Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari, Review: Heavy load to carry It is difficult to decide what was more burdensome: sitting through the film or reviewing it for the benefit of unsuspecting prospective audiences. There is just too much happening, a lot of it without logic, over the two hours 19 minutes that Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari spans. In the hands of a competent editor, the two hours would end in the bin and the 19 minutes would then make an interesting TV episode. This is one of the films wherein an item...

Dream Girl, Review: Lady Boy’s multiple nightmares Can one accuse film-makers of misleading audiences by describing their films as anything but what they really are? Dream Girl, dubbed ‘family entertainer by its makers,’ panders to below the belt viewers and frustrated loners, under the garb of showcasing the lead actor’s mimicking talent, and providing a telephonic helpline to lonely hearts. It is a series of stand-up comic jokes, with one-liners, puns and double ente...

A maker with a penchant for addressing social and sociological malaises tries his hand at the intra-nation village/small town to big city trans-migration issue in India, as seen through three different angles, by inhabitants of a Mumbai chawl (shanty/slum). Though Bhonsle is largely realistic cinema, Devashish Makhija, nevertheless, bends his treatment occasionally, to use tropes to move the story forward. The result is an above average film that has enough merit to be watchable on its own, bu...

Ajji, Review: Gran finalé Enough of laurels for acclaimed shorts like Taandav, Aglee Baar, Absent, and the largely unknown feature, Oonga. It was time for Devashish Makhija to push the limits hard, and make a shocker that would provoke the critics into hot debate, and leave the masses, if and as and when they get to see it, cringing and stunned. In Ajji (Granny/Marathi title, though the film is in Hindi), as in most films that emanate from and belong to a genre, content dictates form....