Shilajit Mitra

There is a self-aware moment in Sitaare Zameen Par that nicely parodies the moral science cinema of Aamir Khan. A team of neurodivergent basketball players has won a precious free throw in a losing game. Their coach, Gulshan, can’t stop pep-talking the player about to take the shot. Satbir (Aroush Datta) loses his head and yells out. “Sir, pehle aap chup rahiye,” he thunders, telling Gulshan to shut up. Khan — one of the most didactic superstars India has ever produced — needs to surround himself with more Satbirs. In his directorial debut, Taare Zameen Par, a landmark film from 2007, Khan played Nikumbh, a sensitive art teacher who mentors a dyslexic child in a boarding school. The audience, too, felt mentored meaningfully by Khan, their hearts and minds broadened by a thoughtful, virtuous star. Khan spiked his hair and dressed up in a clown suit for the role. Yet, every so often, we spotted a halo behind his head.

Detective Sherdil begins with a rap number talking up its quick-witted protagonist, ending with a declarative “Sherlock and Bakshi could never compare!” A tall claim, but also true in a sense. Neither Holmes nor Byomkesh hung around at crime scenes making reels. This, however, is what Sherdil (Diljit Dosanjh) does in the film’s opening scene, calling it a highlight of his job. The camera circles him in an arc. We are being introduced to a genius investigator. Instead, Diljit looks like he’s ready to drop his latest single. Having busted the biggest kidnapping ring in Budapest — oddly, no one, not even the White characters, speak a line of Hungarian — Sherdil is starting on a vacay. Promptly and unceremoniously, he’s dragged back to investigate the murder of telecom magnate Pankaj Bhatti (Boman Irani). On a highway, Bhatti’s car was waylaid and blown up by a bike-borne assassin. While the killer was caught, who were his paymasters?

Questions abound in Karan Tejpal’s directorial debut, Stolen. For starters, why would Raman (Shubham Vardhan), a young man en route to attend a wedding — not just any wedding, mind you, but his mother’s wedding — suddenly jettison his plans in order to help a complete stranger in peril? There are a couple of ways you can answer it, including a recent bereavement we learn about, but my preferred theory is this: Raman is a freelance photographer who works for magazines. If there is one profession in India with a perpetually troubled conscience, it’s Raman’s. Matters are more straightforward for Raman’s brother, Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee). A foppish, affluent gent, with slicked-back hair and a practical manner, he just wants to get on with his night (“The afterparty is so not lit without your moves,” he’s told on the phone). Come to pick up Raman at the railway station, he witnesses a commotion. A five-month-old child has been stolen from the platform; the mother, a desperate-looking migrant labourer named Jhumpa (Mia Maelzer), initially suspects Raman, then acquiesces to his offer for help.

What’s the deal with Sunny Singh? The actor, in his fairly long career, has been a curious nonentity in Hindi cinema, turning up in any and every film that will have him. He was a mildly amusing presence in the Luv Ranjan Cinematic Universe. But his recent output has been especially bleak. It does not seem to matter if he is playing Lakshmana in Adipurush or a boozy beefcake in Wild Wild Punjab. Whatever the assignment, Singh gives the impression of an amiable jock who’s wandered in from the nearest Hakim’s Aalim. In The Bhootnii, a new horror-comedy, Singh plays Santanu, a student of ‘St. Vincent’s College of Arts and Culture’, a true cradle of learning. Its students occupy themselves with the pursuit of sachi mohabbat (true love), which is understandably hard to come by. Each year, on Valentine’s Day, they hang trinkets and pictures on a wishing tree called the ‘Virgin Tree’. It is worshipped as a bringer of romantic good luck, but it also bodes ill: a tree nymph, played by Mouni Roy, haunts the campus, and has apparently precipitated a string of recent suicides.

The release of Ground Zero has been coloured, inescapably, by the deadly terror attack in Pahalgam, which claimed at least 26 lives and has escalated tensions in the subcontinent. Although the film, drawn from real events, is set in Kashmir in the early 2000s, its climactic showdown — a late-night raid on a terrorist hideout by Border Security Force (BSF) jawans — is bound to feed the current mood. This may work to the film’s advantage, firming up its theatrical prospects even as it muddles its intent. There are nuances here that many viewers, under the circumstances, are likely to ignore. There was a hint of this in the film’s trailer. “Is only the land of Kashmir ours, or its people too?” asks BSF commandant Narendra Nath Dhar Dubey (Emraan Hashmi). It is an important question to pose in this heated atmosphere, with allegations of complicity directed at the Kashmiri people, not to mention threats and attacks against Kashmiri students in other parts of the country. Ground Zero stands apart from works like The Kashmir Filesand Article 370. It is closer in spirit to Shershaah: a patriotic, simple-minded biopic, with a passing yet palpable concern for local lives.

To promote his film Logout, a cautionary tale about smartphone addiction and the perils of online fame, Babil Khan turned to Instagram, posting a ‘cryptic post’ before deleting it—an all-too-common marketing ploy. It’s one of the self-defeating ironies of the genre. Bollywood—and streaming platforms—are in no position to preach. They depend as much on social media as the nervy, shut-in influencers they depict. They bait, patronise and actively profiteer from the same economy. And like everyone else, they collect data. Directed by Amit Golani and written by Biswapati Sarkar, Logout is best approached as a campy thriller than a revelatory tech satire. Pratyush (Babil) is a young content creator living by himself in a big city. He’s amassed substantial clout making silly sketches on YouTube, viral trash where he assumes both the male and female roles, like an actor in the early days of silent film. He’s close to clocking 10 million followers—a major brand deal hinges on this milestone—but he wouldn’t stoop to any level, or so he thinks. His competitors are the real bottom-feeders. Literally: sliding down their boxers and twerking before the camera for hits.

Gajraj Rao can act in his sleep. Quite literally. An agreeably slapstick moment in the new Prime Video comedy series Dupahiya finds Rao’s character, a kindly but superstitious school principal, snoring away on a cot, making sweet music with those silly, rumbling, guttural sounds. Rao has the training of theatre, of engaging a crowd with the bare tools of physicality and behaviour, and is so warm and winsome a comedian that we tend to forget his nastier roles (he played the menacing, mysterious caller in 2008’s Aamir). Perhaps Dupahiya could have harnessed Rao’s lurking nastiness to lend itself some zing. Built around a stolen motorcycle in a village, this is a ‘Panchayat’ lite, a sweet, soporific series that passes the time, exceedingly flaky and forgettable. Director Sonam Nair, who made the charmingly zany short film Khujli once upon a time, is decidedly out of her depth in the rural setting. The writing (by Chirag Garg and Avinash Dwivedi) is vacant and amateurish, the texture crumbly and second-hand. The oddball cast exhausts its whimsy in the first three episodes; indulged for six more, they verge on annoying.

Shabana Azmi is the fiery queenpin of a female outfit. They ply a disreputable trade. Her underlings feel the heat of her glare. She suffers no fools. I’m talking, of course, about a film called Mandi, directed by the late, great Shyam Benegal and released in 1983. Its coolness remains unsurpassed, 42 years on. Dabba Cartel, a new Netflix crime series with Azmi again at the helm, tries its best to be cool. Co-created by Shibani Akhtar, the show has a novel core: a home chef’s dabba (tiffin) delivery business spirals into a perilous drug operation. The pin-balling narrative is tugged along over seven episodes. The characters are stock, but, coming at you in numbers, they keep up a busy rhythm, like players on a revolving stage. It has the mark of an Excel production: ample efficiency, not a lot of excellence.