(According to Rahul Prajapati Coffee Bloom is a 3 star movie)

coffee bloom is indian romantic drama film directed by debutant director manu warrier. it stars arjun mathur and sugandha garg in lead roles. the film is produced by speaking tree productions. it tells the story of a young man dev, who sells his family coffee estate as a statement underlining his renunciation of the world. the film premiered at mumbai film festival, organized by mumbai academy of the moving image (mami), last year under the 'new faces of indian cinema' category. coffee bloom is scheduled for release on 6 march 2015. writer : sharath parvathani and manu warrier director : manu warrier stars : arjun mathur, sugandha garg, mohan kapoor, nandini sen, ishwari bose-bhattacharya duration : 2 hrs 15 min
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(According to Rahul Prajapati Nh10 is a 4 star movie)

anushka sharma lights up a cigarette at a critical juncture before going for the kill. that one moment does a lot for a woman breaking the shackles of a warped male dominated mindset in the heartland of india. navdeep singh's nh10 is a highly relevant film in these times of a necessary need for women empowerment. it strikes like a bullet and the stinging odor of revenge stays with you for long, even after the film gets over. at the same time, the excessive detailing of the violence doesn't make it an easy watch. meera (anushka sharma) and arjun (neil bhoopalam) are a happy couple, safely ensconced in their cushy corporate jobs. meera gets a taste of delhi lechery when there's an attempt to molest her. arjun, in an attempt to get her over the trauma, plans a getaway for her birthday. as they hit the dusty 'nh10', they become embroiled in a case of honor killing in front of their own eyes. their ugly run-in with the killers headed by satbir (darshan kumaar) takes a nasty turn, the conspiring policemen are of no help, arjun gets seriously injured and meera has to slug it out on her own through extremely tough circumstances. sudip sharma's writing is soaked in the blood-n-dirt of haryanvi villages and the big city milieu. the screenplay is taut and the pace zips along. jabeen merchant's editing is sharp and the edit patterns surprises you with its sudden innovativeness. there are interesting nuances that establishes the path-breaking attempts in a very subtle manner. arjun gifts a cigarette packet to meera to smoke only on her birthday. meera rubs off a derogatory word written on a toilet door in a dhaba. ammaji (deepti naval) disdainfully clearing the wardrobe of her murdered daughter pinky. anushka sharma packs in an incredibly strong performance laced with intense vulnerability. her character graph shows a natural progression stemming from uncertainty, fear, inherent intelligence and how she gets forced into pumping steel-in-her-veins. the physical conditioning through the rough terrain must have been very difficult. when she hysterically screams 'f**k you' to the killers, you can feel her cumulative agony. neil bhopaalam, as the supportive husband with an immature streak delivers a solid performance. darshan kumaar is a totally violent contrast to the calm-n-collected husband of mary kom. he's a pleasant revelation. deepti naval shines in a cameo. her dramatic shift from empathy to antipathy is electrifying. music has been used in a matter-of-fact manner and at no point;it takes anything away from the narrative or the pace of the film. shilparao has outstandingly sung 'le chalmujhe' in an unplugged format. it literally digs its claws in your heart with the sheer authenticity of angst. the flagship number 'chil gaye naina' isn't a part of the film, and, thankfully, the makers didn't use it in the end credits either. arvind kannabiran's cinematography is brilliant as he expertly captures the jilted images in spite of difficult lighting conditions. director navdeep singh is at the top of his game. after many years in the wilderness post the critically acclaimed manorama six feet under and a failed production plan with abhay deol, singh retains his sanity and doesn't compromise on his or writer sudip sharma's vision. but, in spite of a water tight plot, one can question arjun's motivation to go after rogue killers even though he's with a lady in tow. was he that naive? also, the climax seems somewhat rushed and way too sudden. on the whole, nh10 is a wonderfully made film with an outstanding performance by anushka sharma. it will be well appreciatedby an intelligent audience that's gunning for women safety and empowerment. the sound cinematic credentials and gripping narrative is the high point of the film. but, as mentioned earlier, the glorification of violence isn't easy to stomach. you need to be really motivated to absorb it. this national highway has its shares of potholes, but, it is a must visit. do go the nh10
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(According to Rahul Prajapati Dilliwali Zaalim Girlfriend is a 1 star movie)

"dilliwalli zaalim girlfriend" -- don't bother to memorise the tongue-twisting title because by the time you get a hang of it, the film will be out of the theatres -- is neither a political comment nor a love story (the two favourite plot points in films set in delhi). come to think of it, this film isn't much of anything except a perplexing oddity served up to torture our senses with its brittle boardroom humour. you know those films where you wonder why they bothered to make it in the first place?bingo! "dilliwali..." seems like a vehicle to promote divyendu sharma, the actor who shone in that unforgotten gem of a film "pyaar ka punchnama", as a conventional romantic lead. while playing the regular jobless roving-eyed lothario, sharma also gets to do song breaks, one where he pounds the piano passionately and looks more like a victim of a fractured wrist than a broken heart, and the other where he gets to rap with yo yo honey singh...no less. one ardently wishes sharma would stop trying to be a shah rukh khan or a ranbir kapoor. pradhuman singh, who plays sharma's buddy, is far more comfortable with the space provided to him. he is happy being well, happy. that's the character's name. and if you want to know what a guy called happy in delhi behaves like, then you haven't been to delhi lately. the film ticks all the boxes in the rom-com space and yet manages to emerge looking stripped-down and exposed, like a chicken that's about to be slaughtered. where, pray tell, is the plot? we understand this is a comedy about a besotted loverboy (sharma) who buys a car on loaned money to impress the girl in the bank, and then spends the rest of the time running from pillar to post trying to find the car after it's stolen. well, ha ha to that. every encounter staged to trap the car-mafia chief (jackie shroff, looking like the villainous actor mukesh tiwari and behaving like a sindhi trying to do punjabi accent) smacks of cocky writing. what made jackie assume this cheesy space? the free ticket from mumbai to delhi, perhaps? there is a growing breed of avant garde writers in bollywood who feel scripting unconventional plots is the solution to the creative midlife crisis that our cinema is currently going through. but just because your characters are young and they pretend to be 'cool', they don't qualify as harbingers of change in modern indian cinema. such aggressively bohemian writing (by the competent actor manu rishi chadha) is a new form of regression and oppression in our cinema, where characters try so hard to populate an unorthodox plot they end up looking like gatecrashers at a poorly attended wedding. the two primary female actors serve up a more palatable template in their personality. prachi mishra (poor voice, poor packaging) is the girl who entices our hero into buying the car. she is a material girl clinging to dubious values in a script that stifles her aspirations.
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(According to Rahul Prajapati Barkhaa is a 3 star movie)

there was a kind of film made in the 50s and 60s which had the leading man visit a hill station only to fall-in-love-at-first-glance with a ‘goriyaa’. the leading man was usually accompanied by a friend who was also the comic relief, very useful in a film which would soon turn on the waterworks and maudlin violins and loud melodrama, because the ‘goriyaa’ would turn out to be an unsuitable girl, not ‘laayak’ for the ‘khandaan’. there would be much ‘rona dhona’ after a bit of ‘naach gaana’, dialogues involving a quivering- lipped maa and a thunderous baap, and many relatives playing poison ivy. i have news for you. in 2015, we are still making that film. the big question, of course, is why, to which i have found no answers. barkhaa (sara loren) plays a bar-dancer with a back-story, which includes a cad (priyanshu chatterjee) who promises her the moon, and, of course, drops her when he has had his wicked way with her. current ‘majnu’ (taaha shah) moons about trying to convince her of his noble intentions, and we keep waiting for the time when the father (puneet issar) comes on all heavy, and the mother starts beating her chest. ‘yeh pyaar nahin, nadaani hai’, she wails. why? because, of course, bar dancers have no ‘izzat’, and live in bad ‘mahaul’, and all. sonny boy would of course get tainted because he has had the bad luck to fall for a fallen woman, and the temerity to bring her in front of them (the parents). maybe the intention of the film was to tell us that ladies who dance for a living also have the right to respectability, which is wonderful, but a mothballed plot and an even more mothballed treatment isn’t the way forward.
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(According to Rahul Prajapati Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! is a 2 star movie)

detective byomkesh bakshy despite the sluggish pace makes for an engrossing watch. dibakar banerjee manages to recreate an old world charm and a sense of nostalgic intrigue that we felt as children while watching the byomkesh bakshi series on dd. it is interesting to see how the indian sherlock holmes makes rookie mistakes as we follow him on his very first adventure. byomkesh (played by sushant singh rajput) is both intuitive and gullible at the same time. he is adept at spotting even a subtle discrepancy but also has the naivet㩠of a novice. it is quite obvious that our protagonist had completely surrendered himself to the director and his craft and while, comparisons with the sharp rajit kapur are inevitable, sushant manages to hold his own. dibakar banerjee’s attention to detail is discernible. what stays with you much after you have left the theatre is how meticulously each shot has been set up. every scene is packed with information and it’s a challenge to absorb the essence of all that is going on. while the detailing is to the director’s credit, what is a little disappointing is that the plot seems too convoluted. the joy of watching byomkesh bakshi’s adventures were that they were so neatly presented that even as a 12-year-old i could completely comprehend the entire proceedings. while for the most part the film manages to keep us hooked, there are others where the plot takes such circuitous turns that keeping up becomes an arduous task. the fact that banerjee has more monies at his disposal now, is quite evident – the production quality is far superior to his prior projects. his supporting cast is competent, especially anand tewari. our director is quite effective in getting the mood right.
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