Balaji's Thots

As a sports movie, the broad outline of Dangal is quite formulaic. We have a coach who initially alienates his students with his tough coaching methods but they eventually come around and his training methods help them be victorious. But small changes in the screenplay and uniformly solid performances across the board hide the formulaic […]

Dilwale‘s promos focused almost entirely on the Shah Rukh Khan-Kajol pairing, making us wonder if the film would be a mature love story recalling their most famous film DDLJ. But its Rohit Shetty, the director behind Chennai Express, at the helm and so Dilwale actually feels a lot like Baasha as it kicks off with Raj Bhai(Shah Rukh […]

The 2016 National awards were announced today. What stood out for me immediately was the fact that I was familiar with all the major winners. The lists of winners in the last few years have always been populated by at least a few films in languages like Bengali and even when the films were in Tamil or Malayalam, they […]

Ever since the Pokkiri remake Wanted became a BO hit, Salman Khan has mostly appeared in unabashed masala films that gave him larger-than-life roles and delivered over-the-top action, light romance and goofy comedy. So the storyline of his latest film Bajrangi Bhaijaan – he goes into Pakistan to reunite a lost girl with her parents […]

Road movies are always made up of the main characters meeting a number of people along the way. While the person(s) taking the road trip are more grounded, the people they run into are usually eccentric or strange but end up imparting some important life lessons to the protagonists. The bulk of Piku is also […]

Revenge thrillers have a rather rigid template. The protagonist undergoes a family-related tragedy caused by the bad guys and then goes after them with single-minded determination, extracting his revenge in crowd-pleasing ways. The tone may be dark(Naan Sigappu Manithan) or more masala-ish(Aboorva Sagodharargal) but the basic plot remains the same. But Sriram Raghavan, the director […]

Baby finds covert ops agent Ajay(Akshay Kumar) in a series of missions with hardly any breathing time between. The film’s innocuous name is actually the name of the unit he is a part of, an elite unit that is made up of a select few from different groups and as part of a 5-year test […]

Based on his films so far, director Rajkumar Hirani has hit upon a rock-solid formula for his movies. He picks an establishment that is ostensibly about serving people but is seen by the public as a money-making endeavor(a hospital in Munnabhai M.B.B.S, a college in 3 Idiots), he introduces an outsider, a rebel who questions […]

Mardaani tackles the serious topic of the trafficking and forced prostitution of young girls and serves it up with large doses of the masala that is a familiar part of cop stories. But strong performances from the cast and restraint in presenting the masala ensure that the mix works well. Rani Mukherji stars as cop […]

The Dhoom series has always been about big stars, style and cool action sequences. Dhoom 3 sticks to that formula but also throws some drama into the mix. The film ups the ante when it comes to all aspects of the formula and the lack of logic and realism is by now a given but […]