|
|
Cha Cha Real Smooth
(2022)
|
Ishita Sengupta
|
It is a kind of film that sees merit in being kind to your parents and your sibling even when you feel the most hurt. Heartbreak here does not serve a purpose, it just hurts bad.
Posted Jul 20, 2023
|
|
|
All That Breathes
(2022)
|
Ishita Sengupta
|
The documentary places all forms of life at an equal footing, the act not dehumanising or brutalising any but propelling the need to acknowledge all as residents of the same community.
Posted Jul 20, 2023
|
|
|
The Worst Person in the World
(2021)
|
Ishita Sengupta
|
The Worst Person In The World feels revelatory for the empathy it lends to the turn of time. Trier trades ‘what’ with ‘how’: how does it feel to be turning 30? This question inform all his decisions.
Posted Jul 20, 2023
|
|
|
A Love Song
(2022)
|
Ishita Sengupta
|
Even then A Love Song is the most tender love story I have seen in recent times. It is a film that suddenly sneaks up on you, reminding you of someone you have not been able to forget.
Posted Jul 20, 2023
|
|
4
|
She Said
(2022)
|
Ishita Sengupta
|
Although the premise is the effort that went into exposing the misdeeds of Harvey Weinstein, She Said is about other things. It is about the rage of women compelled to be silenced for years, the empathy borne out of shared experience and existence.
Posted Nov 19, 2022
|
|
|
Phone Bhoot
(2022)
|
Ishita Sengupta
|
It is a bit absurd, juvenile and honestly baffling how, sitting in 2022, the film not just got made but is headlined by three capable actors and bankrolled by Excel Entertainment.
Posted Nov 11, 2022
|
|
3
|
Monica, O My Darling
(2022)
|
Ishita Sengupta
|
With his latest film, Bala locates the purpose for moral transgression embedded in the noir genre: to belong, to be seen but most importantly to be acknowledged.
Posted Nov 11, 2022
|
|
2.5/5
|
Last Film Show
(2021)
|
Poulomi Das
|
It's perhaps why the personal thread of Chhello Show, culled from Nalin's own journey to become a filmmaker, feels diluted in the face of the well-tested tropes the film force-fits itself into.
Posted Oct 14, 2022
|
|
3/5
|
Luckiest Girl Alive
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
Even when Luckiest Girl Alive doesn't manage to sell its plot contrivances all the time, Kunis' breathtaking performance manages to make us buy some of it.
Posted Oct 10, 2022
|
|
1.5/5
|
Goodbye
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
Even though Goodbye is ultimately let down by several factors, what sounds a death knell of its very existence is a complete lack of purpose.
Posted Oct 10, 2022
|
|
4/5
|
Hasan Minhaj: The King's Jester
(2022)
|
Tatsam Mukherjee
|
Minhaj's animated style of storytelling is deceptively intricate, even if it appears like a man going off the rails with pop-culture references. Each line seems to have been refined & rehearsed through scores of performances.
Posted Oct 05, 2022
|
|
4/5
|
Vikram Vedha
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
On its part, Vikram Vedha isn't devoid of style, charm, or even voice. Even though Pushkar-Gayathri mute down their source material for the Hindi remake, it still retains the makers' trademark measured intensity.
Posted Sep 30, 2022
|
|
2/5
|
Plan A Plan B
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
The film, which feels like an overextended sketch gone wrong for the most part, is unable to muster any charm, an ingredient that is usually indispensable for any rom-com outing.
Posted Sep 30, 2022
|
|
2.5/5
|
Chup
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
It's hard to not be excited, amused, or even invested in any of these premises. Except, it's easy to forget one crucial thing -- what might prevent these one-line plots from ending up as a gimmick is intelligent filmmaking. There is no shortcut to that.
Posted Sep 23, 2022
|
|
3/5
|
Borderlands
(2021)
|
Poulomi Das
|
There's a sense of intimacy in Divekar's compositions that has a real feel for geography. My only grouse with the film was the lack of cohesive approach to its storytelling.
Posted Sep 22, 2022
|
|
2/5
|
Pinocchio
(2022)
|
Rahul Desai
|
Pinocchio is a frustratingly dry, functional and uninventive rendition of a fairytale that has somehow resisted cultural updates despite its morally elastic nature.
Posted Sep 20, 2022
|
|
5/5
|
Everything Everywhere All at Once
(2022)
|
Rahul Desai
|
A peerless ode to love, life and everything in between.
Posted Sep 20, 2022
|
|
|
Where the Crawdads Sing
(2022)
|
Rahul Desai
|
The film is little more than an artistic tourist trap.
Posted Sep 20, 2022
|
|
3/5
|
Jogi
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
If the film succeeds in making viewers invest in the proceedings despite its lengthy 160-minute runtime, it's solely owing to the sensational two-header turns by Dosanjh and Zeeshan Ayub.
Posted Sep 16, 2022
|
|
2.5/5
|
Brahmāstra Part One: Shiva
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
Brahmastra Part One -- Shiva is a film that shouts its story from the rooftops instead of piecing its threads together in a coherent narrative.
Posted Sep 10, 2022
|
|
3/5
|
Diorama
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
Novotny's knack at conjuring tension out of silences and resentment is the film's secret weapon.
Posted Sep 10, 2022
|
|
3/5
|
I Came By
(2022)
|
Rahul Desai
|
Babak Anvari's return to genre-fluid form.
Posted Sep 09, 2022
|
|
3.5/5
|
Beast
(2022)
|
Rahul Desai
|
Baltasar Kormakur's Beast uses raw emotion to drive the conflict between man and nature.
Posted Sep 09, 2022
|
|
1/5
|
Cuttputli
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
I wish Cuttputlli cared as much about not torturing the audience as much as it cares about Kumar's saviour complex.
Posted Sep 02, 2022
|
|
|
Love in the Villa
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
Love in the Villa resembles the rom-com equivalent of a tourist trap. It takes corny clichés and stretches it into directions that make it amiable but also, forgettable.
Posted Sep 02, 2022
|
|
3.5/5
|
Archive
(2020)
|
Rahul Desai
|
A poignant cocktail of grief and science fiction.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
1/5
|
Day Shift
(2022)
|
Rahul Desai
|
This is proof that vampire-hunter movies need to be retired.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
1.5/5
|
Samaritan
(2022)
|
Rahul Desai
|
It is a derivative superhero drama that thinks it's subverting our notion of derivative superhero dramas.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank
(2022)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
If Blazing Saddles confronted racial stereotypes by making a black sheriff police a white town, Paws of Fury tones down its satirical edge and irreverence for a neutered and declawed interspecies lark.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
Persuasion
(2022)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
Persuasion hamstrings Austen's lyrical reflections and snappy exchanges with deadened modern jargon in a blatant attempt to remould the story as befits Netflix's demographic pandering.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
The Gray Man
(2022)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
In a world where entertainment can be reduced to an algorithm, gray denotes dispassionate neutrality instead of vari-hued complexity, cold industrialisation instead of creative sophistication. Which pretty much sums up Netflix's new pseudo-blockbuster.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
Memoria
(2021)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
A bewitching whisper of a film that leaves the imprint of a haunting banger.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
Carter
(2022)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
When a oner has been stitched together with digital trickery, it is easy to get caught playing "Spot the cut." But in the case of Carter, the trickery is so blatantly obvious we are deprived of even that pleasure.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
Crimes of the Future
(2022)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
Cronenberg cuts open his own body of work and excises the parts he needs to Frankenstein a new beast. He gives us his own twisted logical extension of how the human body might need to subvert the biological status quo as a sustainable measure.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
Belfast
(2021)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
What Branagh fails to understand is there is a difference between filtering an observed experience through a child's point-of-view, and treating the viewers like they were children.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
Compartment No. 6
(2021)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
Where Compartment No. 6 differs from It Happened One Night and Before Sunrise is that its set-up isn't in service of a life-changing romance, but a study into class and cultural differences framed via a contrast of appearances vs reality.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
Jurassic World Dominion
(2022)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
Colin Trevorrow cannot access a single iota of magic of the Steven Spielberg classic that started it all — without resorting to cheap nostalgia. He still tries though, but it's the equivalent of a T-rex chasing its own tail with its tiny-ass arms.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
The Girl and the Spider
(2021)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
The film spins a web of unexpressed emotions in conflict, weaving its magic through a waltz of loneliness and longing, attraction and rejection, in confined places where bodies sometimes move to the same rhythms, sometimes in opposition.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
This Much I Know To Be True
(2022)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
It continues the narrative from One More Time with Feeling, framing Cave's acceptance of his grief. Watching the film through the lens of its emotional prequel is unavoidable. The mournful air may not be as concentrated, but it lingers in the shadows.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
Lightyear
(2022)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
A dubious feat of reverse engineering an IP into a commercial for itself, geared to administer doses of nostalgia to the Toy Story faithful and expand the lore of a character into a potential saga of his own.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
Cha Cha Real Smooth
(2022)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
The movie's good intentions are so myopic, it is trapped in the same bubble as its lead character.
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
|
Faya Dayi
(2021)
|
Prahlad Srihari
|
Through the lens of khat harvesting, Beshir serves a portal into the plains of Harar where the plant is both a boon and a bane. https://www.news9live.com/entertainment/faya-dayi-film-review-188401
Posted Aug 29, 2022
|
|
3/5
|
Holy Cow
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
Mishra is the backbone of the film, giving a face to a Muslim everyman while asserting his repressed fears. It's an effective display of an actor being so attuned to his craft that he can seamlessly tune out the noise surrounding it.
Posted Aug 26, 2022
|
|
|
Runway 34
(2022)
|
Ishita Sengupta
|
Runway 34 is ostensibly a male saviour drama. As if on cue, the women are presented as decorative objects written with wafer thin imagination.
Posted Aug 25, 2022
|
|
3/4
|
Halftime
(2022)
|
Ishita Sengupta
|
Attempting to make us feel bad about someone whose net worth is $400 million currently is an overreach. Halftime's biggest merit resides in how close it comes to evoking that without manipulation.
Posted Aug 25, 2022
|
|
|
Shabaash Mithu
(2022)
|
Ishita Sengupta
|
Like most men, Srijit Mukherji thinks he understands women. Like most men, he does not.
https://www.news9live.com/entertainment/shabaash-mithu-mithali-raj-biopic-srijit-mukherjis-understanding-of-women-is-as-skewed-as-his-idea-of-filmmaking-184688
Posted Aug 25, 2022
|
|
2.5/5
|
Dobaaraa
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
It's as generic and similar as most mid-tier Netflix offerings, which over time turn into nameless, faceless, entities. If anything, Dobaaraa feels like an exercise in Kashyap dumbing himself down.
Posted Aug 20, 2022
|
|
2.5/5
|
Laal Singh Chaddha
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
It's hard to justify the purpose of a remake that doesn't seem interested in rethinking a source material in a way that is attuned to present times and is invested in only recreating it.
Posted Aug 20, 2022
|
|
0.5/5
|
Raksha Bandhan
(2022)
|
Poulomi Das
|
Raksha Bandhan is the cinematic equivalent of a man constantly talking over a woman and then wanting an award for it.
Posted Aug 20, 2022
|
|
1/5
|
Thalaivii
(2021)
|
Tatsam Mukherjee
|
There’s no such thing as serendipity, nothing simply happens here. Not even Jaya stopping at a traffic light and talking to a few street urchins. It’s meant to spawn the next chapter of this “incredible” life story.
Posted Aug 10, 2022
|
>
