Priyanka Roy

Two decades ago, Priyadarshan and Akshay Kumar — Paresh Rawal and Asrani from their winning Hera Pheri team thrown into the mix — meshed horror with comedy to deliver Bhool Bhulaiyaa, a film that brought together folklore and urban legend, superstition and psychology, to make for an engaging watch. Monjulika became a part of modern Bollywood lore, and the film’s nostalgic hook was enough to spur two more films, but without Akshay or Priyadarshan involved. So when the news arrived that the hit combo was set to return with a film together after 15 years, and that too a horror comedy, expectations naturally soared. But we are living in a time where the genre has taken a leap with the Stree films, powered as they are with social commentary and the overturning of many a formula. Bhooth Bangla — misplaced comedy in the first half, inadequate horror in the second, mangled mess as a whole — is definitely not the film we were hoping for when we walked in.

There is something about Rajkummar Rao’s comic timing — subtle or not — that always hits home. In Ludo, we saw it in the undying love that his ’80s-styled character had for Mithunda — displayed via moves, mohawk and the breathless rattling of the menu at the joint he served in as a waiter. In one of his earlier films, Talaash, where he played the supporting role of a cop, his character’s dilemma to stay or leave, while in the background, when his boss, played by Aamir Khan, engages in a shouting match with his wife (Rani Mukerji) in a public space, proved to be a masterclass in understated lightness in a scene that was otherwise exceptionally intense. In Stree 2, a franchise that has given him immense opportunity to flaunt his comedic chops, the scene where his Vicky desperately mimics Jana’s (Abhishek Banerjee) mother in wholly unintelligible phrases just to drown out her grating voice, is meme gold.

For all those (and by that I mean almost everyone) who, at some point, has felt that marriage is a death sentence, the experience is quite literal in the ominously named Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. Events that fall in the very, very bad category — and that is putting it mildly — do take place in this fresh-off-the-block Netflix series, all of which has to do with its protagonist’s decision to marry her “soulmate”.

You just begin.” This line, at the end of The Martian, released 11 years ago and packing in the kind of repeat-value watch few films have managed to over the last decade, struck home then and is particularly resonant in the times we live in. It was part of a speech that Mark Watney (Matt Damon) delivered to a roomful of aspiring astronauts when asked what kept him going alone in a capsule on Mars when almost all hope had faded away. Watney’s speech, and the film’s optimistic message: that you just get to work, solving one problem after another, figuring it out step by step until you have finally changed things for the better — feels relevant in every step of the world we live in now.

The last time Kata Mara appeared on the big screen as an astronaut, it was The Martian. The Ridley Scott film, which has immense repeat-watch value, cast Mara in an important role, but like her peers on that Mars mission, she did end up being a side player to Matt Damon’s “Martian” Mark Watney. Like in The Martian, Mara’s Sam Walker is also part of a failed space mission, but all comparisons to the 2015 film end just about here.

A little more than 40 years ago, cartoonist Alison Bechdel formulated The Bechdel Test, which, over the decades, has become an essential metric to evaluate the representation of women in media, with special emphasis being laid on film. The Bechdel Test has a simple ask — to assess whether a piece of performing art has (a) at least two named women and (b) whether the female characters in it engage in a conversation (or more) on a topic which is something other than that centred on a man. Many films, since then, even while not being feminist in the classical sense of the term (or female-centric, according to commonly-used parlance), have proved to be worthy candidates of the test. Many others have not, despite their on-the-surface female presence, been able to pass muster. But no film, at least in recent times, would perhaps have failed it as spectacularly as Dhurandhar: The Revenge.

Q: You know what they say about good surgeons? A: Their hands never shake. This pops up in more than one conversation in Accused. What it attempts to convey is the sudden turmoil that Geetika Sen (Konkona Sensharma) finds herself in. A celebrated gynaecologist in the UK, Geetika has it all — a career on the upswing, a steady marriage (with Meera, a paediatrician played by Pratibha Rannta) and a reputation that she has painstakingly built over the years. However, Geetika’s life undergoes a seismic shift when she is accused of sexual misconduct at work. What starts off as an anonymous allegation quickly turns into a collective pointing of fingers, threatening to upend all that Geetika has at present and aspires for in the future.

Within the first few minutes of The Bluff, Priyanka Chopra Jonas slices and dices, swoops down and slashes a bunch of buccaneers in a relentless, action-packed, adrenaline-pumping sequence. Except that her character is no ordinary damsel in distress and neither is this a regular home invasion. The men who break in aren’t your streetside thugs either. They are, in fact, tied inextricably to Ercell Bodden’s past (Priyanka) and now stand to threaten her future. For Ercell wasn’t always Ercell. Known as “Bloody Mary”, she grew up sailing the seven seas as a pirate but gave up her swashbuckling, edgy ways for a domesticated life in Cayman Brac. The invasion — in which Priyanka plunges into the blood and gore with both physical solidity and psychological grit — is just the beginning of the high-stakes action that defines this Frank E. Flowers-directed film.