Top Fives

This is almost year-end and I had an interesting idea to put my top fives in movies (Ten will be too much of rating others :)).
Of course, it is a stupid thing to do but someone has to do the 'dirty' job ;).

I am restricting to what ever Indian movies I have seen in 2004. Also I haven't included Mughal-e-Aazam, as it will be too hard a competition for others.

According to me, the liking for a movie is very subjective. I also regard the fact that as a movie-lover we are always ready to take some amount of illogical stuff and when it comes to Indian cinema this amount is not that small. Therefore logic don't guide you here in totality. At times you watch movies to get a fulfilling experience, at times you cry for realism and at other times you believe in a fantasy to be real.

For sometime now, I have tried to judge a movie by the honesty of the effort, and it does give fairly good results.

Coming to this year, I will not say it is bad year because 2003 wasn't great either. There were only countable good movies ( Bhoot, Dhoop, Jhankar beats, 3 Deewarein, Waisa bhi hota hai...) in 2003. The criteria which I followed include:
1. Honesty of effort
2. Minimum Cliché and Minimum melodrama
3. Innovation in theme/presentation
4. Performances
5. Would I like to see it again ?

So here the lists goes on...
Top five 2004 movies
1. Maqbool (Excellent Performances by one and all, interesting story-telling and good direction)
2. Ab tak Chappan (Good Dialogues and real characterization, end is little bit filmy)
3. Chameli (Kareena's performance and creation of a great rainy-night-with-two-strangers ambiance)
4. Naach (A true musical)
5. Hum Tum (Saif's performance)

Those who can't make to the list but are worth a mention here:
1. Morning Raga (For Music, Shabana's sincere work, Perizaad's beauty)
2. Yuva (Good direction and performances)
3. Khakee (Thoroughly entertaining stuff and Aish as Vamp)
4. Dev (Solid performances by Amitabh and Om Puri, and excellent kiss between Kareena and Fardeen)
5. Madhyanam Hathya (Very realistic, cinema which doesn't take any sides)

5 movies I regret, I didn't watch
1. Shwaas (So much hype !)
2. Chokar Bali (Mixed reviews, Heard Raima Sen has done an excellent work)
3. Phir Milenge (Revathy movie, I missed 'Mitr' too)
4. Raincoat (Looks like some sensible cinema)
5. Meenaxi: Tale of three city (They say its poetry on screen)

Now coming to worst 5 and it has all the competition, but fortunately for some I haven't seen many movies this year.
Five Worst movies
1. Vastu Shastra
2. Main hoon na
3. Dhoom
4. Gayab
5. Paap

Also this year was not any big step forward in Indian Cinema. It hasn't stopped its ways of making duplicate movies if one works ( 'Murder' followed by 'Hawas', followed by 'Girlfriend', followed by 'Julie', followed by 'Ab Bas'... and many more to come). If I try to get a trend, the only one which I can think of is item numbers. Every movie should have at least one, by hook or by crook. Another trend is kissing on screen. The only Kiss which conveyed some real passion was seen in 'Dev', otherwise all this kiss-business is so fake. All the Yash-chopras and Karan-johars still keep fixating on family values (which is nothing but dancing, loving and marrying), saccharine romance, deep melodrama and 'sarso ke khet'.

Hope 2005 is better. Hope to see Karan Jahar make a song-less murder mystery and Ram Gopal Verma a family drama.