Kuttey, Review: Gulp Friction Quentin Tarantino can rightfully claim a patent to the format used in Kuttey: prologue, epilogue and a non-chronological structure, with the present merging with the past and the past merging with the present. The co-writer and director of Kuttey (Dogs), Aasmaan Bhardwaj was born one year after Pulp Fiction (1994) was released, bagged top honours at home and abroad, and attained cult status soon afterwards. Twenty-seven years after he was born, Aasmaan has made h...

MAMI inaugural screening: 104-minute wait for 104-minute film Organisers of the Jio MAMI’s 18th Mumbai Film Festival (MFF) with STAR chose actress Konkona Sen-Sharma’s directorial debut film, A Death in the Gunj as the opening film. In a continually perplexing schedule, the opening film, for the last couple of years, is not screened on the opening day, and not even at the inaugural venue. This year, the inauguration ceremony was held at the restored Opera House cinema. Located at...

Talvar, Review: Whodunit? Doesn’t matter! Like the 1950 Japanese cult film Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa and often rated as one of the greatest films ever made, remade n number of times in India, Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar (sword) presents three contradictory accounts of a nation-rocking real life double murder, which variously portray the prime accused as guilty or innocent. It fictionalises names and dates, amalgamates some characters into a single entity and does not take a ...

Gour Hari Dastaan/The Freedom File, Review: His-story Described in the press as a Kafkaesque black comedy when it was launched in 2011, Gour Hari Dastaan is based on a true story, of Gour Hari Das (now 85), with some Kafkaesque undertones, but very little or no black comedy. It cannot afford to be a comedy, let alone a black one, since it deals with the sensitive subject of the neglect and disregard suffered by those who participated in the struggle to rid India of British colonial rule. Brit...