Editor's Reviews
In-depth reviews by our experts 🔮
Lootcase
"From the 1993 classic Karamati coat on Doordarshan which we 90s kids used to watch ad nauseam to Akshat Verma's Delhi Belly and Kaalakaandi, this film adopts a similar approach. It's just that Lootcase meanders in the first two-thirds of the runtime even when the ball already has started rolling and it's just a family version of what was a much more chaotic and unhinged movie in the form of Delhi Belly, only that can't possibly be compared to this light-hearted popcorn comedy thriller. The actors did their jobs though."
Havoc
"Tom Hardy plays a battering ram to a door made of styrofoam. A huge letdown if you are here for a taste similar to the director's previous ventures- The Raid duology. It's like Evans stitched the cutscenes of a video game and released it. The need of the era for Hardy should now be how to dial down his voice to Locke amplitude than whatever that's been going on since his Ben stint, since he has been lost on the beaten path for quite a long time. And, as for Netflix, this obsession with familiar formula-based action thrillers post-Extraction, it needs to get off it pronto."
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
"While lapping up the schadenfreude soup made of Kathleen Kennedy's ouster, let's not forget that final forty-minute glorious spectacle of rebellion televised by Gareth Edwards which was in fact under the aegis of that same woman. Half a star extra for that wonderful warfare and nostalgia."
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
"Extended Ultimate Edition. Supposed to look for the improvements. I don't what I missed, where exactly were these improvements? Apart from that warehouse brawl where Snyder flouted the canon and the legend of the Batman, this whole thing turned out to be a self-flagellating ritual by reliving the torture which I forgot 9 years ago. One scene got me laughed out loud when the Bat vigilante just casually mentioned how he was a friend of Martha's son just five minutes…"
Black Mirror: Common People
"Post season 4 it seems Black Mirror's 'Teeth' have become less sharp. Nevertheless, Common People still has a biting force similar to that of a saltwater crocodile, the issue is once upon a time not too far long ago in the past it's biting force was that of a Megalodon. Very meta, yet not at all complex and resembling to the current socio-political landscape and economic model of a digital, deep tech-reliant post-capitalist world with a non-aversion to ritualistic self-humiliation.…"
Badlands
"What's amazing is the fact that Malick takes a perfectly ordinary Bonnie and Clyde story and tries to make it to the proportion of Romeo and Juliet with his patented style of long philosophical voiceovers, sprawling landscapes and troubled existential angst. Martin Sheen must be the talk of the Tinseltown back then with this and then Apocalypse Now. Pretty surprising for a debut."
I Want to Talk
"Junior Bachchan channels Senior Bachchan's role from Piku in a movie about life's peak and trough as well as about the "persistent" nature of will and a complicated father-daughter relationship, the way it is supposed be portrayed without any sugary syrup. Sircar maintains his ability of telling a story around taboo and difficult conversations like he always has been since his debut. The problem is there are already enough materials available with similar stories and themes, so nothing unique there.…"
Trial by Fire
"One of the most underrated television series on Netflix right now. If not for the shaky structure and episodic format along with loosely bound non-converged resolution of each character arc, this limited series would have been the cream of the crop. The performances were phenomenal, especially by Rajshri Deshpande. Abhay Deol was also brilliant. Trial By Fire does something really unique when it comes to disaster crime drama, it keeps its boiling emotions attenuated and considering the magnitude of the…"
Mickey 17
"Apart from the whole screwball parody of the xenophobic MAGA-Musk's fast-fail approach, this satirical sci-fi proves to be a directionless hotchpotch of tried and tested applied ethics, thought experiments and philosophical questions revolving around deep tech and its implications on the nature of humanity hugely inspired from Moon, Blade Runner and even from Avatar. P.S.- Mark Ruffalo was hilarious."
Adolescence
"Alarming and affecting at the same time. Should have come with a hydrostatic pressure label. What Fran Kranz's Mass did on the issue of mass shooting, Adolescence attempts to do its part on toxic masculinity. Stephen Graham has come a long way, from playing goofball side characters like Tommy and Scrum all the way to Boiling Point, Peaky Blinders and now writing, co-creating and performing in serious stuff like this."
The Electric State
"Too childish even for children. Could have easily fitted into a 15-minute episode of Love, Death & Robots but I guess that wouldn't have been fair for the quality of that show. You gotta hand it to the creators, even in a futuristic AGI-driven dystopia they failed to dial down the glaring anthropocentric hubris and self-aggrandizement and put a human as God at the centre. Uncannily and irritatingly similar to Ready Player One and the whole Nolan Sorrento cabal. Imagine you…"
Heart Eyes
"Despite the endless availability of similar mindless movies, this one still demands a god-tier suspension of disbelief while ripping off of multiple slashers, both old and new ones. Made it look like a bunch of TikTok influencers wrote it on a weekend bender."
Captain America: Brave New World
"A whole lot of drama and kerfuffle over nothing."
Wicked
"While Wicked is majestic, mellifluous and magnanimous in nature and by design, it loses its progenitor's old sage-like essence and traded it with inane high school cliquey cafeteria-crap derived from Mean Girls and from previously tested rom-com tropes. The last half an hour tries to flip the "Chosen One" device to emphasize somewhat of a distinctive rise of a hateful character we thought we knew that was put to the screen 85 years ago, but by then it was already…"
The Wizard of Oz
"An old soul of a film full of never-fluttering wondrous awe. Every ten minutes, I kept asking myself- "How could they have done it all back then?" Paradigm shifting in vision, humorous in approach and joyous in terms of thematic underpinning. In the end, The Wizard of Oz is a celebration of minimalism wrapped up in this grandeur bejewelled mesmerism."
Under the Bridge
"Beyond the whodunnit and the investigative procedural, beyond the court proceedings and the true crime sensationalism, there exists a sweet spot with a 360° character study of not only the victims and their kins but also the perpetrators and the investigators with all of their roots tied together. In addition to all that Under The Bridge addresses systemic problems, community, racial and societal issues along with historical injustices and apathy of the state towards multiple generations. The entire cast is…"
Saturday Night
"Cutting it way too close to showtime... Even with everything that's been happening in India with the stand-up comedy situation being adjudicated and the whole thing failing to pass through the moral gatekeepers who happen to be a bunch of sexagenarians occupying the seats at the top court, I still couldn't fully enjoy this dramedy, but, hey! Maybe that's because it was from before my time. The ever-present lingering elements of chaos just build up the pressure to a point…"
September 5
"Gripping, tightly-packed hostage drama thriller turns its lens peeking behind the broadcasting curtain reporting what was one of the darkest chapter in the history of Olympics in a very minimalist almost documentary-like tensed precision. About journalistic integrity, objectivity and neutrality, ethical dilemma and moral boundaries surrounding a hot button topic that is clearly still relevant to this day."