Nonika Singh

In ‘Bhakshak’, Bhumi Pednekar’s Vaishali Singh busted the wrongdoings in a shelter home. In ‘Daldal’, her character is face to face with a victim-turned-assassin from the same place. Before you accuse us of letting the cat out of the bag, let it be said that the seven-episode crime thriller is not exactly a whodunit. Early on, by Episode 2, we know who the killer is. So, it’s the why and how which is more significant. Suresh Triveni, who gave us the delightful ‘Tumhari Sullu’ and ‘Jalsa’, is the creator of the series.

Till date, ‘Border’, directed and produced by JP Dutta — never mind certain misgivings — is considered a significant war film. So when Dutta decided to produce its sequel 27 years later in 2024, the new captain of the film, director Anurag Singh, knew he had to tap into the same emotion which made ‘Border’ a blockbuster. Apart from Sunny Deol as the connecting thread, ‘Border 2’ thrives on music, emotions and of course melodrama. Anurag possibly couldn’t resist Sunny Bhaji’s “dhai kilo ka haath” manifesting with full force. So, Sunny Deol’s Lt Col Fateh Singh Kaler gets plenty of one-to-one combat scenes and some bombastic dialogues too, besides a heartrending track.

Many Hindi films on smuggling, aka taskaree, have delighted audiences since the days of the iconic ‘Deewar’. So what can ‘Taskaree: The Smugglers Web’ bring to the table? Coming from the stable of a brilliant director like Neeraj Pandey, who gave us the ultimate heist film ‘Special 26’, and headlined by a fine actor like Emraan Hashmi, expectations build up.

When Season One of ‘Freedom At Midnight’ — an adaptation of Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre’s book of the same name — dropped, a few naysayers had some issues with it. To counter the censure, mostly quibbles, Nikkhil Advani, the creator-director of the magnum opus on India’s freedom struggle, had declared: wait for the second part. Any misgivings about the portrayal of Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi or even Muhammad Ali Jinnah vanish like a puff of smoke. If Season One was a precursor to India’s Independence, Season Two takes you to that historic moment when India breathed free, as well as to the cataclysmic times when the horrors of Partition engulfed Punjab and Bengal. In these harrowing episodes, when humanity acquired a monstrous hue, the immortal lines of Amrita Pritam — “Ajj akhan Waris Shah nu” — echo resoundingly.

Can a film on a war hero shun jingoism? Can a film based on the 1971 war avoid thriving on an anti-Pakistan sentiment? In times when ‘Dhurandhar’ is roaring at the box office, can it dare to go in the opposite direction? Can there be a war movie that instead of exacerbating conflicts is rather calming? The answer to all these questions is a resounding ‘yes’. National Award-winning director Sriram Raghavan (for ‘Andhadhun’) not only reinvents himself by moving to a genre he is not quite known for, but also shows what a biopic and a war movie should entail.

For some time, Dharma Productions has been wearing its progressive heart and beliefs on its sleeve. That’s all very well, what more do you want from the proponents of ‘rich lives matter’? Like the typical gloss and shine signature of its cinema, it can’t quite bid adieu to its glitzy USP. Any wonder then that the storyline spends the first half in picturesque Croatia. The ‘to-die-for’ locales of the European nation on the coast of the Adriatic Sea is where love blossoms between our two lovebirds.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui is back as Inspector Jatil Yadav, and in sync with his name, so is the complexity of the case he cracks in the second outing of this Honey Trehan directorial. In the very first scene, Meera (Chitrangda Singh) races out of her house frantically and drops of blood fall on her face. Scene shifts. Inspector Jatil is asked to investigate what appears to be black magic, cast on this well-heeled family.

In the mahaul of hate-mongering and venom-spewing comes a breath of fresh air. ‘The Great Shamsuddin Family’, at once delightful and incisive, knocks more than one pigeonhole we all have begun to inhabit. Baring the religious divide yet batting for harmony, here is a film whose characters are as delectable as the leitmotif of the film. As the title suggests, we meet this ‘great Shamsuddin family’. The word ‘great’ is pun-intended, hides humour in its folds, but soon reveals their ‘great’ bonding and idiosyncrasies in the everyday acts.