Films
Scoring fingerprint
10 scored reviews · 0–10
Nandini rarely scores films: 10 of 372 reviews carry a score.
From the archive
Alpha is more product than experience, with sketchily drawn characters, a derivative plot and predictable beats. The chief item on offer in Alpha is brawn over brain, and the rigour, ideas and production budget needed to expand the franchise in interesting ways are in short supply.
Full review ↗TRM 4.6
Despite its downbeat theme and bare-bones plot, the Hindi-language film is an engaging and thought-provoking account of old age, isolation and genteel poverty. The 115-minute film is led by a charming non-professional pair of actors who, despite some moments of awkwardness and self-conscious dialogue delivery, are utterly believable in their despair.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1
Meethe Mein Kya Hai is tailor-made for fairy tale Diwalis and other festive occasions, where generational comfort, rather than generational conflict, is on display. While the film is sweet without being saccharine, the hangout with characters who behave wisely for the most part drags on for far too long.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
Wicker delivers a non-Disneyfied, distinctly weird fantasy that is alive to grown-up feelings. Beautifully shot by Lol Crawley, with a matching score by Anna Meredith, Wicker is among the most outlandish, and enchanting, odd couple romances in recent memory.
Full review ↗TRM 6.5
The leisurely pacing allows for core emotional truths to emerge. Although Max, Min & Meowzaki feels stretched towards its finale, 138 minutes are mostly well spent in the company of introspective people. Max's trajectory is the most riveting and convincing, benefitting from an excellent performance by the under-utilised Siddharth Menon and a charming turn by Vidhatri Bandi.
Full review ↗TRM 6.0
The movie set in London is as pointless as its title is inexplicable. Even at a relatively crisp runtime of 105 minutes, Bhai Tera Star Hai strains patience levels. A series of gags has been strung together into a film that is entertaining only to its fictional characters.
Full review ↗TRM 3.4
Doosra neither has enough material to prove its thesis that Ganguly was the Mahendra Singh Dhoni of his time, nor a convincing explanation for why Tara chooses to break free at the same time when Ganguly was leading Indian cricket. Doosra needed to have picked a side, rather than trying to force-fit two incompatible ideas into a single narrative.
Full review ↗TRM 5.3
Despite its length – 163 minutes, and not all of them necessary – Satluj is a gripping, tension-filled affair. The film is admirably measured in its outrage and powerfully performed across the board. Trehan's understanding of the circumstances that encourage the killing spree, as well as his clarity on human rights and moral probity, make Satluj one of the sharpest political films in recent memory.
Full review ↗TRM 7.2
Baby Do Die Do initially lives up to its superb title and inventive premise, with deft portrayal of Mumbai and inventive use of split screens. However, the love story takes over the narrative and diffuses its focus, forcing overly neat coincidences and unconvincing twists, and the 125-minute film could have done with the same kind of ruthless treatment that Baby reserves for her targets.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1
The film version stands on its own bloodied feet. The extraction of the show's most entertaining aspects while also introducing a couple of new arcs, and the decision to use the same actors with one notable exception, give Mirzapur The Movie both the element of comforting familiarity and the thrill of surprise.
Full review ↗TRM 6.4
So silly that it's juvenile and sometimes so anarchic that it almost escapes notice, the 121-minute Happy Patel takes refuge behind its conceit. This is a film about nothing pretending to be about something. But the movie isn't outre enough to send up writer-director-actors who don't realise when a comedy routine has run its course.
Full review ↗TRM 5.0
Within the framework of a crime thriller that has music by Ilaiyaraaja and striking compositions by cinematographer S Thirunavukarasu, Subbaraj shreds received wisdom with a brio that has to be seen to be believed. Dorothy is a terrific subversion of the conventional Tamil film romance.
Full review ↗TRM 7.0
Tujhya Aaila joins a long list of movies about childhood memories, but the latest one is more attuned to the unpleasantness and the darkness, the slaps and the punches. The resulting film is a mood piece that's engaging while also being intensely peculiar, its emotional centre hard to pinpoint at times.
Full review ↗Although The Vvan labours to establish Van Devi's pre-eminence in the pantheon of Hindu goddesses, the 136-minute film doesn't work hard enough to create a compelling, awe-inspiring back story for her. There's little focus to the hocus pocus, with slapstick comedy and an item song interrupting Rishi's conversion into a firm believer.
Full review ↗TRM 4.7
For all its trail-blazing ambitions, the comedy is most comfortable around the age-old debate over how married couples should adjust to the demands of their parents. The satire on Gen Z wokeism and unacknowledged dependency itself isn't all that receptive to fresh explorations of family dynamics.
Full review ↗TRM 5.7
The storytelling is similarly stodgy and plodding. Even the dullness that pervades the 145-minute film can't conceal its cogent, clear-eyed denunciation of religious bigotry.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9
But he can't make a cliched story that is fixated on death come alive, nor can he justify the staggering 142-minute runtime. With character-building taking a backseat to gun-waving and knife-wielding, performance isn't what is on offer here.
Full review ↗TRM 7.0
Although Amit Rai undermines his screenplay's impact through stubborn bloat, he displays empathy towards his characters, especially the poverty-stricken Prince, as well as a strong sense of justice. There are powerful moments in store for patient viewers.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
Halfway between Mumbai masala and Hollywood salsa, 7 Dogs is the kind of over-the-top timepasser that thrives on low expectations. Although Salman Khan makes no impact, Sanjay Dutt is a good fit as the flamboyant Ranjit.
Full review ↗TRM 5.2
While the film about a perfect crime isn't perfect, Vadh 2 is certainly well-executed, engaging and thoughtful. What could have been a gimmick becomes a fresh opportunity to ask questions about what justice means in practice, whom does it actually serve, and who gets to play judge or executioner.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1
The original was daft, the remake is dafter. The thrill of seeing the sightless Shyam in action is cancelled out by the sluggish pacing and mostly poor acting.
Full review ↗TRM 5.3
The movie version is crisp and efficient, if somewhat perfunctory. While the storytelling captures the necessity of Yogesh's principled stand, the creative choice to stick to the time period in which the novel is set makes Yogesh's mission a bit quaint.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1
Lust Stories 3 is still in the sort-of-safe to be watched at work, opting to be mildly risky rather than boldly risque. The one-woman-to-three-men ratio is intact, with Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, Shakun Batra and Vishal Bhardwaj tackling aspects of love and carnality—Bhardwaj's final episode proving the most memorable, delivering lushness and lustiness through Aditi Rao Hydari's terrific performance.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
The overall vibe in Vibe is of indulgence. Since Kunal Kemmu is the one doing the indulging, the film works when it chooses to. The rest of the time, the 145-minute Vibe is a 100-minute movie in search of a befitting mission.
Full review ↗TRM 5.7
Babita Singh Reporting, which is out on Prime Video, is excellent at posing the questions that matter. First-time feature director Ambiecka Pandit dexterously directs a script by Amita Vyas that deftly sets up Babita's situation, but fumbles when it comes to producing the key that unlocks the mystery around Bansi. While the latest movie doesn't have a compelling enough pay-off, it fulfils its chief purpose: a close examination of a typical middle-class existence that conceals micro-aggressions and macro-conflicts targetted at women.
Full review ↗TRM 6.0
Although the movie makes too much of basic courtroom strategy, both Kazmi and Zulfiqar expose the sloppiness and haste in the Mumbai police's intelligence gathering. The picture is a partial one, refracted through an eagerness to be seen both as fair and muscular. Although positioned as an uncritical portrait, Prahaar is often in an argument with itself.
Full review ↗TRM 6.5
H Vinoth's action drama is such a barely disguised extended poll propaganda video and so reliant on Vijay's proven ability to command the screen that the director doesn't even try to deliver a basic viewing experience. For a movie touted to be Vijay's final offering now that he has a state to run, Jana Nayagan (The People's Hero) is astonishingly lazy. It's bizarre that his allegedly last outing as a fictional hero should be so dull, so amateurish and so tacky.
Full review ↗TRM 4.4
Although the plotting is predictable to a fault, the 100-minute movie gives a palpable sense of a family struggling to confront its worst nightmare. Although the situation faced by Pashya unfolds on expected lines, the film adequately explores the emotional cost of a financial crisis.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9
Chhapaak has some clunky execution and earnest speechifying, but its intention – to bring the crime of acid attacks to mainstream attention – is brave and commendable. This makes the movie hard to watch but also hard to turn away from. Chhapaak is needlessly uneven and sluggish at times, but it's most powerful when it keeps things simple and stays on course.
Full review ↗TRM 6.5−0.5
The origin story in Balaji Mohan's Nayyi Navelli is far too weak, confused and uninvolving. In a film bereft of imagination or magic, Gautam Dhar's Mohini works doubly hard to keep the miracles coming, to little effect.
Full review ↗TRM 4.6
Daayra tries to stand apart from other films that valorise police personnel who break the law while claiming to defend it, but despite having dared to question extra-judicial killings, the film erases much of the boundary between right and wrong and has lost the thread of its argument, instead leaning towards Raman.
Full review ↗TRM 6.6
The lack of moderation quickly overtakes any effort to understand why men do what they do – and why women enable them. Geetu Mohandas is in here somewhere, trying to tell us that she's having immense fun steering scene after scene of pointless blood-letting. Despite the opportunity to populate an overtly male genre with female characters, Toxic peddles tiresome stereotypes about damaging mothers and damaged single mothers.
Full review ↗TRM 4.3
Although running on for far too long and piling on a twist too many, the 140-minute Ikka is an engaging timepasser. Siddharth P Malhotra's workmanlike contribution to one of Hindi cinema's favourite genres doesn't deliver on its promise of fireworks, but it isn't a damp squib either.
Full review ↗TRM 5.4
The heavily laboured love triangle here is between Kunal's saintliness, Diya's anxiety and Ally's aggressive sexuality. The women appear sillier and sillier as the 150-minute film drags on with seemingly no end in sight.
Full review ↗TRM 4.9
Tapadia's debut feature is a crisp, gripping and moving account of uncommon valour in the face of unimaginable horror. Bharat Bhhagya Viddhaata is also a tribute to Mumbai's vital working classes.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
After thrashing about, all along delivering powerful individual scenes, Main Vaapas Aaunga clicks into place. In the resonant climax, as well as in the gorgeous Imagine-like song in the end credits, Imtiaz Ali cuts to the chase about the endurance of love, the secrets of Partition, and the power of remembering.
Full review ↗TRM 6.7
Humour – black and salty – clearly works better for Triveni, as is evident in Maa Behen. When the women's antics to save their skins are played straight, Maa Behen is the sharpest and the most entertaining, though the film occasionally gets carried away with its cleverness.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9
Mudassar Aziz instructs the cast to perform in a highly exaggerated manner and deliver every line at high volume. Shouting out the dialogue doesn't make it funnier. Nor does slathering loud music in the background. Aziz, who directed the delightful Happy Bhag Jayegi all those moons ago, hasn't found the right pitch for his sly take on conventional morality ever since.
Full review ↗TRM 5.3
The Netflix release is a colourless tale of a khaki-clad braveheart, barely different from other films of its type, except for an illustrious cast and slick production values. There's nothing more to say or show in a movie that's utterly predictable and bereft of feeling.
Full review ↗TRM 5.6
The 195-minute movie is epic in length but not in scope. There's little freshness or imagination in the slow-mo action scenes or in Santosh Sivan's cinematography. Most of the cast members deliver performances as uninspiring and studious as the film itself.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
For a film about extreme stinginess, Toaster is generous with the laughs. Vivek Daschaudhary's Hindi film, which is out on Netflix, is an enjoyably silly comedy filled with off-the-wall situations and some daringly outre elements.
Full review ↗TRM 4.5
Dhurandhar: The Revenge is Marco or K.G.F: Chapter 2, but with malice that meshes seamlessly with pro-government propaganda. The vendetta saga is overstretched, garbled in places, and vastly more indulgent, resembling a web series rather than a movie.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
Do Deewane Seher Mein isn't a plot in search of a movie. It isn't even much of a plot. The whole thing meanders along without direction or purpose.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
Ikkis distinguishes itself from nearly every war movie made in the past few decades. Raghavan downscales as well as cools down the military conflict drama, reducing it to its basic elements of bravery and battlefield strategy. The film proves that it's possible to recast such stories and rescue them from excess.
Full review ↗TRM 7.0
The new movie doesn't have the potency of its predecessor, or the atmospheric visuals that suggested perverse deeds unfolding in dark corners. The 136-minute film hurries along too, delivering a serviceable but also uninvolving and blunt-edged police procedural.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
Dhurandhar is the result of Dhar's directing skills mating with a Research and Analysis Wing PowerPoint presentation. Dhar's proficiency with Hollywood-style carnage and talent for creating distinctive characters, coupled with the literal anti-Pakistan bashing, make Dhurandhar appear a lot more momentous than it actually is. A considerable stretch of the staggering 214-minute film is no different from gangland chronicles led by swaggering, aphorism-dripping men.
Full review ↗TRM 6.0
De De Pyaar De 2 is too much of a good thing. The bits that work stand out, especially Ayesha's refusal to let the men in her life tell her how to behave, and love.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1
The characters are too sketchily written and indifferently performed – even by the dependable Manav Kaul – to be engaging. The scare factor is negligent, constituting much groaning and sighing. After dithering about for far too long, Baramulla finally snaps into shape in the extended climax, pulling off the mask of horror to reveal … bared teeth.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9
Haq is an elegantly dressed-up dressing down of intransigent leaders who force even religious-minded individuals like Shazia to practically secede from the community. Rather than strafing, Haq opts for scolding – delivered in a normal pitch, based on argument rather than rhetoric.
Full review ↗TRM 7.1
Milap Zaveri tries to revive his flagging career by glorifying stalkers in Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat. The 140-minute film, written by Zaveri and Mushtaq Shiekh, has scenes in excruciating slow motion and songs with the usual doom-and-gloom lyrics. The general feeling is of being trapped in a small elevator during a lengthy power cut.
Full review ↗TRM 4.1
Although unwieldy at times, Kantara: Chapter 1 maintains the enchantment through impeccable world-building and a balance of spectacle with ideas. Like the first movie, Kantara: Chapter 1 seamlessly meshes religious mythology, local legends and shamanistic performance traditions with temporal concerns.
Full review ↗TRM 6.7
Mandlekar, the actor who makes his directing debut with this film, treats Zende's best-known exploit like one big joke. The shallow, silly script feels like an early draft, with barely any attention paid to Carl and too much focus on the hunt for him.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
Shazia Iqbal's bold, powerful and often incendiary adaptation of Mari Selvaraj's Pariyerum Perumal (2018) brings into mainstream Hindi cinema the radical Dalit consciousness that has transformed the Tamil film industry over the past few years. In terms of its effect, especially in the early portions, Dhadak 2 is the equivalent of a minor earthquake. Yet, Dhadak 2's achievements eclipse its flaws.
Full review ↗TRM 6.5
For a film about a potent and fierce goddess, Maa is a resolutely tame affair. The film neither creates emotional engagement with its characters nor has the technical polish to be a convincing scare-fest. Maa is a poor showcase of Furia's feel for the genre.
Full review ↗TRM 5.2
While the new film's plot is as old as the hills, the staging and treatment of character arcs have the ability to surprise, mesmerise even. Thug Life looks fresh, exciting and seductive – the classic Mani Ratnam trick to make even the routine appear like something you have never seen before.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8
The film is nasty, brutish and long. The 153-minute Jaat is most alert and alive in its elaborately choreographed action set pieces, in which gravity, restraint and logic are skillfully slaughtered as surely as Ranatunga's men. The movie itself is unapologetic about turning massacre into empty spectacle.
Full review ↗TRM 5.4
Test unfortunately takes this observation to heart, descending into an avoidable 145-minute heap of repetitive and overstretched storytelling during which several people get slapped about. The film is an exercise in ethics, examining the wisdom of the choices made by Arjun, Sarvanan and Kumudha, but the overwritten film introduces plot turns that make it feel ungainly.
Full review ↗TRM 5.2
The mostly breezy and quickly forgettable film rolls out the requisite packaging needed to justify itself. You have the bright lighting, modish costumes and appropriate Gen Z lingo, but not the compelling characters or unexpected scenarios that might generate emotional investment in exaggerated conflicts.
Full review ↗TRM 4.6
Superboys of Malegaon is a perfectly sweet tribute to the power of cinema to inspire other kinds of cinema. While the film ably shows the drama behind the drama and Nasir's refusal to be defeated, it has a generalised small-town quality rather than a specific flavour – the M in Mollywood is missing.
Full review ↗TRM 7.4
Its bellicose tone is like Chandraprakash Dwivedi's Samrat Prithviraj (2022), while some of its action sequences resemble scenes from the Partition. The thirst for comeuppance, vengeance and macho reprisal is stark, making for a frequently violent, often draining experience. The film's lack of feeling is vivid too, with shouty speechifying mistaken for heartfelt passion and sumptuous visuals confused for grandeur.
Full review ↗TRM 6.4
Glossy and pretty to look at, and with a better-appointed kitchen too, the remake does well to stick with the original's unsparing attack on a traditional household. While the radicalness of the original conceit is watered down, Mrs communicates the reality behind delicious hand-churned meals and elaborate preparations.
Full review ↗TRM 6.4
Style resoundingly trumps substance in Andrews's first Bollywood outing, which is extraordinarily good-looking but has neither a halfway convincing plot nor engaging characters. Despite superb visuals and a blazing Shahid Kapoor, Deva is as cold to the touch as its treatment of weighty themes such as guilt, culpability and redemption is clinical.
Full review ↗TRM 5.2
The events that precede the Sargodha strike and the attack itself are reduced to a bunch of fast-paced dogfights and fiery tableaux. At least on this score, the 125-minute movie delivers, with the smoothly staged action set pieces revealing how the IAF pilots outsmarted Pakistan's vastly superior planes through sheer dexterity and a fighting spirit. The catfights on the ground are less engaging.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1
Imagination is largely in short supply in the threequel, which has been written by Prakash Kaushik. Except for a twist about Manjulika's identity that works well, the film has little that we haven't seen before in the previous movie.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1
The screenplay draws its impact almost entirely from its gruesome source material, so much so that its original contributions fall flat. As a police procedural, the movie barely makes the grade. The sequence is so uncomfortably mesmerising that it appears to be the reason that Sector 36 exists. The rest of Sector 36 struggles to match this show of acting prowess.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
Apart from crowd-pleasing vigilantism – Shankar's version of the anarchist credo Eat the Rich – Hindustani 2 has little new to offer. The result is a bloated, brutish film that rejects non-violent solutions to corruption.
Full review ↗TRM 4.6
Kill, billed as the most violent Indian movie ever made, is a slaughterfest that begins soon after the train leaves Ranchi for Delhi. The action makes excellent use of the train's narrow corridors and restricted spaces, with unrelenting and unforgiving action choreography. Raghav Juyal is this movie's prize-winning ticket, superbly playing Fani as a formidable adversary.
Full review ↗TRM 7.2
Apart from reaching back in time to remind us that sexual exploitation by religious leaders as well as attempts at legal censorship are hardly new, Malhotra's movie fails to make a case for itself. The film is barely convincing as a period production. The makers are equally unable to depict the sensitivity of religious feeling or the monumentality of Karsan's decision to take on a powerful sect.
Full review ↗TRM 5.4
The movie is funny, sexy and honest without being overly mushy or judgemental. Crew is turbo-charged by a terrific trio of performers, who exude sheer relief at being handed roles that play to their respective strengths.
Full review ↗TRM 6.5
Dunki is more heehaw than ha ha hee hee. Broad comedy and tear-jerking moments – Hirani's strengths – are largely missing from his screenplay, written along with Abhijat Joshi and Kanika Dhillon. In the absence of compelling character arcs or a halfway realistic depiction of the complications involved in transporting humans across borders, the movie never travels below the surface.
Full review ↗TRM 6.7
Stuffed with carnage, peppered with overt emotional abuse, and seething with primal feelings, Animal doesn't set itself up to be liked. But in its unabashed exploration of an emotionally damaged alpha male, the movie is hard to dismiss. Kapoor's career-best performance makes Animal tough to stomach, but equally difficult to ignore.
Full review ↗TRM 5.0
Gulzar's screenplay has a little bit of everything and nothing about any one thing in particular. However, Kaushal's charm offensive isn't enough to keep Sam Bahadur on track. The greatest hits approach leans on recorded history rather than compelling fiction for dramatic momentum.
Full review ↗TRM 6.0
Despite solid craft, meaty individual scenes and a few sharp performances, the film converts a long-distance run into a slog. Having flirted with shining a torch on the moral darkness involved in espionage, Khufiya settles for a routine thriller with an unconvincing outcome.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
For all the talk of science, there is none of the rigour of Aashiq Abu's Virus, about a disparate government team pooling resources to fight the Nipah virus in Kerala, or Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, which uncannily anticipated the coronavirus pandemic. There are moments when The Vaccine War feels like a Health Ministry press release reproduced verbatim.
Full review ↗TRM 5.3
Atlee's guts-and-glycerine saga has big names from the Hindi and Tamil industries, a crowd-pleasing theme of vigilante justice, slickly filmed action set pieces, snarky humour and earnest social messaging topped by Shah Rukh Khan in peak charismatic mode. Fleet despite its 169-minute runtime, with sequence after sequence designed to draw whistles as well as wring out tears, Jawan deftly leaps from one incredulous moment to the next.
Full review ↗TRM 7.1
The 156-minute OMG 2 always has its heart in the right place. Its concept is carefully steered, taking care to offer a progressive interpretation of Hinduism without causing offence. Yet, the use of religion to dispel misinformation as well as encourage social change sometimes comes off as a crutch, rather than a necessity.
Full review ↗TRM 6.5
The slickly filmed Jailer has some sharp scenes of crackpot humour and a few quirky types that salvage an increasingly dull homage to Rajinikanth's screen persona. Who can take an avenging hero seriously when the threats are so feeble? A high-wattage star can bring only so much value to an indifferently written movie.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1
The 168-minute film ends up being ostentatious as well as pretentious, and while the conventional core of the contrived war between Mammon and Marx is the most honest aspect, it remains an overly long, tonally jittery, and stereotype-filled narrative. Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt are electric and entirely believable in their ardour, but the screenplay's post-interval section runs through a list of Worthy Causes that feels unearned.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
The film is set up to give Kartik Aaryan the lion's share of memorable moments, but Kiara Advani is more hard-working than Aaryan – and more efficient. While the movie explores a noble cause behind the troubled marriage with sensitivity, it still demands that the hero take the initiative of releasing his heroine from her travails, reflecting a male saviour complex that undermines the female lead's agency.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9
Om Raut's Adipurush has passion, ambition and scale. What Raut's adaptation of the Ramayana lacks is a sense of wonderment. The derivative visual design borrows from the Avengers productions, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and a host of fantasy fiction works, resulting in a movie that resembles a video game rather than capturing the moral universe of the epic.
Full review ↗TRM 4.9
Ponniyin Selvan: Part 2 is the rare sequel that matches up to the hype created by its predecessor. Ratnam's command over a dense plot that can fill several films feels staggeringly effortless, with mesmerising cinematography, fluid editing, and AR Rahman's evocative score creating a spell that lingers throughout the 164-minute film.
Full review ↗TRM 6.6
Shehzada is a contrived comedic melodrama that faithfully rehashes a tried-and-tested formula, with director Rohit Dhawan making very few tweaks to the source material. If Telugu films bolster such projects with strong scripts, Shehzada is carried solely by Aaryan's chutzpah.
Full review ↗TRM 5.1
Ram Setu is what you get when you layer WhatsApp forwards with visual effects. The 144-minute film makes a hash of scientific rigour, archaeological practice and, indeed, alternate readings of the Ramayana itself. The attempt to convince, rather than hector, is accompanied by dubious comic book-level plotting, sluggish pacing and pedestrian performances.
Full review ↗TRM 4.2
Brahmastra Part One: Shiva gets the pyrotechnics right but fumbles in creating an emotionally involving alternate reality. While Brahmastra isn't lacking in ambition, Mukerji's screenplay doesn't trust its instincts enough. The visual design is always on point, but the talk is hard on the ear.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9+0.1
The Hollywood production's reductive perspective makes the remake a tough sell at a time when Indian history is sought to be recast in alarming ways. The remake turns out to be a resolutely old-fashioned saga, suffused with the yearning for a fairy-tale world in which love, death and loss are easily overcome.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1−0.1
Aanand L Rai's movie, despite its progressive messaging, sets the clock back in more ways than one. Neither the contrived conservatism nor the forced progressiveness feels sincere in a film about female empowerment that is steered entirely by a male saviour.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8−0.8
Darlings is an old-fashioned dark comedy that plays out in a distinctive milieu with an artfully designed imaginary bubble in which liberation might be pursued. Reen boldly gives the sensitive subject of domestic violence the gallows humour treatment, and the risky balancing act nevertheless succeeds for the most part, with sharp repartee, skillfully staged scenes and deftly sketched characters.
Full review ↗TRM 6.6
But the post-interval section falls inexorably down the well in which one of the corpses has been found. The disjointed narrative staggers from one idea to the next just like Vikrant magically appears and disappears at will. Focused on creating a visually evocative setting and showcasing leading man Sudeep's cool moves, Vikrant Rona is happy to miss the wood for the trees.
Full review ↗TRM 4.6−0.6
The film is at its entertaining best when it's in and around the football field. Yet, it's the formula that wins, and the football that sticks—the gully football sequences are the real showstopper, while the romance subplot and magic elements feel like distractions from the film's strongest asset.
Full review ↗TRM 6.0
Shah Rukh Khan pops up every now and then to leaven a film that tells a necessary story but tells it shoddily and without curiosity. A stronger performer might have better conveyed Narayanan's agony. Madhavan's dedication, while undeniable, fails to challenge him to rise above his limitations and move beyond flat dialogue delivery and a handful of expressions.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8−0.8
Kiranraj's screenplay starts out well, giving us shards of Dharma's brittle personality and meticulously building up his rapport with Charlie. But unwilling – or simply unable – to cut away from suffering human and adorable beast, the film descends into a pile of soggy sentiment. Dharma's road trip with Charlie seemingly has a destination, but the film takes forever to get there.
Full review ↗TRM 6.4−0.4
Led by an aptly cast Kartik Aaryan as a cocky showboater, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 moves along on its hero's insouciance, Tabu's screen presence, and patches of entertaining comedy.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9+0.1
Runway 34 is evenly balanced between offenders and the offended before it goes on the defensive. A film about a serious lapse in safety, which endangers the lives of hundreds, turns out to be a storm in a teacup, less effective than the fury that threatens to swallow Vikrant and his co-fliers.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9+1.1
K.G.F: Chapter 2 continues the adventures of the folk hero whose exploits are apparently so mind-boggling that they have been erased from the history books. It's over the top of over the top, if that's even possible. Despite being less chaotic than Chapter One, the sequel continues to suffer from leaps in the time-space continuum.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5−0.5
Dabangg 3 isn't funny or even campy enough to be anything more than an aging hero's throw of dice, hoping that third time will be as lucky as the first two.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8
The male leads, separated by a couple of generations and united by their ability to land punches and execute pirouettes without breaking a sweat, set the screen on fire. Fortunately for War, there is barely a scene without either of them.
Full review ↗TRM 5.4
Wannabe show boat meets dreamboat in The Zoya Factor, a movie that both suffers from miscasting and benefits from perfect casting.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
Ayushmann Khurrana is in fine form as the hero as well as the heroine...Raaj Shaandilyaa directs Ayushmann Khurrana as a call centre employee who puts on a woman's voice and gathers a fleet of admirers.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
What works best for the nostalgia-flecked Chhichhore is its warm and non-judgemental evocation of the wonder years. The earnest Anni arrives at a college modelled on the Indian Institute of Technology and learns that he has been assigned to Hostel Number 4. This is where the "losers" are dumped. Although Anni initially attempts to move out, he soon succumbs to its charms.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1
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TRM 5.9
TRM 4.4
Strong performances cannot rescue a weak and confused whodunit Prakash Kovelamudi's comedy-tinged thriller stars Kangana Ranaut and Rajkummar Rao.
Full review ↗TRM 6.4
Like this year's Gully Boy, Super 30 suggests that with talent and commitment, it is possible to cross over from the other side of the tracks. Leap high towards your goals, Anand tells his students. The formula is as pat as the solution, but many parts of the journey makes this classroom victory worth the while.
Full review ↗TRM 5.7
A powerful examination of crimes against Dalits...Article 15 isn't exactly nuanced about the brutal system that continues to subjugate Dalits, but neither are the times. The implausible portions balance out the moments that echo the headlines. For every scene that seems out of place, another comes along to remind us of why this movie is effectively landing its punches.
Full review ↗TRM 7.4
Just like the man of the title, the director seems stuck in a moment he doesn't want to get out of. Kabir Singh reimagines the Indian hero archetype in interesting ways, but its inability to even consider the flaws in its leading man's romantic outlook is its undoing. Is masochism the flip side of machismo? Both movies seem to agree, but they never ask why.
Full review ↗TRM 5.4
An ode to the Salman Khan-Katrina Kaif pairing and little else...Ali Abbas Zafar's movie sets his hero's adventures against the backdrop of India's post-Independence history.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
A 131-minute victory parade on the big screen...Omung Kumar's biopic stars Vivek Anand Oberoi as the Man from Gujarat.
Full review ↗TRM 3.3
TRM 5.3
TRM 4.3
The movie reserves its firepower for a climactic display of pyrotechnics, and the visual effects showcase is a relief from the puffy eyes and forlorn speeches. Thanos may be inevitable, but what's an Avengers movie without showboating?
Full review ↗TRM 7.8
TRM 6.1
TRM 4.6
Badla has hugely familiar leads, and the casting of at least one of them allows Ghosh to deliver a weak and unconvincing coup de grace. Taapsee Pannu is unable to summon up the blank canvas onto which all manner of possibilities can be projected, while Amitabh Bachchan hops on the gravitas train for the nth time. The gender swap allows for a meaty role for Amrita Singh, who deftly plays a key character, and her presence, along with that of Tony Luke, work strongly in the movie's favour and helps it along its pretzel-shaped journey.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
Some of the humour is nicely timed and executed, and Indra Kumar even tucks in a message of environmental conservation (delivered through tamed wild animals). There are enough lines here to fuel WhatsApp conversations – until the next such movie comes along.
Full review ↗TRM 4.0
TRM 7.3
Ek Ladki moves along on the strength of its progressive theme and some fine performances. Typical Bollywood elements – quirky characters, peppy songs, posh settings, syrupy emotions – are cleverly turned around to encourage us to see love through a different lens. However, the 120-minute movie tries too hard to be funny and heartfelt at the same time (and sometimes in the same scene). The comic bits inspired by the source material always work better than the melodramatic portions.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1
The Manikarnika production isn't lavish enough to suggest a grand sweep of history, and the focus on its heroine is too narrow to accommodate a larger conversation about the efficacy of Lakshmibai's actions. There is plenty of leaping and feinting, but not enough reflecting.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9
TRM 3.9
The 138-minute Uri leaves no room for debate. The build-up to the military strikes are accompanied by swelling background music. All characters are suitably grim and ruthless, preparing to "invade the enemy in his home and kill him there". The action sequences have a brutality and realism that has rarely been seen in Hindi cinema. The film is stacked with bold flourishes – the title appears on the screen only 30-odd minutes in – and Aditya Dhar directs with a confidence that belies his experience.
Full review ↗TRM 6.0
Ranveer Singh's energy and flamboyance ensure that Simmba appears more engaging than it often is, and Ajay Devgn's well-timed cameo rescues the film from being a write-off. Simbba is all about its male movie stars. Sara Ali Khan has fewer scenes than some of the other characters, including Siddharth Jadhav as a member of Simmba's posse. The movie has no use for her Shagun – so much for being on the side of women.
Full review ↗TRM 5.7
Khan's fanbase will possibly be even more perplexed with Zero. By trying to play the man next door rather than a larger-than-life personality, Khan has all too literally let himself be cut to size. The romantic declarations are less effective, the conviction with which Khan has carried off more modest romances is missing, and the package is smaller than before. As the space rocket blasts off towards Mars, the superstar is transformed into a supernova, and it's null all the way into the void.
Full review ↗TRM 4.7
At close to 120 minutes, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse spins far too many webs for its own good, but the witty dialogue, energetic voice work, and eye-popping visuals mostly keep fatigue at bay.
Full review ↗TRM 7.5
Ali Khan is a vibrant presence, lending her character spirit and charisma. She is the most watchable and memorable character in the pre-interval sequences, and gives a snappily told but somewhat cold film much-needed warmth when the mountains melt and everything goes under water.
Full review ↗TRM 4.9
In the end, the movie belongs to Freddie Mercury, the Bohemian rhapsodiser of the title, who conquers with his voice from beyond the grave. The movie comes alive every time Mercury's sonorous voice booms out of the screen. His powerful singing makes it possible to endure the flat writing and staging with your eyes shut and your ears open.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
Aamir Khan is the saving grace in a trite, uninvolving film...Krishna Acharya's period drama, starring Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, pits a gang of rebels against the British empire.
Full review ↗TRM 4.1
Great expectations are partially met in comedy about pregnancy...Amit Sharma's comedy explores the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy on a middle-class Delhi family.
Full review ↗TRM 6.7
A wicked and wacky yarn about a crime and its unlikely punishment...Sriram Raghavan's crime thriller stars Ayushmann Khurrana as a blind pianist, Radhika Apte as his girlfriend, and Tabu as a femme fatale.
Full review ↗TRM 7.5
What this movie succeeds at being is a well-mounted excuse for marrying light horror with glib and unremitting humour (the often hilarious dialogue is by Sumit Arora). The cast is in full flow here, with Rajkummar Rao brilliantly leading the herd as a not-too-bright mushball who becomes Chanderi's unwilling hero. Rao faces competition on occasion from Pankaj Tripathi, and even the perfectly cast Shraddha Kapoor seems to be paying attention after a very long time. Even as Stree begins to collapse under the weight of its contradictions, the actors are always on cue, delivering the steady patter of conversational humour with aplomb and leaping out of their skins at just the right moment.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
The gleaming cars, neatly ironed costumes, and orderly manner in which the props have been arranged barely convey the impression of the blood and sweat involved in achieving a seemingly unattainable goal. The pounding background score and on-the-nose dialogue heavily underline what is being seen on the screen. The sluggish pacing over 153 minutes contain few moments of surprise or discovery. In the end, the inevitable clamber for the exit gate is stalled in the final moments by the strains of the national anthem.
Full review ↗TRM 6.0
Despite the contrivances he is saddled with, Shaukat turns out to be a delight. Irrfan has had his share of road movies (Road to Ladakh, Piku, Qarib Qarib Single), but he has immense fun being the designated joker in the pack in Karwaan. A scene in which he rehearses his proposal to a woman he has only just met involves talking to a wall, and the actor ensures that it is memorable. Together with Salmaan, Irrfan lends the movie the poignance it seeks, but doesn't always find, over 120 minutes.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
Sanju is the fawning biopic of Sanjay Dutt that the trailer warned us about. It promises complexity and psychological acuity. Until a point, it appears to be on track to creating a nuanced portrait of controversy's favourite child – but then it plummets into unquestioning and misty-eyed reverence.
Full review ↗TRM 6.9
TRM 5.6
The story's real superhero isn't Harshvadhan Kapoor's dull Sikandar, but Priyanshu Painyuli's passionate Bhavesh. Painyuli plays Bhavesh with real feeling, and the exact moment of the film's descent can be pinpointed to the moment when his character cedes ground to Sikandar. The myth takes over the man, but Painyuli ensures that the man matters too.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8
Scenes from a marriage that actually isn't worth saving...Sanjay Mishra stars as a rude husband trying to win back the affections of his wife in Harish Vyas's movie.
Full review ↗TRM 5.7
TRM 7.1
Despite strong performances, Iranian director Majid Majidi's first Indian movie is barely convincing.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9
There is a Hallmark quality to Dan's lack of direction, which is presented without adequate explanation. But there is also a lived-in quality to Chaturvedi's study of life-threatening illness, which is rarely explored by the movies with any seriousness.
Full review ↗TRM 6.9
Despite the efforts taken to ensure that the labyrinthine turns through the 139-minute movie are never confusing, the filmmakers are unable to avoid the twin curse of repetition and redundancy. Deo aims for conversational humour that evolves organically from the moment, but the running length could have been cut significantly limiting its impact. Blackmail has a satisfying neatness and roundedness that are usually missing from such films, but some of the manufactured clutter could have easily been avoided.
Full review ↗TRM 5.7
TRM 6.1
TRM 3.2
Pad Man proves that sometimes, the message is far more important than the way in which it has been communicated.
Full review ↗TRM 6.4
The best thing about Akshat Verma's debut feature is a performance by Saif Ali Khan that is both outrageous and moving.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8
Kashyap's trademark caustic humour and tendency to upturn expectations serve him well in many moments. There are scenes in Mukkabaaz that will not find place in a regular film, including Bhagwan's humiliation of Shravan and the tense conversation between Sanjay and Bhagwan.
Full review ↗TRM 6.9
In Ali Abbas Zafar's Tiger Zinda Hai, Khan's vitality as an action hero is sorely absent. Were it not for back-up from Katrina Kaif as his wife Zoya, a laughably incompetent bunch of terrorists, and the combination of an indigestion-causing substance and sedatives, the Research & Analysis Wing agent's mission to rescue Indian and Pakistani nurses trapped in Iraq would simply not have been possible.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
The movie exists as a testament to Ranaut's awesomeness. The star and the character merge into one, and the movie suffers as a result.
Full review ↗TRM 5.4
McAvoy lights up his scenes, but it is Theron's unchanging visage and her claim to the female Bond crown that steer the show from one head-scratching but ravishing scene to the next.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9
The sexual politics isn't always on target, but the emphasis on sexual freedom is. The script wobbles as the four tracks evolve and get far too complicated to be smoothly straightened out, but it is at its entertaining best when the women get all hot and heavy.
Full review ↗TRM 6.8
Commando 2 is recommended viewing for the Finance Ministry, fans of actresses who steal scenes from under the noses of their bulky heroes, and advocates of films that are extensions of the government's Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity department. Its efforts to make sense of and communicate a solution for the black money economy is even less competent than the government's authoritarian measure.
Full review ↗TRM 4.1
Some portions seem like a shameless ode to the Lego company, while other scenes celebrate the joy of seeing legendary characters interact with each other. At 105 minutes, the film occasionally becomes too cute for its own good. The plot is wafer-thin but the jokes fly thick and fast.
Full review ↗TRM 6.9
There's too much of everything in Running Shaadi, whose casual humour would have worked better with a crisper and more focused running time. The idea of wedding organisers balking at the prospect of their own nuptials has been tackled with both greater economy and expansiveness in the past. By running in two directions, the movie ends up nowhere.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8
Underwater thriller 'The Ghazi Attack' dives deep for patriotism. Passions are roused and the national anthem plays twice as an Indian Navy crew faces a Pakistani submarine in 1971.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
To the credit of Kapoor and the marquee lead, Jolly retains his human dimensions. Akshay Kumar is typically endearing in his everyman role, and Annu Kapoor is suitably venal as his opponent, but both are defeated by Shukla's Tripathi. The judge's pragmatic definition of the law, unconventional courtroom behaviour, and no-nonsense attitude enliven the proceedings. In the case of Justice Sunderlal Tripathi versus the others, the defence and prosecution can both rest.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
The fast-paced plotting, and typically silly action-comedy sight gags ensure that the 103-minute running time breezes by, but there is little here that hasn't been seen before, or that Chan hasn't done better.
Full review ↗TRM 4.1
It's all as expected – the gimmicky scares that are so predictable that you can set your watch to them, the slickly choreographed action that befits the movie's video game origins and the strictly-business acting by one and all. The futility of the enterprise is evident from the ease with which Alice overcomes every obstacle thrown her way.
Full review ↗TRM 4.1
The movie's philosophy is best summed up not in the line "Baniye ka dimaag aur miyan bhai ki daring", but in the observation that where there are restrictions, there will be rebellion. Raees's resistance is conventional, but the movie's slyness and lack of moralising are off the books, like the liquor.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
In 'Kaabil', Hrithik Roshan is much too capable as the blind hero Sanjay Gupta's vendetta thriller works because of its childish simplicity and the leading man's exertions.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9
Coffee With D aims for conversational comedy, but it never quite hits its stride. Grover, the television actor best known for his mimicry-based characters Gutthi and Rinku Bhabhi, is miscast as the hero of the enterprise. Grover doesn't have the ability to command the big screen, and the absence of clever dialogue leaves him visibly floundering.
Full review ↗TRM 3.6
As pitches for conquering world markets and disgruntled domestic audiences go, Return of Xander Cage does one better than Gibbons's glib and always successful sales talk.
Full review ↗TRM 5.1
Ali has all the elements in place for a breezy ode to young love, but his mechanical approach and miscasting ensure that OK Jaanu is not exactly an okay remake.
Full review ↗TRM 5.0
Haraamkhor's characters are supposed to have shades of grey, but their blandness can never be mistaken for maturity. About the most shocking thing about this major-minor affair is its sloppiness.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9
Every age produces the cinema it deserves, and with its insistence on absolute obedience to an authoritarian figure, Dangal is inadvertently a reflection of our times. Daddy truly does know best, and Dangal harbours no doubt whatsoever that his daughters are wise not to question him.
Full review ↗TRM 8.0
The movie lacks Kahaani's balance of thrills and humour, but it has the same spirit of righteous anger and faith in a female actor's ability to take charge of a situation. Ghosh shopped the script to other actors before going back to Balan, and the movie is the better for it.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
Dear Zindagi has the longest prelude in recent memory – endless soft-focus montages, friendly banter, and lovable close-ups and fly-on-the-wall footage of the magnificent Alia Bhatt as a romantically confused cinematographer, all of which seem to be adding up to something vague or nothing at all.
Full review ↗TRM 5.6
The action is nasty and short, and before any "what just happened" questions can be asked, ACP Yash delivers yet another punch. It's not quite India's answer to the Mission: Impossible films, but at least on the thrills front, it's halfway there.
Full review ↗TRM 5.2
The characters have barely progressed since Rock On!!, and if anything, their bickering proves that they are frozen in the universe created by the first film. Aditya continues to be troubled by trifles; KD is still the enthusiastic peacemaker; Joe can't seem to stop playing party-pooper.
Full review ↗TRM 4.5
An endless supply of pop culture references and a swagger similar to Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark character from the Iron Man films allow Doctor Strange to showcase Cumberbatch's talents. But the filmmaking isn't bold enough to fully revel in the strangeness of the source material. Co-writer C Robert Cargill had said in an interview that an early version of the script was rejected by producer Marvel Studios for being "too weird", which is exactly what the film needed to be.
Full review ↗TRM 6.6
The action is nasty and efficiently choreographed, but Shivaay does not have the power of Taken, which never wavers from its blunt tagline, "They took his daughter. He'll take their lives."
Full review ↗TRM 4.6
The movie's self-conscious and almost apologetic sober approach, muted shades (the cinematography is by Anil Mehta), and grown-up acting persists all the way till the ridiculous pre-climax twist.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1
Ice and warmth even each other out. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back trundles along on the comfort of knowing that America, and Hollywood, is safe as long as Tom Cruise is around.
Full review ↗TRM 5.1
The anti-Sikh riots in Delhi following Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984 needed better writing, acting and nearly everything else.
Full review ↗TRM 3.9
The Paula Hawkins bestseller about gender battles and domestic violence is reduced to a thriller, and a not very effective one at that.
Full review ↗TRM 6.0
TRM 4.5
...barring an intriguing opening and a few nicely executed scenes in Italy, Inferno is a strained attempt to capitalise on Robert Langdon's popularity and a far cry from the fast-paced and edge-of-the-seat stuff we have come to expect from the Brown-Howard-Hanks combine.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8
Mirzya is doomed by its inability to free itself from the weight of the original legend. A tragic romance that doubles up a cautionary tale about the consequences of rebellion gets the music video treatment. One song rolls out after another to suggest the heat of the heart, but the movie remains cold to its own possibilities.
Full review ↗TRM 4.7
The movie is less a study of psyche than of personality. But within its hagiographic constraints, Pandey and lead actor Sushant Singh Rajput assert themselves admirably.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
The gentle pace works well in the first hour, but Nair runs out of steam in depicting Ramakant's struggle to deal with the truth about Udai. Ramakant's bold romantic relationship with a woman beggars belief, as does the idea that under-educated villagers in the '70s and '80s would dream of fleeing towards America. The real destination of an under-educated Indian immigrant might have been the Arab countries, but then "Dubai" cannot be mangled like "Umrika".
Full review ↗Like ABCD, Banjo relies on a song dedicated to Ganesha to win audiences over in the climax. The track Om Ganapataye Namaha Deva is a doozy, but it proves yet again than a rousing prayer to the remover of obstacles is powerless in the face of limited imagination.
Full review ↗TRM 4.4
Yadav's third film Parched presents gender issues in a fairy-tale setting, but retains enough head and heart to flip the gorgeous backdrops to reveal the violence, abuse and discrimination that characterise the lives of the three principal characters.
Full review ↗TRM 6.4
The movie considerably enriches the screen treatment of sexual assault, but the moment for fewer lectures and greater observation is still some years away.
Full review ↗TRM 7.8
The best thing about 'Raaz Reboot' is that it is the last one in the series...
Full review ↗TRM 3.8
Eastwood's plain and to-the-point filmmaking style syncs perfectly with Hanks's marvellously underplayed and understated characterisation. Hanks's Sully hits just the right notes of fear, frustration, ambivalence and pride. He is no ordinary hero, but he is not extraordinary either – I'm just doing my job, he shrugs. That sounds a lot like Eastwood.
Full review ↗TRM 6.7
With a tighter screenplay, sharper dialogue and more accomplished leads, Baar Baar Dekho could have been that hybrid between Hollywood and Bollywood genres, but it is neither here nor there, neither of the present nor of the future. Mehra has a fashion catalogue writer's eye for beauty, but this movie needed a Mills & Boon writer's heart to make its fantastical premise work.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8
Some of the one-liners land with the same force as Ali's shots, but the cocktail of wacky humour, sentimental blather and tributes to God, Mom and the Neighbourhood has just too many elements to digest. Nawazuddin Siddiqui lives it up as the hero, churning out punchlines and playing the romantic lead in a creaky fantasy about bridging the gulf between the working class and a rich person's game.
Full review ↗TRM 4.5
The 111-minute movie has been beautifully shot by Sylvester Fonseca, set in vividly captured locations, and perfectly performed by its ensemble cast, but the screw-loose narrative needed some tightening to have been truly effective. Oberoi sometimes takes too long to set up and spell out obvious moments and scenes.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
Sonakshi Sinha does a decent job in the emotional scenes, but the movie needed somebody faster and stronger to kick higher.
Full review ↗TRM 5.3
Stripped off its unusual settings, Thithi's story is most ordinary – a crooked deal gone badly wrong. By plonking it in a place that is both "once upon a time" and a recognisable town in Karnataka, Reddy has brewed a curious mix of anthropology, comedy and commentary on the futility of resistance.
Full review ↗TRM 7.3
Barry Sonnenfeld's Nine Lives is catnip for followers of such twenty-first century personages as Maru and Lil Bub, and perhaps only the most ardent feline fans will find Tom Brand's adventures, funny, insightful, or even halfway engaging.
Full review ↗TRM 4.3
Coming at the end of 151 minutes, some of them well spent and some of them wasted, this bumper sticker sentiment mirrors the film's endeavours. A Flying Jatt is clearly designed as a franchise in the making, and a sequel to Aman's adventures on the ground and in the sky is probably already being scribbled on the back of a napkin.
Full review ↗TRM 4.3
...heavy on the sort of cultural tropes that buoy the average NRI comedy: weddings, differing values, mock horror over Caucasian men preying on innocent Indian women and the long-simmering sexual union (cut down in the Indian version). But the dialogue is easy on the ear and the cultural anxieties are just a stock-in-trade.
Full review ↗TRM 5.0
Mutual tensions, politics and conflict are shoved out of view for a rom-com utopia in which, if only for 126 minutes, Indians and Pakistanis are on the same side. All they want is a barreful of laughs, and at least on that score, the movie doesn't let them down.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
Bemkambetov's Ben-Hur is an adequate spectacle for viewers unaware of the existence of Wyler's version, and the director's impersonal approach to the charged material works fine until the moment of Ben-Hur's encounter with Jesus Christ. The hurried ending seems tacked on to the real climax in the dust-laden arena, where men and horses shed blood for their beliefs.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8
Rustom's recreation of an iconic trial echoes the narrative style of the lesser films of the period in which the actual crime occurred – it throws out the facts in favour of a simplistic and crowd-pleasing solution, glosses over its hero's criminal behaviour, and paints its characters in black and white. What the movie does get right is the luridly tabloid quality of the case.
Full review ↗TRM 5.6
...is a costume party with food for thought. Mohenjo Daro is far from perfect, but it's also far more than the sum of its memes.
Full review ↗TRM 4.5
Born To Run fits the bill of the average sports biopic, but it rises a few notches above the Indian version of the genre. The 111-minute movie might have benefited from fewer montages of Budhia panting over asphalt and less pantomime performances by the government employees (played by Chhaya Kadam and Gajraj Rao). This sports biopic wants to be black and white, but it's actually a nice shade of grey.
Full review ↗TRM 6.7
Suicide Squad doesn't trust its instincts for mischief and derangement enough. The contours of a truly mean and subversive comic book adaptation flash through in some portions of Suicide Squad, especially when Waller and Harley Quinn are around, but they are defeated by the curse of the ultimate Enchantress – the please-all Hollywood blockbuster.
Full review ↗TRM 5.1
The movie's central conceit, that we tell tall tales in the name of love, doesn't have enough meat for more than a few scenes. This legend is actually a short and not very imaginative joke.
Full review ↗TRM 2.6
At least in its refusal to give pat answers, Jason Bourne earns its place as a worthy successor to the original trilogy, but the suggested sequel is going to have to work harder in giving Jason Bourne, and the undeniably aging Matt Damon, a reason to move yet again.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
Dishoom's premise has promise – two mismatched police officers join hands to rescue India's cricketing jewel from a kidnapping – but Desi Boyz director Rohit Dhawan simply cannot get the film to jumpstart despite all the elements being in place.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
Agneya Singh's disjointed and pretentious first feature features the quest for high-quality hashish and the meaning of life.
Full review ↗TRM 3.6
As vigilante solutions for a heavily mediatised environment go, Madaari is certainly a movie for our times. Shailja Kejriwal's story and Ritesh Shah's screenplay leave us in doubt about which side we are supposed to choose.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
Despite the promise held out by the title, this kind of fun is neither great nor grand.
Full review ↗TRM 2.5
The Secret Life of Pets is beautifully realised but often misses the zaniness of Despicable Me and Minions (which was co-directed by Renaud and Pierre Coffin). The dialogue is less funny than the antics of the scatterbrain animals and birds.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9
Sultan is billed as fiction but at its heart, it's really a biopic of Salman Khan, the dark star who has now attained supernova status.
Full review ↗TRM 6.5
As the plot slowly but surely meanders out of control in the service of delivering a big-bang finish, it's the sequences in the jungle and the incredibly real computer-generated animals that endure over the greedy and confused humans.
Full review ↗TRM 5.1
Shorgul has no scope to explore the unending rise of communal feelings among ordinary people, and the confused plotting and never-ending turn of events further muddle an already mixed message.
Full review ↗TRM 3.8
The message is muddled and the pace glacial even at 90 minutes. Most of the acting is strictly functional, with Chatterjee making an unlikely inspirational teacher of the wonders of physics, and the production values are better suited for television than the big screen.
Full review ↗TRM 4.5
Most of the acting is strictly functional, with Chatterjee making an unlikely inspirational teacher of the wonders of physics, and the production values are better suited for television than the big screen.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8
The idea that Raghav is merging into Ramanna is provocative and thought-provoking, but the movie doesn't elaborate on its cleverness and focuses instead on delivering shocks and jolts. They come unfailingly whenever Ramanna is on the screen, swinging an iron rod and wearing a helmet to add his personal touch to an already macabre scene.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9
If the movie works, it's because of the casting and direction of the children. Hetal Gada is especially lovely as the protective yet strict older sister who knows more than she should for her age. Krrish Chhabria strictly follows instructions to convey his blindness by tilting his head to one side¸ keeping his eyes down at all times, and looking at his toes while he speaks. But his affection for Pari is unmistakable, and their bond guides the movie over its many bumps.
Full review ↗TRM 6.7
The exquisiteness of the marine backdrops get drowned by the uninteresting yammering of the characters, especially Dory, whose refrain that she does not remember anything but her name is charming only at the first instance. The detailed reproduction of underwater life is there before the eyes, but it constantly competes with the assault on the ears from talkative and neurotic sea creatures that have clearly spent too much time in human company.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
Udta Punjab soars on the back of hard-hitting scenes and superb performances from its cast, but a shorter trip would have given the movie the kick it sorely needed to be counted as the definitive drama on the moral corruption of an entire society.
Full review ↗TRM 6.8
Apart from fans of the popular video game World of Warcraft, the movie Warcraft is also of interest to two other sets of viewers: those who have been missing their regular dose of orcs, dwarves, wizards and kingdoms caught between sorcery and normalcy, and fans of Duncan Jones.
Full review ↗TRM 5.3
Te3n is unable to capture the briskness of Kahaani, whose director, Sujoy Ghosh, is one of Te3n's producers. Dasgupta's feature film debut (he has previously made short films and the television series Yudh) shares with Kahaani an attempt to create a Kolkata neo-noir setting in which dread and death lurk in unlikely spaces.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
The low-grade aesthetic isn't as much a creative decision as a sign that somebody on this production decided to keep a firm handle on the budget. The title says it all: unable to improve on or add anything to the Korean source, the filmmakers have decided to keep it brief.
Full review ↗TRM 3.8
The filmmakers have aimed to deliver a puerile movie, and, in fact, will be offended by any discussion about Housefull 3 that does not involve its box office prospects. We are in the mythical "critics will hate it but audiences will love it" zone, and since the movie aims to be nothing more than a weekend moneyspinner, it is accordingly forgettable and disposable.
Full review ↗TRM 4.3
The most engaging scenes are the numerous shootouts and chases, especially one in which Veerappan and his men escape yet another STF attack through a vast area of red hillocks that resemble ant-hills. Men, women and children perish like flies and there are gut-wrenching torture scenes, but the real violence is felt by the ear-drums.
Full review ↗TRM 4.6
The set-up is convincing, and Radhika Apta's central performance as Mahek makes it doubly so. Apte has been steadily building up an impressive portfolio of performances, and she is in top form in Phobia.
Full review ↗TRM 6.4
Waiting is too sparsely plotted to realise its ambitions, but Menon, who has co-written the film with James Ruzicka, does raise important questions on the dilemmas faced by the family members of comatose patients. Who decides the treatment methods, and when is it time to stop waiting and move on? A less neat and more rigourously written movie would have waited for the uncomfortable answers to these knotty questions to come less easily.
Full review ↗TRM 6.5
'Sarbjit' is a tragedy in capital letters...The loud and insistent melodrama takes away from the pathos of the central character's story.
Full review ↗TRM 5.1
At almost two-and-a-half hours, in spite of collapsing cities, new characters and a Wolverine cameo, X-Men: Apocalypse offers so little over such a long running time.
Full review ↗TRM 5.4
Manjule takes well-worn material and a classic tale and gives it his own distinctive touches.
Full review ↗TRM 7.4
Tony D'Souza's film about Mohammed Azharuddin plays out like an episode from the TV show 'CID'.
Full review ↗TRM 5.0
The movie wants to say something poignant and profound about the need for sons to accept their father's decisions, but it doesn't have the material to do so. Still waters are meant to run deep, but in Dear Dad, they remain still.
Full review ↗TRM 5.0
Despite strenuously ignoring its tremendous potential for black comedy, Money Monster ticks along on the assured turns by its star leads. Julia Roberts is especially lovely as the dream producer who, in a less toothless movie, would have been the real monster in the studio.
Full review ↗TRM 5.6
Fortunately, Agnihotri isn't as skilled a propagandist as Leni Riefenstahl and more a modern-day Don Quixote. As he sallies forth against the windmills of his imagination, his political and economic prescriptions for a better India get the better of his storytelling. And to think that it all began with a pile of unsold pots.
Full review ↗TRM 3.4
Captain America: Civil War makes up for the dullness of the previous Captain America films, and Chris Evans, with his pumped-up muscles and thawed-out all-American good looks, adds greatly to making this a satisfying watch.
Full review ↗TRM 7.1
...the essence of the original – and the reason it worked with audiences – has been lost. There's none of the energy and drive in the Hindi Traffic.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
The real drama of how Hardy brought out the sparkle in the diamond in the rough is reduced to a clash of working styles. At the heart of Robert Kanigel's book is the indefinable bond between the two men, vastly different in education, temperament, approach and cultural values. A different kind of movie is required for this relationship to find expression.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
Baaghi is a derivative mishmash of several popular romances and martial arts classics, including Tezaab, Enter the Dragon, The Karate Kid, and The Raid: Redemption, but director Sabbir Khan at least gets the spirit of the action sequences right.
Full review ↗TRM 4.6
Threatened by protests and petitions by the Sikh community, Santa Banta Pvt Ltd comes with a huge disclaimer that its turbaned characters are fictitious and bear no resemblance to anyone real. That seems entirely superflous. It's hard to imagine anybody in real life as dim-witted as Santa (Boman Irani) and Banta (Vir Das).
Full review ↗TRM 2.5
The story is slight and stretched, and there isn't enough meat it in to adequately explore the potential themes – the bromance that develops between Shankar and Rajesh, the moral concerns over illegal blood donation, the exploitation of poor donors, and the general shortage of the life-giving fluid that makes racketeering a necessity.
Full review ↗TRM 5.1
Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari's debut is hardwired to be heartwarming. Only a curmudgeon could complain about the gimmickiness inherent in the story of a domestic worker who enrolls in her 15-year-old daughter's school to ensure that the girl doesn't flunk her crucial tenth standard board examination. The modern-day fairy tale has its fiar share of Moving Moments, but then over-eggs an already substantial pudding.
Full review ↗TRM 7.0
Khan is predictably effective as Aryan, but he is solid as Gaurav. Stripped of the head tilts and gestures that have made him a latter-day Dev Anand, Khan is menacing as the deranged admirer who loses his balance and goes to extreme lengths to teach his icon a lesson. Khan commands the screen in a movie that is effectively a two-hander despite the presence of minor characters (Waluscha De Sousa as Aryan's wife, Sayani Gupta as his secretary, Deepika Amin and Yogendra Tikku as Gaurav's parents).
Full review ↗TRM 6.8
TRM 3.7
The Jungle Book is always stunning to look at, and its economical 105-minute running time adequately showcases Mowgli's first steps towards realising his inner potential and coming closer to his human self. But the film misses out on the opportunity to provide a compelling reason for Mowgli's resurrection.
Full review ↗TRM 7.5
The main characters are too sketchy for the movie Balki hopes to have made, and they are not light enough for the movie he should have made. Ki & Ka could have been an interesting screwball comedy about the gender wars if the director had a greater attention span and a genuine interest in moving beyond gimmicky plots and contrived situations.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8
Shot by Larry Fong, who also worked on Snyder's 300 and Watchmen, Batman v Superman is an eye-popping visual experience in which the action moves from destruction porn to poetic abstraction.
Full review ↗TRM 5.3
The movie's highlights are three action sequences that have been faithfully replicated from the original. Hamstrung by local censorship laws, Rocky Handsome has had to trim back the ultraviolence that marks South Korean crime dramas¸ but at least the movie comes to life when the death count is ticking. It's a pity that the survivors are not as interesting as the corpses.
Full review ↗TRM 4.2
Strong performances and charming characters compensate for a lack of depth and acuity in Shakun Batra's movie.
Full review ↗TRM 7.2
Eye in the Sky is a suspenseful and timely, if simplistic, thriller, exploring the new methods of war. Hood builds up the tension while injecting dashes of humour, particularly through the characters of the British politicians and Alan Rickman's caustic Lieutenant General Frank Benson, who cannot remember which doll to buy his daughter but is completely clear on the rules of engagement.
Full review ↗TRM 7.0
The plot synopsis for Triple 9 barely stretches beyond a line – corrupt cops on the payroll of Russian mobsters. But director John Hillcoat (The Road, Lawless) packs the film with enough pulpy flavor and tension to transform the routine into something deep and perhaps even profound.
Full review ↗TRM 5.4
Even though The Program stays away from Armstrong's personal life, there is still far too much going on at any given point. However, the solid performances from Foster and the supporting cast steer the narrative.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
The clarity with which director Manoj Tiwari approaches his subject isn't always reflected in the overly busy plotting and the choppy narrative. Yet, the filmmaker makes his points adequately. People are willing to be herded like sheep. Politicians use trickster godmen for electoral gains. And all it takes to be a successful holy man is a wardrobe full of saffron and a talent for manipulation. Blind faith and cynicism take care of the rest.
Full review ↗TRM 4.7
Reshammiya's fans will appreciate the corny dialogue by Natasha Ramsay, the slow-motion action sequences in which our hero sends criminals flying through conveniently located glass panes, and his newly chiseled body. Whatever the view on Reshammiya and his unrelenting attempts to be regarded as an actor, there is no doubt that he is the biggest sport in Bollywood. Perhaps no other actor tries so hard to live up to the criticism, and succeeds every time.
Full review ↗TRM 3.5
The action too is definitely weaker in this sequel too, which comes across as a bit of a vanity project for producer and lead actor Butler, with skimpy support coming from Morgan Freeman, Angela Basset and Eckhart. Though Butler and Eckhart share an easy chemistry, the plot is too contrived for the proceedings to be convincing. The spectacle of the White House exploding has the hint of awe to it, but the poor computer graphics in the sequel do not evoke any horror as Westminster Abbey and Chelsea Bridge are blown up.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8
Andrew Haigh's marital drama features superb performances by Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay...
Full review ↗TRM 6.6
TRM 6.6
BN Singh's solutions are ultimately no different – and certainly less watchable – than the average vigilante flick. Singh ultimately emerges as a more serious and sorrowful Chulbul Pandey, and all Jai Gangaajal needed was a shirt-baring moment to complete the fantasy of justice delivered off the books and in slow motion.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8
Alejandro G Inarittu's surival epic features superlative cinematography by Emanuel Lubezki and a deeply committed performance by Leonardo DiCaprio.
Full review ↗TRM 7.1
Alex Proyas's Gods of Egypt is a deeply stylish and deeply hollow fantasy adventure in which it is hoped that the spectacular visual effects will blind audiences to the absence of a credible storyline.
Full review ↗TRM 5.0
The movie is most powerful as a miniature about a man who prefers the comforts of the shadows rather than the glare of the spotlight. Mehta and Asrani put forth the message of the personal as political with as much restraint as is possible in a mainstream movie. Deepu draws the introverted professor out of his self-imposed prison and seems to be able to restore some of his trampled-upon dignity. There are some benefits to being forcibly outed. Siras recites his poetry at a gathering, shyly accepts the applause, and, for the first time in days, feels better about himself. It's one of the movie's most affecting scenes and Bajpayee's finest moment.
Full review ↗TRM 7.3
Abhishek Sharma's sequel to his 2010 sleeper hit tries very hard to squeeze humour out of a contrived plot.
Full review ↗TRM 4.4
Ram Madhvani's biopic on air hostess Neerja Bhanot is a lump-in-the-throat account of courage under fire.
Full review ↗TRM 7.6
Spotlight doesn't set up false binaries between print and new media, nor does it treat its reporters as superheroes with notebooks. McCarthy's no-frills approach and classic shot and reverse-shot storytelling often nudges Spotlight into the television movie zone, but there is no mistaking what is at work here: the good fight to tell a story the way it needs to be told.
Full review ↗TRM 7.7
The episodic screenplay barely hangs together, and many of the characters are poorly fleshed out. But the performances are strong, particularly by Johnson, Mann and Wilson, some of the observations on the battle of the sexes are acute, and the intimate camerawork brings us closer to the characters, particularly Alice, than we usually would.
Full review ↗TRM 5.4
Fitoor's plot has no central motor to power it through its twists and turns, and no discernible big idea to replace the critique of privilege and entitlement. Despite being residents of one of the country's most politically volatile states, the characters are largely bereft of ideology.
Full review ↗TRM 5.0
The answer to whether this prophecy is fulfilled is delivered after a torturous journey that involves Akash's workplace tensions, a yoga camp in Alberta in Canada, and many songs in which Samrat sheds his shirt in an imitation of his self-declared hero, Salman Khan. Despite numerous plot twists, the two-hour duration feels as stretched as Samrat's movie star ambitions. Every now and then, a song that might be better viewed on YouTube shows up to relieve the tedium.
Full review ↗TRM 3.7
'Ghayal Once Again' proves that some old wounds don't heal well The sequel can't dislodge memories of the original, but the action is spectacular.
Full review ↗TRM 4.7
TRM 7.6
Saala Khadoos packs in many issues that affect female Indian athletes – poor sporting infrastructure, indifferent and corrupt government officials, and sexual harassment by coaches, selectors and administrators. The movie seeks to warn young women of the perils that could befall them if they lay themselves bare for the glory of the game and the nation. It doesn't exactly seem to be the appropriate place to suggest that it is perfectly alright for a young boxer to fall in love with a coach who is twice her age, but Saala Khadoos goes right ahead and does just that.
Full review ↗TRM 5.4
The movie's general disgust with the idea of gay sex proves that for all its outrageousness, Mastizaade is as tame as they come. The jokes are weak, while Zaveri's taste for zany puns has soured. The filmmaker's ability to find sexual innuendo in everyday situations and objects is truly staggering.
Full review ↗TRM 2.3
Those unfamiliar with the comics may just find some of the relentless action and the new track of a Roman child amusing enough. But die-hard fans will rage at the rewrites to the story, the pedestrian dialogue and childish gags. Like Caesar's efforts to conquer Gaul, the attempt to tame Asterix for the screen has proved futile yet again.
Full review ↗TRM 5.3
TRM 7.0
TRM 6.0
The joy in this 124-minute drama comes from watching the fabulously chosen cast play off each other. Joy shares with Russell's previous feature, American Hustle, a loose and improvisational quality and a light-headed and slightly manic approach to storytelling.
Full review ↗TRM 5.7
Hooper's movie is far too ironed-out to adequately explore the creases and rips of the relationship. The Danish Girl proves that mainstream filmmakers are more receptive than before to tackling tricky subjects such as trans identity and the fluid boundaries between genders, but the movie also sets out the limits of this depiction.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
Tarantino is an ace at using a repetitive question-and-answer format to build up menace and tension, but both qualities are in short supply in The Hateful Eight. Mistrust is spelled out loud and clear rather than felt, and when the bullets start to fly, the movie becomes a familiar bloodbath that is played for both shocks and laughs.
Full review ↗TRM 6.5
Folded into the mess is a heartfelt message reminding viewers that teachers should not be taken for granted and should be accorded the respect and dignity they deserve. But the movie is too overwritten, shoddily produced and amateurishly performed to make its point convincingly. Of the cast, all of whom have been directed to act as broadly as possible, only Azmi makes a mark. The film's report card: an A for effort, but with marks cut for general incompetence.
Full review ↗TRM 4.2
Sharp viewers will guess the conclusion much before it comes. Yet, Wazir remains watchable even at its eyeball-rolling best.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
If Chauranga's world feels doubly familiar, it's because this combination of elements has already been presented by Nagraj Manjule's Marathi movie Fandry in 2013. Even though Chauranga has been in the making for longer than Manjule's debut, Fandry beat Mishra to it, and for those who have watched both films, Chauranga feels like a milder and less adventurous cousin.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
...is overstretched even at just 107 minutes, but it packs in enough of a cutting critique of electioneering chicanery. However, the salutary message that spin, rather than politics, is the villain, is unearned. The Hollywood-mandated happy ending is drenched in an idealism that isn't evident in the rest of the narrative.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
The original Point Break featured a cornball romance between Keanu Reeves's Utah and the spiky-haired Lori Petty, and there is a token female in the new movie too, but the real sparks fly between Bodhi and Utah as they test the limits of endurance and their trust for each other. The movie flounders when it's not in mid-flight, and the absence of memorable dialogue or sexiness, both of which were plentiful in Bigelow's film, means that we can't wait for Bodhi and his band of hirsute seekers to gather at the edge of something – a cliff, a rockface, the ocean – and defy the laws of nature. Every time they get back to earth, the pointlessness of this remake reaches breaking point.
Full review ↗TRM 4.8
The Khan-Kajol pairing proves that the stars still have what it takes to set the screen alight, and they are more combustible together than Dhawan and Sanon, but their romance is tired and trite. The movie works best when it stays within the Golmaal zone, and Farhad-Sajid's WhatsApp-level humour keeps the eyelids from meeting ever so often.
Full review ↗TRM 5.1
... sumptuous retelling of the legend is strong on romance but weak on statecraft.
Full review ↗TRM 6.7
After some dubious-looking computer-generated backdrops in the opening scenes set in Nantucket, the special effects team kicks into gear once the Essex enters the water. The battle between the whale and the humans has the unfortunate effect of creating empathy for the mammal, which appears rightfully outraged at the repeated attacks on members of its pod. After the mammal has done its work, the story floats as aimlessly as the castaways, counting down to the inevitable return home. The cast performs efficiently, but they are dwarfed in every way possible by Moby Dick's inspiration.
Full review ↗TRM 6.4
Ruhil makes a fine weasly villain, who is using Kajarya for his own ends, and the movie has its share of corpulent police officers and cold-hearted editors. It's a grim watch, but then female foeticide is never easy to confront.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
The focus on the inner world of the Krays and their cohorts excludes any awareness of what else was going on in London at that point, but as a platform for the talented cast, especially Hardy, the movie works just fine. Helgeland's screenplay is packed with sharp one-liners and repartee, including Ronnie's observation that he is a "giver and not a receiver" when he is describing the kind of gay man he is, and Thewlis's resigned comment that the gang needs "a public relations department and we have Joseph Goebbels".
Full review ↗TRM 5.6
Though the movie has been shot in a fashionably jittery, hand-held style, and the overlapping conversations and rapid-fire editing suggest momentum and purpose, the 120-minute running time is a stretch. Since the movie has saddled each of its female characters with a Problem, it feels duty-bound to address every one of them. The conceit of being a non-formulaic movie that examines Indian social problems in a realistic manner blows up in the preposterous climax, which faithfully follows the scripting rule book that a gun in the first scene must be fired by the end.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
There simply isn't enough here for 131 minutes. Sharman Joshi looks pained throughout at the prospect of having to profess undying love for Zarine Khan, deal with Daisy Shah's incompetence, and pretend that Grover is a dastardly villain.
Full review ↗TRM 3.8
In keeping with one of the many boxing movie traditions invoked by that Creed, a full-throated yes follows a half-hearted no.
Full review ↗TRM 6.5
The movies have measured out their moments of grace and levity in tea spoons. This has been the rare franchise without false hope and easy short-cuts. The soft-focus closing frames in a film whose favourite colour is grey suggest an ending that is unearned, and the relationship between Katnis and Peeta remains frustratingly underdeveloped.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
At 151 minutes (the filmmakers seem to have used every single shot canned), only a handful of scenes stand out. Kapoor and Padukone are perfectly paired, and Ali brings out their chemistry in many tender moments.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
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.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1
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.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
11 filmmakers contributing to a single theme in 'X Past is Present' make one big mess...
Full review ↗TRM 4.4
This is a movie that aspires to be about the mini-empires that exist within—and often work against—the Indian republic, but it scuttles its own ambitions midway through. It becomes yet another movie about twins separated by circumstance and brought together by Hindi cinema.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
...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.
Full review ↗TRM 5.1
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.
Full review ↗TRM 5.6
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.
Full review ↗TRM 4.2
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.
Full review ↗TRM 5.4
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.
Full review ↗TRM 7.5
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.
Full review ↗TRM 3.9
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.
Full review ↗TRM 4.7
The insipid writing, functional performances by an ensemble cast that includes Satish Kaushik, Kitu Gidwani and Parmeet Sethi, and contrived emotions add up into a stale serving of a cinematic sub-category that has run its course.
Full review ↗TRM 2.9
In Denis Villeneuve's Sicario (Mexican slang for hitman), Del Toro plays Escobar's ghost. Taylor Sheridan's screenplay tries to imagine what it would be like if Escobar re-entered a game whose power centre has moved to the borders of the US. What might the Colombian, who died in a shootout in 1993, and whose Medellin cartel self-destructed soon after, make of the levels of brutality in Mexico that exceed the imaginations of the most lurid-minded scriptwriters?
Full review ↗TRM 6.6
Sanjay Gupta's remake of a Korean hit is designed as a comeback vehicle for Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, but Irrfan holds sway all the way. The movie loses momentum after the interval and the contradictions pile up as in a train wreck, but there is always a scorchingly lit corner in a never before-seen shade of yellow or green to gaze upon.
Full review ↗TRM 5.6
Talvar makes an elegant and convincing case for the Talwars, but it ignores one of the biggest factors behind their conviction. A separate, cautionary tale can be spun on how news anchors in hot pursuit of ratings and tabloid-influenced editors stacked the odds against the couple. Avirook Sen's book Aarushi provides several instances of how unverified claims about the private lives of the Talwars created an unassailable image of the dentists as scheming and swinging monsters.
Full review ↗TRM 7.2
The latest movie from the director of Something's Gotta Give and It's Complicated has nothing to give and is most uncomplicated. The novelty factor of the premise of Nancy Meyers's The Intern and the casting wears off within the first hour. The rest of the running time is spent on padding up the potentially interesting but severely underdeveloped encounter between generations.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
...a throwback to the 1980s and '90s, when comedies featuring clandestinely bigamous and harried husbands were common enough to qualify as a sub-genre. In television star Kapil Sharma's big-screen debut, the stakes are doubled: his character Bholu has three wives, none of whom knows about each others and none of whom he particularly cares for, as well as a girlfriend he actually loves.
Full review ↗TRM 4.4
...the 128-minute takes its own sweet time to get around to whatever it wants to convey – which is, in its cheerfully nihilistic way, nothing. As six kidnappers hatch frequent plots to amass money in the canteen of the college where they are supposedly enrolled as students, the screenplay luxuriates in their insouciant banter and complete lack of urgency.
Full review ↗TRM 4.2
The killings are swift, brutal and plentiful, executed with a businesslike chill that hangs over the whole movie. Black Mass is a better adaptation of non-fiction books than most, but the experience is ultimately as cold as Bulger's heart.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
Everest takes us right to the top but is in such a hurry to get back to base camp that it ignores a question posed by travel journalist Jon Krakauer's character to the summiteers: why is scaling Mount Everest so important? The struggle between human will and the mountain's unbending nature is conveyed in the most basic and obvious terms. The movie shows us how the climbers reached the top, but isn't interested in understanding why some of them died.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
The humour misses its mark and the romantic entanglement rarely locks into place. This is a rom-com low on rom as well as com.
Full review ↗TRM 4.0
An ineffective remake of a 1983 box office hit mislabelled as a classic, Hero is yet another instance of the resilience of the ancient Indian tradition of nepotism.
Full review ↗TRM 3.9
The plodding pace, choppy editing and amateurish exposition are relieved by slick action sequences, suitably dressed-up foreign locations (including Beirut) and convincing production design. Every effort has been made to make sure that this delusion of vengeance looks as close to the real thing as possible, right down to the actors who play Headley and Hafiz Saeed. This is art imitating a fantasy about life, made with the hope that life will eventually catch up with art.
Full review ↗TRM 5.2
While the understated and naturalistic acting is a relief from the usual ostentation, Gour Hari Dastaan is sluggishly paced, and fails to convey the monumentality of the protagonist's mission. More thought has been expended on Rajiv's asides on the commercialisation of the media and the aforementioned castrating feminists than on injecting narrative momentum into Das's journey. In any case, his battle is half-won when he gains access to top officials. There is little left thereafter for Das – or the movie – to prove.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
If the Hindi remake, also called Drishyam, proves anything, it is that Joseph's movie, which borrows its central idea from the Japanese thriller The Devotion of Suspect X, is a hard act to follow. The Hindi Drishyam, directed by Nishikant Kamat, works just fine so long as it reproduces its original twisty quality, but it nevertheless suffers from miscasting and unnecessary scripting tweaks.
Full review ↗TRM 6.5
Peyton Reed's Ant-Man is, by the very nature of its subject, a smaller and consequently far more enjoyable enterprise. The 118-minute movie retains a cheerful and light comic-book tone throughout, with its highlight being a battle for supremacy waged on a Thomas toy engine set between two miniscule men in insect-themed suits.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
The proceedings are held together by McKellen's compelling performance and his deft switches between a spry 70-something and a precarious 93-year-old who looks back on his fame with amusement and regret. In one sequence, Holmes watches a film adaptation of the story that he is attempting to rewrite and concludes that the dramatisation is overdone.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
The understated and compelling 'Masaan' finds life and hope in the city of corpses. Directed by Neeraj Ghaywan and written by Varun Grover, this first-time feature has memorable performances and a sensitively observed account of decay and redemption.
Full review ↗TRM 7.7
'Bajrangi Bhaijaan' has two stars, neither of whom is called Salman or Kareena... The knee-high Harshaali Malhotra and the redoubtable Nawazuddin Siddiqui steal the show in Kabir Khan's seriocomic cross-border drama.
Full review ↗TRM 6.6
The yellow-coloured minions are among the most critic-proof animated characters ever created. Considered opinion and critical distance are useless defenses against the sight of even a single one of the mites with its wide eyes and goofy grin bobbing across the screen...It's sometimes aimless, often hilarious and always silly, everything you would expect the minions to be.
Full review ↗TRM 5.7
...is a triumph of size, scale and spectacle. SS Rajamouli's eye-popping period spectacle raises the bar for the Indian action movie by several notches. Every frame pulsates with the passion of a filmmaker openly staking his claim as the most adventurous soul travelling through mainstream cinema at the moment.
Full review ↗TRM 7.2
It's hard to shake off the feeling that we are inside the head of the average member of the Pixar approvals committee rather than a girl on the cusp of puberty. Pixar productions are always fun, but they are rarely profound despite their visible efforts, unlike French and Japanese animated films that do not try to be, and often predictable. That's why the one emotion missing in Riley's head is surprise.
Full review ↗TRM 7.5
The satire is seems confidently put across at first but then becomes illogical and unwieldy. Kapri is aiming for a tragicomedy about rural India, but some of his visuals are straight out of a horror movie.
Full review ↗TRM 3.9
Since ABCD 2 aims to be bigger than its predecessor and magnifies its spectacle to 3D proportions, it takes no chances. Apart from God, Vande Mataram is also invoked to help the Mumbai Stunners conquer hearts in Las Vegas. All that is missing from the rousing climax, in which all races and nationalities rise to applaud this Make in India moment, is a Swachh Bharat message.
Full review ↗TRM 5.4
Events move at a fast clip, the paleontology talk is kept to a minimum, the computer-generated effects are beautifully realised, and the characters perform their parts with the required efficiency. The raptors easily steal the show, especially in the sequence where they hurtle through the woods in pursuit of the Indominus rex, as ugly-cute as pit bulls.
Full review ↗TRM 6.1
Passionless and pathos-ridden 'Hamari Adhuri Kahani' struggles to show the love...
Full review ↗TRM 3.3
For all its efforts, Dil Dhadakne Do doesn't have one standout sequence that lays bare the nastiness that fester in some families. The Mehras are mildly troubled rather than seriously dysfunctional. They have one crucial scene together, inspired partly by The War of the Roses, when Kabir decides to end the lies once and for all. Like other such scenes, this one too suffers from the butter-knife treatment when it actually needed a razor.
Full review ↗TRM 6.3
TRM 5.0
Lots of sweet, not enough bitters, and one great Dimple...It's a they-are-crazy-but-not-dangerous giggle-fest, with as many repeat-worthy jokes in Goan English as there are cashew trees in the state. Since this is also India's European corner, the sun-blessed land of laidback, where time can stretch onto eternity or to the 105-minute duration of this movie, Finding Fanny never dares to disappoint.
Full review ↗TRM 6.8
The movie's sexist title suggests that she has masculine qualities of bravery and honour, but the best proof of her macho side is her indifferent relationship with her spouse. Not unlike the average Indian husband, Shivani prefers the company of others, in this case her co-workers, her orphaned niece, and a teenager, Pyari, who sells flowers at traffic signals. The abduction of this flower girl by a sex trafficking ring deeply upsets Shivani, who launches a personal crusade to save Pyari and whoever else might be in the room at that moment.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
A vigilante movie that smartly lands its punches and punch dialogue is well suited to provide unreal solutions to very real problems, but Shetty also wants to change the world, one car blow-up at a time. In between the runs-in with thugs and masked gun-men, there are pleas for a better tomorrow, candle-light vigils and speeches to the media to behave.
Full review ↗TRM 5.3
There is endless punning, a play on the names of actors (example: "I Rajini-can't believe it") and iconic Hindi movies, SMS forward-worthy jokes and the idea that a dog can get the better of humans. Junior's bored expression and lack of affection towards the two-legged creatures on the set is glaringly evident, but the rest of the cast has far more energy, sportingly submitting themselves to the pratfalls aimed at knee-high viewers and going along with the occasionally madcap plot twists.
Full review ↗TRM 4.0
The movie works best when it forays bravely into the tornado, conjuring up suitably awe-inspiring acts of devastation, and is at its most tedious when it tries to establish emotional connections with its characters, including Richard Amritage's suspiciously buff school vice-principal and Sarah Wayne Callies's anxious single mother and weather scientist.
Full review ↗TRM 5.4
Guardians of the Galaxy is the kind of movie that frequently sends up its own clichés, only to rescue them eventually and reassert the reasons we flock to such movies in the first place.
Full review ↗TRM 6.9
Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania is an extended, 134-minute review of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge by a debutant writer and director who has watched the film closely enough to have his own spin on it. Shashank Khaitan's film-making debut arrives 19 years after Aditya Chopra's blockbuster became the gold standard of screen romance, and he has the necessary distance from the source material to unpack the conservatism that beats loudly at the heart of the original movie.
Full review ↗TRM 6.0
The 121-minute movie harnesses the classic tropes of melodrama—coincidences, conflicts, the perfect resolution—to deliver a feel-good fairy tale of a remarkably mobile heroine who gets up and leaves whenever she feels like. The movie needed to have come with a "Don't try this at home but feel free to dream" disclaimer.
Full review ↗TRM 5.3
ay arrives to beauty only to unleash terror on it. Transformers 4 has many superbly executed set pieces, but its showcase is a pre-climactic sequence that makes excellent use of Hong Kong's architectural mix of tenements and high-rises. A Hong Kong Tourism Board hoarding gets tucked into one scene, but, as the saying goes, you need to let the right one in.
Full review ↗TRM 5.0
Sajid Khan has declared in every available forum that his movies are for audiences rather than critics (whatever that means). The same audiences booed his last offering, Himmatwala, out of the cinemas. If there is something to relish in Humshakals, it is the opportunity to sharpen weapons and words. It's been a while since there's been a movie this hatchet-worthy. For that, the team behind Humshakals needs eternal gratitude and continued support.
Full review ↗TRM 2.5
The first thing to be said about Grace of Monaco is that it is not as maul-worthy as it has been made out to be. The next thing to be said about Olivier Dahan's movie is that it isn't exactly noteworthy. The best thing that can be said about the 103-minute biopic is that it is always lovely looking, dressed to the hilt and bathed in the kind of lambent light dear to films about movie and actual royalty.
Full review ↗TRM 3.9
How to Train Your Dragon 2 has few surprises, enough predictable fun and a running time (106 minutes) that respects the scantiness of the material.
Full review ↗TRM 6.8
A.R. Murugadoss' entertainer displays greater fidelity to its source than did his Ghajini reboot, down to the bloated running length of 170 minutes. The situations are the same, the dialogue is translated verbatim and the heroine hasn't yet grown a brain, but the Hindi version misses out on the charisma of its leading man. Holiday's Akshay Kumar is a poor match for Tamil superstar Vijay, who has built a career out of supplanting average acting skills with practised insouciance.
Full review ↗TRM 5.1
Doug Liman's new movie Edge Of Tomorrow proves that despite the doomsday predictions of his detractors, time is always on Tom Cruise's side. The object of avoidable ridicule and the unavoidable effects of ageing in recent years is nothing but unputdownable, which is just what he needs to be in this heavily weaponized version of Groundhog Day.
Full review ↗TRM 6.7
Kuku Mathur Ki Jhand Ho Gayi has many rough edges, patches of amateurish staging and acting, misguided attempts at humour, and an ear-splitting and disposable Amar Mohile background score, but it is also good-natured, warm-hearted, and finely observed. Its characters seem right at home in the Subhash Nagar, west Delhi, location in which the movie plays out.
Full review ↗TRM 4.6
The reboot's real interest is in conjuring up a tender relationship between a fairy, a princess and a crow, with enough twists to save a well-worn fairy tale from the curse of overuse.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
More comfortable with action than words (the dubbed English version, done in India, is another source of unintentional mirth), he focuses his energies on delivering the daddy of all action spectacles. Would anybody else dare to come close to his achievements—or would anybody else bother? Once is quite enough.
Full review ↗TRM 6.0
Several leading men before Shroff have boosted their careers by building up body mass and appearing in movies with plots as profound as a gym manual, but they were fortunate enough to have a smart screenplay, crackling dialogue writers and a popular soundtrack. All of the above are absent in Heropanti, resulting in a 146-minute tour of incompetence.
Full review ↗TRM 4.2
Mutant maniacs might just enjoy the significance of such knowing lines as "It's good to see everyone" and "You and I have a lot of catching up to do". Mutant agonistics might just feel like uninvited guests.
Full review ↗TRM 6.6
The Xposé's cheerfully chintzy look and feel, the lack of interest in period detail, the wispy plot, and endless shots of a pensive Reshammiya walking down a Paris avenue, gazing moony-eyed at Zara's rival Chandni (Afroz), dominating the shooting of an under-production movie, and yanking every other character's strings this way and that add up to an ambitious vanity project that holds appeal only to other members of the singer's treasure hunt. Full marks for trying, but none for refusing to give up.
Full review ↗TRM 3.9
Strikingly shot by Seamus McGarvey to maximize the movie's Imax potential (it's hard to imagine the scale and depth of the gritty visuals on anything smaller), Godzilla demands, and often achieves, a sense of awe.
Full review ↗TRM 6.4
For a movie whose conclusion is foregone, whose treatment is literal-minded, and whose message is sloppily assembled and delivered, Varma does throw up some surprises. He effectively captures the ordinariness of the milieu that produces Manjunath, and extracts solid performances from his cast. However, the director is less sure-footed about the larger issues thrown up by Manjunath's death.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
There are only moments of the frisson that characterises humankind's fascination with the verboten, conveyed more through Mastram's language than the visuals of open-mouthed women waiting to spill out of their clothes at the slightest provocation.
Full review ↗TRM 4.5
ven at this modest running length, Kya Dilli Kya Lahore feels stretched and half-baked, less of a big-screen experience and better suited to an intimate stage production. The accusations and counter-accusations traded by Samarth and Rehmat—much of it in un-subtitled Punjabi—aren't particularly insightful about the intractable problems plaguing both nations, while the overwhelming sense of nostalgia for an undivided India doesn't do the Pakistanis justice.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
Revolver Rani has a bit too much going on at any given point, but it is cast well and has an interesting set of actors who give the material much-needed heft. Vir Das makes a convincing foil to Alka's brusqueness, balancing the comedy of his daily tortures that result from Alka's blinkered love with the tragedy of his pawn status.
Full review ↗TRM 5.6
The movie feels a few decades old despite moments and ideas stolen from Guy Ritchie's anachronism-packed Sherlock Holmes films and the popular British series Sherlock.
Full review ↗TRM 3.0
For a movie that asks birds in particular and nature in general to be left alone, Saldanha can't resist anthropomorphising the creatures to the extent that they sound and behave an awful lot like humans. Perhaps this franchise needs to be more bird-brained than it is at the moment.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
The overly busy screenplay, which clocks at 155 minutes, is packed with so many ideas that it unfolds at the pace of a multi-phase election. A documentary montage of poor Indians is one of many heavy-handed gestures in a movie that could have benefitted without them.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
As if to compensate, there are ample displays of Varun's sculpted body, his fighting skills, his dancing abilities, and his general heroism. The title says it all.
Full review ↗TRM 5.5
As city films and portraits of ordinary people taking a step towards an extraordinary light go, Aankhon Dekhi is an enjoyable confection, delivered by an ensemble cast, especially Sarao as Bauji's daughter and the ever-dependable Brijendra Kala as his partner in crime, that brings immense energy and vitality to the show.
Full review ↗TRM 6.7
Of all the tributes to Sampat Pal's debatable feminist politics, this one is the narrowest, and the silliest.
Full review ↗TRM 4.5
With more thunder thighs than in a Silk Smitha retrospective, 300's sequel displays yet again the perils of pitting bare-chested fighters against a cavalry of archers. More clothes could do the trick in the inevitable sequel, in which The Man with the Golden Underwear will be given more to do than just distract audiences from the unrelenting carnage.
Full review ↗TRM 5.9
It's only when the monuments men realize that the Nazis have stashed away the art in various mines that the movie belatedly gets going. The fact that Oscar-nominated cinematographer Phedon Papamichael doesn't deliver a single artistically composed and lit frame to showcase the fabulous paintings being saved, tells you everything you need to know about this shadow of a sketch of the impact of war on art.
Full review ↗TRM 5.1
...well-judged performances, richly atmospheric cinematography, attractive production design, and further proof that advances in computer-generated imagery tend to make human beings redundant. A good-looking muddle about men, machines and money
Full review ↗TRM 5.0
Like most films of its type, Lone Survivor works fine as long as its characters maintain their fingers on the trigger and keep the armaments industry in the black. It's when they stop firing and start looking around them that the overall lack of geopolitical sensitivity becomes painfully apparent.
Full review ↗TRM 6.7
Of all the genres that Bhagat dips into for the mish-mash that is One By Two, the gross-out American comedy was an ill-advised choice.
Full review ↗TRM 3.5
What we get from Jai Ho the movie: Salman Khan saves his family honour and, by extension, the honour of the nation, in slow motion, single-handedly dispenses a battalion of baddies, rattles off repeat-value dialogue, romances a freshly excavated young female whom we might never see on screen again, divests himself of his upper garment and wriggles his bottom.
Full review ↗TRM 5.2
Every nation wants a biopic that reminds it of a time when it produced great souls. Accordingly, Mandela is drenched in nobility. Given the difficulties that Mandela and his fellow South Africans have endured, it's possible to ignore the two-hanky sentimentality, soaring finale and the experience of a half-done portrait that's waiting for a more clear-eyed artist.
Full review ↗TRM 5.8
Indeed, the entire experience, in which visual and sound are inseparable, is designed to satirise the very small-town nostalgia that is the movie's most accessible legacy. Om-Dar-Ba-Dar is the original vernacular spectacle that has been endlessly imitated by advertising, music video and popular cinema.
Full review ↗TRM 6.2
Made solely to keep costume designers, prop suppliers and computer effects providers orphaned after the wrap of Ridley Scott's Gladiator gainfully employed, The Legend of Hercules reduces the torturous life story of its storied Greek hero to a few, easily comprehensible words.
Full review ↗TRM 3.6
It's a zeitgeist film, of course, given all that has happened on Wall Street and the rest of the world in recent times, but it's also a study of addiction, to money, drugs, sex and the kind of outré hedonism that now seems outright obscene. The movie doesn't have a single totemic image that captures the obscene wealth and privilege on display—there is no Antilla, no Scarface cocaine bath. Rather, the parade of outrageousness continues from the beginning to the end, dominated by DiCaprio's smarmy visage that suggests a Gatsby gone irredeemably rogue and transformed into a coked-out raging bull.
Full review ↗TRM 7.1
Khan, who was billed as one of the big draws of the latest Dhoom, turns out to be one of its biggest liabilities. Pushing his body to the limit but limiting his facial movements, Khan sets himself up for a year's worth of supply of parody through attempts to convey determination and purpose by knitting his brows together.
Full review ↗TRM 6.0
The never-ending turn of events is eventually as tiresome as a junk food binge, but the colours, shapes and inventive fruits and vegetables are truly ravishing, and some of them stake their claim to Minion-level cuteness.
Full review ↗TRM 5.1
Rebellion and revolt don't often fly off the franchise shelf, but here is Katniss Everdeen in part deux of the post-apocalyptic fantasy action drama The Hunger Games, having an Arab Spring moment and landing an arrow or two in the name of liberty.
Full review ↗TRM 7.0
Last Vegas is the outcome of Hollywood's admirable ability to create roles and movies for its older talent and address the needs of the wrinkled but moneyed section of the audience. The adventure of four childhood friends, who reunite when one of them finally decides to end his bachelor days, is filled with references to pill organizers, hip surgeries, and the advent of death.
Full review ↗TRM 5.2
Rajjo claims to be a sensitive examination of the social discrimination faced by prostitutes, but writer and director Vishwas Patil's feminism can be measured by the depth of lead performer Kangana Ranaut's cleavage.
Full review ↗TRM 2.7
Satya 2 does have academic value, as a study of a director's systematic attempts to demolish his legacy and bury one of his most enduring creations—the Man With No Background who represented the dreams and nightmares of Mumbai in the 1990s.
Full review ↗TRM 3.1
The only bold move in an otherwise smug, by-the-numbers movie is the absence of a romantic interest for Boss. Akshay Kumar's XXL-sized comic timing serves him well in some of the action comedy sequences, but fitness levels can never replace genuine acting skills. The rest of the cast picks up their paycheques, and only Ronit Roy seems to be making an effort to be serious amidst the clowning.
Full review ↗TRM 4.9
Captain Phillips begins in a routine way and concludes in a Best Actor Oscar bid, but the opening and climax bookend an often heart-stopping battle of wills between a ship cargo crew and four daredevil pirates.
Full review ↗TRM 7.0
German filmmaker Oliver Hirschbiegel's biopic Diana takes the basic facts of the British royal's post-divorce years, puts them through the dry-cleaner and then whips them on the washing stone to make sure that no blemishes or stains survive.
Full review ↗TRM 4.1
When it's not trying to jolt audiences out of the stupor they are likely to slide into, Besharam turns over every cliché from the Big Black Book of Hindi Movie Plots section that lists "Robin Hood-inspired Thief Takes Good Turn After Heart is Stolen."
Full review ↗TRM 4.0
