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“Queen”… Self life
Spoilers ahead… Kangana Ranaut looks different in Queen. The actress has always come across like a bundle of raw nerve endings, her hair seemingly frizzed by those naked electrical impulses,...
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“Bewakoofiyaan”… Money matters
Spoilers ahead… They’re yuppies. Mohit (Ayushmann Khurrana) works in the airline industry. (In other words, he has a high-flying job.) Mayera (Sonam Kapoor) works in the financial services industry....
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“Lakshmi”… Hyderabad blues
Spoilers ahead… And this month’s Juhi Chawla Award for Playing Against Type goes to… Satish Kaushik, the cuddly Calendar from Mr. India who plays Reddygaru in Lakshmi. We first see him as he alights...
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“Ankhon Dekhi”… In plain sight
Spoilers ahead… Watching Rajat Kapoor’s marvellous Ankhon Dekhi, you may find yourself wishing that we had one of those “Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture” awards. The casting is...
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“O Teri”… Corpse and nation robbers
Spoilers ahead… It’s election time, and some genius probably thought Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro was ripe for an update. And so we have two bumbling reporters (Pulkit Samrat, Bilal Amrohi) mired in deal-making...
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“Youngistaan / Dishkiyaaoon”… Papa’s boys
Spoilers ahead… It must be strange being a producer’s kid. You see daddy whipping out his purse and making stars of others, and you think “Why can’t that be me?” And so you set out in search of...
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“Main Tera Hero”… Beta No. 1
Spoilers ahead… Any film that takes a dig at Katrina Kaif’s Hindi can’t be all bad – even if does feature Nargis Fakhri, the latest claimant to Kaif’s throne. Tamil cinema has a thing for casting...
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“Jal”… Water, water, nowhere…
Spoilers ahead… Two vastly different films vie for space in Girish Malik’s Jal. The first one is a sort of tragic satire. A Russian conservationist comes to the Rann of Kutch to study flamingos. She...
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“Bhoothnath Returns”… The perfect ghost
Spoilers ahead… How times change. In 1984, when Amitabh Bachchan was still playing the angry young man, his cure for the malignant tumour of political corruption, in Inquilaab, was to become Chief...
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“2 States”… Going south
Spoilers ahead… With Ek Duuje Ke Liye or Vicky Donor, we sense the effort to make something that’s more than just a cross-culture romance, the effort to make a movie. Why not have some fun with the...
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“Dekh Tamasha Dekh”… 2 faiths
Spoilers ahead… Towards the end of Dekh Tamasha Dekh, we see the police chief (Vinay Jain) of a seaside village on the phone, talking to his young son. (It’s a land line. There are no cell phones...
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“Kaanchi”… Heroine
Spoilers ahead… With the release of each new Subhash Ghai movie, we’re aware of its distance from his older ones, and it’s no different with Kaanchi, Ghai’s first heroine-centric saga. As long as he...
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“Purani Jeans”… Faded memories
Spoilers ahead… The most annoying affectation in the movies today may be the framing device set in the present day. 2 States structured its story as the flashbacks of a man baring his heart to his...
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“Hawaa Hawaai”… Gone with the wind
Spoilers ahead… Amole Gupte makes movies about children but he doesn’t make children’s movies. Taare Zameen Par (which Gupte was involved in, but did not direct), Stanley Ka Dabba and his latest film,...
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“Manjunath”… Oil and trouble
Spoilers ahead… Manjunath is the story of an incorruptible oil-corporation employee who died in a nondescript village in Uttar Pradesh when he was 27, with six bullets in his chest. Even to those...
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“Children of War”… Oppressing issues
Spoilers ahead… Mrityunjay Devvrat’s Children of War opens in a lush forest. An old man, a Hindu, recites mantras as he sprinkles ashes from an earthen vessel. A little girl nearby asks him what he is...
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“The Xposé”… A nose by any other name…
Spoilers ahead… A few scenes into Anant Mahadevan’s The Xposé, I sat up. Could this actually be a cunningly disguised sci-fi epic? Consider the evidence. It’s 1968. We’re neck-deep in the Bombay film...
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“Kochadaiiyaan”… The return of the king
Spoilers ahead… I suppose we should begin with this question: How is the animation, performance-capture and otherwise? Imagine that we had the kind of merchandising culture that Hollywood has...
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“Heropanti”… Paper tiger
Spoilers ahead… It’s a wedding. It’s Jatland. That’s not really a word but it isn’t hard to guess what it means. Like Finland is occupied by Finns, Jatland is the domain of Jats, who, we’re told, don’t...
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“CityLights”… Metro vanilla
Spoilers ahead… Something about metros makes filmmakers reach for metaphors about birds. Most recently we had Nadaan parindey, the song in Rockstar that had the protagonist calling out to pigeons that...
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