By God, at times you feel this loud, flamboyant, ostentatious yet-all right, admit it-sinfully engaging film should just pipe down. There is so much that’s noisy about this film. And we aren’t talking about Sandeep Chowta’s over-accented background score. Yet it’s never unpleasant noise. Son Of Sardaar takes us into the core of a family feud in Punjab where Sanjay Dutt, playing a goofy oddball of a Panjabi patriarch as only he can, wants our affable...full review

“Becket” beckons Bollywood once again. The immortal French play by Jean Anouilh was furnished with a sensitive renewability by Hrishikesh Mukherjee in the 1973 movie Namak Haraam and then again by Govind Nihalani in Dev (2004). Now the story of two friends, separated by caste, creed and ideology, who are torn apart by their irreconcilable socio-political differences, is given a seriously spunky spin by Prakash Jha in Chakravyuh...full review

Silence is seldom spoke so eloquently. It’s been a while since we saw a film that set style at a subsidiary state to substance, put the characters’ inner life ahead of the flamboyant manifestations of self-identity in a world governed by benevolence and charm. Barfi! is a very charming film. It’s remarkably devoid of vanity. The story of a deaf-and-mute man who could have grown up watching Chaplin and Raj Kapoor’s cinema, and an autistic girl ...full review

"Voodoo karle saajna..." If your career starts to slip up, have no fear. Consult God. If He lets you down, consult his nearest rival Satan. Shake hands and even bed the devil, and you have an ally to work on your enemy. So now we know why actresses in Bollywood can't get along. They are too busy sticking needles into one another's careers to focus on their own. Shanaya (Bipasha Basu), we are told at the outset without wasting time, is a top-notch actress on the downslide...full review

The four stories, originally written by Nirmal Varma, come together in a mysterious melange of pain, longing and tentative redemption in Chaurahen. In her other film Aisha, director Rajshree Ojha gave us no clue of her affinity to such an intimate contact with the deepest recesses of the human heart. Aisha ended up being as shallow as its Jane Austin-derived protagonist. Dare we say the characters in Chaurahen are as thought-provoking...full review

This is a great time to be a movie buff. Within a week of "Paan Singh Tomar", which should incontestably win Irrfan Khan the National Award for best actor, comes "Kahaani" in which Vidya Balan is so flawlessly resplendent that one suspects the next year's National Award too is already reserved for her. Dirty deeds forgotten. Playing Vidya Bagchi, a non-resident Indian (NRI) who lands in Kolkata heavily pregnant and immeasurably distressed...full review

This is a great time to be a movie buff. Within a week of Paan Singh Tomar, which should incontestably win Irrfan Khan the National Award for best actor, comes Kahaani in which Vidya Balan is so flawlessly resplendent that one suspects the next year's National Award too is already reserved for her. Dirty deeds forgotten. Playing Vidya Bagchi, a non-resident Indian (NRI) who lands in Kolkata heavily pregnant and immeasurably distressed by the disappearance of her husband...full review

There is a Don (oh, there are many of them peeping out of every nook and cranny of this abominable comedy) played by Prem Chopra who loves Meena Kumari and Pakeezah. Sighing loudly he tells another don, played with lipsmacking relish by Mahesh Manjrekar, "They don't make heroines like Meena Kumari any more. She was someone you wanted to marry. Nowadays the heroines are good for only one thing."...full review

As we see rescue operations post a bombing attack being carried out in slow motion, the soundtrack goes almost inert in a show of frozen protest…And you know there and then that Azaan has something out-of-the-ordinary to offer to the action genre. Tackling global terrorism and Islamic isolation as seen through the eyes of a tormented Muslim secret agent, Azaan heads towards its flaming phases of flash-points with the least amount of fuss or ostentation...full review

Hear this. DJ Raunak loses his hearing ability and gets to hear the voice of his conscience. Great premise for an onscreen human drama? Debutant director Neerav Ghosh, with incredible support from his leading man Rajeev Khandelwal, creates an engrossing defence of anti-hedonism. Excessive self-indulgence is dumb. It can also make you deaf. So says the film's well-crafted screenplay. The message is driven home with a refreshing absence of self-importance...full review

At some point in this pointless parody of all of David Dhawan's Tom and Jerry comedies from the past, Devgn and Dutt, playing a pair of warring, snaping, snarling, sneering con-persons, call for each other. 'Chetan? Bhagat? Chetan? Bhagat? …." In that pause between the last blast and the next you know the script writer (Yunuz Sajawal) is thinking of how to carry the plot to the next gag. Wish they had actually roped in author Chetan Bhagat to write some...full review

Tere Mere Phere is not only a romantic comedy, it is a black comedy, slapstick comedy, satire, comedy of manners, screwball comedy -- all rolled in one. Deepa's attempt to weave in every sub-genre of comedy is probably the nemesis of the movie....full review

Coming from a comic guru like Sagar Bellary, who has given comedies like Bheja Fry and Bheja Fry 2, Hum Tum Shabana is a total let down. Unlike his previous films, this has various scenes from different comedy films strung together to look like a comic masterpiece....full review

The manner in which Dhulia brings into play the murky, sleazy politics of Uttar Pradesh is remarkable for the fusion of lies and truth with the borderline between the two extremes simply blurring. Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster is an audacious tongue-in-cheek homage to Guru Dutt's timeless classic Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. Don't believe the director's protestations to the contrary. Dhulia's film even opens with an unabashed tribute to Guru Dutt's film with skeletons being dug out during an excavation....full review

ZNMD is a coming-of- age film on many levels. It celebrates the sheer beauty and physicality of location and their deep connection to the characters' state of mind, without apology or explanation. Trust me. I looked. I couldn't spot even one unpleasant face or topogrphy in the entire length and breath of this beautiful film....full review

During a year when cacophonic crassness masquerading as comic entertainment has been sanctioned by critics and the masses, "Guzaarish" comes along to remind us that excellence is alive in our cinema. Ironically this wonderful work of art, nuanced and magical in its portrayal of an unstoppable spirit's quest to juice life to its fullest, is about dying. "Guzaarish" is Bhansali's most tender and evocative film to date. It layers the pain of a dying body with the passion of an unstoppable spirit as manifested in Hrithik's skilled and effortless performance as a quadriplegic who pledges to make every moment of his limited "sau gram zindagi" pleasurable for himself an those around him...full review

Aisha is a 2-hour celebration of pre-nuptial rituals. Though no one says it, every girl in the picture wants only one thing. And it isn’t necessarily love, but somewhere close. The bristle and bustle of Delhi come alive through the slender intellectual faculties of the protagonists. ...full review

Darsheel and little Ziyah create an intangible and secret world of hushed wonderment and discovery that takes the narrative far beyond the precincts of the original fable about an impoverished pair of siblings’s desperate but disarming attempt to share a pair of shoes. Yup, Bumm Bumm Bole is quite a ‘shoe’ stopper. The fable is expanded to accommodate a world filled with pain pleasure and other emotions that emerge in the journey from innocence to awareness....full review

Move aside. There is no room for artifice in Mahesh Manjrekar’s latest work. A raw guttural gritty intense edgy mordant and finally devastating look at the world of the damaged and the ravaged, City Of Gold is as powerful in portraying a bereft working class as Molly Maguires was about Irish mine-workers. Except for the fact that there is no room for pretty visuals in City Of Gold. Manjrekar portrays the opposite of the beau monde. That murky end of the spectrum where the shenanigans of the IPL brigade seem as distant as the promise of that pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow....full review