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“Akira”… Can’t hold a candle to the original
Spoilers ahead… To know the kind of filmmaker AR Murugadoss is, you only need the scene from Akira (a mostly faithful remake of the Tamil sleeper hit Mounaguru), where the victim of an acid attack sees...
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“Baar Baar Dekho”… A bland, but very pretty, time-travel romance
Spoilers ahead… There are films with eye candy. And then there are the Dharma films that deposit the eye at the confectionary store. Katrina Kaif is only the third most beautiful thing in Baar Baar...
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“Freaky Ali”… A silly, uneven comedy with a terrific Siddiqui
Spoilers ahead… The attraction of Freaky Ali is the prospect of seeing Nawazuddin Siddiqui in a movie that, in just its first half-hour, insults a lisping child, a wizened old man and an albino (“nakli...
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“Pink”… A solid courtroom drama that makes solid points about the way we...
Spoilers ahead… Had Pink been made in Hollywood, it would have been labelled “Oscar bait.” It makes all the right noises. The story is one that will launch a thousand op-ed pieces. In an echo of Shah...
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“Parched”… A very well-acted film that hits hard, hits home
Spoilers ahead… Is Radhika Apte the best weeper on screen today? With other actresses, you hunt for a handkerchief to lend, a ladies’ room to usher them into. You worry about their makeup. With Apte,...
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More than a few good women
‘Dil Chahta Hai’ is the ultimate male-bonding movie, but today, the females seem more fascinating. So Dil Chahta Hai turned 15 this year. It hasn’t aged all that well. That’s the thing about being such...
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“M.S. Dhoni – The Untold Story”… Not a good biopic, but a perfectly...
Spoilers ahead… At one time, the minimal requirement for a biopic to be made about a man (or woman) wasn’t just a life that lent itself to drama but the subject’s death. Mahatma Gandhi died in 1948....
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From Love Marriage to Dhoni
A short history of cricket in Hindi cinema. Take the topic of cricket in Hindi cinema and the temptation to concoct a quiz is irresistible. For instance, name the actors who played father and daughter...
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Fact? Or rah-rah fiction?
The problem with the recently released biopic of Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the problem with many biopics of the famous: the flaws make way for fawning. MS Dhoni – The Untold Story is a terrifically...
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“Mirzya”… A major misfire… But for a while, a fascinating formal experiment
Spoilers ahead… Something about star-crossed lovers nudges our filmmakers towards formal experiments. Chetan Anand’s Heer Ranjha is entirely in exquisite verse. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya,...
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Pretty pictures
On the great shallow pleasures of gawking at beautiful people on screen, and the problems when they pretend they’re otherwise. When the minute-and-a-half teaser for Karan Johar’s upcoming Ae Dil Hai...
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“Ae Dil Hai Mushkil”… A satisfying bridge between Hindi cinema and Bollywood
Spoilers ahead… The way we speak in real life, that’s conversation. The way people in a certain kind of movie speak, that’s dialogue. Both kinds of exchange are present in Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai...
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“Shivaay”…
Review coming soon… My take: Some great stunts. But terribly long, and becomes hard to care (or keep awake) after a point.Filed under: Cinema: Hindi
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West side stories
At the Jio MAMI film festival with vampiric mermaids, touchingly liberal Indians, a donkey laden with symbolism, an unusual gay pairing, a rape fantasy, and a sparklingly restored version of ‘Teesri...
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A conversation with Karan Johar
A new film. A new season of his guilty-pleasure TV show. And a new sense of liberation. Karan Johar talks. Baradwaj Rangan listens. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that we’ve never seen a filmmaker...
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“Rock On II”… As needless sequels go, not entirely a waste of time
Spoilers ahead… It took me a few listens to get into Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s score for Rock On II. The music is somewhere between fantastic and forgettable – but that’s just another way of saying it’s the...
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“Force 2.”… A generic but decent-enough action entry
Spoilers ahead… It must not be easy being John Abraham. It’s the Arnold Schwarzenegger problem, the Sylvester Stallone problem. When people approach you to carry a movie on your shoulders, they mean it...
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“Dear Zindagi”… Overlong, a tad simplistic, but buoyed by great performances
Spoilers ahead… In a sense, Gauri Shinde’s Dear Zindagi is a greatest-hits compilation of Alia Bhatt’s career. Bhatt’s character, Kaira, suffers from insomnia (we saw that in Shandaar). She has...
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“Moh Maya Money”… A pretty decent slice of ‘domestic noir’
Spoilers ahead… In Munish Bhardwaj’s Moh Maya Money, Ranvir Shorey plays a real-estate broker named Aman, one of the millions of middle-class men trying to escape middle-classness. But he doesn’t want...
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“Kahaani 2.”… Despite a few slips, a first-rate piece of genre cinema
Spoilers ahead… Who is Durga Rani Singh? The name forms the subtitle of Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani 2, and it belongs to the character played by Vidya Balan – but who is she? Is she a construct from the last...
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