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Member Reviews

No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough. Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.

You can also browse reviews using our alphabetical index of films reviewed

Films reviewed on this Page

Mithya: The Darker Chapter (1)
Ka (1)
Amaran (2)
Lucky Baskhar (2)
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (1)
Do Patti (3)

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Mithya: The Darker Chapter
Rahul Desai
The Hollywood Reporter India
How much Mithya is too much Mithya?

The second season of Mithya continues to be a celebration of mediocrity.

One of my pet peeves features Hindi cinema’s toxic relationship with technology. You know how, in the middle of a public event, every single cellphone in the hall simultaneously beeps with a headline alert because the famous person it’s about is also present? Everyone turns to dramatically look at this unfortunate person; whispers and gossipy glances hijack the scene. This is how news spreads in such stories. It can be at a press conference, a panel discussion, even at a party. In Mithya: The Darker Chapter, it’s at a business auction that comes to a standstill. My questions are simple. How is it that nobody’s phone is on vibrate mode? Why are the shock and awe so coordinated? Why is it that no other message or app on the phone has a pop-up sound? The closest I’ve experienced as a real-world viewer is when, during a press screening of Super 30 (2019), most journalists in the hall audibly gasped when Dhoni got run out in that World Cup semifinal.

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All 2 reviews of Mithya: The Darker Chapter here

Ka
Srivathsan Nadadhur
Independent Film Critic
Kiran Abbavaram’s ‘karmic’ thriller packs a handful of surprises

Overcoming a fluttering second hour, Kiran Abbavaram’s Telugu film ‘KA’ concludes on a high

Comebacks are always interesting, especially when an actor is willing to look back and understand what went wrong in the first place. After a series of misfires, a resurgent Kiran Abbavaram is back with a festive release, mysteriously titled KA, that invests in a solid story over the heroics of the male protagonist. The period thriller offers a rich blend of action and emotions with a karmic twist.

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Amaran
Avinash Ramachandran
Avinash Ramachandran Talkies
Sai Pallavi, Sivakarthikeyan stand tall in this tale of timeless love

With wonderful performances by Sivakarthikeyan and Sai Pallavi, Amaran is a poignant yet powerful tale about Major Mukund Varadarajan's love for India, and his wife Indhu.

Gentleman cadet Mukund Varadarajan is marching along with his batchmates during his passing out parade. During this march, an animated Indhu Rebecca Varghese shouts out the name of the love of her life. She also runs around to catch a glimpse of Mukund, who is one among the soldiers passing out. GV Prakash Kumar’s rousing score primes the scene for a romantic high. She is jubilant, happy, ecstatic, and sports a smile that reaches her eyes as Mukund marches with a straight face.

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All 6 reviews of Amaran here

Amaran
Manoj Kumar
Desi Martini, HT Media
Sivakarthikeyan, Sai Pallavi anchor a fine movie on Indian Army

Amaran brings to life the heroic story of Major Mukund Varadarajan, an officer of the Indian Army who sacrificed his life during a crucial anti-terror operation in Jammu and Kashmir in 2014.

Amaran is based on the life of Major Mukund Varadarajan, who died during an anti-terror operation in Jammu and Kashmir in 2014. Biopics like this come with a unique challenge: since audiences already know the outcome, there’s little room for surprises. Directors often leverage the emotional depth of such stories to create resonance, sometimes stirring complex emotions or evoking our deepest fears. Filmmaker Rajkumar Periasamy, as expected, focuses on these emotional elements, ultimately leaving the audience with a deeper understanding of the human conflict hidden beneath layers of turmoil.

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All 6 reviews of Amaran here

Lucky Baskhar
Manoj Kumar
Desi Martini, HT Media
Dulquer Salmaan elevates a solid, safe take on ambition

Lucky Baskhar follows the story of Baskhar Kumar (Dulquer Salmaan), a diligent bank employee in late 1980s Mumbai who embraces a morally ambiguous path to gain financial security.

While promoting his latest movie, Lucky Baskhar, director Venky Atluri claimed that one of his biggest strengths is his talent in screenwriting. However, those closely following his filmography would tell you that his ability to assemble a stellar cast is his greatest asset. He once again showcases this strength with Lucky Baskhar.

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All 3 reviews of Lucky Baskhar here

Lucky Baskhar
Avinash Ramachandran
Avinash Ramachandran Talkies
A terrific Dulquer Salmaan powers this brilliant Venky Atluri film

Venky Atluri spins a fascinating tale involving banking, and scams, and Dulquer Salmaan ensures everything sails smoothly despite hitting a few road bumps.

Legendary American poet Maya Angelou once wrote, “When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence…” Dulquer Salmaan’s latest film Lucky Baskhar is about one such small thing that decided to brave its fears, and find a way to survive when the tree of the great banking scam of the 90s fell. Of course, we have seen multiple iterations of this story through series like Scam 1992 and films like The Big Bull. But what Venky Atluri does in Lucky Baskhar is that he isn’t telling the story that everyone is focused on. He conjures up a story of a man who is caught in the crosshairs and decides to do something about it. Now, it is fictional, but it could have been true. And it is this thin line between fiction and reality that truly makes Lucky Baskhar a terrific watch.

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All 3 reviews of Lucky Baskhar here

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
Rahul Desai (for OTTPlay) 
The Hollywood Reporter India
The Retroactive Stillness Of Grief

Director Benjamin Ree uses the investigative form of a true-crime drama. Except, the twist in this documentary is that the victim was actually a survivor — the grand revelation is life, not death

Benjamin Ree’s The Remarkable Life of Ibelin starts off as a documentary about death. We see the tombstone of Mats Steen, a Norwegian boy whose body and soul were at war. A mix of VHS footage and family interviews then reveals that Mats had duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a degenerative disease that reduced his 25 years to a hellish survival story. His mind yearned for the momentum his muscles never had. Subsequent clips show his body shrinking on landmarks and vacations, the end inching closer.

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Do Patti
Uday Bhatia
Mint Lounge
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?

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All 17 reviews of Do Patti here

Do Patti
Sukanya Verma
rediff.com
One By Two

Do Patti collapses like a house of cards when it aims to be clever.

Dressed in the exact same attire as her newly wedded sister at her reception, the lookalike twin poses right next to the bride and groom as if fulfilling Bollywood’s bawdy fantasy of saali aadhi gharwali in a tasteless, thunder-stealing move.

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All 17 reviews of Do Patti here

Do Patti
Anuj Kumar
The Hindu
Kriti Sanon, Kajol struggle to power this thriller on domestic abuse

Attempting to follow the flowchart of being engaging and meaningful, director Shashanka Chaturvedi loses his grip on the crime thriller

For a long time, one believed that a compelling cinematic narrative shows more than it tells, and expresses more than it explains. However, the recent content spurt on OTT platforms seems bent on cerebrating the opposite. Do Patti is yet another addition to the long list of films that skip theatres for a streaming service. It reduces the art of storytelling to a mere artifice for meaningful cinema. These films end up delivering the message but little else.

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All 17 reviews of Do Patti here