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Angrezi Medium
A film about a free and loving father-daughter relationship becomes a closed circuit. It’s that old cliché about setting someone free if you love them and seeing if they come back.
Mar 2020
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Hichki
...often comes across as parachute filmmaking—dropping in on a problem just long enough to prick the viewer’s conscience and make them feel like they’re watching something meaningful, but avoiding any sort of meaningful engagement.
Mar 2018
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Gold
The story itself is a nice idea, but that extra beat, that crucial unwillingness to trust the viewer, reveals the film’s insecurities.
Aug 2018
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Mardaani 2
...Hindi cinema has no appetite for complexity when it comes to sexual assault, opting time and again for vigilante retribution.
Dec 2019
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Delhi In A Day
...this film reminded us of being called up in front of a classroom. You know you’ve done something wrong, but it’s not a pleasant experience.
Aug 2012
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Oct 2016
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AK vs AK
The one-line is irresistible—“Anurag Kashyap kidnaps Anil Kapoor’s daughter”—but it’s still sketch material. Blown up to feature-length, it plays like a grungy, scrappy vanity project.
Dec 2020
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Mission Mangal
The film plays up Indian ingenuity without making a convincing case for it.
Aug 2019
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Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi
...isn’t a total bust: there are intermittent laughs, and the Indian and Pakistani characters are treated with generosity. But to set a film in China and then spend 135 minutes sneering at the Chinese is, to put it plainly, opportunistic and childish.
Aug 2018
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Dil Dhadakne Do
Pretty but never dazzling, busy but never riveting, glib but never wise, Dil Dhadakne Do never does find its sea legs.
Jun 2015
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Ae Dil Hai Mushkil
Instead of confronting its central question—what do you do if the person you love doesn’t love you back?—the film sidesteps it with a shameless deus ex machina.
Oct 2016
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Ki & Ka
A promising premise is ruined by narrative unsubtlety and some strange stylistics choices.
Apr 2016
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Beyond The Clouds
...had it not been Majidi making this, it’s debatable whether Beyond the Clouds, which feels like an artily rendered patchwork of stock Mumbai film moments, would have been on anyone’s radar.
Apr 2018
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Main Aur Charles
Hooda’s Sobhraj is a cipher, a beautiful surface with no indication of the emotions—if any—that are raging underneath.
Oct 2015
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Rock On 2
...the best thing one can say about Rock On 2 is that it’s a professional job.
Nov 2016
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Omerta
Mehta’s frequent juggling of timeline and location means the jag and jump of the filmic technique matches the fragmented nature of the narrative. The chaos is needed, for though there’s some shock in Omerta, there’s little surprise.
May 2018
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Dream Girl
...a film that’s slight to begin with, and which looks even slighter in comparison to Dum Laga Ke Haisha, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan and Badhaai Ho.
Sep 2019
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Jun 2015
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Jan 2016
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Dear Zindagi
...it’s awkwardly written and exists more as an excuse for Alia to be able to do a big shout-y scene.
Nov 2016
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Qarib Qarib Singlle
A patchily constructed romantic comedy, redeemed somewhat by Irrfan and Parvathy.
Nov 2017
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The Zoya Factor
...offers little cheer to those invested in the return of the Hindi romantic comedy or the halfway-decent post-Lagaan cricket film.
Sep 2019
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Tamasha
What he might need, though, is a writing partner, someone who can supply him stories and characters that aren’t composites of things he’s written earlier.
Nov 2015
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Jab Harry Met Sejal
Imtiaz seems to have settled into a comfort zone of his own. The cult of Ali the Incurable Romantic will only grow with films like these. But Ali the Director might need to branch out soon.
Aug 2017
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Simmba
Even for Hindi cinema, where rape-revenge is a thriving subgenre (there were four films on the subject last year), this is pretty dire.
Dec 2018
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Jab Tak Hai Jaan
We’d rather not point out more flaws in Yash Chopra’s swansong. Instead, let’s celebrate what has been a singularly important career.
Nov 2012
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Befikre
For a film about relationships, there’s little insight offered into why we behave the way we do in love and lust, just a reiteration of that old chestnut: former lovers can’t be friends.
Dec 2016
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Kalank
In a Bollywood that’s trying to look more self-aware, emotion can be a lead weight. I'd be curious to see what audiences make of the film over the next week or two; the one I saw it with seemed to tire by the end of all the eloquence.
Apr 2019