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Jan 2017
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Fugly
There’s a good movie to be made from all this, one that looks at our country through the eyes of women, especially in light of recent headlines – but Fugly isn’t it.
Jun 2014
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Total Siyapaa
...despite a few big laughs, the film never becomes the farce it so desperately wants to be.
Mar 2014
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Raees
Is it possible to make a relatively “realistic” masala movie? The lines don’t have the punch they should, and the Old Bollywood scenes are an embarrassment.
Jan 2017
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Shorgul
This is a valid, even necessary issue to explore, but the filmmakers aren’t up to it.
Jul 2016
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Sarbjit
How can all this result in such a dull movie, which is neither a gripping familial drama nor a tense legal thriller?
May 2016
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Kaalakaandi
...made me wonder if Delhi Belly might be another instance of the famed “Aamir Khan touch,” where people who make good-to-great films under his aegis end up bombing outside.
Jan 2018
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Shab
It’s hard to get involved with any of these lives, as their problems are so generic (though Onir could claim, rightly, that the generic is the universal). Something’s off. The revelations are underwhelming, and, worse, unaffecting.
Jul 2017
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Prince
Gulati cannot decide if he wants to emulate a superhero movie or if he’d rather tap into a more human dimension, with the hero in a limbo after having lost his mind. The film itself exists in a bit of a limbo...
Apr 2010
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Roy
Roy is what happens when an art-house English film masquerades as a mainstream Hindi movie.
Feb 2015
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Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2
...overlong and it tries to make us feel outraged on behalf of these guys.
Oct 2015
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Irada
...leaves you with a renewed appreciation for burning-issue masala movies like Kaththi and Kodi, which, for all their flaws, at least remember to entertain.
Feb 2017
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Bewakoofiyaan
...is much more complicated and adult, and by reducing it to a rom-com, Asthana pulls her punches.
Mar 2014
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Bangistan
Anshuman has ideas – but he doesn’t know what to do with those ideas on screen.
Aug 2015
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Inkaar
Mishra’s point may be that the sexual harassment case was just a red herring and that the real story was about a man and a woman who realised what’s truly important and repriortised their lives, but that’s just cheapening a sensitive issue.
Jan 2013
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Teri Meri Kahaani
There's nothing aggressively bad about it, but there's nothing good either - and there's something frustrating when a film that could amount to something ends up being nothing.
Jun 2012
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Gabbar Is Back
The title Gabbar Is Back merely indicates the return of the bogeyman, not the return of the glorious masala cinema of his era.
May 2015
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Chalk N Duster
Aren’t we all guilty of having moved on, with very little time to remember our teachers? But they deserve more than this shrill drama...
Jan 2016
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Jul 2016
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Once Upon A Time In Mumbai Dobaara
The directors from the Mahesh Bhatt stable know their way around the darker side of desire and they know how to shape characters that are real yet just this side of larger-than-life. Other filmmakers venturing into these waters come off as posers...
Aug 2013
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Kill Dil
At every point, you keep wanting Kill/Dil to be so much more – but this isn’t a lazy failure. If anything, Ali tries to do too much.
Nov 2014
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Brothers
One feels a twinge about picking on a movie made with so much craft and care, by a director who errs on the side of too much in the midst of many who do too little, but strip away the pretty wallpaper and you’ll see how generic Brothers is...
Aug 2015
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Race 2
...the "director duo" – that very moniker is funnier than most of what passes for humour in their films – have somehow pulled off a thriller where we root for the beautiful people. Walking out, I thought, "How did they do this?"
Jan 2013
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Mickey Virus
The trick is to convey a sense of breathlessness, and Saurabh Varma’s Mickey Virus manages this only in spurts.
Oct 2013
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Jai Ho
There is so little to root for in the film – despite such an emotional hook, of man helping fellow man – that we look for scraps...
Jan 2014
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Kick
Movies like Kick depress me – and not because of the ineptness on display, the sheer waste of resources, the utter contempt for the audience. What depresses me is that they become hits, and further the conventional wisdom that this is what masala cinema is all about.
Jul 2014
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Helicopter Eela
A terrible mother-son story with a Freudian subtext it doesn’t know what to do with.
Oct 2018