Best of Bollywood 2014

After a rocking early start this year with Queen, Highway and Hasee to Phasee, Bollywood was unable to produce a streak of good cinema. With a very few just good movies and of course many dull ones, it was a below average year. Somewhere between this, a masterpiece Hawaa Hawaai was delivered by Amol Gupte who showed yet again that children movies can be unique and brilliant every other time. Mardaani, Samrat & Co, Aakhon Dekhi, Haider showed some promise. Although it was a very good ending of the year starting with PK and marvelously acted and directed thriller Ugly.

Here is the list of my TOP 5 Movies this year:

1. Hawaa Hawaai
2. Queen
3. Ugly
4. Highway
5. Mardaani

After movies, it's worth mentioning other important attributes of cinema that floored us this year.

Best Actor: Aamir Khan (PK) / Girish Kulkarni (Ugly)
Best Actress: Kangana Ranaut (Queen)
Best Director: Anurag Kashyap (Ugly)

This has to be followed by summarizing these aspects and mentioning other great entities that just missed the top list.

Male Acting:
This was one of the rare years where none of the Male lead actors nailed the performance. Till end of the year it was only Shahid Kapoor in Haider who was appreciative. Other than that only few character artists were watchful but in very small roles. For instance Pankaj Kapoor in Finding Fanny, Irrfan Khan in Haider and Vijay Raaz in Kya Dilli Kya Lahore. Other well performed commercial roles include Rajeev Khandelwal in Samrat & Co and Partho Gupte / Saqib Saleem in Hawaa Hawaai. Again towards the end, there were two terrific performances by Aamir Khan in PK and Girish Kulkarni in Ugly. Aamir performed brilliantly throughout whereas Girish Kulkarni mirrored perfection in whatever valuable minutes he got.

Female Acting:
Similar to the unusual male act year, Female performances were also a rarity but in a complete opposite way. It was a definitely a female centric year that saw many astonishing performances by female leads. Starting from Parineeti Chopra in Hasee to Phasee, it was Alia Bhatt who took all the attention with a breathtaking performance in Highway. Unfortunately for her, soon after Kangana Ranaut came with a splendid performance in Queen which was stamped as the best performance in starting of the year itself. The year was hence followed by three more good performances that include Rani Mukherjee in Mardaani, Priyanka Chopra in Mary Kom and Tabu in Haider. Undoubtedly 2014 will be remembered as the feminine year.

Direction:
With few good directed movies by Vikas Bahl (Queen) and Amole Gupte (Hawaa Hawaai), it was Imtiaz Ali who showed some brilliant skills again in Highway. He was responsible for each and every point of success that the movie tasted. It was the last movie of the year that took all attention with a splendid direction by Anurag Kashyap in Ugly. Each scene was tailor made and movie was directed to perfection. The vibe and excitement that he created were just awesome. Full marks to him for all the fervor he inserted into the viewers.

Best Music:
1. Highway - A.R. Rehman
2. Queen - Amit Trivedi
3. Ek Villain - Mithoon, Ankit Tiwari
4. 2 States - Shankar Ehsaan Loy
5. Hasee to Phasee - Vishal & Shekhar

PK

Director: Rajkumar Hirani
Actors: Aamir Khan, Anushka Sharma

Rating: 3 / 5

Cruising on Raju Hirani's formula and heavily forecasted as an entertainer, PK certainly has not disappointed. Problem lies in more than few places where you'll really mourn that why the main essence is highly extended and deviated. It starts slow to build some trivial story but Aamir's entry takes off the movie to a different level. Although looked like a used concept initially but throughout the first half Raju Hirani miraculously proves that he's a pure comedy master. Everything was nailed with genuine laughs including awesome use of Bhojpuri accent. After a continuous flow of wonderful comedy and great content, second half pulls out the main entertaining crux from the movie. Use of god and religion were over protracted that keeps you waiting for revival of the good times.

Aamir Khan spectacularly performed the character that looked hard for an actor to make it unique. It was his movie completely with other actors just having a minor support to play. Although movie trailed in second half but Aamir's performance was rock solid throughout.

Despite the fact that Raju Hirani's directorial performance was good, he copied his success mantra from all his previous cults. It looked like a mixture that fortunately was presentable. It worked this time for Raju but next time repetitiveness might hurt albeit I can take the risk of saying that I'm confident Raju will excite us again.

Music was substandard and was restless at many places although presence of Aamir Khan made it watchable.

Overall, a terrific first half riding on tremendous performance by Aamir Khan that mourns you why second half was poor.