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The Best Hindi Movies 2018

The-Best-Hindi-Bollywood-Movies-of-2018

What makes your list of the best Hindi movies 2018? Here is our list, while you make up your mind. Music lovers, what do you think of the 9PM ‘best Hindi movie songs of 2018?’ Do let us know. 

Despite the invasion of alternate online entertainment making zombies out of millions of cell phone users,70mm cinema lovers like me still made it to the theaters this year.

Multiplex owners impassively continue to charge exorbitant rates for tickets and food, unaffected by dwindling numbers.

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Single screen theaters, probably the only hope for reviving mass audience big screen cinema in India are slowly going extinct like the dinosaurs. Nobody gives a damn, while some single-screen theaters still fight it out. By my own experience, nothing matches watching a great movie from the balcony seat with an expressive, open, cheering, hooting audience.

As a response to the online onslaught, top filmmakers took a diversion, experimenting beyond formula and star-driven films.The best films of the year worked for the content, execution and performances, rather than the formula. Finally, more directors could be telling stories in 2019 that they always wanted to tell.

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Andhadhun | Director – Sriram Raghavan

Completing his “the darkness within man” trilogy with Andhadhun, Raghavan goes lighter and cheeky, as compared to the part-masterpiece Johnny Gaddaar and gritty, psychotic Badlapur.As a Pune-based writer, it was exhilarating to watch Raghavan execute scenes around the city he obviously loves, like in Badlapur.

The ending will be long talked about, how much of the story recited is true, what has been made up and why is the rabbit blind too? Go figure. Great performances by Ayushmann Khurrana, Tabu, Anil Dhawan and Radhika Apte.


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Mukkabaaz  | Director – Anurag Kashyap 

Opening the year with another rebel slingshot, Anurag Kashyap barrel guns his way through the sorry state of sports (especially boxing) in India.Based on true events, Mukkabaaz searingly chronicles Sharavan Kumar’s impossible fight to be a boxing champ, warding off caste oppression, murderous gau rakshaks, opposition to a love affair, sports administration politics, neglect, insensitivity.

Though songs mitigate impact to a degree, Mukkabaaz proves again that nobody does freewheeling, straight, engaging, razor-sharp cinema like Anurag Kashyap.Featuring superb performances by Vineet Kumar, Zoya Hussain and Ravi Kishan. Good offbeat music by Rachita Arora with one song by Nucleya (Paintra).

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Mulk | Director – Anubhav Sinha

Do we really know our directors and actors? A maker of average movies may have a magnificent story hidden within them, and we, a fast-to-judge audience would have no clue. Anubhav Sinha, the maker of mostly forgettable movies until now, arrived this year with the absolute truth and courage of Mulk.
Easily the 9 PM Hindi Movie of the Year, you can’t ignore Mulk’s large-hearted intensity. In these unequal, religiously-blind, oppressive times, Mulk holds a revolutionary torch to healing and mending broken relationships.
The Tapsee Pannu monologue kept me thinking for days. Rishi Kapoor is very effective, while Manoj Pahwa is haunting. Mulk, as I have stated many times this year, is the most important film of our feared, repressive times, it is a mandatory watch for all.
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Raazi  | Director – Meghna Gulzar

Raazi was a big surprise for me, the tautness and sensitivity took me aback on its theatre release viewing.Catching it on a streaming service months later, the movie remained as immediate a watch.

The human touch has been cast away for loud patriotic jingoism in so many Hindi movies, Raazi walks a difficult line and earns the rewards for it.

Alia Bhatt, Vicky Kaushal and Jaideep Ahlawat put in stellar performances in this balanced spy thriller.With the makers’ heart and head at the right place, Raazi has raised expectations for the next Meghna Gulzar movie.

Meanwhile, her father and Shankar-Ehsan-Loy gave a crackling soundtrack to match the movie’s intention and message.

Those interested in more movies related to the Indo-Pak 1971 war, go for the decent submarine drama The Ghazi Attack.
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Tumbbad | Directors – Rahi Anil Barve, Anand Gandhi, Adesh Prasad

I haven’t seen anything as visually stunning as Tumbbad in the last decade.As far as horror movies go, other directors can take a cue from the film’s story and screenplay writers.

A horror movie need not be about gory faces, disturbing violence, cheap thrills, escapist voyeurism and sex for the heck of it.

Tumbbad mines the fables we heard from granny and answers all money-minded stone hearts, “Greed is definitely not good.”Six years in the making and barely recovering its cost at the box office, I have only one thing to say for all the star-blinded audiences who gave Tumbbad a skip at the theaters.

You missed a breathtaking cinematic experience of a lifetime.

Honourable Mentions    
Stree-movie-poster
Stree
Fresh rollicking horror comedy with an ambiguous pro-women message.
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Pad Man

Superb social entertainer better without the fluffy, forced love triangle.

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October 
Subtle poetry, strangely moving, despite the impending, looming
tragedy.

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