Rohan Naahar

While Tom Cruise dangles off World War II biplanes and redefines movie stardom for the 21st century, Salman Khan is celebrated for simply showing up to work. This, in essence, is why our mainstream cinema can never compete. Both Cruise and Salman have attained demi-god status, but at this point, Bhai’s bracelet has a bigger screen presence than him. Watched mere days after Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Salman’s latest film, Sikandar, feels more disheartening than it may have appeared when it was released in theatres. It’s the most recent example of how mainstream Bollywood is pandering to the audience’s perceived demands, instead of challenging them to keep up. Sikandar is made up of around 500 equally nonsensical plots, which are introduced and executed in 10-minute bursts of maniacal disregard for the tenets of moviemaking. It’s like micro-dosing on Being Human deodorant; you’re going to come out the other side either with a vaguely foreign accent, or you’re going to become obsessed with finding doppelgängers of your ex-partners. Starring Salman as the king Sanjay Rajkot, Sikandar mutilates the very idea of cinema with its ineptly edited, lazily written, and lethargically acted brand of storytelling.

The Caravan reported in 2024 that Nita Ambani hired choreographer Vaibhavi Merchant during the inauguration of the NMACC, which was attended by everyone from Zendaya to Gigi Hadid. Merchant, known for choreographing iconic songs such as “Kajra Re,” was reportedly with Mrs Ambani, telling her “how to smile, now to fold hands, say namaste.” This is the sort of detail about how the other half lives that would elicit gasps of disbelief from the likes of you and I. Sirens, the new dark comedy mini-series on Netflix, offers an exaggerated glimpse inside the lives of the one percent. Julianne Moore plays Michaela, the wife of a billionaire, who is joined at the hip with her assistant Simone, played by Milly Alcock.

After he directed Aladdin — the anonymous 2019 remake that you’d forgotten made over $1 billion at the box office — Guy Ritchie became extremely prolific almost overnight. He made another movie that same year. But more importantly, Aladdin marked a major stylistic evolution for the famously flashy filmmaker: he got really into clothes. Nowadays, you find yourself admiring the tailoring in his films more than the films themselves. There is little, for instance, to like about Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. But, boy, was Cary Elwes dressed smartly. Unfortunately, the costumes in Ritchie’s recent films are inversely proportional to their quality. The worse the movie, the better the clothes. The clothes in his latest, Fountain of Youth, are excellent.

In this era of exploitative true crime television, Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story stands out as being unusually restrained. But this depends entirely on your ability to resist googling the sordid scandal that inspired it. The show will work only for those who aren’t familiar with the case; anybody who remembers reading about it in the papers will probably wonder what made the filmmakers omit crucial details. Nevertheless, Fred and Rose West is an unusually well-made piece of true crime TV; it circles the case, but doesn’t circumvent it. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the series was produced by the streamer’s UK arm, which has historically been superior to the American (and certainly, the Indian) wings. Fred and Rose West is perhaps the most disturbing documentary of its kind that the streamer has released since 2019’s Tell Me Who I Am, another British production.

Rules don’t apply to the rich in Secrets We Keep, the addictive new Nordic-noir series on Netflix. The six-episode thriller unfolds through the perspective of Cecilie, a young mother who lives along with her lawyer husband and their two children in a spectacular lakeside villa in Denmark. Her seemingly idyllic existence is upset by the disappearance of her neighbour Katarina’s au pair, a Filipino immigrant named Ruby. Only a day ago, Ruby had approached Cecelie in confidence, and had asked for her help in being extracted from Katarina’s home. Something was very wrong, Ruby said. Cecelie awkwardly avoided any trouble, and advised Ruby to raise any concerns that she might have with her employers. Little did she know that Ruby would go missing under mysterious circumstances mere hours later.

There’s a scene in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning where Hayley Atwell’s character, Grace, looks Ethan Hunt dead in the eye, and suggests with stone-faced seriousness that he accepts his destiny and becomes God. Played by Tom Cruise, Ethan could soon gain possession of an incredible artefact that’ll nudge him in that direction. His buddy Luther has invented a gizmo that basically functions as a magic lamp in which he plans to trap the rogue genie that he is after — an AI villain called The Entity. Ethan’s reluctance to handle absolute power, however, is about as believable as something like The Entity being caught and captured in a fancy pen drive. But if there’s one thing that we’ve learnt about him in these last decades, it’s that when he’s given a choice — there’s always a choice — he doesn’t say no.

Every single high-ranking official who appears in American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden — and there certainly is a murderer’s row of them — knows that they are in a Netflix documentary. They’re prone to speaking in blurbs; in declarations and pronouncements, almost as if they want to make sure that they make the cut. The sprawling three-episode series, which was suspiciously released two months after it was supposed to, traces the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, the notorious Al Qaeda leader who remained, for a long period of time, the most wanted man in the world. At the peak of America’s war on terror, there was a $25 million price on his head. Bin Laden kept taunting the Americans for years, somehow evading capture despite having being driven out of his stronghold in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. The documentary series begins on the fateful day when two passenger airliners crashed into the World Trade Centre, while another hit the Pentagon. A fourth plane, United 93, crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers overpowered the hijackers and took control of the cockpit. It was the worst terrorist attack in modern history, resulting in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people. President George W. Bush vowed to bring those responsible to justice, and essentially gave the Central Intelligence Agency carte blanche to capture or kill bin Laden.

There is a difference between ambition and delusion. Ambition often depends on one’s means; delusion, on the other hand, hinges on one’s capability. The Diplomat isn’t an ambitious film for barring the brawny John Abraham from lifting a finger. But it’s certainly delusional for thinking of itself as a desi answer to Argo. There is, however, a more unexpected comparison that the movie invites, without realising that it is guilty of committing the same mistakes that it is so confidently calling out. But more on that later. Directed by Shivam Nair, The Diplomat projects itself as a feminist film, but it is actually a tribute to male ego. A dramatically inert distillation of a multi-pronged story, The Diplomat takes a typically Bollywood approach to telling a story about a woman’s emancipation and empowerment. It frames its narrative from the perspective of Abraham’s character, India’s Deputy High Commissioner in Pakistan, JP Singh. But it is actually the story of Uzma Ahmed, an Indian woman played by Sadia Khateeb, who is conned into marrying a Pakistani man named Tahir. They met in Malaysia, where he was working as a taxi driver. A few months into their relationship, Tahir moved back home and invited her to join him there. But he had an ulterior motive.