The best Bollywood movies of 2015

Bollywood had a decent 2015 for cine lovers.

In the midst of intolerable mediocrity masquerading as cinema, though some from this group went into the multi hundred crore clubs, there were movies made for the connoisseurs of quality cinema as well. And then there were some high quality wholesome entertainers.

It is very difficult to decide lists of best movies. All good movies require excellent team effort and passion. Then these are cross genre with different styles of direction and acting. The way I decide primarily is how entertained, engrossed and excited I felt during the course of the movie and how many layers of emotion the movie could unfold inside me; and I try to hold on to these thoughts. How I felt overall while coming out of the cinema hall, in terms of the overall technicalities of cinema. Then, if the movie plays again on television how excited would I be to watch it again.

So here is my list of the top dozen movies of 2015.

1) Baby
2) Tanu weds Manu Returns
3) Masaan
4) Tamasha
5) Detective Byomkesh Bakshy
6) Majhi the mountain man
7) Margarita with a straw
8) Drishyam
9) Talvar
10) Dum Lagake Haisha
11) Piku
12) Bajirao Mastani

Badlapur, Dil Dhadakne Do, NH10, Hunterr and Angry Indian Goddesses are the other good movies of 2015 that addressed different issues. I could not watch Main aur Charles, Titli and Shaandaar. Understand these are also well made movies, would catch them as soon as possible. I did not consider Bahubali in this list since it is a Telugu movie. But kudos to director Rajamouli for being able to execute a movie in high-fantasy genre with minimal flaws. Eagerly waiting for the second installment in 2016. Bahubali would spawn many movies in this genre in the near future and Prabhas and Rana Daggubati might be seen often in Bollywood movies.

Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar, Ranbir Kapoor, Sushant Singh Rajput, Ranveer Singh and Nawazuddin would be nominated for the "best actor" awards. The way things work, Nawaz would get the critics awards and the others would be shared by Amitabh, Akshay, Ranveer and Ranbir. I read that Ranvir(Sheorey) in Tilti was also a par performance, so this category would be interesting.

Among the leading ladies, Deepika Padukone would sweep the awards and may find two of three nominations in the best acrtress category. However Richa Chaddha, Kalki and Kangana would give her very tough competition. Anuskha and Konkona may also be nominated. Ideally for me, Kalki should have equal chances of winning, but again the way our awards work, Kalki or Richa may get the "critics" awards, most would be taken by Deepika and some by Kangana. Neeraj Pandey, Anand Rai, Neeraj Ghaywan, Imtiaz Ali and Dibakar Banerjee would share the director awards. My personal favourites would be Pandey or Ghaywan.

Coming back to the movies,"Baby" is at the top because of Akshay Kumar and Neeraj Pandey's direction on how exactly one should make a gripping movie in this genre. The camerawork, the screenplay and the characterization. No you do not need over the top action sequences, spies are not supermen. You do not need that unnecessary item number as well. I would like to see Pandey making a lot more movies and would like Akki to stick to such quality roles.And I really liked the girl Tapsee, would love to see her more often as well. :)

I must confess that "Tanu Weds Manu Returns" is right at the top for me simply because of Deepak Dobriyal, though Madhavan and especially Kangana were very competent as well. When you take one particular art to an entirely different level, comedy in Dobriyal's case, you carry a lot of the movie on your shoulders and take it to a different level as well. Off late I do not remember better comic timing than "Pappi".

For a debut, "Masaan" is an exceptional effort by Neeraj Ghaywan. One really needs to watch this one to understand the conflicts, the rebel and the ethical conflicts of the characters and the situations created in the movie. Excellent parallel movie with underrated but brilliant actors, especially Richa Chaddha.

"Tamasha" again is not really mainstream but with highly commercial actors doing different stuff and carrying it off in style. The movie is indulgent in parts, but the way it critiques "growing up" in the Indian society, especially for a non conformist, like a lyrical poem, is simply out of the world. Hats of the Imtiaz Ali and more like these please!

With "Detective Byomkesh Bakshy", Dibakar Banerjee has successfully been able to pull of a Noir. Yes this is not the drawing room detective we all know and have read about. The character has transformed much like Sherlock Holmes in the series we have currently seen, but nonetheless Sushant Singh Rajput did complete justice to the character and we can expect a fine detective series of our own. Neeraj Kabi is one of the most underrated actors in Indian cinema today and we should be able to see a lot more of him.

Nawazuddin is one of the best actors in Bollywood, probably the best in his generation, if we leave out the stalwarts. By the time he ends, he would be right up there with the likes of Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri and Anupam Kher. He proves it yet again in "Majhi the mountain man". Kalki in turn showed her acting prowess in Margarita with a straw. Very few movies have been made in India that sensibly and sensitively tackle the lives and struggles of people with special needs. I would rate it alongside the legendary Sanjeev Kumar's "Koshish". "Drishyam" makes it to the list because of its excellent plot and incredible ending. Of course Devgan's acting supported ably by the others was also above par.

Without making any judgements, "Talvar" skilfully shows all the possibilities of one of the most disturbing and infamous double murders in India. Neeraj Kabi and Konkona come up with brilliant performances and Meghna Gulzar deserves kudos for the presentation and making us think what if the parents are innocent indeed and the investigation was really botched up.Dum Laga Ke Haisha was different and cute. The director breaks convention and shows that the world has all kinds of people and lead actresses need not always be size zero and actors must not sport six packs. You are the hero and heroine of your own lives and can do things to make your little world happy and exciting. Good performance again by the lead actors. Piku did not get into the preaching space, but had a nice funny story about father-daughter bonding, constipation and their lives around it, executed cannily by Shoojit Sircar.

I could not review "Bajirao Mastani" yet, so I will write a bit about the movie. For the first 30 minutes one would feel that if may go down as one of the classics of all time! It was so refreshing to see Ranveer Singh not hamming and actually playing the role instead of himself, and sincerely trying to get into the skin of Bajirao. Deepika took off from she left in Tamasha and is steadily moving towards becoming the actress of the era with her choice and roles and delivery. As Bajirao’s love interest the passion, the sacrifice, the rebel, all facets of the character came out pretty well. Priyanka Chopra is also very good as Bajirao’s wife. However Tanvi Azmi as Bajirao’s widowed mother would take the cake for the best performance among the actresses. The quality of acting is actually top notch by the support cast as well.

The culprit however is the director Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

Yes cinema is a piece of art and yes you have a liberty to make the movie as you like. But there is a thin line between cinematic liberty and over indulgence. Braveheart and Gladiator are two of the best period movies that has come out from Hollywood about great warriors. Imagine, William Wallace and Maximus Decimus Meridius jumping around and dancing after winning a war with his soldiers

Fine, Mastani can dance, but does she need to sing and dance everywhere? Then what is wrong if she was being called a “baijee”? Priyanka and Mastani also dance on "Pinga Gapori" even after  a highly strained relationship for obvious reasons. Bhansali has to understand that if he destroys the flow of what could have been a great movie, by repeatedly putting in unnecessary songs and dance sequences and over indulging himself he would be remembered as a good director but not a great one and his movies would be good movies but not classics. The movie should be watched however for the performances of all the actors, the huge canvas and the cinematography.

Hope 2016 would be a an exciting year for movie lovers. Would love to discuss movies, music, acting and direction with you all in real life and cyberspace. :)

Tamasha: Lyrical, exquisite, different

One fine day, we all kill the child within us, “grow up”, leave the world of fantasy and become practical, domesticated and professional. For most it is a normal routine process, probably the way they envisioned themselves to be anyway, or they condition themselves better for the world.

But what about the ones that are different and remain fantasied? Those who could never come to terms with the banal realities of life, whose passion, creativity and effervescence constantly fight the mundane expectations of the world? They fight, but ultimately give up, start lying to themselves and try becoming something they are not. However they become lonely in a world where others do a better job of lying to themselves.

Imtiaz Ali captures this process through his protagonist Ved(Ranbir Kapoor) like a craftsman and like an artist he weaves the movie around him. Ved wanted to be nothing but a story teller, but forced by conventional wisdom, he takes up engineering, management, then the job of a brand manager and starts believing that this was actually meant for him. He meets a girl from a past encounter in Corsica, France, with whom he had gelled immediately and had had a short passionate relationship. They fall in love again, but the girl realizes that he is not the same man and  helps him get back to what he actually is.

However the treatment and presentation of this simple storyline is unique and lyrical. Lovely cinematography, deft camerawork, shifting timeframes of storytelling and a deep understanding of human emotions and vulnerabilities. Irshad Kamil’s lyrics add excellent value to the plot points and non sequiturs.

The way a kid’s interest towards a part of life is formed, his fervent visits to the storyteller, how different stories impact his mind with characters and their myriad facets, all this has been brought out very well. The way a creative person’s mind works, Sanyukta marrying Prithiviraj Chauhan in a Church and many other sequences where boundaries blur and classics we have heard since childhood merge together.

Some of the scenes just penetrate through the heart. The simple discussion with the auto driver who wanted to be a singer, who says, “Koi mai ka laal nahi bata sakhta main kaun hoon, par main andar se kuch koi aur hee hoon aur bahar se majboor!” The protagonist probably realizes that the problem is across classes, but maybe the auto guy is more enlightened than him on the issue. 

The symbolism of keeping the flowers at the backseat, that get wizened after sometime, to show that in the grind of life we leave the beautiful things in the backseat. The parties we go with people we do not have a connection with, the show off that we are having fun, while actually we are stuck in a tedious routine. The movie does not say, it shows. In many ways the movie projects a mirror on our faces, that many of us choose to ignore.

Ranbir Kapoor as Ved, brilliantly brings out the confusion, the latent anger, the synthetic cool attitude of a man following a mirage. As the storyteller, who landed up in the corporate world, there are a few close shots where he has to deliver confused and emotionally intense expressions together and he does not falter. After Piku, Deepika Padukone again resoundingly silences her critics(including me) with a vivacious portrayal of Tara, the girl who was made for the original Ved.  She is choosing her roles very well and in terms of acting she is right up there among the top  two or three leading ladies. The multi-talented Piyush Mishra as the story teller is peerless as ever, especially during the last scene. Vivek Mushran and Javed Sheikh as Ved’s boss and father respectively are competent. 

Rahman’s music is good, Mohit Chauhan, Arijit Singh and others bring out the best of their styles that go very well with the theme of the movie. However uncharacteristically my favourite happens to be “Heer to badi sad hai” by Mika Singh, whom I do not like particularly, but must say he has done a great job with the subtle variations of the song.

The good things notwithstanding, the movie has its flaws. Sometimes Imtiaz Ali sets himself too free at the cost of a tight screenplay and the film wanders. Though the music is good, the timing of some of the songs did not seem right and the ideas got repetitive. The first half drags a bit probably in order to drive home the point the director is trying to make. Common Imtiaz, we are intelligent enough, at times think of the producers and commercial viability too! ;)

Please note that Tamasha is not for everyone.

I believe at some point we all ask ourselves, “What am I, why am I doing this? Was it meant to be like this?” Basically hanging between esteem and self-actualization on the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If one is already asking such questions, is fighting internal battles with the self or otherwise has an excellent understanding of the multi layered emotional fabric of human beings, then this movie is for them. 

If you appreciate the different aspects of movie making, a different style of storytelling, with exaggeration as a catalyst, because the protagonist himself is a story teller that involves exaggeration, and if metaphors, symbolism, poetry and painting appeal to you, then this movie is for you. 

Please do not watch this is you do not want to think much and specifically want to see a “paisa vasool mass entertainer”. In that case wait for Rohit Shetty’s Dilwale, that will surely make 300 crores or more!

4 out of 5 for this one!