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Vijay Raaz
Dream Girl 2, Trailer launch: Meet Ayushwomann, the body behind the voice
Meeting Dream Girl 2 was not easy. In fact, it was 3 times as difficult as one would have imagined. First hurdle was the location hunt, as the invitation just said Meta Office, BKC. BKC is a huge settlement, and it took us (me and my friend Prasad Sovani, who had come down from Pune) a while to locate the venue, though we still managed to arrive on time. Secondly, we had to wait about 45 minutes to get identity badges a...
Made in Heaven, Season 2: "Marriages are made in heaven, so are thunder and lightning"
Although the quote comes from Clint Eastwood, you can say it again, for this is Season 2. And unlike most marriages in real life, on OTT you get a second chance, to revisit heaven. After a successful Season 1 (2019), the team from Excel Media and Entertainment, and Tiger Baby Films, is back, with Season 2. Many characters are retained, and a few are added, to make these marriages work, I presume, ...
Netflix’s Kathal: The curious case of the two missing jackfruits and its serious, very serious ramifications
Firstly, it was not discovered by a man named Jack. Secondly, it is not a fruit, but a vegetable. Writer Ashok Mishra spent many years in north India and developed a taste for Kathal, which is the Hindi name for jackfruit. Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) is an evergreen tree (family Moraceae), native to tropical Asia and widely grown throughout the wetland tropics for its la...
Vikram Vedha, Review: Gang gang, bang bang
There are only a handful of characters in Vikram Vedha who do not wield guns, swords or any ‘weapon’ they can lay their hands on. Almost all of them die. And what about those who do wield guns and makeshift weapons? They meet their fate too, except for…Rarely has a film let loose a such a fusillade of bullets, from all sorts of hand-guns as well as AK47s, as in this film. And rarely have we seen so many corpses tumble left, right a...
Odd Couple, Review: Tying the not
It’s nice to be taken by surprise, especially if the film is not a suspense thriller. And Odd Couple does just that. Borrowing its title from the 1965 Neil Simon comedy play, The Odd Couple, made into a film (1968) starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, in which one of the two bosom friends does all the household chores that you would normally associate with a woman, this film has the man, of a man-woman couple, doing the laundry and the cooking, and ...
Gangubai Kathiawadi, Review: Guess what is the oldest profession in the world, and meet its President
Gangubai, a variation of Ganga, is the most common name of Maharashtrian maid-servants in Mumbai. Ganga becoming Gangu is quite normal, while the Bai here refers to her designation as maid. An engaging film was made in 2013, with the maid as the central character, only it was spelt phonetically more correct, Gangoobai. In other parts of the country, Bai could mean a courtesan, a classical sin...
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...
Shukranu-Hui Emotion ki Nasbandi, Review: Tale of forced sterilisations lacks potency
In modern Indian history, the Internal Emergency, proclaimed in 1975 and in place for about two years, is regarded as a highly controversial phase. During this period, buses and trains ran on time, attendance in government establishments increased astronomically, corruption was all but eliminated and prices of a host of essential commodities were controlled. But all this was accompanied by curbs on freedom o...
Bala, Review: Haireditory and dark humour
Two films in rapid succession about hair loss are about as rare as a new lock of hair sprouting on a bald pate. Whereas Ujda Chaman had the relatively unknown Sunny Singh Nijjar and Maanvi Gagroo playing the lead roles, Bala has National Award winning (shared) actor Ayushmann Khurrana, and by now well established actresses Bhumi Pednekar and Yami Gautam. Time has come when insider jokes, vulgar dialogue, mimicry and stand-up comedy are expected from K...
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...
Setters, Review: Questionable answers
Job-oriented education has been a hot topic in India, where unemployment figures and poverty levels are very high. Corruption begins when a child is admitted to the kinder-garten class, with the help of a handsome bribe, euphemistically called ‘donation’. The spiral often continues till the graduation level, where the focus shifts to obtaining leaked examination papers, getting proxy candidates to appear on behalf of weak students, feeding liv...
Photograph, Review: Ode dear
If only vignettes and mosaics could add up to a good script, Photograph would look refreshingly different. If improvised dialogue and incomplete scenes could substitute for a coherent narrative, Photograph would find its place in the album of memorable cinema. Forlornly, though, Ritesh Batra’s Photograph unpeels itself like the layers of an onion, offering emptiness at the end of the exercise, instead of discovery and resonance.
Arriving with a sumptuous tr...
Stree, Review: Ironing ‘bored’
What do you call a female ghost? For want of a better word, the villagers who are haunted by this entity call it Stree (Hindi for woman). Fair enough. If English film-makers can call a ghost Entity, what is wrong with a Hindi film selecting Stree as its eponymous title? Mind you, this is no ordinary ghost that haunts or possesses the simple village-folk. It kidnaps only men, every year, with precise accuracy, on the same dates, and leaves behind only...
Nawabzaade, Review: One woman, three men, infinite boredom
No, I did not do that! Really! Why would a conscientious critic invert half the picture from the poster? It’s there, on their Facebook page. See for yourself. Those three upside down bodies belong to young bachelors, who go under the euphemism of princes’ sons, but are paupers in real life. They are desperate to find suitable girls to marry, but who will even look at them, let alone marry them?
Enter a family that moves i...
Soorma, Review: Bio-pick
Diljit Dosanjh pours his heart into a dream role, and director Shaad Ali inspires the cast to turn a real-life, touching tale of a star hockey player into a rivetting bio-pic. Even if the writers have deviated from incidents and facts (we call it cinematic licence), it all jells together into a highly convincing drama that survives a 132-minute run and stays with you for even after a full 24 hours and more.
Soorma (not to be confused with surma, which is applied in t...
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Dear filmfestivals.com Visitor: can you please tell us which is your profession? Thanks
I am filmmaker
41%
A festival organizer
19%
A journalist
5%
A film professionnal (neither filmmaker, nor festival staff or media)
7%
A film student
12%
Just a film fan
16%
Total votes: 3978
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