Saibal Chatterjee

Love makes the world go round in confoundingly concentric circles in Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari. Given full on flippant treatment, the caprices and convolutions of the Varun Dhawan-Janhvi Kapoor starrer have a free run of the field. The film revolves around four young people who are surrounded by families at variance with their choices. The quartet finds itself on a wild merry-go-round of break-ups, hook-ups and matrimonies.

Another southern superstar vehicle that alternates between soaring high and sputtering cumbersomely, They Call Him OG does not go completely off the rails thanks to the kinetic power that lead actor Pawan Kalyan lends the film. The Telugu superstar goes full tilt at powering an erratic screenplay that delivers an abundance of superficial style. The film has plenty of arrows in its quiver but all of them hit their intended targets. But if you are a Pawan Kalyan fan, that lacuna is unlikely to take anything away from the sheen that the star possesses.

Marking a buoyant return for Anurag Kashyap to the gangster drama genre, Nishaanchi serves up a campy broth with a generous sprinkling of retro Bollywood ingredients that dissolve into each other in unpredictable ways. Written by Kashyap with Rajan Chandel and Prasoon Mishra, Nishaanchi brims with raw action, earthy humour and gnarled emotions that frequently unleash full-blown violence. Notwithstanding its ups and downs, the film retains its crackle all the way through. Set in Kanpur in the years leading up to and beyond the turn of the millennium, the gritty film homes in on a family sucked into the world of crime by rage and retribution. The family of four suffers the repercussions of impulsive acts, including a life-altering tragedy, but is held together by a woman who is no Nirupa Roy. She is the antithesis of the silent, long-suffering mother of Hindi cinema’s chequered past.

Secret of a Mountain Serpent by writer-director Nidhi Saxena is a poetic exploration of female desire set against the backdrop of the Kargil conflict. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival, the film weaves folklore, symbolism, and haunting performances by Trimala Adhikari and Adil Hussain into a tapestry of longing, liberation, and cinematic beauty. With its blend of myth and reality, evocative sound design, and visual mastery, it is an unforgettable contribution to Indian independent cinema. Between Dream and Reality Writer-director Nidhi Saxena’s second film, Secret of a Mountain Serpent, is an exquisite piece of cinema. It blurs the line between the dreamily meditative and the wholly tangible to explore the boundaries of female desire when it is set free from the suffocating constraints of societal stipulations. ‘

Producer Sajid Nadiadwala returns after a five-year hiatus with his nearly one-decade-old action franchise, which is perhaps like no other in the world. All the films in the series, including the one being reviewed here, are standalone ventures with Tiger Shroff in the guise of an overly belligerent rebel being the only common link between them Baaghi 4 foists upon us more of what the franchise has done before in abundance - gratuitous violence - in order to peddle a brand of toxic masculinity that the world can certainly do without. Shroff, of course, has the chops to plunge headlong, with his action hero poise intact, into spitfire sequences and give them all he has - and then some. But what can an actor do when what is on paper is only superficially visceral and does not pack the sort of punch that can inject some credibility into the protagonist’s exploits.

Coolie has no dearth of big stars. It has Aamir Khan in a special appearance as a swaggering, heavily tattooed crime lord who pops out of a chopper in the middle of a desert at the fag-end of the film. Upendra has an extended cameo that kicks of late in the second half when the chips are down for once for the titular protagonist. Nor is that all. Nagarjuna Akkineni dons the garb of the principal villain and Soubin Shahir slips into the skin of a slimy double-dealer. It’s top-heavy, to say the least. Each one of them carries his weight in Coolie-The Powerhouse (the title of the Hindi dub of the Tamil action extravaganza that’s been released without the suffix). But it is hardly surprising that the onus of doing most of the heavy lifting in squarely upon the redoubtable Rajinikanth.

Talent, teamwork and tenacity are attributes that, as a rule, occupy centrestage in a sports drama. These qualities come to the aid of a team of hoopsters that fights to beat the odds stacked against it. Add to the proceedings a dash of feel-good, high-spirited humour and periodic tugs at the heartstrings and you have Sitaare Zameen Par, somewhat inconsistent in pace but always entertaining. The underdog story, scripted by Divy Nidhi Sharma and directed by R.S. Prasanna, pivots around ten neurodiverse basketball players placed under a reluctant coach, an angry not-so-young man in dire need of a course correction. The team does not get along with the coach. A judge assigns the job to the latter as punishment for ramming his car into a police vehicle in a drunk driving case. Although they find winning ways difficult to come by to begin with, each member of the outfit makes steady progress on and off the basketball court.

Late in this sprawling and disappointingly inconsistent gangster saga, the male protagonist, badly wounded, asks a doctor about the exact nature of the injection that she is about to administer. She lets on that the fluid in the syringe is a sedative guaranteed to lull him to sleep. Mani Ratnam’s Thug Life may not be as soporific as that but large swathes of it could certainly have done with targeted shots of stimulants. Thug Life isn’t quite the kind of film that you expect to be a huge disappointment. In an era in which scepticism, even trepidation, precedes the decision to watch a movie that has blockbuster aspirations, a Mani Ratnam movie, no matter what genre it belongs to, is usually an exception. It generates both anticipation and excitement.