Priyanka Roy

Saiyaara is proof that Hindi mainstream cinema hasn’t (yet) forgotten to make a film that tugs at the heart, and more importantly, quietly but firmly makes its place in it. Bringing back old-school romance with a modern vibe, Saiyaara may seem Aashiqui 2-coded in parts, but has enough feel and fire to power its way to blockbuster box office… one which has been missing a raw, real and relatable love story for a while. Directed by Mohit Suri — the man who has earned enough cred in spinning love stories that meld a beating heart and deeply-felt humanity with searing chemistry and chartbuster melody — Saiyaara introduces two new faces as its leads. But in an age where a performance on a Friday rarely makes a career soar or stumble anymore — determined as it is by social media heft, paparazzi pull and networking skills — Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda prove that they are in it for the long haul. If what they have delivered in their debut film is anything to go by, two new actors with promise and passion, skill and sincerity are born. The stardom that they will invariably achieve after this film will be but a byproduct of the hard work they have put in.

A German film is fast climbing the global charts on Netflix. Brick, a sci-fi thriller that also doubles as a relationship drama, is the latest addition to the puzzle-box/ escape room movie sub-genre, that over the last few decades, has met with middling success. Brick tells the story of a group of tenants who become trapped inside their building when a mysterious, almost alien-like black brick wall ‘grows’ overnight outside their apartments, completely surrounding it. The wall is impenetrable, its strong magnetic energy even managing to make bullets ricochet off it and kill those it has trapped within their four walls. There is no way to escape, and as the minutes tick by, the group finds that the Internet is down, their phones are out and the water supply has run dry (though the electricity, inexplicably, seems to be still working).

Every stereotype involving Bengalis that you have ever heard, seen and read is heaped in and then hammered into Aap Jaisa Koi. A potentially sweet film with a premise that invariably should have left a lingering aftertaste is sacrificed at the altar of poor research and poorer storytelling. What emerges is a hackneyed, almost hastily put together film that wants to be everything — entertaining, message-y, inspirational, thought-provoking — but ends up being nothing. Except for a “kick in your b***s, bro” (that is not me being obscene, but a recurring dialogue in this film). Aap Jaisa Koi, streaming on Netflix, hinges on the idea of a 42-year-old virgin — this one beats Hollywood’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin by 730 days — meeting a woman far beyond his dreams (and reach). The 10-year age gap between Shrirenu Tripathi (R. Madhavan, who, in reality, is 55) and Madhu Bose (Fatima Sana Shaikh, 32 in the film, 33 in life) doesn’t seem to matter to the two of them. Despite being from different backgrounds, their beats — and not just of the piano that she plays or the sitar that he strums — click in an instant. She is a feisty Bengali woman who teaches French and lives in a joint family in North Calcutta. He still shares a modest apartment with his recently single friend (Namit Das rescues what, on paper, must have been a very annoying character) and teaches Sanskrit in a school in Jamshedpur. Shri’s only family comprises his boorish older brother (Manish Chaudhury, forever stereotyped) and neglected sister-in-law (Ayesha Raza Mishra, who helps lift the mediocre film).

In the run-up to its release, Maalik has been promoted as a gangster film with a difference. Gangster film? Yes. With a difference? Not really. The Hindi heartland setting — this time (like all other times) it is Uttar Pradesh — is familiar. So are the players — corrupt politicians, kingmakers, cops without scruples, dime-a-dozen goons….The trajectory of its protagonist-cum-antagonist is, unfortunately, as old (and cold) as the gangster genre itself. With so many seen-there-watched-that elements, Maalik only works in bits and spurts, grounded as it is by a strong, fiery against-type turn from Rajkummar Rao. Rajkummar, with one of his earliest roles being a bit part in Anurag Kashyap’s landmark gangster outing Gangs of Wasseypur, plays a farmer’s son who lets go off the football at his feet and picks up a gun in his hand when his father (played by Rajendra Gupta) is assaulted by a local goon. Driven by the belief: “Maalik paida nahin huye toh kya, bann toh sakte hain”, Deepak soon becomes ‘Maalik’, with director Pulkit not willing to devote any time into tracing how a simple college boy becomes Allahabad’s most dreaded gangster. Despite its long runtime — 152 minutes feels extremely stretched — Maalik doesn’t spare much time or thought for any other details as well, and operates on a superficial level, with the action, though gory and visceral, quickly slipping into repetitive territory.

Anurag Basu’s trademark whimsy and frenzy, music and maelstrom of emotions and equations come together once again in his latest. Metro… In Dino, a spiritual sequel to Basu’s sparkling 2007 relationship drama Life In A… Metro, follows the anthological template of the first film, as well as the filmmaker’s dark comedy caper Ludo, that released five years ago. Unlike Life In A… Metro that drew both its feel and fabric from Mumbai — its incessant rains, its bumper-to-bumper traffic, the connections inadvertently forged and broken on local train rides and the everyday stories of crushed ambitions, lost loves and dreams unrealised — Metro… In Dino doesn’t belong to one ‘metro’. The action shifts between Mumbai and Pune, Kolkata and Bangalore, Delhi and Goa, with the film not being able to ground itself in any city. Each landscape coalesces into the other, with very little to define the film’s backdrop. Physically, Metro… In Dino is all over the place. Which, unfortunately, is an apt descriptor for its structure and storytelling as well.

Putting ‘blockbuster’ in ‘summer blockbuster’ in the way few films can is F1 — The Movie. This high-octane, classic underdog story, stylishly acted and seamlessly picturised, is just the adrenaline shot that the big screen needed. Dominating cinema space this weekend, big movie comfort food rarely felt as enticing as F1 which may run on familiar fuel but delivers huge dollops of entertainment. Powering this rise-against-all-odds story is Brad Pitt. At 61, Pitt fires on all cylinders, showing us yet again why he and Tom Cruise, a year older than him, are indisputably the last great movie stars. That F1 is directed by Joseph Kosinki, the man who helmed Cruise’s 2022 summer blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick — the film that brought theatres back into business globally after the pandemic — is only one of the many commonalties that their careers have shared. In the late 2010s, Kosinski was developing a racing film with both Pitt and Cruise set to star — and do their own driving. Earlier this week, Cruise landed up at the London premiere of F1 to support his Interview with the Vampire co-star. Needless to say, in its thrills and chills and its need-for-speed DNA, the shadow of Cruise looms large over F1.

In an opening flashback, Carmen aka Carmy — played by the irrepressible Jeremy Allen White — is seen telling his late brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal) about his vision for a restaurant. He says: “We could make it calm, we could make it delicious, we could play good music, people would want to come in there and celebrate… we could make people happy.” Carmy’s recipe for a winner of a restaurant pretty much sums up what The Bear has meant to us over the last three seasons — a series, that true to its audacious and intense DNA, throws its players into the frying pan of adversity, but the fact that they come up trumps at the end, is inspiring. In short, it is an uplifting experience. The Bear has always “made people happy”. Season 4 of the much-loved and highly feted series is now streaming on JioHotstar, and it hits the ground running, taking off from where the third season had ended. The reason could possibly be that they were shot back-to-back. It is a more confident and calmer season than its immediate predecessor, though the 20-episode arc across the two seasons — with a ‘to be continued’ thrown in — means that they are essentially two sides of the same coin.

There is comfort in familiarity, but there is also fatigue. Season 4 of Panchayat is a stark example of the same. Operating within the confines of Phulera — the tiny hamlet somewhere in North India whose nooks and corners now feel like home — Panchayat 4 reintroduces us to its quirky bunch of characters who have increasingly become like family. But while there is a certain delight in getting back to the people and places that have become part of our lives over the last four seasons, the lack of momentum this time around does compel us to feel that Panchayat has run its course. In an OTT age dominated by blood and gore and twisted relationship dramas, the advent of Panchayat five years ago felt like a breath of fresh air. That it arrived during the pandemic — a time of uncertainty where we were clutching on to anything that felt even remotely comforting — made this series an instant clutter-breaker and, by extension, a bona fide hit strong enough to spawn a few seasons. But what started as a delightful fish-out-of-water story of a young man (Abhishek Tripathi, played by Jitendra Kumar aka Jeetu) who takes up the low-paying job of a panchayat secretary as a stop-gap arrangement before he gets back to the big city to pursue his dreams, but gradually learns to warm to its eclectic residents, has now completely shifted focus to the petty (and both funny and unfunny) politics in Phulera.