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Khandaani Shafakhana
There isn’t enough humour of the gentle or wicked variety across the sluggishly-paced film to communicate its larger themes.
Aug 2019
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Arjun Patiala
In trying to send up Bollywood cliches, Arjun Patiala becomes yet another Bollywood cliche itself.
Jul 2019
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Judgemental Hai Kya
Neither whodunit or even whydunit, Judgementall Hai Kya is never quite able to match its ambitions. Buried somewhere in the rubble is the ghost of a movie about why madness is sometimes the only sane response to violence.
Jul 2019
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Family Of Thakurganj
The plot kicks in very late, and a bit too late to rescue the movie from utter predictability and sameness.
Jul 2019
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Jhootha Kahin Ka
The whole commotion would have been resolved if the characters had sat across from each other and explained their positions, but then we wouldn’t have had a movie to plod through.
Jul 2019
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Super 30
...suggests that with talent and commitment, it is possible to cross over from the other side of the tracks. Leap high towards your goals, Anand tells his students. The formula is as pat as the solution, but many parts of the journey makes this classroom victory worth the while.
Jul 2019
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Malaal
The movie has nothing new to say about the star-crossed romance, and is too timid to mirror the unabashed celebration of unreconstructed malehood that marked the source material.
Jul 2019
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Article 15
...isn’t exactly nuanced about the brutal system that continues to subjugate Dalits, but neither are the times. The implausible portions balance out the moments that echo the headlines. For every scene that seems out of place, another comes along to remind us of why this movie is effectively landing its punches.
Jun 2019
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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India‘s Most Wanted
The overheated and undercooked film doesn’t have enough substance to justify its flourishes.
May 2019
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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
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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
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Blank
...has the plotting heft and production values of an episode on the popular television series CID.
May 2019
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Mar 2019
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Mar 2019
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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