The obvious memory Leena Yadav’s Parched invokes – and therefore draws comparisons with – is Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala. To begin with, their setting is the same – the dry, parched land of Kutch. It is at once sobering and stark. Mirch Masala was set in the 1940s and dealt with patriarchy in the time… Continue reading Leena Yadav’s Parched
Banjo, directed by Ravi Jadhav, is an out and out commercial film. It’s also designed to service its lead who, like the lead of any self-respecting commercial film, can do just about anything. He can fight the goons, talk about the ills of society, fall in love, be the lead singer of his street band… Continue reading Ravi Jadhav’s Banjo
2016 has so far had two films taking up the very pertinent, past, current and ever present issue of sexual harassment and more importantly, consent. One did it with the most lightest of touches, offering up an experience that bordered on the visceral, taking advantage of all its genre conventions. Your eyes may widen, foreheads… Continue reading Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Pink
Nitya Mehra’s Baar Baar Dekho is an amalgam. There are some good things. A lot of it is middling. If you plot it, the graph might resemble a sine wave but maybe not the same kind of peak. Or trough. They wobble here and there the way mathematician Jai Varma (Sidharth Malhotra) time travels and… Continue reading Baar Baar Dekho
Sonakshi Sinha is tired of your criticism. She is tired of those constant barrage of admonishments almost ordering her to let go of the mass-y, South Indian remakes that have her only as eye-candy and to appear in a couple of songs matching steps with the hero – the only reason the movie even exists.… Continue reading Akira
A story of development and decay – of land, of a village, of people, of caste – disguised as a bildungsroman. Rajeev Ravi’s Kammatipaadam could be a companion piece to Pa. Ranjith’s Madras (2014). While Madras had the wall as the ghost figure that influences and transforms people around it, Kammatipaadam has the land itself,… Continue reading Kammatipaadam
Tiger Shroff is out with his third film. Remo D’Souza has his fourth directorial venture. I wonder what it says about Bollywood. I am not very sure about the fate of Shroff’s films at the box office but D’Souza has had a good run with his ABCD franchise. Well yeah, it is a franchise right?… Continue reading A Flying Jatt
