Villains aren’t what they used to be. I haven’t seen the original South Indian versions of many of the cruelly loud movies we’re subjected to every few months, but the ones they make in Hindi cinema are so definitively STAR VEHICLES that they deserve the all-caps rebuke. There is clearly no other purpose to these […]
Review: Joss Whedon’s The Avengers: Age Of Ultron
“So if I lift it, I then rule Asgard?” Tony Stark doesn’t even take his jacket off the first time he tries to lift Thor’s hammer, a laughable attempt to prove — in Thor’s baritone — “worthy.” The party scene in all the trailers shows Earth’s Mightiest Heroes ™ throw down over drinks as they […]
Review: Vikram Bhatt’s Mr X
What is the worst thing a tacky filmmaker can do? Overblown dialogue, corny acting, big conceptual plot-holes, continuity errors, melodrama, weak subplots…. All of those are regrettable but forgivable. For the kind of B-grade movies a director like Vikram Bhatt routinely churns out, these are all par for the course. The most unforgivable sin is […]
Review: Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court
An Indian courtroom is not a place you want to be. The universally slumped shoulders, the increasingly clerical lawyers, the incomprehensible antiquated legalese, all ticking away under a slow moving fan, creaking almost as slowly as the cases being argued. It is in this world that Chaitanya Tamhane’s impressive directorial debut Court is set, and […]
Review: Dibakar Banerjee’s Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!
Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! is a gorgeous, gorgeous film. Yet for all its stylishness and period grandeur it is not as intelligent a film as it yearns to be, the plot isn’t cunning enough and the conveniently-unravelled puzzle never quite sucks the viewer in.
Review: Harshvardhan Kulkarni’s Hunterr
Is there a word for a male nymphomaniac? (If not, I strongly suggest ‘himphomaniac.’) The film Hunterr chooses to use the word Vaasu — taken from the sanskrit word vasana, meaning ‘truly stubborn desire’ — and treats it like commonly used slang. “I am a vaasu,” says the man with great revelatory import, trying to […]
Review: Navdeep Singh’s NH10
Bad things happen in NH10. That statement is both warning and promise: because Navdeep Singh’s new film is a tough film to stomach, a frightening and disturbing beast, and because it should be just that brutal, given how loyally it adheres to slasher/thriller genre conventions. The thing about Singh is the way the director takes […]
A toast to Terry Pratchett, who christened me a dragon
Terry Pratchett once named a dragon after me. But that’s not important. (I mean it is, of course. It’s massively cool and thrilling — THRILLING, even — and something I’ll brag about forever. But that’s not what’s important right this second.) Right now we have to deal with heartbreak, as Sir Terry Pratchett has left […]
Review: Sharat Katariya’s Dum Laga Ke Haisha
There’s a lot to be said for the nineties, and Kumar Sanu doesn’t make the list. Not only is it hard to look past the impossibly nasal voice, he’s also a singer who flourished at a time when Hindi film music was actively choking the Hindi film, forcing formulaic ditties into movies made for the […]
Why the 2015 Oscars are worth celebrating
The good guys won. Actually, it was bigger than that. I’ve annually whinged about and berated the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences shortsightedness and predictability in columns like these for far too many years now, and this is the first time I sat back through the Oscars — occasionally tense with fingers crossed […]
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