Bollywood in 2008: The movies I loved.
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It is that time of the year again when we look back at the year and analyze the year’s movies we loved. I don’t watch many movies in a year(or let’s put it, not being able to), so this is the list of movies I loved amongst the lot I watched. Since I couldn’t watch some of the most talked about movies of the year like Aamir, Mumbai Meri Jaan, Welcome to Sajjanpur, Dostana. So, they don’t make it to the list for obvious reasons.
They rocked it. And how! (Rock On!!)- After a spate of failures, Excel entertainment finally delivered with Kapoor’s Rock on. The poignant story of 4 individuals discovering themselves when they have ‘moved on’ in life and ‘compromised’ with life. Beautifully understated and surprisingly subtle, Kapoor’s story telling ability showed huge improvements since his forgettable Aryan. Farhan Akhtar looked very assured in his first stint in front of the camera, while Shahana’s portrayal of a frustrated wife was commendable too. The soundtrack of the movie left a lot to be desired, and Farhan’s voice received an emotions of mixed hues, I found it to be strictly okay. For me, it worked within the context of this film, it won’t anywhere else. With due respect to Javed Saab, the lyrics were pedestrian to say the least. Sindbad the sailor, and Na na na na were the only two songs that had those truly cool, zingy, carefree moments . Socha Hai tried too hard to impress, and so did the rest, though Phir Dekhiye was sung soulfully by Dominique. Kenny being diagonised with cancer and all that associated drama were the only staring blemish, the movie was going beautifully till that point dictated by the demands of the characters and setting, not by any formulaic structure. The movie could have still fallen after that cliched angle, but was deftly handled thereon and turned out to be quite decent in totality.
No Good bye to a movie like this. (Dasvidaniya). - Vinay Pathak plays Amar who discovers that he has only three months to live. The subject of the sort has been handled in many movies( though only as direct and explicit in method like Bucket List), but the way Vinay Pathak portrayed the hidden, unexplored desires of an ordinary middle class guy was exhilarating to see. Almost every wish of his is sewn with some really beautiful scenes and the moment you think the movie is going into the maudlin and itching to become sugary dramatic, it snaps out and comes back on track. Although, I believe the movie lost all its impact towards the end. It could have easily been 15 minutes short. When Vinay and his brother are having a conversation in the balcony about life and how we miss the minute details only to repent it later, was heart warming. Then, Vinay says yeh zindagi kitni khubsoorat hai na bhai…The movie should have ended right there. Right there. To see the movie end on a detatched note was a tad dissapointing.
The common fear of unknown faces. (A Wednesday) – A dynamite debut. Neeraj Pandey. A tight gripping thriller that almost never sways off track, barring few amateur dialogues, and a couple of minor inconsistencies here and there. People will always debate how practical and logical the whole thing was. The make up of the common man can be debated and so will be his motives. If not for anything else, if his motive can be looked as a symbolic representation of everyone’s anger that is seething within, that too in wake of recent bombings, we can appreciate what A Wednesday wanted to say. Also, A Wednesday never tried to spell a solution, it was just an exaggerated version of the latent anger. If this continues, something is gonna break, that’s what A Wednesday was about. Naseeruddin was the Shah of the movie, while Anupam Kher is as always was a delight to watch.
So when can the most cliched story be entertaining? (Jaane Tu..Ya Jaane Na): Okay. It can be argued that he might not be the same Tyrewala who wrote the Main Khuda of Paanch, but even on his bad days Tyrewala can be fairly sharp and intelligent than most of the people in Bollywood. I had always thought Tyrewala’s first film would be different, but his choice to direct a typical bollywood rom-com flick came as a surprise. The story was cliched as it could get, nor was the treatment of the love story any different. The same we are only buddies, the third one ensuing jealously, etc.etc. But, I never thought the high points of this movie would be the comic element. After a certain point, the movie just ran berserk and was pointlessly hilarious, and ala Singh is King and their cousins, the jokes were not cliched, although bordering on to unbelievable madness at times, the movie was fun. The movie worked for me only because of its mindless humor, you know, dimaag ghar pe chod kar aane wali movie. I enjoyed it like I would enjoy any ‘good’ Govinda-David Dhawan flick. Romance and the lovey dovey scenes( or their effect) was conspicuous by its absence. Also, Kabhi kabhi Aditi was reason enough to throng the theaters.
God was with this movie till he was not in the movie. Rab Ne Bana di Jodi(only the first 40 minutes): We all knew Aditya Chopra could do it after DDLJ, and we were all waiting for it, with almost bated breath. The movie introduces Punjab in an uncharacteristic Chopra way, and surprisingly, Chopra captures the nuances of the small city in a manner we all had wanted to see for a long, long time. The character of Suri is so cute and sweet, that you feel like saying a girly Aww…cho chweet whenever he says Thani ji. Shahrukh steps out of his King Khan umbrella and delights, dazzles, and sinks into Suri’s Action shoes to provide one of his most believable performances. This movie could have been a different story all together(literally!), had Aditya Chopra plugged in some common sense and a shade of practicality. He killed the movie after that. Well, that is a different thing all together. But, I still can’t get over the first 40 minutes replete with magical moments like Maine to aj tak kisi ladiss se baat hi nai ki, and when he gazes over the new tiffin with Haule Haule playing in the background.
Sarkar Raj: Sarkar Raj is not amongst the Verma’s best work, but, given Verma’s horrendous form of late, Sarkar Raj wasn’t that bad either. The first half was distinctly better than the second half. Abhishek brooded more than he did in Sarkar, while the camera was obsessed with exposing every wrinkles on Bachann’s face. Even though the climax was a bit too easily spelled by the know it-all-Godfather-turned-God, it was still pretty engaging for most of the parts.
Oye Lucky Lucky Oye - After Khosla’s success, expectations were sky high from Banerjee’s next movie. And Banerjee didn’t disappoint. This tragicomedy had some stellar performances from the entire cast, backed by a layered script, and the capital city at its barest best. I had said almost everything about the movie in this article. So, any more adjectives in this space would just be redundant.
And for me the ‘real hero award’ of this year goes to….? UTV Motion Pictures for giving home to some of the most varied, fresh and exciting ideas in the industry. One just hopes UTV continues sheltering this new breed of Indian cinema. The Pandeys, the Banerjees and the Kamats have just begun to emerge and aren’t we loving it? We must thank UTV for that.
So, that was 2008 for me. What movies made it to your list?
Tags: 2008, Bollywood
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Interesting list. But I feel unlike 2007, 2008 is not a land mark year in any which way. It has its share of good-to-average-to-real-bad movies but nothing exceptional to write about. Or am I jumping the gun and should I wait for the last release of this year. I don’t think a lot would change.
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@ Vishesh
We only have Jumbo & Ghajini to look forward to before the year is over.So dont expect any major change before the year is over.Of course we can hope that these 2 movies turn out well.
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Best film of the year?
Salman Khan’s ‘Hello’ and ‘Yuvraaj’ !
Next in line? ‘Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic’!!
:-)
Ok, seriously now, I definitely agree with ur ‘UTV’ comments.
Whether it was;
JODHA AKHBAR
JAANE TU
A WEDNESDAY
ROCK ON
FASHION
SAJJANPUR
MUMBAI MERI JAAN
AAMIR
LUCKY OYE
they have just excelled!
Basically, everything by UTV was great!
‘Bhootnaath’ was enjoyable, as were ‘Bachna Ae Hasino’, ‘Ramchand Pakistani’, ‘Saas Bahu aur Sensex’ and ‘Tashan’.
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And here are some saviours in the ‘bad/weak’ films list;
Vishal Bhardwaj’s title song in ‘Haal-e-Dil’
Priyanka Chopra in ‘Dostana’
Abhishek’s performance and
Dhruv Ghanekar’s music in ‘Drona’
Anuragh Sinha in ‘Black & White’
Priety Zinta in ‘Heroes’
Kajol in ‘U, Me aur Hum’
Shah Rukh Khan in ‘Rab ne’!
Infact, i’ve become quite a fan of his after this!
Adnan Sami’s soundtrack, and Ada Sharma in ‘1920′.
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@ Steve: Jaane tu was not produced by UTV, it was produced by Aamir Khan, while Rock on was produced by Ritesh Sidhwani( Excel Entertainment!). I guess the excitement of writing so many names got to you!
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UTV for me has been India’s Miramax this year. They are striking a fine balance between the mainstream and small, medium cinema.
And its not just the movies, but also the fact that they bought the best of World Movies to India this year.
I cud have never imagined watching 400 Blows, Jules Et Jim, House of Flying Daggers, Battle of Algiers on Indian TV. They are marketing these movies in a very good way.
UTV World in fact has forced Star Movies and HBO to buck up, and come out with some really good stuff.
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But much as the small and medium budget movies, have been comming up with excellent stuff, i can’t say the same about the mainstream movies. This year only Jodha Akbar has been really good in the mainstream segment.
90% of the mainstream cinema has been utter rubbish.
I think we are having 2 streams here, while small and medium budget cinema, has been experimenting with ideas, comming up with good scripts and plotlines, Mainstream cinema, has been stagnating, with cliched plots, predictable plots. With no content to speak of, most of the mainstream cinema, is falling back on gimmicks like affairs between lead stars, 6 pack whatever, 0 size brains to promote their movies.
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Arre nahin Tanul Thakur ji!
U.T.V was involved in the distribution na?
That’s what I meant, that whatever they’ve been involved in (to whatever extent) it has been an impressive year which involved U.T.V in a major way.
Ratnakar, let’s be glad that ‘at least’ those smaller films are making bigger statements yaar.
Thankgod for that!
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Yes UTV has taken the lead this year in getting the right mix of movies- be it in distribution or production.its time that others also learnt something from them.
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Wasn’t MITHYA released this year? If you haven’t see that then definately add it to your “must see” list (or “must see within before dying list if you’re Dasvidaniya crazy”). Same with Jodha Akbar which was pretty good (a film worthy of the big screen experience in a long time).
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Here’s my personal Best of 2008 list:
MITHYA
JODHA AKBAR
U ME AUR HUM
JAANE TU YA JAANE NA
BACHNA AE HASEENO
ROCK ON!!
DASVIDANIYA
OYE LUCKY LUCKY OYE
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I just looked at a list of ALL Hindi films released in 2008… it has been one of the SHITTIEST years I can remember. I mean, fine, I’ve managed to miss a few films that I’ve heard great things about, but still…
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Here’s hoping 2009 will be a much better year…
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@Tony: I haven’t watched Mithya, but, have heard a lot about it. But, I did see Jodha Akbar and was hugely disappointed by it. Also, 2008 has not really up there, in fact the first 7 months were pathetic, we still had couple of good movies towards the end…!
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Yeah no doubt Tanul that 2008 was, as Jackie Chiles (the famous lawyer from “Seinfeld”) would put it “Dismal, Abysmal, and downright Dispicable!”
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But seriously do watch MITHYA. No matter how much respect you have for Ranvir Shorey, it will go up after watching this complex performance.
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I would put Mithya on the list too. I havent gotten a chance to see Khuda Ke Liye so I dont know if it deserves to be on this list! Ditto for Tahaan, I missed that one too! Else, I like on the films on this list. 2008 was a bad year. This list should have had 20 films in a good year!
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Oops! * I like all the films on this list!
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@ Arati
Khuda Ke Liye is a Pakistani film & shouldnt really be clubbed with Bollywood IMO.
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@Sethu: Sorry, I thought we were discussing Hindi films of 2008. My mistake!
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Mumbai meri jaan had to be the best film overall for the year. it transcended genres yet stuck to a seriously engaging screenplay.
On the other hand Jodha Akbar was the worst three hours spent in a theatre for me. (two cans of red bull in the interval couldn’t keep me from dozing off before the climax!) what’s the use of cleverly choreographed period war sequences and an anachronic interpretation of history,albeit an inspiring model of it,if you can’t keep the viewer engaged till the climax and let the characters develop towards a predictable end, hinging on not-so-clever plot devices while dragging it on ceaselessly.
As for Sarkar Raj being anywhere on the top of the list, well… WHY? I’m inclined to momentarily withdraw my agnostic beliefs and pray to the Lords, let there not be another Sarkar/Sarkar Raj movie.
And to RGV, maybe you ought to move away from the mob for a while, take a vacation, book a room at the Taj for a month or two, yes it is ready to welcome normal citizens now, without the CM, escort et al!
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Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye
Rock On
Summer of 2007
Welcome To Sajjanpur
Jodhaa Akbar
Jaane Tu
Golmaal Returns
Mithya
Bombay To Bangkok
Chalo Let’s Go
(NOTE: in no particular order)
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Rocky: Bombay to Bangkok? Really? Normally i really enjoy Nagesh Kukunoors films but this one I shut off after 30 minutes and went for a walk in the rain!
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Tony, yes, had a great time with it. Especially the Vijay Maurya-Jeneva Talwar love story that blooms later in the film. Both of them were very good, and Maurya is an amazing talent. It is essentially a romantic film, and expecting other things from it would lead to disappointment, as has been the case. Very few Hindi movies manage to achieve what this one has: a lightness of touch. My favourite Kukunoor movie after Dor.
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Another very interesting thing about this movie is its curiosity for the other. Most of the Indian films set in a foreign country treat the place just as a backdrop, and its people just as screen fodder. Policemen, henchmen, dancers gyrating in the background, bystanders gaping at the camera, etc etc. In Bombay To Bangkok, we have a Hindi film that actually tries to weave the locals into the story. So much so that we have a Thai heroine for the hero! Then there are Thai monks, Thai prostitutes, Thai relatives, assorted Thai old boys fooling around…
Another peculiar thing that happens with foreign-set Hindi films is that lots of local people have the preternatural ability to speak and understand Hindi. This doesn’t happen in this film. The heroine doesn’t know Hindi, and except for some ‘cute’ instances, goes about the whole movie speaking Thai. Yet love blossoms, as it should.
Ultimately, I admire the choices made for the movie. In its own humble way, this might be a pathbreaking Hindi film.
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Thats a pretty good list u hav there Tanul, except for Sarkar Raj. I mean, it wasn’t RGV’s worst agreed…but nowhere in the best of 2008 imho. I am yet to watch Dasvidanya, RNBDJ and OL LO.
But yeah, Rock On truly rocked. And u hav put it wonderfully, when u say “understated and surprisingly subtle”. I went to watch the film, expecting a wannabe attempt at the life & times of a rock band, and was blown away by the movie. Rock on truly isn’t about rock music or the life of a rock band as such…it was more a story of 4 friends and their unfulfilled dreams….you got to watch it in that perspective. I was impressed with the nuances as well. While watching the film on DVD a few days back, I noticed a small detail. The “Tum Ho To” song has a guitar solo towards its end (in the soundtrack)…but it’s not there in the film coz the lead guitarist (Arjun) wasn’t there on stage. They’ve taken care of these small things. The casting was spot on as well..Farhan and Arjun were brilliant and Purab Kohli, well, he was a revelation…the soul of the movie !
Jaane Tu..Ya Jaane Na was also a surprise. yeah, sure it was immature…but then so were the characters…so it made sense.
A Wednesday was a good movie..innovative story…but I feel that it got way more praise than it deserved..the end 15 minutes or so ( Naseer’s speech) was awesome but the movie did falter otherwise..thts just my feeling. I felt Mumbai Meri Jaan was a better film.
Jodhaa-Akbar had too many flaws, but the film did work for me overall. Maybe it’s Hrithik’s sincere performance or Rahman’s wonderful score…maybe all of it together.
But the breakthrough film of the year, for me was certainly Aamir. Gritty, raw and edge-of-the-seat stuff. Plus it had the best soundtrack of the year…seriously I had goosebumps when “Ha Raham” played out on the screen. Amit Trivedi is prodigously talented…and so is RK, of course. A big thus up for the Aamir team !!!
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@Doc Ock: Thanx..I agree with your points with respect to Rock on. Also, I had included Sarkar Raj for the sole reason that I found it to be pleasantly watchable..though I would love to see Aamir, MMJ (and had I liked those, Sarkar Raj wouldn’t have been made it to my list)!
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word. UTV is making a real positive change in Bolly land, unlike PNC with their talli girls.
i will never ever include jaane tu in my fave movies. it was a teenage love story, which is done to FUCKING death a million times and it was nothing special or out of the ordinary.
no sarkar raj either.
OLLO is my fave.
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Guys….feels so good that you are so in love with what UTV has been doing for the past year…
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100% agree with Rocky!
‘Bombay to Bangkok’ was such a fun film!
Ok, so it wasn’t the most unique story ever, but the film actually works.
Raving about Shreyas would be stating the obvious, but Vijay Maurya was just EXCELLENT!
His love story and gangster rap had me enthralled!
Infact, I just don’t understand why this film got slated so badly??
I’m actually gonna buy it on dvd! :-)
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