Sreehari Nair presents his Top 20 movies of the decade.
'Made in Heaven plays well as a busy show; when it's hip, but without being hopeless,' feels Sreehari Nair.
Homecoming fuses the kinky-swiftness of the original superhero movies with the silly concerns of a 2017's teenager, points out Sreehari Nair.
'Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga is a step backward for the portrayal of female camaraderie in our movies,' argues Sreehari Nair.
... And sometimes, that's enough, says Sreehari Nair.
In an online chat with readers, Investment Advisor Harsh Roongta answered their queries on the ban on Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes.
'What we have here is a director who understands how people fight, but has not a clue about how they make love,' points out Sreehari Nair.
'Oddly enough, everything Raazi cannot explain or put a finger on, it glosses over in the name of patriotism or watan-love; glorifying thereby the very sentiment it had set out to mock.' 'This is the unique tragedy of the film: it becomes less of a counterpoint to pseudo-patriotism and more of a companion piece,' says Sreehari Nair.
Begum Jaan makes a lot of noise, cuts a lot of throats, but sucks up to kiddie-ideas of history and revolution, feels Sreehari Nair.
'Tigers fails to understand that the phenomenon of a million babies dying because there is not enough clean drinking water in which to mix a certain packaged baby formula may have its source in a system where deprivation runs so deep that even a small gift works like a tonic,' argues Sreehari Nair.
After 20 plus years of threatening to offer us new sensations, Nagesh Kukunoor has finally let it rip, raves Sreehari Nair.
'I felt a constant gag in my throat, and emerged from the movie somewhat mugged,' confesses Sreehari Nair.
Baahubali: The Conclusion doesn't enlarge the scope of the first picture or deepen its meaning, feels Sreehari Nair.
Parasite's razor-sharp characterisations ensure that the picture is thoroughly entertaining though it falls short of greatness, declares Sreehari Nair.
'Sanjay Leela Bhansali's historical characters behave as though they are already aware of the chapters that will be dedicated to them and the sonnets that will be written in their memory.' 'And yet, they talk relentlessly about making and remaking history.' 'Can anything be more superficial?' asks Sreehari Nair.
At its core, Criminal Justice is a tale of small miscalculations leading to grave consequences, feels Sreehari Nair.
'Not only are the concerns expressed in Stree (patriarchy, consent, prejudice against women) mere excuses to touch our 'sentimental hotspots', the movie itself is a few tricks cobbled together,' says Sreehari Nair.
'When Rajkummar Rao plays Bose with his tummy jutting out, Buddha Ears, his mouth puffed, and his talk straight, it feels more like an echo piece than a real person,' feels Sreehari Nair.
'If questioning and dethroning hierarchies is your primary motive, why not put an end to the practice of announcing your shining star, your box office draw, in big flaming letters and mentioning everyone else's name in small font at the bottom of the screen?' asks Sreehari Nair.
Sreehari Nair introduces you to three promising movies coming up.
To an award show that's famous for honouring artists belatedly, we have sent as our official entry one of our major film-makers's weakest work yet, feels Sreehari Nair.
Anurag Kashyap's lovers have no enemies to shoot, says Sreehari Nair, and so they take aim at each other.
Rukh may be lit like a YouTube Short Film, and may have its share of other technical problems, but there's something disturbingly original about director Atanu Mukherjee's vision, Sreehari Nair feels.
Dhadak is a film that turns Nagraj Manjule's vision into naught, only so that a few more zeroes can be added to Karan Johar's bank account, says Sreehari Nair.
'By ruffling dignified feathers, and by polarising its audience, Kabir Singh has put movies and art back into our public discourse,' says Sreehari Nair.
'In this chicks-rule-the-roost universe, the men are non-existent, untrustworthy or plain incompetent and it's the women who are providing for each other's fantasies.' Sreehari Nair applauds Ocean's 8.
'Harshvardhan Kapoor will go on to become one of the finest Indian actors of this generation,' predicts Sreehari Nair. 'In Bhavesh Joshi, Kapoor treats the movie like a box and tries to break out of it.' 'It's magic to watch a young actor like Kapoor achieve intensity without overextending himself; he can hold a frame while merely being in it.'
'The Indian Right can afford to be rigid; but as liberals, our position has to be one of constant evolution, or else death awaits us,' argues Sreehari Nair.
'The best Indian movies today are ones that portray life as "something that doesn't end when the movies do".' 'There's no real arc to traverse or easy lessons to learn. And Irrfan and Nawazuddin -- who can both swerve a movie purely on the strengths of their instincts -- are just the perfect actors for this kind of movie sensibility,' says Sreehari Nair.
Indu Sarkar is an effective propaganda movie only to the extent that it knows its mission-statement and knows whom to shame and whom to take in its stride, feels Sreehari Nair.
With Joji, Dileesh Pothan has found a way, once more, to use everything he has learnt to further push the boundaries of his art, observes Sreehari Nair.
'Wasn't there a single person below 30 in the whole production team? I wondered aloud at different points in the narrative,' notes Sreehari Nair.
Hindi Medium works because it manages to stretch itself beyond its scrubby elements, easy half-baked jokes, lessons about consumerism and our love for English, into a simple story about a boy who would do anything to see his girl smile, feels Sreehari Nair.
Ram Gopal Varma is back with Part Three of that series, which presented to us the first clear evidence that the great man was slipping, rues Sreehari Nair.
'2015 gave us a set of Hindi films that brought to light, the true uncorrupted joys of filmmaking even in their roughness.' 'Films which told us why we loved films in the first place. Films that were less ashamed of revealing their weakness and ones that took chances with audience expectations.'
The curse of stardom, especially in a country like India -- which wants its Gods to be tidy and punctilious -- is that stardom forces you to stop exploring the frozen sea inside you, and instead inspires you more and more to perform out of a small puddle, observes Sreehari Nair.
'Every time I watch Sholay telling myself that it is nothing more than a 'brazen potboiler,' the movie works. However, each time I take it for this iconic masterpiece, Sholay falls short; terribly short,' says Sreehari Nair.
If you happen to like this film, I have to assume there's something seriously wrong with your idea of a journey, Sreehari Nair says.
'As citizens of this country, we often expect sweeping changes here, but find the smallest of abdications that we may ourselves be called upon to make far too inconveniencing.' 'Think about it deeply -- about the move and the reactions it has gathered -- and we will actually learn a lot about ourselves,' says Sreehari Nair.
'It's a performance that puts the Bachchan hysteria to shame,' observes Sreehari Nair.
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