Rush has the bone though not enough meat to make for a juicy fare on the excesses of television journalism. It leaves you wondering what director Shamin Desai would have done with his film making career had he lived.

While the film contains a collage of competently calibrated performances by some brilliant actors like Chetan Pandit, who was last seen as an idealistic schoolteacher in “Agneepath”, here slips into a cheesy cop’s role and debutante Anjali Patil leaves the best impression among the supporting cast. A truly worthy successor to the holder of that never-forgotten actress with the same title (Smita).

What makes Chittagong particularly special is the way it depicts heroism not as muscle-flexing, chest-thumping, rhetoric-driven bravado (as in standard ‘war’ films) but simply as audacious acts of defiance by ordinary people in the face of grave risk and the prospect of inevitable failure.

Barfi! comes as close to being a modern masterpiece as cinematically possible. To miss it would be a crime. To embrace it is to serenade the sublime.

Barfi! celebrates life without dismissing the dark passages and roadblocks that we often encounter as we travel through that craggy road to death.To be able to celebrate life so warmly and sensitively the filmmaker has to know death closely. Basu, a concer survivor, has been there.Barfi! comes as close to being a modern masterpiece as cinematically possible. To miss it would be a crime. To embrace it is to serenade the sublime.

Department tells a virile story with no patience for sappy humbug. It’s not meant for those who think lovers laughing their way into death, as they did in Ishaqzaade, are the last words in ruinous relationships.

If in The Dirty Picture, Vidya Balan wore her sexuality on her sleeve, in Hate Story, Paoli uses her sexuality like a favoured currency in the stock market. Hate Story pushes the envelope so hard, all the contents spill out in a torrential tumble of tantalising power-play set within the world of corporate battles and gender conflicts.This is a most riveting and aesthetic saga of a woman’s revenge against the man who’s wronged her since RK Nayyar’s Inteqaam – except for the fact that Paoli does things Sadhana in Nayyar’s film could have never imagined.

Large-hearted and generously endowed with moments that you take away with you from the film even as John Abraham comes on screen for an irrelevant song and dance item, the film is the surprise entertainer of the year. It is the warmest, funniest most sensible and sparkling comedy in a very long time. In Shoojit Sircar’s vision every single actor shines with a glorious naturalness. Ayushmann is effortlessly the discovery of the year.

The sheer relief of watching a gifted new actor play, for a change, a good hearted, idealistic hero who sets off to make blue films and ends up sorting out problems between couples, is enough to make us not wince at the jagged edges which stick out here, there and everywhere in the narration.Bittoo Boss is filled with some genuinely endearing moments where the protagonist comes close to losing his stubborn values but retrieves them just in time.This film is an uneven but likeable experience held together by the debutant Pulkit’s performance. He’s undoubtedly a star in the making.

Agent Vinod is not quite the overwhelming experience that you would want a global espionage thriller to be. More thoughtful than thundering, more la Carre and less Bond it nonetheless take the spy genre in Hindi to a new level of finesse. Finally, the cool quotient in Raghavan’s chic spin on the espionage thriller is so high that you forget Bond and all his bloody brothers.