Tusshar Sasi

“Don’t romanticize my poverty to me,” says Maruti Kadam (Adarsh Gourav) to his ultra-rich influencer girlfriend Avani (Shanaya Kapoor) in Bejoy Nambiar’s Tu Yaa Main. It’s a laugh-out-loud line, but it carries the weight of a boy who has watched his world stagnate inside a 10×10 shanty. Avani, alias Miss Vanity, with her multi-million-following, likes to believe that money can’t buy happiness – who, perhaps, is one Virar-to-Churchgate local train ride away from abandoning philosophy to retreat to her plush Juhu pad. For Maruti alias Aala Flowpara, whose sister takes Marathi tuition and whose mother sells snacks to local shops, money is indispensable. He wouldn’t mind a richer life or a richer girlfriend if it widens his comfort zone.

Are female cops different from male cops? At least in the way they are shown in commercial films and series? An example of this can be found halfway through Mardaani 3. Top cop Shivani Shivaji Roy (Rani Mukerji) is tense in a hospital lobby after her husband was attacked by the antagonist Amma (Mallika Prasad). What should she ideally do as both a woman and an officer? When Shivani receives a tip about the villains, the scene pauses for a microsecond, the camera glances at the emergency room, and then she gets up and walks out. She does so because Shivani is the hero of the franchise, not the heroine. Minutes later, she is seated in the same fashion but outside a morgue. It’s not her husband but somebody else that’s the victim this time, and Shivani has tears in her eyes – something that a Chulbul Pandey (Dabangg) never would.

Patriotism, in its truest form, is an unexplainable emotion. If you are patriotic, you know it is largely a one-sided relationship, almost like one’s belief in God. You either feel it, or you do not. I remember discussing Laal Singh Chaddha with someone, where the titular character saves a slain Pakistani soldier purely out of humanity. The idea that brotherhood should be placed above national pride was something my head understood, not my heart. As I sat down to watch Border 2, I wished it could evoke that unadulterated feeling, which is second only to our love for kith and kin.

Twenty minutes into Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos, I was reminded of a question someone asked me around the Golden Globes recently: “How did One Battle After Another win in the Musical/Comedy category? There were no songs and there wasn’t any comedy.” While I chuckled then, watching Vir Das and Kavi Shastri’s film made me re-realize his perception of comedy. Happy Patel is set in a satirical world with a nice lineup of eccentric characters and even weirder events. Somehow, the filmmakers are hell-bent on making us laugh in a Bollywood-comedy sort of manner. Which is why, it was awkward when Happy Patel could not make me laugh. Not even once. It was like your younger sibling trying to tickle you in childhood, only to fail miserably. I may have smiled a couple of times here and there, notably during the climax. That was it.

A man with a baby in his arms is strangely sexy. I’ve read that they get more swipes on dating apps, irrespective of whose baby it is. This aesthetic existed long before older and/or burlier men entered the “Daddy” tribe. The next best thing, I guess, is the visual of a man who cooks. These are territories our fathers and grandfathers rarely ventured into, and when men step into anything non-traditional, the attractiveness meter (sometimes) fires up.

Franchises are the flavour of the season, and Honey Trehan’s Raat Akeli Hai remains a highly specific one. Once again, a murder mystery is investigated by the no-nonsense, middle-class cop Jatil Yadav (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), with the victims being members of a powerful family in Uttar Pradesh – the Bansals. The Knives Out template is reworked through a bunch of crazy, rich Indian issues and layered with an exterior coating of capitalism in Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders.

In a highly polarised and radicalised social climate in 2025, I am often asked some truly bizarre questions. “You have Muslim friends? Are you left-wing?” Before I can even raise an eyebrow, I am usually met with unverified statistics: “I’m not against Muslims, bro. Eighty per cent of them are good; it’s the twenty per cent I have a problem with.” Sometimes I wonder how, at least in urban setups, we have normalised such conversations. When I watched Anusha Rizvi’s Jio Hotstar film The Great Shamsuddin Family, I was reminded of many eccentric families I know. And I wouldn’t even insert religion here, because this is simply a regular, loud, annoying, over-the-top, yet loving Indian family.

It’s one thing to make a biography or documentary on an over-exposed crime episode. It’s another to sprinkle it with cinematic liberties and hope it magically transforms into a chilling superstar saga. Jithin K. Jose’s debut feature Kalamkaval attempts the latter and ends up as an engaging yet deeply implausible effort that feels dystopian. Tragically so, because almost nothing in its setup or screenplay reflects the conservative, observant, and perpetually inquisitive social fabric of Kerala.