Mulk, Review: Half-baked attempt at addressing a burning national issue Right in the beginning, the makers tell you that the film is inspired by real-life incidents, as reported in Indian media, and that they have no intention of suggesting that some acts of some persons are representative of the entire community. Mulk addresses the burning issue of terrorism and tries to convey the triple messages that perpetrators of terror should not be identified on the basis of their religion, that terr...

Siraj Syed reviews Mantra: Travails and travesties In one scene of Mantra, the protagonist, a Delhi industrialist called KK (Kapil Kapoor) who is about to sell his bleeding chips-manufacturing business to his cash-rich multi-national rival, finds a Frenchman looking for a drug (of the smoking kind) and the two manage to find a dealer named Rahul. On a high, the man tells the Frenchman that the Beatles have split. Nothing wrong in breaking such news to a pot-partner, even if the guy happens to...

Drishyam, Review: Missing Corpse, Hissing Cops and Habeas Corpus What would drive producers to make and remake a film in five different Indian languages in a span of two years? Box-office success of preceding language versions and a potential remake goldmine at hand, or the merits of a script that tries to turn the killer v/s cops genre on its head, and could have viewers gasping for breath? In the case of Drishyam, whose Sanskritised title can be approximated as Drishya (scene/sight in Hindi...