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Mar 2021
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Dec 2019
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Chhichhore
...has a big point to make about defeat and self-worth, but takes the laziest possible route to get there. For a film about the dignity of trying, it does not lead by example.
Sep 2019
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Dream Girl
...is consistently funny, but structured too much on Ayushmann’s own Vicky Donor to draw a fresh response.
Sep 2019
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Kalank
...is a sincerely-crafted, visually-robust film pulled apart by mediocre performances.
Apr 2019
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Mar 2020
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Simmba
...is a decent enough commercial film when not angling for resonance — with some of the funnier lines really popping on screen — but its self-serious orations on the topical issue of rape make a parody of the whole situation.
Dec 2018
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AK vs AK
That’s the thing about the mockumentary format: unless you really dial it up, the fakeness starts to show.
Dec 2020
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Jawaani Jaaneman
...is, like I said, a hangout film. It trims conflict for humour and chill vibes.
Feb 2020
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Kaagaz
Satish Kaushik is one of our steadiest actor-directors, thriving especially in mainstream fare. But the social realism of Kaagaz largely eludes him.
Jan 2021
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Mar 2019
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May 2019
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Marjaavaan
...an 80s masala template, dance bars and remixes, infuriating rhyme schemes, and a pyro-maniacal obsession.
Nov 2019
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Manikarnika
The film begins as a biopic, but derails quickly into a surreal showdown of unbridled carnage. The facts, if any, get chewed up in the mess.
Jan 2019
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Roohi
Just a few years into its revival, the Hindi horror-comedy has upped and died. The biggest blow was Laxmii (2020), with Akshay Kumar in a red saree, and now another is dealt by Roohi, starring Janhvi Kapoor as a human-witch hybrid.
Mar 2021
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Notebook
It soon becomes clear that Notebook — for all its postcard framings and poetic peg — is still very much about one thing: introducing two new faces to the world, and serving as their showreel.
Mar 2019
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Helicopter Eela
The story certainly has its moments, but the schmaltzy grammar adopted by Sarkar fails this messy story about prodigy mothers and prodigal sons.
Oct 2018
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Kabir Singh
There’s no forgetting an original performance, a sentiment this story coasts rather lazily on.
Jun 2019
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Pati Patni Aur Woh
Its humour doesn’t stem from escalating confusion or clever lines, but plain sleaze. It takes the fantasy world of old Govinda movies and grafts it onto a real milieu — a scary combination by all means, as hinted at by Bhumi’s ‘single-screen/multiplex’ line.
Dec 2019
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Pihu
The set-pieces are intriguingly imagined, but they mesh oddly, and entire sequences, like unmatched pieces of Lego, refuse to fit into each other.
Nov 2018
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The Tashkent Files
...becomes increasingly weird as it goes along. A chaos of quotes, citations, claims and counterclaims grab you by the throat.
Apr 2019
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Malaal
The film is constantly aiming for a large-canvas treatment, often at the expense of local colour and depth. Only because it can.
And, because this is ultimately a launch film.
Jul 2019
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Section 375
...as the politics of Section 375 gradually comes into view, it loses all claim on even-handedness. This is a film too smug about its own neutrality, using it as a front to sneak in a damaging conclusion.
Sep 2019
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Good Newwz
It’s a silly move, ditching a laugh track and filling it up with beat drops and stings. In case the Indian TV industry hadn’t made it clear, noise isn’t news.
Dec 2019
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Kedarnath
Abhishek Kapoor melds two difficult subjects — interfaith romance, natural calamity — while working within a moderate budget. The writing is clunky and the payoff unearned, and everything feels like a drag at the two-hour runtime. The execution hurts the most.
Dec 2018
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Super 30
...is not quite the masala potboiler it wants to become. The emotional beats are grand but disingenuous, while the wit is hollow.
Jul 2019
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War
Despite the toughness of its leading men, the film tires them out with its convoluted writing — which, I am afraid, is the only villain in this skirmish. The rest are just in it for the money.
Oct 2019
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Zero
This film reimagines the all-consuming charisma of its leading man with a cool spin, but constantly cushions it in padding just in case he falls. The result is a middling vaudeville occasionally lifted by a clever line or a peak in the music score, pushing towards a trite and predictable climax that can be seen from space.
Dec 2018
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Family Of Thakurganj
With little resources, filmmakers like Prakash Jha, Tigmanshu Dhulia and Anurag Kashyap made our northern badlands cinematic. It’s the impostors that come now who are balling up the place. They exploit dialect for laughs, landscape for scenery, and violence for plot twists. It’s all so criminally wrong.
Jul 2019
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Dec 2020