Shubhra Gupta

Baby Do, sure. Baby Die, okay. But Baby Do Die Do? Can there be a clunkier title? Or is it plain kinky? I went into the theatre wondering what I was in for, and I’m happy to report that fans of desi-style South Korean actioners are in for a treat: Huma Qureshi playing a deaf-mute contract killer comes up with an implacable stare, and a weapon hiding in plain sight, as she goes about decimating her victims one after another, getting support from a solid ensemble. The grey-blue screen, the acid rain, the frequent pull-backs to give us a panoramic view of Mumbai at night, people clawing their way up in chawls and high-rises, and the things they do in the dark when no one’s looking: in this Sion-via-Seoul aesthetic which the film commits to completely, no punches are pulled, and the pace rarely flags.

Finished reading the credit list above? Phew. All right, eyes here, as I tell you more. The intention, from the get go, is clear. Whistle up a massive cast, making the previous editions of the Welcome series seem positively sparse in comparison. Have it led by Akshay Kumar, currently riding his comedy wave. Concoct a plot line where anything goes. Get in a couple of leggy ladies, whose job is to swoon and be silly. And when all else fails, conjure up a CGI gorilla. Not going to bother sharing any other details because there are none. As befits such films, the premise is thinner than a wafer. A richie rich guy wants to make a flop film to pour black money down the drain, leading this bunch into a jungle where reel villains turn out to be real, and mayhem ensues.

Season 2 of this rural-com returns with its low stakes, lo-fi storytelling, in which the TVF mandate– keep it cosy, bro– stays comfortably uppermost. No surprises then that our idealistic doctor stays the course, even as the clashes between the twain– the citified outsider and the set-in-their-ways villagers– continue. Also back in harness are his little unit of compounder, nurse and helpers, the colleague-turning-into-friendly-companion, the rival local quack, and the gaonwalas themselves, slowly if reluctantly, understanding the value of a real ‘daaktar saab’ who can actually save lives.

Some films come carrying so much weight that they become hard to bear. Some films become testaments to their time. The Voice of Hind Rajab is one that does both: it lets us in on the agony of a small child left alone in the back of a car, her family members murdered, calling for help; it also asks us to bear witness. Director Kaouther Ben Hania first heard the clip in which a five-year-old girl is heard sobbing, saying she is afraid of the dark, asking for help. The voice belonged to Hind Rajab who was travelling with her aunts, uncles and cousin in the Gaza strip when the car was strafed by Israeli forces. Everyone in the car is dead, the cousin is grievously injured: we learn that the latter dies too, leaving the terrified Hind hiding as best as she could behind the backseat.

‘Ooh, a threesome?’ ‘Hawww, noooo, just checking’. This could well be a tagline for Cocktail 2, a spiritual sequel of the 2012 original of the same name, which once again gives us a guy and two girls looking for The One. Kunal (Shahid Kapoor) plays a dashing chef whose mere presence makes irate female customers swoon. But he’s perfectly content with the love of his life, Diya (Rashmika Mandana), and the two have settled into post-hangover-burpy-domesticity minus the pheras: shaadi, who needs that, when the two are miya and biwi in all but name? On a holiday in stunning Sicily, a chance encounter with the free-spirited Ally (Kriti Sanon), an old friend of Diya’s, becomes the third side of the triangle. Ally is single, and ever ready to mingle, and following through on a wholly contrived ruse, finds herself alone with Kunal: will the two find more than one chance to stray, and how will that impact our lovey-dovey jodi? Who will be the twosome, and who will walk away, all lonesome?

Two love stories spanning two eras is a running theme in Imtiaz Ali’s filmography. His latest, ‘Main Vaapas Aaunga’, a pre-Partition for ever-and-ever romance, juxtaposed against a commitment-phobic present-day couple—in which the girl and guy are doing the back-and-forth chancy-dancy thing, is also in the same zone. It also re-unites him with Diljit Dosanjh, the lead actor of their previous collaboration, Chamkila. Co-written by Ali and Nayanika Mahtani, the film opens with the Chandigarh-based 95-year old Ishar Singh Grewal (Naseeruddin Shah) desperate to get to Sargodha. His faculties are slipping, and he has no realisation that the town lies across the border, created in 1947 to carve India and Pakistan out of the subcontinent, leading to wholesale carnage and bloodshed.

Can you really, truly ruin a perfectly interesting ensemble and the kernel of an idea that could have blown up into a fully feminist fun film, by not knowing quite how to build on it? Maa Behen, bearing a title which cheekily wants to subvert that familiar invective prevalent in much of North India, in whose fictional town this film is set, gets lost in flabby, confused writing. And yet again, you wonder how films which squander their potential, and a great cast — apart from Madhuri Dixit-Tripti Dimri-Dharna Durga, this has the terrific Geetanjali Kulkarni and Shardul Bhardwaj among others — keep rolling out. Ma Rekha (Madhuri Dixit) with her two wildly different daughters, Jaya (Tripti Dimri) and Sushma (Dharna Durga), is the fulcrum, around which revolve patriarchal fathers-in-law who can’t make tea for themselves, entitled brothers-in-law who demand fresh rotis hot off the tawa, careless husbands (Shardul Bharadwaj) who double up as flirtatious jeejas flirting with uncaring saalis, and sundry other men who are either clueless or indifferent.

Decades before the phrase became a sarkaari slogan, a world class product became a shining example of the dictum, Made In India. India’s first Quartz watch, Titan by the Tatas, proudly manufactured in India, for Indians, by Indians, was launched back in the late 80s. The timepiece that took on the entrenched might of old favourite HMT, and the ingrained habit of winding a knob, took its time getting there. Incorporating the setbacks and breakthroughs, it is a fascinating story of individual passion and solid teamwork, backed by the goodwill of one of India’s most powerful business houses. Under the charismatic-yet-mercurial leadership of the legendary Xerxes Desai, whose mentor was JRD himself, ‘The Titan Story’, based on Vinay Kamath’s book as an inside-look, is a saga which elicits multiple feelings: the confidence in an on-the-rise India, based on high-quality technology and best ethical practices, the demands of successful entrepreneurship, the power of an idea, the people who remained steadfast to their purpose, all wrapped up in popular Bollywood songs-driven nostalgia.