Rahul Desai

Good Fortune plays out a bit like a smart-alecky Aziz Ansari comedy sketch. A skit-like one-liner — what if a well-meaning but incompetent “budget angel” body-swaps a wealthy white guy and a miserable brown guy? — is pan-fried with a series of thematic keywords: gig economy, American dream, immigrant struggle, racial biases, capitalist greed. It’s a deadpan spoof that counts on looking like a deadpan spoof; even the sincerity is supposed to sound designed and clunky. It has the narrative scale of a gag, too. As a film, it doesn’t know where to go after the social gimmick wears off; it just fizzles into the sort of artificial resolution that, if I didn’t know any better, passes off as image-renovating and self-righteous tripe. The film is fun when Keanu Reeves turns earnestness and bad writing into an art form. But as a Barbie-styled comment on modern American society, it comes across as performative and dishonest. Look Ma, (no) Wings!

Bhagwat Chapter One: Raakshas starts like any Indian crime drama that wants the best of both worlds. The story is “inspired by true events,” but just about fictional and legally coy enough to stage itself as a franchise about a police officer who solves one case per film/season. It’s the Delhi Crime template. The ‘Chapter One’ in the title is a clue. As is the self-reverential opening slate: “To keep the truth alive, you must tell its story”. And a corny closing slate about courage that ends with an exclamation mark (!). In between these two quotes, however, Bhagwat defies its familiar status to stay humble, metrical and consistently watchable. Akshay Shere’s two-hour film has more in common with another well-crafted Hindi series. It shares its real-world source material with Dahaad (2023), the 8-episode thriller about a cop who gets drawn into a case of multiple missing girls and a potential serial killer. Like the show, the film does well to excavate the social fabric of a place that often serves as a portal between predator and prey.

As an Indian critic pummelled into submission by the hagiographic reverence and sanitised beats of homegrown biopics over the years, a film like The Smashing Machine is always a bit of a culture shock. What do you mean the hero is not really a hero? What do you mean he’s willing to be emotionally naked, broken, vulnerable, ugly, difficult and unreasonable on screen? What do you mean he’s a victim of his own decisions and not wronged by the world? What do you mean he’s not an inspirational story with a message? Benny Safdie’s sports biopic has a mixed-martial-arts protagonist who’s a serial winner with a drug addiction problem, a mansplaining habit, a toxic relationship that weakens him, a punctured comeback arc, and, eventually, he’s barely even the protagonist. It has Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson finally playing the role he was born to play — that of a champion wrestler and near-invincible strongman — only to challenge his stardom with a painfully human(e) performance.

In the opening episode of the Search: The Naina Murder Case, its protagonist, ACP Sanyukta Das (Konkona Sen Sharma), engages in banter with the cocky man replacing her, ACP Jai Kanwal (Surya Sharma). Star detective Sanyukta is transferring herself to the cyber crime unit in a new city to save her marriage. Jai taunts her for this decision. To get the better of him, Sanyukta casually spoils the twist of a popular crime drama he’s watching. “Silent Justice” is the name of this show, a nod to Criminal Justice, one of the biggest hits of the same streaming platform and production company. The self-referencing is ironic, because Search is another page out of this OTT playbook: SEO-coded title, by-the-books remake of multi-season European/British series, less-than-ambitious staging, formulaic twists, middling craft, functional conflicts, curated colour.

You can see why Lord Curzon Ki Haveli sounds attractive on paper. Regardless of the budget, it’s an “independent-minded” Hindi film, the kind that used to be conceived, crowd-funded and exhibited in the pre-streaming age by film-makers like Sandeep Mohan, Q and Sudhish Kamath. The title is intriguing if one knows their history. It’s a chamber drama, shot largely in the living room of a British manor. It’s a lean production; the main score is Beethoven, the sound design is a co-writer, the suspense is supposed to be Hitchcockian. There are only four, sometimes five, characters in the house. It’s fully conversational, an introvert’s nightmare. There’s enough room for the lens to lurk around. The performers have worked in an indie setup before. The mood — where actors have the freedom to put on strange accents and do strange things — is a front for social commentary.

STEVE opens with a 48-year-old man (Cillian Murphy) on his way to work. He’s full of nervous energy. The way he’s psyching himself up, you’d think he’s going to war. It’s going to be a long and complicated day. He knows it, not because the film revolves around this day, but because it’s just another day. The moment Steve reaches work, the war begins. As the headteacher of a school of reform for troubled boys, he is pulled into the quotidian mayhem of his ‘job’. The students of Stanton Wood are already at it: Jamie and Riley are fighting like animals again, Tarone is provoking everyone, Shy is brooding and simmering after a heartbreaking phone call with his mother. It’s 1996, and the heavy-metal emotions of youth clash with the hard-rock resilience of adulthood. Steve tries to calm them down, assuage them, warn them, banter with them; he’s everywhere and nowhere.

I, Poppy follows an old poppy farmer and her troubles with a ‘wayward’ adult son. Like several others in her Rajasthani village, Vardibai Meghwal owns a patch of land and a poppy-farming license. She is a grassroots supplier of opium, the precious Black Gold that contains morphine used in both medicinal and illegal drugs. The trade is far from profitable, but she perseveres; she cannot afford to worry about moral implications. Her grandsons help her toil in the field. But Vardibai considers her son, Mangilal, a liability for not entering the family business, slacking on his teaching job and barely contributing to household expenses. The situation is dire. Mangilal is an addict who, according to his mother, needs to be cured and controlled and rehabilitated. He is amused by her taunts; he’s never at home, always distracted by hallucinations of an alternate reality.

Like most critics, I jot down notes while watching a movie. These notes are mostly factual reminders: character names, periods, places, plot details, specific scenes, lyrics, credits. When the movie is fine, these notes contain observations: thoughts about shots, metaphors, social pointers, puns, easter eggs and scene breakdowns. When the movie bombs, the notes become adjectives and verbal emojis: so bad, oh my god, worst, REALLY, what is he doing, come on, absolutely not. But when the movie is Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari, the notes look unhinged. For example, I see a note yelling: “Where is the damn leopard?”. There’s another note begging: “But why?”. Another: “Chutney or smoothie?” Another: “Eco-conscious writing, much recycling”. No context. Just madness. If I were to draw a mental map of how I arrived at a stage of waiting for a leopard cameo, the map would be an illustrated review. And I’d be an artist.