I don't know about where you live, but in Toronto there are several theaters that always have one or more current release Bollywood films. I saw this poster months ago and thought it was ridiculous enough that "We could watch Barfi?" became an in-joke.

And through all this I had never seen a proper Indian film, ever. These movies are always playing here, yet none of the English papers review them, nor do my peers in Toronto ever see them. Nobody on my letterboxd feed ever seems to post anything about any of them. We'll see all the Korean movies or the sad bastard French films, but never something like this.

So m'lady and I saw Barfi on Netflix and…

Actors 5x5: Bollywood leading men project: Ranbir Kapoor #2
Actresses 5x5: Bollywood leading ladies project: Priyanka Chopra #1

This is one of the strangest love stories I have ever seen. Like most love stories, it has a love triangle, but the triangle is not what you'd expect.
Barfi, the hero, is deaf and speech-impaired.
Shruti, the first heroine we're introduced to, loves the hero very much but spends most of the film wondering if she should commit to him or not. She even marries somebody else fairly early on (but she keeps wondering even after that). And the hero, though heartbroken, wishes her the best. They stay friends.
Jhilmil, the second heroine we're introduced to, is autistic. To be honest,…

Heartwarming and sweet, love how the interactions and the relationship between Barfi and Jhilmil is really well developed and acted, there isn’t much speaking in the movie because of  their disabilities, so the actors really had to use their expressions and energy to really portray the characters and it honestly works, all the emotions and feelings are able to be shown wonderfully, the small moments of sadness, joy, fear, jealousy, heartbreak, are able to be expressed on screen with a nice soundtrack that carry’s you along, and some gorgeous visuals, and likeable leads, absolutely adored Ranbir in this, and this is probably Priyankas best performance.

Loved how it was also able to have some homages to silent movies, with the slapstick,…

Honestly, this is so far up my alley it seems kind of dishonest to review it.

Without wanting to take anything away from this astonishingly lovable film, I'd say it's the perfect example of why, most times, the notion of originality in cinema is somewhat overrated. This is pastiche at its fullest, lifting entire gags from Keaton, Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, the narrative structure from 'The Notebook', the accordion-lead score, color palette and the "quirky" wide-eyed short-haired character from 'Amelie', and so on and so forth. And yet, it still feels very much like its own thing, even if it clearly isn't (but again what is?).

The key difference here is that unlike so many pictures in recent years…

A Cinematic Passage to India || Film #1

Well, what a great way to start this challenge. Barfi! is one of the few Indian films I'd really heard about before, mainly in thanks to its appearance of many of IMDb's recent top lists (although there are a significant number of Indian films with fairly conspicuous ratings). Thankfully, Barfi! managed to live up to what I had heard about it.

It tells the story of a young deaf and mute man (Barfi) and his relationships with two women: one of whom is engaged and another who is severely autistic. Obviously I was completely unfamiliar with the three main actors but they were all fantastic in their own way. Ranbir Kapoor plays…