Rahul Desai

Citadel: Honey Bunny is a catchy title. In fact, you can almost hear it. “Honey Bunny” instantly evokes the viral Idea Cellular ad jingle from 2012: you’re my pumpkin pumpkin/hello honey bunny. But there’s more to the earworm than a Pulp Fiction tribute or a term of endearment. The commercial itself showed a traveler infecting different parts of the country with a tune; the cutesy lyrics, too, felt like the collective sound of couples staying connected across regions. It’s not a stretch to suggest that Citadel: Honey Bunny — whose pan-world premise features a pan-Indian adventure of a couple named Honey (Samantha Ruth Prabhu) and Bunny (Varun Dhawan) — is a long-form descendent of the jingle. It’s totally on brand for director duo Raj & DK, who thrive on affectionate pop-cultural nods, cinephilia and retro references.

Some movies are so entertaining that they make you miss the good old days. But others are so vapid that they make you miss good days. Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 is “others”. You see Vidya Balan, and fondly reminisce about Priyadarshan’s Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007) and Pritam’s hit soundtrack. You see Vidya Balan and Madhuri Dixit playing enigmatic women, and think of how well they were cast in Abhishek Chaubey’s Ishqiya (2010) and Dedh Ishqiya (2014). You see a tragic female ghost haunt a mansion and morph into a human social message in a setting full of foolish men, and it’s hard not to respect how fundamentally sound the Stree movies are. You see crows descend from the dark skies for dramatic effect and think of The Crows Have Eyes III: The Crowening, the Bosnian B-movie starring Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek.

One of my pet peeves features Hindi cinema’s toxic relationship with technology. You know how, in the middle of a public event, every single cellphone in the hall simultaneously beeps with a headline alert because the famous person it’s about is also present? Everyone turns to dramatically look at this unfortunate person; whispers and gossipy glances hijack the scene. This is how news spreads in such stories. It can be at a press conference, a panel discussion, even at a party. In Mithya: The Darker Chapter, it’s at a business auction that comes to a standstill. My questions are simple. How is it that nobody’s phone is on vibrate mode? Why are the shock and awe so coordinated? Why is it that no other message or app on the phone has a pop-up sound? The closest I’ve experienced as a real-world viewer is when, during a press screening of Super 30 (2019), most journalists in the hall audibly gasped when Dhoni got run out in that World Cup semifinal.

Benjamin Ree’s The Remarkable Life of Ibelin starts off as a documentary about death. We see the tombstone of Mats Steen, a Norwegian boy whose body and soul were at war. A mix of VHS footage and family interviews then reveals that Mats had duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a degenerative disease that reduced his 25 years to a hellish survival story. His mind yearned for the momentum his muscles never had. Subsequent clips show his body shrinking on landmarks and vacations, the end inching closer.

Sanjay Gupta’s The Miranda Brothers revolves around two hunky brothers named Julio (Harshvardhan Rane) and Regalo Miranda (Meezaan Jafri), rising football stars in a Josh-coded Goa where orphaned babies are picked up from garbage dumps outside churches; arrogant cricketers cackle and say: “Cricket has two C’s: Cash and Chicks”; football scouts exclaim: “if we select both brothers, it’s like an earthquake and typhoon becoming one!”; bronze-bodied dance tracks called “Be My Mehbooba” pop up on a beach; and mourners at a funeral walk together in slow-motion as if they’re teleported to Sanjay Gupta’s Kaante (2002) instead.

THE WILD ROBOT is about an all-purpose robot that turns sentient in the wilderness. After washing up on a forest island, Rozzum “Rozz” 7134 learns to feel and discern once it mothers an orphaned goose and befriends a red fox. I’d say it becomes human, but in the context of where we are today, “it grows a heart” is more accurate.

Most directors make you feel like you’re watching their film — their technical prowess, their intent, their voice, their commercial and arthouse ambitions. But directors like Vasan Bala make you feel like you’re watching their dreams come true. His movies aren’t shown, they’re shared. His craft isn’t flaunted, it’s realised. In Jigra, there are no shots, only fulfilled aspirations. There are no scenes and set pieces, only childhood memories. There is no action, only the physicality of emotion. There is no story, only the narrativisation of storytelling.

Raat Jawaan Hai unfolds as an uncharacteristically warm and vibrant answer to a question popular Hindi cinema is too streamlined to ask: what happens after the end credits of the quintessential buddy comedy have rolled? Call it “Little Things for young parents” or “Dil Chahta Hai for reluctant adults”, but the fact that Raat Jawaan Hai fuses two seemingly exclusive genres of life — the friendship triangle and the marital drama — is, in itself, a minor triumph.