The Best Bollywood Movies of All Time Open the Door Some of Cinema's Most Spectacular Films
First lesson: learn the history. Second lesson: Get to watching.
Don’t mistake Bollywood for a distant relative of Hollywood. The Indian Hindi-language film industry is a cinema hub of its own right, and they need no direction from their Western counterpart.
Coined for the formerly-named city of “Bombay,” now known as Mumbai, Bollywood is often mistaken as a physical place or a genre. Although Bollywood films are often produced in Mumbai and are known for unique genres like the masala film, Bollywood is an Indian film industry designated for its utilization of the Hindi language.
The Bollywood industry has produced some of cinema’s most spectacular and extravagant films, from its colorful, awe-inspiring musicals of the masala genre to the hyper-real films of parallel cinema (and everything in between). Whether you’re looking for action, drama, romance, or comedy, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for and more in these Bollywood and Indian cinema classics.
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge
Queen
Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga
This heartwarming coming-of-age comedy-drama tells the story of a young woman named Sweety on her journey to love and acceptance as a closeted lesbian. Pressured by her rather conservative family, Sweety’s path towards pursuing a relationship with the woman she loves seems riddled with obstacles. However, she finds an avenue for hope in an unlikely place: through the help of a suitor.
3 Idiots
Sholay
This 1975 action-adventure follows the unlikely trio of two criminals and a retired police officer. The officer hired the two to take down another local criminal, and the duo’s mission to fulfill the officer’s request grows urgent as their bond with him, and his motives, grows deeper.
Mother India
Mehboob Khan’s choice to remake his 1940 feature film of the same concept proved to be worth the 17-year investment. Now a hit musical-drama, Mother India follows the plights of a single mother as she struggles to raise her two sons despite their poverty.
Mughal-e-Azam
This historical-drama tells the love story of Mughal Prince Salim and commoner Anaarkali, a romance which arises to the dismay of Prince Salim’s father, Emperor Akbar.
The Lunchbox
A classic of the late, great Irrfan Khan, The Lunchbox unfolds (literally) through a series of letters from a wife to her husband in his daily lunchbox, with hopes of reviving their marriage. What she doesn’t realize upon building a rapport, however, is that the man whom she is communicating with is, in fact, not her husband.
Pyaasa
Almost every modern poet has probably wondered why it took most of the literary greats dying for their work to get recognized. Pyaasa is the ultimate posthumous dream, in which a young poet’s mistaken death prompts his brother to get his works published in his honor. But, when he “returns” to his newfound fame, he is met with a less reverent audience.
Lagaan
Set in the early 1890s amidst India’s colonial British Raj, Lagaan tells the tale of one village’s journey out of their overtaxed debt under their British rulers. The wager for overcoming their unjust circumstances? Beating their officers in a game of cricket.
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