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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

Girls Will Be Girls (3)
The Teacher (1)
Young Hearts (1)
Victoria (1)
Pierce (1)
Body (1)
Miss You (1)
Kaalratri (1)

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Girls Will Be Girls
Anupama Chopra
The Hollywood Reporter India
A Quietly Breathtaking Coming-of-Age Drama

Female teenage sexuality has rarely been captured with this sensitivity and nuance in an Indian film

Girls Will Be Girls is a quietly breathtaking film. It includes several remarkable debuts – starting with writer-director Shuchi Talati. This is her first feature, and she weaves this coming-of-age story of 18-year-old Mira with tenderness, frankness and delicacy. Female teenage sexuality has rarely been captured with this sensitivity and nuance in an Indian film. Second, Preeti Panigrahi who plays Mira. Panigrahi is the find of the year. Without a trace of strain or drama, she captures the myriad emotions coursing through Mira as she discovers passion, sexuality, unbridled rage, a twisted sort of jealousy, resentment, disappointment and eventually, comfort. And third, Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal who debut as producers with their company Pushing Buttons Studios. Girls Will Be Girls does this with skill and uncommon grace.

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All 10 reviews of Girls Will Be Girls here

Girls Will Be Girls
Udita Jhunjhunwala
Mint, Scroll.in
A beautifully observed coming of age story

Writer-director Shuchi Talati’s debut feature is a simmering and sexually tense coming of age drama. Set in a boarding school, the story is centred around Mira, a school topper, head prefect and teacher’s pet. She’s driven to excel and considers herself the model student, upholder of school rules and moral gatekeeper. So, it’s confusing for the obedient and righteous Mira to be faced with challenges outside of the curriculum and to realise that book-learned knowledge might be no match against street smarts, life experience and generational patriarchal conditioning.

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All 10 reviews of Girls Will Be Girls here

Girls Will Be Girls
Saibal Chatterjee
NDTV
It's Spellbindingly Granular And Resonantly Universal

It's buoyed by impeccable writing and a couple of consummate performances by debutante Preeti Panigrahi and the seasoned Kani Kusruti.

A brilliant and sensitive schoolgirl in love with a classmate is watched, monitored and scrutinised incessantly as she seeks to break free from familial and societal shackles in Girls Will Be Girls, writer-director Shuchi Talati’s self-assured, award-winning narrative feature debut now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. The exquisitely crafted and insightful coming-of-age drama, an Indo-French co-production that bagged two awards at the Sundance Film Festival this year, is buoyed by impeccable writing and a couple of consummate performances by debutante Preeti Panigrahi and the seasoned Kani Kusruti.

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All 10 reviews of Girls Will Be Girls here

The Teacher
S. R. Praveen
The Hindu
An honest portrayal of dehumanising oppression in Palestine

A house, lived in for years, bulldozed by the Israeli military in front of its inhabitants, leaving behind a pile of tangible memories under the rubble. A youth resisting the burning down of an Olive orchard shot down by a settler with practised ease and nonchalance, just as if it were the most normal thing to do. Soldiers violently barging into every single home in a village in search of an Israeli military man who was abducted.

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Young Hearts
S. R. Praveen
The Hindu
A heart-warming teenage gay romance

Sometimes, the most gentle turns in a film can create a considerable emotional impact on the viewer. The filmmaker need not necessarily move a mountain to achieve that. Belgian filmmaker Anthony Schatteman’s Young Hearts, with its fresh take on teenage gay romance, is filled with several such moments that flow organically one after the other. Being screened in the World Cinema section at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), this rather small film about young people has gained appreciation amid a flurry of bigger films boasting wider festival play.

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Victoria
S. R. Praveen
The Hindu
A crafty portrayal of a woman’s inner turmoil

Sivaranjini J’s debut film, screened at the Malayalam Cinema Today section at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala on Saturday, is set almost entirely inside a beauty parlour

The spark that initiates a work of art can come from anywhere. For Sivaranjini J., it came from the unusual sight of a rooster sitting inside a beauty parlour near her home in Angamaly. Victoria, her debut film which was screened at the Malayalam Cinema Today section at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala on Saturday, is set almost entirely a beauty parlour.

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All 2 reviews of Victoria here

Pierce
S. R. Praveen
The Hindu
Nelicia Low’s worlds of movies and fencing come together seamlessly in her debut film

In Singapore, I picked fencing because two of my favourite movies growing up had swordplay – Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. So actually it was my love for film that led me to fencing, says the filmmaker.

While watching Pierce, the debut feature of former Singapore national fencer Nelicia Low, one would assume that the sport inspired the film, for fencing is at the very centre of the narrative which deals with brotherly affection and psychopathic tendencies. The trademark moves in the sport, which one character defines as chess played with swords, also parallels the behaviour of the characters in the film, screened in the world cinema section at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) on Saturday (December 14, 2024).

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Body
Rahul Desai
The Hollywood Reporter India
A Hindi Indie Full of Craft, Curiosity and Naked Ambition

Abhijit Mazumdar’s troubled-actor drama is in the International Competition section of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK)

Once adulthood sets in, and once we’ve accumulated enough years, most of us have two types of recurring dreams (and nightmares). One revolves around the terror of remembering that the exam is tomorrow and we haven’t touched the school syllabus. The other is shaped by the horror of finding ourselves naked in routine situations, while being totally helpless about it. Both of these are trauma responses to our fraught relationship with society. Both feature a link between social conditioning and shame, but Abhijit Muzumdar’s Body confronts the steeper task of exploring the second dream. It’s a testing watch, but ultimately quite a rewarding one.

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Miss You
Srivathsan Nadadhur (for All in a Frame) 
Independent Film Critic

In times when films have become social/ideological statements, it’s refreshing how Miss You still wants to be a simple story about ordinary people, everyday situations. The plot, centred on memory loss, fragility of modern-day marriages and second chances, banks on its slice-of-life treatment to see itself through. Yet, its simplicity paves the way for mediocrity due to the jaded treatment, time-tested storytelling tropes and poor music. There are flashes of Siddharth’s good-ol charm and decent performances by Ashika Ranganath and Karunakaran for intermittent relief. Miss You has its moments but is too casual and lacks conviction to be a memorable romance drama.

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All 5 reviews of Miss You here

Kaalratri
Shamayita Chakraborty
Deutsche Welle
Soumitrisha’s OTT debut has Hoichoi written all over it

Directed by Ayan Chakraborti, the thriller also has Anujoy Chattopadhyay, Debesh Chattopadhyay, Rajdeep Gupta, Indrasish Roy, and many others.

Devi (Soumitrisha), who only remembers the past six years of her life, gets married to Rudra Roy Burman (Indrasish Roy) — a drunkard and lecherous son of Samaresh Roy Burman (Debesh Chattopadhyay). Devi’s mysterious friend Maya (Koushani Mukherjee) — known for her ominous presence – predicts that Rudra will die the next day after their marriage. Her prediction becomes real.

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