Movie Reviews

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Makkhi

  Makkhi is the most outlandish film I've seen in years. It's also the most fun I've had in a theatre recently. This is the dubbed Hindi version of Eega, which was released earlier in Tamil, Telegu and Malayalam, but nothing has been lost in translation. Read On..

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Aiyyaa

  Aiyyaa is a bewilderingly odd film. In 2009, writer-director Sachin Kundalkar made a film called Gandha, which consisted of three short stories. Here he adapts one of these stories about a girl with a heightened sense of smell.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: English Vinglish

  English Vinglish is that rare thing – a Hindi film that creates a heroine out of a homemaker. Shashi, played by Sridevi, is a beautiful, accomplished woman who efficiently manages her home, husband, mother-in-law and two children.

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  Critics verdict: Sridevi is absolute magic in English Vinglish!

  After watching English Vinglish, you will thoroughly welcome her return. At 49 years old Sridevi still has it! Gauri Shinde shines in her directorial debut. She displays a fine control of her filmmaking craft, say critics.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Omg oh my God!

  OMG Oh My God! is about something that touches all our lives - religion. It is a film about our relationship with God, how instead of being God-loving, we have become God-fearing. Anupama Chopra writes.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Heroine

  There’s alcohol, affairs, a sex tape and even – gasp – a lesbian one-night stand. But Heroine doesn’t even deliver the frisson of a good Stardust story. It’s limp and, more incredibly, boring. Anupama Chopra reviews.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Barfi

  In Barfi, writer-director Anurag Basu creates a gossamer, fairy-tale world. Sometime in the 1970s, somewhere in the misty hills of Darjeeling, a penniless but irresistibly charming deaf-mute boy named Barfi gets the prettiest girl in town to kiss him. Anupama Chopra writes.

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  Sarit Ray's review: Raaz 3

  What do film stars with waning mojos do when they fail to win awards? Swig whisky on the rocks and wallow in self-pity? Raaz 3’s megalomaniac, mantra-reciting, tacky-costume-wearing heroine Shanaya (Bipasha Basu) plays out those clichés.. Read On..

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Joker

  Joker testifies to the power of the star in Bollywood. It is staggeringly inept. I can't imagine that it was persuasive even as a concept. Yet it got made, in all likelihood because Akshay Kumar said yes. Anupama Chopra writes.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi

  Bollywood traditionally doesn’t pay attention to the love stories of forty-plus men – unless their last name is Khan and the actress is at least twenty years younger. So we should give a round of applause to debutant director Bela Bhansali Sehgal for creating a middle-aged love story.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Ek Tha Tiger

  Director and co-writer Kabir Khan takes the larger-than-life Salman Khan persona and wraps it in an engaging story that services it. Of course it’s played out like a comic book but if you’re willing to suspend disbelief there’s fun to be had. Anupama Chopra writes.

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  Review: Gangs of Wasseypur II

  Gangs of Wasseypur II is less like a movie sequel, more like the season finale of an ongoing (and admittedly, engaging) TV series. Part I had no real ending. Read On..

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum

  I enjoy vulgarity, cheap lines and jokes with double meanings as much as the next person, but really, is this the best we can do? Anupama Chopra writes.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Gattu

  Gattu, directed by Rajan Khosa, is an effortlessly charming, bittersweet film about a little boy obsessed with kite-flying. Nine-year-old Gattu lives in Roorkee, Uttarakhand.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Cocktail

  In Cocktail, Imtiaz Ali as a co-writer creates a love triangle that references Archie's comics, the 1980s television show Three's Company and the oeuvre of Aditya Chopra-Karan Johar (foreign locales, decadent Western lifestyle, superior Indian values) and yet feels new. Anupama Chopra writes.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Bol Bachchan

  Bol Bachchan, like most of Rohit Shetty’s earlier films, including the Golmaal series and All the Best: Fun Begins, isn't so much a film as a series of gags strung together with songs and the requisite car-bashing action. Anupama Chopra writes.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Maximum

  Can we all agree that Bollywood has squeezed as much cinema as is humanly possible out of Mumbai’s infamous encounter cops, their weasel-faced informers and the police-politician-builder-underworld nexus?

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Teri Meri Kahaani

  If we are to stay interested in watching the same two people fall in love for two hours, the writing and performances really have to sparkle. Sadly here, neither does. Read on..

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Gangs of Wasseypur

  Gangs of Wasseypur is an ambitious, sprawling saga about the coal mining mafia in Bihar. Three generations of Khan men carry on a blood feud that starts in 1941 and will continue in Gangs of Wasseypur Part 2, which is set in contemporary times.

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  Sarit Ray's review: Ferrari ki Sawaari

  Ferrari… isn’t really another cricket movie (and thank God for that). At its heart, it is an underdog story, with an Everyman up against huge odds; the kind of movie that we have come to expect from a Rajkumar Hirani-Vidhu Vinod Chopra script. Sarit Ray writes

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Shanghai

  The Shanghai in the title isn't a city. It's a state of being, a metaphor, an aspirational fantasy. The story, adapted from Vassilis Vassilikos's novel Z, is set in an unnamed town in India. Anupama Chopra reviews.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Rowdy Rathore

  The film is one more in the line of movies that value masala above all else. But Dabangg and even Wanted, were far more cohesive and compelling. Rowdy Rathore is pure noise. Anupama Chopra reviews.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Department

  Department, about a special task force of encounter specialists, begins with this adage: Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. After that, Ram Gopal Varma retreads old ground: crooked cops, underworld dons, political leaders who function like underworld dons.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Dangerous Ishhq

  It's easy to understand why Karisma Kapoor chose Dangerous Ishhq as her comeback film after a hiatus of six years and two children. She's the hero. She sets the plot in motion. Anupama Chopra writes.

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  Anupama Chopra's review: Ishaqzaade

  I wonder if the Indian film ritual of intermission also functions as a creative road-block. Because so many fine films derail exactly there; I call it the curse of the second half. Ishaqzaade is one of these. Anupama Chopra writes.