The sorely underappreciated 2014 rom-com Hasee Toh Phasee, a collaboration between two diametrically opposed production houses (the larger-than-life Dharma Productions and the doom-and-gloom Phantom Films), introduced us to then new filmmaker, Vinil Mathew. He seemed very promising. Hasee Toh Phasee… Continue Reading
I never took a liking to Monster Movies. To me, they’re cheap and pedestrian. Yet what I find fascinating about the vast majority of them, like Jaws, Frankenstein, Jurassic Park et al., is how they use their Monster not only to… Continue Reading
The following piece was recorded for the Bombay-based film critics podcast, India Independent Films, – run by Rahul Desai and Tanul Thakur – prior to its publication on this site. You can listen to this essay in the audio track… Continue Reading
A Styzyga is a terrifying Slavic mythological demon with two hearts and two souls intertwined in the same body. While I would never assume that Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra are the after remains of a malevolent demon of Polish origin,… Continue Reading
Amid one of the most distressing weeks in recent years of the Israel-Palestine conflict Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine, a growing number of celebrities and influential figures across the world have been voicing their support for the Palestinian plight. Among them… Continue Reading
For the better part of a decade now, Dharma Productions filmmaker, Shakun Batra, has been the most exciting auteur in masala cinema. In his directorial debut, Ekk Main Aurr Ekk Tu (my personal favorite Hindi film of the 2010’s), he… Continue Reading
I couldn’t help but think of one of my all-time faves, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, when I saw the trailer for Netflix’s Valentine’s Day rom-com, Namaste Wahala. Stanley Kramer’s 60s iconoclast classic starring screen revolutionist, Sidney Poitier, set the… Continue Reading
The highly anticipated #FreeBritney HBO exposé, Framing Britney Spears, finally aired a few days ago and, among the many revelations the gut-wrenching documentary made, is that one of the catalysts to Britney’s notorious 2007 meltdown was Justin Timberlake’s repugnant and utterly… Continue Reading
The White Tiger is the worst piece of shit I’ve seen in years. If I was Indian – especially an urbanite Indian – I would have shut it off after two minutes. But I’m not, so I shut it off… Continue Reading
The nightmare has subsided and the country I call home can exhale for the first time in four long, emotionally and mentally taxing years. As many have punnily put it, it’s the “the end of an error”. That being said, we should… Continue Reading