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Bombairiya
...has the strands, but is bereft of that one thing all movies need: a plot. Whatever passes for one is so hare-brained, so all-over-the-place that you wonder just how this thing was cobbled together.
Jan 2019
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The Accidental Prime Minister
What comes as a surprise is just how shockingly bad and shoddy the film is. There is a complete absence of any art or craft in its making.
Jan 2019
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Uri
For a film about active blood-letting, it is curiously bloodless. There are not enough of the rousing goose-bump inducing moments that such films come armed with. When a character shouts, how’s the ‘josh’, you want to add to it: where’s the ‘josh’?
Jan 2019
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Dec 2018
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Zero
How many times do we see A-list Bollywood superstars go out of their comfort zone? SRK could have taken a deep dive into Bauua and emerged on another level. But he gets busy trying to do another Swades, and fly the flag, and be a patriot. When you try to do everything, very little is achieved.
Dec 2018
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Kedarnath
In trying to please everyone, the film loses edge, and leads to a tepid cop-out. It’s a weepie minus the tears.
Dec 2018
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2.0
...is dull as ditchwater in the first half, perking up a little in the second, with a half-way watchable Akshay, and a Rajini coming into his own right towards the end, for a bit. There are some oh-wow moments, but on the whole, the film is not worth all the sound and fury.
Nov 2018
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Mohalla Assi
...is not much of a film. It’s just a collection of choppy scenes, making it seem that it was censored heavily. It’s been in the making for five or six years, and you can see later add-ons: Deol is earnest, but not really convincing as an Assi dweller.
Nov 2018
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Nov 2018
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Lupt
It’s meant to be a ‘supernatural horror’ flick, but what it is, is plain horrible.
Nov 2018
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Helicopter Eela
...is so saddled with banal story-telling, stretched sub-plots and exaggerated performances, including and especially from the lead actress, that it never really takes off.
Oct 2018
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FryDay
No one else seems to have the first idea of what to do, apart from going around in circles, and spouting dialogue which is meant to be funny but instead fries your brain.
Oct 2018
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Tumbbad
...is a gorgeous looking, intriguing morality tale which both entrances and repulses: it’s not something I will forget.
Oct 2018
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Andhadhun
...is racy, pacy and appropriately pulpy: alert viewers may twig on to the big reveal, but the thrills and chills are right there where they should be.
Oct 2018
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Sui Dhaaga
...is well made. It’s nice and safe and staid. There are several moments that warm the heart, and you cheer when sui-dhaaga win over needle-and-thread. But you always knew they were going to, didn’t you?
Sep 2018
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Pataakha
I’ve always maintained that Bharadwaj is great with set-up and dwindles as a finisher. Happy to be proved wrong this time around.
Sep 2018
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Batti Gul Meter Chalu
Two things mar the movie. Some of the humour made me distinctly uncomfortable: sexist lines inserted for cheap laughs, and a judge made too comic, is not something we expect in a film with good intentions. The other is its inordinate length. It’s run-time is almost three hours: the meter should have stopped at two and a half.
Sep 2018
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Manto
There is a gap, a curious distance, between the vision and the execution, and much of the film, including Nawaz, resides in it.
Sep 2018
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Love Sonia
More focus on what happens to the girls when they are yanked from that life would have made Love Sonia fresher, and given the characters more to play with. That is not something we see too often, and there is a tiny glimpse of it in the film. The rest of it is same-old.
Sep 2018
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Manmarziyaan
You enjoy the initial exhilaration born out of breathless passion as the winsome boy and girl engage in the age-old dance of desire. And then they become exhausting. As does the film.
Sep 2018
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Halkaa
Nila Madhab Panda gives us a film about urban wretchedness in easily digestible drawing-room gollops.
Sep 2018
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Stree
Stree’s premise is a cracker, leaving you grinning in the dark. But the execution comes off a tad clunky: subversion in a film willing to embrace its silliness can be very effective, but it can get diluted if your messaging is mixed.
Aug 2018
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Yamla Pagla Deewana Phir Se
In this installment, taglined ‘Phir Se’, even the half-hearted guffaws, which we managed in the first two, have dried up. The jokes are so lame that they are practically invisible.
Aug 2018
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Genius
No harm in rejigging masala, but not if your style is mothballed. And not if the lead comes off strictly average, punching so high above his weight, that you end up feeling sorry for him.
Aug 2018
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Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi
The sequel tries for the same mix of muddled-headed but large-hearted Punjabis, crooked Chinese, a song or two, and a series of sequences which are meant to be funny but are most flat and dull.
Aug 2018
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Gold
You know you are being played, but you don’t expect anything else, because it’s that kind of film : when the `tiranga’ went up, I teared up.
Aug 2018
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Satyameva Jayate
There was a time, in the 70s and 80s, when B grade cinema embraced this theme—weeding out corruption with extreme violence– with enthusiasm. Satyameva Jayate brings it all back, with all its dialogue-baazi, and relentless background music, piling one improbable, cliché-ridden sequence upon another.
Aug 2018
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Mulk
Any film that does not demonize, that talks of peace and brotherhood, in these dark, cynical times, is to be lauded. Mulk is Anubhav Sinha’s best film, and it concerns us all. It makes me want to cheer. Out loud.
Aug 2018
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Vishwaroop II
...even he (Kamal Hassan) can’t rise above the shockingly inept script, which he rescues only in a few places, when his trademark intelligent, wry self-awareness manages to kick in. The rest can be safely ignored.
Aug 2018