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Guzaarish
Just what, exactly, is this oddly bloodless film - a Bhansali movie for those who don't like Bhansali movies?
Nov 2010
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Jannat 2
I went in with low expectations and the film surpassed them at every level, and this isn’t faint praise.
May 2012
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Jun 2014
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Daas Dev
The film is darkly funny, and a refreshing change from the staid classicism that undermined some of Mishra’s recent work.
May 2018
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Patiala House
Underdog-cricketer story meets emancipation saga in an inoffensive-enough drama that really should have been much better.
Feb 2011
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Aug 2018
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Baby
The director Neeraj Pandey realises that he isn’t making a film about ideas. He’s making an action movie, a thriller. Baby feels long at over two-and-a-half hours, but there’s nothing that feels redundant.
Jan 2015
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Rann
Varma’s accomplishment in Rann is to transform an entirely predictable outline into an engrossing experience.
Jan 2010
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Break Ke Baad
...the story never really catches fire, and it never makes you invest enough emotion in the continent-hopping lovers - painted as opposites, in typical rom-com colours - ending up together. The hurdles that they plant on their way to happiness appear molehills, not mountains.
Nov 2010
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Ishaqzaade
...works so well because it’s a love story where there’s something more at stake than the question of will-they-get-together.
May 2012
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7 Khoon Maaf
A delectably mounted, dramatically inert black comedy has lots of atmosphere and little else.
Feb 2011
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Nov 2012
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The Lunchbox
...a fascinating mix of fact and fiction, documentary-like realism and flights of poetic whimsy.
Sep 2013
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Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga
This very “safeness” is this film’s secret strength. This isn’t Blue is the Warmest Colour. It’s a YashRaj-style romance with two girls. Without discomfiting the mainstream audience, it makes it possible to talk about a “bedroom subject” in the living room.
Feb 2019
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May 2018
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The Sky Is Pink
A tastefully made weepie that’s cheerier than the downbeat material would have you think.
Nov 2019
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Shubh Mangal Saavdhan
...is yet another “small” film that shows where so many of our bigger movies go wrong. It’s not rocket science. It’s just the basics. With an alert cast, flavourful writing, good filmmaking, it’s not… hard..
Sep 2017
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Dekh Tamasha Dekh
...the director, Feroz Abbas Khan, positions the film at the border of surrealism and absurdity – and this tone, gently satiric, makes all the difference.
Apr 2014
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Jun 2012
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Saand Ki Aankh
I would have liked a classier film, but as far as the emotional beats go, Saand Ki Aankh is mostly on target.
Nov 2019
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Queen
It’s too long, too predictable, and too full of bits that needn’t have existed – that lizard bit? that sex shop bit? that casino bit? – but everything is pulled off with such panache (and with such good performances, especially from Ranaut) that you don’t feel like complaining.
Mar 2014
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Parched
We’ve had many films about women, but few that have so sensitively, so generously let them be women.
Sep 2016
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Laila Majnu
An idiosyncratic take on the legend takes a while to soar, but it’s worth the wait.
Sep 2018
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Bajirao Mastani
...the performance is still an exhilarating mix of fireworks and thunder and lightning, if only because Ranveer Singh is the first leading man in a Sanjay Leela Bhansali movie who knows what it means to play a Sanjay Leela Bhansali leading man.
Jan 2016
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Neerja
...is a fine tribute to a woman whose wings were clipped just as she was beginning to fly.
Mar 2016
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Sui Dhaaga
A surprise-free drama that’s well-acted, sweet-natured, and quite satisfying.
Oct 2018
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Peepli [Live]
An extremely well-made first feature is also extremely overfamiliar, what with its initial investment in farmer suicides giving way to easy potshots at our media.
Aug 2010
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City Of Gold
The travails of a closely-knit milling community make for a few great moments, if not all-out great cinema.
Apr 2010