Rohan Naahar

A few years ago, there was an uproar over a scene of sustained violence in director Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit, a period crime drama about a real-life incident that led to the deaths of three young men. The controversial scene unfolded across several uncomfortable minutes, and showed a group of white police officers beat down a lineup of innocent Black men. Bigelow didn’t avert her eyes from the horror, and instead, caught the audience by the scruff of the neck and made them watch. The film’s examination of ingrained racism, police brutality, and the systemic oppression of minorities drew parallels to modern-day America, but it also divided audiences. Director Sandhya Suri’s Santosh, which was screened at the recent Dharamshala International Film Festival, unpacks similar themes, but in the context of contemporary north India. Like Detroit, it pivots on a scene of unrelenting brutality that transforms it from a standard police procedural into something more haunting.

In director Dibakar Banerjee’s Tees, three generations of a Kashmiri family grapple with identity, erasure, and a desire to be heard in an ever-evolving and increasingly intolerant India. It is cruelly ironic, therefore, that the movie itself has been throttled like its characters. Originally titled Freedom, the ambitious saga has effectively been caged on a hard disk by the paranoid Netflix. But despite being denied a release by the streamer, Tees was presented in its complete form at the 13th Dharamshala International Film Festival recently, with Banerjee present to soak in the warmth that seemed to be emanating from the hundreds of pilgrims who queued up for it on a winter evening. Tees opens, rather worryingly, with a scene that wouldn’t feel out of place in Banerjee’s latest, Love Sex Aur Dhoka 2, which was more an act of self-immolation than self-expression, if we’re being honest. A computer-generated black cat walks towards us, before it is revealed to be the internet avatar of a human being looking for a connection. The year is 2042, and a young writer named Anhad Draboo (Shashank Arora) appears rattled by the rejection of his rebellious verses by an overbearing government.

Influenced by every zombie thriller ever made, but more specifically, by the video game series The Last of Us, Prime Video’s Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End is a competently crafted thriller let down by a lack of ambition. The Spanish-language film unfolds across a year in the life of a grieving man named Manel, who is caught by himself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Manel is heartbroken over the death of his wife in a car crash not too long ago — the movie opens with this tragic scene — and is hanging on by a thread when the fast-spreading virus breaks out. Having survived the pandemic, everybody assumes that they can handle this outbreak as well. But they have no idea just how terrifying things are going to get. Initially, Manel decides to stay put at home and ignore the government’s instructions to participate in a military-aided evacuation. But after a couple of months in isolation, he has no choice but to make a move. Manel’s sister left with her family for the Canary Islands just as the outbreak got out of control, and even though he lost all contact with them a while ago, he decides that the smartest thing to do would be to make his way to them. Apocalypse Z is divided into chapters; not literally, like a Quentin Tarantino movie, but more structurally.

A gleefully grotesque satire of success, director Coralie Fargeat’s English-language debut, The Substance, lives up to its title. But it has plenty of style to spare as well. Demi Moore stars as Elizabeth Sparkle, a fading actress who, in a moment of great weakness, decides to sample an underground drug that purportedly reverses the ageing process. But she quickly discovers that she has bitten off more than she can chew. The Substance is to Moore’s career what Birdman was to Michael Keaton’s, or The Wrestler was to Mickey Rourke’s, a movie that sheds its superficial obsession with superficiality and transforms into a whole new beast towards the end. It’s the kind of film that requires courage from everybody involved, including the caterers who were presumably tasked with preparing a menu that wouldn’t end up on the shooting floor everyday. It would be remarkable if nobody threw up while making this movie, because every moment of its incredible final act positively challenges you to keep your lunch in your stomach. But before Fargeat unleashes her final flourish, she sets up an increasingly absurd universe for Elizabeth to navigate.

A slow-burn thriller with a deep emotional core, an intricately plotted genre exercise, and an acting showcase for two talented young performers, Caddo Lake, on paper, sounds like the complete package. It takes a while to get going, and the first act is particularly testing, but it’s also the kind of film that gets better with every passing minute. In fact, Caddo Lake is at its best towards the end, when it ties all — or, at least two — of its narrative threads together, unleashing an emotional wallop that rivals only the sheer thrill of watching its well-executed twist.

Often described as ‘the most famous unsolved murder case in American history’, the Zodiac Killer’s brutal spree in the 1960s and ‘70s attracted a flock of amateur investigators before true crime was even a thing. But now it is, and as per the law, Netflix is mandated to make a three-part documentary series about it. Titled This is the Zodiac Speaking, the show confusingly omits the real-life chapter that inspired this title, and presents, instead, a new angle to the case, one that has been flogged to death by documentarians, filmmakers, and podcasters alike. This is the Zodiac Speaking has the same fast-paced narrative that has come to define most of these Netflix true crime content; the tone is perpetually ominous, the violence and mayhem is circled and highlighted, cheap recreations are used to heighten the drama. The ending, invariably, is anti-climactic. But the show attempts to sidestep this inevitability by picking its lane and sticking to it. In minute one, This is the Zodiac Speaking identifies a possible suspect — in fact, the only person who was ever publicly named by the police as a person of interest — and proceeds to move heaven and earth in an effort to corroborate its claims.

Getting an audience to detest a movie villain isn’t difficult. People are cynical; all they want is someone to project their frustrations on. But getting the same viewers to genuinely empathise with the protagonist of your film isn’t as easy as it might seem. It requires them to lower their guards and shed their egos; to allow moments of vulnerability in the presence of absolute strangers. Most of all, it requires them to ignore the objectively lunatic act of developing a connection with a made-up person, as if they are real. But Vasan Bala has cracked the code in Jigra — a film that pulls off this almost impossibly difficult feat by getting you, the viewer, to participate in the grandest act of collective empathy crafted on a Bollywood screen this year.

Normally, one of the most frustrating things that a movie can do is to abandon its characters and become too consumed by the plot. Our mainstream cinema has always struggled with this, and things have only become worse in the streaming era. It is said that show runners, in particular, can get away with anything on digital platforms as long as there is a murder in the first episode. Well, someone most certainly dies at the end of the first act in CTRL, the new film from Vikramaditya Motwane — his first feature since AK vs AK in 2020.