Review: Gurgaon

The first few minutes of the film gives you a sneak peak of North Indian culture, real estate wheeler-dealers, gender-bias, sibling rivalry, and more. First-time director Shanker Raman (cinematographer of ‘Peepli Live’, ‘Rocky Handsome’), clearly influenced by the neo-noir films of Anurag Kashyap, has helmed the quizzically titled Gurgaon – showcasing its fanciful malls, buzzing […]

Review: Indu Sarkar

First, the title – an astute ploy by director Bhandarkar to bear out part of the lengthy disclaimer that Indu Sarkar is a work of fiction. This, despite the director, who’s also co-scripted the film, going on record to say that “The film is 70% fiction and 30% documented fact”. Indu Sarkar – a pun […]

Review: Indu Sarkar

First, the title – an astute ploy by director Bhandarkar to bear out part of the lengthy disclaimer that Indu Sarkar is a work of fiction. This, despite the director, who’s also co-scripted the film, going on record to say that “The film is 70% fiction and 30% documented fact”. Indu Sarkar – a pun […]

Review: Sing

‘Sing’, also released as ‘Mindenki’, is a Hungarian short film which opened at the 14th Asiana International Short Film Festival in Seoul, and has bagged 13 awards, including the coveted Oscar for Best ‘Live Action’ Short Film this year. Written and directed by Kristof Deak and shot in six days, it has the 10-year-old Zsofi […]

Review: Dunkirk

From 26th May to 4th June 1940, in the French coastal town of Dunkerque, a little over 300,000 troops – mostly British, some French and Belgian – were reined in onto the town’s beach by a sustained German fire – both artillery and aerial. Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), a young petrified British soldier, tries every means […]

Film Review: Baby Driver

Rarely does one come across a film on crime with high-octane car-chase sequences, accompanied by an ear-pleasing soundtrack. Baby Driver (Ansel Elgort) suffers from a constant ringing in his ears – a result of a car accident in his childhood that killed his parents – but compensates for his disability by perennially donning earphones and […]

Film Review: Phullu

This film by any other name would have been just the same.  The film begins impressively with a high-angle shot of a cremation in a village. Cut to a village simpleton Phullu (Sharib Hashmi) staying with his mother (Nutan Surya) and sister Tara (Trisha).  Phullu runs errands for the women-folk of the village, doing their […]