Shubhra Gupta

Another of those iss raat ki subah nahin sagas, featuring bent cops, greedy politicians, gun-toting hoods, and sundry others chasing a common target, the best thing about Gajab Raat is its lead actor. Manoj Bajpayee, unerringly playing a very efficient but very corrupt cop whose conscience is not completely dead, kept me watching even when the pace slackened. A film whose level of interest depends entirely on how pacy it is has no business losing track of time, but given that it goes over two hours, what else could we have expected. After losing no time in getting everything kickstarted, with a grievously injured girl (Aditi Sandhya Sharma) slides out of a moving car in the middle of Connaught Place, followed by a rapid if reluctant response from an investigating officer (Manoj Bajpayee) and his team, a whole host of shady characters target the victim who is left fighting for her life.

Three flatmates sitting around lumpy couches, slinging slang, while looking for the love of their lives : remember the 2011 Pyaar Ka Punchnama trio, which refreshed these tropes with a distinctly desi vibe?. Cut to 2026. The threesome slumming it on the outskirts of Delhi, more gender inclusive by dropping a guy for a gal, has switched it up for a swisher look, both in terms of office-and-home decor. What hasn’t changed, even if the director of that one has a producer’s credit on this one, is the search for The One: a school reunion is used as an excuse to hook up with those who remained stubbornly out of reach. Will he, won’t she? That eternal question, as well as bad mouthing frenemies, will never get old, whichever decade it may be, so if that’s the endeavour of the youngies at the centre of this Gen Z-coded rom com, so be it: my interest lay in whether this bunch of new faces will be able to pull it off.

There’s this woman in 2026 who finds a flip-top phone which connects her to a man in 2016. Disbelief — is this some kind of bad joke — turns into shock. How is this even possible? On either side of the decade stand the happily-married Kiran (Sonakshi Sinha) and the jobless stalker Samar (Zaheer Iqbal) who fall into a circuitous loop of breaking-and-joining, till there arrives a tipping point. This is the kind of plot which can either fly or collapse, depending on the skill of the writers. I’m here to tell you that this film, which borrows its title from a film whose stalker hero saga became a super-hit in the 90s, never even achieves lift-off.

A girl who never fits in her skin. A cricketer who comes into his own, leading his country to a colossal win. This parallel play between two characters is channelled through Doosra’s docu-fiction format: the choice is interesting, but the results are mixed. Tara (Plabita Borthakur) lives in a Rajasthan village with her conservative father (Ankur Vikal) and obedient mother (Samidha Guru), and an older brother (Navin Ratwa). Like all traditional families, Tara is expected to fetch and carry for the men — get me water, orders her father, and she has to leave her books, even as the bada bhai lounges — with her mother toeing the patriarchal line, because that’s what women have done for centuries. The film begins in the 90s, with a snapshot ride of the decade — the declaration of liberalisation, the empty RBI coffers, the banking on our gold reserves, the rath-yatra and the rise of the ruling party, amongst other important markers — along with developments in the Indian cricket team, with its highs and lows.

An amnesiac Pakistani spy on an Indian mission that goes massively wrong seems like a cracker of an idea. Especially when it’s being fronted by Ayushmann Khurrana, who has the ability to be both serious and droll, without getting all heavy about it. It’s too bad that the film forgets the memo, just like its hero, because it never quite knows whether it wants to be a comedy or a tragedy, getting all twisted out of shape trying to figure left, right, both, and where-do-I-go-from-here? There’s no confusion in the way it begins. An operation in Kashmir, with a crack Indian anti-terrorist team all set to smoke out dreaded terrorist Azhar Masood (Mukul Dev), goes bust when he escapes across the border. A crestfallen Vikrant (Ayushmann Khurrana) is let off the hook by his boss (Smita Tambe), but his colleague (Suhail Nayyar) grows ever suspicious: is there more going on than meets the eye? Who is Bilal Ahmed? Is the Pakistani infiltrator hiding in plain sight?

Little boy wants a baby brother, but his mom and dad are too busy navigating troubles of their own. What is to be done, if they don’t even want to kiss and make up? Sweet premise. Solid cast, including Gulshan Devaiah and Rasika Dugal as Desmond and Jessie, the couple who live with their seven-year-old Thomas, in the sylvan Goa of the 90s. It is a time when old-fashioned bakeries in picturesque Panjim townsquare Fontainhas are threatening to give way to soulless American shops. Desmond’s tasty paos and pois are no longer able to attract even loyal customers, and the same crowd is replacing Jessie’s tuneful piano lessons for Dubai-bought musical toys. Money is hard to come by, and the spouses are to be found sparring more and more.

Labelling a good-looking, confident woman, unwilling to be boxed into the coy, submissive template, a ‘daayan’ happens too often even in this day and age. To decode generations of social prejudice and conditioning across genders is a chance that films should take, even if they fear falling under yet another dreaded label — ‘female-oriented’ movie. When Nayyi Navelli begins, with Yami Gautam as the new dulhan who arouses the suspicions of her devar (Anurag Thakur) and his pal, you really want the film to deliver on the promise. Fronted by Gautam, who did a wonderful job in Haq, and an ensemble which looks like fun — the last time you had Mita Vashishth and Sushmita Mukherjee, both capable of delightful ditziness, in one frame was in the 90s — this one feels like it had so much potential.

The case against Ajmal Kasab, the terrorist who was captured alive during the Mumbai attack on 26/11 was built by public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, whose painstaking methods left not a shred of doubt about the former’s guilt. Rajkummar Rao brings a dogged sincerity to his playing of Nikam, but the film never really shakes off its dominant quality — it is as by-the-numbers as it can get, in both re-creating the glimpses of that terrible night during which a terrorist group took Mumbai hostage, as well as the court-room proceedings in which defence lawyer Abbas Kazmi (Sikander Kher) works hard to dismantle the case, under the watchful eye of the judge (Ashish Vidyarthi).