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Bobby Jasoos
The Charminar, Ramzan, Iftaari, Id, food...all help in building up an atmosphere that’s more delicious than the suspense itself. In fact, there’s hardly any mystery at the heart of Bobby Jasoos and the tepid climax proves to be very disappointing.
Jul 2014
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Jun 2019
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Drishyam
It’s the cat ’n mouse games, twist in the tale and the final revelation that are the stuff of collective audience sighs. That too only if you are watching it for the first time.
Aug 2015
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Lootera
Has just the right construct of a classic but stops short of becoming one. And that's such a loss-there, yet not quite.
Jul 2013
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Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania
Something about it works: it is a ‘100 per cent original fake’ of DDLJ.
Jul 2014
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No One Killed Jessica
There are some fine, stand-out moments. What detracts are some obvious filmi touches.
Jan 2011
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Bareilly Ki Barfi
The mediocre music and song-n-dance routines bring in the typical filmi touch to the film trying hard to fight it but still wanting to remain within it. Although a likeable film, BKB is one that could have but doesn’t quite fly.
Aug 2017
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Drishyam
The trademark, heavy-lidded intensity of Ajay’s Vijay is too casual and throwaway instead of powerful and impassioned.
Aug 2015
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Laal Kaptaan
...had the makings of an unusual new genre; a barbaric, brutal, surreal, picaresque fantasy. Unfortunately, it is unable to pull it off.
Oct 2019
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Sep 2010
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Finding Fanny
If the characters seem to come straight out of Mario Miranda cartoons, the telling seems to have taken a page out of Amelie...
Sep 2014
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May 2016
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Tumbbad
As the film progresses the explanatory begins to replace the enigmatic while you long for the shadowy, invisible demons of the mind lurking in the moody frames at the start of the film.
Oct 2018
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Special 26
Fairly gripping, with the proverbial twist in the tale, much like the director's earlier A Wednesday.
Feb 2013
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Daas Dev
...does have force and vigour, it’s been told with a lot of energy and drive. Wish it could have got visceral enough.
Apr 2018
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Bajirao Mastani
Sanjay Leela Bhansali returns with another visual spectacle that wilfully takes liberties with the past that it depicts. But it does manage to engage even as it exhausts.
Dec 2015
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Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!
Dibakar tries to pack in too much even in terms of cinematic references—from classic Hollywood to noir, to Ritchie and Tarantino and Chinese action flicks. The constant shift in tonality jars, especially in the over-the-top melodrama of a climax.
Apr 2015
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Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety
It was in 2011 that Ranjan first came out with a “male perspective” on the man-woman relationship in a middle class, urban scenario in Pyaar Ka Punchnama. It reached out to many. Would SKTKS now become the Bible for an entire generation of young men? Seems so.
Feb 2018
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Mar 2020
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Bhoothnath Returns
The film’s structure gets lopsided, the second half is uneven and overstretched, and often the director ends up overstating his good intentions.
Apr 2014
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TE3N
The situation is interesting but the process of investigation, the clues, their piecing together doesn’t set one’s grey cells working.
Jun 2016
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Monsoon Shootout
It’s this Sliding Doors kind of broader structuring, the moody, monsoon-night noirish setting and the brooding air that make the film marginally engaging.
Dec 2017
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Good Newwz
A damper of morality and manipulation after an uninhibited and irrepressibly refreshing start.
Dec 2019
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Chef
Like with its tone, emotions, characters and performances the film stays consciously aloof in handling food as well.
Oct 2017
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Zed Plus
Nice doses of black humour and sharp, witty lines. But not quite an Indian Yes Minister.
Dec 2014
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Dhanak
...one stayed invested and smiled along only because of the adorable actors with Bollywood references adding to the cute appeal. But it needed a lot else.
Jun 2016
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Mom
Three months ago, we saw Raveena Tandon trudge the same course in Maatr. The shadow of that film hangs too heavy on Mom. Not only are the titles similar, the films themselves seem like identical twins, with Mom turning out to be the relatively better made of the two. But, only slightly so.
Jul 2017
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Stree
Between scares, laughs and trying to be feminist, the film does tend to get unwieldy and spreads itself too thin. The three elements play out inconsistently. But on the good side, as in some of the recent Bollywood films, Stree has a quaint sense of place, eccentric characters, a few madcap sequences and some sharply written, consciously irreverent lines to keep one engaged.
Aug 2018
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No Fathers In Kashmir
Kumar comes with a solid background in documentary filmmaking and has sound grounding in the politics of the State (Inshallah, Football and Inshallah, Kashmir), the reason one would have expected a far more searing and incisive account in the film than what one eventually gets to watch.
Apr 2019
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Ribbon
Despite an evident lack of flourishes and drama; a straight, linear narrative; no major ups and downs, nor sideways swings and an unadorned style Ribbon manages to engage.
Nov 2017