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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

Adolescence (1)
The Electric State (1)
The Diplomat (2)
Dope Thief (1)
Humans in the Loop (1)
Superboys of Malegaon (2)
Crazxy (1)
Dabba Cartel (1)

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Adolescence
Sonal Pandya
Times Now, Zoom
Powerful, Heartbreaking Crime Drama Filmed In One-Shot Take Is Necessary Watch For Parents

Flawlessly filmed with stirring performances from its cast, the British drama Adolescence follows how a family falls apart after their 13-year-old son is accused of murder.

Co-created by star Stephen Graham and filmmaker Jack Thorne, Adolescence should become necessary viewing at schools for teachers, students, and parents. The four-part series is focused on the arrest of a 13-year-old boy, Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), accused of stabbing his classmate fatally. The British series deftly captures how this incident affects all those around Jamie—his family, the police, his classmates, and even the psychologist assigned to the case. While the devastating story will leave you emotionally sapped at the end, Adolescence is a stark reminder of the evolving world around us where kids are forced to grow up much too fast.

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All 5 reviews of Adolescence here

The Electric State
Sanyukta Thakare
Mashable India
It Is Not A Chris Pratt Film

Not the best but not bad

The Netflix film takes place in a dystopian past where the world was taken over by a war with robots and turned the world into a different kind of machine obsessed society decades ago. Set in the 90s the film explores what happens when robots take over everyday activities, gain conscious awareness and decide this is their world too. A war breaks out and one evil is replaced with another. The film is reportedly based on Simon Stalenhag’s illustrated book of the same name. However, reports have revealed that the makers took creative liberty with the tone and aesthetic of the film which is far from the original material. The film has its own version to offer but the source seems way more cooler. Netflix’s film is more focused on being a child’s film enjoyable by the adults while be wholesome and also sharing its deeper message of human bonding. However, if the reports are true and the film has been using AI without considering its impact and consequences, then the irony of the film loses its impact totally. Millie Bobby Brown’s film begins amid the war with machines, where her character Michelle’s brother is taking a test for college applications. He is deemed a genius who has the potential to save the world and humans from the war against machines. However, just as their lives were about to get better, the family ends up in an accident and Michelle is the only one who survives.

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All 3 reviews of The Electric State here

The Diplomat
Sanyukta Thakare
Mashable India
John Abraham's Film Is An Intese Thriller, Sadia Khateeb's Performance Shines

A good one time watch

John Abraham film is based on a true story but the makers do take liberties with the storytelling. Directed by Shivam Nair the film focuses on the thriller tone while exploring the victim’s story instead of the outcome since it’s already known. Inspite of the lack of action and punchy dialogues which is what John is known for in the recent years, the actor gives a commendable yet subtle performance. The film begins with a woman from the mountains of Pakistan being escorted to the Indian embassy. The makers from the first shot make it known that she isn’t coming from a good place, other women she comes across are beaten and bruised while the men carry guns and would use them as easier as their arms. She is taken to the embassy by her husband and another man along with him. They wait for the embassy to open and as soon as her husband leaves her side and the doors open, Uzma Ahmed presents her Indian passport demanding she be led inside and that she’s in need of dire help.

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All 12 reviews of The Diplomat here

The Diplomat
Rahul Desai
The Hollywood Reporter India
John Abraham Leads a Middling Political Thriller

Engaging in parts, but can’t resist a few unhealthy habits.

he Diplomat has all the elements of a solid thriller. The drama is Argo (2012) and Bridge of Spies (2015)-coded, where one government agent must negotiate the safe return of a citizen trapped in a seemingly hostile country. The premise is almost ready-made. The film is inspired by the true story of Uzma Ahmed (played by Sadia Khateeb), a woman who arrives at the Indian embassy in Islamabad desperately seeking refuge; she claims to have been tricked into marrying an abusive Pakistani man who kept her captive in the mountains. Deputy High Commissioner J.P. Singh (John Abraham) takes charge, determined to guide her through a maze of media scrutiny, red tape, court trials and political tensions. All he has are words and aura, in addition to the support of the Minister of External Affairs (based on the late Sushma Swaraj) from New Delhi.

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All 12 reviews of The Diplomat here

Dope Thief
Sonal Pandya
Times Now, Zoom
Gritty Crime Thriller Has Strong Performances, But Weighed Down By Complex Plot

Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura play two loyal friends whose side lives of petty crime drops them into the big leagues after a drug bust gone wrong.

The eight-episode series Dope Thief takes its main characters on an absolute journey as greed and corruption in law enforcement are exposed through each stage. Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura’s characters are longtime friends who are drawn into this mess and try to emerge on the other side unscathed. The story hooks you in from the start, but with each twist, you’ll find yourself rolling your eyes at the outrageous turn of events. The well-acted crime drama is worth tuning in only for its cast. Ray (Brian Tyree Henry) and Manny (Wagner Moura) became the best of friends in juvenile detention and continued their life of crime undetected as adults. The duo pose as DEA agents and rob small drug dealers of their stash and money. Until one day when they hit the wrong meth house in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly, they are entangled in the larger narcotic crime ring that involves more dangerous drug dealers and even the cops themselves. With no one to turn to and their families now in danger, how do the two friends find an escape?

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Humans in the Loop
Rahul Desai
The Hollywood Reporter India
A Profound Take on Artificial Intelligence and Natural Order

Aranya Sahay’s beautifully conceived story won top honours at the 16th Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes)

A great concept can be a curse. Take the one-liner of Humans in the Loop, for instance. An Adivasi single mother named Nehma (Sonal Madhushankar) starts working as a ‘data labeller,’ a job that requires her to train AI models to recognise the world in pictures and videos. This one-liner alone is so fertile — so ripe with cultural parables and documentary minimalism — that it’s hard to imagine a fictional film that expands on it. What can a feature-length story express that isn’t already implicit?

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Superboys of Malegaon
Sucharita Tyagi
Independent Film Critic
A despondent tale wrapped in a feel-good package.
All 14 reviews of Superboys of Malegaon here

Superboys of Malegaon
Saibal Chatterjee
NDTV
The Film Is An All-Round Delight

Fuelled by measured performances that blend energy with restraint, the characters and the film are in reach for the sky, while staying firmly rooted to the ground

Their incredible true story has been in the public domain for well over a decade and a half but the deeds of the moviemakers of Malegaon have never ceased to fascinate. Inherent in the tale is the drama of improbable dreams of nondescript individuals clashing with daunting societal and economic constraints and, in the bargain, engendering phenomenal acts of self-belief. Director Reema Kagti captures it all in Superboys of Malegaon, a matter-of-fact fictionalized retelling. Her film is a classic rollercoaster in which dizzying and sobering, flighty and probing, roll into and out of each other. Superboys of Malegaon, produced by Excel Entertainment and Tiger Baby, is about unremarkable lives made noteworthy by trajectories less ordinary. But, operating firmly within the realms of the real and the relatable, the film steers well clear of the cliches of the genre.

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All 14 reviews of Superboys of Malegaon here

Crazxy
Saibal Chatterjee
NDTV
Sohum Shah Pulls It Off With Aplomb

The film dares to be different and sticks to its guns.

A taut and tense thriller, Crazxy, produced by and starring Sohum Shah, whose choices as an actor have never been conventional, upends genre norms to deliver a 93-minute adrenaline rush that until it ends up in a small puddle of avoidable mush is absolutely riveting fare. Coming to think of it, even the somewhat mawkish conclusion is not wholly out of place in a drama that blends the emotional with the visceral. Crazxy wastes nary a scene in its sustained bid to generate intrigue and suspense centred on the conversations and choices of the protagonist, a successful surgeon with a volatile past making his way through a day on which everything that can go wrong goes horribly wrong. The film rests on a virtuoso solo act that sees Sohum Shah in the guise of a Delhi doctor pulled into a heart-pounding race against time to save his kidnapped daughter, a girl he heartlessly abandoned due to no fault of hers.

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All 8 reviews of Crazxy here

Dabba Cartel
Saibal Chatterjee
NDTV
Shabana Azmi's Performance Is Half The Battle Won

Shabana Azmi pulls her weight without missing a beat. She is ably supported by a wonderful ensemble cast that includes Jyotika, Nimisha Sajayan, Sai Tamhankar, Lillete Dubey, Shalini Pandey and Anjali Anand.

Shabana Azmi is the pivot around which Dabba Cartel, a female-driven Netflix crime drama series, swivels. She is in her element. That is half the battle won. Winning the remaining half takes a bit of doing. Happily, it isn’t entirely beyond the team behind and before the camera. Azmi pulls her weight without missing a beat. She is ably supported by a wonderful ensemble cast that includes Jyotika, Nimisha Sajayan, Sai Tamhankar, Lillete Dubey, Shalini Pandey and Anjali Anand. The writing, too, contributes more than its mite to the show by putting a vigorous fresh spin on the genre. Yet, there is no escaping the feeling that the seven-episode Excel Entertainment-produced series, created by Shibani Akhtar, Gaurav Kapur, Vishnu Menon and Akanksha Seda, could have been a little tighter at the seams and a bit lighter at the edges. It falls just a touch short of being an unqualified success.

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All 6 reviews of Dabba Cartel here