A 124-minute film about a man trying to pull down a mountain could be like staring at a construction site while stuck in a traffic jam. But this one weaves in enough entertainment and thrill to be a lot more than that.

Director Ananth Mahadevan plays it safe by ticking all the boxes: adapting a story that got enough press to have recall, getting former journalist C P Surendran to pen the screenplay, and casting faces who have a proven success rate in such films. But what he didn’t account for is investing time to establish a mood and to allow his characters to find themselves instead of rushing into scripted characteristics. It’s like the perfect school play, everyone knows their lines, everyone falls in line and little is left to mind.

Director Karan Malhotra has a unique ability. He can douse anything into a tub of glycerine and make even a movie about MMA into one about loving your parents. After all, it’s also about loving your producer.

This is India’s first carbon neutral film. If you watch it, you’ll wonder if the lack of carbon can be blamed for this celluloid disaster. Aisa Yeh Jahaan stands for grave urban issues: lack of green cover in metros, the Assamese being called Nepali, the homeless being reduced to hog on street food etc. But the audience will surely stand for a larger concern: to exit the screen and reach for a headache pill.

Based on trailers, many would imagine Masaan to be a film meant for festival audiences. But with evolving audience tastes and the equity attached to novel storytelling,’mainstream’ is hardly a word of any consequence.

With Bahubali, Rajamouli has given us a new epic that generations from now will watch, analyse and appreciate. It not only sets a milestone in visual technique but also establishes a benchmark in storytelling.

Films about youth striving for change and questioning authority have existed from the beginning of time. But it takes a little more than getting five shirtless boys to nose dive from a 15-feet cliff into water to make a Rang De Basanti.

Debutant director Vinod Kapri was astute in picking a subject that tabloid headlines are made of. But in execution, he couldn’t convey the mood of the story. Directing a satire can be tricky. It has to subliminally mock real events without making a Kapil Sharma sideshow of it. But subtlety is not a virtue this film banks on.

Anybody can dance, but not everybody can watch them do just that for 154 minutes (the film’s run time) at a stretch. Enthusiasts, who feed on dance reality TV marathons and expect this to be little more than the best of Dance India Dance, will find it to be an audio-visual delight.

…what could’ve been a sensitive debate on whether battered wives can challenge societal norms to seek extramarital comfort, ends up being an eclectic mix of cliches. Did Vidya read the adhuri script before signing this film or did Emraan not get the puri signing amount? We’ll never know.