Top Rated Films
Manisha Lakhe's Film Reviews
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Four friends come together as grown ups when one of them, Kalindi, decides to get married. The couple thinks it will be a small, intimate do, but it turns out to be a great Indian over the top shindig. The friends find their troubles magnified under the glitter and after lots of boozy nights and days discover how love triumphs all. You want to facepalm several times but it’s all frothy and bubbly as Champagne…
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Based on a wonderful story ‘Kabuliwala’ by Rabindranath Tagore, this story turns a dry-fruit vendor into a Bioscopewala, and Minnie and her dad into this modern dysfunctional family. It is not just a stretch but the whole film is about Minnie rediscovering ‘facts’ that everyone and their popcorn in the audience has already guessed. You want to slap Minnie many times, but Danny as Bioscopewala wins your hearts…
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With American satellites keeping a constant eye on Pokhran, India’s Nuclear site for years (India had conducted the first ‘peaceful’ nuclear explosion in 1974), there was no way they world was going to allow India to join the nuclear nations. So a civil services officer created a team and helped conduct not one, but three underground nuclear explosions successfully, one of the most successful covert operations in the world. The idea is great, but it takes too long to build the story.
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A copy of the Marathi film Ventilator, Khajoor Pe Atke exaggerates in every possible way bringing down what could have been a wonderful situational dark comedy to something unsavory. A brother is about to die, and the family gathers around to ‘be there’. Each person has his or her own motives for being there. Alas, instead of letting the audience decide when to chuckle and when to fall off the chair laughing, the loud comic sounds and the constant overacting puts you off.
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Everything old is eventually replaced by something new, and it’s best to adapt. Whether it is an ancient photocopier or a big old house. This is a lesson that this small feel-good family film that has the heart in its right place brings on the big screen. They try really hard and even though little scenes from the film are good, the film drags on and on and you wish it should have been made for TV movie instead.
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A man who is 102 years old and full of life teaches a lesson or two or three for his grouchy 75 year old son. Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor make this father and son melodrama a good watch simply because they deliver. But if you step away from the casting coup, the loud violins that accompany the moralising and the mawkish sentimentality could put you off. Should have been a Sunday afternoon theatrical production, with a family hug afterwards…
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The word ‘Omerta’ means a code of silence that members of crime groups adopt when caught by the law. This film shows us how Omar was happy to kill in the name of religion. The staccato storytelling style and the constant shift between past and present is distracting at best. Unfortunately there is no emotional takeaway from the story, so you watch the stabbings and the kidnappings wondering ‘what was that?’
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Is it a comedy? Is it horror? Is it social drama? Is it funny? Is it a weird love story? No one quite knows and when everything is piled on so thick, you begin to wonder as audience if you have lost your capacity to care. The background music is ideal for saturday morning cartoons and is so loud you want to order ear plugs. At 132.47 minutes, you idly wonder if they would be easily delivered before you would turn permanently deaf.
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Majid Majidi comes to India and falls for the poverty is beautiful trap. After that, he simply rolls from one cliche to another and another until you just shake your head in despair. Ishan Khattar who makes his debut shows flashes of talent and is let down by a 70s style poverty porn. And the other star of the film is the city itself. But that just isn’t enough to make you want to spend multiplex money.
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Four lads and a girl are at a school reunion and are happily partying when they accidentally run over someone. They find themselves trapped in an old abandoned factory at the mercy of a madman. The terror is doubled because the protagonists are speech and hearing impaired. It’s an interesting experiment but the loud background music fails many, many times. As does the overacting.