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Saare Jahaan Se Mehnga
The film has been written zippily by people who know this world. It looks and feels authentic, minus exaggeration. And the actors look as if they belong.
Mar 2013
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Mardaani 2
We need more strong female leads in our movies. We just don’t need them to be surrounded by misogyny and dialogues which lead the audience to cheer when the men mouth lines which aim low.
Dec 2019
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Talaash
...starts out as a smart, well-written noir-ish thriller, and then slips between the tracks. Pity about the second half.
Nov 2012
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Jul 2014
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Piku
...sparks in moments, and I threw my head back and guffawed in a few. But the rest of it stays only mildly amusing. I wanted more motion in these motions.
May 2015
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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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Jawaani Jaaneman
A little more consistency with the writing, and a re-upping of the fun-meter would have made Jawaani Jaaneman super. As it is, it is fun while it lasts.
Jan 2020
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2 States
The smooth, engaging first half descends, post-interval, into mopey melodrama, and I got impatient waiting for the inevitable resolution.
Apr 2014
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Waiting
It is too explanatory, too talky : you want the characters to stop describing what they are feeling; you want some quiet so you can see them feeling, and feel right alongside.
May 2016
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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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Thank You
...promises you a huge passel of nothing: no story, no sense. On all those scores, it doesn't disappoint.
Apr 2011
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Mere Dad Ki Maruti
At its best it is placid, and sort of middling, this Mere Dad Ki Maruti.
Mar 2013
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Band Baaja Baaraat
...both Sharma and Singh, the near pitch-perfect surprise packet of the film, make you smile. Enough reason for a visit.
Dec 2010
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Ragini MMS - 2
Despite its harum-scarum script and barely-there logic, I quite enjoyed ‘Ragini MMS 2’ in the portions when Sunny Leone is in full stride.
Mar 2014
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Anjaana Anjaani
These are good actors being made to boost a limp story: they needed a better film.
Oct 2010
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Bhaag Milkha Bhaag
...is more the overlong, overblown Singing-Dancing-Flying Sikh, than just the triumphal, true Flying Sikh.
Jul 2013
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Mary Kom
...it also gets right the main act : Mary Kom, inspirational world champion, shaking a glove.
Sep 2014
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Bajrangi Bhaijaan
This film presses many red-hot buttons, even if the treatment is strictly in-the-clouds ‘filmi’. And gives us Shirtless Salman as a dove of peace, speaking for all religions and ‘mulqs’. Believe it, or faint.
Jul 2015
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No Fathers In Kashmir
The best thing about Kumar’s film is that the problems it outlines feel urgent, even if we’ve seen them before, especially and quite co-incidentally in the sudden spurt of films set in the valley which have released in the past few months.
Apr 2019
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The Dirty Picture
The writing is confused as to point of view and weightage, and post-interval, like most Bollywood films, 'The Dirty Picture', dives.What makes us watch, despite everything-the overheating, the overwriting-- is Vidya Balan...
Dec 2011
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Raees
And that’s where the film gets stuck, between the two stools of restraint and full blown tamasha...
Jan 2017
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Kadvi Hawa
You also wish the film was tighter: it feels like a stretch even at 100 minutes.
Nov 2017
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Sanju
...is mostly engaging, and some of it good enough to make you laugh out loud in pleasure, especially when Hirani is killing it. But you wonder too what the film chose to leave out, and you wonder if this would have been more of a film if those things had been in here.
Jun 2018
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Bharat
The good thing about the film, despite its eye-roll moments, is the underlining it does of a nation which belongs to us all.
Jun 2019
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Bol
Even when it turns out to be too wordy, and much too long-winded, there's no denying that 'Bol' is important. Because it has the courage to say, via its spunky heroine : utaar ke phenk do in burquon ko, apni zindagi khud banao.
Sep 2011
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The Last Act
...more consistency in quality would have made ‘The Final Act’ a more solid, better -realised act.
Dec 2012
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Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania
How about this lot in a film that toplines a smooth-as-butter, not-weighed-under- a- DDLJ-tribute plot?
Jul 2014
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Padmaavat
You can easily delight in it while the going is good. But nearly three hours of it, and looping rhetoric around what constitutes Rajput valour can and does become tiresome.
Jan 2018
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Mission Mangal
How do you jazz up dry, complicated science to make it easy for the viewer who wants, primarily, to be entertained? The answer is twin-pronged: one, dumb down the science and keep it simple, stupid, and two, get a big male A-lister to front the project.
Aug 2019