'This is not a bolt from the blue.'

Aseem Chhabra watched some great films and some huge disappointments in 2021.

The failure of Decoupled is that, as it deals almost solely in 'snapshots of insight', it fails to showcase how life flows, how the world goes round, how things unfold, feels Rohit Sathish Nair.

Two men smiling, eyeing each other as they briefly let their guard down, with no care of what the world around them is thinking, that has almost never been shown in a Bollywood film, notes Aseem Chhabra.

Gehraiyaan seems to be aurally thin, which serves as a clue to the larger issues plaguing the movie, observes Rohit Sathish Nair.

Subhash K Jha celebrates Ajay Devgn as the movie star turns 53.

On Kapil Sharma's 41st birthday, Subhash K Jha looks back on the comic's fall and resurrection.

The simplicity of the model that was the original, which allowed it to glide with grace, has been foregone, observes Rohit Sathish Nair.

What did Alia have that Ranbir's previous girlfriends did not? Mom Neetu Kapoor's blessings, observes Subhash K Jha.

'If I don't act for a week I become edgy, restless and moody.'Subhash K Jha salutes Manoj Bajpayee, actor extraordinaire, on his 53rd birthday.

Get your lowdown on what's going on in the world of movies with Subhash K Jha.

If Irrfan could have been our finest professor of empirical philosophy, and Nawaz is our foremost poet of that space halfway between the gutter and the stars, then Jaideep Ahlawat has to be our greatest artist-scientist, asserts Sreehari Nair.

Ranveer is loud, but not shrill, notes Subhash K Jha.As in singing, in acting holding your pitch in the higher notes is a Himalayan task.Ranveer resides on the highest notes of the musical mountain and still manages to be coherent, fluent and persuasive.

Pellissery's women continue to express the beauty in our common humanity. And often, these women go so far into expressing our hopes, desires, absurdities and follies that they end up acting at variance with the ethical prescriptions of our age. And this, I believe, is precisely why they remain "invisible" to a whole bunch of viewers, says Sreehari Nair.

I have heard cynics say that Priyanka Chopra Jonas as we know her today is the creation of a PR machinery, but that is rather a poor reading of a determined woman and the work she has done to get to where she is.Aseem Chhabra salutes the movie star on her 40th birthday on July 18.

'Javed Akhtar, Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi have collectively brought more pride and honour to our country than the entire film fraternity put together.''Sir, the names you have taken are institutions, pillars of India's popular art, symbolising the very essence of humanism and nationalism.'

Nobody else needs to boycott Bollywood, they are doing a pretty good job of digging up their own foundation, notes Deepa Gahlot.

Long before she won royalty rights for playback singers, there was an undisclosed incident in Lataji's life where she not only put a male colleague in place, but also refused to sing with him thereafter.

I spent almost all my life trying to figure out how anyone could express so many shades of human feeling in her voice, wonders Subhash K Jha.

Ariyippu drives home the point that nothing can force you to leave the path of righteousness, discovers Utkarsh Mishra.

Let us get high on Pathaan and his simple-minded antics, sure, but let us also take a moment to think about Jim who, with that one cunning piece of dialogue, goes on to boldly state that patriotism is a many-hued thing, observes Sreehari Nair.

Shah Rukh had outgrown the roles that made him a star -- the menacing, obsessive lover in Darr, the regular guy in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na or the new age boyfriend in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.By the time he entered his 50s, he was struggling to find his feet, explains Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.

'He didn't have a single mean bone in his body.''He never had a negative word about anybody, not even those who harmed him.'

RRR threw a lifeline, or so it seemed -- to a world that was down in the dumps. Keeravani and his Naatu Naatu just happened to be in the right place at the right time, notes Saibal Chatterjee.

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam is a masterpiece, and like most masterpieces of the cinema, it's a great act of folly, observes Sreehari Nair.

The question 'Who was/were behind Aditha Karikalan's killing?' will continue to remain a historic mystery despite Mani Ratnam setting out to unravel it in his own way, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.

Kindness and compassion is all you need to survive and build your life. And that is what makes 2018's Kerala story so relevant, notes Divya Nair.

Sirf Ek Banda Kaafi Hai reminds us that we haven't run out of instances where even the most vulnerable can secure justice against the mighty, applauds Utkarsh Mishra.

'He's always been an all-inspiring kind of director that nobody can surpass,' R Madhavan tells Subhash K Jha about Mani Ratnam.

One of Hindi cinema's most high-profile couples celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on June 3.

'Cinema or the sentiment of a people, disgusted by contemporary politics and wanting to feel whole by collectively recalling a moment of great difficulty that was also a cause for togetherness?', asks Shyam G Menon.

Even as our tier-2 and tier-3 cities become increasingly well-mapped, and well-documented through myriad tech-driven data, the Indian film-maker's dominantly urban gaze turns to regions not crowded by data, area codes, or directions, observes Debarghya Sanyal.

None of R D Burman's collaborations was as rewarding and resplendent as with Gulzar, who turns 89 today, August 18, 2023, says Subhash K Jha.

We are back to being a country that talks about box office numbers as the measure for what an audience's real feelings about a movie are, laments Sreehari Nair.

'No small artistic film can even hope to win, except, maybe, as random tokenism,' asserts Deepa Gahlot.

As Mahesh Bhatt turns 75 on September 20, Subhash K Jha calls him the 'eternal seeker of truth in cinema and in life'.

There is no plot, no central story line or theme. It appears Atlee felt if he put a Shah Rukh Khan (there are two of them actually!) on screen doing just about anything, the film would sell, sighs Nitin Sathe.

'For god's sake, portray the armed forces in the correct manner,' asserts IAF veteran Air Commodore Nitin Sathe after watching Tejas.

She is superior to 90 percent of the performing fraternity and she knows it.Subhash K Jha salutes the actor who turns 52 on November 4.

At the Leo fete, Vijay had this also to tell his fans: 'I know you all are in my heart. But today, I also know that I am also in the hearts of all of you...'A typical politician's line, did you say, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.

For someone like me who studied Sam so intently, if a lump could form in the throat during the emotive scenes, I think the cast did a superb job, notes Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).

Be it Kabir Singh or Ranvijay Singh, alpha males are nothing but grown men in diapers, observes Durba Dhyani.

'As I watched Mammootty 'try out' Mathew Devassy, I could hear from my theatre seat the ready-made appreciation of the liberal press, their applause for the great actor having flirted with queerness on screen.''But it is a flirtation and nothing more, for I could not detect in Devassy any hint of love, not for his homosexual lover, not for his wife,,' observes Sreehari Nair.

As Yesudas turns 84 on January 10, Subhash K Jha salutes the legend.

While the country is gripped by Ram Mandir frenzy, Danish Husain -- without shouting from the rooftops -- silently staged his opinion with this play on one of India's best-known poets, observes Neeta Kolhatkar.

'I somehow felt that Muzaffar Ali was in Aligarh to feel the pulse of the Muslim youth, especially in the darker and harsher times that India is passing through,' notesMohammad Sajjad.

What follows is essentially a long scene set in a single location, and you watch in amazement as the scene grows into one of Indian cinema's funniest and most spectacular pieces of sustained craftsmanship, accumulating emotional power and subtext, growing wings and claws, becoming its own beast, applauds Sreehari Nair.

Entertainers can be good politicians if they treat the citizens as the audience, and treat their job like a live show, and work hard to make sure the audience likes them, asserts Sandeep Goyal.

The reasons are too private to be discussed at a round table, listed out during a seminar, or uncovered in an academic course.A proud but insomniac connoisseur murmuring in his sleep may do a better job of explaining the phenomenon than an expert on a podium. Sreehari Nair airs his thoughts.

Watching Aavesham is like sprinting through the whole history of our mass-masala movies and seeing it in a new light, notes Sreehari Nair.And this, incidentally, is the story of Fahadh Faasil's career too.