Helicopter Eela
The start-stop narrative, which feels jerky and disjointed, contains the ghost of a screwball comedy.
Oct 2018
FryDay
How about crafting a role for Govinda that properly capitalises on his comic talents and persuades him to shed off the anything-goes quality and tackiness of his recent films? Fryday isn’t quite a comeback for Govinda, but it will have to do for his extant fanbase.
Oct 2018
LoveYatri
...the movie exists only to give Aayush Sharma his dream debut. Salman Khan devotees might be persuaded to accept the latest boon from their screen god, but for the unfaithful – and the unforgiving – Loveyatri is a trudge from start to finish.
Oct 2018
Andhadhun
Raghavan’s talent for imagining ordinary people as proficient criminals in the right conditions and his use of locations and sharply etched characters to advance his plot is put to great use in Andhadhun.
Oct 2018
Sui Dhaaga
What eventually endures isn’t the inevitable heart-warming finale but the honesty of the writing and the performances and the subversions, minor and major.
Sep 2018
Pataakha
A crisper running length would have ensured a more explosive impact for Bhardwaj’s latest, and welcome, foray into black humour with a political subtext.
Sep 2018
- Sep 2018
Manto
Despite the best efforts of Nawazuddin Siddiqui to humanise his character, Manto’s inner workings remain elusive, emerging only in bits and pieces.
Sep 2018
Love Sonia
Despite the disjointed narrative, which leaps from one idea to another, the unconvincing plot turns, and the unending agony that awaits Sonia at every turn, the movie doesn’t waver from its focus on the inherently exploitative nature of sex work.
Sep 2018
Manmarziyaan
...Anurag Kashyap’s most emotionally resonant movie yet, injects considerable vim and wit into the most conservative and predictable of sub-genres: the love triangle.
Sep 2018
Halkaa
Halkaa’s good intentions are never in doubt, nor are the efforts of the filmmaking team in illuminating a dark reality of Indian cities. But far greater subtlety, and a more realistic assessment of the problems faced by slum dwellers in building toilets, were needed to have made Pichku’s mission credible.
Sep 2018
Gali Guleiyan
...Bajpayee’s career-best performance prevents interest from flagging. The actor never loses Khuddus’s humanity, and portrays his plight with unerring rigour and poignancy.
Sep 2018
Yamla Pagla Deewana Phir Se
The forced wackiness is spread thinly over 148 minutes, and the poor production values and all-round laziness indicate that nobody in this production was trying too hard.
Aug 2018
- Aug 2018
Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi
The frenetically paced plot makes even less sense the second time round, and the humour is more scattershot and even desperate in places.
Aug 2018
Gold
The sluggish pacing over 153 minutes contain few moments of surprise or discovery. In the end, the inevitable clamber for the exit gate is stalled in the final moments by the strains of the national anthem.
Aug 2018
Satyameva Jayate
The movie never takes itself too seriously, even as it emerges as the obverse of Hindi movies that celebrate the super-cop who breaks the rules while in uniform.
Aug 2018
Vishwaroop II
The thespian in him is missing from a movie littered with ordinary performances. Only Rahul Bose’s hoarse-voiced Omar provides the campiness that could have salvaged the movie from its dire sense of self-importance.
Aug 2018
- Aug 2018
Fanney Khan
The actors help the movie navigate the implausibility at the heart of the plot and its facile critique of a music industry in which talent is worthy of being recognised only if it is televised.
Aug 2018
Karwaan
The 120-minute featherweight comedy is so content to embrace the big cliches associated with the road movie genre that it is almost possible to go along with the easygoing vibe and forget that there are larger questions at stake about the generation gap, lost dreams, and mortality itself.
Aug 2018
Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster 3
The law of diminishing returns has finally caught up with one of the most unlikely film franchises in recent memory.
Jul 2018
Soorma
...by downplaying the genre’s excesses – chest-thumping jingoism, macho aggression, excessive manipulation – and giving its hero enough room to find his place in the world, Soorma ensures that this triumphal journey of the human spirit is full of surprises.
Jul 2018
Sanju
It promises complexity and psychological acuity. Until a point, it appears to be on track to creating a nuanced portrait of controversy’s favourite child – but then it plummets into unquestioning and misty-eyed reverence.
Jun 2018
Race 3
The unpardonably long movie (160 minutes) has been directed by choreographer-turned-director Remo, who appears to have been too much in awe of his leading man to have actually given him any basic instructions on the sets. The dialogue strains to be funny, and provokes humour in the wrong places.
Jun 2018
Phamous
struggles to justify its existence. Sequences tumble into each other with barely any coherence or sense of rhythm; the talented cast flounders at the best of times.
Jun 2018
Bhavesh Joshi Superhero
For all its promises of looking at Mumbai’s seemingly intractable problems with a fresh eye, Bhavesh Joshi Superhero offers solutions that are far removed from reality. The film moves away from common sense as it descends into genre territory. It doesn’t help that its leading man fails to take audiences along.
Jun 2018
- Jun 2018