When we first met Hathiram Chaudhary in the summer of 2020, humanity was in the grip of a severe pandemic, and ‘paatal lok’ — to now put it lightly — didn’t seem to be too much of an alien word (or world) at that moment. The show provided a much-needed distraction, and was a rare watch that gave us food for thought, metamorphosing from a police procedural to a tightly-knit thriller that compelled us to examine the fault lines of caste, social prejudice, marginalisation, vote-bank politics, fake news and religious divide. Five years later, Hathiram — played like second skin by the irrepressible Jaideep Ahlawat — is back. In Season 2, the stakes may be higher, the socio-political environment more tense and the cocktail of betrayal, deceit, double-cross and revenge more tricky and tenuous… but Hathiram has remained the same. A man still world-weary and honest to a fault. But if angst defined Chaudhary in the first season — a sincere if bullheaded cop thirsting for one challenging case in his predominantly unremarkable career — it is acceptance that forms his core this time. Hathiram hasn’t made any significant strides in his career, but as a man he seems content. ‘Seems’ is the operative word here.

For a film in which the leading man’s signature line is ‘I am unpredictable’, Game Changer feels as old as cinema itself. In fact, the plot of this film — stretching over an abominably long 165 minutes — is so stale that every second of it will remind you of some terrible movie you may have had the misfortune of sitting through in the past. Game Changer is vintage Shankar, which is more of a bad than a good thing these days. The man who once gave us films like Gentleman and Anniyan, Enthiran and Indian, has been stuck in a creative rut, recently illustrated by the torture fest called Indian 2. Game Changer is a definite improvement over Indian 2 but that isn’t saying much about a film that relies on every overused trope in the masala movie book — physical (over) acting, grating background score, expensively-shot but totally unnecessary songs and a story that goes here, there, everywhere… and ultimately, nowhere.

A Vikramaditya Motwane film (or series) will always have one standout moment that stays on with the audience long after curtain call. In his debut film Udaan, it is the final moment of brothers Rohan and Arjun triumphantly walking hand-in-hand to their long-deserved freedom. In Trapped, it is Shaurya’s almost gleeful taandav-like dance when he burns down his mattress in a bid to attract attention in the apartment he finds himself locked in. In Lootera, it is the painfully poignant penultimate scene of Varun hanging an artificial leaf in the blinding blizzard so that Paakhi has reason to live, for at least a day more. In Jubilee, among many memorable moments, it is the unbridled sense of joy, reminiscent of Awaara, where Jay and Niloufer lose their umbrella in the pouring rain, but discover each other in the process. Each of these scenes represents freedom — or the journey towards it — in many ways. Each moment, as is the norm in a Motwane directorial, is simple on the surface but is loaded with meat and meaning.

The arrival of Squid Game in 2021 was met with overwhelming resonance and relevance. In a world ravaged by the pandemic which had shifted power structures, altered priorities for both individuals and institutions and given birth to an existential crisis which compelled many of us to question purpose and privilege, the South Korean series — that Netflix dropped with very little fanfare — may have spoken, much like the Oscar biggie Parasite, about the class chasm in that country as well as fast-growing debt and the perils of the rise of capitalism in the South Korean economy, but it found itself touching a chord with audiences across the world.

Logic, chronology, geography, sensitivity, ear drums and brain cells all take a hike in Baby John. The big-budget production that attempts to launch Varun Dhawan as an all-out action star is an all-round assault on the senses, partially redeemed by only a few clap-worthy moments mostly credited to ‘VD’, which is what the baby-faced actor is introduced as at the beginning of Baby John. I haven’t watched Theri, the 2016 Tamil blockbuster which was purely a fan-service exercise for diehard followers of Thalapathy Vijay. I am not sure if Varun has the kind of fans — I mean by demographic and not volume — that would queue up feverishly to watch him defy the laws of physics to make easy work of 10 men at one go or swing his sunglasses in one swift movement as some sort of a signature style, a mid-level tribute to everyone from the iconic Rajinikanth to the magnetic Chulbul Pandey.

Sometimes truth isn’t justice, and justice isn’t truth’. Delivered with both pain and profundity in the penultimate moments of Juror#2, this incandescent line not only sums up the film, but the justice system as a whole, anywhere in the world. Exposing the fault lines in our rules of crime and punishment, but in the kind of quiet yet forceful manner which has been a signature of his brand of filmmaking ever since Clint Eastwood first put on the director’s hat a staggering 53 years ago, Juror#2 is the type of film that makes your mind go back to it time and again even days and weeks after watching it.

If the 2019 reboot of The Lion King, that came out 25 years after the original, also called The Lion King, taught us anything, it is that one should never tamper with anything that has made a place for itself not only in the hearts of the audience but also in cinema history. Mufasa: The Lion King, though not a reboot or remake, can be added to that list. Serving as a prequel to the 2019 film, it takes us back in time to when Mufasa and Taka — as Scar was once known — were young cubs roaming the plains together.

A watch of Despatch, especially in its penultimate moments, sent me straight to Google in search of some facts and figures. That, in turn, led me down a rabbit hole where I was bombarded with one astounding (‘uncomfortable’ would be more apt) revelation after another. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s UNESCO Observatory of Killed Journalists, more than 1,600 journalists have been killed since 1993. Earlier this year, UNESCO director-general Audrey Azoulay broke it down bluntly, stating that in 85 per cent of such killings, the perpetrator has gone unpunished.

Q. Why can’t Miley Cyrus afford to buy Pushpa?
A. ‘Pushpa flower(s) nahin, fire hain.’

This PJ masquerading as a riddle — something which I made up while writing this review — is perhaps as low IQ as it can get. Much like the Pushpa franchise, which thrives on being low IQ, but does one thing pretty much consistently: it serves up, in Silk-speak, what it promises — entertainment, entertainment and more entertainment. Pushpa 2: The Rule, arriving three years after Pushpa: The Rise that became a bona fide pan-India blockbuster and laid the foundation for a big-budget franchise, packs a punch in almost all departments, even going up a notch or two from the first film.

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom”. This momentous line from Jawaharlal Nehru’s Tryst with Destiny speech, delivered on the eve of India’s Independence on August 15, 1947, remains etched in the annals of history. What also remains an indelible part of our country’s birth into freedom after 200 years of colonial rule is the bloodied, agonising, gut-wrenching division of one nation into two.