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Feb 2016
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A Gentleman
Good directors are allowed to make bad movies, but with Happy Ending and, now, A Gentleman, Raj and DK have ventured into a peculiar place: they’re making bland movies. There’s no personality, only empty professionalism.
Aug 2017
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One Night Stand
How much better One Night Stand would have been with better actors, a more committed filmmaker than Jasmine Moses D’souza!
May 2016
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Jan 2017
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X: Past is Present
It’s interesting, certainly. But look past the style, and there’s little substance.
Nov 2015
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May 2016
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Raees
Is it possible to make a relatively “realistic” masala movie? The lines don’t have the punch they should, and the Old Bollywood scenes are an embarrassment.
Jan 2017
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Shorgul
This is a valid, even necessary issue to explore, but the filmmakers aren’t up to it.
Jul 2016
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Gori Tere Pyaar Mein
We don’t go to rom-coms expecting cold logic, but even as a heart-tugger Gori Tere Pyaar Mein doesn’t quite cut it.
Nov 2013
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Once Upon A Time In Mumbai Dobaara
The directors from the Mahesh Bhatt stable know their way around the darker side of desire and they know how to shape characters that are real yet just this side of larger-than-life. Other filmmakers venturing into these waters come off as posers...
Aug 2013
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Sarbjit
How can all this result in such a dull movie, which is neither a gripping familial drama nor a tense legal thriller?
May 2016
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Irada
...leaves you with a renewed appreciation for burning-issue masala movies like Kaththi and Kodi, which, for all their flaws, at least remember to entertain.
Feb 2017
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Shab
It’s hard to get involved with any of these lives, as their problems are so generic (though Onir could claim, rightly, that the generic is the universal). Something’s off. The revelations are underwhelming, and, worse, unaffecting.
Jul 2017
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Prince
Gulati cannot decide if he wants to emulate a superhero movie or if he’d rather tap into a more human dimension, with the hero in a limbo after having lost his mind. The film itself exists in a bit of a limbo...
Apr 2010
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Shaadi Ke Side Effects
...the film feels toothless, pointless, pretending to tackle real issues while really searching for the next easy punch line.
Mar 2014
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Bang Bang!
...the film needed better location photography. It needed better writing. It needed better songs. And it needed a better director, someone with attitude and style.
Oct 2014
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Manikarnika
...is all ingredients. There’s no cook. Technically, of course, there are two: Radha Krishna Jagarlamudi and Kangana Ranaut. But there’s very little in the film that looks “directed”. It’s just a dull series of events...
Feb 2019
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Roy
Roy is what happens when an art-house English film masquerades as a mainstream Hindi movie.
Feb 2015
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Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2
...overlong and it tries to make us feel outraged on behalf of these guys.
Oct 2015
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Kaalakaandi
...made me wonder if Delhi Belly might be another instance of the famed “Aamir Khan touch,” where people who make good-to-great films under his aegis end up bombing outside.
Jan 2018
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Bharat
...is rooted neither in the cinema traditions of the decades it covers nor is it the designer masala of this day. It’s a series of very perfunctorily staged scenes that flit past us. This happened. And then, this happened. And then this.
Jun 2019
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Mickey Virus
The trick is to convey a sense of breathlessness, and Saurabh Varma’s Mickey Virus manages this only in spurts.
Oct 2013
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Fugly
There’s a good movie to be made from all this, one that looks at our country through the eyes of women, especially in light of recent headlines – but Fugly isn’t it.
Jun 2014
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Jul 2016
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Total Siyapaa
...despite a few big laughs, the film never becomes the farce it so desperately wants to be.
Mar 2014
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Bangistan
Anshuman has ideas – but he doesn’t know what to do with those ideas on screen.
Aug 2015
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Inkaar
Mishra’s point may be that the sexual harassment case was just a red herring and that the real story was about a man and a woman who realised what’s truly important and repriortised their lives, but that’s just cheapening a sensitive issue.
Jan 2013
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Teri Meri Kahaani
There's nothing aggressively bad about it, but there's nothing good either - and there's something frustrating when a film that could amount to something ends up being nothing.
Jun 2012
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Gabbar Is Back
The title Gabbar Is Back merely indicates the return of the bogeyman, not the return of the glorious masala cinema of his era.
May 2015