Article 15
Article 15 is not the work of a hack, or of someone merely scooping a plot out of newspaper headlines. It is a well-researched, clear-headed movie; but its findings have a purpose
Full review ↗6.0
TRM 7.4−1.4
Sreehari Nair
Tough GraderRediff
Reviewing since 2015 · Last review Jun 2019
Tough Grader
Films
Sreehari's highest scores
Scoring fingerprint
How Sreehari scores
38 scored reviews · 0–10
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10
Most given: 4 (10 reviews)3% of reviews not scored
In step with the room
Within a point of the Monk Score on 41% of 37 films
Closest peer
Rajeev Masand
Agrees with Sreehari on 84% of 21 shared films
Divergence
Where Sreehari and the room split
SreehariMonk Score0 ———— 10
Kinder than the room
Tougher than the room
From the archive
All 39 reviews
Bharat
Bharat is nothing more than a reflection of the times we are living in: where we expect our heroes to be flawless, virtuous fellas -- it is our current national disease,
Full review ↗3.0
TRM 5.8−2.8
Tumbbad
What seemed missing in Tumbbad was that screwiness, that kinkiness, which shades so many of our best parables...
Full review ↗4.0
TRM 6.7−2.7
Manto
If Manto, the film, falls short of being a masterpiece, it's ironically because Nandita Das the filmmaker does not quite crack the Manto code herself: she doesn't quite see her subject with the same wholeness that Manto saw his people. ' 'This imperfection in the film, in a way, becomes the greatest tribute to Manto
Full review ↗7.0
TRM 6.5+0.5
Manmarziyaan
With Manmarziyaan, it is this kind of love story that Kashyap, I think, is out to challenge. His lovers are too messy for an external force to cause any real harm. They have no enemies to shoot, and so they take aim at each other.
Full review ↗TRM 6.0
Gali Guleiyan
This view of the supposed spiritual decay of our times, which is at the core of Gali Guleiyan, is thus more fashionable than perceptive...
Full review ↗6.0
TRM 6.5−0.5
Stree
Not only are the concerns expressed in Stree (patriarchy, consent, prejudice against women) mere excuses to touch our 'sentimental hotspots', the movie itself is a few tricks cobbled together...
Full review ↗4.0
TRM 6.3−2.3
Vishwaroop 2
Vishwaroop 2 is a motion picture conceived almost entirely inside Kamal Haasan's bedroom without him even bothering to take a walk outside. This means that every single thing in Vishwaroop 2 is reduced to Haasan's reading of that thing, his feeling for that thing, his excitement for that thing, and also his limited understanding of that thing.
Full review ↗4.0
TRM 4.00.0
Mulk
'Mulk gets a lot of things right, including its vision of the country as a place where underneath the punctilious, forced-secular surface there are volatilities waiting to go off...
Full review ↗5.0
TRM 6.5−1.5
Bhavesh Joshi Superhero
If anything, Bhavesh Joshi proves right that maxim, unsaid but true: That Fixed Ideology, Self-righteousness and Superheroism run parallel to each other.
Full review ↗3.0
TRM 4.8−1.8
Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain
What we have here, I guess, is a director who understands how people fight, but has not a clue about how they make love.
Full review ↗5.0
TRM 5.7−0.7
Raazi
Oddly enough, everything Raazi cannot explain or put a finger on, it glosses over in the name of patriotism or watan-love; glorifying thereby the very sentiment it had set out to mock. This is the unique tragedy of the film: it becomes less of a counterpoint to pseudo-patriotism and more of a companion piece.
Full review ↗4.0
TRM 7.1−3.1
Omerta
A sense of injustice has been flaring in Mehta too since the time his face was blackened by Hindu fundamentalists. The face behind the black paint has since then, been his main subject. In Omerta, he tries to close in on those who smear the paint, and with that change in focus, he achieves something he hadn't achieved yet. Something indescribable; something that terrorists and artists both die trying for: Salvation.
Full review ↗9.0
TRM 6.1+2.9
Daas Dev
Sudhir Mishra is perhaps telling us that we are all politicians waiting for our chance at the podium and that it takes a real silly to see the absurdity of it all.
Full review ↗7.0
TRM 5.0+2.0
Mercury
There's something very pompous about the basic pitch of this movie that slowly chews away at its core..
Full review ↗4.0
TRM 4.9−0.9
3 Storeys
3 Storeys is a movie of endless surprises: There's one murder, one giant regret re-lived and regurgitated, and one devastating catastrophe that comes out of nowhere. But none of these high-points has any room for discharge. The dead man and the wailing lovers, all seem to be holding it back for the fear that the neighbours may hear them.
Full review ↗7.0
TRM 5.3+1.7
Pari
The best horror movies are ones that make you laugh as you scream -- laughing presumably at your own screaming -- but Pari doesn't operate on that level.
Full review ↗6.0
TRM 5.4+0.6
Padman
A movie like PadMan, progressive in its pitch but with nothing else to sustain it, settles the issue of our liberals taking their good taste too seriously. For this is not truly a liberal world if we keep searching for alternatives to regressive ideas in an R Balki film.
Full review ↗4.0
TRM 6.4−2.4
Mukkabaaz
My worry is that many who are not fond of Kashyap's usual complex sensibility would like this latest move: They'll applaud the fact that he's going for the tear glands with brass knuckles on. The tragedy of Mukkabaaz is not that it aims low; the tragedy is that it aims low and hits.
Full review ↗5.0
TRM 6.9−1.9
Tu Hai Mera Sunday
Tu Hai Mera Sunday has delightful women characters, sketchy men, and individual threads that work better than the whole package...
Full review ↗5.0
TRM 5.9−0.9
Kadvi Hawa
Kadvi Hawa is intended to be a wake-up call, but look closely and it is also a chant.
Full review ↗8.0
TRM 6.4+1.6
Qarib Qarib Singlle
In movies like Qarib Qarib Singlle, we don't even get that sort of pleasure, only a deadness that never goes away. If you happen to like this film, I have to assume there's something seriously wrong with your idea of a journey.
Full review ↗2.0
TRM 6.0−4.0
Ittefaq
As far as its final twist goes, Ittefaq is a whocareswhodunit but what it does have, as compensation, is the shock and suggestiveness of pulp served hot.
Full review ↗6.0
TRM 5.5+0.5
Rukh
Rukh may be lit like a YouTube Short Film and may have its share of other technical problems, but there's something disturbingly original about director Atanu Mukherjee's vision
Full review ↗6.0
TRM 5.5+0.5
Newton
While filled with startling insights and questions, and buoyed by terrific performances throughout, Newton suffers from a lack of end-to-end clarity. It is a near-great film, but one that for some reason doesn't express itself fully...
Full review ↗7.0
TRM 7.3−0.3
A Gentleman
The noise of the crowd, the badly phrased banter of the unthinking mob, the music in the butcher's knife, the tiny dreams of little people, these asides were the true essence of Raj and DK's first two movies, and it seems like they've stopped stepping out and recording them.
Full review ↗3.0
TRM 4.7−1.7
Bareilly Ki Barfi
There were moments in the movie when a loud laugh escaped my throat. But it didn't seem to matter. Because they were all laughing and my laughter was getting drowned in the laughter of those around me.
Full review ↗8.0
TRM 6.0+2.0
Indu Sarkar
Indu Sarkar opens with the declaration of Emergency but its true beginning-point is a disclaimer proclaiming it as a work of fiction bearing nothing more than a chance resemblance to people, places, and events. I found that disclaimer to be less of a mandatory insert and more an apology for the film's artlessness.
Full review ↗4.0
TRM 4.7−0.7
Lipstick Under My Burkha
Lipstick Under My Burkha touches, fleetingly, upon this aspect of female bonding that is removed from the compulsions of protesting. When the film is not making points, it has some life. When it goes off into conscious revolting, it's just distributing pamphlets.
Full review ↗4.0
TRM 6.8−2.8
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Homecoming fuses the kinky-swiftness of the original superhero movies with the silly concerns of a 2017's teenager...
Full review ↗7.0
TRM 7.1−0.1
Sachin: A Billion Dreams
2 hours and 20 minutes later, I walked out of Sachin: A Billion Dreams learning not one additional thing about Tendulkar: Not one factoid, not one statistic. Maybe it's convenient filmmaking, or maybe just the essence of God.
Full review ↗5.0
TRM 7.1−2.1
Hindi Medium
Hindi Medium works because it manages to stretch itself beyond its scrubby elements, easy half-baked jokes, lessons about consumerism and our love for English, into a simple story about a boy who would do anything to see his girl smile...
Full review ↗6.0
TRM 6.5−0.5
Sarkar 3
Ram Gopal Varma is back with Part Three of that series, which presented to us the first clear evidence that the great man was slipping...
Full review ↗2.0
TRM 4.0−2.0
Baahubali 2
Despite its gargantuan cast, there are not more than 10 people in Baahubali who actually talk; the others merely exist as echoes. These are people forever chanting their support, nodding their heads in accord, or following directions. If you think about it, this lop-sided view of heroism is in complete disagreement with the spirit of great movies. But in a world of sheer campy values, as this one, such problems became the very essence of the experience.
Full review ↗5.0
TRM 7.1−2.1
Laali Ki Shaadi Mein Laaddoo Deewana
If you want to be disappointed, there are better movies to be disappointed by. This is a half-star picture with one extra star for how ignorant it is about its own quality.
Full review ↗3.0
TRM 3.5−0.5
Poorna: Courage Has No Limit
This movie is a perfect example of a city-bred director scanning our heartlands, and instead of taking in all the complexity, all the denseness, stopping to ask himself, "What are the corrections I can highlight in these lives, and how do I stitch together a narrative around these corrections?"
Full review ↗4.0
TRM 6.4−2.4
Thithi
In his first full-length feature itself, Raam Reddy seems to have mastered something that's most difficult to master in cinema: a way of suggesting a dreamlike clarity in a brazen setting...
Full review ↗10.0
TRM 7.3
Tamasha
Very briefly, we see an honest film and some three-dimensional characters. The dread in Imtiaz Ali's Tamasha feels real. The silliness, however, comes across as too orchestrated.
Full review ↗4.0
TRM 6.2−2.2
X: Past Is Present
In its misappropriation of Freudian themes, the movie gives its protagonist a truckload of guilt, but nothing more to chew on. And all this, means that the grand statement made isn't anything more than a South Mumbai kid's version of the all-conquering, all-observing, all-knowing feminine power. There's a lot of worship for women that's comes through in X. But is there enough love?
Full review ↗5.0
TRM 4.4+0.6