Aan Tiwari honoured with Best Child Actor award for Baal ShivReviews
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Review: Gatham: Deceptively told psycho saga
Gatham starts off looking like a basic psycho thriller. A young couple is stranded in the middle of snowed-out nowhere when their car breaks down on a highway. A stranger stops, says he lives nearby and offers them shelter for the night.
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Review: Rogue City: Old-school toast to carnage and chaos
Rogue City underlines its intention at the very outset, with its title. There are the rogues and there are the cops of the city, and the ensuing showdown creates scope for a convenient quota of action and drama to set up a near-two hour crime thriller.
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Review: Taish: Familiar vibes of vengeance
The story unfolds against the backdrop of good-looking London and nearby locales, using a cast that fits the characters well. For some novelty, you get a choice in formats -- you could watch Taish as a six-episode series, or as a feature film.
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Review: Mirzapur 2: Back to the boondocks
Season two had been promoted all along as a revenge story and, going by where the first season ended, it was obvious that gunning for vengeance would be Guddu (Ali Fazal) and Golu's (Shweta Tripathi) sole motive, after they lost their loved ones to the brutality of Munna Tripathi (Divyendu Sharma).
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Review: Footfairy: Slowburn psycho thriller
Footfairy is simply the most engaging noir attempt by Bollywood in a while. The triumph lies in treatment. The film manages to be sinister and shocking, and conveys a grizzly plot without being too blatant about it.
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Review: A Suitable Boy: Overwhelmed by the odds
Nair's new web series talks of an India that was. The show diligently tries to belong to the former lot, but tends to gravitate to the second category.
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Review: Comedy Couple: Fun while it runs
Comedy Couple works for its freshness in storytelling more than the story it tells. The film is likeable for characters that draw instant attention and quirky situational humour.
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Review: Putham Pudhu Kaalai: Many moods of lockdown
Five well-known filmmakers down South have collaborated to direct a story each in this episodic film. These films do not have any link with each other except the fact that all five are set against the backdrop of lockdown.
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Review: Halal Love Story: Feel-good film with twist of satire
Halal Love Story crafts humour out of the sensitive issue of Islamic belief without being trivial about it. If that balancing act seems accomplishment enough, director Zakariya Mohammed and his co-writer Muhsin Parari reveal plenty of other cinematic qualities along the way.
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Review: Scam 1992: Retells a complex saga
There is a basic challenge that Hansal Mehta throws, while narrating the story of Big Bull Harshad Mehta. Instead of letting his story unfold through the mind games of his protagonist, which would have made the series lucid and enjoyable for all, he often tends to immerse the narrative in a mire of heavy stock market lingo and logistics.
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Review: Ginny Weds Sunny: Band Baaja Blunder
Ginny, Sunny and their not so funny misadventure of love sets you wondering within 10 minutes of the start: Why was this film made in the first case? The question plays in your mind on the loop all through the runtime that follows. By the end of it, you realise this was a couple of hours ill-spent.
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Review: 'High' is a trip on the wild side
Fancy a miracle drug that perks up the mind. A little unimaginatively, perhaps, the drug is called Magic, though the name is meant to underline its sheer energising power. A band of do-gooder scientists want to introduce the pill and heal the world, but therein lies the rub.
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Review: The Good Lord Bird: American history as a Western thriller
Ethan Hawke goes all guns blazing as hero and co-creator, in this drama series based on the true story of an abolitionist who set out to liberate 19th century America from slavery, in the process triggering off Civil War in that country.
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Review: Nishabdham: Messed-up mystery
Nishabdham, a Telugu suspense flick, has been shot and released simultaneously in Tamil and English as Silence (there's a dubbed Malayalam version, too).
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Review: Khaali Peeli: Taxi misadventure taxes patience
Ishaan and Ananya clearly enjoy their all-out masala outing, almost oblivious to the cinematic mess they are thrown into. Despite the utterly formulaic spread, they look good as a ‘jodi' -- never mind that they struggle getting the Mumbaiyya lingo right.
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Review: Serious Men: Nawazuddin shines in engaging satire
In Serious Men, Sudhir Mishra casts Siddiqui as Ayyan Mani, a Dalit migrant from Tamil Nadu in Mumbai. He lives in a one-room chawl with wife and little son, and works as a personal assistant to an important man in an important organisation.
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Review: Kiss The Ground: Aggressive agro therapy for Earth
BY VINAYAK CHAKRAVORTY
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Review: The Comey Rules: Political drama lacks sorted storytelling
To wholly savour The Comey Rules, one would need a certain relish for contemporary American politics beyond the knowledge of news headlines -- particularly of certain controversies pertaining to the FBI and the election of Donald Trump as 45th President of the Unites States.
