dig at Zero; says, “Mat yaad dilao…”

Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub recalls impulsively buying a Mercedes after Thugs of Hindostan and Zero debacles; says, “Now I laugh about it”

It has been 5 years (1825 days) since Shah Rukh Khan announced a new film…and the wait CONTINUES

EXCLUSIVE: Lilliput explains why Shah Rukh Khan should not have played a dwarf in Zero

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Olga_nilkina.

Wonderful movie to watch with family on the eve of Christmas holidays

Shantanu Tripathi

The concept of the film is amazing. Its a journey of a vertically challenged person from Meerut to…

How can a story be written so badly. Mohammed zeeshan such a talented actor and they made him a…

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