Rahul Desai

I remember being traumatised by the mediocrity of The Fantastic Four (2005) and its Silver Surfer sequel (2007), back when superhero movies were still in the ‘Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man’ era. One of my first thoughts, as a red-blooded male teenager, was: Is Jessica Alba really worth the fuss? The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a considerable step up from both the 2000s debacles and the 2015 disaster (I bet you didn’t remember that one — well, neither do Michael Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell and Miles Teller). Granted, that doesn’t take a lot of doing, but as an MCU movie that absolutely ‘needed’ to be made to thicken the chaos of the next Avengers movie, it’s not the worst thing. It’s not the best thing either, but when did Marvel ever pretend to be ambitious within its anti-cinema aesthetic? The Emmy-nominated Martin Scorsese will tell you more.

Imagine a group of strangers launching a Sunday book club. They begin enthusiastically — discovering each other’s tastes, comfort levels, sense of humour, personality and general vibe. Sometimes, they do drinks later and tease each other’s choices (“Sally Rooney? You’re such a hipster”). The possibilities are endless. Then one of them misses a Sunday; the balance is off. Two more drop out the next week. The plan-maker is gone soon. The energy fades. The discussions morph into dull rambles; sometimes, sentences and thoughts start only to get lost along the way. Finally, two members remain; one of them quotes J.K. Rowling. They sit in silence and scroll through their phones until their cabs arrive. They search for a “books to hold performatively in public spaces” list. Rangeen is this book club — united by passion, dismantled by time. The nine-episode series starts with hope. A talented crew, led by Vineet Kumar Singh (in pre-Chhaava mode) and Rajshri Deshpande (Trial by Fire); even Mismatched star Taaruk Raina isn’t miscast like he was in The Waking of A Nation. A solid setup: a self-righteous Hindi scribe named Adarsh (Singh) catches his wife Naina (Deshpande) with a young gigolo (Raina, as Sunny), and their marriage breaks down. The series more or less opens with this incident, so one is left to trace the language of their companionship through their conflict — no happy flashbacks, no spoon-feeding, just resentment and bad decisions and silence.

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.