Review : Sriram Raghavan's "Badlapur" is the first notable cinematic triumph of the new year.

The opening credits cheekily pay a nod to Don Siegel, Hollywood's connoisseur of vibrant B-grade thrillers. It's a trivial detail that is almost missed, but Sriram Raghavan always likes to pay his homages to his masters in one way or the other. It comes as no surprise, then, that Badlapur works so darn well as a tribute, while also being the first notable cinematic coup of the year. It is scintillatingly done, mesmerizing to the hilt from the get-go, and an unconventional revenge fable that packs a whopping dramatic punch.

If you have seen Raghavan's previous memorable efforts, the impressively grimy neo-noir drama Ek Hasina Thi and the exceedingly artful and pulpy Johnny Gaddar, you have a faint glimmer about what kind of film Badlapur is raring to become. Which is a pretty futile speculation to make, because Badlapur is not the grim, enthralling thriller the trailers made it out to be; it is something else, something exotic. Like Raghavan knew exactly what a typical revenge saga stocked with cliches looked like, and skimmed over the ordinaries. The twists--while not being "twists" in the truest sense of the word--lack the astonishing precision that made his previous films stand out. But Badlapur is not obsessed with exploiting its shock value or sculpting a manly protagonist or a thuggish antagonist. Rather, it concerns itself, much to our delight, with crafting a psychodrama that is brimming with gorgeous details that add flesh to its characters and constructing a no-frills narrative, the very basics of film craft. 

It's a momentous occasion when a Hindi film looks beyond its materialistic potential and entangles itself in an unsophisticated, organic way of filmmaking.

The opening sequence is overwhelming in its impact. A bank heist goes terribly awry, blood is shed, lives get disrupted. It's a dive straight into the chasm of distress, and Raghavan pulls no punches. While we are busy getting used to Hindi films diluting the tragedies for us, he allows us to get a taste of it firsthand. It is conveniently, commendably shocking for an audience that has grown up watching Hindi films. While the first-half ratchets up the suspense skillfully, never leaving any margin for evident flaws in the plotting and leaving it just at the brink of a dramatic eruption, the second-half meanders early on. It's frustrating to watch a promising build-up coming undone so sluggishly mostly for comic relief, but Raghavan steadies the narrative in a jiffy with his trademark flourish: an episode of grisly violence. 

And just when I was beginning to feel that the film has pulled a fast one, and is--what a bummer it would have been, had it been so--actually the same old vengeance tale slipping into a new coat, the final few minutes offered a potent thunk of emotion. It changed the whole film, and I was left to handle the surge of feeling and admire the fact that I was left dumbstruck. 

The acting and writing here is of the highest order, with dark, goofy humor infused subtly instead of spattering the film with it. Raghavan's wacky dabs are apparent. A cluster of his regulars do the trick as supporting characters, as they always have done. In places, the screenplay is limp, but when one stands back to assess the final picture, its imperfections will only seem like nitpickings. The film carries a sullen, erratic look, which is essential, for it houses a bunch of cunning slime balls. 

Badlapur isn't a film that lands its legs in the commercial traps of Hindi cinema. While a ton of Hindi films are enthusiastically and fraudulently promoted as "unorthodox" each year, here is a film that actually is. And Nawazuddin Siddiqui--the greasy, scrawny and scheming anti-hero who serves as such a welcome change from the hunky lowlifes posing as the baddies in our films these days--is in a class of his own. Without exaggerating to a good extent, I will simply say that this certainly is my favorite performance of his. He gives Badlapur its moody identity and pulsating energy. And how many films he has done can this be said for?

Handpicks : The Ten Best Films Of 2014.

To celebrate the Oscar nominations, allow me to catalog my favorite films of last year. It was a dandy year for films, and when it came down to listing ten hits, I was in a quandary. Truly, a memorable year for every kind of film, and it certainly got me excited about the new year. And a successful year for film can be gauged by how thrilled the audiences are for the next year at the end of it.

The following are my top picks. I still haven't seen Canadian enfant terrible Xavier Dolan's transgressive Mommy, Paul Thomas Anderson's eccentric stoner-comedy Inherent Vice, Ana Lily Amirpour's Iranian vampire-western A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Ava DuVernay's ignored Selma, Yann Demange's fraught thriller '71, the legendary Mike Leigh's new film Mr. Turner, J.C. Chandor's A Most Violent Year, Viktor Taus' Clownwise and Abderrahmane Sissako's acclaimed Timbuktu to name a couple.

The others, in order:

10.  Why Don't You Play In Hell? (Japan)

It's the kookiest party film of the year.

Sion Sono's impish ode to the cinema, Why Don't You Play In Hell? is kitschy indulgence. It's a spectacularly over-the-top venture that finds humor in the most unexpected places, is gleefully implausible and content in remaining mad as a hatter. Sometimes, only sometimes, inane films make vivifying cinematic experiences, and Sono's treat is a fine example of that. It works majorly because of its distinctive narrative--which is established using a several cinematic techniques, from long tracking shots to abrupt close-ups--and Sono's ability to infuse even the most tranquil sequences with pulsating energy. It's a wildly inventive, goofy albeit flawed excursion through the imagination of an artiste confident about his flair and passionate about his art. Any hunt for rationality will reap one only disappointment, however.

9.  Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance) (US)

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is such a braggart.

Birdman stands out as a mammoth technical achievement on every level; a caustic, claustrophobic satire on showbiz and vanity and loneliness that is wonderfully weird and arresting, though not always as absorbing, expertly orchestrated and fashioned like a supple one-take film that gives it a hypnotic aura. It's a heady blend of wow and wacky. But the problem, the only one, with Inarritu's film is, it's too conscious of its own greatness, conscious of what it's trying to achieve on a technical scale and that schtick sometimes impedes the narrative flow. In places, the effect seems painfully artificial, which is a major drawback for a film that tries hard to please.

But that's not to say that this way-out beauty isn't disarming; there are a few genuinely breathtaking sequences that tingled me, the most memorable being Michael Keaton's Riggan levitating and gliding through New York City insouciantly. Birdman isn't a perfect film--maybe an illusion of one--but its audacity deserves props.

8.  Blue Ruin/Whiplash (US)

The "indie-st" indie in recent memory and the euphoric wonder of the year.

While on one hand, Jeremy Saulnier delivered a bloodstained, sickening revenge fable was flamboyant, dispiriting and assured debut, reminiscent of Coen Brothers' Blood Simple, with great difficulty and on the other hand, Damien Chezelle served us a sort of musical-thriller with a bald monster tormenting a whippersnapper. And both worked better than anyone could have ever imagined. While Blue Ruin left me thoroughly shaken by its depiction of the barbarity people can resort to to exact vengeance, I found it hard not to holler for the invigorating high Whiplash gave me. Both films marked the arrival of two major auteurs in-the-making. Saulnier's deft use of bare imagery to heighten the bleakness of his tragedy and Chazelle's justified close-ups of sweaty faces and blood-sprinkled cymbals to underline the edginess of his semi-autobiographical story were wise calls indeed. And both films emphasized on the need to remain human even when circumstances are untoward.

Blue Ruin and Whiplash might be forgotten soon, much to my chagrin, but they trained the spotlight on independent cinema. If that was the objective, then they knocked it out of the ballpark.

7.  Ida (Poland)

Pawel Pawlikowski's curiously vivid, expressionistic film looks every bit like an awards season vanquisher, and it deserves to be one, too.

With gorgeously bleak, austere imagery, Ida explores the subtleties and vulnerabilities of the human mind and soul by scrutinizing two female protagonists affected by an old tragedy they prolonged unearthing for years. As is a cliche in the movies, whenever a character goes digging into their past, the repercussions they come up against aren't gratifying. The plot of such films is molded from what secrets these repercussions withhold. In Ida, the disclosures are dreadful, but the mystery here is more of the mind than of the revelations. It treads on a familiar path, but it does it with much deliberation and diligence than what we might have seen before. Pawlikowski's utterly apathetic to the suspenseful element of his story, thereby giving it no window to gut or unnerve or sermonize.

In my review of the film, here is what I wrote: "Can a weak rebellion against a life of illusion diminish the harsher versions of the truth?" Ida pitches this question, but the answer lies somewhere in the inscrutable silences at the end. The fact that one cannot fathom it is what makes this a haunting experience.

6.  Two Days, One Night (Belgium)

The only instance where I jumped with joy when the Oscar nominations were being announced was when Marion Cotillard's name was called out.

Cotillard--so fine in La Vie en Rose, so criminally underused in Hollywood--turns in a performance of towering warmth and feeling as a chronically depressed mother and wife fighting for her job and her pride that deserves more than just a measly Oscar. The new film by Belgium's Dardenne Brothers, Two Days, One Night packs a dramatic punch that cuts straight to the heart. There is a flicker of suspense, a whole lot of suppressed drama, a hint of light humor and an aura of familiarity. But at the core of this deeply empathetic film is Cotillard, whose radiating, nuanced performance conveys volumes of sadness and hopefulness for every second she is on-screen. Notice her triumphant stride, how her face lights up whenever she is happy, how dismally vulnerable everything is when she isn't. It's a measured performance, majestic in its humbleness. The same could be said of the film.

5.  Leviathan (Russia)

Andrey Zvyagintsev's compactly-written Leviathan is a thing of devastating beauty.

It's simultaneously imposing and harrowing, intimate and bleak, an angry and disillusioned critique of contemporary Russia. Zyyagintsev's scripting is flawless, exploring the helplessness and haplessness of a man fighting a losing battle to a corrupt mayor over an ancestral bit of land exhaustively, allowing his audience to hope for his characters but then, in a neat stroke, quashing whatever whit of optimism we had. What stands out in this masterwork is the frequently breathtaking composition of shots. Using landscapes and lighting to magnificent effect, the visual detailing augments the melancholic feel of the film. Though its pacing might be lethargic, the narrative thankfully never meanders. Leviathan may be a depiction of a specific country, but one can't escape the universality of its message.

4.  Boyhood (US)

The most successful gimmick of the year is predictably also the chief contender for the top prize.

Boyhood was Richard Linklater's passion project for eons, a film of overpowering ambition and affinity that placed it in the history books long before it even hit the theaters. I, for one, would definitely love to read a book that documents its journey from a spirited script to a cohesive film that had been in the making for a little over a decade, but I also believe that the curtains need to be pulled on Boyhood before it loses steam through dissections. Linklater is the new maven of coming-of-age films, and Boyhood, while not being his best, is an affectionate survey of pubescence. Inevitably, it's also Linklater's most personal film yet. And why shouldn't it be? It represents a picture of each and every one of us, a variation of who we are. And for the first time, Linklater has made a picture that is more about about us than about himself.

Many find Boyhood to be a slog, but for what it achieves on an emotional level and for its zeal, it certainly isn't a trivial experiment if it's a tedious one.

3.  Force Majeure (Sweden)

I find it hard to digest that this Swedish masterpiece didn't make the final five.

Ruben Ostlund's bitingly funny, acute melodrama about a family's predicament whilst on a skiing holiday is impossible to shake off. A man's failure as a father, husband and a man after a brief moment of cowardice is put under scrutiny and painstakingly analyzed in this psychodrama that is always on the brink of a dramatic eruption, but remains understated till fade-out. It compels its audience to reflect on themselves in a way that is surprisingly organic. Ostlund wisely uses ravishing, somber images of snow-capped mountains, commonplace sounds to fill the silences and a fancy color combination to add layers to his quietly uneasy film. The tonal shifts are delightful in their precision.

A marriage under duress might be a subject that a lot of films have tackled previously, but I cannot remember the last time I have been this enthralled to delve deeper into one.

2.  Goodbye To Language (France/Switzerland)

The new film by Jean-Luc Godard. Jean-Luc Godard. And it is truly avant-garde. I don't know how one reviews or rates one of the most bewitching experiments in film in recent years, but Goodbye To Language, I believe, is more about what the audience feels than what they interpret. Consisting of gorgeously abstract imagery, confounding editing calls, overlaying voiceovers and a quasi-fractured narrative, Godard's diffuse, crammed film is about how we communicate and express through verbal exchanges. It imbues its audience with a feeling of astonishment, of wonder, subjecting us to something so introspective, so unique yet so virtual that one viewing is not enough to exploit the sheer magic of its visuals and ideas. It urges us to cogitate on what it tries to convey through its opaque diegesis. 

The only problem is, I am not even as close to decrypting it in my second viewing as I was in my first, but Goodbye To Language offers us something that film rarely does: an opportunity to see a trailblazer playfully reinventing himself.

1.  The Grand Budapest Hotel (US)

Wes Anderson can never get it wrong, can he?

The auteur, now with eight feature films to his name, has mastered the genre he created with Bottle Rocket in 1996. The Grand Budapest Hotel is his most challenging work yet, and a sui generis experience that reminds us why we love movies in the first place. Like all Wes Anderson marvels, this endearingly quirky, supremely wistful and tremendously poignant fable-like film makes crack use of symmetry, color, locations and characters to create a lushly detailed, resplendent world that one might find hard to leave and forget. It's an act of pampering, but it's pampering we enjoy.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is the quintessential Anderson package, and a film I will keep returning to for years to come.

Handpicks : The Ten Best Hindi Films Of The Year.

I don't remember the last time I said this, but it was a great year for indie films. Last year's Ship Of Theseus, The Lunchbox and Shahid served as three promising pointers that independent cinema is slowly, but surely, finding a footing in an uncaring industry that is still averse to the idea of a brand of cinema rivaling commercial cinema. With a burst of indie films procuring limited commercial releases, one can only hope for this to persist.

While there were some definite surprises this year, I was dispirited to find that the film whose release I was looking forward to ever since I first heard about it had been pushed forward. Perhaps Kanu Behl's Titli, debuting to much brouhaha at Cannes in May, will be a global contender next year. In what one can only label a "Christmas miracle" in the truest sense of the phrase, Anurag Kashyap's dark, dire and dogged crime-drama Ugly, embroiled in a controversy for a long time, made sure we ended a most reassuring year on a cheery high.

Personally, I missed out on a few movies this year. Nisha Pahuja's The World Before Her, a documentary on two Indias seen through the eyes of two very different women, and Amit Masurkar slacker comedy, Sulemani Keeda, about two struggling writers waiting to break into Bollywood were some I regret missing out on.

Anyway, to the list. Here are my favorite films of the year, ranked in the descending order:

10.  Filmistaan (dir.: Nitin Kakkar) / Finding Fanny (dir.: Homi Adajania)

An indie and a surprise.

While Nitin Kakkar's heartwarming debut took us across the border to a land that is besotted with cinema as much as we are, Homi Adajania's bittersweet fantasy fable (with priceless, unusually imprecise Goan accents, take it from a Goan) ambled through some of Goa's most scenic locales. Both films were promoted as comedies, but they went beyond the confines of their genre to deliver a torrent of feeling to go with the occasional laughs. While they catered to the mainstream audiences, one cannot ignore their attempts to bend what "mainstream" means in contemporary Hindi cinema. Though flawed efforts also, Filmistaan and Finding Fanny were invigorating attempts at bring about a change from the usual mundane fares at the multiplexes. And they are on this list because they succeeded in doing so.

9.  PK (dir.: Rajkumar Hirani)

Oh, dear. What we expected, and what was served.

The experience of watching P.K. is like going to a great restaurant, ordering a chef's special but being made to settle for something inferior. It was easily Rajkumar Hirani's weakest film, but his most ambitious one. Some sequences carried his trademark flourish, but some came off as plain ineffectual. Some were brilliantly constructed and performed, but some were shockingly overblown. Still, for the robust arguments alone, P.K. deserved more than just a viewing. It begged rumination. Admittedly, it does channel Umesh Shukla's OMG: Oh My God!, but this one stands its ground proudly without fretting about the kind of response it provokes. I admire.

8.  Haider (dir.: Vishal Bharadwaj)

The Bard-Bharadwaj pairing seems to be an eternal romance.

Whenever the auteur fiddled with the Bard's works previously, he produced pure magic. While Haider is a respectable -- and likably impish -- film in itself, it's not as daunting a cinematic creation as Maqbool or Omkara, I'm afraid, albeit one that is painted on a grander canvas. A lethargically paced funeral should suffice as its description, but it's the setting where Haider excels. A frigid, frosty Kashmir serves as a battleground for imminent bloodshed, and the tension is piercing. And performances. Oh, the performances! The whole cast is magnificent, and that is such an understatement. But words fail me. I just wish Haider were a tauter film. Its greatness lay right there, but it was a bloated, shapeless lump that desperately needed knocking into shape.

7.  Ankhon Dekhi (dir.: Rajat Kapoor)

An engrossing parable that brought a spark into a world we have forgotten exists.

Ankhon Dekhi unfolds in a heartbreakingly nostalgic Delhi of sights and sounds that mysteriously vanished years ago. But Rajat Kapoor, armed with an immaculately-written script that breathes life into a decaying world, brought to us an affable "nutcase" whose story was more edifying than maddening. A broadly philosophical, whimsical film, Ankhon Dekhi is the journey of a travel agent-turned-ideologist who is someone we first laugh at, then get frustrated with but ultimately come to comprehend. And goddamn me if I didn't walk out of this film feeling as if this was the most progressive sermon I had ever sat through. It is Kapoor's best since 2008's Mithya, and his most personal.

6.  Ugly (dir.: Anurag Kashyap)

The aptest titled film of the year, folks.

In Anurag Kashyap's fraught world of slimeballs, everything is ugly. Guns are pulled, cheeks get smacked, profanities flow like mud, people get roughed up habitually. His depiction of the nastiness of human character is perturbing enough, but it is also endlessly fascinating. Ugly is an sample of what he can achieve with little indulgence and no flamboyance. An enthralling character study of a bunch of abhorrent, desperate characters trying to outwit each other for egomaniacal pleasures, it is a singularly distressing, alarming and murky tale of deceit and narcissism. And it leaves one spellbound. I was wowed.

5.  Dekh Tamasha Dekh (dir: Feroz Abbas Khan)

It's such a shame that a lot of people are still unaware of the finest horror film of the year.

Theatre veteran Feroz Abbas Khan's second feature film, Dekh Tamasha Dekh is a brilliant black comedy; a satire brimming with absurdist elements, horrific episodes and gut-wrenching truths. It showcases a part of the country tucked away in the badlands of Maharashtra, where communal tensions flare up at the slightest provocation, and the violence they lead to is met with frustrating nonchalance. It's a sour detail to digest, but it reeks of the truth. At times a tad too theatrical, Dekh Tamasha Dekh is simultaneously sickening and rollicking until the second-half kicks in, and it turns into a full-fledged spook story. Shafaat Khan's pithy dialogue and a cluster of wonderful performances (the finest of which is a cameo by old-timer Sudhir Pandey, and isn't he a beauty!) make this the year's bravest, most important film. And the scripting is absolutely spotless.

It's nothing less than a miracle that Dekh Tamasha Dekh, a film that could so easily have been a victim of livid controversies but only if it had grabbed more eyeballs, found a commercial release. It left me so enraged and yet so frightened because it was familiar. And when was the last time you walked out of a film frightened because it was familiar?

4.  Miss Lovely (dir.: Ashim Ahluwalia)

Oh, the irony of the title.

An exercise in indulgence, Ahluwalia's gorgeous and thickly atmospheric arthouse drama was a sleazy, searing, claustrophobic, melancholic and often bitterly funny odyssey through Bombay's porn industry of the '80s. Centered around the splintered relationship of two brothers, Miss Lovely was a tale of half-hearted promises, loneliness, brooding characters and their wretched thirst for fame and attention, all crafted into an elegant, poignant film. The sluggish pacing may bore some, frustrate many, but there is no denying that Ahluwalia's dedication to craft and research is astounding. This surely won't be the last time I dig a spot in my schedule for Miss Lovely, which also features a superlative Nawazuddin Siddiqui, if that particular bit interests you.

3.  Dedh Ishqiya (dir.: Abhishek Chaubey)

The cheek of the title is supremely delightful.

I felt that one would be hard pressed to make a sequel by matching the character and tone of the marvelously earthy Ishqiya, but I needn't have worried. Abhishek Chaubey's nearly flawless second film is a riot; a painfully wistful, boisterous and polished film in contrast to his exceedingly crude debut. I don't know if -- and such a case is rare -- it is an improvement to its predecessor, but Dedh Ishqiya is a sophisticated illusion of a long dead world of nawabs and begums, an illusion I would sure like to buy into. It retains some of the roguishness of Ishqiya that made it such a ravishing experience, but it's an affectionately made film clearly in love with itself. And in many ways, it is the perfect sequel.

2.  Queen (dir.: Vikas Bahl)

Only the most dreadfully dopey might find Queen annoying.

Vikas Bahl asserted that he didn't know how to "make a film" when he took charge of crafting the finest crowd-pleaser to come strutting in years, but I find his statement a bit paradoxical. Queen is a film of disarming confidence, fashioned carefully to win one over and it does in its first half-hour and spends the next hour-and-a-half fine-tuning the formula it has sprung from. Kangana Ranaut not only gives a nonpareil performance, the best of the year, but also the best of her career. She makes the film what it is. And she's also one of the folks responsible for the frisky dialogue. There is a thin line between mainstream and offbeat, and Queen toys with it. It's a film of such eternal allure and warmth, rooted so deep in Indian culture that the traditionalists and modernists can sit beside each other and enjoy it as much.

1.  Katiyabaaz (dir.: Deepti Kakkad & Fahad Mustafa)

Kanpur doesn't have electricity. This darkened battleground may have seen many a skirmish, but in the best Hindi film I have seen all year, there hasn't been one more dryly amusing.

But it has Loha Singh, a stocky "Robin Hood" who nimbly scales electric poles and fixes illegal wires to supply impromptu electricity to power-starved locals, who idolize the chap. It's an intensely fascinating subject. But Katiyabaaz, this ace mockumentary that blew my mind like no other Hindi film this year, isn't about this strange hero; it's about his even-steven face-off with Ritu Maheshwari, CEO of KESCO, an electrical power company battling debts. Maheshwari's adamant approach to rid the company of its debts leads her to go up against this locally loved superman. What ensues is a battle between anarchism and autocracy, a droll battle, a fuming battle, where no side wants to back off, that leaves one drained. Kakkad's and Mustafa's attention to trivial details of everyday life in Kanpur and their detached exploration of the subject only amplify the eventual effect it will have on you.

However, for a film that gives one the impression of it being a pacy thriller, Katiyabaaz is also a desperately sad picture. Loha Singh's domestic life is pitiful, but not to the extent of it being a drag. When required, Katiyabaaz has emotional depth by the dozen. This tragicomedy is a brilliantly balanced, no-frills outlook on Kanpur's power crisis that doesn't preach or teach. Only engages. After 2012's Supermen Of Malegaon and Celluloid Man, it is undoubtedly an indication of Indian documentaries finally coming of age.

Review : Anurag Kashyap's "Ugly" is a dazzling nightmare.

Ugly is a fantastic ordeal, a gripping police procedural furled in a haze of soiled consciences, sardonic dialogue and obnoxious characters, and one of the best films of the year.

There's also something rather odd about this Mumbai opus, but I can't finger what exactly. Perhaps, it's this: it's the most un-Kashyap film the auteur has made in his directorial career spanning a little over a decade. There is little indulgence, hardly any bloodletting and, for once, his flamboyant style of filmmaking is covert. With his typically despicable, irascible troop of characters for whom domestic violence and violence of the mind is a way of living, Kashyap weaves a hellish character study around the disappearance of a little girl, but he doesn't focus as much on the "disappearance" as he does on its repercussions.

Ugly is a story that underlines the depths that humanity can sink to when it is propped up against a bare wall. It is aimed to appall, to agonize, smeared by the grime of a menacing Mumbai, a city that no one knows how to capture on a camera better than Kashyap. In the bleak byways of the city (splendidly shot by Greek cinematographer, Nikolai Andritsakis), the story unfolds in a stream of aimless and helpless exchanges and blame games, occasionally coupled with helpings of black humor and a plethora of cusses. It's exactly the kind of film one would expect from Kashyap, and he knows this which is why he doesn't make it like he usually does, and that's where Ugly stands out. It wallows you in a world that Kashyap has familiarized his devotees with, and yet manages to be a seemingly novel take on the internal and eternal ugliness of a human mind.

The complications the disappearance leads to are unforeseen. As her panicky father and his friend go the the police station to lodge a formal complaint, the blase cop is captivated by the wonders of modern technology. It's slightly ruffling to see someone supposed to bail us out of trouble being fascinated by something so trivial in a time of bother, but this agitating sequence is beautifully effectuated by sharp, street-smart dialogue and diligently controlled performances that make it scarily amusing. Ugly bursts with such details frequently, allowing the vexations of its characters to flow freely until they get to you.

The girl's father, a struggling actor, is someone we sympathize with until, in a shrewdly placed flashback, we find out about his dark side, which cripples our sympathy for him in a flicker. His friend -- an ungodly believer, a detail of screaming irony -- too has a nasty side to his unusually calm demeanor. The girl's alcoholic, suicidal mother, divorced from her first husband, has cornered herself in a monotonous marriage with a tough cop, who hates her first husband, the struggler, with a vengeance. While the mother uses her second husband to shield herself from the piling frustrations of her first, her deprived brother tries to involve himself to earn himself a quick penny. They all have odious consciences that are masked by their concern for the vanished girl, but Ugly is an exploration of the moral monsters lurking inside them. A dark, depressing and dreary exploration that gets increasingly flustering with each passing moment, finally reaching a point where you feel as utterly impotent as the characters do. That's where I realized how good a film -- no, how great a film -- Ugly is.

The performances are sublime. Each character is vitalized wonderfully by the actors portraying them, and each emotion is articulated by finer nuances. The screenplay is structured expertly, each twist spaced out well, each character fleshed out brilliantly. The dialogue is so sharp, it could cut glass. While it was used in Kashyap's previous effort, Gangs Of Wasseypur, to simply add color to a grey world, it is used here to spectacular effect to propel the story forward. This is some of Kashyap's sharpest writing to date.

When Ugly culminates, one realizes that it actually was a deceivingly simple story all along and was intended to be a lesson in morality. And as a character study, it's a marvelous success. It unnerves, it engages and in its closing moments, it revolts. It leaves one a lot wiser and a little insecure, just as it is meant to. Sniff around for a seamless plot, however, and it will disappoint you.

Ugly is in the same vein as Kashyap's Paanch and Black Friday, and it is in that genre where he towers over his peers. Its abrupt commercial release, the last of the year, may have brightened our Christmases, but it certainly hasn't made them rosier. Many will leave the theater loathing it for its guts. And that reaffirms why Anurag Kashyap is one of our most treasured talents.

Review : Rajkumar Hirani's "P.K." is endearing but a bit too theatrical.

Rajkumar Hirani has spawned a brand of cinema that has many takers, that opens intriguing discussions and that can easily be a game changer as far as Hindi movies are concerned. He sermonizes, amuses and stirs, layers his plots with melodrama and has a knack for lacing them with throwaway gags. His films may be proudly theatrical, but they are not unnecessarily so. Hirani is a part of a phenomenon. His films are genuinely earnest in their quest to question the absurdities of life, of a system of beliefs and seek answers to questions that seem improbable, the answers to which delight us. Like the loony characters he creates, he has a certain way of seeing things that forms the nucleus of his films, and a certain way of exploiting what he sees. That is how he does what he does.

P.K. is no different. With the good part of the hype on its side and a weighty topic on its shoulders, it swaggers through a series of convivial episodes to a predictable conclusion, but it is a ride that is as flawed as it is thought-provoking.

It has neither the unflappable magnetism of the Munnabhai series nor the pure wackiness of 3 Idiots. But it is ambition and aplomb that eventually propel it over the finishing line.

In its opening moments, P.K. plays out in a manner that one would expect from Hirani. A voiceover -- critical in his previous film 3 Idiots, has no relevance whatsoever in this one, I'm afraid -- illuminates how an alien is stranded in the arid deserts of Rajasthan (I groaned, for aliens in a Hindi film look outlandish, but I needn't have worried) and is swiftly robbed of his only possession, thereby establishing an apt diegesis. In an independent strand, an inconsolable Indian girl, a victim of religious speculations, has to give up on her romance with her Pakistani partner. When the girl, who turns into a journalist upon her arrival in her home country, senses a story in the alien's attempts to retain his lost possession and realizes the worth of his curiosity, P.K. transfigures into a prudent, riotous and ultimately edifying satire.

Though the portion before P.K.'s foray into a full-blown satire is a bit cluttered, everything blends in seamlessly after. One thing that catches your eye almost instantly is its doughty approach to the material and its airy manner of expression. Living in a country that is oversensitive to the matters pertaining to religion and godmen, I was pleasantly surprised to find that P.K. has no qualms about mocking those who generalize in their name. Umesh Shukla's engrossing OMG: Oh My God! had similar intentions before it fell prey to a desire to please the believers in the audience and successfully hinder any kind of controversy, and hence ended up undoing whatever dynamic arguments it made. 

P.K. follows a similar pattern argument-wise, but it has a tastefulness that makes it easier to digest and harder to dislike. Some cleverly assembled sequences are apprising and hilarious, like a particularly lengthy one in which the protagonist is baffled with different kinds of people embracing different religions, hence different gods, who come with rules to comply in a house of worship. It's a tricky idea, but Hirani does it with such subtlety that it has the gentle pinching effect coupled with chuckles, which was the desired outcome, perhaps. The profundity found in the protagonist's naive queries is often overwhelming, a splendid bullseye. It is cathartic to see someone take intended potshots at the country's willingness to submit to religious barriers, but it does it in a refreshingly tolerant way. 

While P.K. works wonderfully well as a cogent satire in the first-half, it is the second-half where it stops being perceptive and lighthearted. As godmen culture, existing so freely in this country, is brought under the microscope, it switches to a more conventional narrative. There is an excellent sequence early in the second-half, but the lack of such potent punches makes that second-half drab. The climax is surprisingly clumsy for a filmmaker of Hirani's prestige, when the true face of godmen is unmasked in the flurry of a tear-soaked reunion and silent change of hearts, a typically theatrical touch but one that seems horribly out-of-place for a film that had little to no melodrama throughout. Or a dispensable bolt from the blue right before that. Or, as is the case in countless Hindi films, a half-baked romance that threatens to crumble the likability of the two primary protagonists in its final moments, but thankfully does not. Although these are relatively harmless defects when you look at the bigger picture, their questionable presence does irk somewhat.

P.K. has a couple of winsome elements (Sanjay Dutt's cameo is lovely, and personally my favorite part in the film) and some that don't work as convincingly. The screenplay is a bit frail in parts and heavily relies at times on coincidences, but the reasoning it brings forth deserves to be lauded. Also, rarely does it happen during a Hindi film that one sits in a theater packed with people; atheists, agnostics and believers who conform to different religions, laugh at themselves when a caricature of them presents itself on the big screen.

The tragedy here is that this approach works only in film; in the real world, these actions would have led to brief acts of violence and disorder. That makes P.K. a timely wonder.

Review : Pawel Pawlikowski's "Ida" is melancholic and unforgettable.

Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida is a film of mystique; there's nothing exotic about it, but its potency is astonishing. Often, in film, we've been on numerous trips with a character who has lived a fabricated life and who naively digs into their past in search of the truth, and the bleak surprises await them. How good this kind of film eventually turns out to be hinges on how startling the revelations are, and how profoundly we let them hassle us. 

In Ida's case, the revelations are more dramatic than disquieting, but the sheer fluidity of its storytelling makes it an indelible experience. 

In spirit, it channels Denis Villeneuve's stunning debut Incendies, a singularly harrowing tale about a pair of twins who unmask their dead mother's cryptic past, but the comparison stops there. Pawlikowski's handling of the material is much more understated in stark contrast to Villeneuve's brutally frank modus operandi. There is no shock value, there are no loose threads. He sticks to narrating the story with as little pontificating as possible, without digressing and without emphasizing much on the disclosures. It's the characters he aims to create. And with characters so humongously, delicately multi-layered, how can one not be intrigued? On a road-trip with these two baffling female protagonists, we virtually decipher the unspoken subtleties of the human mind, and how it reacts to certain muted afflictions.

Ida is a bare film; scarce characters govern its plot, the exchanges between them are terse and the wintery landscape of Poland the film is set against makes it look dismally frigid and cramped. It's a film shot in gorgeously gloomy black-and-white, a chic touch, and scored unassumingly that complements its appearance. The imagery is aesthetic, of course; it chronicles a distinct story of its own, of post-war Poland and of nostalgia-swamped glimpses into a world we have only read about, a resourceful supplement in a film where dialogue is kept to a minimum to amplify the obscurity of its characters. And the performances (Agata Kulesza, in particular, is fabulous) are exacting and poignant. 

In the end, when the stirring revelations are done and dusted with, Pawlikowski takes Ida a step further. He proceeds to scrutinize how it has swayed his characters, exploring their state of mind with dedication and deliberation that puts Ida in the league of the best films of the year. The final half-hour is an act of reaffirming why it is a film that stands out in a stream of other films alike. Can a weak rebellion against a life of illusion diminish the harsher versions of the truth? Pawlikowski unrelentingly asks this question several times in his perusal of his lead character, but it echoes loudest in the film's dying minutes.

Ida is an expressionistic gem of a film about self-identity and forlornness that warrants lengthy reflection.

Review : Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" is a worthy sprint through adolescence.

"Coming-of-age" is a genre in film that is often dismissed as being too facile, but has more variations than what we usually surmise. In American cinema specifically, we have the kind that John Hughes served with generous helpings of humor coupled with disarming candor (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off), the kind that John Singleton showcased with such sensitivity, starkness and cognition (Boyz N the Hood) and the kind that was brutally, uncomfortably real and dour, the perverse sort that made everyone descry the obvious talents of Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale).

Which brings us to Richard Linklater, the crackerjack who has shaped a reputation of being the modern master of the genre, whose Dazed and Confused doggedly solidified that assertion. And the good news is, Boyhood, while not being his best, is certainly a doozy experiment that is emotionally productive.

It's wondrous for the umpteenth time how Linklater cheekily manages to find allure in the ordinaries of life, in our conversations, hushed and yelled, the exhibition of our suppressed emotions, and how in the end we are only a minuscule part of a larger cosmos. Observing a boy from the ages of seven to eighteen, scrutinizing his conduct in a life he never chose as he grows up is a figurative, audacious move, and who better to do this than Linklater? Time is his muse. And time has never looked so benign in any film of his.

The approach is casual. The conversations invoke an overpowering sense of deja vu, riddled with dry, throwaway humor and are nailed with an unassuming earnestness that is hard to define. Really, it's a skin Linklater is comfortable walking around in, and he hurtles through twelve years without missing a beat. His Mason is a figure of familiarity, perhaps because he is, in many ways, a specimen that represents each and every one of us, and that makes Boyhood an engaging chronicle. We are looking at us, a more realized version of ourselves in a film that aims for nothing more except bringing to us a picture of what lies beyond what we see in the mirror.

However, Boyhood also feels like a rushed film. I only wish it wasn't so eager to make Mason grow up, and then slacken the pace so that the "childhood" part seemed like a blaze in a reasonably long film. But this is only a minor niggle. Cramming adolescence in a film is never a cinch, especially in one that has been in the making for a little over a decade, and, rationally speaking, there are going to be loose ends that were forsaken at some point. Linklater's directorial flourishes are completely absent as well, giving the film its plain vanilla look. He was never one who would be remembered for his skill in handling a camera. But I wonder, would Boyhood have been the same if Linklater's expressive touches were present? It's a document of an ordinary soul, would visual artistry have killed it or enhanced it?

The selling point of the film, the gimmick that has irreversibly glued itself to it, will place it in my memory for a long time. It's an experiment of towering warmth, even though it doesn't seek to tell a story. It's anything but philosophical, more willing to talk about life than find meaning in it. And, remarkable as it seems, a surprisingly simple film.

On his excursion through adolescence, Linklater's Boyhood is a collage of the little moments he saw as he whizzed past them.