At the end of 161 minutes of Chhaava, based on the high-points of the life of Sambhaji Maharaj, the son of Shivaji Maharaj, you are left with two chief thoughts. How do you pull off a film which talks up a historical figure not as well known as his illustrious parent, without us wondering: how much is fact, and how much fiction? And the other, which is the reason you manage to sit through this ultra-loud, ultra-violent re-creation of a slice of the 17th century Hindustan is the total commitment on display by its lead actor to the titular character: Vicky Kaushal becomes Chhaava (‘son of a lion’), whose story the film adapts from the Marathi novel of the same name by Shivaji Sawant.

To make a modern rom-com remains the bane of Bollywood: Loveyapa proves all over again just how difficult it is to create a cracking love story which truly captures the essence of today’s swipe-right-and-left generation. The real film kicks in well into the second half, much after the listless toing-and-froing of the pre-interval portion between the two leads who cutely call each other Baani Boo, and Baboo. Ooo. You think you love each other? Ok, exchange your phones for a day, and see where you go with it, declares Baani’s stern shuddh-Hindi spouting daddyji (Ashustosh Rana). Consternation on faces, and dread in hearts, Baani Sharma and Gaurav ‘Gucci’ Sachdeva hand over their phones to each other, and thus begins loveyapa, love plus ‘siyapa’, that untranslatable Punjabi word whose closest meaning is trouble.

The distance between these two contradictory statements — the smell (khushboo) of the kitchen is sexy, and, you smell (baas) of the kitchen, do you expect me to be turned on — is measured by, who else, a man. The man who has deposited the woman he has married and brought to his home, where he lives with his parents, in the kitchen. Where she is expected to be an uncomplaining slave to everyone’s time and moods: the doctor husband who runs a clinic while constantly complaining of overwork, expecting his wife to serve ‘garam phulkas’ when he sits down to eat, the father-in-law wanting his slippers placed just so for him to slide his feet into, the mother-in-law using the sil-batta to grind the chutney, because the mixer-grinder is not loving enough.

‘Sabar Bonda’ is the story of two young men, finding their way back to each other. It is also a story of grief and acceptance, told with warmth and piercing sensitivity. Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) accompanies his mother to their ancestral Maharashtrian village from Mumbai, for the ten-day mourning period after the death of his father. He is back after a sizable gap, but the reason for his staying away starts up again: ‘potential brides from good homes’ are back on the table, and Anand finds himself struggling, like he did before, for a way to tell his relatives that he’s gay. ‘Sabar Bonda’ has a couple of firsts to its credit. It is self-taught filmmaker Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s debut feature, and the first Marathi film chosen to screen at the Sundance Film Festival, whose 41st edition is currently underway.

One of the chief things that emerges from this four-part mini-series on the Roshans, is that, despite being part of so many memorable films via music, direction, production and performance, their contribution to Hindi cinema was not celebrated enough. Part of the pleasure of watching this kind of show is the straight-up access: apart from the Roshans themselves — Rajesh, Rakesh, Hrithik and close family — everyone from Shatrughan Sinha, Shah Rukh Khan, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Karan Johar, the Akhtars, Javed, Farhan and Zoya, Abhishek Bachchan, singers Asha Bhosle, Suman Kalyanpuri, Sudha Malhotra, Usha Mangeshkar, Kumar Sanu, Sonu Nigam, and several others are all here, speaking about their relationship, professional and personal, with the Roshans.

The much-delayed, riding-on-controversies ‘Emergency’, written and directed by Kangana Ranaut, is finally out. The long disclaimer states that the biographical feature ‘draws information from the life and real life events of one of the most respected politicians and former prime ministers, Smt Indira Gandhi’. And then it follows up the standard caveat of ‘creative liberties’ having been taken in the dramatisation, with a most un-standard sentence: ‘the filmmakers fully acknowledge and respect other perspectives and viewpoints’. This unexpected dissonant note pretty much sets the tone of this film in which Ranaut has played the role of Indira Gandhi, which swings from showing her as a young woman growing into an autocratic leader, to a weak, vacillating mother under the influence of Sanjay, her ‘bigda hua beta’, and back again.

When Hathi Ram Chaudhary says in his world-weary manner, ‘hum toh paatal lok ke permanent niwasi hain’, he’s not just addressing a character in the series. He’s plunging us into the nether-world again, and we dive right in, willingly. The first season of Paatal Lok (2020), directed by Avinash Arun and created by Sudip Sharma, quickly become a benchmark, in the way it lifted a familiar world — weatherbeaten-but-idealistic cops pulled into cases of murder and corruption in high places — by singular story-telling, and characters that stayed with us. I’ve sorely missed my favourite cop, entire lifetimes imprinted in the craggy lines of his face, in the interim. Welcome back, Chaudhary sir.

‘Black Warrant’ is a seven-part series based on a book of the same name about an insider’s account of his time at what has been dubbed ‘the biggest prison in Asia’, Tihar Jail. The volume is co-authored by Sunil Kumar Gupta, who joined Tihar in the early 80s, and journalist Sunetra Chowdhary; the show, directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, cherry picks some of the most sensational cases that unspooled during Gupta’s watch, as he grew from a wet-behind-the-ears rookie to an experienced jailer, without losing his humanity. Gupta, credited with starting Tihar’s first legal aid cell for poor, illiterate under-trials, is played by Zahan Kapoor. The actor, who debuted in Hansal Mehta’s 2022 terrorist drama ‘Faraz’, is given enough time here to grow into his role. Within a few minutes of the opening, his slight frame and smiling, soft ways — unlike his colleagues, he doesn’t cuss a mile a minute, nor does he use brute force on the inmates — are underlined more than a few times, and it’s quickly apparent why. His character, who doesn’t quite fit the job description — maintaining order in a rough-tough jail — is a familiar device used to impart chunks of information. And it is to Kapoor’s credit that he becomes more than just that device which is pressed into service through the series; he inhabits his character with conviction.

Parama : A Journey With Aparna Sen is a lively portrait of an artiste, with conversations that the director conducts with his subject, and her subjects. It begins, aptly, with a sequence from Sen’s first directorial, ‘36, Chowringhee Lane’, a 1981 film that brings alive a slice of Calcutta long since vanished. Violet Stoneham, played unforgettably by Jennifer Kendal, is an Anglo-Indian-school teacher-spinster who lives alone. An accidental meeting with a former student and her boyfriend injects warmth and colour into her drab life, but the change is sadly short-lived. Ghosh and his team take Sen to the building — the kind in which the lifts didn’t work, the bare tangle of electricity wires hanging dangerously low over the staircase — in which the film was shot, and we hear her reminisce about how one of her best films, and one whose portrayal of loneliness still aches, came together.

In an unspecified North Indian hilltown boarding school, a girl comes of age. That overused phrase ‘coming-of-age’ is a misnomer when it comes to mainstream Hindi cinema: the years between thirteen and eighteen are those where contradictory impulses leap between synapses, with mind and body taking off in opposite directions, and explorations of both taking you into spaces where you’ve never been before.