Kabir Singh
...reimagines the Indian hero archetype in interesting ways, but its inability to even consider the flaws in its leading man’s romantic outlook is its undoing. Is masochism the flip side of machismo? Both movies seem to agree, but they never ask why.
Jun 2019
Game Over
Saravanan and co-writer Kaavya Ramkumar deliver a taut and highly watchable thriller that, despite falling short of its ambitions, has a clever take on the way in which violence against women gets imprinted on bodies and souls.
Jun 2019
Bharat
...is an unfeeling and overstretched affair that botches its source material and squanders the opportunity to say anything meaningful about Bharat’s journey from the 1940s till the 2010s.
Jun 2019
Nakkash
Imam doesn’t have enough layers to weave around a threadbare plot, and the double life that Alla Rakha leads, which is the most interesting aspect of the story, gets drowned by the melodrama.
May 2019
PM Narendra Modi
Any insights the movie offers into Modi’s rise are inadvertent. The monomaniacal focus on one man above all else will surely be of interest to those who study how cinema can be used for propaganda.
May 2019
India‘s Most Wanted
The overheated and undercooked film doesn’t have enough substance to justify its flourishes.
May 2019
De De Pyaar De
The movie barely works as an age-gap saga but is more effective as a comedy about moving on and finding new soulmates. Ranjan and Jain heavily pad up material that is just about enough for an extended sitcom episode with songs, uneven comedy and needless melodrama. Ironically for a film directed by an editor, the pacing is sluggish.
May 2019
Student Of The Year 2
The sequel that nobody wanted is neither an improvement over the original nor a downgrade of it. The bar is low to begin with, and when the butter-limbed Tiger Shroff is around, it’s easily surmounted.
May 2019
Blank
...has the plotting heft and production values of an episode on the popular television series CID.
May 2019
Kalank
The movie retains its hauteur and attention to period haute couture even as it goes off the rails, finally chugging into its destination after leaving broken hearts and unmet ambitions in its wake.
Apr 2019
Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aaata Hai?
...has an anti-establishment heart, but because of the somewhat outdated execution, it falls flat as a two-hour watch.
Apr 2019
The Tashkent Files
...is the kind of movie you get when you arrange an offline meeting of the online community that has rallied behind the Quora question, “Did Lal Bahadur Shastri die a natural death?”
Apr 2019
No Fathers In Kashmir
Editors Thomas Goldser, Abhro Banerjee and Kumar keep the film moving at a clip that accentuates the writer-director sometimes stunning, sometimes stressful and all together sobering view of a situation that he seasons with hope.
Apr 2019
Romeo Akbar Walter
The twists in Romeo Akbar Walter don’t always work, and the narrative is stretched to 144 unearned minutes. The plotting barely rises above the level of the popular television series CID.
Apr 2019
- Mar 2019
Gone Kesh
The light touch that peppers most of the scenes feels misplaced, given the gravity of Enakshi’s condition and the association between beauty and hair. The shattering of self-image and the tragedy of Enakshi’s plight, given her youth, are barely explored.
Mar 2019
Junglee
The scenes between Jammwal and elephants of various sizes are the best thing about Junglee, after its plea to halt the poaching of the gentle giants.
Mar 2019
Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota
...there is nothing unfeeling about Vasan Bala’s retro tribute to the small, silly and lasting ways in which the movies leave an imprint on the soul.
Mar 2019
Hamid
The movie balances simplicity and profundity, and would have benefited from a leaner running time to better convey its ambitious exploration of loss and abandonment in a region stereotyped as a paradise on earth.
Mar 2019
- Mar 2019
Mere Pyare Prime Minister
...loses direction as it navigates its way through its good intentions and delays an outcome that is predicted from the first frame of the button-cute kids running around the slum.
Mar 2019
22 Yards
...does benefit from nicely etched characters and a feel for cricketing denizens who are sometimes forgotten as the game gets too big for its own good. A T-20 trot becomes a one-day trudge, but the relief at a movie about cricket that doesn’t involve nationalism cannot be understated.
Mar 2019
Badla
Taapsee Pannu is unable to summon up the blank canvas onto which all manner of possibilities can be projected, while Amitabh Bachchan hops on the gravitas train for the nth time.
Mar 2019
Sonchiriya
The film itself is a tangle of ideas, and works better as an existential mood piece than the heavy-duty action drama it often resembles.
Mar 2019
Luka Chuppi
...isn’t quite radical, let alone consistently funny, but the long walk to the altar is far less conservative than it could have been.
Mar 2019
Total Dhamaal
When you throw so much at the screen, something is bound to stick. The screenplay, by Paritosh Painter, Ved Prakash and Bunty Rathore, has enough visual gags and punchlines to distract from the severely tacky visual effects and overwhelming familiarity of such movies.
Feb 2019
Gully Boy
Dreams and reality fuse seamlessly in Gully Boy, Zoya Akhtar’s most heartfelt and accomplished movie yet. Akhtar’s fourth feature is headlined by an outstanding Ranveer Singh, packed with well-picked actors and neatly-etched characters, and filmed with infectious passion.
Feb 2019
The Fakir Of Venice
The decade between its completion and its release shows in every frame. Mumbai and Venice are visibly less crowded than they now are and the actors are younger and more energetic, but the movie’s art world con made little sense then and even less sense in 2019.
Feb 2019
- Feb 2019