The strong performances by the leads notwithstanding, the Hollywood remake doesn’t quite capture the complexity and thrills of the original. The narrative confusingly cuts back and forth between the past and the present as in the Argentinean film, but the chemistry between the police officer and the lawyer are missing from the English-language version.

11 filmmakers contributing to a single theme in ‘X Past is Present’ make one big mess…

The new James Bond movie adventure, directed by Sam Mendes, is as traditional as it gets. Were it not for its superior technical quality, Spectre might have been classified as a 1980s production.

…muddles through its 174 minutes, neither hitting the highs expected from such an expensive and high-profile project nor the lows that plague mid-career filmmakers. Like its intended audience, the movie sticks firmly in the middle.

It’s a halfway house between the observational and the reverential, with cutesy moments with the Yousafzai family mixed with awe at the ease with which Malala addresses world leaders and handles the media. In its weakest moments, He Named Me Malala feels like a campaign tool for the activist’s foundation and for the larger cause of women’s education. The film is an incomplete picture of a work in progress, but the teenager’s confidence, maturity, wisdom, and talismanic status in the world of global activism are undeniable even in the most uncritical moments.

Some of the jokes have the ring of truth found in the best WhatsApp forwards. The daring premise seals the movie’s destiny as a cult favourite, but at 124 minutes, it is stretched beyond belief and tolerance. The curse on Guddu takes far too long to lift, and the directors are unable to escape the other curse that has ruined several potentially interesting comedies. Guddu can’t keep it down, and the filmmakers can’t keep it short.

Had Raman stuck with his investigation into Charles’s mystique and his self-mythologisation, this movie might have actually become the sophisticated biopic it wants to be. Main Aur Charles should really have been about the poster, not the case file.

Stripped of its class dimensions, however, the movie has a raw power and imagination. Behl and Katariya wash off the gloss, dishonesty and sentimentality that have clung to depictions of the Indian family and reveal a face that is ugly but also commonplace. Above all else, Titli is a horror movie.

Rock the Kasbah is neither about rock nor a casbah, and only Bill Murray, the craggy-faced prince of pathos, single-handedly steers the movie from one stupefying bad moment to the next.

The 146-minute movie proceeds in a jerky and slapdash fashion, and only a few sequences hit the mark. Most of the comedy seems to be in the form of one big private joke that does not travel beyond the borders of the set.