where reviews, columns and essays jostle for attention
(Every year, I do one particularly special interview. Winning over audiences and critics with unusual films Andhadhun and Badhaai Ho, 2018 was the year of Ayushmann Khurana. Here’s my story from last year.) I walk down a clinically white corridor, looking for Room 114. The doors next to me are deceptively nondescript. Names of occupants […]
The Oscar race has been run. The votes have been cast and the envelopes are sealed. I’ve speculated enough about each category — actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress and director — and made predictions, but let’s take a closer look at the biggest envelope of all. Regardless of who actually wins. The 89th annual Academy Awards […]
As always, there were many contenders for this list. But these ten films — these ten monstrosities — are the absolute bottom of last year’s barrel. 10. Fitoor Grated expectations. What a pretty mess this was. In my review, I’d said: “People age oddly in Fitoor. A small Kashmiri boy with innocent eyes and a […]
This has been a year of makeshift marvel. My Best Actor and Best Actress selections showcase worthy performers, but this set of movies makes it clear that this year has been characterised by fundamentally flawed winners. Most selections on my top ten come with built-in caveats, and yet they are films I’d rather celebrate than […]
Lists are made to be debated. To be obsessed over and taken apart and analysed, and while we critics bemoan the December ritual of rankings, those of us who love Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity will also confess to enjoying the absurd make-believe analysis of it all. On that note, I’d like to thank the ten […]
It is that time of year again, when lists are made and arbitrary rankings are passionately made and argued about. Actresses out-performed the actors in Hindi cinema this year, and keeping this list down to ten names was hard. The following names include a debutant and a veteran, obvious inclusions and unlikely suspects, and one […]
Six months of 2016 are almost up, and as tradition dictates, it is time to take stock. Here I step back and take a look at what’s worked and what hasn’t. The Good The Top Films For me, there have been three standout films in 2016 so far, and these couldn’t be a more diverse […]
Cinematic history and myths are, more often than not, shaped by the better loser. Best Picture may sound like it, but it isn’t the biggest prize a film can win on Oscar night.
I once had the remarkable good fortune to be sitting unexpectedly in the Comedy Cellar in New York when a surprise guest was thrust upon us. The audience couldn’t believe it, and out strolled Chris Rock — an incendiary performer and giant comic superstar — who slayed. He was great and we were enraptured, and, […]
2015 may just be the year we started writing good roles for women. There are always a few great characters, certainly, but this could be the year when mainstream cinema allowed for experimentation on a larger scale, for a whole slew of female characters who were liberated, self-assured, opinionated and unapologetic. The roles came and […]
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