Team FC
Ali's most conventional film is also his best, using equally well a narrative and characters like Geet (Kareena Kapoor) and Aditya (Shahid Kapoor) to produce something beautiful.
In searching for stories and locating one's true self, Ali made Tamasha, which was anchored by a terrific Ranbir Kapoor turn, filmic inventiveness, and a Rahman soundtrack that was laudable to say the least.
Ali had a crack at the biopic and put a refreshing spin to the genre, breaking with staid narrative conventions that hobble the Hindi cinema variant, and drawing an impressive performance out of Diljit Dosanjh as the singing sensation who was murdered at the peak of his popularity.
Ali tackled sombre themes in his abduction drama about a young woman (Alia Bhatt) who finds freedom in her captor (Randeep Hooda). With a lovely Rahman soundtrack and solid performances, the film tided over its myriad problems to come through.
Ranbir Kapoor's incredible performance, aided by Rahman's music and Anil Mehta's images, helped the film sail over some difficult patches of writing and an abysmal turn by the co-lead Nargis Fakhri.
Ali's directorial debut was a breath of fresh air in a cinematic landscape that was more and more becoming repetitive: the narrative was something intriguing, and the performances solid.
A mid-tier Imtiaz Ali film if there ever were one, the film's biggest strength was the very natural chemistry between Deepika Padukone and Saif Ali Khan, which lent believability to the film's conflict.
While conceptually interesting, Ali's decision to play coy with material that was anything but, and the decision to soften harsh characters was the trouble of this film, which boasted a refreshing Shah Rukh Khan performance and a great Pritam soundtrack.
Ali's revisitation of the concepts that underpinned his 2009 Saif Ali Khan-Deepika Padukone starrer was a train wreck, with bad writing and terrible performances and unmemorable music.
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