Priyanka Roy

We find ourselves in an age where romance — not to be confused with love — is manufactured, off screen as much as it is on it. The list of perennial favourites in the Hollywood romantic-comedy genre rarely deviate beyond When Harry Met Sally, Notting Hill, The Notebook, and You’ve Got Mail, and I am not just talking about someone like me who is of a certain vintage. Gen-Z may argue — “What about To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before?” or “Haven’t you watched La La Land?” — and with solid enough reason, but a classic rom-com for the ages has been a long time coming.

Though it may not qualify as a typical feel-good, mushed-up Christmas watch, Goodbye June is a well performed and sincerely mounted family drama, which, however, springs no surprises. Sometimes clunky, but mostly charming and held together by a bunch of memorable performances, Goodbye June is the directorial debut of Kate Winslet, who works out of a script written by Joe Anders, her 22-year-old son with ex husband and filmmaker Sam Mendes. Winslet also stars as one of the principal characters.

Exposition. Explanation. Emotion. Stranger Things Season 5 Vol 2 rests on these three Es. The other ‘E’ that worms its way into the three episodes of this volume — before the grand finale drops less than a week later — is ‘Exotic Matter’ and with it the realisation (courtesy Dustin Henderson) that everything we have thought of the Upside Down over the last decade is not really it. In reality, the evil parallel dimension that has been at the heart of Stranger Things is, well, not a parallel dimension at all. It is, in fact, a wormhole to an even worse dimension that Vecna is trying to “collapse”, with an eye on taking over the world.

Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri. Any film with a title that aims for the tongue twister hall of fame — and failing spectacularly even on that front — is anyway trying too hard. The rest of it is no different. TMMTMTTM (took me multiple back space taps to get that right) tries too hard to be a breezy comedy. It tries too hard to be an intense romance. It tries too hard to have a cool cat of a leading man. It tries too hard to have a heroine in touch with her emotions. It tries to hard to conjure chemistry. It tries too hard to build conflict. It tries to hard to be an “it’s all about loving your parents” emo-drama (their words, not ours). And it tries way too hard be a “2025 ke hookup culture mein ‘90s ki love story.”

At the outset, let’s address the ginormous elephant in the room. Dhurandhar doesn’t feel as long as its runtime — three hours and 34 minutes — made it out to be. The credit for that goes to the fact that the Aditya Dhar-directed film hits the ground running and despite the protracted setup of time and space, it manages to keep its pace consistent, often escalating to breakneck speed when matters spill over into high-stakes territory. ‘Break’ and ’neck’ are the operative words here.

The latest entrant in Bollywood’s twisted math of intense love = toxicity and male entitlement is Tere Ishk Mein. Which doesn’t come as a surprise considering that this is not new terrain for director Aanand L. Rai. The man is a repeat offender, having glorified stalking and toxic masculinity packaged as a tragic tale of unrequited love a dozen years ago in Raanjhanaa. That Tere Ishk Mein is said to be set in the same universe as Raanjhanaa is significant; that it is backed by a production house (T-Series) which has put monies on films like Animal and Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety is even more telling.

Stranger Things is engaging TV. It is affecting TV. It is emotive TV. And nine years, four seasons and 34 episodes later, we know that Stranger Things is no longer simply TV. What more can be said about this Netflix phenomenon that first came into our lives in the summer of 2016, bringing in a potent mix of science-fiction, horror and mystery packaged in a coming-of-age drama that evoked unbridled ’80s nostalgia, that hasn’t been said before? As the seasons have rolled, the adventures of a rag-tag team of teens taking on forces mythical and supernatural have only grown bigger in scope, scale and storytelling. It has spurred a booming universe of merchandising, live experiences, a Broadway show, a fandom that has made it a pop culture landmark, resurrected interest in things as diverse as Dungeons & Dragons and Eggos, brought Kate Bush back to the top of the charts and rocket-launched the careers of the majority of its young actors. The launch of every season of Stranger Things has been an event, eliciting the kind of tingling-in-the-neck sensation — we know that could be a stretch, but hey, this is Stranger Things — that Will experiences every time he feels Vecna (or as we know by now, is Vecna).

In Hindi cinema, foreshadowing has somehow become a go-to formula for a war film. In 120 Bahadur, the latest in Bollywood’s canon of real-to-reel combat cinema, the signs are all there very early on — a promise to return made to a beloved, a son imagining the happy times he will get to spend with his parents again, a father writing a letter to his young son from a zone of strife, with special emphasis on words like ‘saahas’ (courage) and ‘balidaan’ (sacrifice). When our leading man — Farhan Akhtar’s braveheart Shaitan Singh Bhati — is asked to cut short his leave and called back to duty ahead of the festive season, he tells his wife: “Agle saal Diwali aise manayenge ki iss saal ki kasar poori ho jaaye”. It is such a predictable route to take that one knows he will never make it back.