The Bermuda Triangle is the only triangle that comes to mind with Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma and Katrina Kaif, mostly because the audiences that dare to enter their story never find themselves again. As Babita Kumari, Katrina drinks herself silly, almost as if she can foretell the fate of the film. Almost as if she can see a scene ahead that involves an angry monkey, human baby, gun, wheelchair and R. Madhavan's haircut on the same stage. A dramatic scene, no less.
Read Rahul Desai's full review here
If you've seen filmmaker Sriram Raghavan's AndhaDhun, you'd agree that the thriller leaves you with more questions than answers. Does Ayushmann Khurrana's Akash regain his eyesight? But how? Or maybe he never lost it. The theories are endless, as are the chat threads on the internet which dissect the open-ended final moments of the movie. Raghavan and his co-writer and editor Pooja Ladha Surti are rather pleased with the confusion they have caused. It was a "definite ambiguous end", they explain. Here Raghavan and Surti uncover all the hidden meanings of AndhaDhun.
Read Mohini Chaudhuri's full interview here
There is no mainstream filmmaker in India who – for over 35 years – has pushed himself and his art the way Mani Ratnam does, with each new film an attempt to challenge the boundaries of mainstream cinema, test the tastes of the audience. Whether he succeeds or fails, he doesn't repeat himself (his signatures, maybe, but rarely his stories). Here's a very personal ranking of this filmmaker's work.
Read Baradwaj Rangan's ranking here
Shankar is a superb imaginator. A flock of cell phones, swirling like birds, transforms into the leg of a bird of prey. A bedroom turns into a death trap, vibrating with ghostly mobile-phone beeps. A road transforms into a silver tsunami. A cell phone glows inside a man's belly, like the monster in Alien waiting to burst forth. (Things go satisfyingly splat! a few seconds later, presumably as predicted in the Garuda Puranam.) But this is all Shankar seems to be interested in now — these visual WOWs.
Read Baradwaj Rangan's full review here
Shankar is someone who's always out to wow you. Someone whose imagination has always exceeded what the practical realities of Indian budgets and effects houses can give him – but also someone who doesn't let this stop him. He's someone who wants to build the Taj Mahal with bricklayers. And someone who's utterly unapologetic about his reputation as a size-matters showman.
Read Baradwaj Rangan's ranking here
The year was 1984. Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister, India were World Champions, and Katrina Kaif was just a month old. It was Onam in Kerala, but this year, it was going to be different. Apart from Mahabali, Keralites also welcomed a little ghost with a drinking problem, named Kuttichathan. He was the Casper-like protagonist of Navodaya Studio's My Dear Kuttichathan, the big festival release. The posters described the film as 'India's First 3D Movie', a concept quite new to the lay man. Yet once the first set of shows got over, word of mouth was all the promotion the film needed. 'You need to see it to believe it', everyone said.
Read Vishal Menon's article here
In May last year, an attack on an actress prompted members of the Malayalam film industry to form the Women In Cinema Collective – a non-profit meant to address issues faced by female industry members. With the #MeToo movement gaining momentum in Bollywood more than a year later, Anupama Chopra asked actress Parvathy what cues the Hindi film industry could take from the South and how speaking out has affected her job prospects.
Read the interview here
As the theory goes, if you put 100 monkeys with typewriters in a room long enough, eventually you'll get Hamlet. Race 3 is one of those other 99 drafts. The script certainly looks like it was untouched by human hands. The trademark twists from the earlier films are reduced to minor reveals that even the cast doesn't seem convinced by – though, to be fair, given this cast, "Mere paas maa hai" wouldn't sound very different from "Abba dabba jabba."
Read Baradwaj Rangan's full review here
Browse through the radio at any point of the day, and it is likely that an Arijit song would be playing on at least one FM channel. At the time of typing this out, it was "Baatein Bhi Kahi Na" (Khamoshiyan) on one channel, and his rendition of the Kishore Kumar classic "Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas" on another. But India's number one singer is also one of the most elusive people in the business. Arijit Singh is everywhere, and nowhere.
Read Sankhayan Ghosh's profile here
26 years, almost 100 credits to his name – Shah Rukh Khan has had a glorious career doing hero, villain, comedian and cameo. From the sweetness and innocence of Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa (1994) to the darkly complicated Fan (2016), Anupama Chopra lists her favourite films by the superstar.
Read Anupama Chopra's ranking here