Suffice it to know, this is a ‘home-invasion’ picture, a full-on sub-genre of its own, with limited pay-off, yes. But with only one question that should really matter: Does it keep you interested/hooked right through to the end? For sure. That’s all you need to know. And get set, go!

India’s Most Wanted is kinda fast-paced, a rudimentary thriller with background score guiding your every move, but two hours plus runtime simply appears an hour too long.

Kesari is in-your-face, goose-bumpy ride-heartwarming because it’s history; and hysterical, because it’s that kinda movie-it is just the best one can do.

Gully Boy is a new kind of ‘Angry Young Man’ movie, in effect – seamlessly merging sub-culture with pop mainstream.

We’ve all read about Rani Lakshmibai in middle-school history. But we remember her best from the Allahabadi poet Subhadra Kumari Chauhan’s long poem with the famous descriptor, ‘Bundele har bole ki muh, humne suni kahani thi. Khoob ladi mardani, who toh Jhansi wali Rani thi.’ A genuine, soul-stirring tribute to her phenomenal heroism can at best hope to come close to Chauhan’s immortal lines. Yes, this one does.

The ‘curse of the second half’ in Hindi pictures is simply so severe, especially when it comes to films with well-known faces, that even as I find myself really enjoying a movie, there’s a radar at the back of the brain constantly cautioning one to only hope that the post-interval portions even live up to the first half — by half. If so, then as an audience, you’re pretty much through.

No better actor to lead this charge than the fully fired-up Vicky Kaushal menacingly calm as a military mind – inspiring his peers, with an infectious energy that is impossible to resist

Zero jerkily jostles between heartland, rustic realism, and a far-out romantic fantasy, vaguely along the lines of Shah Rukh Khan’s Om Shanti Om. The only take-away is how tough it must’ve been to pull this off

Be that as it may, is this the sort of romance dream-debuts are made of? Traditionally, yes. Sara Ali Khan’s mother, Amrita Singh, for instance, similarly hit the screen with Betaab – rich girl, poor boy, young love – in the early ’80s.

Badhaai Ho, on late pregnancy, is just as funny, and as much fun; even as the point of the picture might seem progressively belaboured