For years, I have wondered why there is no Bollywood adaptation of Face/Off (1997). The story and the OTT performances seem perfect for the filmi treatment. Bollywood loves the following key elements of this beloved classic: convoluted, unlikely scientific processes, complete with bubbling lab equipment brothers grieving parents […]
I’ve been watching Bond movies since seeing No Time to Die in the theater—I ACTUALLY WENT TO THE MOVIES!!!—so it’s time to bring another Indian spy-ish film to the Gutter. I say “-ish” because, as previously discussed, the formulas of popular Hindi cinema generally don’t allow for the […]
The works of Agatha Christie, like many other best-sellers in the English language, have been successfully translated into mainstream Indian cinema.* Gumnaam (1965) moves the stage version of And Then There Were None on a jungle- and ruin-covered island somewhere off the coast of India (and if you’ve […]
I don’t know if the people responsible for this film were trying to make a throwback to the 1970s, but that’s sure how Roop Ki Rani Choron Ka Raja seems to me. That they succeeded is one of the highest cinematic compliments I can give. Plot intricacies, big […]
Dharam Veer is a Hindi cinema TARDIS, holding way more bedazzled boots, pirate shirts, Elizabethan doublets, Roman sandals, feisty gypsies, hand guillotines, romantic princes, creepy statues, sworn promises, lost relatives, baby-switching schemes, court politics, sword fights, naval battles, and eye-for-an-eye justice than you imagine could possibly fit inside […]
It’s not terribly high in historical accuracy, but Sikandar is wonderful to behold and thoroughly thought-provoking about empire and political virtue from pre-Independence India. Sikandar manages to be completely entertaining while still indulging in lesson-dispensing from Aristotle, who as the film opens is in Persia with Sikandar and […]
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The Cultural Gutter 