Starring: <strong>Jeetendra, Sridevi...Oops, Ajay Devgan, Tamanna, etc.</strong> Directed by <strong>Sajid Khan</strong> Rating: <strong>**</strong> Sridevi famously said recently that her 1983 career-making potboiler <em>Himmatwala</em> was no <em>Mughal-e-Azam</em>. She was right to a point...Until now, when Sajid Khan’s remake of the 1983 K. Raghvendra Rao film has come along to provide a comparative viewpoint.

<strong>Starring</strong> Bipasha Basu, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Doyel Dhawan, Shernaz Patel <strong>Written & Directed by Suparn Verma</strong> <strong>Rating: ***</strong> All of us --men and women, husband and wives, adults and children—have to live with our fears. Sometimes we have to die with them. That’s where trouble starts in Suparn Verma’s smartly-written nimbly-executed shiver-giver which, blessedly, doesn’t lapse into a gore fest...At least not until the last few reels when the body count begins to pile up faster than we can say, ‘Aatma’.

Starring <strong>Jackky Bhagnani, Amitosh Nagpal,Vijay Verma, Priya Anand</strong> Directed by <strong>Priyadarshan</strong> Rating: <strong>*** ?</strong> Way back Tina Turner sang ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It?’ Now in <em>Rangrezz</em> the question is spun into a spunky dizzying drama of brutal love and betrayal. When love comes to shove, all hell breaks loose. It’s been a while since Priyadarshan made us sit up and watch in rapt attention. Visually and in terms of the content, <em>Rangrezz</em> is his best work in years.

Starring: <strong>Naseeruddin Shah, Nivedita Bhattacharya, Ahana Kumrah, Shruti Vyas</strong> Written & Directed by <strong>Makarand Despande</strong> Rating: <strong>*** ?</strong> These women sleep FOR you. Not WITH you. These are not street walkers. They are sleep workers who sleep for you when you are busy.

Starring: <strong>Arshad Warsi, Boman Irani,Sourav Shukla, Amrita Rao</strong> Written & Directed by <strong>Subhash Kapoor</strong> Rating: <strong>****</strong> It’s not often that a film manages to hit us in the solar plexus with a statement on an epidemic social disease, and yet succeeds in telling a story so engaging you want to jump out of your seat and applaud the enterprising spirit that surges through the veins of this equi-poised saga of the judge, the judged and the damned.

Starring <strong>Neil Nitin Mukesh, Sonal Chauhan</strong> Directed by <strong>Sheershak Anand, Shantanu Ray Chibber</strong> Rating: <strong>***</strong> Neil sees dead people. Whether dead people see him back is not known at the end of this chilling serial which starts off as a comment on the perils of intricately-manufactured cellphones and ends with a slap-in-the-face comment on the porn industry that, we are told, threatens to destroy the very foundation of our societal structure. It certainly creates havoc in two lives out to have a fun week in azure Fiji. Here’s how.

Starring <strong>Irrfan Khan, Mahie Gill, Jimmy Shergill, Soha Ali Khan, Raj Babbar</strong> Directed by <strong>Tigmanshu Dhulia</strong> Rating: <strong>****</strong> In what could be regarded as a sequence of subliminal comic relief, a little-known actor Rajeev Gupta gives this film, suffused in powerhouse performances, its best performance as a slimy politician caught watching porn on his laptop in his office by a goon masquerading as a journalist.

Starring: <strong> John Abraham, Chitrangda Singh, Prachi Desai, Raima Sen, Mini Mathur</strong> Directed by <strong>Kapil Sharma</strong> Rating: <strong> ***</strong> What do you with a self-obsessed guy like Ishaan who shoulders no responsibility except that to his iron-board torso and matinee-idol posturing, who takes everyone from Mom, Sis and Girlfriend to success, friendship and karma for granted? John Abraham plays the kind of narcissist whose life is just waiting to fall apart. It does, soon enough leaving him...well, high and not quite dry.

Starring: <strong>Nana Patekar, Sanjeev Jaiswal,Atul Kulkarni</strong> Directed by <strong>Ram Gopal Varma</strong> Rating: <strong>****</strong> Somewhere in the re-telling of the saga of bloodbath, torrential shower of bullets and bombs that rained down on Mumbai on 26 November 2008 a little child sitting lost amidst a carpet of corpses in the posh hotel lobby of the Taj weeps on the gleaming white marble floor now reduced to a bloodied mess. We then hear another round of gunfire and then, the child’s weeping ceases.

Starring: <strong>Sanjay Dutt, Vivek Oberoi, Paresh Rawal, Arshad Warsi, Chandrachur Singh, Ravi Kissan, Divya Dutta</strong> Directed by <strong>Anand Kumar</strong> Rating: <strong>** ?</strong> Wasseypur’s gangs never had it so good. Seeing the glorious guttural outflow of gore blood bullets and profanities in <em>Zilla Ghaziabad</em> one could safely(?) assume, Wasseypur is safe. So is the other release this week. Abhishek Kapoor’s <em>Kai Po Che</em> is as far removed from its Friday competition as flying kites are from speeding bullets.