Sat, March 22 2025

Vikram Bhatt's Tumko Meri Kasam is a vanity vehicle. This is not an anomaly but given the rut Hindi cinema is in, the existence of such a film only reinforces the pliability of the industry.

Second time within months there is an Aurangzeb reference in a Hindi film. If the Mughal ruler was vilified in Laxman Utekar’s Chhaava then he is freshly referenced in Vikram Bhatt’s Tumko Meri Kasam. A character wickedly says he can do anything to sit in the seat of power, like Aurangzeb. But neither the man saying it is particularly odious nor is the outcome of the mention a disaster. One can argue about the overall ineffectiveness of Bhatt’s new work, but, in reality, Tumko Meri Kasam harks back to the good old time in Hindi cinema when films were made without agenda and motives, and scenes were allowed to breathe and not spliced together by furtive video-game editing. Well, one part of this is more true than the other. Scenes go on unendingly in Tumko Meri Kasam (endearing at first and grating soon after) as the narrative veers towards propaganda. Except, Bhatt’s film props up a man and not a nation. But given that it props at least something up, Anupam Kher features in a central role and does everything. He stands in court as the accused; he argues as his own lawyer and doubles up as a detective to find loopholes in the case even as police officers remain conspicuously absent like what we are watching is a figment of someone’s imagination.

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Sat, March 22 2025

Funny for wrong reasons

Written and directed by Vikram Bhatt, the film is a fictionalised version of the story of Ajay Murdia aka the founder of a chain of fertility clinics, Indira IVF. According to reports the film has incorporated some real facts about his life and career in the screenplay. The film explores a legal case, where he is accused of an attempt to murder one of his younger board members, while the memory of his dead wife gives him hope to not give up. With a run time of over two and a half hours, the film feels longer than necessary between, flashbacks, songs and more. Led by Anupam Kher as Ajay Murdia, the film begins with a news montage of how he is accused of attempting to murder, while a court proceeding grants him bail in the matter. His lawyer played by Eesha Deol is seen flying with him to Udaipur, so the family can decide how to move forward with the case. While Ajay wants to brave the storm along, he isn’t left behind by his kids who also decide to stick by him till the end. Soon it is evident, that the young board member is trying to frame Ajay Murdia in the case and his life was never in danger.

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Sat, March 22 2025

Nimma, a Punjabi immigrant, faces racism, forcing him into Sarab’s gang. He rises quickly, but Rawat’s mole threatens their empire. Gang wars erupt, demanding Nimma’s fierce loyalty. Sarab’s arrest leaves Nimma vulnerable, surviving an attack. A coma, addiction, and betrayal follow. Sarab escapes, leading to a vengeful confrontation between him and Nimma, fuelled by chaos and loss. Parmish Verma, the popular musician, bares his heart out to portray the angst and the chaos within Nimma. However, with more effort to internalise the role, he could have created a more lasting impact. Aadar Malik, as Nimma’s on-screen bestie and musician, has an impressive screen presence, helping him emote with precision. Kanneda is an important show, capturing the immigrant experience through an insider’s lens, reminding us that Indian stories needn’t always be home-soil bound. The series serves as a cautionary tale, depicting a 90s Punjabi life in Canada gone wrong – a musician lost in drugs, crimes, and gangs. Despite everyone’s attempts to help and transform him, redemption eludes him.

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Sat, March 22 2025

‘कन्नेडा’ वेब सीरीज के नरेटर मोहम्मद जीशान अय्यूब के शब्दों में कहें तो इसे समझने के लिए कनाडा देश को समझना होगा, जहां दो देश बसते हैं। एक गोरों की फर्स्ट वर्ल्ड कंट्री ‘कैनेडा’ और दूसरा थर्ड वर्ल्ड कंट्री से आए प्रवासियों का ‘कन्नेडा’, जिसके निवासियों को सेकंड क्लास सिटीजन समझा जाता था। यह कहानी इसी तबके के एक ऐसे बंदे निर्मल चहल उर्फ निम्मा (परमीश वर्मा) की है, जो कनाडा और कन्नेडा के बीच की इस दूरी को मिटाने के लिए कुछ भी करने पर आमादा हो जाता है। साल 1984 के दंगों के बाद अपना पिंड पंजाब छोड़कर वैंकूवर में बसा निम्मा पढ़ाई, खेलकूद, म्यूजिक हर चीज में अव्वल होता है। स्कूल में वह गोरों के खेल रग्बी में सिलेक्ट होने वाला पहला ब्राउन मुंडा बनता है, मगर गोरे साजिशन उसे ड्रग रखने के जुर्म में फंसाकर टीम से निकाल देते हैं। इसके बाद निम्मे को यकीन हो जाता है कि वह कितनी भी मेहनत कर ले, खुद को सुपीरियर समझने वाले कनाडा वासी उसे वह इज्जत नहीं देंगे। इसलिए वह ताकत और पैसा हासिल करके यह इज्जत कमाने का ठान लेता है।

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Fri, March 21 2025

The eight-episode series struggles to capture the Punjabi immigrant experience in 1990s Canada.

Kanneda, the title of this eight-episode drama, is “Canada” pronounced with a Punjabi twang. The theme is clear — an Indian immigrant story that unfolds in the awkward cultural gap between Kanneda and Canada. The setting is Vancouver in the 1990s; the narrator helpfully tells us that racism is rampant and Punjabis continue to be treated as second-class citizens. The central character is Nirmal ‘Nimma’ Chahal (Parmish Verma), a young and hotheaded chap who slowly mutates from fairytale to cautionary tale. It’s a familiar journey: Nimma starts off honest (a rugby scholarship to kickstart a music career), before losing faith in the system and getting into the drugs-and-gangster business. Flashbacks allegedly suggest that his family left Punjab during the 1984 Anti-Sikh riots, but his trauma looks anything but generational.

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Sat, March 22 2025

Latika and Palash, siblings in Purulia, a small West Bengal town, attempt a bank robbery to prevent the loss of their ancestral home. Their plan quickly spirals out of control, attracting gangsters, police officers, and robbers. Hidden secrets from their past resurface, creating further chaos. They navigate a treacherous landscape of betrayals and altering alliances and face tricky situations. Tanya Maniktala is undoubtedly a promising young talent in the digital space, but one wonders if she’s consistently underselling herself by picking a series of mediocre projects (how good was she in A Suitable Boy and Kill?) She’s good in Loot Kaand, but can’t salvage it from its chaotic execution. Sahil Mehta, as the on-screen sibling, is effective, reflecting his evolution with every opportunity. Loot Kaand, as the title suggests, is the drama woven around a robbery. Director Ruchir Arun and the writers create a situation where two flawed protagonists – siblings Latika and Palash – resort to a crime out of financial necessity, only to realise they’re not alone. They find themselves entangled in a web of an arms scam, a kidnap and run for their lives amidst deceitful, dangerous men.loot-kaand

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Sat, March 22 2025

Featuring a career-best performance by Colman Domingo, director Greg Kwedar's prison drama is one of the best film's of 2024.

Perhaps the single greatest scene in any movie released last year was the one where Colman Domingo’s character — a convict named Divine G — pleads his case during a clemency hearing in the startling prison drama Sing Sing. He tells the examining committee about the theatre programme that he has spearheaded at the facility, and how uplifting the experience has been not just for him, but each and every prisoner who has participated in it. The scene purposefully recalls the many similar moments in The Shawshank Redemption, in which a hopeful Red, played by Morgan Freeman, desperately begs for mercy. It isn’t a flashy scene, but one that relies almost entirely on Domingo’s (mostly reactionary) performance — easily the best that he has delivered in his career. The same is true of the film itself. Directed by Greg Kwedar, Sing Sing debuted on Max after a negligible theatrical run abroad. Based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts programme that is conducted at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York, the movie features a handful of ex-convicts playing semi-fictionalised versions of themselves. This gives it a layer of authenticity that would’ve been difficult to achieve with professional actors. There’s a rawness to the drama that’s mostly missing from mainstream American cinema these days, although Sing Sing — the movie premiered at Sundance in 2023 — doesn’t exactly qualify as mainstream.

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Sat, March 22 2025

Adolescence is a crime drama, yes, but one that isn’t about the crime as much as the boy at its centre, the world that shaped him, and the people left reeling in his wake. If you thought it would be a murder mystery, the idea is put to rest at the ending of the first episode itself (it’s a miniseries and features four episodes) when the said mystery is revealed. It is revealed that (spoiler alert, but not really, for the trailer itself let it slip if one watched it closely) Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) did really kill the victim, Katie. No, Adolescence series is more interested in the motive behind the crime, and it is revealed piecemeal in the rest of the three episodes. Like Kareena Kapoor Khan-starrer The Buckingham Murders, Adolescence capably uses its small British town setting to paint a picture of a community simmering with quiet tensions. But while The Buckingham Murders leaned into grief and personal reckoning, Adolescence sharpens its gaze on something far more insidious, which is the slow radicalisation of a young mind through figures like Andrew Tate.

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Fri, March 21 2025

Adolescence confronts the debilitating fear(s) of every parent — where are our children going? Who are they meeting? What kind of conversations are they having? Who or what is influencing them? And the biggest question of them all — what are our children watching? Ever since it dropped exactly a week ago, this Netflix miniseries has taken the world by storm. ‘A perfect piece of television’ is not a descriptor that comes by easily, but Adolescence has earned that in more than a few reviews. On social media, it is being discussed, debated and dissected. Besides the overall impact of this four-episode series, almost every scene, dialogue, body language and more, is being put under the microscope, even as the viewer peels off layers and semi-layers of this crushing yet cathartic watch.

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Wed, March 19 2025

The camera becomes the curious protagonist of this masterfully crafted Netflix miniseries

The first part of Adolescence opens with a 13-year-old boy, Jamie (Owen Cooper), being arrested on suspicion of murder. It’s early morning. The family home is raided by the police; DI Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) and DS Misha Frank (Faye Marsay) take Jamie to the police station. Jamie tearfully goes through the detainment process. He is strip-searched, his father Eddie (Stephen Graham) agrees to be his ‘appropriate adult’ and a local solicitor arrives to represent Jamie. The two cops then interrogate the boy. For much of this episode, as grown-up viewers, we are wired to watch these proceedings through the lens of one question: Did he do it? At some level, we experience it as an investigative thriller: a murder mystery where the suspense lies in the answer. When Jamie quietly tells his dad that he is innocent, it’s hard not to believe the kid. He sounds truthful. It’s probably all a mistake and he’s protecting a wayward friend or elder. We look at the father as a portrait of complicity, too — closely judging every word, glance and gesture of his. DI Bascombe mentions a previous juvenile case where none of them noticed years of sexual abuse. But the end of the episode shows that Jamie did do it. He brutally stabbed his schoolmate Katie to death in a carpark the previous night. The cops had proof all along. His guilt was never in doubt. There is no confession. The anti-climax lies in the eyes of the beholder.

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Fri, March 21 2025

Mon, March 10 2025

The film dares to be different and sticks to its guns.

A taut and tense thriller, Crazxy, produced by and starring Sohum Shah, whose choices as an actor have never been conventional, upends genre norms to deliver a 93-minute adrenaline rush that until it ends up in a small puddle of avoidable mush is absolutely riveting fare. Coming to think of it, even the somewhat mawkish conclusion is not wholly out of place in a drama that blends the emotional with the visceral. Crazxy wastes nary a scene in its sustained bid to generate intrigue and suspense centred on the conversations and choices of the protagonist, a successful surgeon with a volatile past making his way through a day on which everything that can go wrong goes horribly wrong. The film rests on a virtuoso solo act that sees Sohum Shah in the guise of a Delhi doctor pulled into a heart-pounding race against time to save his kidnapped daughter, a girl he heartlessly abandoned due to no fault of hers.

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Mon, March 10 2025

Personally, it isn't for me

Crazxy led by Sohum Shah follows after the actor’s biggest hit Tumbbad. While the new release is nothing close to the fantasy horror, it does bring a new and unique concept to the big screen. However, the promotional material from the film does not line up with the real concept nor does it bring the right expectations from the film. The misdirection adds to the mystery but doesn’t last long as the plot turns predictable early one. The film’s climax also leaves much to be desired despite the concept. The film begins with Sohum Shah getting ready with a massive bag on his way to the hospital, getting bombarded with calls about reaching on time. Early on, the makers establish that Sohum’s character Abhimanyu isn’t the good guy. He is set up at the obnoxious ex-husband, a terrible father and a doctor who does not care much for the patients. He is about to settle a big case, and pay for his life with the 5 crore in his car, and move on with his new girlfriend. However, one phone call changes it all.

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Fri, March 21 2025

Mon, March 17 2025

जंगल में एक अधेड़ शख्स वीडियो बना कर खुद को गोली मार लेता है। वीडियो में वह बताता है कि 1985 में उसने अपने दो साथियों के साथ मिल कर इसी जगह पर एक लड़की को गाड़ा था। खुदाई में पुलिस को वहां एक लाश मिलती है। पता चलता है कि यह किसी रेखा नाम की लड़की की लाश है। मारने वालों को भी पुलिस पहचान लेती है। धीरे-धीरे पुलिस को यह भी पता चल जाता है कि रेखा को क्यों मारा गया। लेकिन एक रहस्य अंत तक बना रहता है कि रेखा आखिर थी कौन? कहां से आई थी रेखा? और क्या वह लाश सचमुच रेखा की ही थी? हिन्दी वाले जो अक्सर छाती पीटते हैं न कि उनके पास अच्छी कहानियां नहीं होतीं, उन्हें साऊथ की ऐसी फिल्में देखनी चाहिएं और गौर करना चाहिए कि क्यों साऊथ वाले उनसे कंटेंट के स्तर पर चार कदम आगे खड़े होते हैं। सीखना चाहिए उनसे कि जब कोई थ्रिलर बनाओ तो उसमें थ्रिल पर फोकस करो, सस्पैंस रखो तो ऐसा रखो कि देखने वाला सिर के बाल नोच ले लेकिन उसे क्लू न मिले। यह नहीं कि पुलिस वाले हीरो की डिस्टर्ब लव-लाइफ दिखा दो, हीरो है तो मारधाड़ दिखा दो, बेमतलब का नाच-गाना दिखा दो, पर्दे पर हीरोइन आई नहीं कि उससे कोई ‘ऐसा-वैसा’ सीन करवा लो, जबरन कोई कॉमेडियन घुसेड़ दो। मतलब यह कि जब तक हिन्दी वाले अच्छी-भली कहानी के ऊपर बिना ज़रूरत के मसाले बुरकते रहेंगे, उनकी फिल्मों का रंग भले चोखा निकले, स्वाद बिगड़ा हुआ ही निकलेगा।

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Fri, March 14 2025

In Rekhachithram, director Jofin T Chacko observes the doctrines of police procedurals, pays due respect to them, and then sends the movie down an altogether unexpected path in the final 30 minutes.

Malayalam filmmakers aren’t just pushing the boundaries of genre cinema in India, they’ve evolved to a stage where they can confidently toy with tropes. In Aattam, director Anand Ekarshi created magic within the framework of murder mysteries by unraveling the expectations that they come attached with. Ekarshi performed a deft act of cinematic misdirection, revealing that Aattam wasn’t a mystery at all, but a sharp satire of patriarchy. In Rekhachithram, director Jofin T Chacko observes the doctrines of police procedurals, pays due respect to them, and then sends the movie down an altogether unexpected path in the final 30 minutes.

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Fri, March 21 2025

The crime thriller stars Vivek Prasanna, Poornima Ravi, Chandini Tamilarasan, Prathosh in the lead roles.

Sexual crimes have become the go-to place for filmmakers to find easy conflicts. It has become a license for all the on-screen violence of the protagonist and the viewer is expected to get a cathartic release seeing such revenge stories. In the end, the victim or the sexual violence itself is just reduced to nothing more than a conflict or a reason for the story. Trauma is yet another addition to the list of such Tamil films, which are on the rise now. However, director Thambithurai Mariyappan should be lauded as he at least doesn’t capture such violence with an exploitative gaze, which has become the norm. Such maturity is shockingly absent in other aspects of Trauma, which comes across as the work of a novice short-filmmaker. As far as the story goes, Trauma follows three narratives because it wants to be a hyperlink film, which is in vogue now (thanks to Lokesh Kanagaraj). We have two petty thieves who go about stealing cars. They are straight out of Tamil black-and-white comedy dramas because they seem to not even know how much a second-hand car would sell for. They wonder whether an SUV would sell for twenty thousand rupees, and that’s supposed to be funny.

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Fri, March 21 2025

There was a time, a little before Covid, when all filmmakers were making anthologies. These films were usually about common subjects like love and loss. Last week, I watched an unusual anthology titled My Melbourne. Four directors come together to tell you real stories. Shot in Melbourne and featuring women, the stories address gender, sexuality, nationality and disability. The film opens with Nandini directed by Onir and introduces you to Indraneel/ Arks Das and Chris/Jackson Gallagher who live in Australi. Indraneel’s father is visiting them from India because Indraneel and he have to collectively immerse the ashes of Nandini, Indraneel’s mother. It is a difficult time for the father and son but they make an effort to let bygones be bygone.

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Mon, March 17 2025

Directed by Onir, Imtiaz Ali, Rima Das, and Kabir Khan, the anthology weaves together four tales recognising the inclusive culture that the Salad Bowl of Australia promises to uphold

Celebrating the cultural ethos of a city through an anthology is not a new cinematic concept. Over the years, we have watched films etching the spirit of Paris, Tokyo, and Mumbai on celluloid. This week, we have some distinguished names from the Indian film industry collaborating with Australian talent to mark the cultural diversity of Melbourne. Known for their distinct idiom, Onir, Imtiaz Ali, Rima Das, and Kabir Khan map the themes of sexuality, disability, gender, and race, gently emphasising the inclusive nature of the city. Based on real-life stories, the protagonists’ truth touches the emotional buttons without necessarily triggering a wave of reaction. Perhaps the format limits the creative souls from taking leaps of faith and deepening the conflict as in the short form, sometimes the goal becomes more important than the means. The denouement starts knocking at the door before the journey is fully realised.

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Thu, March 20 2025

Sometimes a certain space defines your identity and you don’t know it until that space is taken away from you. Indrani directed Bengali film Chhaad tells you about a school teacher, a dormant artist Mitra/ Paoli Dam, who loves to spend her evenings on her building terrace. It is here she befriends her niece and a few kids who come up to fly kites. She attends school in the morning post her daily chores as a daughter-in-law of a joint family, Mitra looks forward to watering the plants on the terrace of their dilapidated building.

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Thu, March 20 2025

Two Malayalam films that world premiered at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala in December 2024 share DNA despite employing different milieu and techniques. Fasil Muhammed’s Feminichi Fathima (also screened at the 14th Indian Film Festival of Bhubaneswar) is about the eponymous Muslim housewife in Ponnani in Malappuram and possesses a day-in-the-life narrative. Sivaranjini’s Victoria designs a single day as a series of single takes in the life of Victoria, a beautician at a parlor in Angamaly who is juggling a characteristically busy day at the office and a tenuous period in her personal life. The two films have little in common in terms of setting and visual grammar, but they share philosophies and wrestle with the politics of survival and existence. They focus on women’s labor, the physical strain on their bodies, and the casually developing solidarity with the women around them.

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Tue, December 17 2024

Sivaranjini J’s debut film, screened at the Malayalam Cinema Today section at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala on Saturday, is set almost entirely inside a beauty parlour

The spark that initiates a work of art can come from anywhere. For Sivaranjini J., it came from the unusual sight of a rooster sitting inside a beauty parlour near her home in Angamaly. Victoria, her debut film which was screened at the Malayalam Cinema Today section at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala on Saturday, is set almost entirely a beauty parlour.

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Tue, March 18 2025

The United Nations should probably intervene and impose sanctions on streamers for wasting over $300 million on movies like The Electric State. Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo—the guys behind Avengers: Endgame and Infinity War—the film somehow lowers the bar for them even further, after the one-two punch of The Gray Man and Citadel.

Sat, March 15 2025

In the grand tradition of Hollywood throwing mountains of cash at sci-fi epics, The Electric State arrives with a budget so colossal it could fund a small nation — or at least a few more seasons of Stranger Things. Directed by the dynamic duo of Anthony and Joe Russo, the film is based (loosely, because of course it is) on Simon Stålenhag’s hauntingly beautiful 2018 illustrated novel of the same name. It has a cast packed with well-regarded names. But does the star power mean the movie works? Let’s dive into everything we know about The Electric State, including its plot, ending, cast, trailer, and a brief movie review. We mentioned Stranger Things above because this film stars Millie Bobby Brown in the lead. If you are waiting eagerly for the fifth and final (sob) season, this might serve as an amuse-bouche if you are a fan.

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Fri, March 14 2025

Starring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown, the Russo brothers' new Netflix tent pole is the kind of movie that seems to get longer while you're watching it.

Someone on social media the other day posted that each of the last 15 Best Picture winners at the Oscars could’ve been funded for the amount that Netflix spent on The Electric State, the astronomically expensive new movie from directors Joe and Anthony Russo. We’re talking about films like Oppenheimer, which itself would’ve taken up $100 million of this cash pool, leaving the remaining $220 million to be spent on landmark films such as Parasite, 12 Years a Slave, and this year’s Anora. Starring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown, The Electric State is the kind of movie that seems to get longer while you’re watching it. No matter how deep into it you are — it could be the end of the first act or the second — it always feels like there’s an hour still left. On the face of it, The Electric State isn’t a particularly long movie. It taps out at around 120 minutes, which is positively merciful of the Russos, whose first gig after the global success of the three-hour-long Avengers: Endgame was Cherry, a 141-minute drama about a drug addict who robs banks to fund his habit.

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