Shubhra Gupta is film critic and senior columnist with the Indian Express. She watches world cinema for delectation, Hollywood for fun, and Bollywood for work. She has a huge capacity to sit through terrible Bollywood movies, but no patience at all with bad Hollywood. And world cinema has to be really cutting edge to grab her attention, and keep it. When she began reviewing, over 20 years ago, people would commiserate and say, “oh, you poor thing, you have to watch Hindi cinema”. But soon, Bollywood became cool, cool, cool. So now she hears this more often “oh my god, you watch Bollyood films, can you introduce me to Shah Rukh Khan”? No, she can’t, sorry, though she can vouch for the fact that he is really sharp and good fun in conversation. But what she can do, and has done week after week, month after month, year after year, without a break, is to lead you into the magical world of movies, and share her experiences of watching all those hundreds of films over the years. In her reviews and columns, she lets you into what she likes, and doesn’t, and invites you to be bewitched. And to know how to choose between the good ones and the turkeys, and how you can take away something from even the really ghastly ones. Because life is a movie, isn’t it? Bahut picture baaki hain, mere dost.

July 25,2025 13:08:07 PM
Rangeen movie review: Still waiting for the definitive desi show which will engage with full-blown lust without hedging its bets with caution and surrounding it with superfluous bits and pieces.
Fri, Jul 25, 2025
July 25,2025 09:21:47 AM
Sarzameen movie review: Prithviraj is capable of ratcheting emotion, as is Kajol. And Ibrahim, playing a boy cruelly bullied for an impairment who grows into a young man on the opposite side of the loyalty divide.
Fri, Jul 25, 2025
July 19,2025 09:51:25 AM
Special Ops 2 review: Given its length, there definitely are spots where things slacken, but on the whole, this buzzy spy-saga stays mostly on-point, always entertaining
Mon, Jul 21, 2025
July 18,2025 15:43:04 PM
Tanvi The Great movie review: Anupam Kher, who returns to direction after more than twenty years, adopts a fuss-free approach and a welcome restraint.
Fri, Jul 18, 2025
July 18,2025 14:28:03 PM
Saiyaara movie review: What could have been a bitter-sweet love story, and that’s what the Mohit Suri film is clearly going for, is done in by its dialogue-heavy, inconsistent bits.
Fri, Jul 18, 2025
July 11,2025 20:17:31 PM
Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan movie review: Vikrant Massey and Shanaya Kapoor-starrer Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan had the potential to turn into a passable rom-com, but how do you make a movie out of a writing morass?
Fri, Jul 11, 2025
July 11,2025 15:35:44 PM
Maalik movie review: Rajkummar Rao goes all out doing the mobster thing, hefting machine guns and goons, killing and rampaging with impunity in the Illahabad (Allahabad) of the late 80s-90s.
Fri, Jul 11, 2025
July 11,2025 12:30:19 PM
Aap Jaisa Koi movie review: It’s great that Bollywood can now give us a hero who is forty-plus, and whose insecurities around women feel real. But this gives way to staged confrontations-and-resolutions, lending the movie a faintly mothballed air.
Fri, Jul 11, 2025
July 04,2025 14:41:03 PM
The Hunt - The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case review: Amit Sial-Sahil Vaid show is a welcome addition to shows looking back at recent times, which attempt to pin-point historical and political flashpoints in India with archival documentary footage.
Fri, Jul 04, 2025
July 04,2025 09:49:13 AM
Kaalidhar Laapata movie review: Child actor Daivik, a wide smile lighting up his face, is a natural. He settles into a rhythm which makes their journey somewhat palatable: it is Abhishek Bachchan who struggles to match up.
Fri, Jul 04, 2025
July 04,2025 09:47:37 AM
Metro.. In Dino movie review: This really should be a series, because life is unruly and ungainly, spilling over the edges, annoying and exhilarating, in equal measure, and when Metro In Dino is at its best, it catches all those beats.
Sat, Jul 05, 2025
July 02,2025 08:00:24 AM
Bollywood 6-month report card: From Chhaava's polarising blockbuster-dom to the spunky success of Sitaare Zameen Par, here's the best, worst and strictly middling cinema that we watched in the first six months of the year.
Wed, Jul 02, 2025
June 27,2025 11:12:49 AM
Maa movie review: Smashing patriarchy is a task that films need to keep taking up, and Kajol has the heft to get the job done.
Fri, Jun 27, 2025
June 20,2025 14:29:16 PM
Detective Sherdil movie review: There are enough adept actors in this ensemble, led by Diljit Dosanjh, for us to expect an engaging whodunit. But the treatment is flat, making the characters even flatter.
Fri, Jun 20, 2025
June 20,2025 10:10:38 AM
Sitaare Zameen Par Movie Review & Rating: This film wouldn’t have worked as well as it does if Aamir hadn’t been fully committed to putting himself out there as a hero-who-is-a-jerk.
Fri, Jun 20, 2025
June 13,2025 14:45:57 PM
Second Chance movie review: Music and myths are part and parcel of the land’s fabric, and the script weaves those in neatly without any exoticising.
Fri, Jun 13, 2025
June 13,2025 13:36:08 PM
Rana Naidu 2 review: Rana Dagubatti makes up for the show's shortcomings as the long, tall and strong titular character, who stays the last man standing in the face of all the murder and mayhem.
Fri, Jun 13, 2025
June 06,2025 20:00:25 PM
The Life Of Chuck movie review: The Life Of Chuck is a near-faithful cinematic adaptation which aims at giving us the warm fuzzies-in-this-dark-and-dismal-world, and succeeds, more or less.
Fri, Jun 06, 2025
June 06,2025 13:09:45 PM
Housefull 5 Movie Review, Rating: Compared to the previous Housefulls, this one has a slightly fuller house, but because no one expects anything else, it’s pretty much like the older ones.
Fri, Jun 06, 2025
June 05,2025 12:19:08 PM
Stolen movie review: While everything in Abhishek Banerjee's new film is clearly geared towards making the proceedings urgent, that crucial sense of urgency comes through only sporadically.
Thu, Jun 05, 2025
June 04,2025 08:00:59 AM
Honey Trehan says among 121 'non-negotiable' cuts demanded by CBFC include changing protagonist Jaswant Singh Khalra's name, dropping Indian flag's visuals, removing mention of Punjab police, and changing the name of the film. 'What is left then?’ he asks.
Wed, Jun 04, 2025
May 31,2025 08:07:33 AM
Filmmaker Neeraj Ghaywan on capturing the voice of the marginalised in Homebound, the nine-minute standing ovation it received at the Cannes Film Festival, navigating his identity and how empathy and kindness are what the world needs right now.
Sun, Jun 01, 2025
May 30,2025 16:38:35 PM
Sister Midnight movie review: The film is a strong indictment of mismatched people yoked into marriages not of their making. And a big shout-out to finding your tribe.
Fri, May 30, 2025
May 30,2025 12:59:24 PM
Kankhajura review: While the show is filled with good performances -- everyone does their job well -- the writing doesn’t surprise as much as it could have. There’s also the standard difficulty of everything becoming a stretch.
Fri, May 30, 2025
May 30,2025 12:32:46 PM
Criminal Justice A Family Matter review: Pankaj Tripathi’s everyman-ness is his most endearing trait, but it can also become a much of muchness.
Fri, May 30, 2025



