Abhishek Chaubey's "Sonchiriya" (The Golden Bird) is set in the ravines of Madhya Pradesh, but is clearly influenced by Hollywood Westerns. Chaubey, who last made "Udta Punjab", serves up a gritty film about bandits on the run from the law. The outlaws are splintered into groups because of infighting, battling enemies on all fronts as they confront ghosts of the past.
For a movie about live-in relationships, Laxman Utekar’s “Luka Chuppi” (Hide and Seek) spends an inordinate amount of time getting the lead couple married.
Sujoy Ghosh made his directorial debut with a movie about music and friendship (“Jhankaar Beats”), but he has since moved on to darker themes. His last few films have all been in the thriller/mystery genre and the filmmaker says he gravitates towards the narrative style even when he doesn’t set out to.
Indra Kumar's "Total Dhamaal" might as well have been an animated film. A plethora of characters plunge to the ground from skyscrapers, escape collapsing bridges and survive being swept over waterfalls with nary a scratch. Much like a 'Tom and Jerry' episode, where the cat and the mouse spring back seconds after having been flattened.
This might be an incongruous analogy, but Zoya Akhtar's "Gully Boy" is like those picture-in-picture debates you see on prime-time news, but in a good way. There is a central story with many windows open at once, essentially leading to the main plot, but also alive in their own way, thus making the big picture seem that much more textured and vibrant.
One of the positives of Anand Surapur’s “The Fakir of Venice” is its take on Indian spiritualism and the West’s garbled interpretation of it. The problem lies in the way it tries to convey its message, not least because this is a film that is releasing 10 years after it was made.
Ranveer Singh, it seems, can do no wrong. He wowed critics with his intense performance as the marauding king Alauddin Khilji in “Padmaavat”, tasted box-office success with “Simmba”, and even married his dream girl, the actress Deepika Padukone – all in the space of a year.
Shelly Chopra Dhar’s "Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga" (What I Felt when I Saw that Girl) is much like a package ordered from Amazon. The box is huge, but most of the volume is because of the wrapping material, which can sometimes leave you a bit disappointed with the size of the actual product.