Category: Movie Reviews

Director Sriram Raghavan, Bollywood’s undisputed master of pitch-dark thrillers, takes a bit of a step back from the racy narrative rhythm of Andhadhun and walks a fine line between the unhurried and the urgent, the philosophical and the provocative, and the classy and the kicky in Merry Christmas, a quiet head-scratcher that never lets go...

Prasanth Varma’s Hanu-Man, touted as the first Telugu-language superhero movie, scores in terms of scale and ambition. The execution, notwithstanding a few visual and ideational highs (most of them CGI-driven), struggles at times to keep pace what the film’s racing inner pulse. The disconnect mercifully isn’t overly glaring. At the level of the yarn that...

Rohit Shetty’s indefatigable cops make an ungainly, if not wholly wobbly, landing in the universe of web shows. They go after “India’s most wanted terrorist” – a young man who has sinister plans up his sleeves but looks like he would be hard-pressed to swat a fly. The resultant thriller is hackneyed and devoid of...

The Mumbai movie industry rarely, if ever, does justice to biopics, be they of personalities of contemporary relevance or of figures of historical significance. Main Atal Hoon, helmed and co-written by the National Award-winning director Ravi Jadhav (Natarang, Balgandharva, Balak Palak), does little to change that widely held belief. If not a botched effort without...

The least one would expect from the first film of an intended franchise is freshness, if not exceptional originality. Let alone soaring to great heights, Fighter, an aerial action thriller directed and co-produced by Siddharth Anand (War, Pathaan), struggles to shake off its flat trajectory. For the audience, if you aren’t a Hrithik Roshan fan...

New Delhi: A murder on the beach shakes the swish set of Alibaug out of its self-obsessed stupor. Posited as both a preface and the probable final act of Karmma Calling, a seven-part Hotstar Specials series, the prelude points to what lies ahead for the denizens of the seaside enclave of the rich and the...

New Delhi: A bravura parable built around a range of zany ideas and marked by dazzling visual flair and precision, Schirkoa – In Lies We Trust is an animation film of stunning power. It is as potent as cinema as it is pertinent as commentary.   The 103-minute film combines 3D mo-cap and 2D techniques...

Since the silent era, the life of the Rajasthani mystic-poet Meerabai has been brought to the big screen by several Indian filmmakers, most notably Debaki Bose (1933), Ellis R. Dungan (1947) and Gulzar (1979). They cast Durga Khote, M.S. Subbulakshmi and Hema Malini respectively in the role of the historical/literary figure whose work and lore...

New Delhi: Aparna Sen, movie star, ace filmmaker, successful magazine editor and active civil society leader, has had an incredibly eventful and diverse career. A documentary chronicling her life and times was long overdue. But that certainly isn’t the only reason why Suman Ghosh’s Parama: A Journey with Aparna Sen, should be essential viewing. Straddling...

In Anatomy Of A Fall, her fourth film, French writer-director Justin Triet launches into a comprehensive examination of a festering relationship that ends with a sickening thud. The inquest yields an intense, riveting drama built around a suspected murder and a bruising courtroom battle. Thanks to the firm grip that she and co-writer Arthur Harari...