Priyanka Roy

‘Welcome to hell,’ says Salman Khan somewhere at the beginning of Sikandar. It doesn’t take you long to realise he was warning you about his own film. Salman, set to turn 60 this December, was never much of an actor (I use ‘much’ with much politeness). Except, perhaps, for few and far between flashes of some sort of emoting — and emotion — in films like Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Tere Naam, and a fistful of others. The last film he truly ‘acted’ in was Kabir Khan’s Bajrangi Bhaijaan, and that was 10 years ago. In the last couple of outings (see box), the indifference has been evident, with directors employing everything from miraculous computer graphics to superhuman editing skills to simply ensure that Salman is a living presence on screen. In Sikandar, Salman’s disinterest has peaked, and in a directly proportional manner, so has our disillusionment.

Adolescence confronts the debilitating fear(s) of every parent — where are our children going? Who are they meeting? What kind of conversations are they having? Who or what is influencing them? And the biggest question of them all — what are our children watching? Ever since it dropped exactly a week ago, this Netflix miniseries has taken the world by storm. ‘A perfect piece of television’ is not a descriptor that comes by easily, but Adolescence has earned that in more than a few reviews. On social media, it is being discussed, debated and dissected. Besides the overall impact of this four-episode series, almost every scene, dialogue, body language and more, is being put under the microscope, even as the viewer peels off layers and semi-layers of this crushing yet cathartic watch.

Calcutta is a living, breathing entity in Khakee: The Bengal Chapter, but not in the way we have come to know of it on screen. The city — familiar to the world as the hub of culture and creativity, as the land of Tagore and Ray — is imbued with a sinister edge in this new Netflix series, functioning as a hotbed of gang wars, organ trafficking, kidnapping, murder and of the consistently tenuous equation between cops and criminals. So, a machher bajar, where the act of buying fish has almost been romanticised into a form of art by the Bengali gastronome (honestly, is there any other kind?) sees a policeman being hacked in broad daylight by a bnoti; At the parar cha-er dokan, adda is definitely a mainstay but so is the brokering of hit jobs. A significant character’s body is stacked against the gate of the Victoria Memorial, forming a dichotomous (I refrain from saying ‘striking’) bloody red foreground against the pristine white facade of the city’s iconic landmark. Guns are traded at New Market. The streets are seedy, the changing positions of the players often finds the underbelly indistinguishable from the rest of the city. Calcutta carries the burden of many bodies, its streets tinged with blood.

I had never thought that there would come a film — at least in my lifetime — that could challenge the combined vacuous pointlessness of the Student of the Year franchise. That distinction belongs to Nadaaniyan, a film which, even though we are just in March, stands a good chance of being within the Top 5 section of the worst films list of 2025. Nadaaniyan, streaming on Netflix, comes from the same folks who, of course, made the Student of the Year franchise. Dharma Productions may have packaged its ‘younger’ productions as the more sleek-sounding Dharmatic, but Nadaaniyan is clearly not the kind of film that is going to take them far. Nor is it the kind of debut that actors Saif Ali Khan and Amrita Singh should have approved for their son Ibrahim Ali Khan.

‘Shaukh paal ke kya karega, Malegaon mein tu marega.’ This innocuous line sung rambunctiously by two childhood friends on a bike ride is both about ambition and the realisation of the futility of it, destined as they are to live within the borders of Malegaon, the small town they were born in and will probably die in. And yet, it is these two boys — along with a few pals, all of who share a common love for cinema — that have gone on to put Malegaon on the map. Superboys of Malegaon revolves around this motley crew. A charming, slice-of-life film about ordinary men doing extraordinary things, this Reema Kagti directorial written by Varun Grover is a potent, layered example of storytelling, one which strikes a chord immediately, even if you know very little of the world the film is set in. Malegaon, an unassuming town close to Nashik in Maharashtra, has made it to the news for a variety of reasons. There were the Malegaon blasts close to two decades ago that claimed many lives. Five years ago, Malegaon incubated itself in such a way that very few lives were lost in the Covid-19 pandemic, prompting other administrations to attempt and replicate its model.

An extroverted heroine with an inclination to cuss with abandon and the ability to talk nineteen (hundred) to the dozen. A docile hero, the exact opposite of her. And the pair caught up in chaos during the course of one night. This could well be the first hour of Jab We Met. But the dark and quiet galiyaan of Ratlam have given way to the cacophonic roads of Mumbai. The pair here — unlike Geet and Aditya in Imtiaz Ali’s romantic comedy for the ages — are married. This is Dhoom Dhaam. The title is a smart play on the festivities associated with a wedding. After all, ‘dhoom dhoom se shaadi karenge’ is as old as Bollywood itself. But in Dhoom Dhoom, now playing on Netflix, ‘dhoom dhaam’ alludes to the fireworks that follow. What can be more deadly than marriage? Well, a bride and groom on the run on their wedding night, pursued by a gang of goons who are convinced that the newly-married couple are in possession of a key piece of incriminating evidence. Except that they aren’t.

The law of averages — that a brilliant father rarely gives way to an equally illustrious son — was turned on its head as early as the 17th century when Sambhaji took over the reigns of the Maratha empire from his father, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj’s depiction in history — despite tales of his unwavering valour — are unfortunately sketchy. Even the name by which he was referred to — ‘Chhaava’ aka ’lion’s cub’ — is more of a nod to Shivaji’s larger-than-life courage and persona. To cite an almost as-good-as-it-gets allusion, it refers more to Mufasa than it does to Simba. Hence, the unsung story of Sambhaji, and his relentless fight against the Mughals, led by the tyrannical Aurangzeb, needed to be documented. Chhaava does that, with its source material being the eponymously named historical novel by Shivaji Sawant. Which brings us to the tricky question of how much of Chhaava — the book, and by logical extension, the film — is fact and how much of it is exaggerated fact? We will, perhaps, never know.

For those not in favour of remakes — I am one of them, considering most turn out to be a lazy copy-paste job — the decision to let go of Mrs because the memories of watching The Great Indian Kitchen are too sacrosanct, will not be unfounded. But Mrs is not just any other remake. It is a thriving, breathing, nuanced film in its own right. It is the kind of film that takes the best out of its source material and enhances it, setting itself in a socio-cultural context that is relevant and relatable. Mrs hits hard — just as hard as The Great Indian Kitchen did when it released at the tail-end of the first wave of the pandemic. The Malayalam film with a seemingly simple story of a newly-married woman struggling to fit into a conservative and patriarchal household, ignited conversations around gender roles, casual sexism, toxic relationships, male entitlement and a woman’s role in a world she is constantly stereotyped in. It became a mirror of the suffering that most Indian women, at some time or maybe all of the time, have been subjected to. In that film, what remained subtle and innocuous at first finally boiled over into rage that resulted in a moment of gut-wrenching catharsis. Like the woman at the centre of it, we felt elated, but we also cried.