(An edited version was published in The New Indian Express) The review of Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s first feature film, Nil Battey Sannata, began in these pages with an appreciation for the film passing the Bechdel Test. Not always a quality indicator, it was still rare and important that a film from Bollywood passed it. Tiwari’s… Continue reading Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s Bareilly Ki Barfi
(An edited version was published in The New Indian Express) There is something strange about the lighting in Shree Narayan Singh’s Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (written by Siddharth-Garima). Especially when women are in focus. We see a group of women holding lamps and gossiping about husbands and mothers-in-law, as they make their way to the… Continue reading Toilet: Ek Prem Katha
(An edited version was published in The New Indian Express) Shanker Raman’s Gurgaon puts the spotlight on the eponymous concrete jungle. The jungle is an important construct. The film begins with a voice-over that refers to man as an animal –Â janwar. There is a scene where Kehri Singh (Pankaj Tripathi), one of several real estate… Continue reading Shanker Raman’s Gurgaon
(An edited version was published in The New Indian Express) Jab Harry Met Sejal plays like an extended version of the first half (or quarter?) of Imtiaz Ali’s previous film, Tamasha. Harry (Shah Rukh Khan as Harinder Singh Nehra) is a tour guide and Sejal (Anushka Sharma with a laborious, takes-time-to-warm-up Gujarati accent), one of… Continue reading Imtiaz Ali’s Jab Harry Met Sejal
(An edited version of this was published in The New Indian Express) The universe can be brutal. It’s not even a week since everyone got done with the nepotism debate – from the attempted award show comedy, the backlash, the empty apologies to Saif Ali Khan’s thesaurus diarrhea and open letters – we already have… Continue reading Anees Bazmee’s Mubarakan
(An edited version was published in The New Indian Express) Sabbir Khan’s Munna Michael begins with a filming of a song sequence in 1995. It’s a popular 90s song from David Dhawan’s Coolie No. 1 – Husn Hai Suhana. A very unconvincing Govinda look-alike dances in front but Khan focuses on one of the backup… Continue reading Sabbir Khan’s Munna Michael
(An edited version was published in The New Indian Express) In Alankrita Shrivastava’s ‘Lipstick Under My Burkha’, women in Bhopal – in what counts as a second-tier city setting – are trapped in myriad ways. The setting is important. We’ve seen independent women in Hindi cinema before and we see them almost week in week… Continue reading Alankrita Shrivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha
