Shilajit Mitra

The press screening of Ikka was held at Mumbai’s Sunny Super Sound—an appropriate venue, I thought, given the super sounds Sunny Deol makes in the movie. Since Damini (1993), the actor has used the courtroom drama as his personal soapbox. He rages and he raves, he rebukes and he reprimands. A part of me wishes Deol were an actual lawyer working in real courthouses. Imagine the swiftness in proceedings once his gavel-like fists land on the furniture—like a thunderclap. To be fair, director Siddharth P Malhotra uses this trick judiciously, initially giving us a calm, urbane Deol in natty linenwear. The actor plays Arjun Mehra, a celebrity defence attorney who never loses, always has a decisive ace up his sleeve (hence the film’s title), and, despite his large apartment and luxe lifestyle, exclusively represents the innocent and the powerless. And here comes his latest innocent: Shaurya (Akshaye Khanna), the reprobate son of an industrialist, accused of sexually assaulting and attempting to murder a date.

You’re scrolling through BookMyShow on a breezy Friday afternoon. It’s been a stressful week, and the rains have let up, so you decide to unwind with a brainrot Bollywood comedy. But which one? Should you go watch Welcome to the Jungle, still running in theatres, or Dhamaal 4, the latest in the long-running treasure hunt franchise? These things are subjective, but let me present a quick comparison. Welcome to the Jungle is directed by Ahmed Khan. Dhamaal 4 is directed—in the kindest sense of the term—by Indra Kumar. Welcome to the Jungle is a spoof about the making of movies. Dhamaal 4 shows why some movies should never be made at all. Welcome to the Jungle has satirical ambitions. Dhamaal 4 has hysterical collisions. Welcome to the Jungle is a loose rehash of Tropic Thunder. Dhamaal 4 is a hard retread of the first, second and third Dhamaal.

It began, absurdly enough, with a man washing his car. Jaswant Singh Khalra, a prominent human rights activist, was abducted on September 6, 1995 from outside his home in Amritsar and was never seen or heard from again. Despite eyewitnesses and mounting public pressure, almost a year passed without a breakthrough. What exactly happened to Khalra? Did he become a ghost and vanish into the frosty Punjab night? Did he find employment as a wage worker in Europe or America, as the cops tend to insist? Or did he join the thousands of young men—deemed ‘disappeared’ and murdered in extrajudicial killings—whose cause Khalra had made his life’s mission?

Farida Jalal didn’t grey her hair overnight. She’s been acting in movies since the 1960s. Since DDLJ, she’s been a sweet, endearing presence in Hindi films, buffing up large ensembles with her nourishing warmth. At 75, she’s a grande dame in the tradition of Zohra Sehgal and Nafisa Ali. Yet like those greats, Jalal is very much her own actor—as Shyam Benegal’s Mammo proved. Her new film, The Great Shamsuddin Family, directed by Anusha Rizvi, is also an ensemble comedy, with Jalal billed behind everyone else. Yet it only sparks to life when the actor joins the fray.

You’ve watched Dhurandhar. You’ve watched Tere Ishk Mein. You’ve watched Haq. You wouldn’t admit it, but you’ve also watched The Taj Story. Now you want to fold the year in peace. How about a silly Kapil Sharma comedy? I hadn’t seen the trailer for Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon 2 and went in expecting more of the same: a tumescent comedy about a man with many wives, with no wars or social unrest to worry about, no particular politics to propagate. The first film, released in 2015, was some form of a hit. Surely the sequel will abide?

Babloo Nishaanchi (Aaishvary Thackeray) is at the end of his rope. Recently released from prison, after a ten-year stint, he finds himself in freefall. A belated discovery about his twin brother and the woman he loved most sends him over the edge. Babloo fumes drunkenly by a pond. He screams into the void. Funnily, the void screams back — there’s a random man on the opposite embankment, mimicking and mocking our hero’s exertions. This scene has the Anurag Kashyap touch: impotent rage and self-pity undercut by absurdist humour.

Hindi cinema operates in extremes. On the one hand, you have the blatant Islamophobia and sectarianism of recent propaganda films. These films dig around in history to single out a particular community. The other approach is rarer: calm, sober-sided films made with a measure of dignity and intent. Yet these films also have a tendency to hedge, to oversimplify. Too often, they reduce complex realities to pat displays of solidarity. I felt that way about Ground Zero, a Kashmir-set military film with a passing yet palpable concern for local lives. And I feel much the same about Haq, which dramatises the landmark Shah Bano case from the 1980s. Incidentally, both films star Emraan Hashmi.

Cliffhangers are the hot sauce of series storytelling. They’re meant to make us drool, lean forward, smack our lips in anticipation. They are old spice, essential for closing out seasons but also necessary as episode-to-episode hooks. They fulfil an ajinomoto-like role in the cooking of compelling shows, and even the most prestigious chefs will cop to their use. The American television critic Emily Nussbaum is dead-on when she writes, “…cliffhangers are fake-outs. They reveal that a story is artificial, then dare you to keep believing.”