Category: Review
-
Review: Mukesh Chhabra’s Dil Bechara
Sushant Singh Rajput leafs restlessly through an issue of GQ. His Dil Bechara character doesn’t care for the magazine and neither may the filmmakers have paid much attention to the prop, but as he flips pages and drops the magazine dismissively, we see Tiger Shroff on the cover, airbrushed and silhouetted and to the industry…
-
Review: Shoojit Sircar’s Gulabo Sitabo
There is magic in the way Amitabh Bachchan falls. As a wizened old coot in Shoojit Sircar’s Gulabo Sitabo, Bachchan’s Mirza Sheikh topples over whenever overcome by bad news. This is a Wodehouse-ean touch (think of all those reluctant fiancés who clutched tables as they reeled, till Jeeves bounded to their rescue) and Mirza, too…
-
Review: Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy
The first time we see Ranveer Singh in Gully Boy, he’s stealing a car. Three men head toward an SUV, Singh walking third, far behind the cocksure leader. He appears tentative and preoccupied, having sought out the least active role. His name is Murad, and that is his way. A college kid obsessed with hip-hop,…
-
Avengers: Endgame — The Spoiler-Free Review
What is an epic? To silence any doubters, Avengers: Endgame features a grand sequence modelled on one of cinema’s most iconic and revered scenes. A man wearing a red cloak commands torrential waters to make way, unmistakably invoking Moses parting the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments. And even this massive shot is easy to…
-
Review: Vishal Bhardwaj’s Rangoon
She doesn’t want to sit on his lap. Miss Julia is enraged, and all her billionaire boyfriend Russi Billimoria does — as the man in charge, her lover, her producer — is slap the inside of his left thigh, inviting his tigress to clamber aboard so he can make it all better. She seethes while…
-
Review: Theodore Melfi’s Hidden Figures
The coffee is in a different pot. The year is 1961, and nervous mathematician Katherine Johnson is an exceptionally bright woman assigned to NASA’s Space Task Group. Here, in a world of white men wearing detergent-commercial white shirts and grey pants and thin neckties, she feels like an anomaly. An anomaly who has to walk…
-
Review: Chris McKay’s The Lego Batman Movie
There are many Batmen. Detective. Dark Knight. Dancer. Father-figure. Fascist. Flirt. Teacher. Troublemaker. Terrorist. Created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane in 1939, the crimefighting vigilante has had a varied and sprawling mythology. With many a writer and filmmaker desperate to leave their own stamp on the shadowy character, the years have seen him turned…
-
Review: Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight
The cinematographer shines the brightest in Moonlight. The film by Barry Jenkins is a soulful and evocative work of motion picture poetry, performed by fine actors and with a musical score that keeps things heartbreakingly dreamy, but what cinematographer James Laxton brings to the table is the most special of all. Based on Tarrell McRaney’s…
-
DJ Caruso’s xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage
One has to feel at least a bit sorry for Vin Diesel. Diesel, following franchises like xXx and The Fast And The Furious represented a new kind of mainstream action hero: a lunkheaded leading man, a swiss-army-knife of brains and brawn. He’d rappel down the skyscraper, punch out a squad of guys, and get the…
-
Review: Nitesh Tiwari’s Dangal
This summer, India learnt the name Produnova. An intricate gymnastic move named after a legendary Russian athlete, the Produnova is a vault so complex that only five gymnasts have actually executed it. The Olympic gold-medallist and reigning queen of the sport, American gymnast Simone Biles shuns it entirely, saying, “I’m not trying to die.” This…