It starts with a stocking and ends with scarf floating into space, portraying freedom. Lily has found her freedom. But she has left us a captive of her tragic tale for all times to come.

Chalk ‘N’ Duster is not great cinema by any stretch of the imagination. It is often crude and unapologetic in its melodramatic pitch. But its heart is in the right place. It is a decent conscientious attempt to depict the bond between teachers and the taught. Shabana’s Vidya and Juhi’s Jyoti (vidya and jyoti, get it?) are more aspirational than real. There is irony there. Because the treatment of the subject is more street-play blunt than aspirational.

In debutant director Bikas Ranjan Mishra’s Chauranga  there are so many scummy characters swimming in the tides of a temporal debauchery and greed that you desperately look for ways to tell yourself, life is worth living after all, like you do in the best morality tales of our times.

Chauranga is a dark, cryptic and provocative look at cast oppression as seen through the eyes of a young innocent boy. This is the world of Shyam Benegal’s Nishant and Prakash Jha’s Damul. But a lot more murky and yes, clumsy. There is way too much fondling, pushing and touching, not all of it appropriate or even apt. Sanjay Suri’s love making scenes with Tannishtha Chatterjee show him copulating violently, with his pyjama on.

This looks like a terrific year ahead for Bollywood. Wazir is a solid start. A gripping thriller anchored by Bachchan and Akhtar’s compelling compatibility. Not to be missed.

Dilwale is one of those terrible mistakes that superstars like Shah Rukh and Rohit Shetty make in the mistaken belief that they can get away with anything in the name of entertainment.

Bajirao Mastani is a masterpiece that teaches us many important lessons on love and and life. Most of all it shows us that another Mughal-e-Azam is possible in this day and age because there is a filmmaker who possesses the epic vision of K Asif.

Kajarya is not quite the long-legged social statement that the film’s well-researched plot would  suggest. But it has its heart in the right place. And its theme of mass gender annihilation makes our blood freeze .

Sitting numb at the end of this deeply disturbing film on female infanticide, Kajarya, I was informed that 10 million girls have been killed in our country since the 1980s. Director Madhureeta Anand has our attention by force. She does not allow audiences the luxury to flinch or turn away.

This is  a wonderful wonderful film with moments and performances that I will cherish forever. What stays long after the film is its admirable equanimity in portraying gender equations. If men ogle at women as though by birthright, here women to attain orgasmic contentment watching the shirtless boynextdoor wash his car.