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Shagird
...despite its sharp, often funny exchanges, and a few spanking scenes, is that it is not new enough.
May 2011
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Happy New Year
And that is the problem with ‘Happy New Year’. Every where you turn, you find a scene, a line, a sequence that is familiar, from Farah’s own ‘Main Hoon Na’ and ‘Om Shanti Om’, and all the others it borrows from.
Oct 2014
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Bombay Velvet
Lookswise, the film is pure gorgeousness. Trouble is, it is also largely overwrought and inert.
May 2015
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Phillauri
The pacing is not just languid, it is positively slow, and it allows scenes to go on for much longer than they should.
Mar 2017
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A Gentleman
...we also wish that there was some more comic-book energy in the plot, which keeps sliding and slowing. That’s the only way spoofs can remain spiffy, and worthy of our complete attention.
Aug 2017
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Sonchiriya
...is more a display of wonderful cinematography through which the aridness of the Chambal is lensed, and a series of kinetic hold-your-breath-till-they-end set-pieces (which includes Chaubey’s fondness for Mexican stand-offs), than an exploration of despairing people on the edge of the wedge.
Mar 2019
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Dec 2009
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Jun 2011
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Sep 2012
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David
...speaks of a new kind of Bollywood which doesn't want to be slavish to stars or formulae. But it also speaks of a filmmaking which isn't quite as accomplished as it would like to be, or should be.
Feb 2013
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Ae Dil Hai Mushkil
...hope that Johar will come up with something newer and sharper the next time around.
Oct 2016
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Meri Pyaari Bindu
...proves that Bollyland romance still hasn’t got over its ‘500 Days Of Summer’ overhang.
May 2017
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Rann
...juxtaposes big media houses and large-scale monetary and moral corruption in a style that’s so patently Ram Gopal Varma that it leaves us with a dizzying sense of deja vu. Been here. Seen this.
Jan 2010
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Raajneeti
...could have been the film of the year. It had the potential, and the actors, but it comes together only intermittently. This is not the Prakash Jha who has made some of the most politically resonant films in Hindi cinema.
Jun 2010
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Golmaal 3
...the laugh-out-loud stretches are few and far between, mainly because we've seen these same guys doing the same things before, and also because the gags are running out of steam quicker.
Nov 2010
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Teen Thay Bhai
What this film needed was a lightness of touch. What it has is heavy-handedness, most of the time. And fart jokes enough to keep juveniles in splits.
Apr 2011
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B.A. Pass
Mohan Sikka's short story 'The Railway Aunty', on which the film is based, uses its atmosphere of defeat and rancidness much better. In the film, Bahl creates claustrophobia well, and then loses the story and the characters in it.
Aug 2013
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Hasee Toh Phasee
So many of the plot devices feel so contrived and cobbled together that you lose sight of the best things about the film. Some absolutely delightful sequences, and laugh-out-lines, get lost.
Feb 2014
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Dishoom
It’s got flash but the plot keeps stuttering and stops the film from really zip-zap-zooming.
Jul 2016
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Dec 2018
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Naam Shabana
...leaves you with a niggling question: why create a heroine in the action hero mode, with both mind and heart, and then give her a big bro to ‘help’ her out? This results in second-guessing your biggest asset, wondering if she is a liability.
Mar 2017
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Qaidi Band
More realism would have made this a film we could have believed in. But we do take away the young faces with us, especially Anya Singh whose bright-eyed earnestness is wholly convincing.
Aug 2017
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Luka Chuppi
If you really want to kick the bigots where it hurts, you have to do it early and hard. To lament about the horrors of live-in relationships through the film, for a last-minute turnaround live-and-let-live-speech, is not enough.
Mar 2019
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Yeh Saali Zindagi
Other characters drift in and out of this crowded, disjointed film, which keeps giving us expository labels as to location and situation.
Feb 2011
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Mahayoddha Rama
...my expectations that it was going to be a delightfully subversive take on the epic were dashed almost as soon as it started.
Nov 2016
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Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aaata Hai?
The original had a protagonist whose raving and ranting, whose very being the way he was, was alive to the moment. This fully superfluous remake will only make you angry.
Apr 2019
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Rabba Main Kya Karoon
The trouble with Rabba Main Kya Karoon, as with most of these films which showcase a pair of inexperienced newcomers with a solid, ill-used supporting cast, is that it settles too easily into a sexist, let's-dump-on--these-idiot-women mode.
Aug 2013
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Dharam Sankat Mein
...opens with promise, bringing up concepts that need to be spoken about, but you soon realize that the film is not as radical as it could have been, which should have been clear with its choice of title.
Apr 2015
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Welcome Back
...the movie clomps about, looking for the laughs. And failing, mostly, to find them.
Sep 2015