Fri, April 19 2024

The sequel—Part Two: The Scargiver—ought to benefit from a defined focus but mucks it up with frivolous scenes, the worst possible dialogue, and by routinely prioritising exposition over its horridly underdeveloped characters.

Rebel Moon was just the worst. Zack Snyder—the director, co-writer, and (strangely) also the cinematographer—spewed lore as if he was penning a Wikipedia article, not a movie. It was apparent that he had no idea what it took to flesh out characters and develop their interpersonal dynamics. Snyder displayed an utter inability with the camera, too. Rebel Moon looked like it had been shot on a giant parking lot with its endless horizons and poorly applied VFX. All this despite having the easiest of templates: a movie about gathering a team of galactic warriors. So, unless Snyder decided to scrap and reshoot the whole thing in four months—a trailer for Part Two: The Scargiver was appended to the end of Part One: A Child of Fire, after all —the sequel was never going to be a big improvement over the first one.

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Sun, April 14 2024

A live-action video game adaptation from the makers of Westworld—is the right mix of goofy and self-serious but is found lacking in crucial departments.

For about a decade and a half, Todd Howard—who has led direction on every major Bethesda video game since 2008, including the award-winning action role-playing titles Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim—resisted the idea of a Fallout television adaptation. Howard rejected multiple pitches as none of them were “quite clicking” for him. But that changed when Jonathan Nolan—creator of the sci-fi series Westworld, co-writer of The Dark Knight, and a self-professed fan of the Fallout games—rang him up. Howard was impressed: “It was very clear that he had played the games and loved them and had a vision for what it could be on the screen.” The deal was announced in 2020, and a little less than four years later, Fallout the TV show has arrived on Amazon Prime Video.

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Fri, April 12 2024

Imtiaz Ali’s call for artistic freedom—and the price you must be willing to pay—doesn’t always have the power or focus it needs.

What is decency? And who gets to define it? In a country where taking offence and sentiments being hurt has morphed into a crutch and a pastime, the boundaries of what’s appropriate shrink every day. But this isn’t anything new. Intolerance has always been widespread—it’s now just easily disseminated. In the eighties, that’s how singer-songwriter Amar Singh Chamkila earned the moniker Elvis of Punjab. (A line in the movie takes it too far and calls him “the Elvis of Punjab, US, UK, and Canada”, which is funny on another level because, you know, Elvis is American.) It was given for his popularity, for shattering multiple sales records over his short life, but it applied to how society was enraged by the content of his lyrics. A sentiment that likely led to his assassination at the ripe age of 27.

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Fri, April 12 2024

Is Amar Singh Chamkila a long-awaited return to form for director Imtiaz Ali, or is it another let-down from the once-promising filmmaker? We discuss the film’s inventive approach to the music biopic genre, if not narratively then at least formally. We also talk about Diljit Dosanjh and Parineeti Chopra’s central performances as the slain husband-wife folk singer duo and address the ‘Hindi gaze’ that Ali brings to this inherently Punjabi tale. Along the way, we also discuss the nature of high and low art and the film’s many defences of Chamkila’s controversial music.

Tue, April 2 2024

Aattam, the latest Malayalam-language gem that further solidifies the industry’s artistic stronghold on the cinema landscape of the country, offers an inventive spin on the whodunnit genre. We discuss the film’s gripping narrative, ambitious social commentary, and director Anand Ekarshi’s bold voice. We also talk about the many moral quandaries that the movie puts its characters in, and how willingly it invites audiences to gaze inward and participate in the proceedings. We also debate the merits of its final moments, which we compare and contrast with Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.

Wed, March 27 2024

Colin Farrell-led show is a love letter to film noir but its otherworldly late-game reveal may prove to be divisive.

Modern-day Los Angeles, a troubled private detective, and a missing drug-addled young woman. Those are the basics of Sugar—the new Apple TV+ neo-noir series led by Colin Farrell—which feels wistful for times gone by. That’s evident from what its protagonist drives (a blue retro open-top Corvette coupé), how he looks (well moisturised swept back hair), his passions (an avowed old Hollywood cinephile), and how he dresses (white shirt, black suit, black pants, and black shoes—the full gamut). The orchestral background score, made up of pipes, piano, and the saxophone, further adds to it. And then there are all the overt references. Forget riffing on classic film noirs, Sugar outright invokes them.

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Mon, March 25 2024

Is Fighter another in the long and increasingly problematic line of hyper-nationalistic Indian action movies, or is its biggest problem that it can’t look beyond star Hrithik Roshan? We discuss the many missteps that director Siddharth Anand makes in his follow-up to Pathaan, the unnecessary songs and the momentum-killing asides, but we also talk about how the movie goes out of its way to not paint all of Pakistan as evil terrorists. Along the way, we also talk about the film’s many aerial fight sequences, the final showdown, the nonsensical attempts at comedy, and Anil Kapoor’s parallel mission to break some sort of decibel record.

Wed, March 20 2024

Murder Mubarak lowers the bar even further for Netflix India, and feels like a particularly annoying missed opportunity. We talk about the inept filmmaking, the strange structure, and the over-the-top performances of its ensemble cast. We also wonder how the finished film can look like something that was snatched away from director Homi Adajania and handed over to editors who’ve never met him. And for the second time in two weeks, we find ourselves noting missing scenes from a big-budget movie featuring major Bollywood names.

Fri, March 15 2024

The Gippy Grewal starrer is an entertaining but uneven film that highlights misogynistic attitudes towards women.

Vikas Vashisht’s Punjabi-language feature Jatt Nuu Chudail Takri (2024), starring Gippy Grewal and Sargun Mehta in the lead roles, is an unremarkable horror-comedy with a light-hearted take on a social issue. Written by Amberdeep Singh, who wrote the blockbuster hit Saunkan Saunkne (2022), also starring Mehta, Jatt Nuu Chudail Takri raises some pertinent questions but tries to squeeze in too many things, resulting in a bit of a muddle. A self-willed woman who refuses to tow the line, is known by many names in a patriarchal society. ‘Chudail’ or witch is one of them, which denotes a difficult woman of malicious intent. Amberdeep Singh mobilises this unfortunately common epithet in Jatt Nuu Chudail Takri, in an attempt to examine the attitude of men towards women, in particular, that of husbands towards their wives.

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Mon, March 11 2024

Merry Christmas, director Sriram Raghavan’s follow-up to the critical and commercial hit Andhadhun, is nothing to celebrate. We discuss the film’s lack of discernible aesthetic, the complete absence of any spark between stars Katrina Kaif and Vijay Sethupathi, and its baffling climax. Along the way, we discuss the decision to reduce an important child character to a plot device, and the increasingly illogical behaviour displayed by both central characters.

Fri, March 8 2024

Even a giant talking dragon—voiced by the always wonderful Shohreh Aghdashloo—can’t save this feminist fantasy survival thriller.

Damsel—the new Netflix movie with Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown—is part of a fairly new strain of feminist films that wish to dismantle the stereotypes associated with fantasy films such as these. Its subversive claims—that this is not a story where a white knight rescues a damsel in distress—are made clear from the start. Yet, it has all the other time-honoured elements: an evil queen, a naïve younger sister, semi-unquestioning parents, and a prince under his mother’s thumb. (And oh, there’s also a talking dragon. We’ll get to that.) But alas, this 101-minute entirely self-serious tale—there isn’t a bone of humour in Damsel—has little to say and even less to show. I kept waiting for the film to kick in, to usher me into what it promised and wow me with its action, but that moment never arrived.

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Tue, March 5 2024

Dune: Part Two is being called one of the greatest sequels ever made. It isn’t. We discuss the problems that we’ve had with both Dune films, our issues with their cold tone, the seemingly rushed plot despite a nearly three-hour run-time, and the sheer number of characters to keep track of.

Sat, February 24 2024

All India Rank, the feature directorial debut of Varun Grover, is a refreshing change of pace for Bollywood, but still not as good as it could have been. We discuss all the ways in which the coming-of-age drama avoids making the same mistakes as 12th Fail or Kota Factory, its ability to evoke a particular time and place, and its reliance on tried-and-tested narrative tropes. We also talk about the toxicity in the Indian familial set-up that the movie calls out in its own understated way while making larger statements about aspiration and ambition.