All films from
INDIA unless o/w noted.
1. Talaash (Reema Kagti, 2012)
2.Prem Sanyas / The Light of Asia (Franz Osten/Himanshu Rai, 1925)
3. Shiraz (Franz Osten, 1928)
4. Acchut Kanya / Untouchable Girl (Franz Osten, 1936)
5. 3 Idiots (Rajkumar Hirani, 2009)
6. Devdas (P.C. Barua, 1936)
7. Enthiran / Robot (S. Shankar, 2010)
8. Baazi / High Stakes (Guru Dutt, 1951)
9. Talvar / Guilty (Meghna Gulzar, 2015)
10. Do Bigha Zamin / Two Acres of Land (Bimal Roy, 1953)
11. Nagarik / The Citizen (Ritwik Ghatak, 1952)
12. Ajantrik / Pathetic Fallacy (Ritwik Ghatak, 1958)
13. Meghe Dhaka Tara / The Cloud-Capped Star (Ritwik Ghatak, 1960)
14. Taare Zameen Par / Like Stars on Earth (Aamir Khan/Amole Gupta, 2007)
15. Andhadhum / The Blind Melody (Sriram Raghavan, 2018)
16. Komal Gandhar / A Soft Note on a Sharp Scale (Ritwik Ghatak, 1961)
17. Titas Ekti Nodir Naam / A River Called Titas (Ritwik Ghatak, 1973)
18. Jukti, Takko Aar Gappo / Reason, Debate and a Story (Ritwik Ghatak, 1974)
19. Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (Mira Nair, 1996, USA/INDIA /UK/Japan/Germany)
20. Raja Harishchandra (Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, 1913) + extras
21. Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955) (re-watch)
22. Aparajito (Satyajit Ray, 1956) (re-watch)
23. Apur Sansar (Satyajit Ray, 1959) (re-watch)
24. Parash Pathar / The Philosopher's Stone (Satyajit Ray, 1958)
25. Jalsaghar / The Music Room (Satyajit Ray, 1958) (re-watch)
26. Devi (Satyajit Ray, 1960) (re-watch)
27. Teen Kanya / Three Daughters (Satyajit Ray, 1961) (part re-watch)
28. Rabindranath Tagore (Satyajit Ray, 1961)
29. Khuda Gawah / God is My Witness (Mukul Anand, 1992)
30. Kanchenjungha (Satyajit Ray, 1962)
31. Abhijian / The Expedition (Satyajit Ray, 1962)
32. Mahanagar / The Big City (Satyajit Ray, 1963) (re-watch)
33.
Tees Maar Khan (Farah Khan, 2010)
OK so this one has a 2.5 rating on IMDb - perfect for the low ratings challenge in a few months if you're reading this. And that's where it belongs; while I trust IMDb ratings for contemporary Bollywood films even less than I do for most films, sometimes they're on the money. This is an absolutely unbearable crime-comedy about India's most notorious criminal (the name is the title) planning a train robbery in some small town dump while pretending to make a movie starring his girlfriend and one of India's biggest stars who he's suckered into believing will be up for an Oscar for it. This is obviously trying to satirize Bollywood but it's so broad and frenetic (a positive in some ways - it's only just over 2 hours long) that the jokes all fall flat or just zip by too quickly, at least for someone who's not that in up on the industry. But given the across-the-board hatred for this film it seems even Indians who love their pop films aren't impressed. This fits almost every negative stereotype most of us probably have about Bollywood - I mean this picture pretty much says it all
The whole film ultimately seems thrown together just to showcase the very repetitive music and the mugging and sexy dancing respectively of stars Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif. Oh and there's some rather irritating gay stereotyping going on though at the end of the film it's not clear if it's meant to be positive or negative - it comes across poorly to me but I get the sense that the filmmakers might have thought they were being progressive. Anyway, complete garbage.
34.
36 Chowringhee Lane (Aparna Sen, 1981)
Sen's first film as writer/director is a bleak, depressing story of a 60ish Anglo-Indian teacher (Jennifer Kendall) at an English-language girls' school in Calcutta, reflecting back on her memories of a lost love in WWII, family that have moved on and left her, etc, all while transitioning from teaching her beloved Shakespeare to the "less stressful" grammar that her new principal thinks will suit her better. Her only real joy besides Shakespeare (which her students don't seem to care much about) is her cat, and she lives a life of isolation until a chance run-in with an ex-student brings her a brief friendship with the student and her writer fiancee. Her diabetic older brother is dying, and the one other family member she's close to, a niece, has moved far away and invites her to move also, but this friendship with these young people seems to give her a new lease on life...for a little while. A really gloomy story about getting old and being alone, this hit me pretty hard; it's a really solid film but probably not something I'd have watched right now had I bothered to read up on the plot.
35.
Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (Reema Kagti, 2007)
I watched Kagti's later noirish crime film
Talaash earlier this month and liked it a fair amount, so this rom-com (so it looks like from the ads and such anyway) had some appeal. It's a bit different than what I expected, ultimately being more dramatic and less funny, and I'd say drama with romantic-and-weird elements would be a better descriptor. The weird elements are what make it fairly enjoyable to me - we have a bunch of couples on a bus going to Goa for their honeymoons, and by the end of the film two of the men are starting to acknowledge their attraction to each other (pretty progressive for India at the time I'm guessing), one of the women has shown herself to be an expert martial artist, and another couple turn out to be superheroes. I guess for some this stuff might undercut the more dramatic elements about how couples get together or stay together (one pair are middle aged and have been together for years) but to me it made for an interesting melange of realism and fantasy. No great shakes at all but pretty watchable, with only a couple of song/dance numbers and a run time of just over 2 hours.
