Udita Jhunjhunwala

The latest superhero offering from the Marvel Cinematic Universe might be its most audacious. Thunderbolts introduces a team of assassins and mercenaries who are all wrestling with troubled pasts. Though Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), the Winter Soldier, is the most familiar character, the film centres on Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), along with Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) and John Walker (Wyatt Russell)—a low-budget Captain America. Fans will recognise each of them from the MCU, predominantly from Black Widow. What writers Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, along with director Jake Schreier and producer Kevin Feige, do so well in the 36th MCU film is turn second-string characters—antiheroes, even—into flawed but fun heroes. Thunderbolts* is a bold tonal shift in the MCU, trading flashy heroics for emotional scars and moral ambiguity. There are shades of Suicide Squad here, but this is a more inward-looking movie.

Writer-director Ananth Narayan Mahadevan bookends his 129-minute biopic on social reformers and educationists Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule with the events of 1897. Poona is devastated by the plague. Savitribai runs across parched land to bring an ailing child to a makeshift medical camp. Before the doctors can pronounce a prognosis, events move back in time to 1848. Savitri was a child bride then, married to the slightly older Jyotirao Phule who, even as a teenager, was progressive enough to want his wife to be educated. This did not sit well with his conservative father (Vinay Pathak). Undeterred, Jyotirao continued to encourage not just his wife, but also the younger village girls, to learn. Now older and more committed, the Phules’ egalitarian practices and focus on social reform conflicted with the caste hierarchy of the time. The ire of higher-caste men, enraged that the ‘untouchables’ were stepping out of their lane, compelled the couple to move away from their family home. Joy Sengupta plays the upper-caste Vinayak, Darsheel Safary is the adopted son Yashwant Phule, and Amit Behl plays the head priest. Sharad Kelkar serves as narrator, giving the staccato screenplay some cohesion.

There are two sides to digital media influencer connections. The first is the connection created by these influencers—designed, manufactured, marketed, finessed, and posted on their socials. These are aimed at gaining likes, shares, and follows, all to increase the creator’s relevance and brand value. On the other side of the mobile device screen, someone else is consuming this content—often obsessively, even addictively. Writer Biswapati Sarkar’s script for Logout (Zee5) is a cautionary tale that examines how an alarming number of subscribers are entrapped by their ‘cell’ phones.

Something sinister is lurking in room 333 of the Pragati Working Woman Hostel – something so dark that it prevents four of the women from ever leaving the building. They haven’t been the same since Anu (Asheema Vardaan), the fifth member of their tight-knit group, moved out six months ago. Things get worse when an unsuspecting new arrival to Delhi moves into the cursed room. Madhu (Monika Panwar) has left her hometown of Gwalior to escape a traumatic incident and be closer to her devoted boyfriend Arun (Abhishek Chauhan). With the help of friends Bela (Aastha Ssidhana) and Nakul (Gagan Arora), Madhu lands a job in Delhi and lands up at the hostel. Her optimism and hopes for a new life are dashed as the hostel turns out to be a house of horrors, inhabited by a hostile gang and a demonic presence that makes Madhu’s life a living hell. The cruelty of Madhu’s neighbors – Nikki (Rashmi Zurail Mann), Komal (Riya Shukla), Lana (Chum Darang), and Rima (Priyanka Setia) – pales in comparison to the malevolent force in room 333.

Will Sunny Deol—or the makers of any film starring him—ever move past the overused ‘Yeh dhai kilo ka haath’ (this two and a half kilo hand) line of dialogue from the 1993 film Damini? Clearly not, because writer-director Gopichand Malineni revives it once again it as a front-bencher-pleasing proclamation in the Hindi language action drama Jaat, headlined by Deol. Famed in the North, Deol’s character Baldev Pratap Singh declares that it is now time the south gets acquainted with his legendary and destructive hand.

Both the Marathi horror film Lapachhapi (2017) and its Hindi remake Chhorii (2021) were directed by Vishal Furia. Furia returns with a sequel that picks up seven years after the earlier story. Chhorii 2 begins in the same sugarcane fields that were intrinsic to its predecessor, indicating that Sakshi’s connection with the village – where she had left her husband for dead – has not been entirely severed. Sakshi (Nushrratt Bharuccha) is now a teacher and single parent raising her seven-year-old daughter Ishani (Hardika Sharma). Ishani has a condition where she burns instantly in the sun and is therefore kept perpetually in a darkened room at home or covered from head to toe when stepping outside.

S. Sashikanth, a former architect turned film producer, takes on the role of co-writer and director of Test (Netflix), a drama that unfolds against the backdrop of cricket, unrealised dreams, sacrifice, and obsessions. The resolve and ethics of three principal characters are tested to the limit in this unimaginatively directed film, co-written by Suman Kumar (The Family Man, Farzi). Test shifts from a sports drama to a thriller, verging on horror, particularly with R. Madhavan’s character’s transformation. Much of the action unfolds in the build-up to a cricket match between India and Pakistan, set in Chennai. A fading cricketer is desperate for a swansong. Little does he know that out on the pitch during this critical test match, he will face far more harrowing challenges. Arjun’s world intersects with that of Kumudha, a school teacher obsessed with motherhood, who is married to Saravanan, a struggling scientist clinging to his passion project.

Yet another remake of yet another often retold Disney classic is revisited as the Marc Webb-directed musical Snow White. Featuring a mix of new and old songs, a fresh cast, the same story by the Brothers Grimm rehashed by writer Erin Cressida Wilson, and some new but questionable creative ideas. Snow White is thus named by her perfect parents, the King and Queen, because she was born on a snowy night. They lead a happy life, spreading joy among their happy subjects. Young Snow White (Emilia Faucher) makes delicious apple pies for all the townspeople as they sing along merrily. But after her mother dies, her father remarries a beautiful woman who turns out to be singularly evil. This spells the end of the kingdom’s days of plenty, and long-term servitude for Snow White. Gal Gadot, with all the regalia, is the menacing Evil Queen, adorned in gems and drenched in complex vanity and greed. She repeatedly seeks validation from the magical mirror. But her evil reaches a new high when she is threatened by Snow White’s beauty and grace, condemning her stepdaughter to death. However, Snow White manages to escape and finds shelter in the unlikely company of seven dwarves.