Khela Hobe, Review: Om Puri lives, six years after his death Your gut reaction on seeing a film like Khela Hobe is to lambast it, tear it to shreds and dump it in the bin. You can have a field day showcasing your linguistic prowess and delivering a lecture on the prolific use of demeaning adjectives. But somewhere along the line, a modicum of empathy surfaces. This is largely due to the passing away of lead actor Om Puri, a friend, who died over six years ago. Obviously, this film is more tha...

Har Kisse Ke Hisse Kaamyaab, Review: Many parts, many holes, no whole, no soul In one scene of Har Kisse Ke Hisse Kaamyaab, the protagonist, an actor who goes under the screen name of Sudheer, cannot get his lines right, because he has not had a swig of his favourite brew, and gives retake after retake. We see him do seven/eight retakes, after which, mercifully, the film-maker goes into a montage, with only music, after which it is revealed that he had given as many as 32 retakes. Mercifully,...

Ardh Satya: Govind Nihalani revisits the time of half-truth Many things were happening in Indian cinema during the early 1980s. The National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) was financing and producing/co-producing unconventional, art-house, parallel cinema films, but also the rip roaring comedy Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and the blockbuster, Gandhi. A theatre like Prithvi, set-up by the husband and wife duo of Shashi and Jennifer Kapoor in Mumbai, was becoming the hub of all drama activity, and p...

Daas Dev, Review: Devspeare Talking about the response generated by Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi at the International Film Festival of India, Goa, director Sudhir Mishra had told me that all praise was welcome, but he felt a great sense of fulfillment when internationally acclaimed directors had appreciated his efforts. Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi was liked by a lot of critics as well as a significant number of cineastes. For Sudhir’s sake, I hope that those he holds in esteem see merit in Daa...

Newton, Review: Gravity of the situation Had he been alive in the modern period, the British scientist would have bagged multiple Nobel prizes for his pioneering work in Physics. As it happens, the film of the same name, not a biopic of Sir Isaac, rather about an idealist in the Indian bureaucracy, has been eliminated from the race for the Oscars. A million or more Newtonians are feeling heart-broken that a film that they considered a breakthrough, and the best film made in India in recent t...

Siraj Syed reviews ‘A Million Rivers’: Complex hOMage to simple man PURI This ‘homage’ began as a ‘tribute’ to Om Puri, counterpoised against Lillete Dubey, by writer-director Sarah Singh, four years before his death, in 2013, and was completed in 2016. We saw the film on 30th January 2017, at the Black Box, in Central Mumbai, courtesy the G5A Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Culture. When I last met Om Puri in the last week of November 2016, at the In...

UVAA, Review: Yuvanile delinquents It pains you when an apparently well-intentioned film, made with limited resources, pads it up with trivia and inconsequential trappings, thereby relegating the very issue it set out to highlight. UVAA is good example of undisciplined writing and inconsistent direction, which makes smart moves off and on, only to hit new lows regularly. The film is a tale of five teenage friends who are constantly up to mischief and pranks, sometimes of a serious nature, bu...

The Hundred-Foot Journey: Worth going far to watch Riots, destruction of  his restaurant, and his wife (Juhi Chawla)’s death push Papa Kadam (Om Puri) and his four children out of India. The family moves to London, eventually settling in a quaint village in France. The village is both picturesque and elegant – the ideal place to settle down and open an Indian restaurant. And so, the Maison (house) Mumbai is born. The cold and stiff chef-proprietress of Le Saule Pleureur, a M...