Recent Reviews by Uday Bhatia
Mint Lounge
Uday Bhatia is Film Editor with Mint Lounge in Mumbai. He was previously with Time Out Delhi and The Sunday Guardian. His work has appeared in GQ, The Caravan, Indian Quarterly and other publications.
Films reviewed on this Page
Do Patti
Two for sorrow
A tepid thriller, starring Kajol and Kriti Sanon, from a writer who needs to branch out
Do Patti begins with scattered shots of paragliding gone wrong and a stakeout on a bridge, followed by a woman in a police station telling the cops her husband tried to kill her. Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba, released in August, also has a stakeout on a bridge, and its first scene is a woman in a police station telling the cops her husband is going to kill her. Both films are written by Kanika Dhillon, both are Netflix releases. Did no one think it was a problem that the films start the exact same way?
Read all 17 reviews of Do Patti here
The Real Superstar
Lost in the Twilight Zone with Amitabh Bachchan
Cédric Dupire’s ‘The Real Superstar’ spans the actor’s epochal career but is an atypical tribute
Aman in red suede pants and jacket walks down a deserted road at night. Another man in a sky blue jacket over a black shirt races across a bridge as gunfire explodes around him. Yet another, in a deep blue shirt knotted at the waist, staggers out of a warehouse and is immediately carried off by a delirious crowd chanting his name.
Jigra
The Great Escape
Alia Bhatt leads a terrific cast in Vasan Bala's emotionally charged jailbreak film
Satya has been running from window to window in the anteroom of a maximum security prison. She’s desperate to see her brother before closing time, but there are forms to fill, procedures to follow. Finally, she ends up at the door to the visiting area, wheezing, frantic. The guard does her a kindness, says she isn’t late and will be let in soon. Satya catches her breath, but can’t wipe the worry off. “Do I look sad?” she asks the guard as she’s about to enter. “Little sad,” he replies in Malay-accented English. She puts on a strained smile. “Now?” The guard shakes his head. “Very sad, lah.”
Read all 18 reviews of Jigra here
CTRL
Ananya Panday drives paranoid thriller
Vikramaditya Motwane's film about creeping AI is also a paranoid thriller for an increasingly digital India
Well into CTRL, we know the film’s protagonist only as Nella. While it’s certainly an Ananya Panday character name (past ones have been Tia, Tanya, Ahana and Bella), I did wonder if it was given by her Delhi Punjabi parents. But then we hear her father’s voice from offscreen calling: “Nalini”. And a little piece clicked into place: an assumed name, a username, a handle, in a film about unstable online identities.