Hindi movies
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If the first film was the setup, the second is the payoff. Personally, I liked the setup better — it did more interesting things with its screen time.
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Thoughts on Dhurandhar, a riveting blood-soaked spy thriller with some top-notch world building.
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Mr and Mrs Mahi is a curious mixtape of a film. At one level, there’s little that feels original except the specific plot device of a husband who wanted to be a cricketer discovering that his wife could be a great one. There’s a bit of Dum Laga ke Haisha and Bawaal in how a…
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The first thing you hear when you watch Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s Kill is the theme from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai that plays over the Dharma Productions logo. If there is a greater red herring in the history of red herrings, I do not know it. (This is not to say that Karan Johar only produces…
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Kiran Rao’s sophomore feature Laapataa Ladies begins at a bidaai (a farewell to the bride as she leaves to go to her in-laws’ house). The bride’s face is covered with a veil so all-encompassing that she can barely see anything past her feet. There is a moment of brief panic in her face when her…
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A few days after watching Merry Christmas, I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out why it worked for me. The film is a slow burn, to the point where there isn’t really an end to the burning. You don’t see the quiet desperation of a character who has committed a crime and is…
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To be perfectly honest with you, Ghoomer feels more gimmicky than anything else for pretty much its entire running time. There’s a moment towards the end when Anina, a one-handed woman picked as a bowler, steps out to bat because her team still needs a couple of runs to win and she’s the only one…
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Firstly, why the hell does the title need that extra i? Ah, never mind. Here’s the thing, and watch out, because there are going to be a few spoilers here: A young man finds out that his wheelchair-bound mostly-mentally-absent grandfather once had a dalliance with a woman named Jamini. Turns out they had, at the…
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Caution: Spoilers ahead. Read this only if you’ve watched the film. Gully Boy is a rousing tale, but it’s easy to look at the broad outlines of the plot and dismiss it as Dharavi’s 8 Mile or some such thing. That would be doing the film a huge disservice. A genre exercise must not automatically…
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Taapsee Pannu occupies the center of Manmarziyan like this was the role she was born to play. And why wouldn’t she? The role’s a peach, and Pannu mines a vein of ferocity that makes her character in Baby and Naam Shabana look mild in comparison. It has been argued that the level of agency she…
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