‎Dhruv Krishna Goyal’s profile • Letterboxd

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Landscapers 2021

★★★★½ Watched by Dhruv Krishna Goyal 27 Dec 2021 1

everything's wonderfully "fragile" here.
the film/telemaking is both classical and post-modern. in other words, director Will Sharpe and series creator Ed Sinclar's commitment to recreating the glorious Westerns and the classic melodramas that its protagonists love more or less equals the investigation team's deconstruction of their lives. so, rather than see Susan and Christopher’s life only in a critical light, both filmmaker and creator ask us to also believe in what they believe, complicating what could otherwise have been a…
Sardar Udham 2021

★★★½ Watched by Dhruv Krishna Goyal 16 Oct 2021 10

Interrogations into history - both personal and socio-political - are always subjective, colored by the very form in which people express them. One can choose to look at revolutions and tragedies forensically, excavating personal facts about someone's past from documents like passports, employment certificates, and other paperwork. This form of investigation is a detached one, governed most strongly by the desire to attain some form of tangible, understandable truth. The more personal methodology is that of interviews. Here too, though,…

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Thar 2022

★★½ Watched by Dhruv Krishna Goyal 06 May 2022 3

remains most interesting if seen as a somewhat dour, though perfectly watchable, off-shoot of the conflict hinted at in AK vs. AK between senior and junior Kapoor. or, as a representation of Hindi films' ongoing struggle in embracing masala cinema or Bollywood's restrained "Hollywood"-style cinema.
the casting, writing, and performance styles make the parallels crystal clear. senior Kapoor yearns to be the hero of a 70s B'wood Western. Harshvarrdhan (again unconvincing in a serious dramatic role) is going for something…
Dhuin 2022

★★★ Watched by Dhruv Krishna Goyal 24 Feb 2022

was underwhelmed by Gamak Ghar because of a personal disinterest in (1) films that reveal what they are about at the beginning and then continue to emphasize that throughout the runtime in thuddingly obvious ways, and (2) anthropomorphized narratives (yes, did not like The Red Balloon too). i had liked the form in places, especially the third act that uses wide-shot compositions to paint bricks falling from the top of a worn-down house as a visual equivalent to that of…

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Thappad 2020

★★★★ Watched by Dhruv Krishna Goyal 28 Feb 2020 10

The rise in production and consumption of "social-message movies" in Bollywood of late has given birth to some actors' careers (Ayushmann Khurrana), and somewhat resurrected flailing ones (Akshay Kumar). But, if there is one person, this movement has entirely changed (arguably liberated), it is director Anubhav Sushila Sinha. Take his output before the still hauntingly effective Mulk (2018) and tell me that you saw a filmmaker who wanted to use the medium of cinema to make a change or challenge…
Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar 2021

★★★★ Watched by Dhruv Krishna Goyal 21 Mar 2021 9

Dibakar Banerjee's Highway in that it is not a journey of self-realization through India's scenic mountains and forests, but a consistently tense coming-of-age ride through the long-winded roads of Delhi and Pithoragadh with toll stops at every other turn run by the prototypical government official. that is, a man who believes in not minding a "dictatorship," values money, watches Bhai's movies and engages in casual misogyny.
when that is the accepted definition of man and woman in this world, to be "Faraar" seems like the (only) reasonable response for Sandeep and Pinky.