Film Archives - Page 2 of 3

Laila Majnu Review: How the Interminable Wait for Love Descends into Madness

Sajid Ali's Laila Majnu will easily end up as the most conflicting piece of cinema this year. It tests your patience with a frustrating first hour and then presents an affecting 30-minute sequence that offers a visceral portrait of the insanity of love.

Poulomi Das June 4, 2016

Bollywood

Luck By Chance: The Finest, Most Self-Aware Movie About the Movies Ever Made

Luck By Chance remains Zoya Akhtar’s finest work, a subtle drama exploring the meaning of ambition and happiness in the film industry – via nepotism, sexual harassment, and blind luck.

Mudra May 26, 2016

Bollywood

Manikarnika Review: An Effective Revision of Your School History Book Chapter

As someone rooting for the success of Manikarnika, I was hungry for the movie to delve into the story behind the story. Did the exemplary Queen of Jhansi make mistakes? Did she have regrets? But the film only offers us Kangana Ranaut’s glaring dialogue-baazi and jaw clenching, and hammy plot devices.

Sonali Kokra May 25, 2016

Pop Culture

Hereditary Review: Family is the Greatest Horror of All

The most inventive stroke of Ari Aster’s Hereditary is that it has the greatest horror villain of all time: family inheritance. The film takes the saying “skeletons in the closet” literally, giving us a genuinely terrifying portrait of a family’s breakdown.

Poulomi Das May 20, 2016

Pop Culture

The Predictably Short Flight of Lady Bird

Greta Gerwig consistently understates the industry she inhabits, and remains herself, howsoever flawed or naïve. There must be a word that defines this lightness of being. Might we call her Lady Bird?

Manik Sharma May 7, 2016

Bollywood

Mumbai Gangster Movies Ka King Kaun? Satya

Long before RGV Ki Aag and Guns and Thighs, Ram Gopal Varma gave us a masterful Mumbai gangster movie like Satya. Crime films need characters, not caricatures – they need real grime, not artistically recreated versions of it. They don’t make films like Satya anymore.

Damian D'souza May 2, 2016

Pop Culture

Jurassic World and the Dawn of Dinosaur Dosti

With pet raptors and human cloning stretching believability in an already unbelievable series too far, the Jurassic Park franchise has become a badly written fan fiction version of itself, and The Fallen Kingdom is the franchise’s worst entry.

Dushyant Shekhawat April 25, 2016

Pop Culture

Goodbye Review: Amitabh Bachchan Leads a Largely Charming Film

The Amitabh Bachchan led film wants to explore the aftermath of death, and bar a few sloppy moving parts, is largely charming and likeable.

Pradeep Menon April 1, 2016

Bollywood

Is Pataakha the Sisterhood Story Bollywood’s Been Waiting For?

In Bollywood films, sisters are always selfless; they are mostly bechara, often vidhwa. If they are twins, one is bold, the other is timid. Our films have mostly paid lip service to a bond as ubiquitous as sisterhood. Will Vishal Bhardwaj’s Pataakha change that?

Pragyan Mohanty March 30, 2016

People

Remembering Vijaya Mulay, the Woman Behind the Legendary DD Film “Ek Anek Aur Ekta”

Those who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, learnt about national integrity and unity through a seven-minute animated film that aired on Doordarshan called Ek Anek Aur Ekta. The woman behind this little film with a big heart, Vijaya Mulay, passed away on Sunday, at age 98.

Chandrima Pal March 27, 2016