Recent Reviews by Shubhra Gupta
The Indian Express
Shubhra Gupta, a senior columnist and acclaimed film critic at The Indian Express, boasts over 30 years of experience with her widely-read weekly review column. A prominent figure in India’s film criticism scene, she frequently attends global film festivals and has served on national and international juries. She curates and conducts the hugely popular platform, The Indian Express Film Club, in Delhi and Mumbai.
Films reviewed on this Page
Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video
Rajkummar Rao-Triptii Dimri’s sluggish film relies on too many cheap jokes
Starring Rajkummar Rao and Triptii Dimri, the comedy film has exactly five lines that make you chuckle.
It’s 1997, an era when home entertainment equalled recording all kinds of stuff– beach vacays, birthdays, and ahem, X-rated activities– on handheld video cameras, and playing them back on personal VHS machines. On their ‘shaadi ki first-night’, nudge-wink, Vicky (Rao) and Vidya (Dimri) record their ‘voh wala video’, the loss of which propels the film into motion. Given the director’s track record with his Ayushmann Khurrana-led ‘Dream Girl’ films, in which he mixed soft-core raunch with family drama with a degree of success, it would have been foolish to expect anything else.
All 10 reviews of Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video here
Jigra
Alia Bhatt film is a stretch of both patience and credulity
Alia Bhatt’s performances usually have at least a couple of distinctive notes. Here, badass replacing vulnerability, those edges are blunted. Jigra becomes a stretch, of both patience and credulity.
Early on in the 1 hour 55 minutes film, a character asks Satya, ‘Toh kya Bachchan bananna hai?’ The question is meant as both set-up and punch-line. Her reply, ‘Ab toh Bachchan hi bananna hai’, sets us up for the entire premise-cum-gist-raison d’etre of ‘Jigra’, in which Alia Bhatt’s Satya attempts to become a Bachchanesque hero, kicking and punching, hurt and hurting, falling down and getting up. And staying up.
All 19 reviews of Jigra here
CTRL
Ananya Panday, Vikramaditya Motwane film is two-dimensional
While both Ananya Panday and Vihaan Samat do their job well, the film truly feels potent only when it comes off the screen.
With Ctrl, a cautionary tale about the world’s obsession and our near-total dependence on online apps, Vikramaditya Motwane has moved firmly into the future. Or is it the present? Isn’t this what the geeks have been creating with their gaming universes, where your digital avatars are the better, shinier versions of you? Where they slay all the monsters, and leave you — or rather, your avatar — fully in control?