Anuj Kumar

In contemporary Indian cinema, few voices capture the anguish and alchemy of rural survival quite like Rima Das. With Village Rockstars 2, the auteur returns to the flood-bitten plains of Assam, proving that lightning can indeed strike twice in the same muddy field. If the 2017 original was a euphoric, barefoot sprint through childhood fantasies, this luminous sequel is a melancholic exhale of coming of age. The cardboard guitars have given way to real strings. Her Apu’s melody is now weighted down by the weight of adulthood, but Dhunu isn’t the tragic sister left behind to fade away.

What happens when the custodians of ecological preservation form a corrupt alliance with political forces in the name of progress? Arunabh Kumar and Ekta Kapoor combine to present the dialectic between ecological conservation and modernisation, wrapped in a glossy, high-pitched divine intervention, for a mass audience that, these days, looks South for grand mytho-mystical experiences. When Rishi (Sidharth Malhotra), a rational professional, returns to his ancestral village with his wife Mamta (Tamannaah Bhatia) to sell off his inherited land, he is sucked into a raging debate. Led by the double-faced Deepak (Sunil Grover), those aligned with the development agenda offer a better rate because they want to build a road through the forest to reduce travel time to city infrastructure. In contrast, the traditionalists, including his well-meaning brother Shashi (Anup Soni) and bitter sister-in-law (Shweta Tiwari), don’t want to upset the forest’s reigning deity and invite her curse. Because of a past incident, Rishi has lost faith in the goddess, but Mamta remains devoted. When Rishi ignores the sacred decree forbidding entry into the forest after sunset, fury breaks loose as we gradually discover that beneath the supernatural lies a timely message: reneging on a pact with nature can unleash self-seeking dark forces. Drawing from folklore, it reminds us that the ruler has a role to protect nature and what happens when the custodian goes corrupt.

If the birth of Lust Stories was a shout for liberation, a tearing down of the velvet curtains that long hid Indian intimacy, then the third iteration is the echo. Helmed by a new set of original voices — Shakun Batra, Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, and Vishal Bhardwaj — and bolstered by an ensemble of actors who translate subtext through the vocabulary of body language, it does not seek to shock, nor does it carry the heavy burden of breaking taboos. It treats desire not as a provocative statement, but as a messy mirror. The four-part anthology shows how physical proximity often masks isolation in modern relationships. It shows how lust is weaponised, bargained with, or surrendered to. In the earlier films of the franchise, the stories followed a clear arc of liberation, a character realising their worth or claiming their pleasure. Here, within the recognisable OTT beats, the liberation is rarely external. In three segments, intimacy is readily available, but real emotional safety is scarce.

Coming at a time when society is increasingly seduced by the idea of instant, extra-judicial justice, Meghna Gulzar’s Daayra takes a diagnostic look at the rot within the body politic where ‘encounters’ are routinely packaged and sold as desperate acts of self-defence, and a frustrated public gleefully buys it for the wheel of justice is excruciatingly slow. Heavily informed by the details and fallout of the 2019 Hyderabad case, the film takes away the sensationalised, high-octane tropes synonymous with Bollywood police procedurals that have long normalised law enforcement officers becoming a law unto themselves.

At the heart of Last Man in Tower lies Vishram Cooperative Housing Society, a decaying, close-knit enclave of middle-class Mumbai families. Their world is upended when a ruthless real estate tycoon, Dharmen Shah (Boman Irani), offers them a life-changing financial windfall to buy out the building for luxury redevelopment. The catch is that the payout is all or nothing, contingent on a unanimous vote. While his cash-strapped neighbours eagerly scramble for a ticket into the modern world, Yogesh Mishra (Manoj Bajpayee), a retired schoolteacher known as Masterji, stubbornly refuses to sign away the home that holds the memories of his deceased wife. What begins as a disagreement quickly degenerates into a psychological social pressure cooker, as the neighborhood’s collective desperation, led by the chirpy Sangeeta Puri (Divya Dutta), turns into targeted malice against the lone dissenter.

A blind man, an innocent child, and an unhinged monster. As director Priyadarshan recreates Oppam for a Hindi audience, he sets the stage for an engrossing sensory thriller. It follows a visually impaired protagonist, Shyam (Saif Ali Khan), who accidentally becomes the protector of a young girl targeted by a ruthless serial killer, Parshuram (Akshay Kumar). The imagery of a thriller where the only man who can save a target can’t see the killer is appetising bait that pulls us to the edge of our seats. Alongside Sabu Cyril and Divakar Mani, the seasoned filmmaker designs an atmosphere where shadows and silhouettes combine to create subtext. In Saif, he has a performer whose visible hunger to become the character these days promises a believable clash. Playing a character etched for posterity by the inimitable Mohanlal, he internalises the blindness and creates a gaze devoid of intent. In his own way, he puts in the effort to bring the required gravitas to the character of a maintenance man in charge of a high-rise.

There is an old saying in the film trade that in Indian cinema, audiences can forgive a weaker plot if they fall in love with the people inhabiting it. Much like Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay and Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar, the plot of Gurmeet Singh’s Mirzapur is ultimately just scaffolding; the characters are the architecture, and the dialogues lend it vibrant color. You don’t merely watch the characters, you develop a deeply personal, at times toxic, yet fiercely loyal bond with them. The plot occasionally wanders into generic gang-war territory, but we stay glued because of Akhanadand Tripathi, aka Kaleen Bhaiya’s (Pankaj Tripathi) cold pauses and crisp one-liners, Munna’s tragic yet explosive desperation for love, winsome Guddu’s (Ali Fazal) terrifying, unpredictable rage, and Bablu’s (Jitendra Kumar is not as effective as Vikrant Massey) dilemma between a book and a gun.

Mardaani meets Mom in a mythical framework as Taapsee Pannu joins hands with writer-producer Kanika Dhillon to open a new pulpy chapter after Haseen Dillruba. Invoking the divine wrath of the Devi to anchor a meaningful action-thriller, Gandhari attempts to subvert the typical Bollywood revenge trope, but it ends up more intellectually burdened than artistically elevated. Set in the fictional town of Joypurra, the narrative traces a mother’s harrowing journey after her young daughter is abducted from a crowded railway station. Left temporarily blind after a brutal attack, Bani (Taapsee) transforms into a force of vengeance against a sinister child-trafficking ring.