Anupama Chopra Reviews

Loveyatri is a 1990s film being released in 2018\. Twenty years ago, Hindi cinema specialized in NRIs, Hindu festivals, Indian values, large families and strict fathers who would invariably let go of their daughter’s hand and say, "Ja beta, jee le apni zindagi." Loveyatri is all about Aayush. He gets the traditional Bollywood hero entry. And debutant director Abhiraj Minawala ensures that Aayush g...

Imprisonment is a recurring motif in Love Sonia – a film about sex trafficking. Women live and work in cage-like rooms. Films like this are a tightrope act. The material is inherently ugly. And the narrative needs to convey the horror and tragedy without making the viewer turn away. Thankfully Tabrez conceals as much has he reveals. He has spent more than a decade nurturing the project and working...

Pihu is Trapped meets Home Alone without the anguish or the humour. A toddler, Pihu, wakes up next to her inert mother. Her father is not at home. Pihu shoves and calls and cries but her mom won’t open her eyes. It is now up to the two-year-old to survive the horrors of a modern high-rise apartment.

Green Book is inspired by a true story. The title refers to a travel book for African-Americans – it advised them on places where they could stay and eat in the Southern States. The Green Book is an awful artefact of a not-so-distant past but the film barely touches upon it. The film plays like a feel-good, lightweight treatise on racism and healing, which also makes it a crowd-pleaser.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a frantic movie – visually and narratively. So much happens to so many characters and the film is stuffed with so many marvels that by the end, I was both confused and exhausted. But I will admit that the sight of Hogwarts made me jump with delight. I love the Harry Potter universe and I wish I could recommend this film with greater enthusiasm. It’s c...

The film, adapted from Garrard Conley’s memoir, is both efficient and effective. What I liked best about Boy Erased is that the film is driven by empathy. There are no outsized villains here – even Victor Sykes, played nicely by Edgerton himself, the bulldozer who runs the therapy program, has texture.

At one point in Bhaiaji Superhit, we arrive at a flashback in which Sunny Deol, as the uneducated Banaras don named Bhaiaji is serenading his wife, Sapna played by Preity Zinta, by reciting Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. He’s wearing a shiny, black velvet coat and stumbling over the English. It was at this precise moment that I started to feel more pain for Sunny than I was feeling for myself. Of co...

A Star is Born is a thing of beauty. It’s gorgeously romantic but also authentic and emotionally searing. Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga are both brilliant and heartbreaking. The film is of course a love story but it’s also a portrait of creativity and commerce and the difficulty of protecting the former from the latter. Through the film, Cooper’s character Jackson Maine talks about the importance o...

Eela, as the title tells us, is a nightmarish helicopter parent. She hovers over every aspect of her son’s life. Just like in the Melissa McCarthy film Life of the Party, Eela ends up going to college with her child. Which of course pushes her suffocating ways to the next level. The film is based on the Gujarati play Beta Kaagdo by Anand Gandhi who has co-written the screenplay with Mitesh Shah. T...

Gold is a fictional account of a real incident. I’m not sure how many people are aware of this victory so applause to Reema for bringing it to light. The film is handsomely produced. The period details are in place and despite some dull stretches, the narrative has hold. In the second half though, the wobbling becomes more precarious. The tonality alternates between dramatic and comic.

Gali Guleiyan is a film about a maze - both mental and physical. Khuddoos lives in one of the narrow lanes in old Delhi. It’s a vast and bewildering network of homes scrunched up against each other. A lesser actor would have asked more blatantly for our sympathy or given us some comfort to clutch on to. But Manoj Bajpayee understands that Khuddoos is broken irreparably. His mind is a fog of memori...

Sriram Raghavan is Hindi cinema’s thriller master. His films are filled with dark and dirty people – criminals and gamblers, murderers and conmen. His films are also filled with references to older Hindi films. But in Andhadhun, Sriram takes the homage further. Anil Dhawan, star of 70s pulp classics like Chetna and Darwaza, plays a version of himself – a yesteryear star who spends too much time re...