… is a film that could have been noisy messy and crowded. It ends up being just the opposite .

As Aamir Khan would say for the Mehras’ canine Pluto, “Bow wow!”

Yup, we bow to the wow.

TanuWeds Manu Returns sparkles and dazzles with its delectable synthesis of the scintillating and the sassy.With his third winner in a hat-trick of triumphant films(after Tanu Weds Manu and Raanjhanaa)Aanand Rai asserts his place among the most astute original and culturally sensitized filmmakers we have today.

Bombay Velvet for all its sins of excesses, is the gangster epic that Bollywood was waiting to unleash. Tactile, smokey, powerful, passionate and pulsating with periodicity…this movie is an experience that’s more remarkable for what it attempts than what it actually achieves.

Piku is an exceptionally intimate character study.The three principal characters bare their frailties on camera as though they were part of a reality show that had no cameras. The emotions are raw and unabashed. The three principal actors sink into their roles like monks bathing in the holiest water on this side of the Ganga.

Gabbar Is Back knocks the bottom off the action genre with a breathless ode to Swach Bharat. The film may appear louder-than-life to the dainty-hearted. But the tone is unapologetic massy.You can’t change the disintegrating social order by being subtle.

Miraculously Akshay Kumar does exactly that.

The film’s emotional affluence is matched by its technical finesse. The art work and locational detailing unfussy and matter-of-fact , as well as the casting of every character is so correct, you wonder how the director got it so right with so little self-congratulations.

…has some lucid moments of self-questioning where the religious divide is pungently scrutinized and satirized. Hilarity at the cost of organized religion is not an easy target to achieve for any filmmaker. This films achieves a remarkable threshold of thoughtful humour.Though a lot of it is gradually eroded by over-punctuated satire, this is that rare film which takes potshots at the religious divide without offending anyone.

It may not be revolutionary in concept or path-breaking in execution. But make no mistake. Ek Paheli Leela is the surprise of the year.

A scintillating synthesis of the cerebral and the sensual, Detective Byomkesh Bakshy is a rare Bollywood whodunit cooked on the slow burner at a tantalizing temperature.Dibakar Banerjee’s Calcutta of the 1940s pulsates with heart soul body and nerves of steel.Sushant Singh lives the role of the 1940s’ detective. With due respects to Rajit Kapoor,Sushant is now officially the face of Byomkesh.He owns the part as much as Kingsley owns Gandhi.

Barkhaa rains down a rhapsody of drama and romance. A heartwarming at times touching tale of an innocent girl’s journey into the world of deceit, compromise and corruption, it echoes Raj Kapoor’s Ram Teri Ganga Maili and Kamal Anrohi’sPakeezah in the way the respectable genteel upper class is shown to exploit women of meager means.

Sara Loren is no Meena Kumari. But she kills the part much better than Mandakiniin Raj Kapoor’s fevered fable.