Akhil Arora

More than midway through The Instigators—the Apple TV+ original movie with Matt Damon and Casey Affleck in the lead—a black trashed-up BMW is chased through the streets of Boston by cop cars from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Inside the fugitive vehicle, as Petula Clark’s 1964 global hit “Downtown” blares off the speakers, a well-meaning psychiatrist attempts to counsel her dispirited patient while he’s actively evading the police. In the back, a super talkative sot is incessantly cracking jokes, providing unnecessary commentary or interrupting the doctor-patient exchange. But all the driver wants is for someone to change the song. It’s the funniest high-speed car chase I’ve seen in a film in years.

Towards the end of the third episode of the second season of House of the Dragon, Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) decided to act on the pacifist advice of her cousin once removed. What followed was some of the most thrilling stuff all season. Despite the massive threat posed to her life and Team Black, Rhaenyra disguised as a septa and sneaked into King’s Landing—the home of all her enemies—to meet with Queen Dowager Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke). As they dug into the murderous things that had happened on their behalf, Rhaenyra discovered Alicent’s big misunderstanding. In his hazy last moments, King Viserys wasn’t talking about his son Aegon but Aegon the Conqueror. What we knew all along was now dawning on her. Regardless, Alicent refused to budge and find a peaceful resolution because the gears of war were already turning.

In Deadpool & Wolverine—the new superhero movie that ushers both title characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe—Deadpool is obsessed with doing something worthwhile. He wants to matter and serve a higher purpose. And he does, for Marvel Studios has pinned all its 2024 hopes on a foul-mouthed wisecracking guy it had no hand in creating. In fact, this is the only MCU movie in a 15-month period. Talk about timing. Deadpool wasn’t part of Marvel’s gargantuan, all-consuming shared world until its parent company, Disney, forked over $70 billion a few years ago and ate up one of its Hollywood rivals, Fox. For a Deadpool concerned with his place, this is like being handed two gold-plated .50 calibre Desert Eagle pistols on a silver platter.

In early 2019, when Apple signed Taika Waititi as creator, writer, and director on its television series adaptation of the beloved eighties kids’ movie Time Bandits, his star was on the rise. The Kiwi filmmaker had successfully transitioned from a tiny indie comedy-drama set in New Zealand to a mega-budget superhero romp part of a massive, shared world. Better yet, Waititi had reinvigorated the God of Thunder’s forgettable trilogy with Thor: Ragnarok. All the gates of Hollywood were swinging open for the writer-director. But since then, Waititi has struggled. The Hitler satire Jojo Rabbit lacked bite and was showered with more praise than it deserved. Thor: Love and Thunder and Next Goal Wins were both disasters of epic proportions.

Early into Wild Wild Punjab—the new Indian Netflix original movie—a line of dialogue lays bare the film’s inspiration: The Hangover trilogy. It’s not implied, mind you. One of the film’s four lead characters namechecks the high-grossing franchise as a comedic reference. Except Wild Wild Punjab doesn’t stop at acknowledging its existence. It liberally borrows several subplots from The Hangover, including stealing a police vehicle, being chased by gangsters, and drunkenly marrying a random woman. But Wild Wild Punjab—directed by feature debutant Simarpreet Singh and written by Harman Wadala and Sandeep Jain—displays zero understanding of good comedic filmmaking.

In season 3, Mirzapur wishes to place an even bigger emphasis on the world outside of it. As a feud between two clans ratchets up, a meeting of all the gangsters of Purvanchal—the easternmost section of the state of Uttar Pradesh—is called more than once. They bicker, they whine, but they have no real voice, no real say in the matter. A mediator warns the two parties not to escalate violence and vows that larger powers will come down on them heavily. But it’s all talk. Mirzapur isn’t willing to follow through as it’s only the protagonists who matter. Everyone else is simply window dressing. They feel like plastic, as do those who work for the feuding clans. Its larger world is irrelevant. Mirzapur is a macro show that has no interest in the micro.