Shubhra Gupta
Top CriticIndian Express·KoiMoi
Shubhra Gupta is a very well-know film critic and a senior columnist at "The Indian Express". In 2012, she won the Ramnath Goenka award, one of India's most prestigious awards, for Best Writing on Film.
Most Divergent Takes
- Housefull 3 (2016)0.0 vs TRM 4.4-4.4
- Poster Boys (2017)1.0 vs TRM 5.2-4.2
- The Accidental Prime Minister (2019)0.0 vs TRM 4.1-4.1
- Bhaiaji Superhit (2018)0.0 vs TRM 4.1-4.1
- Hero (2015)0.0 vs TRM 4.0-4.0
Mercy
2026 · Indian Express
The execution is so confused and dull that we lose interest in the human sitting in that deadly chair much too soon, and by the time the kicker kicks in, we are supremely unbothered by how things actually went down. The story-telling is flat; so is everyone on screen.
Bharat Bhhagya Viddhaata
2026 · Indian Express
Kangana Ranaut reclaims her place as one of the best actresses working today, even while ensuring that her Nurse Geeta doesn't overshadow everyone else.
Governor
2026 · Indian Express
As befits propaganda films in the same vein as The Accidental Prime Minister, the story-telling is as basic as it can get.
Ikkis
2026 · Indian Express
Ikkis is a war film which makes you feel in a way that movies these days are not either able to or want to. Rather than just a straight-up war film about a young man's exemplary courage, Ikkis is also an exploration of the harrowing fallout of conflict. This is as anti-Dhurandhar a film as you can hope to watch in theatres this year.
Tu Yaa Main
2026 · Indian Express
Much of the first half feels like we've seen it before, and Shanaya Kapoor faces the real danger – even more dangerous than scaly reptiles – of being typecast into 'a rich girl running away from her problems'. The rest is eye-glaze. My tip: Skip the first half, and check into this survival drama just in time for the crocs and the chaos in order to clutch your Valentine. If you feel the need to.
Accused
2026 · Indian Express
The writing offers us little depth, and that's where this film, which had the potential to be a humdinger, falls flat. There's so little passion between Sensharma and Rannta that you wonder what made them get together in the first place; what little we see is so chaste as to be non-existent.
Kartavya
2026 · Indian Express
Despite heavyweights like Saif Ali Khan, Rasika Duggal and Sanjay Mishra in the Netflix film, it comes undone due to lazy, formulaic writing. The cop jeep with the menacing blue-and-red lights flashing on its roof has more character than any human in the film.
Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos
2026 · Indian Express
The trouble with so many ideas jostling in the film is that very little gets to breathe. Just as something is about to settle in, off it darts in another direction. The result is a film running around in circles, in search of itself, where the silliness mostly doesn't land.
Border 2
2026 · Indian Express
Border 2 holds on to the soul and spirit of the original, while giving us a much bigger canvas, showing conflict not just on land and air, but also water. In most parts, the film keeps you with it, and the others keep the flag flying high. I was moved to tears in many places.
Mardaani 3
2026 · Indian Express
Rani Mukerji is a solid actor, and we go along with her as she leads from the front, with everyone else following in her rear. But even she can't do much with the degree of over-writing and predictable plot-points: when a character says aap rath chalao, aur mujhe saarthi banne do, or words to that effect, we know exactly where this is going, just as we do when too-good-to-be-true characters crop up.
O'Romeo
2026 · Indian Express
The thing with building your scaffold on style and swag is that you end up skating on thin substance, and this reunion of Bharadwaj with Shahid Kapoor...is left swinging between highs and lows. Yes, it's more sure-footed than Bharadwaj's recent slate — Kuttey, Fursat, Charlie Chopra — but I want the Bharadwaj who gave us the marvellous Maqbool and the kinetic Kaminey, back.
Do Deewane Seher Mein
2026 · Indian Express
Do Deewane is just not deewana enough. When will we have our own Madly, Deeply, or is that too much to ask from sanskritik Bollywood which can't even name body-parts now?
Toaster
2026 · Indian Express
For a film like this to work, you need zippy writing, full of smart gags. In this Rajkummar Rao-Sanya Malhotra-starrer, so little lands that it's deeply depressing: you are left scraping off burnt toast.
Maa Behen
2026 · Indian Express
Maa Behen, bearing a title which cheekily wants to subvert that familiar invective prevalent in much of North India, in whose fictional town this film is set, gets lost in flabby, confused writing. So many ideas jostling for space, but so few landing: hard to believe that this comes from the director of Tumhari Sullu and Jalsa. Sadly, Maa Behen is not that film.
Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai
2026 · Indian Express
What worked for a flagrantly politically incorrect time when the team of David Dhawan- Govinda-Kader Khan-Shakti Kapoor skilfully skated through the thin ice of vulgarity and hilarity comes off as plain cringe now. Just like the plot, the laughs are wafer-thin.
Main Vaapas Aaunga
2026 · Indian Express
This film doesn't belong to Diljit Dosanjh, but to Naseeruddin Shah's superbly-judged performance, high-pitched yet never quite tipping into grating melodrama.
Welcome to the Jungle
2026 · Indian Express
I don't have any problem with dimaag occasionally being turned into dahi when I'm at such movies, because that's the ask. Just don't bore me.
Minions & Monsters
2026 · Indian Express
Fun quotient gets buried in chaotic prequel. The film is at its most scattered when they set out doing just that.
Satluj
2026 · Indian Express
This is a clear win for filmmakers who want to tell the story of an actual person, time and place, with unwavering conviction.
Baby Do Die Do
2026 · Indian Express
Huma Qureshi film fully commits to this Sion-via-Seoul aesthetic as no punches are pulled, and the pace rarely flags.
Alpha
2026 · Indian Express
A spy film so dull, Alia Bhatt-Sharvari-Hrithik Roshan can't rescue it. Alia Bhatt-Sharvari enter YRF spy universe in a formulaic and stale film that can't be rescued by Hrithik Roshan's John Wick-inspired cameo.
Minions & Monsters
2026
Anyone familiar with the franchise will know that the thing with the minions is that they are always looking for the Most Evil Person In The Universe to take orders from. And this film is at its most scattered when they set out doing just that.
Dhurandhar: The Revenge
2026 · Indian Express
Ranveer Singh keeps us looking, all through the plodding first half of Aditya Dhar film, and in the slightly-more speeded up post-interval section, but you miss Akshaye Khanna's stylish Rehman Dakait.
Bhooth Bangla
2026 · Indian Express
Aren't we done and dusted with women bending over in revealing cleavages, risible sequences, sexually obvious jokes? Clearly not. This combo is a dated ungainly mess, more horror less comedy, which only starts coming together well into the second half, but by then it's too little, too late.
Deva
2025 · Indian Express
Shahid Kapoor cannot get past that, getting stuck in a flat, stylised delivery, for the most part. There are at least a couple of instances when Shahid Kapoor does come alive, reminding us of the actor that he can be, but you wish there were more of these, rather than the loose threads and the long slack-blah stretches which make you feel every minute of its nearly two-and-a-half hour length.
Raat Akeli Hai - The Bansal Murders
2025 · Indian Express
More gore, less grip in Nawazuddin Siddiqui's second coming as small-town cop. The best written character remains Nawazuddin Siddiqui's Jatil, still moving his mouth in the way he did in the first film, as the moral centre of the film.
The Voice of Hind Rajab
2025 · Indian Express
The film lasts 89 minutes. What it leaves us with is the anger and guilt of a lifetime, as we experience each minute being lost in the face of bureaucratic apathy and growing danger.
Raat Akeli Hai - The Bansal Murders
2025 · Indian Express
A few of the bits and pieces feel a bit contrived, but not enough to take the enjoyment away from a film which has a terrific sense of time and place, and a crime in which everyone has stakes.
Dhadak 2
2025 · Indian Express
This is a film which is clearly on the right side of many of the hot button issues we need to be pressing: casteism, classism, feminism, gender identities. Even though the film is never as searing as it could have been, it is miles ahead of the original 'Dhadak', and it is still important and timely, and as political as a mainstream film is allowed to be in these times.
Maa
2025 · Indian Express
This is a film which is clearly well-intentioned. Smashing patriarchy is a task that films need to keep taking up, and Kajol has the heft to get the job done. But the writing is bland, and there's nothing new in the CGI which is extensively used. The film itself falters in the way it keeps its first half loose, and the second half muddled.
Test
2025 · Indian Express
This convoluted and disappointing film has little to offer. Nayanthara, clad in the most gorgeous saris, comes off better than the others, but that's not compensation enough in this disappointing film, which does scant justice to some of the most talented actors in the Tamil film industry.
Sikandar
2025 · Indian Express
In 'Sikandar', both the director and the star flounder spectacularly, failing to give us anything we haven't seen before. You can't see any of that in this lacklustre, dull offering, fronted by a distinctly uninterested and uninvolved Salman. In this iteration, I was bored out of my skull.
The Diplomat
2025 · Indian Express
It would have been tempting to drown this film in bigotry. But the Pakistan-bashing—of course there is some—stays low-key, the characters who play the vicious tribals amongst whom Uzma is trapped balanced by those who are able to see reason.
Dhoom Dhaam
2025 · Indian Express
The trouble with skimming tropes is that your film, even with a fresh pairing, and despite a few flourishes, ends up more or less trope-y. If this were called 'Boom Baam', instead of 'Dhoom Dhaam', it would be same difference.
Superboys of Malegaon
2025 · Indian Express
The film brings Muslim characters back on our radar, breaking away from the tropes of evil terrorists and subservient sidekicks, and giving us those who own the story and drive the narrative. You wish there were more of these in this fresh iteration of Malegaon's once-were-supermen chapter whose filmi flourishes place it uneasily between fact and faction.
Raid 2
2025 · Indian Express
The film is wrapped in such a strong whiff of sameness that the first half comes off entirely superfluous. After a string of eye-glaze scenes in which Devgn and Deshmukh go at each other, you are left clutching at straws. So much dullness, so little fun.
Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh
2025 · Indian Express
Akshay Kumar plays Nair like an extension of his other recent roles. The film is a handsomely-mounted prestige picture that goes along its expected beats, without any surprises, unpacking a tragic chapter of our past with dollops of explanatory, patriotic fervour.
Jaat
2025 · Indian Express
Sacrificed at the altar of all that gruesome blood-letting and mutilated bodies hanging from the rafters and savaged women forced to huddle together is coherence and plot. We are left numb, unmoving, and desensitised in the dark.
Be Happy
2025 · Indian Express
The film, overall, suffers from that usual good premise-flat execution thing. Bachchan comes off more stolid here, essentially because the plot is more in service to the dancing and the competing, very reality show-like, than to showing us, in any kind of depth, the lives these characters live.
Chhaava
2025 · Indian Express
The ultra-loud, ultra-violent re-creation of a slice of the 17th century Hindustan is exhausting, with torture porn in the climax that reminds you of the systematic flaying of Jesus in 'The Passion of Christ,' ending in an exhausting blur. While Vicky Kaushal's total commitment to the titular character is noteworthy, the film's relentless violence and lack of narrative balance make it ultimately draining.
Fateh
2025 · Indian Express
Your tipping point in Sonu Sood's debut as a director depends upon how much sickening, relentless violence you can handle. After that, it all becomes an empty, exhausting blur.
Sky Force
2025 · Indian Express
The film, however, doesn't do enough justice to this tale of unwavering courage in the face of certain death. Right through, the effort at keeping Akshay's character front and centre skews the balance, with the plot bending over backwards to accommodate Ahuja's untiring efforts, while the brave pilot T Vijaya, who should rightfully have led this tale, consistently plays second fiddle.
Tere Ishk Mein
2025 · Indian Express
Tere Ishk Mein ends up being a totally outdated, confused, heavy-on-melodrama-and-glycerine mish-mash of genres that glorifies an 'aggressive, angry, alpha' man whose uncontrollable temper and toxicity make him nothing but the reddest of all red flags. In 2025, this film's attempt to shove down our throats the most toxic of male tropes—that what the male lover wants, the male lover will get—is deeply problematic and unbelievable.
Mastiii 4
2025 · Indian Express
What if, in the name of the first, there's just non-stop cringe and zero laughs? That's the sum and substance of Mastii 4. Nothing is spared in this charmless offensive: gay people, old people, married people, are all targeted.
Anaconda
2025 · Indian Express
This new version of one of Hollywood's most popular creature features is so desperate to pitch in the laughs along with the scares that it renders everything dull and diluted. Even the poor anaconda feels underwhelming, whenever it does get in a look-see.
Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri
2025 · Indian Express
The film is nothing but 2.5 hours of glossily vacuous tosh. Kartik and Ananya reunited after six years don't for a minute convince you as lovers who can't bear to part. Is this the best that mainstream Bollywood can come up with, for its clearly demarcated Gen Z audience?
Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat
2025 · Indian Express
Bollywood refuses to deep-six the deeply regressive misogynistic toxicity of the Darrs, Anjaams, Tere Naams: it keeps bringing it back, cementing the dangerous idea that one-sided obsession is a perfectly legitimate emotion, which can badger and bludgeon the nay-sayer into submission. Whatever happened to No means No?
Housefull 5
2025 · Indian Express
Compared to the previous Housefulls, this one has a slightly fuller house, but because no one expects anything else, it's pretty much like the older ones– characters tumbling over each other, crass jokes about body parts and fluids abound. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that it will all get over, everything does, right?
120 Bahadur
2025 · Indian Express
Farhan Akhtar plays Bhati with brio, leading his men into a 'jung' from where there was no coming back, and the result is a war film which brims with the action-and-emotion necessary for a Bollywood drama, but refuses to go under because of it. The 'vardi' and the 'valour' that demands that ultimate 'balidaan' brings a lump to the throat, and a tear to the eye.
The Running Man
2025 · Indian Express
Powell doesn't have the depth to dig deeper than he does; neither does the film. Soon enough, it becomes a drag, and stays that way.
Baramulla
2025 · Indian Express
The film unravels in the way it tries to mix its allegorical elements with inconsistent plot-points which include terrorists-from-sarhad-paar involved with 'farming' innocents: too much obviousness takes away from the delicacy of the rest of it. Finally, it is reduced to becoming a testament to wounds which are poked at and made to fester, with the much-required healing touch just a climactic throwaway.
Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari
2025 · Indian Express
Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari settles creakily back in the sangeet-sagaai-shaadi template awash with star-crossed lovers and their parivarik conflicts. In short, everything we've seen before, in multiple iterations, over the years, because that's literally all mainstream Bollywood rom coms seem capable of these days. In too many places, the spectacle is allowed to overpower the screenplay, which is too busy whipping up hit-film-referencing dialogues and situations to bother about creating real feeling.
Homebound
2025 · Indian Express
Neeraj Ghaywan's powerfully moving second feature reclaims the big screen for so many elements that mainstream Hindi cinema has either lost the mojo or the ability to address, or has pushed aside. The film is urgently, cracklingly contemporary, speaking of and to an India where the advantage of birth and religion has unfairly deprived a whole section of its citizens from benefits most of us take for granted.
Jolly LLB 3
2025 · Indian Express
In this one, the story-telling is at its most basic, and it is far and away the weakest part of the franchise. But this element is weighed down by the slow-paced skirmishes between the two Jollys, in a film which feels too long even as it begins.
Param Sundari
2025 · Indian Express
The film, however, doesn't allow its lovers a chance to do any heavy breathing. The limpid-eyed Janhvi tries hard with the Malayali accent, calling attention to the effort, and the chiselled Sidharth gets to flaunt his abs, but this isn't a film which gives its lovers a chance to do any heavy breathing.
Thamma
2025 · Indian Express
Ayushmann Khurrana, adorned on and off with a pair of pointy fangs, tries hard, but is never funny enough. Nor is Mandanna, whose thick kajal-sharp contour-cool bustier game is strong, but fails to raise any steam with her co-star. The writing veers towards set-pieces with ear-splitting background music, but is overall dull, which colours everything the cast does.
Inspector Zende
2025 · Indian Express
The attempt at a serio-comic tone falls flat with only an occasional leap or two, with the writing struggling to match the audacity of the criminal and the enterprise of his nemesis. Overall, neither Bajpayee's sturdy comfort with being Zende 'with an h' nor Sarbh's attempts at inhabiting the serial killer's skin leave the kind of impact that they should. It is patchy, as is the film.
Tehran
2025 · Indian Express
What Abraham, whose impassivity helps his character feel as real as it can when done with reel-drama, manages to pull off here is noteworthy. The plot, in trying to uncover the connections between the conspirators in Iran and Israel, does get confused and choppy in places.
Weapons
2025 · Indian Express
After a point, though, it all starts feeling empty: monsters without motives are no longer interesting, and the big reveal takes away the much-needed suspense. Where initially you couldn't move from the edge of your seat, the bloody fallout leaves you underwhelmed.
Nadaaniyan
2025 · Indian Express
This is a film which has been created by-and-for hashtags, with zero insights into the demographic it represents. The whole thing comes off as tone deaf, and offensive, in a plot that feels like a rehash of every Karan Johar rom com ever made, without his trademark sparkle.
Jewel Thief - The Heist Begins
2025 · Indian Express
This film is so lazily constructed that it doesn't even bother thinking of a new or even a new-ish title. It borrows the name from one of Hindi cinema's most iconic heist movies, and then proceeds to cobble together a plot in which every scene and sequence has been done to death, with twists you can see coming even before they start. He is trying for suave, but emits zero sparkle, just like the movie.
Stephen
2025 · Indian Express
What rescues Stephen, and brings it back to its initial sharpness, is the last act with all its revelatory strands. Smartly shot and enacted, the portion is chilling, just the way it ought to be in a film like this. For a film like this, then, to be able to predict what will happen much before its actually does, isn't the best look.
Haq
2025 · Indian Express
'Haq' does what it sets out to do with clear-eyed empathy, giving us an ordinary woman who found extraordinary strength and resilience to fight for her cause, and created, without ever quite realising it, history. The film could have gone horribly over-the-top, but Varma is steadfast in his intent, lacing his story-telling with welcome restraint.
War 2
2025 · Indian Express
War 2, the sixth instalment of the YRF Spy Universe, is nothing but a glossy snooze-fest. War 2, directed by Ayan Mukherji, is so limp that you are left looking for zing.
Son of Sardaar 2
2025 · Indian Express
What of Ajay Devgn, the hero who leads this enterprise which wants to be a laugh-a-minute, madcap caper, but keeps slackening? I love broad laughs and hare-brained comedies as much as the next person, but whatever happened to keeping it crisp and connected?
De De Pyaar De 2
2025 · Indian Express
R Madhavan's loving-dad-who-will-do-anything-to-protect-his-daughter is the real star of part 2. If only the film didn't resemble an extended sit-com, with a house where most of the action takes place not bothering to hide the fact that it is a set, the length making us restive.
Mahavatar Narsimha
2025 · Indian Express
Despite the size, the animation doesn't feel as sophisticated as it should, in 2025, especially since we've got so used to watching all those spiffy Marvel outings. The other problem is the antiquated way the characters are made to speak.
Saiyaara
2025 · Indian Express
What could have been a bitter-sweet love story, and that's what the Mohit Suri film is clearly going for, is done in by its dialogue-heavy, inconsistent bits.
Maalik
2025 · Indian Express
'Maalik' is too long, too dull, too by-the-numbers. The film is predictable to a fault – a new gangster drama with old beats is not the break-out that Rao must have been hoping for.
Sitaare Zameen Par
2025 · Indian Express
This film wouldn't have worked as well as it does if Aamir hadn't been fully committed to putting himself out there as a hero-who-is-a-jerk. Based on the 2018 Spanish film Campeones, 'Sitaare Zameen Par' adopts the original's determinedly cheery vein to win its matches; in the process, it also wins our hearts.
Fighter
2024 · Indian Express
Succumbing to the current atmosphere of hyper-nationalism leads to bombast, which in turn weakens a film. Two things prevent 'Fighter' from being a total humdinger: excessive jingoism and schmaltz.
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan
2024 · Indian Express
The worst thing about this new 'Bade Miyan Chote Miyan' is not just that it is all noise and fury, signifying exactly nothing. In one word, this is a complete snoozefest. Otherwise how can you turn these two heroes– Firoz 'Freddy' (Akshay Kumar) and Rakesh 'Rocky' (Tiger Shroff) — into such dull clones of themselves?
Baby John
2024 · Indian Express
After sitting through this bloated, cacophonous, derivative, incoherent mess, you feel like telling lead actor Varun Dhawan, who is all wrong for this kind of film, that he needn't have bothered. Baby John bids fair to claim the title of the worst film of 2024, a year when big, starry Bollywood tanked well and truly.
Chandu Champion
2024 · Indian Express
Kartik Aaryan goes full-tilt at playing Murlikant Petkar and does make you root for his character despite the film's falling into declarative, underlined patches. This is the kind of film whose treatment, where everything you see is supported by dialogue, and lashings of obvious humour, makes it less than what it could have been: the beats are predictable, even as it gives us a likeable, inspirational hero we've never heard about.
Srikanth
2024 · Indian Express
Rajkummar Rao is one of the few actors who is capable of fully inhabiting his role, and even more important, shed all vanity in the process. Despite its limitations, the film chooses to tell the story of someone who refused to be labelled a bechara and celebrates an individual who managed to lift himself from a hole in the ground to someone who created a job for himself and countless people like him.
Wild Wild Punjab
2024 · Indian Express
Wild Wild Punjab is nothing but a series of stereotypes about Punjabi 'mundas', and 'kudis': loud, brash, large-hearted, impulsive, pumped up on bravado and idiocy, doing the hook-up-break-up-drinking-shinking-bhangra-shangra-thing, with at least one monster SUV in the entourage, awash in noisome fart jokes and fluids from all sorts of nether parts. If you can bear to think of 'Fukrey' lite, this is it.
Stree 2
2024 · Indian Express
Nothing like dumbing down a sharp premise — yes, yes, it is women who have the power — but it is callow men who continue to have all the fun. Despite all the frantic criss-crossing, I could feel the pace of the movie, never the best thing for a movie of this kind which wants you to suspend all disbelief for its duration.
Bad Newz
2024 · Indian Express
If Bad Newz had stuck to its comedic guns, without resorting to the weepy saccharine bits which take over in the second half, it would have been gold. Kaushal and Dimri have real spark and she holds her own, but the second half, taken over by sighs and moans, is a mood kill.
Khel Khel Mein
2024 · Indian Express
A little more of the some-men-will never-change just like leopards and their spots would have made this Akshay Kumar-Taapsee Pannu film a no-holds-barred banger. The length of the movie makes things sag in bits, especially in the second half, and some of the 'reveals' aren't that madly interesting either.
Yodha
2024 · Indian Express
This totally hair-brained enterprise is a cartoonish rigmarole featuring jaw-dropping logical flaws—from two aircraft with carpets and easily accessible holds to a plot so contrived that even the rescue flare releases the three colours of the tiranga. You may or may not emerge unscathed from this film, but it represents everything wrong with loud patriotism masquerading as cinema.
Shaitaan
2024 · Indian Express
Devgn, in extended 'Drishyam' mode, as the family man-cum-all round saviour, comes off stolid. The trouble with this remake of Gujarati film 'Vash' is that all the 'kaala-jaadu' trickery is ultimately strictly window-dressing to a hero vs villain story, making it predictable because how can a hero, even if he has allowed himself to be bashed up and bloodied till then, not win?
Kill
2024 · Indian Express
'Kill' is a lean, mean killing machine that doesn't pussy foot about trying to save all the main characters. While the film is nothing but a string of sequences oozing with an overwhelming degree of blood-and-gore, a quantum we haven't seen in Hindi cinema before, it succeeds as its own creature with distinctively desi elements that work alongside the visceral action.
Maharaj
2024 · Indian Express
The film is strictly passable: its very specific time and place and lead character is buried under trademark Yashrajification, in which the colour palette, the songs-and-dances, the stereotypical characterisation, the dialogue-heavy confrontation, and everything else comes off generic. Does Junaid Khan have that very special something papa had, and still does? He is passable, like the film.
Munjya
2024 · Indian Express
Sadly, 'Munjya' is neither funny-haha, nor does it make you want to look under your seat, despite its liberal use of jump-scares, and a CGI ghoul. In reaching for Casper-the-friendly-ghost territory, 'Munjya' loses an opportunity to have created a truly original bad boy whose rancid desire for an older girl keeps it alive all these decades.
Crew
2024 · Indian Express
Tabu, so comfortable in her older woman avatar as the senior-most of the crew, and Khan, treading the thin line between greed and need with ease, are a riot; Sanon, in their company, manages to hold her own. Watching these three air hostesses with the mostest, in an easy breezy comedy, with plenty of self-aware chuckles strewn about, is the most fun I've had at the movies recently.
Madgaon Express
2024 · Indian Express
This caper featuring three-guys-in-Goa comes off as 'Dil Chahta Hai' redux, except it's nowhere as funny or fulfilling. This is a threesome which can lift any scene, but the lacklustre writing lets them down. Too many of the jokes settle with a clunk.
Murder Mubarak
2024 · Indian Express
And while 'Murder Mubarak' is the closest any film has come to re-creating Chauhan's universe, very few can do the insider-outsider divide with such acuteness, both sharp and warm.
Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba
2024 · Indian Express
The sequel to the 2021 Haseen Dillruba manages to hit all the marks that the original fumbled at: it is atmospheric, deliciously squelchy, overrun with characters who revel in using love, sex and dhokha as means to their dubious ends. It's been a while since I've had this much fun with a Hindi film which goes full-tilt at grown-up, amoral romance territory.
Sector 36
2024 · Indian Express
Massey, in a 360 degree turnaround from the sincere student of 12th Fail, works at making his Prem believable, his unctuous smile and creepy banter hiding his real self: this is not a man you would want waiting for you on a dark street. But it unravels at the exact point when he is allowed a long diatribe which doubles up as a confession, the build-up of the dread dissipating as he rants on.
Jigra
2024 · Indian Express
Alia Bhatt's performances usually have at least a couple of distinctive notes. Here, badass replacing vulnerability, those edges are blunted. Jigra becomes a stretch, of both patience and credulity.
Do Patti
2024 · Indian Express
There's enough here for a juicy, substantive drama. But the unpacking turns more into an unravelling, mainly because the writing is shallow, and the characters lack depth.
Kalki 2898-AD
2024 · Indian Express
I can't remember a recent film of this staggering size and scale, mounted with such ambition, being such a plod to begin with. The second half shakes things up somewhat, and saves the film from being a total snoozefest, redeemed just in the nick of time by a rousing climax.
Girls Will Be Girls
2024 · Indian Express
The three lead players carry the film. Kesav Binoy Kiron adds the right dollop of barely-there smarm to his charm, and when Panigrahi, winsome and knowing, Kusruti, worn and blow-your-socks-off-sexy, are facing off, you can't take your eyes off either. The latter takes our breath away, just like she does in Payal Kapadia's 'All We Imagine As Light'; it feels right that she is in two of the best films of the year.
Singham Again
2024 · Indian Express
The result is loud and tedious, and instantly forgettable. But it's all so same-old that even the new locations don't help. Neither does all the blatant-referencing-and-copy-pasting of the great epic.
Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3
2024 · Indian Express
This third-go-round suffers from the same things that the previous one did: stereotypes instead of characters, forced humour which refuses to land, and tasteless lines bordering on the risible. The scourge of lazy, formulaic writing weighs heavily on this film.
The Sabarmati Report
2024 · Indian Express
After jumping down the throat of those who speak for balance, the film tries hard at doing a balancing act. How's that for more irony? No nuance, just judgement.
All We Imagine as Light
2024 · Indian Express
The wonderful Kani Kusruti turns yearning into a full-time job, and just for her, this film which releases in India today, is worth every minute of your time. Beautifully shot by Kapadia's constant cinematographer Ranabir Das, the film is suffused with light, lambent in some places, shard-like in others.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
2024 · Indian Express
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a colossal bore. All the crashing and banging, the fleet of odd-bods, including masked creatures wearing strange uniforms, the convoys criss-crossing the desert pockmarked with caves and cliffs, is just a lot of noise, signifying less than nothing.
Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya
2024 · Indian Express
Shahid Kapoor and Kriti Sanon deliver confused film that combines sci-fi tropes with mushy Indian family drama.
Merry Christmas
2024 · Indian Express
Katrina Kaif and Vijay Sethupathi make for an unlikely pair, but they make it work, and she again proves that she can be an actor underneath all that pancake and bump-and-grind.
Indian 2: Zero Tolerance
2024 · Indian Express
Indian 2 takes itself and its hero so seriously that you miss the forced humour of the original, and Indian 2 is nothing but a three hour time suck, where I was bored out of my wits.
12th Fail
2023 · Indian Express
Vidhu Vinod Chopra film is the elixir our cynical times need. Vikrant Massey-starrer cleaves close to ground reality, with characters that makes you feel that they've wandered off the street, dishing out life-lessons laced with dollops of inspiration.
Jaane Jaan
2023 · Indian Express
Kareena Kapoor is both the strength and weakness of this film. There's a scene in which Kareena Kapoor Khan shows just how a bona-fide star can light up the screen, in which her 'real girl' character segues neatly into her 'reel girl'.
Tiger 3
2023 · Indian Express
Tiger 3 sparks to life only intermittently. Salman Khan is looking his age, but the good thing is that he isn't hiding it.
Mrs.
2023 · Indian Express
This is just the kind of film, with a clutch of effective performances and important messaging, which should be made mandatory viewing for couples. Still, and especially for those who haven't watched the original, Mrs has enough merit.
Mission Majnu
2023 · Indian Express
Mission Majnu is a sedate, by-the-numbers drone that avoids jingoism, though the film's message about patriotism residing in the soul feels like a soothing counterpoint to current polarized times.
Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar
2023 · Indian Express
The film drags on for two hours before it comes to the last twenty minutes, which is when the pace picks up. Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar is so boring.
Gadar 2
2023 · Indian Express
Gadar 2 offers nothing new. What we can confirm is that Sunny paaji can still snarl effectively, and that dhai-kilo-ka-haath has residual potency.
Khufiya
2023 · Indian Express
We needed more Tabu in this film. We needed more of the older Vishal Bhardwaj who used to make things sing.
Kisi Ka Bhai... Kisi Ki Jaan
2023 · Indian Express
This Bhaijaan is running on empty. A tired, unimaginative amalgamation of every Salman Khan version.
Sam Bahadur
2023 · Indian Express
Vicky Kaushal wins you over by being spot on, eyes a-twinkle, moustache a-bristle. It's hard to play a character so closely without becoming a caricature, but he becomes Sam Bahadur.
Satyaprem Ki Katha
2023 · Indian Express
Somewhere under the overwrought and overcooked plot of Kartik Aaryan-Kiara Advani-starrer is a real film about two people dealing with troubled pasts, but it gets buried under everything else that the movie throws at us.
Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani
2023 · Indian Express
This Alia Bhatt-Ranveer Singh film has ginormous sets, blingy naach-gaana and a lot of emotions, but little originality.
OMG 2
2023 · Indian Express
It's been a while since I enjoyed an Akshay Kumar performance as much as this one. And I haven't been taken by surprise as much as I was in OMG 2, in the best way possible.
Jawaani Jaaneman
2020 · Indian Express · Jan 2020
A little more consistency with the writing, and a re-upping of the fun-meter would have made Jawaani Jaaneman super. As it is, it is fun while it lasts.
Tanhaji
2020 · Indian Express · Jan 2020
I enjoyed Saif Ali Khan's maniacal bad guy, which comes off as yet another variant (Ranveer Singh, Sanjay Dutt) of the flesh-devouring, diabolical, ruthless enemy that Bollywood currently delights in.
Dabangg 3
2019 · Indian Express · Dec 2019
Dabangg 3, which has a long back-story of how Chulbul came to be called Chulbul, is not just a dreary mish-mash of the previous ones; it's also a cringe-fest.
Panipat
2019 · Indian Express · Dec 2019
Ashutosh Gowariker has the right to creative license, and he has chosen the line which bends both fact and credulity. But did Panipat, which clocks in nearly three hours run time, need to be quite such a drudge?
Laal Kaptaan
2019 · Indian Express · Oct 2019
There are flashes when you feel the film will finally say something important, but then it lapses back into stodgy set-pieces which go on and on.
The Sky Is Pink
2019 · Indian Express · Oct 2019
Occasionally, the combined charm of the star cast does lift the film, especially when they are goofing off in their fancy farmhouse-type home, keeping in sync with the family's rise in fortunes.
War
2019 · Indian Express · Oct 2019
The chief trouble with War is that all the space is divvied up between Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff, that the poor baddies don't really get a chance.
The Zoya Factor
2019 · Indian Express · Sep 2019
For a rom-com which needs to be light on its feet, hitting fours and sixes as it goes along, the writing is not as supple as it should have been. Too many slog overs here.
Prassthanam
2019 · Indian Express · Sep 2019
...the film feels somewhat dated. Here a rape-and-murder, there a club dancer shimmying; here a Haji Ali song sequence, there a funeral-dressed-in-white-kurta-pajamas. Of the ensemble, in which Panday gets to wear a bad wig and vamp it up most enjoyably, Ali Fazal is the most impressive: as the young 'waaris' of his father's legacy, and someone who has a head on his shoulders, Fazal holds this thing together.
Dream Girl
2019 · Indian Express · Sep 2019
You stay watching Dream Girl for Ayushmann Khurrana. He plays Karam/Pooja with grace and conviction, and makes this thing sing.
Saaho
2019 · Indian Express · Sep 2019
Everything a thriller needs is in here, and you settle down, fully prepared for a non-stop, breathless, firing-from-all-cylinders ride. But Saaho turns out to be a damp squib.
Mission Mangal
2019 · Indian Express · Aug 2019
It leaves a smile on the face. And you do feel a swell of pride as the 'yaan' comes into view and settles successfully in orbit. Despite the over-arching presence of the latter-day Mr India, 'sab mangal hai'.
Batla House
2019 · Indian Express · Aug 2019
John Abraham is strictly one-note, which may be how dour cops are meant to come off, but it becomes same-same in a screenplay stretched to show off a well-muscled chest.
Jabariya Jodi
2019 · Indian Express · Aug 2019
From start to finish, there's isn't a single shred of conviction on display. The result is a confused, unpleasing, long-drawn mess, which the viewers will 'jabariya' have to sit through.
Khandaani Shafakhana
2019 · Indian Express · Aug 2019
The trouble with this film is that quite soon it chickens out. From a comedy with a strong 'social' component which could have been a barrel of meaningful laughs, it turns into a soppy melodrama.
Arjun Patiala
2019 · Indian Express · Jul 2019
With Diljit Dosanjh's high likeable quotient, faithful sidekick Varun Sharma's skills at delivering broadsides, pretty heartthrob Kriti Sanon's dazzling pearly-whites, and a host of reliable supporting acts, Arjun Patiala should have been much better than it is.
Judgementall Hai Kya
2019 · Indian Express · Jul 2019
This is the kind of movie which will sharply divide audiences. And that's as it should be. Once I began seeing it as the murmurings of a different mind, I bought it as a caper, as burlesque, where nothing is as it is. I had problems with some of it, but I really liked the rest of it.
Family of Thakurganj
2019 · Indian Express · Jul 2019
For an effective film, you need both plot and treatment. Family of Thakurganj has neither, and a solid ensemble cast is let down, once again, by inept handling.
Super 30
2019 · Indian Express · Jul 2019
The Hrithik Roshan movie is way less than super...Yes, the real-life story is inspiring. But the telling of it is a drag. The film has its moments, which belong mostly to its young people: the kids are all right.
Article 15
2019 · Indian Express · Jun 2019
Article 15 may have an unsatisfactory element or two, but as a film, it rushes in to tread forgotten grounds. It is what is needed, call it what you will-- a clarion call, a bugle, a shout-out.
Kabir Singh
2019 · Indian Express · Jun 2019
Shahid Kapoor takes the movie and tries to run with it. But he has been a hero at the centre-stage for too long; his responses are too practiced, too familiar. He feels too old for this role.
Men in Black: International
2019 · Indian Express · Jun 2019
Chris Hemsworth looks as if he has wandered in from a super-hero movie in his spare time. It is Tessa Thomson who makes this thing work.
Game Over
2019 · Indian Express · Jun 2019
There are a couple of genuinely scary moments, but the rest of it is too stretched: even the 102 minute run time feels too long, with not enough thrills or chills.
Bharat
2019 · Indian Express · Jun 2019
More a miss than hit...In a Salman Khan movie, anything is possible, even tall tales that can transcend borders.
Nakkash
2019 · Indian Express · May 2019
Clearly the intention of the film is to hold a mirror to where we have reached as a nation, with hatred and bigotry replacing trust and 'bhaichara', the sort of intention we need to see more of because it would seem only cinema can join the vanishing dots of the India that used to be.
PM Narendra Modi
2019 · Indian Express · May 2019
As a bio-pic, PM Narendra Modi inhabits muddled, post-truth territory. As a hagiography though, genuflecting at the altar of the man, it's perfect. It's uncritical, unquestioning, high on rhetoric. And there's nothing accidental about it.
India's Most Wanted
2019 · Indian Express · May 2019
India's Most Wanted has the relatively novel backdrop of Nepal, where the terrorist is meant to be hiding out. New scenery usually means instant freshness. But the overall result is more a placid seen-it-before run-around than the edge-of-the-seat nail biter that it promises to be.
De De Pyaar De
2019 · Indian Express · May 2019
You wish the film had been braver in its intention of creating a really cracking rom-com, instead of playing its clichés for a laugh.
Student of the Year 2
2019 · Indian Express · May 2019
The running time is too long for what is, essentially, yet-another-buffed-up-version of Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander crossed with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. This class of 2019 has predictable beats, which is to be expected in an underdog story, but that it is so stilted is disappointing.
Blank
2019 · Indian Express · May 2019
Blank which emphasizes its over-used thrust - Islamic 'aatankwaad' threatening the unity and integrity of 'akhand' Bharat - comes off as far too generic
Setters
2019 · Indian Express · May 2019
Setters lays all its cards on the table in the first act itself: the follow-up is over-long and tedious. And, barring a few sharp moments, flat.
Kalank
2019 · Indian Express · Apr 2019
Kalank doesn't really lift off the screen. The whole feels like a giant set, stately and ponderous and minus impact; the characters all costumed and perfumed and largely life-less, sparking only in bits and pieces.
No Fathers in Kashmir
2019 · Indian Express · Apr 2019
A fresh entrant helps No Fathers In Kashmir to ask questions in order to make the film relevant to audiences unfamiliar with the conflict.
The Tashkent Files
2019 · Indian Express · Apr 2019
The entire film is a series of eye-roll moments, pockmarked by dialogue that's unintentionally hilarious. We don't really have to wait for the big reveal to see the purpose of the film.
Romeo Akbar Walter
2019 · Indian Express · Apr 2019
The John Abraham starrer suffers from its length, and the pall of dullness that hangs over the proceedings. A spy needs to be a patriot. That's why he does what he does, knowing that he is 'deniable'.
Junglee
2019 · Indian Express · Mar 2019
Vidyut Jammwal is a dab hand at action, and those bits are watchable. He is fluid and graceful and believable as he kicks and chops his way in and out of trouble.
Kesari
2019 · Indian Express · Mar 2019
Akshay Kumar is the film. And he pulls it off, keeping that 'Kesari' pagdi aloft right till the end, delivering thundering speeches, and keeping his men's morale up. His Ishar Singh is inhabited and convincing, and it helps that his Punjabi accent is completely on point.
Photograph
2019 · Indian Express · Mar 2019
A tiny cameo by Vijay Raaz illustrates what this film needed more of: a touch of whimsy, a kind of magic. More of this, wrapped in Mohd Rafi's honeyed voice (yes, that's why Siddiqui is named Rafi) which wafts over the film, would have made this odd couple romance much more believable.
Badla
2019 · Indian Express · Mar 2019
Badla, an official remake of a Spanish murder mystery, pulls off a mostly gripping whodunit, something Bollywood rarely manages.
Sonchiriya
2019 · Indian Express · Mar 2019
Abhishek Chaubey's very scenic Sonchiriya, tramping along those nooks and crevices of the Chambal, expending hundreds of bullets and quarts of spraying blood, made familiar by countless 'daaku' films of the 70s and 80s, almost always feels like a retread.
Luka Chuppi
2019 · Indian Express · Mar 2019
Somewhere deep inside Luka Chuppi is the film it wanted to be: a send-up of the tiresome rituals and hypocrisies which bind socially-sanctioned relationships, and an attack on religious bigotry.
Total Dhamaal
2019 · Indian Express · Feb 2019
The only people who prevent you from strangling yourself is the forever-bickering couple played by Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit.
Gully Boy
2019 · Indian Express · Feb 2019
...this is a film to enjoy, both in the seeing, and in the hearing: the soundtrack and the 'songs' leap off the screen. In today's India, to bring a Murad and Safeena, their Muslim-ness a matter-of-fact statement, into centre-stage, to give traction to those who live on the wrong side of the tracks, is an act of bravery. I'll take them any day over an overused Raj-and-Raveena. 'Inka time aa gaya'. Rap along.
Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga
2019 · Indian Express · Feb 2019
What it comes down to is this: yes, we want to make a progressive film, but we have to show our women getting freed up only after getting male approval-and-help.
Thackeray
2019 · Indian Express · Jan 2019
Almost every moment in the movie is a death of irony, the biggest of them being that Nawazuddin Siddiqui, an outsider on both counts of community and religion, plays Balasaheb Thackeray.
Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi
2019 · Indian Express · Jan 2019
As promised, Manikarnika does tick all the nationalistic boxes. It is getting a perfectly-timed Republic Day release. And there are plenty of eye-roll moments as it chases the red-faced Brits, and raises the flag. It may have been Jhansi, but it is clearly a prelude to the 'tiranga'. But what keeps us with the film is Rani Ranaut, who in her best moments, owns her part, the narrative, and the screen.
Why Cheat India
2019 · Indian Express · Jan 2019
The material is slender and too stretched over two hours, as it goes from engineering-medicine into management, the holy grail.
Uri: The Surgical Strike
2019 · Indian Express · Jan 2019
The movie on the whole keeps you watching despite some clunky passages. It's always good to have movies in which the soldiers look real, even if the action is buoyed by such dialogues as 'unhe Kashmir chaihye, humein unka sar'.
The Accidental Prime Minister
2019 · Indian Express · Jan 2019
The film is an out-an-out propaganda film, created for the specific purpose of making the former prime minister look like a weak, spineless man, a puppet whose strings were controlled by The Family.
Mary Poppins Returns
2019 · Indian Express · Jan 2019
Emily Blunt is good, as are the children, and the rest of the performers do their job well enough. A couple of the sequences, when Blunt lets herself go, as well as the climactic set-piece, is quite lovely.
Simmba
2018 · Indian Express · Dec 2018
The only reason to watch Simmba is Ranveer Singh. The actor is fully alive to the moment, knowing that he is working in a template, aware that he has to keep breaking out.
Zero
2018 · Indian Express · Dec 2018
Zero, starring Shah Rukh Khan, Katrina Kaif and Anushka Sharma, fails spectacularly at giving us anything we can believe in, and we go from start to finish, with disbelief growing with each passing frame.
Kedarnath
2018 · Indian Express · Dec 2018
In trying to please everyone, Kedarnath loses edge, and leads to a tepid cop-out. It's a weepie minus the tears.
Bhaiaji Superhit
2018 · Indian Express · Nov 2018
On paper, this is not a bad bunch to be spending a couple of hours with. On screen, the whole thing is beyond terrible.
Thugs of Hindostan
2018 · Indian Express · Nov 2018
Not only do you end up picking up on past films, scenes and references, you are left struggling with staleness and boredom.
Baazaar
2018 · Indian Express · Oct 2018
An uninteresting, uninvolving film...The treatment of the film is moth-balled (a line in English is translated immediately after in Hindi) and hackneyed. Bad songs punctuate the proceedings. Background music is used to buoy almost every scene.
Namaste England
2018 · Indian Express · Oct 2018
Namaste England is just a plain bad film, in which the 'desis' who live in the UK are poor misguided souls, and the real 'desis', especially those from good 'ol Punjab, will rescue the world.
Badhaai Ho
2018 · Indian Express · Oct 2018
Badhaai Ho doesn't quite know what it wants us to do more, laugh or cry. And parts of the film sink into sitcom flatness, especially when Sikri overdoes her grumpy 'saas' act, though some of her lines are laugh-out-loud.
Helicopter Eela
2018 · Indian Express · Oct 2018
Helicopter Eela is so saddled with banal story-telling, stretched sub-plots and exaggerated performances, including and especially from the lead actress, that it never really takes off.
Tumbbad
2018 · Indian Express · Oct 2018
Debutant director Rahi Anil Barve has a distinct voice. Tumbbad is a gorgeous looking, intriguing morality tale which both entrances and repulses: it's not something I will forget.
Andhadhun
2018 · Indian Express · Oct 2018
Tabu is marvelous, Sriram Raghavan finally having created a fitting role for this uber-talented actress, whom we really should be seeing much more of. Ayushmann Khurrana is wonderful, too, sinking into his part.
Sui Dhaaga
2018 · Indian Express · Sep 2018
The only trouble with the Anushka Sharma and Varun Dhawan's Sui Dhaaga is its total predictability: you know what's coming miles before the characters do.
Pataakha
2018 · Indian Express · Sep 2018
The girls in Pataakha take some getting used to: you have to suspend disbelief to take these dusty, filthy-mouthed sisters seriously. But once they start settling into their roles, you cross a hump
Manto
2018 · Indian Express · Sep 2018
There is a gap, a curious distance, between the vision and the execution, and much of the film, including Nawazuddin Siddiqui, resides in it.
Batti Gul Meter Chalu
2018 · Indian Express · Sep 2018
Batti Gul Meter Chalu is a hark-back to a forgotten tradition, which, at its best, gave us story and substance. Batti Gul gives us both, for most part.
Manmarziyaan
2018 · Indian Express · Sep 2018
You want to shake these lovers and ask them to make up their mind, quick. You enjoy the initial exhilaration born out of breathless passion as the winsome boy and girl engage in the age-old dance of desire. And then they become exhausting. As does the film.
Stree
2018 · Indian Express · Aug 2018
Shraddha Kapoor's part is a bit risible, but she has some breathy moments with Rajkummar Rao. Rao, whose Bicky seems like an extension of his Bareilly Ki Barfi avatar, carries the film.
Yamla Pagla Deewana: Phir Se
2018 · Indian Express · Aug 2018
In this installment, taglined 'Phir Se', even the half-hearted guffaws, which we managed in the first two, have dried up. The jokes are so lame that they are practically invisible.
Satyameva Jayate
2018 · Indian Express · Aug 2018
We can get why John Abraham is in this film: he's done this kind of movie before, and this looks like an extension, but what possessed the excellent Manoj Bajpayee, who can lift a film just by his presence, to do this?
Gold
2018 · Indian Express · Aug 2018
What makes Gold worth a watch, despite some problems, are the flashes of well-done humour, the skirmishes between the players, and the rousing finale.
Vishwaroopam 2
2018 · Indian Express · Aug 2018
Even Kamal Haasan can't rise above the shockingly inept script, which he rescues only in a few places, when his trademark intelligent, wry self-awareness manages to kick in. The rest can be safely ignored.
Karwaan
2018 · Indian Express · Aug 2018
Karwaan is aiming for an easy, offhand charm, and we get that only in bits and pieces, especially when Irrfan hits his stride on occasion, or when Dulquer proves just how good he can be by not doing much at all.
Mulk
2018 · Indian Express · Aug 2018
Any film that does not demonize, that talks of peace and brotherhood, in these dark, cynical times, is to be lauded. Mulk is Anubhav Sinha's best film, and it concerns us all.
Fanney Khan
2018 · Indian Express · Aug 2018
A film starring a bunch of our top star-actors can be so off the mark is a sobering, dismal thought: this Anil Kapoor-Aishwarya Rai-Rajkummar Rao concoction, based on a Belgian film Everybody's Famous, is unbelievably awful.
Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster 3
2018 · Indian Express · Jul 2018
It's a crowded film, and several characters get short shrift: Soha Ali Khan, as the permanently inebriated 'second wife' of Saheb, is blink-and-miss. There's too much scatter-shot action, with the plot all over the place.
Dhadak
2018 · Indian Express · Jul 2018
The Ishaan Khatter and Janhvi Kapoor film has neither requisite drama nor authenticity. Dhadak doesn't work, not as an official copy of Sairat, nor as a standalone Bollywood romance.
Soorma
2018 · Indian Express · Jul 2018
iljit Dosanjh as Sandeep Singh is spot on. And that is the film's biggest triumph. Whenever Dosanjh is on screen, we are with him.
Sanju
2018 · Indian Express · Jun 2018
...what we get, and how we get it, in Sanju, is mostly engaging, and some of it good enough to make you laugh out loud in pleasure, especially when Hirani is killing it. But you wonder too what the film chose to leave out, and you wonder if this would have been more of a film if those things had been in here.
Race 3
2018 · Indian Express · Jun 2018
The movie is nothing but a recycled bin of too many car chases, explosions, buffed up characters strutting in slo-mo, and wilted lines.
Phamous
2018 · Indian Express · Jun 2018
Why did the ladies sign up for this mess? Shriya Saran wears deep pink lipstick and a pout, while Mahie Gill is to be seen in precisely two-and-a-half scenes, with the camera hovering suggestively over both their bosoms.
Veere Di Wedding
2018 · Indian Express · Jun 2018
The four 'veeres', Kalindi (Kareena Kapoor), Avni (Sonam Kapoor Ahuja), Sakshi (Swara Bhaskar) and Meera (Shikha Talsania)—are a solid bunch despite their riches and girlish squeals and their entitled troubles.
Bhavesh Joshi Superhero
2018 · Indian Express · Jun 2018
The film clearly intends to be dark, edgy and cool. Trouble is, it spends too much of its time underlining its purpose, even getting a character to say these three adjectives.
Solo: A Star Wars Story
2018 · Indian Express · May 2018
There are moments when you admire the dexterity with which Solo squeezes by yet another fast-closing dark star, or out-runs yet another fizzy missile, and then you are back to looking for something new.
Book Club
2018 · Indian Express · May 2018
You smile as you see these women laugh out loud, try on gravity-defying undergarments, and try on their dates for size: this is a demographic which needs to be seen so much more because they are so much more at ease with who they are
Parmanu: The Story of Pokhran
2018 · Indian Express · May 2018
You will get the money shot of John Abraham and co. walking in slo-mo to swelling background music, enveloped in a comic book feel. You will not get crucial nuance and detail, essential requirements for a film to be to taken seriously.
Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain
2018 · Indian Express · May 2018
Some of the film is pleasing in the way it brings out the dull familiarity that plagues a well-excavated relationship, and both Sanjay Mishra and Ekavali Khanna feel sufficiently lived in.
Daas Dev
2018 · Indian Express · Apr 2018
Daas Dev, starring Rahul Bhat, Richa Chadda, Aditi Rao Hydari, Saurabh Shukla, Vineet Kumar Singh and Dalip Tahil among others, has lofty ambition but not enough impact: the film lives in moments, but droops as a whole.
Beyond the Clouds
2018 · Indian Express · Apr 2018
The bright-eyed Ishaan Khatter has something, a flicker in his eyes, and gets some zest into his part. Malavika Mohanan is great on the eyes, but clueless in how to fill her part.
Nanu Ki Jaanu
2018 · Indian Express · Apr 2018
The Abhay Deol, Patralekhaa and Manu Rishi starrer has one or two lines which leave us chortling, and a situation or two which is genuinely surprising: one or two in a film of two hours? You do the math.
Mercury
2018 · Indian Express · Apr 2018
Karthik Subbaraj has had fun with the undead in Pizza, and the unlovely in Jigarthanda, but this one is a much-too stretched out misguided mess, masquerading as a parable.
October
2018 · Indian Express · Apr 2018
October tells us that romance doesn't necessarily have to play out in the metric of song-and-dance-and-high-pitched-melodrama; that it can be low-key, and unusual, can be conducted through speaking glances, rather than words.
Missing
2018 · Indian Express · Apr 2018
How do you manage a casting coup (Manoj Bajpayee and Tabu) and then waste those talents so spectacularly? How do you create an alleged plot that's so witless?
Blackmail
2018 · Indian Express · Apr 2018
The Irrfan Khan starrer begins promisingly but descends pretty quickly into flatness and sluggishness, a classic problem of not knowing quite how to play out a perky idea.
Baaghi 2
2018 · Indian Express · Mar 2018
The trouble with a full-on masala film going in search of a plot is evident in the way the film unspools. The bare bones are borrowed from Telugu thriller Kshanam, but the fillings are all strictly Bollywood.
Raid
2018 · Indian Express · Mar 2018
In all this to-ing and fro-ing, background music blaring to make up for the lack of real drama, even a terrific actor like Saurabh Shukla is left floundering.
3 Storeys
2018 · Indian Express · Mar 2018
Everyone plays it quite competently, despite the predictable beats. Nice to see Renuka Shahane, who aims for naturalness despite some stodginess in the way her part is written.
Dil Juunglee
2018 · Indian Express · Mar 2018
aapsee Pannu, who could have saved this creaky thing, is buried under a bad hairdo in the first half. By the time she gets all chic, post interval, it's much too late. For her, and the film.
Hate Story 4
2018 · Indian Express · Mar 2018
The plot of Urvashi Rautela, Karan Wahi, Vivan Bhatena and Ihana Dhillon starrer Hate Story 4 is a steady stream of hot bods. And acting, what's that? The film has no ambitions that-a-way, so there.
Pari
2018 · Indian Express · Mar 2018
The Anushka Sharma starrer never rises above its silliness...
Welcome to New York
2018 · Indian Express · Feb 2018
You wish there was more savagery and skewering all round, but Welcome To New York turns out to be a limp, lame tribute to Bollywood. Why would I bother to see this in a film, when TV shows are full of it?
Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety
2018 · Indian Express · Feb 2018
Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety provides some laughs, some of which escape involuntarily. But it also leaves you wondering. Can Ranjan grow up his callow characters? Of course, he can, because he has the smarts (remember Pyar Ka Punchnama?). Does he really want to? I'm not sure. Sharp comedy of the sexes is the hard stuff. Cheap laughs are easy.
Pad Man
2018 · Indian Express · Feb 2018
PadMan isn't a particularly good film. It has tonal problems, swinging between commonplace-ness and flat-out filmi-ness, because it is trying to appeal to many constituencies at the same time.
Padmaavat
2018 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
If there's one thing that keeps us from brooding too much, it is Ranveer Singh. Not once does he try to make us like him, and that makes us like him even more. As Bhansali's Khilji, he is electric.
My Birthday Song
2018 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
The plotting and the treatment of My Birthday Song is far too inept to create a solid psychological thriller out of this looping-upon-itself story, whose big reveal is too brief, too late.
Vodka Diaries
2018 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
On paper, Vodka Diaries, starring Kay Kay Menon, Raima Sen, Mandira Bedi, Sharib Hashmi, may have sounded like an engaging whodunit. But what we see is clearly not.
Kaalakaandi
2018 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
Akhsat Verma's directorial debut is very much of the it-happened-one-night format, where all kinds of people are on the move, and stuff happens. Saif Ali Khan makes the most of his part, even though you wish it had a little more heft.
Mukkabaaz
2018 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
Mukkabaaz is a film whose lack of ostensible polish works to enhance its rough-and-tumble flavor: Anurag Kashyap and the film are at its most sure-footed when they are calling out discrimination, across the board.
Pitch Perfect 3
2018 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
Pitch Perfect 3, starring Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, D J Khaled and John Lithgow among others, is basically a bland, very-occasionally-bubbling-to-the-surface, not-enough-laughs comedy.
All the Money in the World
2018 · Indian Express · Jan 2018
Ridley Scott is a little distant in the way he observes his characters and their dilemmas. The young boy is in mortal danger all through, but your heart is not as much in your mouth as it should be.
Tu Hai Mera Sunday
2017 · Indian Express · Dec 2017
Dhaimade is clearly skilled at creating life-like characters who feel as if they are people you could know, tics and all. 'Tu Hai Mera Sunday' is a feel-good, light-hearted yarn. And it comes at a time when that precious, vanishing space—middle-of-the-road and realistic, not too shiny or too drab but just right—needs an urgent refill. I guarantee you will leave smiling.
A Death in the Gunj
2017 · Indian Express · Dec 2017
Konkona Sensharma's assured directorial debut, unpacks a complex sentiment with feeling, and gives us a layered film with memorable characters about the games people play, and how, sometimes, that can have terrible consequences.
Tiger Zinda Hai
2017 · Indian Express · Dec 2017
Salman Khan-Katrina Kaif starrer is an enjoyable fare...
Fukrey Returns
2017 · Indian Express · Dec 2017
The situations are so tired and contrived there's nothing that even such capable hands as Richa Chaddha and Pankaj Tripathi can do, to retain our interest.
Firangi
2017 · Indian Express · Dec 2017
Firangi review: The trouble with this mildly engaging film, with a solid supporting cast, is that it is far too long. Kapil Sharma is serviceable as a young Punjabi munda, making eyes at a blushing Sargi (Ishita Dutta).
Julie 2
2017 · Indian Express · Nov 2017
This Raai Laxmi and Pankaj Tripathi starrer makes no sense...
Kadvi Hawa
2017 · Indian Express · Nov 2017
The child actors are excellent, as they always are in Madhab's films. It is the older lot whose performance is effortful, especially the calling-attention-to-itself-part from Mishra, who is capable of much more subtlety. Shorey's loan-recovery shark, in his bright printed shirt, and persuasive tongue, fares better. You also wish the film was tighter: it feels like a stretch even at 100 minutes.
An Insignificant Man
2017 · Indian Express · Nov 2017
From a tax officer to a protestor, to an activist, to a reluctant rookie politician, to winning an election, and to becoming the chief minister of New Delhi, the film is the journey of Arvind Kejriwal, and his AAP.
Tumhari Sulu
2017 · Indian Express · Nov 2017
...the film makes up for these niggles by creating a leading lady who is cracklingly alive, dealing with difficulties, and finding a way around them. Sulu is a win.
Shaadi Mein Zaroor Aana
2017 · Indian Express · Nov 2017
The plot looks straight out of the 80s, with its implausible 'revenge' theme, the characters who look 'seedha' but are totally 'ulta', and a leading lady who is presented as a modern, thinking girl, but is given very little agency or a mind of her own.
Qarib Qarib Singlle
2017 · Indian Express · Nov 2017
This Irrfan Khan and Parvathy starrer is a well-crafted, winsome rom-com...
Ribbon
2017 · Indian Express · Nov 2017
Nice to see man and woman working, and dealing with stuff that happens post-marriage: all the messy, irritating stuff that has not been part of the happily-ever-after Bollywood landscape. Kalki Koechlin leaves a mark as a harried professional.
Ittefaq
2017 · Indian Express · Nov 2017
The film manages to sustain itself post that dreaded interval, the one thing that can sink mysteries. In fact, there's more briskness and confidence in the way the all the characters come across, and very little time is wasted as we go along.
Rukh
2017 · Indian Express · Oct 2017
There's a somberness to the way this chronicle of a death unfolds, which holds your attention. Some scenes sit heavily, though. And if you are an alert viewer, you will figure out what happened much before the big reveal.
Jia Aur Jia
2017 · Indian Express · Oct 2017
One Jia is quiet and broody, the other is bright and chirpy. One chokes and splutters, the other smokes and drinks. One wears six inch stilletoes and flouncy chiffons, the other short shorts and cool singlets. On a rugged road trip.
Golmaal Again
2017 · Indian Express · Oct 2017
Tabul is an unexpected pleasure, and lifts Golmaal Again. This a series which looks like it's never going to end, and Shetty has the formula pat after all these iterations. I do hope Tabu becomes a fixture in the future Golmaals.
Secret Superstar
2017 · Indian Express · Oct 2017
Aamir Khan shows up as the out-of-flavour musician Shakti Kumaarr, all tight animal-printed Ts and crotch-hugging jeans, and while his I'm-so-irresistible strutting schtick starts off funny, you wish he had more to do.
Chef
2017 · Indian Express · Oct 2017
There are some interesting flavours here, but Saif Ali Khan's 'Chef' feels derivative, and doesn't come together as a fully satisfactory dish. And that's got to do with the uneven writing.
Judwaa 2
2017 · Indian Express · Sep 2017
With a lot of high-octane drama movies like Bhoomi and Haseena Parkar, this light-hearted comedy by David Dhawan definitely stands a better chance. The Varun Dhawan, Jacqueline Fernandez and Taapsee Pannu starrer is the perfect dose of candyfloss romance, exotic locales and a colourful canvas.
Bhoomi
2017 · Indian Express · Sep 2017
Sanjay Dutt's face is kept in close-up for much of the film, and there is still power in it. This is an actor who can explode off the screen, given the right story. Maybe he needs something better told to vent his anger.
Haseena Parkar
2017 · Indian Express · Sep 2017
Shraddha Kapoor manages the young wife-and-mother part well enough, but her transition to the other side is never fully realized: she appears to be speaking her lines to order and the cheek-pads to add flesh to her jowls, and the deliberately heavier voice, is all put on.
Newton
2017 · Indian Express · Sep 2017
It's rare that an Indian film uses dark comedy to make its points so effectively. 'Newton' could also, just as easily, have been called A Day In The Life Of The World's Largest, Most Complex Democracy. Or, The Great Indian Electoral Circus. Rajkummar Rao is enjoying a purple patch.
Lucknow Central
2017 · Indian Express · Sep 2017
It is the supporting cast which is spot on, especially Rajesh Sharma and Deepak Dobriyal. But more than anything else, it is the mawkish sentimentality which overcomes the story-telling.
Simran
2017 · Indian Express · Sep 2017
Kangana keeps us watching. With her plain unvarnished face, and mobile features, she comes across as a real, solid, complex woman, someone you can reach out and touch. When she's on the top of her game, helping us ignore so many of the film's loopholes, she's glorious. It's a pity her own story lets her down.
Poster Boys
2017 · Indian Express · Sep 2017
Whenever the plot feels like it, it picks up on Sunny Deol's punchy dialogues from his past films. This really tired device only serves to remind us of a time when Sunny made watchable films.
Daddy
2017 · Indian Express · Sep 2017
The Arjun Rampal starrer has a thickly-populated circuitous plot, which goes back and forth in time, which comes in the way of a solid crime thriller cum study of the making of a gangster.
Shubh Mangal Saavdhan
2017 · Indian Express · Sep 2017
This comedy of middle-class-Dilli-manners-and-mores suffers from a sit-com flatness. And when everything is meant to make us laugh, you can quite easily deflect attention from the main premise. The Ayushmann Khurrana and Bhumi Pednekar film resists the temptation to tart up the ordinary, which is the best part: no one's calling attention quirky, everyone is real.
Baadshaho
2017 · Indian Express · Sep 2017
Because it's the old masala entertainment genre, we sit back and enjoy a few familiar guilty pleasures — the item song (Sunny Leone shaking it), the 'seeti-maar' dialogues (the deep-seated misogyny in a few make you cringe, even as you hear, without a shred of surprise, bunches of young men guffawing), the cheerful absence of logic (what's that), and coherent plot points.
Babumoshai Bandookbaaz
2017 · Indian Express · Aug 2017
Nawaz is fully immersed in his role; as is Goswami. The banter between Babu and Banke makes you smile. And then you are back to the film playing out the beats of the genre. It's all there, but we've seen it all, or variations of it, before.
A Gentleman
2017 · Indian Express · Aug 2017
Sidharth Malhotra who helms this enterprise plays a good guy who can also be bad. Now while the handsome Sidharth is perfectly pitched as the 'sundar' and 'susheel' fella of the title, he isn't quite as convincing in his 'risky' avatar.
Bareilly Ki Barfi
2017 · Indian Express · Aug 2017
Rajkummar Rao blows away the weaknesses of this film with his consummate act, playing the timid 'chota shehari' on the one hand, and the loud 'rangbaaz' on the other. He sweetens the pot, and makes up for the rest of it.
Toilet: Ek Prem Katha
2017 · Indian Express · Aug 2017
It's fitting that Akshay Kumar has greenlit and played the lead in this film, which is more a primer of How To Break Social Taboos and Make Toilets rather than a powerful social drama. The moment a film succumbs to being the carrier of a Message as opposed to a message, it becomes burdened.
Jab Harry Met Sejal
2017 · Indian Express · Aug 2017
'Sweet si, 'sister-type' Sejal aka Anushka Sharma and the 'chalu, chalta-hua, cheap' Harry aka Shah Rukh Khan are much too fraternal with each other. We do see that fire, but much too briefly.
Indu Sarkar
2017 · Indian Express · Jul 2017
Indu Sarkar is set during the Emergency, and shows us the horrific violation of freedom put into motion by then prime minister Indira Gandhi, aided and abetted by her younger son Sanjay.
Mubarakan
2017 · Indian Express · Jul 2017
Post-interval, the film's funny bone gets lost. It becomes a long, maudlin harangue on family values and good sisters and brothers, while slipping in a few distasteful jokes about wives and women.
Lipstick Under My Burkha
2017 · Indian Express · Jul 2017
What makes the film it is, is the upfront, frank manner in which female desire and fantasy are treated, running like a strong, vital thread through the film. Dreams can keep you alive, and age is just a number.
Jagga Jasoos
2017 · Indian Express · Jul 2017
In the near-three hours of the run time of the film there's everything else, with Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif chasing bent spies, arms dealers, and sundry other smaller fry, while, of course, saving the world but it forgets to give us a story.
Shab
2017 · Indian Express · Jul 2017
Given Onir's experience in creating interesting characters grappling with the kind of personal demons not usually seen in Bollywood, especially in his last outing I Am, Shab should have been a far more accomplished film. All these are characters, fleshed properly, could have given us a film.
Guest Iin London
2017 · Indian Express · Jul 2017
Do you think crude jokes should be strewn liberally in your weekly flick fix? Should a gag, abysmally executed in the first place, be stretched out like a rubber band to keep you rolling in the aisles?Then Guest Iin London is just the ticket for you.
Mom
2017 · Indian Express · Jul 2017
Sridevi has to do the heavy-lifting of the film, as actors Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Akshaye Khanna, Sajal Ali and Adnan Siddiqui are not left with enough in hand. It gets so busy keeping Sridevi at the centre-stage that this rape-and-revenge drama turns less impactful.
Tubelight
2017 · Indian Express · Jun 2017
...when the main act isn't convincing, the film becomes just like the title: mostly flicker with a little late glow. The one word that's used almost in every other line in the film is 'yakeen'. The film should have been infused with it. Here we just don't buy it.
Bank Chor
2017 · Indian Express · Jun 2017
This Riteish Deshmukh, Vivek Oberoi film is shockingly lame and juvenile whose title seems to have been chosen because it rhymes with a cuss word. Funny much? Not really.
Behen Hogi Teri
2017 · Indian Express · Jun 2017
The only element worth looking at in this film, apart from the dependable Kamat, is the rock-solid Rajkummar Rao. If he was given a better co-star than the strictly one-note Shruti Haasan, this might have turned out to be a better film.
Raabta
2017 · Indian Express · Jun 2017
Sushant Singh Rajput has moments and he makes the most of it, but suavity is not one of his strengths. Kriti Sanon is a surprise, having made clear strides since we saw her last. And one of our best actors, Rajkummar Rao, is hidden under layers of latex.
The Mummy
2017 · Indian Express · Jun 2017
What we are left with is our hero kicking up a lot of sound and fury, and sand, of course, with the promise of much more of the same to come. Not actively awful, but not a barrel of silly fun either.
Sachin: A Billion Dreams
2017 · Indian Express · May 2017
Sachin Tendulkar biopic has moments that you have not seen before, especially with his parents and elder brother, his wife and children and his coach.
Half Girlfriend
2017 · Indian Express · May 2017
I enjoyed the first half. Suri knows how to create drama, and sweeps us up in places, enough for us to ignore the constructed-ness of the characters and the plot. In the second, which is doused in melodrama and swelling `gaana', I was left with that looming question: is half better than none?
Hindi Medium
2017 · Indian Express · May 2017
As usual, it's the marvelous Irrfan who keeps us watching. His is a fine, well-judged performance, which rises above the lines. At one point, we see him cracking up while watching his favourite florid TV serial : in that moment, 'Hindi Medium' is glorious, because the actor catches what he's meant to do, meant to be, gloriously..
Meri Pyaari Bindu
2017 · Indian Express · May 2017
Ayushmann Khurrana, as the steadfast Bubla, fares a little better than Parineeti Chopra because he is given more to play with...
Sarkar 3
2017 · Indian Express · May 2017
Bachchan shows signs of the towering actor he can be, but is captive to the way his Sarkar has been conceptualized and played: he declaims rather than speaks. And there are moments where you can see flashes of the director RGV used to be, when he pulled off films full of creative leaps, and crazy flourishes. Can RGV be restored to factory settings? I hope so.
Baahubali 2: The Conclusion
2017 · Indian Express · Apr 2017
I enjoyed the first part enormously. The second one comes to life only intermittently. Leaving the theatre, you can't help wishing that Kattapa had killed the fellow earlier, for us to get a tighter, more economical and perhaps sharper conclusion.
Noor
2017 · Indian Express · Apr 2017
Sonakshi Sinha is breezy when she faces up to the good-looking men in her life. The trouble is that she is a complete klutz as a journalist.
Maatr
2017 · Indian Express · Apr 2017
Crass, cringe-inducing and downright sordid, this Raveena Tandon rape-and-revenge thriller makes you ask just one question -- who writes this stuff?
Begum Jaan
2017 · Indian Express · Apr 2017
The climax is full of fire and faux brimstone and lots of speechifying, as the ladies of easy virtue become a gun-toting 'fauj'.
Mukti Bhawan
2017 · Indian Express · Apr 2017
Other than a few faultlines, this is a superb film that shows us how it is entirely possible to die, irradiated by life.
Poorna: Courage Has No Limit
2017 · Indian Express · Mar 2017
Fairytales do come true and the story of Poorna Malavath is the proof. Her biopic, directed by Rahul bose, does justice to the extraordinary story of a 13-year-old tribal girl climbing Mt Everest.
Naam Shabana
2017 · Indian Express · Mar 2017
The final nail is the incessant, annoying background music. It blares non-stop and makes this film even longer than it is. Naam Shabana leaves you with a niggling question: why create a heroine in the action hero mode, with both mind and heart, and then give her a big bro to 'help' her out? This results in second-guessing your biggest asset, wondering if she is a liability.
Phillauri
2017 · Indian Express · Mar 2017
Anushka Sharma's Phillauri begins well enough but soon falls prey to its languid pace. It only comes alive when Anushka and Diljit Dosanjh are together on screen in Dam Dam. Then it makes you sigh for what could have been if the whole film had the same energy.
Trapped
2017 · Indian Express · Mar 2017
The trouble with Rajkummar Rao's Trapped is that it is uneven. There are not enough genuinely scary heart-in-mouth moments. His despair stays on the surface when we want to see the soul.
Badrinath Ki Dulhania
2017 · Indian Express · Mar 2017
Alia Bhatt's rebellious dulhania meets Varun Dhawan's boy-man Badrinath, what follows is a flavoursome romance which is way ahead of Humpty Sharma ki Dulhania. Sit back and applaud.
Commando 2: The Black Money Trail
2017 · Indian Express · Mar 2017
What is missing is a plot, muscular enough to service a racy, pacy actioner.
Rangoon
2017 · Indian Express · Feb 2017
Vishal Bharadwaj ambitiously mounts Rangoon but the execution of this Kangana Ranaut, Saif Ali Khan and Shahid Kapoor film never manages to match its intentions.
Hidden Figures
2017 · Indian Express · Feb 2017
Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan are as geeky and nerdy as the men, but they are treated as the ones who will clear the trash and offer clerical services, when asked.
Jolly LLB 2
2017 · Indian Express · Feb 2017
Akshay Kumar brilliantly carries this film on his brawny arms and is ably supported by Saurabh Shukla and Annu Kapoor. The film has a few dips but offers enough heft to keep you engaged.
Kung Fu Yoga
2017 · Indian Express · Feb 2017
Jackie Chan and Sonu Sood's promotions of this film was way better than anything that the movie has to offer.
Kaabil
2017 · Indian Express · Jan 2017
Hrithik does all the heavy lifting and remains the only bright spot in this dispirited mess of a movie. He still has the moves. What he needs is a plot.
Raees
2017 · Indian Express · Jan 2017
Shah Rukh Khan manages to break through in some scenes but this film belongs to Nawazuddin Siddiqui who is having the time of his life.
Coffee with D
2017 · Indian Express · Jan 2017
When the film is about Don Dawood and an Arnab Goswami doppelganger, you expect jokes galore. What you get instead is this craving to run as far away from theatre as possible.
Ok Jaanu
2017 · Indian Express · Jan 2017
This Aditya Roy Kapur, Shraddha Kapoor film proves Bollywood needs to get more adept at depicting young love. Why do our lovers, so much quicker off the mark when it comes to locking lips, sound so juvenile?
Haraamkhor
2017 · Indian Express · Jan 2017
Shweta Tripathi and Nawazuddin Siddiqui front a film about a topic we barely acknowledge, forget showing it in our films. Director Shlok Sharma shows talent.
A Monster Calls
2017 · Indian Express · Jan 2017
It is a little too dark and sparse for little kids, and too obvious for those who have crossed over into adulthood
Dangal
2016 · Indian Express · Dec 2016
Aamir Khan-starrer works on the twin parameters – as a straight-forward film about a popular sport and those who play it, and as a strong feminist statement.
Rogue One
2016 · Indian Express · Dec 2016
Yes, it's grid is predictable: in its beginning is its end. But, and this is the strength of the film, it moves past a leaden start, revs it up, and becomes quite entertaining as it goes along.
Befikre
2016 · Indian Express · Dec 2016
This will also go down as the film which, despite its close clinches, male and female (yesss), its rumpled-bedsheets-and-bedroom-antics, gave us a romance that never ignites. The fire between the lovers is restricted to the songs-and-dances; Ranveer and Vaani don't burn it up.
Kahaani 2
2016 · Indian Express · Dec 2016
This Vidya Balan film starts well but starts telegraphing its punches around interval. It becomes predictable and there can be nothing worse for a thriller.
Dear Zindagi
2016 · Indian Express · Nov 2016
Both Shah Rukh Khan and Alia Bhatt show spark but the film needed a plot to hinge the performances. Too many dialogues that say too little take the joy away from the film.
Tum Bin 2
2016 · Indian Express · Nov 2016
Neha Sharma and Aditya Seal star in a love story which is an instant throwback to the first film. But unlike Tum Bin, it fails to mix the elements wisely despite delivering some well executed moments.
Force 2
2016 · Indian Express · Nov 2016
John Abraham is efficient and does what he needs to, Tahir Raj Bhasin adds complexity to his character. However, much more was needed to rise above the sluggish script.
31st October
2016 · Indian Express · Oct 2016
This Vir Das, Soha Ali Khan film has nothing – neither narrative nor engaging characters—on offer.
Beiimaan Love
2016 · Indian Express · Oct 2016
This is a cringe-fest from start to finish. Stay away. And wave bye bye to Sunny: when a film sinks this low, it's hard to climb back up again.
Mirzya
2016 · Indian Express · Oct 2016
Mirzya disappoints. Coming from all the talent that's gathered together for this, that's even more dispiriting.
M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
Despite Sushant Singh Rajput and rest of the cast's efforts, the film fails because it is not Mahendra Singh Dhoni's biography, it is his hagiography.
Parched
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
Radhika Apte, Surveen Chawla and Tannishtha Chatterjee's film is failed by too much violence and unnecessary gloss. Some things are better left to the imagination.
Banjo
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
Banjo has practically no redeeming features. It is about a NRI musician's (Nargis Fakhri) search for an original sound which leads her to the banjo artist Tarraat (Riteish Deshmukh) and his rag-tag band, and what happens next.
Raaz Reboot
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
The shenanigans of Emraan Hashmi, Gaurav Arora and Kriti Kharbanda are supposed to be scary. What you get instead is unintended humour.
Pink
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
Pink, perhaps called thus because the colour is girly, subverts it and turns it on its head. In its best bits, the film blazes, its call-to-arms radiating outwards and forcing us to acknowledge uncomfortable truths. It has something to say, and says it with courage and conviction. Gather everyone and go; and while you are at it, spread the word.
Freaky Ali
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
Nawazuddin Siddiqui is capable of carrying a film on his own shoulders but the film drowns in its own silliness.
Baar Baar Dekho
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
Katrina Kaif, Sidharth Malhotra film has all the gloss but no beating heart. Baar baar dekho for this romance? Ha, just wishful thinking.
Akira
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
Sonakshi Sinha kicks butt in the A R Murugadoss film but is limited by her role. Despite Anurag Kashyap's deliciously bad performance, Akira falls into a sinkhole.
Island City
2016 · Indian Express · Sep 2016
That big cities are empty and soul-less (and Mumbai, Oberoi's location, is our biggest) is a familiar theme. Oberoi renews it with a couple of good ideas, but doesn't manage to give us an underneath layer: you are left wanting more, more depth, something that goes beyond the obvious. But there's no doubt that Oberoi has an eye. I will be keen to see what she comes up with next.
Thithi
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
...most of it is funny, even if the film suffers from occasional flatness. Reddy's is an original voice, and the 26 year old is a welcome addition to the growing number of young filmmakers in India creating cinema which has provenance, which has something to say. Thithi has won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Kannada.
A Flying Jatt
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
Tiger Shroff plays the bumbling, fumbling superhero with perfection. Had it not been for the unnecessary song and dance, this could have been a rollicking film.
UNindian
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
Lee, surprisingly, isn't bad at all, and manages the emotional bits quite well, though he does flatten in bits. So does the film, but meanwhile it makes its point that East and West can sometimes be best.
Happy Bhag Jayegi
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
This Diana Penty, Abhay Deol film is good for a few laughs but then falls victim to weak writing and never realises its full potential.
Mohenjo Daro
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
Hrithik Roshan can't rescue this film. Ashutosh Gowariker makes it bigger but not better. Pooja Hegde needs a better debut. Mohenjo Daro is a plod.
Rustom
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
Akshay Kumar-starrer borrows the core idea of Nanavati murder case and adds a layer of extra intrigue. The plan is to make a spicy plot spicier but turns it cardboard.
The Legend of Michael Mishra
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
This comedy will make you cry for the wasted talent of Arshad Warsi, Boman Irani and Aditi Rao Hydari. And all the missing 'h' in the film.
Budhia Singh – Born to Run
2016 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
...there's enough zest in the warp and weft of the film, to keep us engaged. It has a welcome sense of pace and place with the use of authentic-sounding Oriya lines being kept at a minimum which is much better than everyone fumbling over the accent.
Chauthi Koot
2015 · Indian Express · Aug 2016
The narrative of this Gurvinder Singh film unfolds unhurriedly and still you do not stir from your seats. You watch with a growing sense of dread, praying for safety of innocents in the frame, both two and four-legged.
Dishoom
2016 · Indian Express · Jul 2016
John Abraham and Varun Dhawan's movie is designed like a fast-paced caper but lacks impact. It shines in bits and pieces but the rest is a stretch.
Kabali
2016 · Indian Express · Jul 2016
This was the time when Rajinikanth should have reinvented himself for his directors have long stopped bothering about plot and characterisation. For when Rajinikant is on and at it, who cares?
Great Grand Masti
2016 · Indian Express · Jul 2016
To spice up the by now wrung-out-to-dry formula of sex-starved husbands and stand-offish wives, Great Grand Masti script has added on a female ghost who died a virgin.
Sultan
2016 · Indian Express · Jul 2016
Sultan is an entertainer with heft. Salman Khan aces it with a full-bodied, fully-earned performance in the movie and is ably supported by rest of the cast.
Shorgul
2016 · Indian Express · Jul 2016
Shorgul is reduced to a clichéd melodrama with its bloody clashes between the sword-wielding `Musalmaans' and `trishul-dhaari' Hindus.
Raman Raghav 2.0
2016 · Indian Express · Jun 2016
There are some mesmeric bits in here, which belong to Siddiqui. But those are not enough. Without those crucial elements, the film is rendered atmospheric yet hollow, and we are turned into cringing voyeurs, into reluctant participants, without redemption.
Finding Dory
2016 · Indian Express · Jun 2016
I missed the lightheartedness of the original. This one is touchy-feely-weepy, underlining the movie's big theme — home is where the heart is. What happened to throwing your head back and laughing?
Dhanak
2016 · Indian Express · Jun 2016
Two winsome kids in 'exotic Rajasthan' make for a pleasant watch. It's hard not to be moved by the two kids — Krish Chhabria and Hetal Gadda — and their heart-warming story, directed by Nagesh Kukunoor.
Udta Punjab
2016 · Indian Express · Jun 2016
This is the kind of film which has something to say, and it says it with both flair and conviction.
Do Lafzon Ki Kahani
2016 · Indian Express · Jun 2016
The only point of interest in this Randeep Hooda, Kajal Aggarwal starrer is that it is set in Kuala Lumpur, a city Bollywood doesn't much get around to.
Te3n
2016 · Indian Express · Jun 2016
TE3N is a case of sadly missed opportunities. Because there are rousing actors in here, and there's a real city to play it all out in. Kolkata is a perfect location for a film like this with its atmospheric patches and the iconic Howrah-Hoogly vistas, reminding you of producer Sujoy Ghosh's far more engaging 'Kahaani', but how a man clad in a dark hoody ( in sultry Kolkata) manages to move around those streets so freely remains an unsolvable mystery.
Housefull 3
2016 · Indian Express · Jun 2016
Jacqueline, Lisa and Nargis playing lassies in short skirts going by the name Ganga, Jamuna and Saraswati, coming up with the worst lines ever...
Veerappan
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
The dizzying camera angles which have marred so many of RGV's recent outings may have mercifully gone missing but the ear-shattering background music is right there.
Phobia
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
The Radhika Apte starrer is genuinely frightener, so far away from those unintentionally comic monstrosities it keeps slinging out, that you feel like cheering.
Waiting
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
Both Naseeruddin and Kalki Koechlin are good fits for their parts in a film which segues easily between English, Hindi and a smattering of Malayalam.
Sarbjit
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
I did tear up a couple of times, but only for Sarbjit. Randeep Hooda is mostly shown inside his dark, fetid cell, his hair filthy, his hands gnarled. He nails the look and the accent, never letting either overpower him, and is the only reason to sit through this sagging saga.
Dear Dad
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
There are a few moments between father and son which feel as if something real is going on – resentment and anger have a way of boiling up to the surface in strange ways between parents and children. But the rest of it is clunky and contrived, and the sudden switch between moods—from dad being foe to friend—feels too hurried.
Azhar
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
This could have been a great cautionary tale about a great sport at a time when it was just becoming the arena it has grown into—full of big money and glamour, bigger endorsements and never-ending temptations : it is, instead, an inept 'tamasha', not very different from the stuff Bollywood churns out, the cricket just the superstructure for tired song-and-dance and melodrama, in living rooms and court-rooms. Nope, this 'Azhar' doesn't hit it out of the stadium.
Traffic
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
This enterprise, bloated by needless saccharine and background music, has its moments but stays, overall, strictly serviceable.
One Night Stand
2016 · Indian Express · May 2016
Right now, Sunny Leone is gorgeous to look at, but we know that already, and struggling to emote, which has been her bugbear in her last few outings as well.
Mother's Day
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
The only thing that makes Mother's Day stand out for me is the presence of a salwar-kameez and sari-clad Indian woman, who plays Mandvi's lively mum. She's also written very broadly, but at least she's there, right in the midst of a flick with so many A-list white gals. Yay for 'desis' in Amrika.
Baaghi
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
I enjoyed the first half, and yawned through the much-too-long-drawn second.
Laal Rang
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
The film is meant to be based on two `real life' incidents, but it doesn't tell us which. What we get, to begin with, is a scary inside view of the kind of skullduggery that goes on between places and people who are meant to be engaged in saving our lives, and are instead, busy lining their pockets, criminally indifferent to the dangers they pose.
Nil Battey Sannata
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
'Nil Battey Sannata' has a strong message about how education can change your life. It does underline the message, but stays just short of being preachy or message-y. And leaves you with a warm glow.
Fan
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
Fan is an out-and-out Shah Rukh Khan show, in which the star proves again that he can greenlight roles completely out of his comfort zone, and deliver.
Love Games
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
The Bhatts' long-standing promise of giving us fully adult men and women bursting with carnal desires and twisted motives used to be backed by storylines. This one gives up quickly.
Ki and Ka
2016 · Indian Express · Apr 2016
Great to see the premise– send a woman out, keep a man in, and reverse gender expectations- on screen : it just needed to have been sharper and deeper.
Rocky Handsome
2016 · Indian Express · Mar 2016
Everything is all over the place in this Goa over-run by 'Roosis', and dark night clubs, and organ traders, and scenes of extreme, hard-core violence. Remind me again, why are we watching this one?
Kapoor & Sons
2016 · Indian Express · Mar 2016
Sidharth brings to the table a loose-limbed pleasing vulnerability which he reveals slowly. Fawad plays his straight, and he doesn't lift off the screen. Rishi gets some laughs in.
Teraa Surroor
2016 · Indian Express · Mar 2016
The focus stays firmly on Himesh, who remains blank-faced through it all, never cracking a single smile, not even when he is with his girl. All in tons of slo mo, alternating with dizzying camera angles. All drowned in loud background music.
Jai Gangaajal
2016 · Indian Express · Mar 2016
Priyanka Chopra's too-sophisticated unmade-up-make-up is very distracting, even in her few convincing moments. And the film goes on for far too long, even when we know how all of it will end.
Zubaan
2016 · Indian Express · Mar 2016
The writing is patchy, with Kaushal not coming off as striking as he was in 'Masaan' : he's good yes, he makes us watch, yes, but is already familiar.
Aligarh
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
Like in his 'Shahid', Hansal Mehta and scriptwriter Apurva Asrani have come up with a lead character and a film which shines with authenticity and emotional heft, which leaves you thinking, and which says something we should all listen to, especially in these times when it has become more imperative than ever before: we can be different, but we are us.
Tere Bin Laden Dead Or Alive
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
'Tere Bin Laden', Part 2, generates start-up potential, some smiles, some laugh-out-loud lines, but it keeps petering out.
Neerja
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
Minus the songs and the excessive schmaltz, 'Neerja' could have been outstanding. But still, the film holds, and hold us with it.
Ghayal Once Again
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
Sunny Deol the actor is still a lethal weapon and can blow his opponent all the way across the room. Sunny the director should just get out his way.
Sanam Teri Kasam
2016 · Indian Express · Feb 2016
'Sanam Teri Kasam' , starring Mawra Hocane and Harshvardhan Rane, not to be confused with the '82 film of the same name, is a manual of how Not to make a contemporary romantic film.
Saala Khadoos
2016 · Indian Express · Jan 2016
The fact that it is about women in a sporting arena– heck, that is a sports film– should be a thing to celebrate, and you can see that effort has gone into creating authenticity while training-and-fighting-in-the-ring, but 'Salaa Khadoos' is far too literally realized to be a really strong film. Unlike Madhi's hero Mohammad Ali, it neither floats nor stings. It drones.
Mastizaade
2016 · Indian Express · Jan 2016
Having suffered through two hours of non-stop crassness, I am sorry to tell you that there are barely two-and-a-half laughs in 'Mastizaade'. The alleged 'masti' is so 'sasti', that you are left cringing rather than cracking up.
Jugni
2016 · Indian Express · Jan 2016
Shefali Bhushan's debut feature has a documentary feel to it, which is natural, given her experience with being a collator and collector of folk sounds around the country. But it works for the realistic grain of the film.
Airlift
2016 · Indian Express · Jan 2016
'Airlift' plays it right, and gives us drama, even if things slow down and turn a trifle repetitious post interval. But overall, 'Airlift' is a good film, solidly plotted, well executed and well-acted.
Chalk N Duster
2016 · Indian Express · Jan 2016
It is a subject that deserves a great deal of attention, but not in the way this Juhi Chawla, Shabana Azmi film does it.
Wazir
2016 · Indian Express · Jan 2016
There's enough to watch in 'Wazir' despite its flaws. It reaffirms something we've always known: that there's nothing to beat a plot-driven film (co-written by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Abhijat Joshi). That the supreme importance in a thriller is to keep it going. And that strong performances are the pivot of any film: watching Akhtar and Bachchan joust and manoeuver around each other is this film's high point.
Chauranga
2016 · Indian Express · Jan 2016
What's missing in between is a fluid narrative, which hobbles the film. Or is the choppiness down to cuts? Either way, this is a film which could have been more.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
2015 · Indian Express · Dec 2015
...a bona-fide film, referencing the original pop-culture behemoth, and renewing it, with some energy and vim.
Dilwale
2015 · Indian Express · Dec 2015
Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol film on the whole, is a plotless drag : the slaphappy antics you see on screen are a random jumble of light, camera, action, done in the broadest sense.
Bajirao Mastani
2015 · Indian Express · Dec 2015
The grandiosity wears off. You long for a genuinely moving, exciting story, featuring all these beautiful people, all actors able to pull off characters, but buried under their mounds of clothes, mouthing dialogue. 'Bajirao Mastani' had the potential to be a terrific historical. What it ends up being is a costume drama: too many costumes, too much revved-up, empty drama, and too little story.
Hate Story 3
2015 · Indian Express · Dec 2015
There are bed bits with generous displays of slithering lingerie on chest-and-thigh, and surprisingly for a time when 'boldness' is being dealt with by archaic moral standards, lots of open mouth-and-tongue action.
Angry Indian Goddesses
2015 · Indian Express · Dec 2015
There's nothing 'angry', to start with, about this bunch of young women which gets together to reminisce, giggle and celebrate. These are flesh-and-blood women, and the film is delightful till they stay that way. Being labelled 'goddesses' seems like a ploy to reel in non-Indians looking for exotica, something the director does well. It doesn't do these lovely ladies any favours.
Tamasha
2015 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
I really liked a lot of the second half. There's so much good stuff going on, including the pair which strays, and then journeys towards each other. Despite its flaws, this is Ali's most complex story, teeming with ideas, and gives us Ranbir back again, along with the lovely Deepika, even if the plot keeps losing sight of her : there are tracts when she goes missing. Pity it peters out.
X: Past Is Present
2015 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
Except for one segment, right at the end, which has Swara Bhaskar and the young Jha, and a sense of time and place, the rest have practically no weight, nor heft. They just go past in a blur, without any real markers. The lines sound forced, and Kapoor says them without investing anything in his character.
Aurangzeb
2013 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
Somewhere in the too-complicated strands of Aurangzeb is a film struggling to cohere. This is what we have: too many subplots with threads hanging, criss-crossing a main plot that is over baked and undercooked.
Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai
2010 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
The challenge in a film like this, which entwines mobsters and `mehboobas', is to make it all new, because of the past classics which have soared with the same dramatis personae. Milan Luthria rises only partially to it : he starts off well, and carries on as he means to, but then falls into the trap of the familiar. `Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai' doesn't match up to that spectacular scene where the city lies below, in all its glittery splendour, never quite becoming the great retro chic gangster flick that it sets out to be.
Shootout at Lokhandwala
2007 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
Shootout At Wadala gives us a bunch of gangsters and cops, all trying very hard for coolth. It has action, some of it explosive, but not madly new. What stops it from becoming the film that it could have is an avalanche of dialogue, the sort of smart-alecky lines that sounded so right in the 70s. In 2013, they seem like a tired device to hang an entire film on.
Love Aaj Kal
2009 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
The snappy back-and-forth between the guy and girl, the large Sardar family and the songs, the train journey (a leitmotif in Imtiaz's films), remind you strongly of both 'Hum Tum', and 'Jab We Met'. Saif playing the older Veer, in turban and beard and rashes of Punjabi, comes up with a few fresh flourishes; but his Jai is all too familiar.
Prem Ratan Dhan Payo
2015 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
...draws heavily from Sooraj Barjatya's previous work, with one glaring cosmetic difference : he sets it not in homes that people like you and me live in, or relate to, but in a grand palace.
Yaara Silly Silly
2015 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
A foul-mouthed whore and a gentle-voiced young fellow are thrown together for a night, and the time they spend together impacts both strongly: the premise has promise, but nothing in the film 'Yaara Silly Silly' delivers on it.
Charlie Ke Chakkar Mein
2015 · Indian Express · Nov 2015
Drugs. Cops. Gangsters. Youngsters. Mix 'em up, and you get 'Charlie Ke Chakkar Mein'. Or at least that's what the film sets out to do.
Main Aur Charles
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
The film should have been riveting. But it comes off as a slapdash, confused collage of scenes involving the famous jail break in which the real life Sobhraj broke free with several prisoners.
Titli
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
You end up feeling for Titli. You want him to break free, and fly away. He shines, and despite its darkness, so does the film. It is harrowing but imperative viewing.
Raajneeti
2010 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
`Raajneeti' could have been the film of the year. It had the potential, and the actors, but it comes together only intermittently. This is not the Prakash Jha who has made some of the most politically resonant films in Hindi cinema.
Shaandaar
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
...a non-stop barrage of stereotypes being played for laughs: rich Sindhi men and their love for living life large, grooms obsessed with their eight-and-a-half packs, limp-wrists and fat waists. Where's the 'shaan' in all this?
Wedding Pullav
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
Everything is predictable. These are new faces, and yet everything they do smacks of staleness. Overused themes can be infused with freshness only if the treatment is right: here, all elements are borrowed from older films and used so clunkily as to extinguish all freshness.
Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
The first had some punch and was okay for a bunch of laughs. The sequel is flat and unfunny.
Pyaar Ka Punchnama
2011 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
The writing is unerring when it comes to the lads, but goes off track with the lasses. Their acts are good, but distressingly single-tone.
Jazbaa
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is over-the-top in this convoluted, over-plotted crime-drama...
The Walk
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
The film, and Gordon-Levitt, shines in this final act, as we watch, with our hearts in our mouths breath suspended, waiting for him to come back safely to the other side. Like the unbelievably fearless Petit, at this high point, you feel you are soaring, weightless, high above the world.
Singh Is Bling
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
The only thing which saves it is that it wears its silliness proudly on its hero's `pug' ( turban), said hero smartly reworking his good-hearted simpleton who loves his mother and respects his father, and rescues his girl.
Puli
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
After the spectacular 'Baahubali', we were all set for an encore with 'Puli', yet another period fantasy from the South. But this one is a crashing bore.
Talvar
2015 · Indian Express · Oct 2015
The film is as real as a constructed-for-the-camera document can be, with its portrayal of the professional rivalries between the investigating teams, and insatiable media persons.
Time Out
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
'Timeout' raises a subject that is usually not tackled with any seriousness in our movies, places it at the heart of the story. For that alone it deserves props.
Kis Kisko Pyaar Karu
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
The only reason not to run out of the theatre, screaming, is that Sharma displays a surprising flair for underplaying.
Calendar Girls
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
A hurried after-thought, which talks of how these girls are really, truly 'proud achievers', comes right in the end. And it's just that, an after-thought. The rest of it exploits—smugly, tackily, uncomfortably explicitly—young women being exploited.
Meeruthiya Gangsters
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
The movie is so far from being the zippy crime caper it presumably set out to be that it leaves you stranded, wondering just what is going on.
Katti Batti
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
Kangana and Imran spend the film engaged in the most inane of doings...Imran Khan is pleasant and earnest, Kangana Ranaut has knocked it out of the park a couple of times while playing feisty, and is capable of mining real emotions even in the fakest of films.
Hero
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
The end of Sooraj Pancholi, Athiya Shetty film brings relief, with Sallu Bhai working the end credits, exuding more star power in two minutes than we've seen in two hours. This 'Hero' is a zero.
Welcome Back
2015 · Indian Express · Sep 2015
There really is no reason why the sequel, despite the collective clunkiness of John and Shruti, shouldn't have worked in exactly the same way. But the jagged narrative and heavy-handed manner of delivering dialogue, much more risible and tasteless than the original, ruins it. We've moved on ; the film, and its treatment, hasn't.
Kaun Kitne Paani Mein
2015 · Indian Express · Aug 2015
Good idea, faulty execution. Using water as a trade commodity is a powerful concept, especially given that there is so much drought and so little accessible clean drinking water in so many parts of India.
Phantom
2015 · Indian Express · Aug 2015
Saif Ali Khan, Katrina Kaif's Phantom is disappointing, there is no crackle, only fizz...
All Is Well
2015 · Indian Express · Aug 2015
Whoever named this film must have a great sense of black humour, because the only thing 'well' about the film is its title...
Manjhi: The Mountain Man
2015 · Indian Express · Aug 2015
Nawazuddin Siddiqui strains every sinew, and remains consistently watchable despite the shifts in tone. But even he cannot make the film soar.
Gour Hari Dastaan
2015 · Indian Express · Aug 2015
A man's struggle for identity can be an absorbing story. Uplifting even, if it is connected with a country's freedom struggle. Gour Hari's 'dastaan', based on the quest of a real-life character, has all the elements that could have made it all this and more, but it comes off flat and dull.
Brothers
2015 · Indian Express · Aug 2015
Akshay Kumar, Sidharth Malhotra's film uses a form of kinetic martial arts to foreground its story of two warring siblings, but it stays, at heart, a Karan Johar film.
Bangistan
2015 · Indian Express · Aug 2015
The film finds its laughs in the odd moment, but comes off, over all, flat and tepid.
Drishyam
2015 · Indian Express · Jul 2015
The film, which stays mostly faithful to the original but has a few inserts, could have been better if it had been tighter. Second half is where the movie and Ajay Devgn-- both take time to get into their groove-- come into their own.
Love Sex aur Dhokha
2010 · Indian Express · Jul 2015
You may not like everything you see in `Love, Sex aur Dhoka', but Banerjee offers up a scintillating new way of seeing. Watch it.
I Am Kalam
2011 · Indian Express · Jul 2015
'I Am Kalam' is a big smile of a movie. You watch, and smile right back.
Masaan
2015 · Indian Express · Jul 2015
'Masaan' is imbued with a sense of place and time, poetry and lyricism, and it captures the essence of Banaras, constant-yet-changeable, with felicity and feeling. It also announces the arrival of new talents in its writer and director: Grover's story is eminently worth telling, and Ghaywan tells it beautifully.
Bajrangi Bhaijaan
2015 · Indian Express · Jul 2015
This film presses many red-hot buttons, even if the treatment is strictly in-the-clouds 'filmi'. And gives us Shirtless Salman as a dove of peace, speaking for all religions and 'mulqs'. Believe it, or faint.
Bāhubali: The Beginning
2015 · Indian Express · Jul 2015
SS Rajamouli's film holds out many promises: of adventure and romance, love and betrayal, valour and weakness. And delivers magnificently on each of them.
Second Hand Husband
2015 · Indian Express · Jul 2015
I was here to see if Govinda's daughter, whose debut this is, had the same zany gene in her. And to see how Gippy Grewal, Punjabi star, would fare in his first Bollywood outing. Within the first few scenes, it was clear that Tina Ahuja was a no-hoper. And that Grewal should go right back to doing what he does best.
Guddu Rangeela
2015 · Indian Express · Jul 2015
...the movie is fashioned as a jaunty ride through Jatland, a theme currently all the rage in Bollywood. Kapoor demonstrates a growing assuredness, which is clear in the robust, cracking portions of the film: all he now needs is a solid hole-less plot with lines to match.
Killa
2015 · Indian Express · Jun 2015
'Killa' is about a boy. Have you been one? Have you attempted to make sense of a world that makes very little sense, after your father passes away, leaving your mother alone? How do you go? Whose shoes do you fill? Whose footsteps do you follow? Avinash Arun's National-award winning directorial debut is about that boy in this movie, but it could just as well be any of us, because those are questions we all grapple with when it comes to growing past, growing up.
Inside Out
2015 · Indian Express · Jun 2015
It is a life lesson, for eleven year-olds-going –on-twelve. And for the rest of us, at whatever age we may be at.
Miss Tanakpur Haazir Ho
2015 · Indian Express · Jun 2015
This could have been a sharp black comedy with a strong sense of place , mining its superb absurdist premise : at one point, you are actually gifted the real meaning of that hoary expression 'gayi bhains paani mein'. That is laugh-out-loud funny. You wish the rest of it was the same.
ABCD 2
2015 · Indian Express · Jun 2015
Much of 'ABCD2′ is inspired by real life: a Mumbai group made it to the world hip-hop championships a few years ago under tough circumstances. The film sets out to prove that all of us can do with second chances, and that Indians can do hip-hop as well as the rest of the world (which we can easily believe given the astonishing degree of expertise we see on our reality shows) But a dance movie needs to electrify. That's missing: all the I-love-my-India drippiness overwhelms the choreography. And why is it so long? It just goes on and on.
Hamari Adhuri Kahani
2015 · Indian Express · Jun 2015
It purports to be an unusual triangle, and perhaps on paper, it may have come off as one. But this is a shockingly empty film, with the entire cast desperately 'acting away', and not one sentiment that feels real. Given his early track-record of creating engaging drama, Mohit Suri should have made a full meal of the film, but his material defeats him: it is not only half done, it's also not well begun.
Dil Dhadakne Do
2015 · Indian Express · Jun 2015
High-society hi-jinks on the high seas. This, in short, is what 'Dil Dhakakne Do' comes off as primarily, even if there are multiple straining-for-depth strands in it. Of creeping middle-age and dwindling love. Of gender imbalance caused by dominant males, and the making of submissive women. Of lineage and privilege and position. Of life lessons from the wisest of them all, a dog named Pluto.
Ishqedarriyaan
2015 · Indian Express · Jun 2015
The desire to be a traditional Bollywood hero continues to be the bane of all new-comers, even those who are star-sons, and not really new comers. Mahaakshay returns in a badly-written romance, which makes you wonder why anyone would want to repeat the same mistakes: 'Ishqedarriyan' features the age-old triangle of rich boy- poor girl- and third party, in a leaden plot that never takes off.
Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year
2009 · Indian Express · Jun 2015
Yashraj Films turns over a desperately-needed leaf with 'Rocket Singh', a film with both art and heart. The not-so-regular story of a regular guy is seldom told right: here, scriptwriter Jaideep Sahni, director Shimit Amin and lead actor Ranbir Kapoor work in tandem to keep it real and grounded and engrossing.
Billu
2009 · Indian Express · May 2015
Watch it for Irrfan who gets every shade in, from self-respect to bafflement to misery, in his portrayal of a poor man who's got too much pride to remember himself to a friend who's gone so far ahead of him in life's sweepstakes. And for SRK playing SRK. Just don't pay too much attention to the film.
Welcome to Karachi
2015 · Indian Express · May 2015
When the gags are flowing apace, and there some good ones in here, 'Welcome 2 Karachi' keeps ticking. I found myself flagging when the pace dipped, especially in the second half. But overall it is all good-natured and appropriately silly, so 'Welcome 2 Karachi' stays watchable. And it manages to end on a hilarious note, sending us out laughing. For a comedy, that's a win.
Tanu Weds Manu: Returns
2015 · Indian Express · May 2015
...a film that is enjoyable despite its occasional slides into message-y territory...Kangana Ranaut plays Tanu beautifully mixing up the familiar with the new.
Bombay Velvet
2015 · Indian Express · May 2015
Lookswise, the film is pure gorgeousness. Trouble is, it is also largely overwrought and inert. The meticulous detailing in the re-creation of one of the most pulsating periods of Bombay's history, is terrific. Much of the film stays, mostly and disappointingly, on its sumptuous surface.
Shahid
2013 · Indian Express · May 2015
If Mehta directs unsparingly, Raj Kumar Yadav acts unflinchingly. His Shahid is a man who grows in front of us, the audience. He does a course correction and changes direction. For a Hindi film protagonist, this kind of arc is rare. So is this story, which calls a spade a shovel, and names names.
Ek Tha Tiger
2012 · Indian Express · May 2015
There are two conflicting factors in Ek Tha Tiger: Salman Khan's overriding principle of silliness and Kabir Khan's intrinstic liking for seriousness. But so overwhelming is Bhai's past aura that serious keeps threatening to slide into silly, and the moment you give in to that in-between space, the film becomes something you can enjoy. Most of the time.
Gabbar is Back
2015 · Indian Express · May 2015
I've said this several times, but I'm ready to implore again: can Bollywood please, please stop making these tired, tiresome remakes? And let sleeping Gabbars lie?
Kaagaz Ke Fools
2015 · Indian Express · Apr 2015
You keep wanting this film to 'ho ja shuru', but 'Kaagaz Ke Fools' doesn't have the feet for it.
Jai Ho Democracy
2015 · Indian Express · Apr 2015
Satire needs nuance: 'Jai Ho Democracy' drowns in obviousness. This, coming from Ranjit Kapoor, is a disappointment. The intention is fine, but the treatment is far from. And it criminally wastes an array of good actors: Kapoor, Puri, Hussain, Biswas, Bashir raise their decibel with zero impact. There's a Mayawati-like character who is made fun of, and we smile, but she's gone too soon. As is the point of this film.
Margarita, with a Straw
2015 · Indian Express · Apr 2015
Kalki pulls it off, and makes us believe in her Laila...This is a film to be celebrated. I am raising a Margarita, as a toast. Now where's that straw?
Court
2015 · Indian Express · Apr 2015
It is a searing, unmissable film, the best you will see this year. If you feel any other way, well, go ahead, sue me.
Ek Paheli Leela
2015 · Indian Express · Apr 2015
The film's title is a misnomer. It should have been Many Pahelis Leela, because all through this terrible drag, I kept trying to solve several puzzles with no success, coming up with a big zero in the end.
Dharam Sankat Mein
2015 · Indian Express · Apr 2015
The central question this film raises is profound: does the religion you are born into define you for the rest of your life? What if you are not who you believed yourself to be? It articulates the anxieties we live with, and uses the words 'Hindu', 'Muslim', 'Isaai' loudly and clearly, which is a relief because films these days are steering clear of these basic descriptives because we are now a nation of the easily offended. But it doesn't jump into the deep end, carefully skirting the tough questions, and sticks to the majoritarian path, and clichéd representations.
Detective Byomkesh Bakshy
2015 · Indian Express · Apr 2015
'Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!' is a film that filled me to the brim. It is the kind of film that I will recall and savour, flaws and all. The pacing is languorous, and in the second-half, the stutters become obvious. Its biggest weakness is its leading man Sushant Singh Rajput...
Barkhaa
2015 · Indian Express · Mar 2015
Maybe the intention of the film was to tell us that ladies who dance for a living also have the right to respectability, which is wonderful, but a mothballed plot and an even more mothballed treatment isn't the way forward.
Hunterrr
2015 · Indian Express · Mar 2015
'Hunterrr' is about a guy who can't keep it in his pants...And what does it say about Indian society that men can be out-there hunters, and women have to be content to be under-the-radar prey? When will Bollywood give us a film in which men and women are equal opportunity offenders? Can it ever?
NH10
2015 · Indian Express · Mar 2015
It's not that Sharma, who has also produced the film, is not trying hard. She is, and up to a point, she is in fine fettle. But at the point when she turns from flee to fight, I stopped believing.
Dirty Politics
2015 · Indian Express · Mar 2015
What we get is the kind of film which should have been deep-sixed before it was thought of. And dialogues that had me guffawing helplessly because there was nothing else I could do.
Dum Laga Ke Haisha
2015 · Indian Express · Feb 2015
The first thing you should know about 'Dum Laga Ke Haisha' is that it has a story. Verily, the thing that movies ought to have before they get made, the very thing that Bollywood forgets, unbelievably, so often. The story is the basis of a solid, honest-to-goodness script, a lead couple that wins you over gradually but surely, and a bunch of actors who know exactly where they are at.
Ab Tak Chhappan 2
2015 · Indian Express · Feb 2015
This kind of film can work if it has a new spin on an old story. But the cop who gets busy notching up kills, without making us wonder about the morality of someone taking it upon themselves to exterminate humans, is a cipher. So is the film. And the worst part? It's full of blips, everyone's lips going silent, as soon as, presumably, a cussword comes along. Oh our delicate ears.
Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost
2015 · Indian Express · Feb 2015
'Qissa' is lambent, lovely, and completely seductive up till this point. It then tumbles into another zone, where an accident leads to a death, and the appearance of a 'ghost', and the tale stutters.
Badlapur
2015 · Indian Express · Feb 2015
'Badlapur' takes a stab at an underlying theme which runs parallel to the revenge motif: can forgiveness, even for the most heinous of crimes, come with time; and, as a corollary, what, after all, is revenge? But the film doesn't explore these fundamental questions with the kind of depth it could have. What is left is a bunch of jugular-grabbing explosive scenes, which make you sigh for the film this could have been. It should have left us scorched; it doesn't. For me, 'Johnny Gaddar' is still the film Raghavan has to scale.
Roy
2015 · Indian Express · Feb 2015
I haven't seen something as fuzzy and dreary as 'Roy' in a long time : just what is Ranbir Kapoor doing in a movie like this?
MSG: The Messenger of God
2015 · Indian Express · Feb 2015
The 'film' is excruciatingly awful only for non-believers...
Shamitabh
2015 · Indian Express · Feb 2015
'Shamitabh' had the potential to use irony and knowingness and a self-awareness, and the presence of the most durable star in Bollywood whose velvet-and-iron rumble has become part of the national soundtrack, to give us an unforgettable story of ego and identity, rejection and acceptance, success and failure. There are a few moments which sparkle, and we laugh in acknowledgement. But the rest of it is overpowered by unabashed reverence.
Hawaizaada
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
This could have been a greatly imaginative flight of fancy, but it is anything but. For a film that is about the joy of flying, Hawaizaada fails to sprout any wings. And it is so utterly stuffed with leaden passages in its unbelievably stretched running time, that it bored the bejesus out of me.
Khamoshiyan
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
As always, Bollywood can't really get serious about horror, because it needs to shove in a song at that very moment. Scary `bhoots' are all very well, but they can't trump 'geets' that will play in a loop.
Dolly Ki Doli
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
Sonam Kapoor film starts off well, but falls into a familiar trap. Ultimately, 'Dolly Ki Doli' is neither biting social comment, nor unfettered fun.
Baby
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
...though this film looks always to be on the move, it frequently stalls. The result is a sort of frantic business which flatters to deceive : 'Baby', fronted by its fleet-footed hero with his brisk moustache and its background-music-overlaid action, feels longer than it should.
Paddington
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
A movie based on a childhood favourite book can usually never measure up. But I was wonderfully surprised by 'Paddington' : the bear is not precious and cute, he is just curious and sweet, the way I remembered him.
Crazy Cukkad Family
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
...ripe for black humour, and a sharp comedy of manners. There are moments when the film seems to get it, but then squanders the chance, and gets back to being broad and obvious. And dull.
Alone
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
Bipasha Basu roams about in negligees and shorts, and tries very hard, but is altogether too manicured to pull off a scare. And the debutant Karan Singh Grover follows the script, but there's not much anyone can do when the pace is so staid that you want to tell the spirit to hurry it up, willya.
Tevar
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
It is Manoj Bajpayee who brings 'asli dum' to this utterly predictable, loud, done-to-death 'Violent Love Story'. He's done all of this before—the leering, the jeering, the dialogue delivery– but he does it with full zest. I wouldn't like to meet his character coming down a dark street.
Taken 3
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
Taken was successful because Neeson represented an old-world weary heroism that could take down new-world villainy one hand tied. You cheered for him because he wanted nothing other than saving his family. In Taken 3, he only stands for himself and doesn't seem to care whom all he hurts in the process.
Take It Easy
2015 · Indian Express · Jan 2015
With some easy moments, this film could have been easier to watch, but not when there is no break from loud background music, loud melodrama, and loud dialogues. Even the children, who all try hard to be as natural as possible, are weighed down under all the preachiness.
Ugly
2014 · Indian Express · Dec 2014
Parts of it grab you, especially the interplay between the deeply unhappy Tejaswini Kolhapure and the unsmilingly vicious Ronit Roy: I wanted to know more about these people, and what makes them tick. But the film backs off from them, and stays a zig-zag between being a police procedural and a human drama that wants your jugular.
I Hate Luv Storys
2010 · Indian Express · Dec 2014
In sum, 'I Hate Luv Storys' is pleasant but flaccid fare.
PK
2014 · Indian Express · Dec 2014
Post interval, it slumps. The focus, which till then is on a character who intrigues us while interesting things are happening to him, gets diluted by a wholly superfluous romance (and songs, tuneful as a couple are), and a face-off between the guy awash in other-worldly goodness who asks all the right questions and the bad godman who has all the wrong answers.
Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi
2008 · Indian Express · Dec 2014
...you cannot get more self-referential than having your hero say 'yeh dilwala apni dulhaniya le hi jayega': that's seriously scraping the barrel. 'Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi' has some sparkling moments, featuring Surinderji Sahni. The rest is done that, seen this. Are there any new ideas left in the Yashraj chest? Now is the time to delve deep.
Lingaa
2014 · Indian Express · Dec 2014
Like all his films, 'Lingaa' is basically three hours of Rajini Saar doing his thing. And it is three hours of full-on `masti' and 'mazaa': no half-measures for the man who just has to walk across the screen in slo-mo to send his fans into paroxysms.
Badlapur Boys
2014 · Indian Express · Dec 2014
You are engaged only when the game is on, and it appears to have been executed with some authenticity : that should have been the sole focus of the film.
Main Aur Mr. Riight
2014 · Indian Express · Dec 2014
Barun Sobti gets the hungry-actor look right, but Shenaz Treasurywala needed to be deeper...
Sulemani Keeda
2014 · Indian Express · Dec 2014
The three main characters as well as the bit parts do their job well. But after a point, it all becomes a bit too laidback, even the trying-to-get-laid bit. A little more fun would have put a little more, much-needed spring into Sulemani Keeda, which apparently loosely translates as "pain in the rear". The title has its tongue firmly in the cheek; the film not as much.
Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain
2014 · Indian Express · Dec 2014
What makes the film worth your time is the way it states, unequivocally, that the gas need not have leaked if Union Carbide and its employees and its votaries had come together to pull the plug in time.
Action Jackson
2014 · Indian Express · Dec 2014
The last Prabhu Dheva outing, 'R Rajkumar', was so unbearable that I thought I would be scarred for life. 'Action Jackson' is almost as vile: the only reason I stuck around was to see if Ajay Devgn would start making like Prabhu Dheva by the end. No, he doesn't.
Zed Plus
2014 · Indian Express · Nov 2014
Zed Plus turns out to be a mildly engaging but overall patchy attempt at political satire from the man who gave us the memorable Doordarshan serial Chanakya. Chandra Prakash Dwivedi still has the touch, but is not consistent, and a lot of the story-telling gets drowned in obviousness.
Ungli
2014 · Indian Express · Nov 2014
The opening credits are animated, and Ungli would have been better off if all of it had been an animation film, aimed primarily at children. As live action for grown-ups, it is the most amateurish piece of work I've seen in a while, all fingers and thumbs.
Happy Ending
2014 · Indian Express · Nov 2014
A series of been-here, seen-this moments and a wasted opportunity...
Kill Dil
2014 · Indian Express · Nov 2014
This has steadily and sadly become a Yashraj trademark, the studio that has given Hindi cinema so many of its beloved landmarks, this cannibalizing bits and pieces of its own films without being able to give us a story we can believe in. It's one thing to have an element or two which is exaggerated, it's completely another to get through a full film with such few credible moments.
The Shaukeens
2014 · Indian Express · Nov 2014
Three dirty old men `leching' at a pretty young thing is what 'The Shaukeens' sets out to show. If it had stuck to its guns, made its threesome more interesting, and the girl less ditsy, this remake of Basu Chatterjee's 'Shaukeen' (1982), would have done its job.
Rang Rasiya
2014 · Indian Express · Nov 2014
It feels like a choppy costume drama marred by false notes and static 'acting'...Varma deserves a deeper, more layered film.
Super Nani
2014 · Indian Express · Oct 2014
It is supremely ironical that a film making fun of 'saas-bahu' serials (yes, it tries) shoves exactly those sentiments down our throat. And even more so when you call your leading lady Bharati. We can do without this creaky idea of Mrs India, thank you.
Fireflies
2014 · Indian Express · Oct 2014
There are patches which feel well –observed, especially when they are based in Mumbai's swish spots—pretty people talking about London flats, and well-attired investment bankers in their offices with a view. And, towards the end, when the reason for the bad blood between the brothers becomes apparent, the outlines of a plot become discernible, and you feel something there.
Happy New Year
2014 · Indian Express · Oct 2014
It turns out to be a cross between an `Oceans 11/12' and 'Flashdance' and a whole bunch of movies that topline Mera Bharat Mahan sentiments....a long showreel of what Shah Rukh Khan the superstar can do...
Sonali Cable
2014 · Indian Express · Oct 2014
Rhea Chakraborty tries for perkiness but comes as a weak link, Anupam Kher is over the top...This could have been a modern day fable, but 'Sonali Cable' is not that film.
Tamanchey
2014 · Indian Express · Oct 2014
For this dish, you need to assemble the following. Girl. Should be able to handle guns and talk tough.... Guy. Who speaks some kind of weird mish-mash of UP-Bihari Hindi and a wildly-printed shirt, which tells us he is a) naïve and b)good-at-heart.... ...Serve
Bang Bang!
2014 · Indian Express · Oct 2014
Hrithik is the film's eye candy and the prime shooter, all rolled into one, and gives you some amount of bang. The rest is burble.
Haider
2014 · Indian Express · Oct 2014
I doubt if I will be able to forget the stunning visuals which dot the film, but the sum is never more than its terrific parts. The craggy old gravediggers in a scene that soars, and the truest character of the film, Haider's father ( played by Jha), channel the continuing tragedy that is Kashmir. As do the lovely `kani' shawls flung over the shoulders of the characters, the wispy steam rising from the `kahwa' cups, the conflicted tears that flow out of Tabu's eyes . If only they had a film to match.
Chaarfutiya Chhokare
2014 · Indian Express · Sep 2014
Does any kind of logic or reasoning go into making these kinds of films? Putting a spotlight on the ills of child marriage– and the other things– can never be a bad thing.
Desi Kattey
2014 · Indian Express · Sep 2014
The point of this kind of film is to be completely male-centric, guns-as-phallus, mine-is-bigger-than-yours.
Khoobsurat
2014 · Indian Express · Sep 2014
'Khubsoorat' is bubblegum-y and air-headed and good-natured, and its biggest strength is that it keeps it consistent, becoming one of those films that over-delivers precisely because it under-promises.
Daawat-e-Ishq
2014 · Indian Express · Sep 2014
As Gullu's straight-laced but loving father, Anupam Kher gives the film its only moments of honesty. The rest is an unpalatable snoozefest.
Creature
2014 · Indian Express · Sep 2014
The plot is unintentionally hilarious, involving an intrepid young woman who turns up in the forest to start a lodge, loads of extras playing chefs and petrified guests, and an alleged award-winning writer. The coming of the creature leaves a trail of dead bodies, but instead of running, our heroine declares 'I am not going'. Drum roll.
Finding Fanny
2014 · Indian Express · Sep 2014
...the film is patchily quirky. An undelivered love letter comes back to the sender, more than four decades after the fact, and it sets into motion this little tale, which leaves you both smiling, when the whimsy is just right, and impatient, when it turns flatly prosaic.
Mary Kom
2014 · Indian Express · Sep 2014
Priyanka Chopra does a good job...What it gets right is the kind of churlishness and mean-minded partisanship Indian sporting federations are beset by : the men ( and they are overwhelmingly men) who run it are not oriented towards the benefit of the players.
Raja Natwarlal
2014 · Indian Express · Aug 2014
You go in hoping for a fun ride. What you get is a limp con job.
Katiyabaaz
2014 · Indian Express · Aug 2014
Overall the film, overlaid by a peppy Indian Ocean number that lays out the connection between the `aadhe bujhe chiraag' that power `poora Kanpoora', does what it sets out to do : present us with a vivid portrait of a once vibrant city in the throes of decay and darkness.
Mardaani
2014 · Indian Express · Aug 2014
The display of the 'trafficked' girls teeters on the voyeuristic. The resolution, showcasing bloody vigilante-ism, is problematic. Is that the only definition of 'mardaani', and is that something to be celebrated? Something more pragmatic, and yes, more real, would have served its consistently watchable leading lady, better.
Singham Returns
2014 · Indian Express · Aug 2014
The sequel to 'Singham' is chock-full of the usual car-on-jeep action. Explosions go off at regular intervals. Shoot-outs—one really well-shot– occur frequently.
Entertainment
2014 · Indian Express · Aug 2014
Akshay Kumar's 'Entertainment' misses the point entirely : it is dull and loud, with a brow so lowered that it reaches the floor.
Kick
2014 · Indian Express · Jul 2014
We know that a Salman film is created solely to display his 'andaaz' designed to send his fans into a swoon. What makes 'Kick' interesting, apart from some unfettered Salman moments, is Siddiqui in full flow.
Hate Story 2
2014 · Indian Express · Jul 2014
The sequel of the 2012 'Hate Story' gives us a new vengeful woman. She's been wronged by, who else, a man. And she will stop at nothing to get back at him. Singh is competent , but even he can't do much with a plot that keeps him in repeat mode. Chawla shows occasional spark, but that's not enough to front a full film. Even Sunny Leone's pink lips, which she pouts most enticingly in a song, don't do the trick.
Pizza
2014 · Indian Express · Jul 2014
'Pizza' will give you some nice chills, and a little twist in the end, which is not as a surprise as it should have been. A remake of the surprise Tamil hit of the same name, the film proves a point. That successful horror doesn't need stars, it needs a solid script, and atmospherics.
Amit Sahni Ki List
2014 · Indian Express · Jul 2014
One man who can't make up his mind between two women is classic brom-com, and there are some moments in here that come close to the real thing. But the story never really shakes off its tropes, and burst forth into its own. Das is an amiable actor, and is a good fit for the urban confused singleton, Tomatia's 'desi' appeal as well as Nayar's svelte swishness is used well, but overall, the film is drab.
Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania
2014 · Indian Express · Jul 2014
'Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania' scores with its likeable lead pair. Varun Dhawan still has raw edges and lets the effort show but he is right for Humpty the Dumpty who likes sitting on wall, and doesn't mind a fall. As the designer 'lehenga'-craving 'kudi' who turns into a girl who chooses substance over style, Alia Bhatt is vibrant and fresh, and the highlight of the film.
Lekar Hum Deewana Dil
2014 · Indian Express · Jul 2014
Was this meant to be a political awakening for two city-bred well-off ignorant-about-real-India young people? It would have been terrific if the plot had known what to make of it. But this is a story which ricochets from one awful point to another, involving the `ladka' and `ladki''s parents and extended families, and the `ladka' and `ladki' hurling themselves at each other's throats, before getting back to more tender body parts.
Bobby Jasoos
2014 · Indian Express · Jul 2014
'Bobby Jasoos' works till the time Vidya Balan gets to lead from the front: the courtship with her reluctant suitor is one of the high points of the film. But I wish this amiable, light-hearted yarn had more 'zaika' and 'tadka'. And the songs are strictly unnecessary and uninteresting. Post-interval, the surprises leachout. So does the fun.
Transformers: Age of Extinction
2014 · Indian Express · Jun 2014
So it's no surprise that the plot is besides the point. Like the previous ones, this latest is all about the noise that Bay can generate, and he is Hollywood's biggest detonator, no contest. The endless car chases, explosions, crumbling buildings, are all tricked out at ear-shattering decibels. As is the main act of the robots transforming from cars to trucks to bots and back again, while getting down and dirty. Good for you if you like that sort of thing, and I am reliably told that there are enough fans of the franchise to line up for fresh installments, even if it is basically more of the same.
Ek Villain
2014 · Indian Express · Jun 2014
Sidharth Malhotra is watchable, he just seems so nice and wholesome all the time. It is Riteish Deshmukh who sweeps the stakes. Suri is an innate story-teller, and can keep things moving. All he needs is a strong, all-the-way credible, original plot.
Humshakals
2014 · Indian Express · Jun 2014
I am all for political incorrectness. Silliness can be great fun. But brainless doesn't have to translate to brain-dead, when it is done with smarts. 'Humshakals' has zero. Even in his really terrible moments, Sajid has managed to come up with one laugh out loud moment. Or two. Here there are none.
Fugly
2014 · Indian Express · Jun 2014
'F*UGLY* begins with a hint of promise, and it could have gone down some paths less travelled. But it meanders, and loses its way.
The World Before Her
2014 · Indian Express · Jun 2014
The tight focus on these two worlds leaves out the other Indias that may not be confined to the single-minded rigour of either camp, beauty or Durga Vahini. There are not just two Indias, as a doyenne in the beauty business and at one time such a popular TV face, declares. There are many more. What choices do the girls who live in those other Indias have? Do they have any at all?
Filmistaan
2014 · Indian Express · Jun 2014
There are a few enjoyable moments in 'Filmistaan', but the potential is never fully realized.
Holiday - A Soldier Is Never Off Duty
2014 · Indian Express · Jun 2014
'Holiday', the official remake of the monster Tamil hit 'Thuppaki', gives Akshay Kumar a chance to return to full combat mode. He plays a patriotic soldier willing to stretch a few rules in the line of duty, whether it is wielding sharp shears on a suspect's finger, or shooting bad guys point blank. Till he's going bang bang, he's all right; the moment he gets romancing and joshing, he slides. So does the film.
Kuku Mathur Ki Jhand Ho Gayi
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
The film ends up being a strictly average, and mostly bland, slice of Delhi life. There's a great deal of Punajbbi Hindi, but that's par for the course of this kind of template-y film. For variation, we get Bihari, from a guard and his 'sari'-loving wife whom he has left behind in Darbhanga, and Kanpur Hindi, from Kuku's 'badmaash mama'. Sit.com territory, stretched out to accommodate a film.
CityLights
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
Mehta does well with generating dread and creating a couple of surprising curves, which almost overcomes some of the plot's uneven arcs. The songs nearly ruined the film for me, but 'Citylights' gives us pause. And an actor who makes us believe, all the way.
Heropanti
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
Boy looks at girl. Boy falls for girl. Girl's father growls. Boy scowls. Girl howls. And I'm left sobbing into my popcorn.
Kochadaiiyaan
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
Even Rajinikanth, the one and the only, can't pick up a film and run with it, if it has the oldest, creakiest plots cobbled together from many books.
Children of War
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
There should have been more history and more competence in 'Children Of War' for it to be the film it had set out to be.
The Xposé
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
If they had maintained the tone, 'The Xpose' would have been a hoot. But songs get stuffed in, a love angle slows things, and it gets stuck in cop stations and courts. They should have just kept the cheese thick. Here's a sampler, from early in the film. A producer tells an aspirant : "na dance na expression na pose, sirf xpose!". Classic. Nothing more would have been needed.
Khwaabb
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
It's tough to make a true-blue sports film, minus song and dance and melodrama, in Bollywood. This one has tried.
Manjunath
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
The best part is that Manjunath is not played by a known Bollywood face. There's enough, in the way the film begins, to keep us engaged.
Mastram
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
Mastram turns out to be much too banal. The re-creation of an era which could have lent the film some heft, is wholly missing from the story.
Hawaa Hawaai
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
Partho is a natural. We saw that in his first film, the heart-warming 'Stanley Ka Dabba'. He's back tugging at our heartstrings, and it's a pleasure to hear a young actor actually speaking his lines with such conviction. 'Hawaa Hawaai' has a big beating heart, but you wish it had been a better film: it trundles on, leaps up intermittently, but doesn't fly.
Purani Jeans
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
I enjoyed 'Purani Jeans' for its freshness in the face of familiarity, and a story that holds all the way to the end.
Kya Dilli Kya Lahore
2014 · Indian Express · May 2014
It is static and goes around in a loop. There's something about the film that reminds you of the Bosnian Oscar winner 'No Man's Land', which was a poignant reminder of the futility of war, and the tragic waste of human lives. 'Kya Dilli Kya Lahore' had the potential to be as powerful, maybe more, because it is our story. So many people still remember Partition as if it was yesterday, and so many people have still have such strong familial connections on either side of the border.
Kaanchi
2014 · Indian Express · Apr 2014
This may have had power 40 years back. Now it is just tired, and jaded.
Revolver Rani
2014 · Indian Express · Apr 2014
The Rani in 'Queen' won our hearts because she was believable every inch of the way. This Rani, who hefts revolvers and shoots to kill, is neither wholly a cartoon figure, nor completely credible. This confusion makes us stop suspending disbelief, and 'Revolver Rani' becomes a tiresome Bollywoodesque trudge through the Chambal, and its men and one woman posturing with guns, and the standard corrupt 'netas' and complicit cops.
2 States
2014 · Indian Express · Apr 2014
It's nice to see Bollywood attempting to create a contemporary young couple. I liked the way they proceed without fuss into that most modern of compacts — of attraction that leads to conjugation, minus coyness. It is done as just something that happens, a no-weightage progression. Which is why the parental 'khit- khit' seems, after a point, overdone and mothballed. The smooth, engaging first half descends, post-interval, into mopey melodrama, and I got impatient waiting for the inevitable resolution.
Dekh Tamasha Dekh
2014 · Indian Express · Apr 2014
This is an important film, and I do hope it gets seen widely, timely and topical as it is in the time of Muzzafarnagar, misguided mullahs and modified bhakts.
Bhoothnath Returns
2014 · Indian Express · Apr 2014
I laughed out loud in a few bits, didn't mind some of it, and blanked out in the rest. Finally it was neither funny nor serious enough: neither fully ghostly nor ghastly, but somewhere in between.
Main Tera Hero
2014 · Indian Express · Apr 2014
'Main Tera Hero' is not as ghastly as a few recent Dhawans have been, but only because it takes itself not at all seriously, and becomes as silly as it should be for some of the second half . The rest of it has its share of the usual unsightly and tasteless gags about women and protruding body parts and the mandatory fat guy in a wheelchair.
Dishkiyaoon
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
This is the kind of film where everyone refers to themselves in the third person ("Gujjar ne kaha kaali diary mein likh dey" : Gujjar being a bad guy and 'kaali diary' a black notepad, got it?), and wanders about biding time till the next meaningless shoot-out and killing. Who writes this kind of tripe? Someone please shoot me in the head.
O Teri
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
I ran for my life in about an hour from this atrocity which calls itself a film, but which is nothing but a series of dismal, embarrassing scenes interspersed with songs that are even more so.
Youngistaan
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
The film, despite its efforts, becomes muddled, and dull. The one I enjoyed watching most was the late Farooque Shaikh, who plays the young politician's mentor and friend. Shaikh has a large role, and he plays it with his customary humour and grace, lending much-needed gravitas to this film. This 'youngistaan' will always remember him with love and affection.
Ragini MMS 2
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
Despite its harum-scarum script and barely-there logic, I quite enjoyed 'Ragini MMS 2' in the portions when Sunny Leone is in full stride. She is totally comfortable in her acres of bare skin, and is surprisingly not that much of a slouch when it comes to acting her part. Heaving and moaning, sure, that's expected. But she can carry a scene: maybe not 'porn se Rituparno' just yet (another example of the dialogue that fits the tone of this film like another kind of sheath), but not half bad.
Sixteen
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
There is heartbreak, and heartache here, minus exaggeration. And some life-affirming scenes, even if the film nearly ends on a lecture about how 16-year-olds can be the most misunderstood breed. This Sixteen is slight, but stays fresh and honest for the most part.
Ankhon Dekhi
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
I have seen it with my own eyes, and I can tell you that 'Aankhon Dekhi' is a fine , fine film. Kapoor's film is an absolute gem, because he gives us a marvelous bunch of characters who make us laugh, and pause, and think. In another film, Bauji would have come off a caricature. But here he is a man in the vital process of sloughing off dead layers, and discovering his skin. Sanjay Mishra does a terrific job of becoming Bauji.
Bewakoofiyaan
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
...spends most of its time trying to showcase a slew of brands, get us to smile at the antics of the father of the bride which are singularly unfunny, and to convince us that its leading lady can helm an entire film.
Queen
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
The story, which could easily have slipped into mush, stays free of drippy sentimentality, barring one or two raised-violin scenes. This could have turned into a clichéd international-accented soup, but despite a couple of exaggerated mis-steps, it stays grounded.
August: Osage County
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
Finally, despite the superb acting, 'August : Osage County' feels becalmed. The heat rises from the ground, but doesn't really reach us.
Total Siyapaa
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
This could have been hilarious. But all it does is drag its feet through unfunny, stretched situations.
Gulaab Gang
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
From its opening frame you discover that in its supposed feminist garb, 'Gulab Gang' is actually the old-style good vs evil story, styled in the tired way these films have been for the longest time. Its chief baddie is, ta da, a woman.
Nebraska
2014 · Indian Express · Mar 2014
To make a film whose lead actor is whiskery and doddery and just plain old so engrossing is an art. Alexander Payne brings all his craft to bear upon 'Nebraska', but at no point does he make us aware of it. Which is why the film works so well, in its pristine black and white frames, as it moves and judders and halts and moves again, keeping beautifully in pace with its protagonists' inner lives.
Shaadi Ke Side Effects
2014 · Indian Express · Feb 2014
While the going is good, 'Shaadi' is fun, and real, and has some nice laugh-out-loud situations which the leads make the most of. But marriage takes two, and the tango here is only from Sid's perspective : how about showing us what it could be like from Trisha's?
Darr @The Mall
2014 · Indian Express · Feb 2014
'Darr @ the Mall' did give me a couple of jumpy moments. But at no point did I feel like diving below, or closing my eyes. After a while, you give up. Because there is nothing to be feared from this predictable tale, other than dullness.
Gulabi Gang
2014 · Indian Express · Feb 2014
The 1.5 hour film is an important document. Because women, usually classified with the 'other' backward classes, and 'dabey-kuchley varg', are for burning, and raping, and humiliating. Because anyone who takes up cudgels on their behalf is to be acknowledged and praised.
Highway
2014 · Indian Express · Feb 2014
I wanted more because it comes from a director who knows, or at least has known how to transfuse exuberance in love, and joy in sheer movement. 'Highway' is pretty but stagey.
Gunday
2014 · Indian Express · Feb 2014
'Gunday' is as generic as its name suggests: even that old phrase 'luchchhe- lafangey' had more character. In the name of plot, we get a mash-up of many popular blockbusters, several of them belonging to Yashraj, the producers of this one. In the name of acting, we get pumped up beefcake and one number plumped-lip eye candy. There are a few solid supporting acts, and they are the ones that keep you watching, but they get buried in the sludge. What you get is what you've been getting. Over and over again.
Babloo Happy Hai
2014 · Indian Express · Feb 2014
Features about messages can be tricky, because the latter can overwhelm the story if the balance is not right. The director has made strong message films before ( 'I Am Kalam') with much more clarity and success. This one tries to do the same but fails : the plot is weak and the acting amateurish.
Heartless
2014 · Indian Express · Feb 2014
It is ostensibly made to alert viewers to an anesthesia glitch which propels patients into a state of awareness where they can feel pain and can hear everything, but are unable to say it. The only reason to watch this one was to see what Shekhar Suman would do in his directorial debut.
Hasee Toh Phasee
2014 · Indian Express · Feb 2014
Batty girl meets sweet fellow. Is it cute? Yes, that first 'mulaqaat' is. And then? Then 'Hasee Toh Phasee' wanders about figuring out whether it wants to be a contemporary rom-com, or a Gujarati-flavoured soap, or a 60s melodrama, or all of the above. This confusion confounds the film, fronted by the most talented female lead working in Bollywood right now, and makes her much less fun than she can be. That holds true for the film, too.
One By Two
2014 · Indian Express · Jan 2014
The trouble begins with it not being able to find the right rhythm. The first half, where nothing happens over and over again, is a drag. Once you've set the scene, and introduced us to the characters, we need more. It's only post interval that the film gathers some momentum, and gives us a bit of drama, and reason to see it through.
Jai Ho
2014 · Indian Express · Jan 2014
`Jai Ho' could have been a pure and simple `Dabangg 3'. It's not. It's not even a no-holds-barred South remake either. Jai's 'aam aadmi' catches traction only a moment. In the rest, he goes back to snarling and kicking and scowling.
Miss Lovely
2014 · Indian Express · Jan 2014
This is a film that unsettled me, and moved me. This is also a film I will savour for a long time. This is a film that unsettled me, and moved me. This is also a film I will savour for a long time.
Om-Dar-Ba-Dar
2014 · Indian Express · Jan 2014
Om Dar-Ba-Dar is a classic protest film because it rebels against everything, with lines which perhaps sound wiser than they are, especially when you hear them again...Welcome to the trippiest film made in Indian cinema.
Yaariyan
2014 · Indian Express · Jan 2014
They should have just compiled the songs, a couple of them hummable, in a CD, instead.
Dedh Ishqiya
2014 · Indian Express · Jan 2014
There is much to be liked in the film, and I wish all of it had been as good as the scintillating bits. The trouble is not just with the pace. Some of the lines, terrific as they are, seem to be added in just so that the characters can revel in their own perfect Urdu delivery.
Mr Joe B. Carvalho
2014 · Indian Express · Jan 2014
I've been thinking of one nice thing to say about this film, which I suspect was made because its title can be read as 'Jo Bhi Karvalo'. Funny much? Sadly, not at all.
Sholay 3D
2014 · Indian Express · Jan 2014
'Sholay', re-released in a 3D version, needs to be your go-to movie this weekend, no ifs, no buts. And that's because, `Bharat desh ke vaasiyon', 'Sholay' is the greatest Hindi 'masala' entertainer ever made, 3D, 2D or no D.
Dhoom 3
2013 · Indian Express · Dec 2013
'Dhoom 3' is too long and too laboured. And a lot of that has to do with Khan : he just doesn't have the sexy-badness that is required for a part like this. He is in almost every frame, widening his eyes, rolling his neck, and trying for twinkly-wicked, but he comes off trying too hard. Bachchan and Chopra aren't given anything fresh to do; Kaif is the only one who has a moment or two.
Jackpot
2013 · Indian Express · Dec 2013
This is not what I expected from a film featuring a very pretty porn star, a buffed-up stud, and a thesp in jazzy threads. It should have been simple, fast in-and-out, grimy fun. What I got was stretched-out lameness, for an hour and a half.
What The Fish
2013 · Indian Express · Dec 2013
This is yet another in the line of the Quirky Delhi Film, a genre that has long run out of steam. The novelty lasts for a few minutes. After which it's all downhill. Dimple Kapadia is completely capable of carrying a film on her own. Here, she's a sad caricature of a loud Dilli aunty, and she's all wrongly played for the part.
Club 60
2013 · Indian Express · Dec 2013
I would recommend 'Club 60', because it brings into the frame an age group euphemistically called the 'silvers', and by touching a chord with its performances. Farooque Shaikh is as solid as ever. And he is given company by the lovely Sarika, who locks into her role with a terrific wet-eyed moment. She keeps him and the film going.
R... Rajkumar
2013 · Indian Express · Dec 2013
I was left asking, why was R.. Rajkumar made? It is nothing but blank putrid noise. R.. for Rubbish. Zero star.
B.A. Pass
2013 · Indian Express · Dec 2013
Mohan Sikka's short story 'The Railway Aunty', on which the film is based, uses its atmosphere of defeat and rancidness much better. In the film, Bahl creates claustrophobia well, and then loses the story and the characters in it. We want to see underneath, and what we get, instead, is neon glaze.
Rajjo
2013 · Indian Express · Nov 2013
...the film piles up every single tiresome cliché from all similar films in the past, while telling us nothing we want to know. Or see.
Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram Leela
2013 · Indian Express · Nov 2013
...creates a couple that ignites the screen, and most of the time when these two are on screen, you keep watching. It's when the guns come on, and the gun-masters start roaring and shouting, that the love-story drowns, and everything gets both too noisy and too choreographed. I enjoyed the lovers, and their ram-leela: if only the film had been more ras, not goli-leela, more roses than guns.
Thor: The Dark World
2013 · Indian Express · Nov 2013
... the shape-shifting Loki is the only character who makes himself new and interesting. When he is around, 'Thor: The Dark World' becomes a different film altogether. You wish there was more of him. The rest of it is metal clanking.
Satya 2
2013 · Indian Express · Nov 2013
'Satya' was a gamechanger. 'Satya 2' is not even in the game. 'Goli maar bheje mein'.
Krrish 3
2013 · Indian Express · Nov 2013
'Krrish 3' is a superhero film. It is also a throwback to the creaky family entertainers Bollywood used to make. The hero has special powers, sure, but also a loving daddy, a lovely wifey, an attractive moll and a villain with severe daddy issues. Only a pet poodle or parrot is missing.
Sooper Se Ooper
2013 · Indian Express · Oct 2013
A complete waste of two hours.
Mickey Virus
2013 · Indian Express · Oct 2013
It's all fun up to a point, and despite a couple of amateurish edges, the director shows potential.
Boss
2013 · Indian Express · Oct 2013
The lines overall are cringe-making, and aimed at those who find a truck named 'Behen Ki Lorry' funny. Really, Akshay?
War Chhod Na Yaar
2013 · Indian Express · Oct 2013
...the theme, fronted by the two lead actors, had the potential to be a zinger.
Besharam
2013 · Indian Express · Oct 2013
Besharam is not a film. It is Bollywood's brightest young star stooping to conquer, in search of the mass market. There is no motif in the film other than making Ranbir the new Salman. But why do that when we already have a Salman?
Prague
2013 · Indian Express · Sep 2013
You keep looking for something to hold on to, and you keep coming up empty.
Warning
2013 · Indian Express · Sep 2013
There are a couple of scary moments, but no relentless stretches of heart-in-mouth terror, the kind that binds this kind of thriller. Even the shark waits politely for the song to end before launching forth.
Phata Poster Nikla Hero
2013 · Indian Express · Sep 2013
On this one-liner of a plot, Rajkumar Santoshi has built a two-and-a-half-hour film which is meant to make us laugh, but ends up making us groan instead.
Dabba (The Lunchbox)
2013 · Indian Express · Sep 2013
If it hadn't been for the occasional flatness, and a couple of predictable notes, there would have been no flaws in this dabba. I also found Ila's mother's (Lillete Dubey) segment, included solely to underline another kind of vacantness, a little forced. But these are tiny niggles in this film that gets the rest of it so right. Batra's characters are a delight. They may be of Mumbai, infused with intense desi flavours, but can inhabit any part of the world. You want to take them home, sit them down at your table, and savour them, one mouthful at a time.
Grand Masti
2013 · Indian Express · Sep 2013
No one expects films of this sort – boys and their toys – to be sophisticated or intelligent. By definition, they are meant to be crass and tasteless. But then filmmakers getting into this should go the whole hog, and give us what they promise: there was nothing adult in what I saw, only pubescent groping. In a slack tale, laden with stale lines, and a moral science lecture tagged on.
John Day
2013 · Indian Express · Sep 2013
The matter-of-factness with which brutal acts are interspersed through this film, and the zest with which they are carried out, made me think that this must be a copy of some Hollywood film. But the rest of it is weighed down with childhood angst in a very European fashion.
Shuddh Desi Romance
2013 · Indian Express · Sep 2013
The nicest part of this romcom, which triangulates girl-boy-girl in a manner Bollywood is just waking up to, is that it lets its characters talk. Like, you know, real conversations, where faces are turned to each other, where the baat-cheet between a girl and guy moves from checking-each-other-for-size -banter to will-our-noses-fit-if-we-kiss to can't-keep-our-hands-off-each-other level.
Zanjeer
2013 · Indian Express · Sep 2013
The filmmakers have been carefully calling it a "tribute", and they have added a couple of elements which weren't in the older film, but to me it was a neither here-nor-there thing: it's neither faithful remake nor campy, knowing tribute. It's just a poor copy. So why?
Satyagraha
2013 · Indian Express · Aug 2013
...the end is chaos, very far from the non-violent satyagrah that the film propounds: gun-toting hooligans and cops run around the town, ending predictably in noble deaths and lectures on morality and goodness.
Madras Cafe
2013 · Indian Express · Aug 2013
In trying to keep it fast-moving, the film turns choppy and confusing in parts. Also, a few of the characters are a tad comic book-y, matching the ludicrousness of some dialogues. The high-flying journalist helping the hero bit feels contrived.
Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara
2013 · Indian Express · Aug 2013
What I wasn't prepared for was just how similar it would be, despite the change in leads , and after a point, just how listless it would turn out to be.
Chennai Express
2013 · Indian Express · Aug 2013
The laughs came intermittently through the first half, and I was still sitting in my seat at the interval. And then it turned into the same old story : the plot, which was thinner than a self-respecting wafer to start with, just gives up and dies, and the lead pair, Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone stop talking to each other and begin posturing. They have no competition from anything else : the trademark Shetty bang bang –car chases, jeeps blowing up, large groups of people charging at each other—is by now more eye glaze than ever.
Rabba Main Kya Karoon
2013 · Indian Express · Aug 2013
The trouble with Rabba Main Kya Karoon, as with most of these films which showcase a pair of inexperienced newcomers with a solid, ill-used supporting cast, is that it settles too easily into a sexist, let's-dump-on--these-idiot-women mode. This movie's idea of laughs is to have Tinnu Anand search for a bra, Paresh Rawal snuggle up to a woman with her cleavage hanging out, and an orange-wigged Shakti Kapoor chase skirt.
Chor Chor Super Chor
2013 · Indian Express · Aug 2013
Turning the tables on someone usually is a fun thing. But the execution is amateurish, so is most of the acting, even if Dobriyal keeps some of it humming. This may have been a good half hour reality show, perhaps, but doesn't have enough for a full-length feature film.
Bajatey Raho
2013 · Indian Express · Jul 2013
The film turns out to be clichéd and largely choppy: an idea by itself is never enough, it's what you do with it that counts.
Issaq
2013 · Indian Express · Jul 2013
Issaq is, then, an insultingly bad film.
Ship of Theseus
2013 · Indian Express · Jul 2013
It is by far the most original, the most poignantly realised, the most thought-provoking film that I have seen in longer than I care to remember.
Ramaiya Vasta Vaiya
2013 · Indian Express · Jul 2013
There really is nothing more to say other than I really felt each minute of the nearly three hours hang like lead. Every single cliché in the book is thrown into the mix, with poor Poonam Dhillon as the mother-of- the- boy-from-hell, and Randhir Kapoor as the father-of- the-boy- trying hard to act sensible, having to mouth the most inane lines. I had not an iota of interest in the leads, neither in the first-time Kumar, nor in Haasan who appears a veteran in comparison. My heart goes out to Sonu Sood who is a good actor, and who gets stuck in this kind of tripe.
Bhaag Milkha Bhaag
2013 · Indian Express · Jul 2013
As it has turned out, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is more the overlong, overblown Singing-Dancing-Flying Sikh, than just the triumphal, true Flying Sikh.
Policegiri
2013 · Indian Express · Jul 2013
Policegiri is a remake of Saamy, and it is most certainly not a hoot. It is a terrible film, with none of the Tamil original's sense of fun, trying to boost a star who looks well past his sell-by date. There is not one thing about this film that is worthy of being watched.
Lootera
2013 · Indian Express · Jul 2013
It has left me with some indelible scenes which are sheer poetry, but this is one of those films that I wanted to like much more than I did.
Ghanchakkar
2013 · Indian Express · Jun 2013
This could have been a hoot, but the execution lets down the premise, and the film remains one of those that could have been edgier and funnier.
Raanjhanaa
2013 · Indian Express · Jun 2013
Raanjhanaa is a film which is all of a piece in its engaging first half, and a good Bollywood launchpad for Dhanush. Makes me want to see what he will do in his second pass.
Shortcut Romeo
2013 · Indian Express · Jun 2013
Suffice it to say, I wasn't feeling very smart when I left the theatre after two and a half hours of this drivel.
Ankur Arora Murder Case
2013 · Indian Express · Jun 2013
The film intends to be part hospital procedural, part courtroom drama, with a dash of chase-and-hunt thriller, all very Robin Cook-ish. But it never really gets there.
Fukrey
2013 · Indian Express · Jun 2013
This may be a new film, but it is certainly not madly novel. Delhi Belly had the same idea with the addition of some excrement and expletives, minus one fukra.
Yamla Pagla Deewana 2
2013 · Indian Express · Jun 2013
A plot that should shame a wafer by its thinness. Random characters popping in and out. And the only thing one can say in its favour is that it is not as terrible as the first.
Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani
2013 · Indian Express · May 2013
It's been a few minutes since I stepped out of Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, and I'm finding it hard to remember what I've just seen. It is a been-here, seen-this, much-too-long glossy creature, and not much else.
Ishkq in Paris
2013 · Indian Express · May 2013
Sadly, Ishkq In Paris comes off mostly derivative, and wholly predictable.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
2013 · Indian Express · May 2013
The film could have done with more finesse in the way it begins and ends, but there are enough subtle shifts in the main act to keep me with it. After Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is Nair's most engaging work. - See more at: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/review-the-reluctant-fundamentalist-is-mira-nairs-most-engaging-work/1117080/0#sthash.mwL52ECG.dpuf
Gippi
2013 · Indian Express · May 2013
It's nice for Gippi to be saying what it does. That fat and frumpy is not bad. That it is quite all right to be who you are, and not anyone else. That winning is not everything. But it would have been nicer if it had been said in a newer, fresher way.
Go Goa Gone
2013 · Indian Express · May 2013
Fittingly, Bollywood's first zom com (zombie comedy) borrows broad brushstrokes from this very Hollywood genre, not the least of which are the zombies, with their blank eyes, staggering walk, and blood-spattered teeth. That the setting is Goa, whose beaches are over-run with unwashed, stringy-haired, glassy-eyed foreigners, helps. - See more at: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/movie-review-go-goa-gone/1114060/#sthash.J71eWKVK.dpuf
Shootout at Wadala
2013 · Indian Express · May 2013
The dialogue, smutty and excessive, is poured heavily upon everything. Not as much bang for my buck as I would have liked.
Aashiqui 2
2013 · Indian Express · May 2013
Once the lovers come together, and the first act is over, why does everything slide? This Aashiqui 2 holds out promise, but doesn't make the most of it.
Bombay Talkies
2013 · Indian Express · May 2013
Bombay Talkies is a film that gives you what all good films should: it has stories, it has emotion, and it has drama. It has people you want to know.
Ek Thi Daayan
2013 · Indian Express · Apr 2013
Ek Thi Daayan starts out as a well-acted, well-produced supernatural thriller, which could , and should, have climaxed with a knock-out punch. To which end, somebody should have walked across the wrap with a deft pair of webbed feet.
Commando
2013 · Indian Express · Apr 2013
It also has a story that creaks . Minus these irritants, it would have been a pure adrenaline rush. Step out for the popcorn when the actors break into song; rush right back in when the fists start to fly.
Chashme Baddoor
2013 · Indian Express · Apr 2013
Why remake a classic if you can't improve upon it? Truly bad-door.
Nautanki Saala
2013 · Indian Express · Apr 2013
Sippy has a feel for staging scenes, and some are laugh-out-loud. The idea that true love can be found through such a random route is also nice, and lends the film a pleasing slightness. But the nautanki in this film is an on-off thing. I wish there was much more of it.
Aatma
2013 · Indian Express · Apr 2013
With its somber palette and plot-with-potential, Aatma could have been a true scare-fest. But it winds down to being well begun, half done.
Rangrezz
2013 · Indian Express · Apr 2013
Priyadarshan has been growing so steadily unwatchable these days that you fear the worst when you step into Rangrezz, a remake of the Tamil hit Naadodigal. As the film unspools, each of those fears come true: this is rock-bottom.
Mere Dad Ki Maruti
2013 · Indian Express · Apr 2013
On the upside, the Punjabbi-ness is not exaggerated. No giddhas-bhangras. No bijis-baujis. And no rock-garden-Chandigarh or Sukhna-lake-Chandigarh.
Jolly LLB
2013 · Indian Express · Apr 2013
The only one who lifts the film and makes it worth our while is Shukla, who has got himself a role worthy of his talent after a long time.
Himmatwala
2013 · Indian Express · Apr 2013
I expected Himmatwala to be predictable, not only because I have faint memories of the older film, but because it follows such a template. I also expected it to be annoying, and it doesn't disappoint on both scores. But I didn't think it would be so dull.
Sona Spa
2013 · Indian Express · Apr 2013
Sona Spa has gone straight to the top of my so-ghastly-they-are-terrific films of the year.
Dabangg 2
2012 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
A sequel to this sequel may be too tempting to pass up for Chulbul and gang. I just hope they don't kill it with same old-ness. "pyaar se nahin, thappad se bhi nahin, boredom se darr lagta hai."
Khiladi 786
2012 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
In the end, I was left looking at a straw to clutch. Any little thing. I found, dear viewer, none. Not. A. One.
Talaash
2012 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
'Talaash' starts out as a smart, well-written noir-ish thriller, and then slips between the tracks. Pity about the second half.
Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster Returns
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
The story-telling in the first half is so seamless that you overlook the things that had been a problem the first time around.
The Attacks of 26/11
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
It had the potential to be both smart procedural, and spiffy action, but '26/11' sinks somewhere in the middle.
I, Me Aur Main
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
This could have been a slap-up rom com. But the trouble with this good-looking movie is that it is patchily written and performed, and often feels contrived.
Kai Po Che!
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
This film rises beautifully above its faults. It does not allow simplicity to descend into simple-mindedness, as it transmits real emotions, and gives space to a stand-out performer.
Murder 3
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
If the Bhatts had given Hooda more able leading ladies to riff off, 'Murder 3' might have been something to look at. What we get instead is two of the most impact-less female lead parts I've seen in a while, packaged in an overlong series of ill-written, ill-acted sequences.
Jayanta Bhai Ki Luv Story
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
The plot that takes two interminable hours to unfold features aimless 'bhais' doing 'filmi bhaigiri' ('tu mera right hand kaise banega, ja pehle usko udaa kar aa'), smarmy would-be employers preying upon innocent young girls, and a lead pair who think eating 'anda bhurji' in rundown Irani cafes is the height of excitement.
Special 26
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
Because Hindi cinema doesn't usually do well with intelligent hide-and-seek games, I didn't have too much hopes from 'Special 26', but the film surprised me. Its flaws are minor; on the "whole, 'Special 26' is a gripping, well-made heist film.
ABCD: Any Body Can Dance
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
This film had the potential, but it needed both sharper direction and dancing, to maximize it.
3G
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
Good idea, lousy execution. This is a mess of a movie, which ticks off its horror film checklist, one after the other: a church with a steeple, shadowy priests, spirits who wear splashy red gowns and kiss with a forked tongue, mysterious escort girls, 'mental' patients scribbling on walls, guilty killers who hang themselves and deadly islands.
Saare Jahaan Se Mehnga
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
The film has been written zippily by people who know this world. It looks and feels authentic, minus exaggeration. And the actors look as if they belong.
Race 2
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
'Race 2' looks exactly like 'Race'. Which may have been intentional because plush locations and pretty playthings and buff men are very much Abbas Mustan trademarks. But all it does is cause a dismally same-same feeling. So much so that the new characters start feeling old within a few frames. Even the plot, which has a one-line pitch, Ranveer out to avenge the death of the love of his life, becomes subservient to the larger cause of looking glossy.
Listen... Amaya
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
I liked some of 'Listen Amaya', I really wanted to like it more.
Vishwaroopam
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
This is a fill it-shut it-forget it film, whose big budget slickness never overpowers it, and which holds you while it lasts.
David
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
'David' speaks of a new kind of Bollywood which doesn't want to be slavish to stars or formulae. But it also speaks of a filmmaking which isn't quite as accomplished as it would like to be, or should be. It points to the presence of craft, sure, but craft which should be paying much more attention to the crucial elements of centrality and coherence. 'David' coasts on a few startlingly sharp scenes and zippy musical interludes, but doesn't add up to the sum of its zanier parts.
Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
The film passed me by in the first hour. It enticed me back again in the second half. But not enough to make me forget the inert prologue, which is minus drama, which is Bhardawaj's true forte.
Inkaar
2013 · Indian Express · Mar 2013
Inkaar could have been truly radical. But it becomes a film that prefers to cop out, rather than deliver on the promise it held out so bravely in its initial passages.
Life of Pi
2012 · Indian Express · Dec 2012
The film makes great use of 3D, and for once I was not cursing: the ocean's immersiveness and the overpowering emptiness and the sheer beauty surrounding Pi is enhanced by the technology.
Makkhi
2012 · Indian Express · Dec 2012
In all other respects, 'Makkhi' is great, non-stop, universal fun.
Shakal Pe Mat Ja
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
There is a generous sprinkling of the F word, and juvenile phrases : one is unraveled, for those who do not know, as Kilometer Litre Petrol Diesel. Groan.
Don 2
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Don 2' needed an energized, crackling plot. What it has, in almost too much abundance, is SRK dripping dimpled coolth. But cool can only take you so far.
Jo Hum Chahein
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
The leads look as if they have just strolled off modeling assignments, and speak out their lines, putting their best profiles forward.
Ladies vs Ricky Bahl
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Ladies vs Ricky Bahl' proves that old adage : newness has a habit of wearing off.
The Dirty Picture
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
What makes us watch, despite everything—the overheating, the overwriting-- is Vidya Balan, who dares to go where not too many leading ladies have. This is her film. But it would have been a better, braver film if it had let her go all the way, not just in bed.
Rockstar
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Rockstar' looks as if there may be something in it, despite the familiar post-teen love tropes that Ali sets up. We're still trying on new girl Fakhri for size, just as her hero is, and keeping an open mind.
Not a Love Story
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
All we are left with is the detritus, of the body, and a film that could have delved into the minds of those whose lives unravel when a crime of passion occurs.
Miley Naa Miley Hum
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
The kindest thing I can say about 'Miley Naa Miley Tum' is that it is not a disaster.
Ra.One
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
It is a superstarry slurry sludge, with just the occasional consolatory sparkle.
My Friend Pinto
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
The trouble with `My Friend Pinto' is that it takes so long to get to the point where it starts to feel like a film that you almost give up. Characters tumble about, minus direction.
Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Despite its irritants, and a few loose ends, `Mujshe Fraandship Karoge' has well done on-the-surface flash, which comes off nicely because it doesn't pretend to be anything else.
Rascals
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Two conmen trying to outsmart each other. What else? Two conmen trying to outsmart each other. And? Nothing.
Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
`Sahib Bibi aur Gangster' is one of those films which occasionally slides smoothly into top gear, but the ride overall bumps over traversed terrain.
Hum Tum Shabana
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
I wanted to stay till the bitter end to see just what could be worse than awful, but I turned chicken. Running away is often the only way to survive.
Force
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
But 'Force' doesn't deliver as much punch, even as it recasts John Abraham as an action hero.
Mausam
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Mausam' starts like a dewy-fresh spring morning, where everything is familiar yet new. It then wilts, autumnal overtones taking over. And then never quite recovers, falling into a dreary never-ending winter.
Mere Brother Ki Dulhan
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
This is a Yashraj rom com where funny-smart lines are a substitute for good old passion. Don't go looking for any. Don't go looking for any subtle notes, either. There aren't any.
That Girl in Yellow Boots
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Where 'The Girl In Yellow Boots' stopped being satisfactory is when I started wanting more, and didn't get it.
Bodyguard
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Bodyguard' sparks only when Salman is slamming 'em off the walls, with his trademark smile and snarl.
Yeh Dooriyan
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
What is it doing out there, swanning around on the screen in this day and age ? So maybe this is a comedy?
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
ZNMD is designed as a feel-good bromance. Arjun (Roshan) is a broker with a plush three bed-roomed house in London, who leads a frenetic deal-making, yen-and-pounds-and-dollar-collecting life. Imran (Akhtar) is a copywriter who writes poetry. Kabir (Deol) is the wealthy scion of a construction firm, whose engagement to uptight interior designer Natasha (Koechlin) sets the three friends on a road-trip to Spain.
Chala Mussaddi... Office Office
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Mussaddi Lal is saying things we all need to hear, but the film manages to make the cut only some of the time.
Bubble Gum
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Bubble Gum' suffers from some amount of narrative drabness, and some strange too-quick transitions. But it is a film that needs to be noted for its appealing cast and being true to itself.
Khap
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Khap' is a film that ostensibly sets out to challenge the notion of 'honour killings', taking us to a Haryana village where such activities seem to over-ride all else. But it is so shoddily done that the opposite is achieved, giving those who practice it with impunity a platform from where they can preach.
Singham
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Singham' works in bits and pieces, only when Devgn gets fully into his stride, squaring up to Raj as he hits the high notes. The rest is just stitched-up scenery.
Chillar Party
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Despite the cartoony swipes, and the thundering track underlying every scene, 'Chillar Party' proves that it is entirely possible to make a smart children's film, with good production values, with kids seen to be having a blast.
Haunted – 3D
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
The only new thing about `Haunted' is that it is Bollywood horror in 3 D. The rest of it, by which we mean the principal stuff that makes it a film—story, location, characters—are all same old same old.But adding a third dimension alone does not a film make, especially if it tries lifting dull content and new actors with scant screen presence.You are left feeling grateful for the couple of creepy moments the film manages, before sinking into sameness again.
Murder 2
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Murder 2' checks all the boxes of an Emraan Hashmi-Mohit Suri-Vishesh Films production.
Bbuddah Hoga Terra Baap
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
If 'Bbuddah' proves something, it is that there has never been star-actor to fill the Bachchan shaped hole his getting silver has caused. No one delivers dialogue (never just lines, okay?) with such impeccable timing as he does; and as to romance, well, just look at him look at Hema. Yearning went out of style, when Amitabh Bachchan stopped lovin' and leavin'.
Bheja Fry 2
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
This sequel is tired and flat. Vinay Pathak is a brilliant comic, but here his constant widening of the eyes and his whinny of a laugh is more grating than funny.
Stanley Ka Dabba
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
`Stanley Ka Dabba' is a heart-warmer that wraps itself securely around you, making you wholly unwilling to let it go. And Partho, director Amol Gupte's son, who plays Stanley, lights up the film. As do his companions.
Shagird
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
The trouble with 'Shagird', despite its sharp, often funny exchanges, and a few spanking scenes, is that it is not new enough.
Ragini MMS
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Ragini MMS is strange mix of Hollywood horror influences ( `Blair Witch Project', `Paranormal Activity') and old-style Bollywood ghost stories.
Luv Ka The End
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
But there's so little else in the film that it all flattens out in an alarming sit-com like fashion, as this very now film is reduced to using the creakiest comic devices from old-style Bollywood—itching powder, and laxatives.
Chalo Dilli
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
A sentimental climactic twist ends up being surprisingly not schmaltzy, and gives an interesting touch to 'Chalo Dilli'. It could have been, though, shorter and crisper.
Shor in the City
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
What makes 'Shor In The City' an instant clutter-breaker is its darkly comic treatment. It makes you smile because its humour comes from within.
Zokkomon
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
And when will we have a children's film that steers clear of the sort of heavy vocabulary which uses such words as 'paakhandi' and 'andhvishwaas'? Too bad Zokkomon doesn't make full use of its potential.
Turning 30!!!
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
But 'Turning 30' soon turns from a warm, welcome peek into that girl's life, a girl we are prepared to like, into a series of clichés. It's almost like the script went looking for every single line that goes with the territory and stacks them up, one after another.
Dum Maaro Dum
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Where Dum Maaro Dum falters is in its uneven tone, and in its less-than-impressive principal characters — the hero, and the villain.
Teen Thay Bhai
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Go only if you don't mind broad humour which overstates its case at every snowflake. Also, if you like your men being called Happy, Chiksi, and Fancy.
Thank You
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
You know exactly what you are in for, if you're in a film which has Suniel Shetty delivering the maximum laughs. Thank You promises you a huge passel of nothing: no story, no sense. On all those scores, it doesn't disappoint.
F.A.L.T.U
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
The young gang is watchable, even if they are made to swap sense for a few broad laughs. The best of the lot is Chandan Roy Sanyal, so good as the dopehead in 'Kaminey'. He stands out, even at his silliest.
Game
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Game is a good Bollywood example of a bad Hollywood film
Yeh Faasley
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Yeh Faasley' has an intriguing premise. The connection between a father and a motherless daughter is usually made stronger because there is just the two of them, and that's what it seems when Devinder Devilal Dua ( Kher) is first shown rapping companionably with daughter Arunima ( Desai).
Tanu Weds Manu
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
A range of interesting supplementary acts distract us from the lead pair whose rocky path to the `mandap' we are meant to follow with interest.
7 Khoon Maaf
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Saat Khoon Maaf' succeeds in engaging you at every point. Given a choice, darrrlings, I will take a Vishal Bhardwaj film with all its flaws everytime, because it is a cinematic experience in the true sense of the word : this film gives us a story, characters, and an urge to ask that age-old question-- and then what happened?
No One Killed Jessica
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'No One Killed Jessica' manages to sustain interest as it makes itself way towards the climactic moment when the culprit, despite the best efforts of his politician father and his fawning courtiers, is nabbed.
Patiala House
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
The writing is smart, the lines are life-like, the characters feel right. The supporting cast is especially good, keeping things moving when the rest threaten to stop in their tracks.
Yeh Saali Zindagi
2011 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
The title instantly conjures up a welcome robustness. That phrase is not so much invective as part of the slangy, easy-speak DNA of so many-- an affectionate, ironic, all-encompassing metaphor for life and how it's such a bitch.
Dhobi Ghat
2010 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
A strangely uneven film. Its beginning feels amateurishly put together ; as it heads onwards, though, it finds an easy, flowing rhythm with just the occasional stutter.
Jab Tak Hai Jaan
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
The title of Yash Chopra's swan-song has a retrospective bitter-sweetness to it : the veteran director did not live to see his film in the theatres. 'Jab Tak Hai Jaan' has released, in old YRF tradition, on Deepawali, but what the title manages to say pithily takes the fllm nearly three very long hours, and the pay-off isn't as sweet as it should have been.
1920: Evil Returns
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
1920-Evil Returns' has a threesome in a house that looks similar, doing ditto. It may not be a sequel, but it uses the same old notes to scare us. Creaking doors.
Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Everyone in 'Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana' speaks in Punjabi. Not the kind of exaggerated, colourised 'zubaan' of your average Bollywood potboiler. The everydayness of the language in this likeable film is one of its pleasures. As well as that it has been shot on real locations, not Bollywood's idea of what a Punjabi's 'pind' should be.
Ajab Gazabb Love
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Despite all the foreign locations glitter, this plays out like a flat, meandering TV comedy. What is the 'ajab', and where's the 'gazabb'?
Chakravyuh
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Chakravyuh' talks of the growing 'red corridor' in several parts of the country, and how it came to be, and how it is playing out right here, right now.
Delhi Safari
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
When it makes the film preachy, some of the fun is leached out. Save the environment at all cost, but keep the entertainment ticking.
Student of the Year
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
I have a bone to pick with Karan Johar, who invites us once again, to witness a bunch of young students do their thing.
Chittagong
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
This is a film that needs watching, because if we don't, we will forget. And that would be tragic.
Kismat Love Paisa Dilli
2012 · KoiMoi · Nov 2012
There are no two ways about it and we're not even bothering with a pun this time: KLPD is a painful watch that's better avoided.
Kismat Love Paisa Dilli
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
If it weren't for a few tolerable moments between Lucky and Lavina, I would have run right out of the theatre. There are elements here that make you think wistfully of mad capers and insane fun. 'Kismet Love Paisa Dilli' is most definitely not that film.
English Vinglish
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'English Vinglish', Gauri Shinde's first feature is a likeable film, which gives us a silky- smooth first half, a slowed-down second, broad-brushstroke-y characters, and an actress who makes it all work.
Raaz 3
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Out come all the 'sadhus' and 'babas' with their 'mantras', and the `bhagwaan ki moorti', and it all boils down to the same old battle against good and evil, borrowing from older horror tropes from here and there.
Joker
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Can kids watch this, I asked myself as I watched this all-over-the-place faradiddle. And then I dismissed it. Because even children, especially children, need a story that holds, and characters that engage.
Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Not scintillating, but sweet.
Gangs of Wasseypur - Part 2
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
There shouldn't have been a Part 2. This should have been the post-interval section of Gangs Of Wasseypur, carrying over, instantly, the charge of the first half. Yes, one continuous flow would have made Gangs Inc. a very long film, closing at nearly six hours. It would have challenged our notions of how long we can fill seats, without squirming or fidgeting, or thinking of escape.
OMG! Oh My God
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Oh My God' gets a tad schmaltzy towards the end, but I suppose that was the only way this piece of mildly irreverent tongue-in-cheek look at` ishwar-paigambar-isaah masih' could close.
Heroine
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Heroine' has every single stereotype associated with Bollywood that we are familiar with, from our newspaper supplements, tabloid gossip, sensational TV programmes, fanzines, social networking platforms.
Cocktail
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
There's some good stuff in 'Cocktail'. Adajania who's made 'Being Cyrus' with Khan is a director with style. Here, he joins hands with Imtiaz Ali's nifty dialogues, and we are made to feel good by seeing these lovely looking people do the stuff that people do when sex is in the air, and love is around the corner.
Bol Bachchan
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
If your nosy is not turned up too high, 'Bol Bachchan', less blaring than your standard Rohit Shetty comedy, can give you sporadic chuckles, and a few helpess laughs. Can't expect more.
Jism 2
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
I am here to tell you that on that count alone, Jism 2 is a crashing disappointment. Yes, there are several flashes of bare backs. There are several flashes of bare everythings, actually, especially in the chest department whose musculature, as they say these days, is awesome.
Gattu
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Gattu's ( Samad) sole spot of joy also comes from his deft handling of kites. Kite-flying helps him escape his life full of drudgery in a` kabaadkhaana', surrounded by the discards of other people. He is an orphan who's been taken under his `chacha''s ( Kumar ) wings, so he's not exactly on the streets, but he could very well be, given that he gets a bare bed and scant food and a lot of brusqueness in return for unending free labour.
Jannat 2
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Don't be fooled. This is not a sequel to 'Jannat', in which match-fixing shenanigans in high profile cricket matches gave Emran Hashmi and Kunal Deshmukh a fertile hunting ground, and us a watchable film. 'Jannat 2' is, for the most part, a badly-done, badly-acted enterprise, lifted only a notch by a couple of performances.
Tezz
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Upon watching 'Tezz', a dull and derivative film which is a mash-up of 'Speed' and a few assorted thrillers based on speeding objects meeting unmovable body parts,Kapoor is the cop who is put in charge of finding the bomber, and the bomb. He also tackles racist colleagues, and angry wives, and plays second fiddle to the main act. A fellow cop asks him : who do you think you are, Dirty Harry?Dream on.
Vicky Donor
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
The repetitions, including the different ways you can define "spurrm", get annoying. Some of the emotional parts get soggy, and the climax, ahem, is contrived. But Vicky Donor's delights outweigh the not-so-good stuff: give me a Bollywood hero who pulls off a pedicure without prurience, and I will tell you, go see this film.
Hate Story
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
So what we get is an oomphy, oozy femme who is uninhibitedly fatale, and capable of steaming things up, but stuck in a story which starts off as credible but all too soon plunges us into a pit of disbelief. And treatment which drags it out too long, minus slickness. We are not going near the plotholes because that would be a long list. Suffice it to say that they are so glaring in places, that you miss out on some not-so-bad parts of this film, chief of which are a few strong scenes by the main performers.
Maximum
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Maximum' turns out to be a dampener. Not because it doesn't have interesting actors. Nor because it doesn't have interesting situations. But because it comes off merely as 'Sehar' redux, minus its power.
Gangs of Wasseypur - Part 1
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Gangs Of Wasseypur' is a sprawling, exuberant, ferociously ambitious piece of film making, which hits most of its marks. It reunites Anurag Kashyap with exactly the kind of style he is most comfortable with : hyper masculine, hyper real, going for the jugular.
Teri Meri Kahaani
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Who wants three Shahids and three Priyankas for the price of one ticket? Not me, even though I duly bought mine, and prepared to be regaled three times over by a pair of actors who are capable of good things on their good days.
Ferrari Ki Sawaari
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
It's not as if 'Ferrari Ki Sawaari' doesn't have its points. I haven't seen such a natural little boy in a Hindi film in a long time. Sahore gets being naughty and willful and wistful without lapsing into artifice, and that is all too rare in saccharine-coated Bolly kidsworld. The little by-plays on the field are fun, too. And despite the fact that Rusy is made out to be this altogether too-gentle character who is more wuss than anything else, Joshi makes him watchable. Also, why don't we get to see Seema Bhargava more often? She is so good here, making her character zing. Which is what's missing from 'Ferrari'. It is nice, but bland.
Shanghai
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Here, he is clearly on the outside. 'Shanghai' is a good film. Most of it is scarily plausible, sharply observed and sharply executed, except that distance which has Banerji telegraph some of his punches, making 'Shanghai' stop just this short of being great. But it is an important, relevant film that demands to be watched not just for what it is saying, but for how it is saying it -- angrily, fearlessly, pointing out, as a line in one of the film's songs puts it, both the 'gur' and the 'gobar' in this, our Bharat.
Rowdy Rathore
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
You take 'Rowdy' and look for a word that sounds good with it. What about 'Rathore'? All right. You take the masala films made in the 70s and 80s. Borrow liberally. Patch together a plot, or whatever passes for it. Rope in a star looking for a solo hit. And you get, all together now, 'Rowdy Rathore'.
Ishaqzaade
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
But overall, it feels stale, this business of using religious differences to divide true love in just this way. You can dress it how you want, with the parents and relatives of both coming off authentic, and the lines which make you smile, but at its core, it's same old same old :It's all in there, and yet the result is mixed : some of 'Ishqzaade' hits the spot, the rest is a drag.
Dangerous Ishhq
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Some films manage to baffle you from start to finish. 'Dangerous Ishq' is one of those: it is unbelievable in all kinds of ways, not one of them pleasant. Is this the film Karisma Kapoor, who's been away on extended mommy leave, chose for a comeback? Seriously?
Fatso!
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Are people with layers of extra adipose worthy of being loved? There is a strongly relevant premise at the heart of 'Fatso', in which an overweight character finds his share of light at the end of a fuzzy tunnel. But despite a standout turn from Ranvir Shorey as the eponymous lead, and some nicely realized segments, 'Fatso' comes off flat and tonally confused.
Ekk Deewana Tha
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'Ekk Deewana Tha' brings back that hoary tradition of love-at-first-sight in a film that exasperates you more than making you sigh : I'm happy to note that it can still be done, this business of losing your heart to a beautiful stranger at one glance, but not in this stuttering, near-obvious way.
Bittoo Boss
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
A few minutes into 'Bittoo Boss', and you start to think that this might, just might, turn into the kind of hilarious risqué comedy Bollywood has been trying to create, inflated not by lazy vulgarity but smart writing. The suggestive lyrics of the opening song in which there are references to 'giving and taking' (sorry approximations of nudge-wink street-slang 'lena aur dena') featuring a strapping wedding videographer, make us smile and lead us to believe that we might be in for some tongue-in-cheek fun.
Housefull 2
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
There were some so bad they were terrific. As the end neared after almost three hours, in which the cast is gathered in one place and let loose upon us, I came to this conclusion: 'Housefull 2' is better than 'Housefull 1', but only by a whisker. That's the only metric to judge this film by.
Love You To Death
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Madcap characters in SoBo (South Bombay), Doing Whacky Things, Speaking Hinglish. The formula has been around, but it's always up for some re-jigging. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Rafeeq Ellias's debut feature gives us an heiress with her doggie, her non-performing asset of a husband with his murderous mommy, his singing sexpert with his quartet. Also, a tarot-card reader with her Elvis-lovin' lover, a theatre-director who doubles up as a dispenser of 'suparis', a muscle-bound jock with a thing for the environment, and a Russian-Israeli hood who goes about saying Mamma Mia.
Agent Vinod
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
The new 'Agent Vinod' checks off each item on the list, holding out the promise of a well-crafted, high octane spy thriller. But practically from the moment it started to unspool, I began being assailed first by doubt, then with sinking conviction : this was not the Sriram Raghavan film I'd been waiting for. This around-the-world in two-and-a-half very long hours is all dressed up, with some slick set-pieces, but it spends most of its time in plodding through genre conventions. Where's the crackle?
Kahaani
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Ghosh, who gave us a couple of trashy films after his sparkling debut, 'Jhankaar Beats', is back with a story with a strong sense of place and character. He loses his grip a little in the second-half, but this `kahaani', overall, has enough for a sit-down-and-watch.
?: A Question Mark
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
'?' (Question Mark) gets shackled by too much explanation about 'spirits' and 'paranormal activity', and it could have done with more crispness, and a little less amateurishness. But as an attempt which stays true to its purpose, of providing uneasy chills, '?' (Question Mark) pretty much does its job.
Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
When a film calls itself Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, it wants you to have no doubts, not even for a second, that this is what you are in for : one boy, one girl, and a rom com. In this instance, uptight boy and giddy girl meet cute in Vegas. You know that in the first half they will be in situations where his uptightness and her giddiness will get full play. In the second, they will try reaching an accommodation, leaving the last few minutes for a suitable ending.
Agneepath
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Most importantly, at the end, there's enough of a payoff. 'Agneepath' is old style revenge drama which does well on the whole, despite its plot holes and a slackened second half, with executing genre conventions. Old fashioned popcorn with 'namak' and 'mirch', not caramel, nor any other au courant variation: you like, your film.
Gali Gali Chor Hai
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Straight-forward, middle-class fellow up against the big, bad system. `Gali Gali Mein Chor Hai' pours old wine into a cracked bottle, telling us everything we've always known even if we were afraid to ask. Corruption is all pervasive. Public servants—cops, lawyers, netas-- do what they know best : extort, harass, intimidate. `Ek thaali, sab chatte batte'. Sigh.
Players
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
The one thing Abbas-Mustan films practically guarantee, despite the degree of theft or 'inspiration' from Hollywood flicks, is pacy entertainment. The plot of `Players' is not stolen, but honorably bought, and has a terrific pedigree : the original 'Italian Job' had the groovy Michael Caine as super-thief Charlie, and lots of lovely lolly; the remake nearly 40 years later had the beefy Mark Wahlberg reprising Charlie the Chor's role, and the very dishy Charlize Theron as the bad-good girl. Both films gave us the kind of enjoyment the best heist movies do : slick thieves with slicker moves, blonde bombshells, zippy car-chases and worthy villains.
Barfi!
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
Barfi'! does take several brave strides. It's good in many ways; what stops it from being a great film is a degree of fuzziness, and an insistence on prettiness.Still, I'd weigh in on the film's side. It is so hard to find a Hindi film which does disability with any seriousness, and with sensitivity. 'Barfi' has its heart in the right place, and doesn't waver from its intentions
Aiyyaa
2012 · Indian Express · Nov 2012
More than anything else, 'Aiyyaa' is a film that could have been a truly subversive, exhilarating ride with a sexually aware, sensually charged woman at its centre. What we get is a flat, heavy-footed clomp through screechy lines and overstated, dragged-out situations. this is not a film which generates the sort of mad hysteria that makes you laugh. After a while, it becomes just another film we can't wait to get out of, despite the trying-to-get-back-in-the-reckoning, still-watchable Rani and the sizzling Prithvi. Taking a cue from one of its songs, I have to say that, post watching, I barely saved myself from being in critical conditionuum.