Rahul Desai

Like Khauf, Black White & Grey — Love Kills, and Black Warrant earlier this year, Mandala Murders is the kind of Hindi fiction that wouldn’t exist if not for streaming platforms. It isn’t short of ambition or scale; it’s original; it’s conceived with the rules, reach, world-building and timelines of a fantasy novel. The template of two haunted cops investigating a pattern of ritualistic murders in a mysterious town becomes a generational saga of a secret female-led cult, black magic, the fusion of science and divinity, a machine that ingests human thumbs to grant miracles, comatose girlfriends, shadow worshippers, a political rivalry, a ninja-styled and mythical killer, a Frankenstein’s-Monster-coded mission, and a lot more. In fact, 8 episodes later, I’d be hard-pressed to distil the premise into a coherent logline. When one character tells another late in the show that “the answers you seek are beyond your understanding,” I could only nod in vehement agreement. To be fair, it does this without making us feel thick.

In Sarzameen (“beloved land”), an Indian army officer, Colonel Vijay Menon (Prithviraj Sukumaran), is tasked with ending violence in the Valley. The Kashmir-for-Dummies setting aids him. All he must do is “liberate Kashmir from the mysterious terrorist whose code-name is Mohsin”. It’s simple. But Vijay — that Angry Young Man who wears generational rage as his uniform — has a problem. And it’s not Kaabil (K.C. Shankar), the dangerous militant he’s just captured. Vijay has a son, Harman (Ronav Parihar), who stammers. His old-school masculinity cannot accept it; he is ashamed, despite daily implorations from his wife, Meher (Kajol). Naturally, Vijay’s mission reaches a point where he must choose between his abducted son and his country. The colonel makes his choice. (Lest we don’t get it, he acts out his thoughts — always). But it is not without consequences: eight years later, a seemingly radicalised young man named Harman (Ibrahim Ali Khan) returns to his parents. Is he the new Mohsin? Does his trauma matter? Is he cute? Where is his stutter?

On paper, Tanvi the Great is about an autistic young woman who sets out to defy an ableist society and complete her late father’s dream. This “different but no less” 21-year-old humbles and awakens many in the process, not least her grumpy grandfather whom she must reside with during her mother’s business trip. The film is actor Anupam Kher’s second as director after Om Jai Jagdish (2002). He has mentioned in interviews that the story is personal; he drew inspiration from his maternal niece, Tanvi, who has autism. The template is familiar. In the age of Sitaare Zameen Par, it’s hard to make a sub-par movie — more specifically, an insincere one — about a neurodivergent character who beats the odds. The theme is nearly impossible to fumble.

When asked about his ear for aspirational sadboi soundtracks, director Mohit Suri correctly deduced that viewers tend to recall the songs from his movies more than the movies themselves. It’s a skill in mainstream Bollywood, of course, especially in an age where Hindi film music is going extinct as a screenwriting and narrative-shaping tool. But the opposite has held true for Suri’s vessels like Zeher (2005), Awarapan (2007), Woh Lamhe (2006), Malang (2020), Hamari Adhuri Kahani (2015) and most of all, Ek Villain (2014); the albums were so addictive that the storytelling often felt like it was biding time and filling space between songs. Aashiqui 2 (2013), that lilting A Star Is Born adaptation, came the closest to being remembered through its tunes, not for it.

Maalik opens with a shootout in 1990, Allahabad. A dacoit-like gangster named Deepak (Rajkummar Rao), a.k.a Maalik (“owner”), is wounded and bullet-riddled. The police have surrounded the hideout. The Bengali superintendent (Prosenjit Chatterjee) cracks a movie joke on the loudspeaker while telling him to surrender. Maalik shoots back through the window. The film then rewinds to a few years ago, starting in earnest to show how Maalik reaches this moment. It’s a narrative older than time. You’d think that if something evokes memories of Satya, Agneepath, Vaastav, Sarkar and every other popular mafia-origins movie, it must be a solid contender. But the opposite is true here: Maalik feels like a childhood film-making wish being fulfilled — an all-you-can-eat genre buffet assembled from scraps of classics — rather than an inventive or original shot in the dark.

It’s been years since I’ve laughed so much in a cinema hall. I needed it. Movies are truly the best medicine. There’s only one problem, though. Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan is not a comedy. It’s not supposed to be funny. If anything, it’s the opposite of a comedy — a dead-serious romantic drama that takes an old proverb too far. In an age where most Bollywood films use self-awareness as a front for mediocrity, it’s kind of disarming to watch a bad film that doesn’t know it’s bad. I almost admire it. We often complain that nobody makes timeless Hindi love stories anymore. Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan is why. It’s a high-risk genre: the line between being lyrical and being incapable of touching grass is wafer-thin. One person’s Dreamy is another’s Delusional. But naming the movie after a song from a Sanjay Leela Bhansali classic can’t be a prayer.

Aap Jaisa Koi is what happens when Badrinath Ki Dulhania (2017), Vicky Donor (2012), 2 States (2014) and Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani (2023) have an awkward college reunion at a restaurant only for everyone to leave without paying the bill. The rest of the gang — Dream Girl (2019), Meenakshi Sundareshwar (2021) and Mrs. (2025) — arrive very late, so the restaurant manager detains them instead. Aap Jaisa Koi is also what happens when playful Bollywood fare is strained through the streaming algorithm. There’s a functionality about the film that flattens the big-screen fluidity of romance, (in)compatibility, warring families and dramatic sermons. Beyond the performative premise of a small-minded man courting a free-thinking woman, the cross-cultural romcom fails to retain the wit, narrative scale and acting sparkle that mark this genre.

Superheroes have one job: they save people. This job profile is fairly uncomplicated. It does not discriminate between the people being saved, as long as they don’t deserve to die. As long as they’re innocent, in one way or the other. American superheroes have forever used this macro profile — of focusing on all of humanity, the universe, the past, the future — as a front for their micro aversions and distinctly apolitical identities. It’s easier to put the ‘petty disputes’ within a planet in perspective when all-time baddies like Thanos and co. threaten mass extinction. At best, our dark friend Batman mined the more systemic problems; politicians have been his adversaries more than once, but he has no time for politics itself. Creators and screenwriters have often shied away from contemporary cracks in favour of big pictures and bigger fish to fry.