Road, Movie: A review A smart, crisp script makes Road, Movie a welcome change from the usual fare. It’s fresh and thought-provoking, minus the melodrama.

iPod-toting Vishnu (Abhay Deol) is wedged in a hair oil-selling family. All he wants is to escape the reach of Atma Read »

All that glitters... In an interview to ilovekolkata last week, first-time film director Birsa Dasgupta said filmmaking runs in his blood. “My grandfather was sort of a pioneer in documentary filmmaking in India. Since childhood I’ve been seeing the flashbulbs, watching my fathe... Read »

Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge?: Review On day one of Chachaji’s (Paresh Rawal) stay at his nephew Puneet’s (Ajay Devgn) plush Goregaon flat, the elderly man puts his legs up on the sofa and farts loudly, much to the horror of everyone present. On day two, he lets out another stinker at the dining... Read »

Teen Patti: review Is magic simply another word for mathematics? Is everything and everybody in this world governed by some mathematical theory or the other? Does a simple math equation have the power to change lives? A tale of gambling and greed, deception and death, Teen PattiRead »

Cerebral and kinetic, Abohomaan charms Novelists and poets have used non-linear narrative technique to great effects. Film, an art form that takes a lot of money and labour to crank up, cannot always show the same agility. But among a few good directors who use it to their advantage, Christopher Nolan is foremost.

This is not jus... Read »

My Name Is Khan: A review There’s been much hullabaloo over what Shah Rukh Khan had said about the exclusion of Pakistani players from the IPL 3. Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray’s followers have been up in arms against the Bollywood actor and his My Name Is Khan. The film’s release has... Read »

Rann: a review In Rann, director Ram Gopal Varma attempts to expose how the country’s electronic media is increasingly sacrificing journalistic ethics at the altar of sordid sensationalism, all in a cut-throat bid to stay ahead in the TRP game.

But in an irony of so... Read »

The game is not worth the candle The last time I visited Prosenjit at his Ballygunj residence, I saw him glow in optimism. He spoke at length about his upcoming films. The subject of Clerk came up and he described how he managed to pull off what could be the tightest schedule of his life so... Read »

Veer: A review In his interviews Salman Khan has described his writing debut Veer as a revenge story, an action film and also as a romance. Coming from the son of one half of the greatest Bollywood screenwriter duo (Salim Khan of Salim-Javed) Salman should have known bette... Read »

Bolo Na Tumi Amaar: review The plot: It’s a love story about a pizza delivery boy (Dev) and an aspiring doctor (Koel), spiced up with comic misunderstandings.

Though it all ends on a happy note, the beginning is anything but sweet. For starters, boy and girl bump into each other everywhere — college campus, South City... Read »

Chance Pe Dance: a review Chance Pe Dance is yet another telling audio-visual evidence that Bollywood writers and directors are struggling to keep up with the new kids on the block. Five years, countless reshoots, one heroine replacement, severely re-edited music videos later, direct... Read »

Elementary, my dear Ritchie "... For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation."— Dr. John H. Watson, The Adventure of the Three Garridebs.

The l... Read »

Pyaar Impossible!: A review With just over half an hour left of the 150-minute movie, Uday Chopra, who’s also written the script of the film, finally comes to the point. He dresses up Priyanka Chopra as a geek and challenges her to get the phone number of any of the happening guys in the party Read »

Aamir does a Santa for Hirani True, you can’t possibly make a contraption out of a vacuum cleaner to help a pregnant woman give birth. But then, before Lage Raho Munnabhai, who could have thought that a rose stick can move mountains?

True, whenever Baba Ranchordas (Aamir Khan) open... Read »

The many dimensions of 3-D Can a director who hasn’t made a feature film in more than a decade encash a conservatively-edited, US$ 300 million sci-fi fantasy film based on a new take on an old story, with zero superstars and a DVD market sinking under BitTorrent? James Cameron’s Avatar Read »

5 reasons why Rocket Singh doesn’t rock... Ranbir Kapoor’s Sardarji S-A-L-E-S stint is bringing on the whistles, and Shimit Amin’s Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year seems to have hit all the right notes with movie-goers. And yet, this story of the underdog’s triumph doesn’t leave you with a smile by... Read »

There is no there there “Some books are to be tasted; others to be swallowed; and some few to be chewed and digested,” wrote Francis Bacon. Had we applied this metaphor to films, R. Balki’s Paa would squarely fall into the second category that includes many other well-meaning but m... Read »

De Dana Dan: Review Sanjay Gupta copies from Korean films. David Dhawan lifts bits and pieces from Bolly, Holly, Tolly, Molly, Kolly…. Priyadarshan rehashes his own films. Just as the sarson ka khet signals a Yash Chopra film and Karan Johar’s films are known by the melodrama, ... Read »

Kurbaan: review The Quran mentions the term jihad 41 times. Love, peace, mercy and compassion find a mention 355 times. Why then is Islamic fundamentalism considered the biggest threat to civilisation today? Why are young men (and women), blinded by rage and revenge, ever ready to give up their lives and conscienc... Read »

Jail: Review Denied bail and, more frustratingly, a chance to utter a word in court in his defence for close to a year, a hapless Parag Dixit (Neil Nitin Mukesh) lets loose his pent-up anger, bashing up a rich kid whose VIP connections have worked in acquitting him in a hit-and-run case. The criminal walks free... Read »

Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani: Review Oi ma! Aila! Main toh kehta hoon aap purush hi nahin… mahapurush hain, mahapurush…. Suno suno duniya ke logon, sabse bada hai Mr Gogo….

Teja main hoon, mark idha... Read »

Tum Mile: A review Once during an interview Francis Ford Coppola was asked why it took so long for Kay to leave Michael Corleone in the Godfather series. The writer-director, citing his own life, had replied that wives tend to believe their husbands when they say they would le... Read »

Requiem for a wren See this shot of Michael Jackson taken from the ground up – from, say, the musicians’ pit just below the lip of the stage: his lithe body, with pelvis thrust forward like a light-catcher, curves tautly backwards; his arms angle back from narrow, fragile-looking shoulders; his fingers stretch back a... Read »

London Dreams: A review Two years ago, Vipul Shah plucked a rustic Akshay Kumar from the fields of Punjab and dropped him into the plush streets of London to give us a beautiful love story in Namastey London. With London Dreams, the man behi... Read »

Blue: A review The 120 minutes of Blue cost Rs 120 crore. That’s one crore for every minute of screen time. But why is it that more than the screen, you keep an eye on the time. Exactly what Kylie Minogue says, when Akshay asks why she is looking at him: “There’s a giant c... Read »

Acid Factory: A review “A man can convince anyone he’s somebody else, but never himself” — Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects.

But if a man himself doesn’t know who he is, how can he convince others? The gas leak which causes “temporary amnesia” in the characters of Read »

Chi chi charm It is difficult to imagine two former Miss Universe winners fighting over a pot-bellied, ageing Govinda. But it is impossible to imagine anyone else but Govinda as a goofy Casanova stuck between a dictatorial wife and a demanding mistress, ever ready with a trick up his sleeve to wriggle out of any... Read »

Wake Up Sid: A review

Orey manwa tu toh bawra hai
Tu hi jaane tu kya sochta hai…
Jo barse sapne boond boond
Nainon ko moond moond…
Dheeme bole koi iktara
iktara
Gunjasa hai koi iktara
iktara...

If there was one song that could change the genre of a film midway, this is it. The Am... Read »

Unfavourable ‘raashee’ If the trailers looked snappy, the movie bogs you down. Ashutosh Gowariker has a weakness for long films, whether Lagaan or Jodhaa Akbar, but unlike the earlier two, What’s Your Raash... Read »

Dil Bole Hadippa: A review If you have diabetes or cholesterol, avoid Dil Bole Hadippa!. For others, the movie has an abundance of ghee and ganne ka ras — no, we aren’t talking about Rakhi Sawant and Sherlyn Chopra — to make a sumptuous (loud and melodramatic, if you are in the other ... Read »

Wanted: A review

Crash…boom…wham…bam…bang! Broken limbs, necks turned 360 degrees, twisted jaws, dislocated shoulders, eyes gouged out, tongues chopped off, pools and pools of blood. The three hours of Wanted take one back to the masala madness of the 80s — when the hero could reduce a dozen villains to... Read »

Lips don't lie So after 80-odd minutes of haan and naa, if and but, they are finally indulging in some not-a-care-in-the-world public display of affection on a neighbourhood park bench. They catch a kid playing with his mother nearb... Read »

Houseful: A review I’m confused. Even though I sat through Houseful for a little over two hours, several questions still remain unanswered to me. For example,

1.    Can a weather-forecaster on a Bengali television channel ever manage to acquire Read »

Nothing right about this one Did Mamata Banerjee secretly back this film? The ‘non-left’ agenda is not just in the title, every character who seeks directions in the film is told “aagey se right”. As if there’s no left road left in the world. And there’s a maa, there’s Read »

Sob Choritro Kalponik: Rekindling imagination Sob Choritro Kalponik is the sharpest journey across a woman’s psyche that Rituporno Ghosh has ever taken since Unishe April. Ghosh, in his earlier films, displayed his enviable skills in screenplay and dialogue writi... Read »

Quick Gun Murugan: A review The leopard print waistcoat, the shocking pink scarf and the tilted cowboy hat are resting near the head of the bed. He is sitting with his silky green shirt unbuttoned. From behind her heaving bosom, she looks at him and says: “How was it for you?” He turns around and replies: “Next time, put more... Read »

Sikandar: A review How many times have you heard the phrase “has its heart in the right place” plastered on an issue-based film? Piyush Jha’s Sikandar makes that bracket but it also tells you that good intentions alone can’t save a movie. The heart has to pump in the right bod... Read »

Kaminey: Vishal’s best What is Kaminey

Kaminey retains the flavour of Bolly-cask, but is bottled so genuinely that it’s rather the bottling craft that stays with you. Though Read »

Neel Aakasher Chandni: A review Sujit Guha’s Neel Aakasher Chandni, two hours and 45 minutes long, is like a spot-the-difference — er, similarity — game. The options: Chandni, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Read »

Love Aaj Kal: A review For one thing, Imtiaz Ali’s latest directorial venture Love Aaj Kal doesn’t compare with his 2007 runaway hit Jab We Met, which, for many, was an exemplary and-they-lived-happily-ever... Read »

Play with fire When you call your film Luck, the first thing you do is send the other ‘L’ called logic out of the window. You officially have the licence to show anything and everything that Hindi cinema has been flaunting over the decades in the garb of coincidence.
Read »

Experimental? Self-congratulatory? Pointless? The film opens with a scene in the woods, with colleagues sitting around a bonfire, while Rana (Samrat Chakraborty) strums his guitar singing ‘Jeebon theke jodi palai chhute’. Sudipta (Ananya Chatterjee) sits like one in a painting, holding her drink looking... Read »

Half-baked 'Half-Blood Prince' You’re in the office when open-mouthed Muggles witness ominous clouds form, you watch as three plumes of black smoke — Death Eaters in furious motion — catapult out of the sky, your stomach lurches as you speed with them at breakneck pace through the narrow alleys of London and you’re right there w... Read »

Sankat City: a review Welcome to Sankat City, says Guru (Kay Kay Menon) even as the opening credits roll. It’s a city where “dhobi ke ooper gadha dikhta hai” and “bhagwaan ke peechhe shaitan”. It al... Read »

Brake Fail: A review Kaushik Ganguly’s much-hyped Brake Fail is, at best, a comedy of errors that aspires to be a “tribute to Hrishikesh Mukherjee,” the master director who made unforgettable comedies like Bawarchi (1972) and Read »

Kambakkht nonsense Take the stereotypical macho man, squirt his brain out, pump in some more brawn, keep him at loggerheads with a frigid woman, slap on crass crudity and voila! You have Kambakkht Ishq. The tenuous storyline is the same old hand-me-down— man meets woman, both ... Read »

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: A review It takes a weasel with a Jack Sparrow complex to lift Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs above what it really is — just another episode of a multi-million dollar animation franchise that promotes loyalty and family values above all else.

The familiar cast... Read »

‘Box No. 1313’: A review One hardly expects freshness from Bengali films, including the works of those we call talented. Rarely do we watch Bengali films whose storylines build on a central idea. Aniruddha Bhattacharya’s Box No. 1313 shows a heartfelt effort to do that.

He ma... Read »

New York: A review Some will go ga-ga over Kabir Khan’s New York for its more or less original treatment of the impact of the 9/11 tragedy on the South-Asian Muslim minority of the United States. Some will take issue with the film’s Bollywood parochialism despite the filmmaker... Read »

'The Hangover': Review Restraint. Not a word you would usually associate with Hollywood comedy of today. And definitely not a word that comes to mind when you hear the premise of The Hangover. Four men hit Vegas two nights before one amongst them is set to get married. Yes, a bach... Read »