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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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Hawaizaada
Puri has toiled hard to make his film look outré, but that isn’t enough – you wish he’d expended an equal amount of energy to infuse a similar eccentricity into the plot and the characters as well.
Feb 2015
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Dolly Ki Doli
...Abhishek Dogra, tries desperately to convince us that it’s a comedy, but the jokes are essentially one-note, the same setup warmed up and served over and over.
Jan 2015
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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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Tevar
Sharma is a genuine filmmaker. His scenes are artfully lit, staged, populated with extras – he makes a masala movie as if he’s making something loftier, worthier, and Tevar is the better for it.
Jan 2015
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PK
The bigger problem is that the film practically reeks of formula. Hirani has become some sort of Madhur Bhandarkar, telling, essentially, the same story and simply focusing on a different facet of society.
Dec 2014
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Happy Ending
Surely directors this smart should know that you can’t mock a genre and embrace it at the same time.
Nov 2014
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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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The Shaukeens
It’s only when Akshay Kumar shows up – he plays himself – that we perk up.
Nov 2014
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Happy New Year
...relentless cannibalisation (and self-cannibalisation) is a pity because Farah’s real talent lies in the mad bits she cooks up...
Oct 2014
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Tamanchey
What we’re left with, then, is an unsatisfying mix of blood and laughs. Even with our low expectations, that’s not enough.
Oct 2014
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Haider
...left me cold. It’s extraordinarily crafted, but it’s something you admire from a distance.
Oct 2014
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Bang Bang!
...the film needed better location photography. It needed better writing. It needed better songs. And it needed a better director, someone with attitude and style.
Oct 2014
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Raja Natwarlal
...isn’t a great – or maybe even a good – movie, but it serves up some of the innocuous fun we used to get from Hindi films before the industry went all global and classy on us.
Aug 2014
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Mardaani
Coming a week after the dreary Singham Returns, Mardaani is essentially a demo on how to do this kind of film with class and a certain sensibility.
Aug 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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Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania
Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya isn’t a cynical rip-off. It’s more the work of a young filmmaker who clearly adores an older filmmaker’s movie, but infuses it with his own new-gen vibe. And that vibe is infectious.
Jul 2014
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Lekar Hum Deewana Dil
After a point, the film turns as clueless as its characters. It’s a nice little loop. Arif Ali is laughing at his leads (both of whom wilt under the bad writing), and we are laughing at him. He cannot decide what kind of movie he wants to make, and for whom.
Jul 2014
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Humshakals
Why are our comedies so bad? We don’t have to search very far for the reasons – tempo-killing songs, underwritten heroines, leaden pace, overlong running times… And we insist on casting stars rather than comic actors.
Jun 2014
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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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Jun 2014
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Citylights
What do you do when you have a lofty metaphor and little to pin it on? That’s the problem Mehta faces in CityLights, which has very little that’s new.
Jun 2014
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Kochadaiiyaan
...is truly history-making in a sense, because this is the first time that a huge star has allowed himself to be the hero in a full-length animated feature. Walking out, you may find yourself wondering: Did it have to be Rajinikanth?
May 2014