1. Ganpath: This was a not film. It was a nightmare. Months after sitting through it in a numb haze, I get up shivering in the night mumbling the G word. Unconfirmed reports claim that several inmates of mental asylums across India suffer from a rare psychological disease know as Gunpathology. Jokes aside, are there no laws against this blatant abuse of the screen by the selfstyled Spielbergs of Filmistan? The plunder makes you wonder! Vikas Bahl still roams free after this atrocity against mankind which featured Tiger Shroff as a dystopian dude dividing his time between two futuristic worlds which were hard to tell apart. They both looked muddy and blotchy, as though a wild boar had defecated on the frames. As for putting Amitabh Bachchan in a work of such woeful mediocrity,a special committee should probe into that crime.
2. Adipurush: This is an act of desecration so unforgivable that only Lord Rama’s intervention can condone the crime. More ravaged than ravishing, louder than the loudest shrieks of pain heard in Nazi concentration camps, Adipurush was Ramayan redux in a very perverse way. here are vague resemblances to Valmiki’s script. But Om Raut’s screenplay plays around with the original, and not very playfully. What really does this version of the Ramayan in is solemnity of the tone.Adipurush might have worked as a snazzy super-sized spoof on the original. As a dead-serious out-take on the Ramayan, Adipurush is disastrously bad. The war sequences, the backbone of this Rama-Ravana faceoff, are hedged by low-hanging stunts that seem designed to provide instant thrills to the frontbenchers.Writer-director Om Raut forgets there are no frontbenchers anymore. That the average movie watcher can easily tell the difference between Game Of Thrones and a game of groans.
3. Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan: This is not just any bad Bollywood product. It is special . It stars Salman Bhaijaan. It glorifies his stardom to the point of shameless hegemony. Every actor, and there are dozens and dozens in every nook and corner wondering what they are doing , seems to be in a competition for hamming. Our Bhaijaan is not even part of the competition. He doesn’t even try to act. He doesn’t need to. Salman ‘Bhaijaan’ Khan preens, smirks, blushes, roars weeps and finally giggles when it’s time to tie the knot. But not before gallons of bloodshed in fights that are staged so clumsily they look like a mock-drill for a village-level wrestling competition.Rumour has it that Bhaijaan ghost-directed this mess. If I were Fahad Samji I would take that as a godsent backhanded compliment.
4. Neeyat: Have you ever seen a whodunit where you just don’t care whodunit? Neeyat was so dreadfully dull and Vidya Balan’s Jane Marple act so vapid it made Charlie Chopra look like Sherlock Holmes. Balan is is a no-nonsense detective in a plot that is nothing but nonsense. With her Sadhana fringe and Streisand pout (both Sadhana and Streisand should sue although one is no more alive) Balan makes a good sleuth, alas,in search of good plot. This whodunit has more plot-holes than one can count on one’s fingers and toes.For a crime thriller the writing is shockingly off-kilter , as though writers decided to have fun with Agatha Christie, and never mind the first murder victim is logic. It’s the body count that counts.
5. Gandhi Godse Ek Yuddh: It is an audaciously fascinating what-if premise: suppose Gandhi had survived Godse’s bullet? Suppose Gandhi had resolved to forgive Godse and bring him around to his own way of thinking, and in the process, suppose Gandhi learnt a few lessons himself on being a true Vaishnav who understand peer parayi(others’ pain).Hats off to Raj Kumar Santoshi for daring to dream. But the film suffers from a seriously flawed dramatic diversion in the form of a love story that is knitted into the hypothetical face-off between the Mahatma and his assailant. The romantic subplot featuring newcomers Tanisha Santoshi(the director’s daughter) and Anuj Saini as seriously committed childhood sweethearts torn apart by the obstinacy of the Mahatma, puts a brake on what could have been a powerful debate on Gandhian and non-Gandhian versions of socio-political protest.What was the Mahatma’s take on nepotism? I guess we’d never know.