Rohan Naahar

There will be no sophomore slump in Kunal Kemmu’s directorial career, which began with the sleeper hit comedy Madgaon Express (2024). His second movie is called Vibe, and this title is by far the worst thing about it — aside from, perhaps, its bloated length. They explain the meaning behind the title right at the end of its 145-minute run-time — it’s an acronym; surprise, surprise — but there’s no denying that it makes the movie sound like a rooftop bar in Delhi’s Hauz Khas. Or worse, an elder millennial’s desperate attempt to attract a young audience. Vibe is neither a rooftop bar nor is it in need of any publicity gimmicks. It’s a movie that should succeed on positive word-of-mouth alone. A smartly directed and impeccably performed action comedy, the film more than earns a place alongside Go Goa Gone (2013) and Madgaon Express in a spiritually connected trilogy about fools who find themselves in sticky situations.

A morality tale with no moral compass of its own, Daayra continues director Meghna Gulzar’s creative spiral after Raazi (2018). That deeply humanist espionage drama is nearly a decade old, but instead of developing her style over time, Gulzar’s technical and thematic know-how appears to have disintegrated with each of the three features that she has directed since then. Like her breakout movie Talvar (2015), Daayra creates the illusion of moral ambiguity, but the film is built on a premise so fundamentally flawed that it’s never able to recover. In Talvar — a Rashomon-style mystery about the infamous 2008 Noida double-murder case — Gulzar made her allegiances quite apparent after spending two hours playing it cool. In Daayra, on the other hand, the filmmaker stops short of condemning something that shouldn’t be up for debate in the first place.

Released in 2022, Fall stood out as an uncommonly well-made survival thriller — it had a killer premise, excellent performances and surprising emotional depth. The genre has only become more popular in the years since. This year alone, we’ve seen the Netflix films Apex and The Last House and the Prime Video title The Devil’s Mouth. None of them were any good, although Apex featured a memorably unhinged performance by Taron Egerton. This week’s Fall 2: Deadpoint most definitely comes up short of its predecessor, but more disappointingly, it can’t quite match the camp qualities of this year’s three other survival thrillers either.

Directed by Ben Rekhi, Last Man in Tower is a perfectly pleasant adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s novel of the same name. But therein lies the problem; it is well-behaved when it should have been transgressive. At its core, this is a cautionary tale about the decaying morality of the Indian middle class, a satire about our collective lack of social trust. But filtered through Rekhi’s lens, the movie comes across as an ode to the undying spirit of Mumbaikars. The story revolves around a decrepit residential building in Vakola, Mumbai, an almost fantastical vessel where men and women of all ages, sexes, and social classes live in relative harmony. The building can be seen as a metaphor for India; a society we imagine existed before it was shredded to pieces by populist politicians. At its (moral) centre is a retired teacher affectionately known by everyone as ‘Masterji’. He’s played by Manoj Bajpayee in a terrific central performance that occasionally reveals the underlying rage that should have been more palpable in the film itself.

Ryan Reynolds repurposes his Deadpool routine in Mayday, the new Apple TV action-comedy film, in which he plays a downed American pilot during the height of the Cold War. With the blockbuster Deadpool and Wolverine (2024) having proven that his fast-talking, quip-based acting style works only in short doses and when it’s offset by an on-screen foil, Reynolds is made to team up in Mayday with Kenneth Branagh, who plays a stoic former agent of the KGB (Soviet intelligence and internal security agency), having a crisis of conscience. Together, they make a bid for freedom in a stylishly made, briskly paced and surprisingly sensitive entertainer that has no business being this good.

There is a long history of small-budget films that escaped the limitations of finance and showed the world what true innovation really is. Generations of filmmakers have relied on techniques indistinguishable from magic tricks to make up for budgetary constraints. Scores of these movies are now regarded as classics. Dial 1975, which dropped on the OTT platform Waves this week, isn’t one of them. The film features a trio of talented actors and traps them in a production so amateurish that it could be mistaken for a student project. The starting premise is familiar. It’s the Emergency (of the ‘70s) and civil rights have been greatly restricted by the administration of a prime minister, who, however, is never seen or heard in the film. It is up to the prime minister’s loyal aides to ensure that even the mere thought of rebellion is quelled before it can morph into something more damaging.

It would be safe to surmise that if you want to stand a chance at beating Novak Djokovic, you play him in an empty stadium, or better yet, fill it with fans. The tennis star will be thrown off track by all the love! Djokovic, widely regarded as the “greatest tennis player in the sport’s history”, famously thrives under pressure. He weaponises the disdain that crowds often show him and turns it into fuel that has pushed him farther than any tennis player in history. He has now reached that stage in his career where a documentary can be made about him. But the one we’ve been presented with by Prime Video is hardly the tribute that the champion deserves.

A week after Emraan Hashmi utilised visa-free entry privileges in Thailand (in last week’s Bollywood release Awarapan 2), it’s Jason Statham’s turn. What’s more unexpected is that Statham’s new movie, Mutiny, has essentially the same plot as that of Awarapan 2 — minus the songs of yearning, of course. Both films involve unpredictable scions of Bangkok businessmen, women and children in need of rescuing and a spunky heroine who teams up with the protagonist. Unfortunately for Statham, his new film is as disposable as its Bollywood counterpart. Directed by Jean-François Richet, Mutiny races along like a speedboat across 95 breathless minutes, but there’s little that sets it apart from the dozens of other action movies that Statham churns out on an annual basis.