カテゴリー: Drama films
Filmed in a remote Bhutan village, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom captures a way of life that is rapidly vanishing. Its Oscar-nominated director talks about growing up in a country where prosperity is measured by happiness, not GDPIt took eight days fo…
Saim Sadiq’s film explores the unsettled social and sexual identities of a widower and his children with delicacy and tendernessThe right way to feel love, and the right way to feel part of a family, are the insoluble difficulties at the heart of this …
Entertaining new version of Pakistan cult movie follows a young noble boy spirited away to a poor village when a rival clan slaughters his parentsImagine Game of Thrones crossed with Gladiator and you’ll have something like this entertainingly old fash…
Pushkar-Gayatri’s reboot of their 2017 hit improves on the original thanks to two zingy lead performances from Saif Ali Khan and Hrithik RoshanVikram Vedha was a Tamil hit in 2017, a twisty, semi-subversive thriller in which a bad-ass Chennai cop and …
Despite its visual appeal, the characters in Czech animator Michaela Pavlátová’s clash-of-values family drama struggle to get past sorrowful stereotypesPost-Taliban Kabul is seen through the eyes of a Czech bride in this new film from acclaimed animati…
Director Advait Chandan is too literal in his adaptation of the 90s classic but finds a warmth and political honesty the original lacksBollywood megastar Aamir Khan’s “Hanks-ish likability” is tested to the limit by his new project with his Secret Sup…
The struggles and triumphs of a 1950s Kolkata family whose highest earner is a woman is told with marvellous lucidity in an optimistic masterpieceSatyajit Ray’s magnificent movie from 1963 is now rereleased as part of a Ray retrospective at London’s BF…
Fans and critics welcome multilingual, pan-Indian, historical-action-romance blockbuster from the renowned Telugu film-maker SS RajamouliThe cinema aisles are lit up with the screens of a dozen mobile phones as a third of the audience shuffles in unapo…
Drama about a reporter who knows too much about a gruesome traffic incident checks off a grocery list of urgent questions without examining themA young girl gets run over at the beginning of Suresh Triveni’s Jalsa, a brutal event that brings to mind Pa…
Drama about a reporter who knows too much about a gruesome traffic incident checks off a grocery list of urgent questions without examining themA young girl gets run over at the beginning of Suresh Triveni’s Jalsa, a brutal event that brings to mind Pa…
Alia Bhatt stars as schmaltz and spectacular fantasy-musical setpieces balance the gruesomeness of this true-crime yarnHere is a luxuriously sleazy-sentimental melodrama about the Mumbai underworld, directed with gusto by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, the pow…
There are shades of 90s erotic thrillers in this enjoyable if overcooked tale of romantic dissatisfaction and infidelityRomance in your 30s is no puppy-love business: youthful idealism ebbs with each passing year, while regrets gradually encroach. Sett…
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s film has high ambition but dodges complexity in favour of overheated melodramaPartly set in the Mumbai underworld, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s boxing drama aims at Raging Bull grit but has an unfortunately irresistible drift tow…
Dharmasena Pathiraja’s 1978 drama, now revived, elegantly broaches universal themes with its story of city slickers disturbing a fishing villagePainstakingly restored from the sole surviving, badly damaged 35mm print, this realist drama from 1978 is we…
The re-release of Mira Nair’s unflinching 1988 story of street children, prostitutes and drug dealers shows it has lost none of its powerMira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! from 1988 was developed through journalistic research into the street children of Mumbai…