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Jan 2013
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Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola
...didn’t stir up any keen emotions in me. Parts of the film soar but many are saggy and ultimately I was just underwhelmed.
Jan 2013
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Table No. 21
...director Aditya Datt creates a reality game show-revenge saga that gathers some steam in the last act, but by then it’s too little, too late.
Jan 2013
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Dabangg 2
My review of Dabangg ended with a plea for a better story for Chulbul. Like so much else in Dabangg 2, that too remains the same. Can someone please write a terrific plot for this terrific character?
Dec 2012
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Khiladi 786
Box office figures suggest that many people enjoy this school of cheerfully moronic cinema, but Khiladi 786 really isn’t my idea of a good time.
Dec 2012
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Talaash
To watch Talaash is to embark on a passionate love affair that ends in frustration because the object of your desire reveals itself to be shallow and depressingly ordinary. In short, a profound anti-climax.
Dec 2012
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Son Of Sardaar
...is exhausting, painfully loud and way too long, with too few laughs.
Nov 2012
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Jab Tak Hai Jaan
...is too tangled to transport you. At almost 180 minutes, it also requires enormous patience. But I recommend that you see it. Because only Yash Chopra could make heartache so attractive and ennobling that his characters wear it like a badge of honor.
Nov 2012
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Nov 2012
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Student Of The Year
Karan Johar's forte is excess. He creates fantastical worlds brimming with beautiful people and expensive things and yet anchors them in high emotion. His films work as both designer porn and soap opera. The pleasure you derive from his films is directly connected to your tolerance of candy floss.
Oct 2012
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Aiyyaa
...parts of Aiyyaa have energy and passion. But it is drowned by the insistence on being wakda - crooked. Clearly wackiness can't carry a film.
Oct 2012
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English Vinglish
English Vinglish is that rare thing - a Hindi film that creates a heroine out of a homemaker.
Oct 2012
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Heroine
At one point in Heroine, a character asks: Iss glamour industry mein kaun fraud nahin hota. This film certainly is one.
Sep 2012
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Barfi!
...for me, Barfi was a singularly frustrating experience there was so much to like, but the film never became more than the sum of its parts.
Sep 2012
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Ek Tha Tiger
Director and co-writer Kabir Khan takes the larger-than-life Salman Khan persona and wraps it in an engaging story that services it.
Aug 2012
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Jism - 2
...should have been way more fun than this. The film is an anti-climactic let-down.
Aug 2012
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Cocktail
He (Imtiaz Ali) creates a love triangle that references Archie's comics, the 1980s television show Three's Company and the oeuvre of Aditya Chopra-Karan Johar (foreign locales, decadent Western lifestyle, superior Indian values) and yet feels new.
Jul 2012
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Bol Bachchan
...mediocre entertainment, which is almost depressing in its repetitiveness. A fitting label would be: The Cinema of Exhaustion.
Jul 2012
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Maximum
Can we all agree that Bollywood has squeezed as much cinema as is humanly possible out of Mumbai’s infamous encounter cops, their weasel-faced informers and the police-politician-builder-underworld nexus?
Jun 2012
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Gangs Of Wasseypur
...is by turns absorbing and frustrating. Watching it feels like gorging on too much good food, leaving you feeling more exhausted than satiated. But there is enough in the sound and fury to enjoy.
Jun 2012
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Jun 2012
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Rowdy Rathore
...beats you to a pulp, cinematically. It's a relentless assault that kicks in as soon as the credit titles roll.
Jun 2012
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May 2012
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Arjun
...is a step forward for Indian animation. I only wish the storytelling itself had been more animated.
May 2012