Rahul Desai

Rarely have I seen so much used to achieve so very little. Unless you count the US invasion of Iraq — which, in the Avatar universe, would amount to cocky American soldiers looking for an excuse to plunder a mineral-rich planet after destroying their own. I want to say “empty spectacle”, but to be honest, Avatar: Fire and Ash is not much of a spectacle either. Spectacles do more than just look vast and technically proficient and convoluted and greedy in 2025; they do more than just go round and round and round in the painstaking and now-dated worlds they’ve built; they do more than employ disorienting 3D motion-smoothing effects to impress the fans rather than express the stakes; they do more than take two decades of technological advancements and old-fashioned originality only to end up feeling precisely like those superhero overkills they were once an antidote to; they do more than be a legacy of groundbreaking CGI; they do more than do more. James Cameron has made a career out of dreaming big and heavy, but with this third Avatar film, he’s a bit like that mad scientist who gets so obsessed with creating and reinventing that he bypasses the basic essence of the medium.

Nagesh Kukunoor’s had quite the year: an uncanny performance in Paatal Lok 2, the maker of the meticulously dramatised The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case, and now the director of a series in which Madhuri Dixit plays a serial killer. It’s no small deal, particularly because Dixit’s role in and as Mrs. Deshpande feels like a spiritual sequel to her role in Anjaam. This six-episode series is based on a French thriller called La Mante, but Dixit’s homemaker is very much the future of that vengeful widow who slaughtered all the evil men that ruined her life. As a character, Mrs. Deshpande is less personal and, in keeping with the times, more patriotic. The stillness about her borders on inertia. Her vague modus operandi revolves around finishing off societal villains like paedophiles, rapists and corrupt politicians. (Add film critics to her list this month). An ethical vigilante of sorts, the show opens with the middle-aged woman being summoned from Hyderabad jail when a copycat killer seems to be on the loose. The style of murder is hers, so she is the only one who can help an absurdly trustful police team to solve the case. A young inspector named Tejas Phadke (an awkward Siddharth Chandekar) leads the investigation, and he’s very suspicious of Mrs. Deshpande — who has renamed herself as Zeenat — and her chequered history. He takes a while to warm up to her in the safehouse. She loves cooking for everyone, but he wonders what plan she’s cooking.

In Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders, a family that runs a journalism empire is slaughtered in the middle of the night. Five members are brutally killed in a mansion built on half-truths and media sensationalism. The three survivors include a grieving mother, Meera (Chitrangada Singh), whose devotion to a shady godwoman (Deepti Naval) makes her a suspect. She claims her drug-addicted brother went on a rampage. It’s the most logical tragedy. But Inspector Jatil Yadav (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) is not convinced. As he learned in Raat Akeli Hai (2020), the shadows are stronger than the light in rich dysfunctional families. He knows there’s more. A forensic expert, Dr. Panicker (Revathi), becomes an unlikely ally. He is wired to dig deeper because men like him know what it is to be buried. The story slowly excavates the void between the haves and have-nots. A class-rage drama poses as an eat-the-rich thriller. Jatil chases the case, but it’s really the case chasing him.

A small-town woman, Kavita (Radhika Apte), feels out of place at a South Delhi party. It’s a rainy day; she looks at a tree outside the window. Her husband’s friends are snooty and patronising. He has a roving eye. She catches him making out with one of the guests. She then gathers the high-society gang around her and starts to narrate a story in an earthy accent that makes them smirk. But the smirks don’t last long. Her “fiction” revolves around a housewife named Smita (Apte), a previous version of herself that they don’t know about. It goes thus. When Smita’s provocative cousin Shalini (Sauraseni Maitra) visits, her loan-riddled husband Pankaj (Anshumaan Pushkar) falls for the younger woman and the two start a torrid affair in the house behind Smita’s back. That’s not all, Shalini two-times Pankaj with a crooked cop named Ratan (Divyenndu); she’s stringing along two horndogs because why not. Needless to say, a heartbroken Smita is not pleased. And when a seemingly docile homemaker trapped in a setting full of predators and cheaters is not pleased, darkness is always around the corner.

Given Hindi cinema’s long-standing relationship with hypermasculinity, it’s almost refreshing to come across a life comedy named Single Papa. Even the premise is a neat change — a single-parenthood story revolving around the kind of North Indian man-child character who would usually be the tortured hero of a romantic Bollywood film. The icing on this gluten-free cake is that Kunal Kemmu plays this man. For anyone who has followed Hindi film in the last few decades, it’s hard not to have a soft spot for former child star Kemmu — an underutilised, immensely likable and flexible performer who’s made a career out of not fitting into the conventional-star mold. I, for one, am always happy to see him on (or off) the screen. The vibes are just right, and there’s an authenticity about him that’s easy to enjoy.

Since deception is the language of a spy thriller, let’s pretend that movies exist entirely in isolation — like an introvert on a Saturday night. Let’s pretend that Dhurandhar, Aditya Dhar’s directorial return after Uri (2019), has absolutely nothing to do with the world around us. (One could argue that it doesn’t, but that’s a mob attack for another day). Let’s also pretend that film criticism is about seeing a movie for what it is, regardless of its moral character or ideology. It’s only fair, given that we all admire great serial killers for being awesome at what they do, legendary dictators for being no-nonsense leaders, wars for being the epitome of courage and technology, and plane crashes for doing tragedy so well.

When it comes to reviewing shows, binge-watching is the default mode of the job. It’s mostly a mad rush to finish all the preview episodes and start writing. There’s no time to be immersed in a universe long enough; the next title is always waiting. So you’re more wired to look for inventive themes and catchy in-points. It’s not often critics get to see a show as it should be seen — steadily, on a drip, one episode at a time, spread over a few days. I had this rare luxury with Real Kashmir Football Club and its eight episodes. Ideal as it sounds, this can go wrong, too; the choice to walk through a show brings with it the risk of losing rhythm and interest. But I found myself ‘waiting’ to watch Real Kashmir Football Club and voluntarily returning to it: during meals, after breaks, before sleeping, between films. Not out of suspense to know what happens next, but out of curiosity to know more. That’s the sign of a rooted and fundamentally sound series. Like a good host, it invites you in without gimmicks and touristy offers, lets you experience it on your own terms, transcends terms like “addictive,” and allows you to establish more of a lived-in relationship. It’s not a perfect bond, but it can be a satisfying one. And it’s kind of fitting for a story set in Kashmir, the one place that cannot be reduced to snap judgments and plain scrutiny.

In Train Dreams, life is but an accruement of endings. Based on Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella, Clint Bentley’s tender fever-dream of a film is rooted in the anonymity of time: an anti-Forrest Gump of sorts. It’s about the kind of man that history is wired to forget: a humble woodlogger and railroad construction worker, a normal husband and father, a survivor and soliloquy, a grafter and griever. A voice-over introduces Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) as an orphan in his childhood; it closes with him at 80, having lived and loved and lost and lived in the shadow of loss. He is a reluctant protagonist masquerading as just another person. It’s almost as if the story keeps leaving him behind in the hope that he will catch up.