The 10 best Bollywood films of 2014 – in pictures

Queen: Female protagonists ruled Bollywood this year, and Queen set the trend. A feel-good comedy/drama, it earned a lot of praise for the director Vikas Bahl and the actress Kangana Ranaut in the title role. It tells the story of a simple Delhi girl, Rani, who is dumped by her fiancé a day before their wedding. In an effort to find closure, she decides to go alone on what would have been their honeymoon. There are surprisingly few clichés, romantic angles or moments of epiphany in the film – instead, we get some genuine laughs and an honest look at relationships. Rani’s Delhi slang and her believable sense of wonderment at everything are two of the reasons why watching this film is a heartening experience. Courtesy B4U

Mary Kom: Inspired by the true story of the Indian boxer MC Mary Kom, the film was directed by the former television presenter Omung Kumar and starred Priyanka Chopra as the sportswoman. There was a lot of debate over why a mainstream actress who looked nothing like Kom was chosen for the part, but all that talk died down after the film was released. Chopra worked hard, training for hours and working with real boxers to make the fight scenes look as realistic as possible, and her efforts paid off. The film was a critical success and a box--office smash. A lot of the credit goes to the other actors, including Darshan Kumar, who plays Kom’s supportive husband, and Sunil Thapa, as her coach. Courtesy: TIFF

Highway: This year, the newcomer Alia Bhatt -outshone even the most established of actresses – the fact that all three of her 2014 films have made the cut on this list is evidence of that. In Highway, the second film of her career, the young actress -portrayed a spoilt, rich brat who is abducted and ends up falling in love with her kidnapper (Randeep Hooda), but there’s a cruel twist to the tale. The songs, composed by A R Rahman, stayed at the top of Indian music charts for weeks. Highway came as a pleasant surprise after Bhatt’s debut in 2012 with the Karan Johar-produced Student of the Year, in which she -portrayed a (somewhat shallow) university -student torn between two loves. Highway was written and -directed by Imtiaz Ali. Courtesy Window Seat Films

Finding Fanny: Directed by Homi Adajania, this film generated a lot of buzz even before it was released thanks to its star-studded ensemble cast. Starring Deepika Padukone, Naseeruddin Shah, Dimple Kapadia, Arjun Kapoor and Pankaj Kapur, the quirky dark comedy is set in a small fictional village in Goa, where an unopened letter and a new visitor in town turns the lives of the characters upside down. Witty and realistic, Adajania’s film packed a big punch in just 102 minutes (that’s really short for a Bollywood film), and came as a breath of fresh air amid other -predictable and mainstream releases. With no song-and-dance sequences to interrupt the flow, the film won over -audiences with its old-world charm, picturesque scenes and honest performances. Courtesy: Maddock Films

City of Lights: Starring Rajkummar Rao and Patralekha, this drama is a remake of the Bafta-nominated Filipino film Metro Manila. Directed by Hansal Mehta, it did not make much of an impact at the box office, but what it lost out on commercially, it made up for in critical acclaim. Rao’s sensitive portrayal of a man desperate to earn a living, who moves from a small Rajasthani village to Mumbai with his family, catapulted him to fame. The raw, gritty story focuses on a growing problem in India: unskilled migrants who live in poverty and crime on the peripheries of big cities. It was a while before people sat up and took notice of City Lights – some credit goes to the singer Arijit Singh, whose searing vocals on the song Muskurane drew attention to the film. Courtesy Fox Star Studios

Dedh Ishqiya: Another female-centric film that did well. A dark comedy starring Madhuri Dixit, Naseeruddin Shah, Arshad Warsi and Huma Qureshi, it is a sequel to Ishqiya. Shah and Warsi reprise their roles from the first film as petty thieves out to make a quick buck, with a funny subplot in which Shah tries to win the affections of a queen, played by Dixit. Directed by Abhishek Chaubey, the sequel doesn’t quite match up to the original, but a surprise ending ensured the movie worked. The director took inspiration from Ismat Chughtai’s short story Lihaaf (The Quilt). Dixit and Shah made for an unlikely pair, but pulled it off with aplomb. Shah and Warsi’s camaraderie as uncle and nephew is fun to watch, as is their impeccable comic timing. Courtesy Shemaroo Entertainment

Humpty Sharma ki Dulhania: An out-and-out masala film, this shamelessly mainstream comedy makes the cut because the director Shashank Khaitan got the mixture just right: it’s a take on the cult classic Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge with the young actors Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt in the lead roles, supported by a fiery performance by Ashutosh Rana as a strict yet soft-hearted patriarch. Great music, sizzling chemistry between the protagonists and hilarious dialogue make this the kind of film you’ll want to watch more than once. Trivia alert: in all three of her 2014 films, Bhatt’s -character gets married. Courtesy: Dharma Production

2 States: Another Alia Bhatt film, this adaptation of the Indian Chetan Bhagat’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name is one of the rare cases where the film is better than the book. 2 States stars Bhatt as a feisty young girl from a conservative family who falls in love with a geek (Arjun Kapoor) from a troubled Punjabi family, but the film truly belongs to the women who portray the lead pair’s mothers: Revathy as a meek southern Indian and Amrita Singh as a loud and domineering Punjabi. The film’s soundtrack topped music charts before its release, and even though the plot had no surprises, the director Abhishek Verman keeps you engrossed until the final credits roll. Dharma Productions

PK: We’ve saved the best for last: Aamir Khan’s PK is the antithesis of most Bollywood films. It’s spectacularly good, with an incredible script and an intelligent director (Rajkumar Hirani) who knows exactly what he’s doing. Add to that good actors, not least among them Khan, and you’ve got a winner that makes all other movies pale in comparison. Its story, about a bewildered extraterrestrial (Khan in one of the best roles of his nearly 25-year career) who arrives on Earth and tries to make sense of human foibles and religion, has triggered healthy debate on social media about secularism. Courtesy Rajkumar Hirani Films

A look back at the top Bollywood films of 2014.