Mission Raniganj-The Great Bharat Rescue, Review: The capsule that saved 65 lives Few films have done as much disservice to their cause by having a misnomer as a title as Mission Raniganj. There is no Bharat Rescue, although the film is about a rescue. Over the last decade, there has been a spate of films with the Mission prefix, dealing either with operations against Pakistan or our scientific achievements. So, if the name of the film at hand been merely Mission Raniganj, it would have been ...

Newton’s Pendulum: New tone in experimental terror curriculum Time and again, film-makers, especially new film-makers, try to conduct experiments. They should know that by definition, an experimental film is not likely to have large audiences. Now here is a film that not only experiments, but it experiments with the psychotic thriller genre, and is a mere 27 minutes in duration. That reduces and restricts its appeal to select audiences. Moreover, it is titled Newton’s Pendulum, a ...

Chhichhore, Review: Posers for losers, choosers and imposers Few ideas would be more contradictory than a parent’s attempt to revive his dying son by calling his college mates to the Intensive Care Unit of a posh hospital and collectively narrating to him, in some detail, their recollections of the hellcyon days they spent in a college hostel, as a bunch of slimy, gooey, swearing, cheating, boozing, smoking, rude, flippant, frivolous ‘losers’. All this is done in the hope th...

Gaon--The Village No More, Review: Here yesterday, Gaon today Imagine a village cut-off from the country and the world. Totally, completely, fully, comprehensively cut off. Imagine community farming, imagine a community kitchen. Also imagine guru-shishya parampara (teacher-disciple oral tradition) education, without any tools. And imagine herbal medicine as the only method of disease treatment. Can you imagine this scenario in 2017? No, you can’t. Writer-director Gautam Singh Sigdar can...

Raazi, Review: Lying and spying, willing and killing As spy thrillers go, Raazi is, at best, average fare. During the first half, it runs the risk of becoming a pedestrian assemblage of trope followed by trope followed by trope. Then, just in time, the writers and the director took booster shots and shaped out the human dilemma, counterpoising it with murder and mayhem. In scale and mounting, Raazi can pass off as a modest Spielberg vehicle, but the total experience remains just about watchab...