BOLLY BRAVOS

NO ONE KILLED JESSICA

Aamir man Raj Kumar Gupta picked a real-life incident and wove an engaging story. Vidya Balan was serene and Rani Mukerji spunky. Amit Trivedi’s music hit the right notes.

DELHI BELLY

The pathbreaker of the year was an irreverent

96-minute ride thriving on toilet humour, laugh-out-loud gags, cuss words, insane characters and situations, and DK Bose!

THE DIRTY PICTURE

Vidya Balan bared body and soul as southern siren Silk in this Milan Luthria film produced by Ekta Kapoor. Unabashed and unapologetic,TDP clean bowled critics and cinegoers.

ZINDAGI NA MILEGI DOBARA

Zoya Akhtar’s liberating tale of life and love drew smiles and tears. Hrithik, Farhan, Abhay, Katrina and Spain made ZNMD beautiful. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s easy tunes (led by Senorita) stayed top of the charts.

SINGHAM

Ajay Devgn roared to box-office success as a braveheart cop in this violent good vs evil remake by Rohit Shetty of a Tamil blockbuster. Prakash Raj’s “Welcome to Goa, Singham” line hit home as well.

MERE BROTHER KI DULHAN

Ali Zafar was cool. Imran Khan was cooler. Katrina Kaif was coolest. This Yash Raj film showed Sorry Bhai! how to make falling in love with your bro’s babe fun. Dhunki did the rest.

FORCE

Mumbai Meri Jaan maker Nishikant Kamat gave us a real actioner. John’s brawn, Genelia’s charm and newcomer Vidyut’s power made Force a winner.

SMALL is BIG

DHOBI GHAT

Debutante director Kiran Rao fashioned poetry on celluloid with a slice-of-life clutterbreaker that focused on real lives and real people. Simple and sublime.

I AM

Calcutta boy Onir’s four-in-one film gave a platform to minority voices fractured by society. The compelling storytelling and winning performances from the ensemble cast kept this silent gem afloat in the big Bolly wave.

STANLEY KA DABBA

A film that explored the innocence of childhood, Stanley Ka Dabba was a bitter-sweet tale of hope and despair. If Amole Gupte gave us a film rich in emotions, his son Partho — as Stanley — brought alive a character that tugged at the heartstrings.

SHOR IN THE CITY

Ekta Kapoor the producer gave us a superbly written and enacted tale about lives crashing and colliding in the big city. Strong characters and a riveting screenplay made this

three-in-one story a must watch.

SHAITAN

This rollercoaster ride of a group of youngsters on the brink scored with its edgy and irreverent tone. The box office may not have warmed to this dark and compelling noir, but we sure did.

RAGINI MMS

Ekta Kapoor rewrote the rulebook with this spook fest modelled on Paranormal Activity. Ragini MMS — with natural acts from Raj Kumar Yadav and Kainaz Motivala — hit the scare spot real sweet.

THAT GIRL IN YELLOW BOOTS

Anurag Kashyap was back with the powerful tale of a young girl shuffling between the men and machinations of the maximum city. Wife Kalki shone bright.

Mirch

Bold premise and sharp wit, both rare in Indian cinema, came together in this gem of a small movie by Vinay Shukla on the politics of sex. The Bong belles in bed? Raima Sen and Konkona Sensharma.

SAHEB BIWI AUR GANGSTER

Tigmanshu Dhulia reinvented and reinterpreted the Abrar Alvi classic to give us a story of love and lust. Brutally honest and a bloody good watch.

SOUNDTRACK

This under-watched film about a hedonistic, drug-addict DJ who becomes deaf in pursuit of his ambitions had quite a lump-in-the-throat act from Rajeev Khandelwal.

BIG BUT BAD

READY

Despite a Salman Khan in Rajinikanth mode and the chartbusting Character dheela and Dhinka chika, this Anees Bazmee hit had a boring first half, a done-to-death plot and too many characters.

RA.ONE

A larger-than-life Shah Rukh, a

red-hot Kareena, Chammak challo, Holly-style special effects and a guerilla marketing blitz failed to hide the fact that this superhero film had no real story to tell.

MURDER 2

Serial kissing met serial killing in this Mohit Suri howler hit that was a

copy-paste of half-a-dozen foreign flicks. Even Jacqueline Fernandez’s seductive pout failed to make

Murder 2 watchable.

BODYGUARD

Salman was fun and Kareena was the show-stealer but what do you say about a film in which the hero is in love with a voice at the end of a phone line? That did not stop Salman fans from making Bodyguard the second highest Bolly grosser ever.

AARaKSHAN

Prakash Jha turned out a tame take on casteism and reservation that failed to take off. Despite the starry line-up — Amitabh Bachchan to Saif Ali Khan to Deepika Padukone — Aarakshan was a laborious watch from start to finish.

7 KHOON MAAF

Vishal Bhardwaj’s dark noir film about a wife murdering her seven husbands in cold blood held out immense promise, but 7 Khoon Maaf turned out to be a dull treatise on unfulfilled love. Ruskin Bond’s story was so much better.

MAUSAM

Actor Pankaj Kapur turned director, casting son Shahid and Sonam Kapoor in this love story across seasons. Despite Binod Pradhan’s beautiful frames, an overlong script made Mausam a mass murder by boredom.

ROCKSTAR

Ranbir and Rahman wowed, but Imtiaz Ali’s tale of a simpleton’s journey to an angsty rocker lost the plot (and the viewer) somewhere down the line. Debutante Nargis Fakhri was a disaster.

DESI BOYZ

Star power, striptease, taut abs and 22-inch waists did not work as this Akshay Kumar-John Abraham starrer plunged to new lows in comedy.

team impact

kiran rao

the director

Aamir Khan’s wife slipped

into the director’s chair

with Dhobi Ghat, giving us a film that came straight

from the heart. Brave and beautiful.

IDYUT JAMWAL

the baddie

Piercing eyes. Perfectly sculpted body. Menacing swagger. Model-turned-actor Vidyut Jamwal made sure all eyes were on him — even when beefcake John Abraham was in the same frame in Force. When was evil so good?

CHAMMAK CHALLO

the anthem

The Bolly anthem of the year had a red-hot Kareena and a deadpan Shah Rukh grooving to Vishal-Shekhar’s tune sung by Akon. Nightclub to para pandal, she ruled.

aamir khan

THE producer

Irreverent and in-your-face, Aamir the producer scored with this ‘Strictly for Adults’ film that promised a rollercoaster ride of f**k and f**t. The 96 minutes of Delhi Belly was capped with a winner: Aamir as Travolta-meets-Mithunda, shaking much more than a leg to I hate you like I love you.

parineeti chopra

the scene-stealer

The audience walked in to watch Ranveer Singh and Anushka Sharma in Ladies vs Ricky Bahl, but walked out with Parineeti Chopra. Playing a spoilt Delhi girl in her debut film, Priyanka Chopra’s cousin stole the spotlight. Next up: Ishaqzaade opposite Boney Kapoor’s son Arjun.

GULSHAN DEVAIAH

the outsider

As an out-of-control cocaine addict in Shaitan and a comic gangster in That Girl in Yellow Boots, this Anurag Kashyap find forced us to sit up and take notice.

EKTA KAPOOR

the producer

From regressive soap opera to ground-breaking cinema, Balaji boss Ekta Kapoor was the game-changer. If Ragini MMS upped the spook quotient and Shor in the City hit hard, The Dirty Picture gave us a mainstream film where a woman celebrated her body, walked the walk and talked the talk.