Uday Bhatia

Every generation deserves its Aashiqui, if only to show that audiences here will never tire of morose musicians neglecting their mental health and then singing about it. The crowd at my Friday morning screening mostly comprised college kids. Invariably, there was a good bit of wisecracking and talking back to the screen. But when it was time for the big concert number, many of them had their phones out and recording. Saiyaara, directed by Mohit Suri for Yash Raj Films, actually began life as a third Aashiqui that never worked out. It isn’t a Bhatt production, but it’s a Bhatt film in spirit. Which is to say, it’s gloomy, emotionally charged, self-flagellating, and full of hummable rock ballads that all sound the same. Pitching a song to a popstar, aspiring singer Krish (Ahaan Panday) sets to music a partially written poem by fledgling writer Vaani (Aneet Padda), whom he barely knows. They’re hired to work on it together (I winced when he snatches her notebook as she’s working—a move that would earn you the lifelong enmity of any real writer). Initially, they seem to reinforce each other’s sadness. He has an alcoholic father and a massive chip on his shoulder; she was dumped by her fiancée on their wedding day. But as the song takes shape, they start to trust, then encourage, each other. She opens up, he calms down, they grow closer.

I really don’t want to bring up Zack Snyder. His films cause me physical pain. But even I have to admit there’s a grim conviction somewhere in all that humourless, quasi-mythological imagery. His films, which include Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League for DC, stand for something, even if I can’t stand them. James Gunn’s Superman stands for nothing except a desire to please. It’s the aesthetic and philosophical opposite of the Snyder Superman films. Underlit greys and browns give way to pleasing whites and blues. There’s a scruffy dog. David Corenswet’s Clark smiles more in his first scene with Lois than Henry Cavill did in three films. There’s a persistent goofiness that I’m sure will drive Snyder acolytes crazy. It’s more watchable, and yet, almost weightless, lacking a sense of definition and purpose.

You’d think Anurag Basu would want to steer as clear of Jagga Jasoos as possible. Yet, the opening of Metro In Dino runs towards that wildly ambitious and notoriously unsuccessful 2017 film with open arms. It’s a true-blue musical sequence: multiple stories, conversational vocals, passing nimbly from character to character. In a film suffused with romantic gestures, this might be the ultimate one. At a time when Hindi directors are trying to make the least musical musicals possible, Basu wants to give viewers the 100-proof version. Basu’s career can be divided into two neat halves: the turbulent love stories from Saaya (2003) to Kites (2010), and then, Barfi (2012) onwards, the embrace of colour and whimsy. Metro In Dino takes its structure from a key first-half work, 2007’s Life In a Metro, but it’s rendered in his later lush style. It’s loving, playful, affecting, overstuffed—all the things that come with watching a Anurag Basu film.

The young man in the row behind me in the 7am screening of F1 was having something like a religious experience. I could sense his enjoyment throughout, but in the film’s final stretch, he started verbalizing it. “Duh-duh-duh,” he intoned in imitation of the score, “Hans Zimmer is peaking.” “That was close,” when Brad Pitt’s race car driver took a sharp corner. And when Pitt pulled away from the pack, his approving words were, simply: “He’s flying.” I thought of shushing him, but decided to hold my peace. I hate when people talk at the movies. But I love it when someone talks to a movie. With his incredibly successful 2022 Top Gun sequel, Joseph Kosinski offered a new kind of Hollywood tentpole. Maverick didn’t redraw, or even test, the boundaries of the form. What Kosinkski did manage, however, was to find and sustain a level of smooth, sleek performance denied to other films on this scale. That film was a machine in the best sense: all clean lines and balance and zero waste. Other blockbusters looked overstuffed and effortful in comparison.

What might Aamir Khan’s last decade-and-a-half have been like had he not done 3 Idiots? I’d imagine his fans, and maybe the man himself, would look at the 2009 film as a positive turning point. It was, after all, a wild success, one that set Khan up for other, even more successful films in the same vein. He was already gravitating towards morally instructive projects; Taare Zameen Par (2007), his first as director, was about a gifted dyslexic child. But 3 Idiots showed how happy audiences were to be lectured at if you made yourself look silly and made them feel smart. Always tagged as a ‘thinking actor’, Khan now seemed determined to make audiences think, even if his films often did the thinking for them.

“Are we in the right film?" a girl in the row behind me asked her friend. You could see why she’d be confused. They’d turned up for a New York romance with Pedro Pascal and here was an unkempt man wearing animal hide handing a bouquet to a woman in front of a cave. He puts a ring fashioned out of single flower on her finger. The title drops and then we’re in New York, watching Lucy (Dakota Johnson) get ready for another day as an in-demand matchmaker.

There are times we look for complexity and depth in cinema, and times when a few simple pleasures will do. Small joys, like arcane assassin guild rituals. Or Keanu Reeves hitting every syllable in “consequences.” Or Ana de Armas with a flamethrower. After four films that remapped Hollywood action, the John Wick franchise has its first feature spinoff. Ballerina is the first film in this universe not directed by Chad Stahelski, with Len Wiseman of the Underworld films in charge. This is usually the point at which franchises thin out and make peace with the idea that they’ll be churning out variations until the public no longer cares. Sequels say you’re a franchise, spinoffs say you’re a business. It would be difficult to argue that Ballerina is an advance over the Wick films. It is, however, a perfectly serviceable, enjoyable action film, and evidence that the aesthetic Stahelski and Reeves have developed over four films is replicable, if not easy to better. De Armas plays Eve Macarro, whose father, an assassin in the Ruska Roma family, married into a rival group of assassins called the Cult. Within minutes of the film starting, armed Cultists lay siege to the house where he’s been hiding out for years, raising his daughter. Eve sees her father die, and vows revenge.

What a wonderful world it would be if Tamil and Telugu commercial directors could apply their considerable talents to telling concise, coherent stories. The bloat is out of control. I’m not just talking about the dozen retrofitted plots of Kalki 2898 AD or the maddening detours of Pushpa 2. Even smart, funny films like Jigarthanda DoubleX stretch their material unduly. I admit this isn’t a widely held opinion. Audiences today clearly like the mess. As luck would have it, the wrong director decided to simplify. Thug Life is Mani Ratnam at his most basic. This isn’t to say he’s made a terrible film—it’s just not the film you’d expect Ratnam, comfortably established as the preeminent popular director of the past 40 years, to make at 69. In his previous two films, Ponniyin Selvan: I and its sequel, he created a rich, teeming world and asked audiences to keep up. No one will have any problem following Thug Life, a remarkably linear tale for an industry that loves flashbacks and wrong-footing the viewer.