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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

The Sabarmati Report (3)
Freedom at Midnight (5)
Bhairathi Ranagal (1)
Kanguva (1)

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The Sabarmati Report
Shilajit Mitra
The Hindu
Vikrant Massey boards the propaganda train

Based on the 2002 Godhra train burning tragedy, and its ensuing coverage in the media, this convenient and skewed film is a poor showcase for its leading man

In an interview that went viral ahead of The Sabarmati Report, actor Vikrant Massey, briefly turning political analyst, reflected on the state of the nation. “People say that Hindus are in danger, that Muslims are in danger. No one is in danger; everything is going fine. This is the best country to live in the world,” he declared in a podcast. The nervous naivety of Hindi film actors ahead of a controversial release is always enlightening to witness. It’s a balancing act no gymnast or slackliner can fathom.

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All 3 reviews of The Sabarmati Report here

Freedom at Midnight
Ishita Sengupta (for OTT Play) 
Independent Film Critic
Nikhil Advani’s Pre-Independence Drama Is Immensely Watchable

Freedom at Midnight is about the historicity of 1947 conveyed through the lives of those who curated the history.

With Freedom at Midnight, Nikhil Advani continues looking at big cultural moments through the microscopic gaze of an insider. Across the two seasons of his breakout show Mumbai Diaries, the filmmaker portrayed pressing social crises through the labour of medical practitioners attending to the casualties. This shift in slant sidestepped the showiness prone to cinematic excess and allowed for a more intimate rendering of public events, transforming, therefore, the narrative around them. In his latest long-form work, Advani turns his gaze to the wide spectrum of India’s independence and reiterates his style of focusing on the bureaucratic bottleneck, telling the story therefore of the people living inside towering buildings and not on the street. Freedom at Midnight is about the historicity of 1947 conveyed through the lives of those who curated the history.

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All 11 reviews of Freedom at Midnight here

Freedom at Midnight
Shubhra Gupta
The Indian Express
A relatable, racy-pacy account of build-up to India’s tumultuous independence

Sprawling yet pacy, the Nikkhil Advani series brings to life the story of India, and Pakistan, which came into existence at that stroke of the midnight hour immortalised in the haunting words of Nehru.

The choice of using ‘Freedom At Midnight’, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre’s account of the tumultuous build-up to India’s independence in August 1947, as the basis for the seven-part web series of the same name achieves one thing above all else: adapting from source material which has been in existence for several years, especially from the celebrity author duo who couldn’t be accused of being either pro-India, or pro-Pakistan, frees creator and director Nikkhil Advani of being accused similar bias.

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All 11 reviews of Freedom at Midnight here

The Sabarmati Report
Sukanya Verma
rediff.com
Poorly Crafted Propaganda

The Sabarmati Report is so flimsy in its execution, taking offence to it would be dignifying its existence.

News is the truth that you choose to bring out, a cunning television journalist tells her artless subordinate early on in The Sabarmati Report. She’s the villain of the piece for concealing inconvenient realities and conveying only what suits her purpose and politics. Funny how The Sabarmati Report’s poorly crafted propaganda masquerading as a crusade for justice is nothing but a blatant embodiment of these very ideals.

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All 3 reviews of The Sabarmati Report here

Freedom at Midnight
Upma Singh
Navbharat Times

सालों लंबी क्रांति और अनगिनत शहीदों की कुर्बानी के बाद अंग्रेजी हुकूमत से 1947 में मिली आजादी के बदले हिंदुस्तान के दिल पर विभाजन का जो जख्म लगा, वह टीस 77 साल बाद आज भी महसूस होती है। मगर क्या धर्म के नाम पर हुआ देश का यह बंटवारा जरूरी था? क्या यह रुक सकता था? देश के भविष्य से जुड़े इस निर्णायक फैसले में शामिल पंडित नेहरू, महात्मा गांधी, सरदार पटेल या मोहम्मद अली जिन्ना जैसे राजनेताओं का क्या रुख रहा? इतिहास के सबसे त्रासद बंटवारे को लेकर ऐसे ही कई अनछ़ुए पन्ने पलटती है, निखिल अडवानी की वेब सीरीज ‘फ्रीडम एट मिडनाइट’। यह सीरीज लैरी कॉलिन्स और डॉमनिक लैपियर की इसी नाम से लिखी बहुचर्चित किताब पर आधारित है, जो ब्रिटिश राज का सूरज ढलने के बाद एक स्वतंत्र हिंदुस्तान के बनने के दौरान हुई राजनीति और सामाजिक हालातों की गहराई से पड़ताल करती है।

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All 11 reviews of Freedom at Midnight here

The Sabarmati Report
Bharathi Pradhan
Lehren.com
Conspiracy Uncovered, Story Incomplete

Media, Politics, Truths, Lies & a lot more... Will The Sabarmati Report cover it all at the silver screens

The communal bloodshed that tainted Gujarat in 2002 has been told and retold on film, in books, on TV debates. But there’s been a lid on the Godhra tragedy that preceded the riots, a lid that’s lifted occasionally to put out theories that suppress and mislead more than reveal. A gas cylinder, a cigarette? What sparked the fire that roasted 59 kar sevaks including tiny children inside a bogey of the Sabarmati Express outside Godhra station in 2002?

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All 3 reviews of The Sabarmati Report here

Bhairathi Ranagal
Manoj Kumar
Desi Martini, HT Media
Shivarajkumar shines in a predictable origin story

Bhairathi Ranagal is an origin story that explores the transformation of an ordinary man into a feared leader.

Shivarajkumar’s portrayal of Bhairathi Ranagal in the 2017 movie Mufti was a monumental success. His iconic look—featuring coloured khadi vestis and shirts—became a trendsetter, even inspiring Nandamuri Balakrishna’s style in Veera Simha Reddy. It’s no surprise that the filmmakers were tempted to delve deeper into the character and cater to the audience’s appetite for more. After all, the market rarely gets it wrong, right? Fast forward seven years and director Narthan brings us Bhairathi Ranagal, the origin story of this beloved character.

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All 2 reviews of Bhairathi Ranagal here

Freedom at Midnight
Priyanka Roy
The Telegraph
Fashions a high-stakes drama built on one of the most tumultuous chapters in our history

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom”. This momentous line from Jawaharlal Nehru’s Tryst with Destiny speech, delivered on the eve of India’s Independence on August 15, 1947, remains etched in the annals of history. What also remains an indelible part of our country’s birth into freedom after 200 years of colonial rule is the bloodied, agonising, gut-wrenching division of one nation into two.

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All 11 reviews of Freedom at Midnight here

Kanguva
Vishal Menon
The Hollywood Reporter India
All 5 reviews of Kanguva here

Freedom at Midnight
Saibal Chatterjee
NDTV
Crafted With Utmost Diligence, The Show Gives History Its Due

Freedom at Midnight isn't driven by A-list stars but by actors who painstakingly and confidently flesh out the towering historical figures

In Freedom of Midnight, showrunner and director Nikkhil Advani, working with a script by a team of six writers, blends solid historicity with elements of fiction and imagination to bring to the screen the agonizing final leg of India’s freedom struggle. The SonyLIV drama series produced by Emmay Entertainment and StudioNext, is crafted with utmost diligence. It blends grandeur with intimacy, swept with precision, sustained gravitas with an acute awareness of the timeless contemporaneity of political decisions of far-reaching consequences made in an era of great upheavals by the architects of a free nation forged in fire.

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All 11 reviews of Freedom at Midnight here