Member Reviews

If one is good only because of the fear of repercussions, are they really good people? If one is disillusioned with the idea of being perfect, wants to live life on the fly, make mistakes and amends along the way, are they really bad people? Now, with most questions regarding the existential crisis of being a good person in a seemingly bad world, these also don’t have concrete answers. Director Ashwath Marimuthu attempts to tell a story of a guy who descends into the depths of depravity only to find the shortest of ropes to hold on and crawl back to redemption. A guy named D Ragavan aka Dragon.

A line from the Tom Cruise starrer A Few Good Men (1992) would be very apt for Surface Season 2. Maybe Jack Nicholson should have shouted, “You can’t handle the truth,” to some of the characters in the show. The Apple TV+ series starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw revolves around a woman named Sophie trying to figure out her past, present, and future after getting amnesia. This season, Surface moves to England, where buried secrets threaten to take over two families. Sophie (Mbatha-Raw), now going by the name Tess, returns to London, where she tracks individuals who were once close to her, hoping to find out the truth about her past. But as the identities of Sophie and Tess continue to co-mingle, she puts herself and others she comes in contact with in more danger. This involves a journalist named Callum (Gavin Drea) and her estranged husband James (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) as they interact with the secretive but wealthy Huntley family and their heirs Quinn (Phil Dunster) and Eliza (Millie Brady).

Ankur Chaddha (Arjun Kapoor) has nightmares about ex-wife Prableen (Bhumi Pednekar), long after they’ve been divorced. Closing a real estate deal for his dad (Shakti Kapoor) in picturesque Rishikesh, Ankur bumps into the glamorous Antara Khanna (Rakul Preet Singh) who was out of reach for him in their college days. She is rich, swings between teaching handgliding and practising sports physiotherapy, and she’s single. He goes into flashbacks to tell her (and the audience) what happened with the bhootni incarnate in his nightmares. Antara and Prableen have history too, flashing back to college days, to friction in a queue to pick up a form. Memories of the taunts at Antara’s leg-revealing shorts and her retorts to Prableen, haven’t faded with time. A second jab at happiness beckons when romance blooms. Ankur even overcomes his fear of heights to propose to Antara dramatically, dropping from a parachute in front of a mall. But Prableen with her menacing “Baby, Baby” has returned, her memory conveniently blanking out their divorce.

You’ve seen Broken News. You know how rival channels work, ethics versus TRPs. You’ve seen Dhamaka and newsroom ambitions that prevail over national security. You’ve seen Despatch, the print medium giving way to digital. You’ve also seen umpteen movies and shows centred around a dreaded criminal, cops, journalists and politicians. You know that cops on the take, on the payroll of businessmen, ministers and opposition leaders, contribute to regular cinematic fodder. The show begins with someone with a huge following stepping out. Binny Chaudhry has surrendered, scream assorted TV anchors. And Binny is shot. The rest is a flashback to return to this moment at the end. Sudhir Mishra who takes the credit as showrunner and director (along with Sanjeev Kaul), picks up a book titled The Price You Pay and proceeds to build Binny Chaudhry (Rahul Bhat) as an uncatchable criminal with hawala rackets, kidnappings and ransom money that he showers like confetti over Indirapuram, the place he grew up in Delhi.

Some movies break your heart when they’re not good. A chunk of filmmaker-activist Sridhar Rangayan’s filmography — which focuses on queer subjects and LGBTQ-themed stories — falls into this category. The chasm between intent and execution is as wide as the chasm between fact and fiction in Hindi historical biopics. Distinguishing between the two is important; criticising the craft of a film is not the same as panning its cause. If social significance alone were a yardstick for meaningful cinema, Rangayan’s latest (co-directed and co-written with Saagar Gupta), Kuch Sapney Apne, would be the Love Actually of the genre. A sequel to his previous feature, Evening Shadows (2018), Kuch Sapney Apne expands its multi-narrative snapshot of an orthodox South Indian family at the crossroads. The conflict is now married to its consequences.

Mere Husband Ki Biwi is such a generic and run-of-the-mill North Indian production that if it were edible, it’d be a half-crispy aloo paratha for breakfast. If it were a person, it’d be Rocky Randhawa (without the self-awareness) from Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. If it were an emotion, it’d be the entitled rage of drivers at the Delhi-Gurgaon toll plaza. If it were a place, it’d be a breezy mustard field — but only as a painting in an upscale art gallery. I can go on, but you get the gist. It looks like every other entry in the genre: glossy, distant, intermittently alive but ultimately soulless. At least it’s environmentally conscious, because it recycles a whole book of tropes: the wise-ass best friend played by a comedian; a lustful Shakti Kapoor character; a quirky voice-over starting the film but disappearing after the introduction; an Amritsari girl who addresses her husband by either his surname, yaar, baby or baby yaar; a love triangle between a Chaddha, a Dhillon and a Khanna where two of them spend an entire half secretly competing with each other for the ‘prize’; a dozen slow-mo shots of them walking towards, past or away from each other with contempt and pride; an overseas almost-wedding; and so on and so (un)forth.

Fortunately, the worst thing about Oops! Ab Kya? is its title. The eight-episode series is an Indian remake of Jane the Virgin, the hit American dramedy centered on the life of a chaste Latina virgin who becomes pregnant after a routine hospital visit turns into an artificial insemination accident. Oops! Ab Kya? (if I repeat this title enough, maybe it’ll stop sounding terrible) is a serviceable show on its own. It has a decent cast: Shweta Basu Prasad finally gets an author-backed role of sorts, while the supporting gang is gamely led by veterans like Sonali Kulkarni and Jaaved Jaaferi. The young-and-awkward Dice Media aesthetic lends itself naturally to the show’s unserious tone. For once, the artifice and DIY stagey-ness of its setting aren’t deal breakers. And it helps that the original show aims beyond its one-line gimmick: every character becomes a protagonist of their own little storyline. There’s not much to tell the main dish from the garnish.

In romantic comedies, more often than not, everything boils down to choices. Do the hero/heroine choose to love the right person? Does that person love them back at the right time? Do parents choose to accept the love stories of their children? Does the couple still manage to choose love over every other distraction coming their way? And the most important question of them all… Does the writer of the film choose the right hero/heroine’s friend? We have seen Santhanam play this role to perfection in multiple films. And in Dhanush’s Nilavukku Enmel Ennadi Kobam, this thankless job is done by Mathew Thomas, who plays Rajesh, the rather generic friend with a generic name with an all-round generic disposition that gets constantly subverted thanks to his electrifying performance.

Till a few years ago, one really had to struggle to pick out a flaw, personal or professional, in the police officers in Malayalam cinema. Right now, it would be hard to find an on-screen police officer without some baggage from the past, which gets almost as much focus as the investigation that the officer is pursuing. The picture is no different in Jithu Ashraf’s debut film Officer On Duty, but for a change, circle inspector Harishankar (Kunchacko Boban)‘s troubled history does not seem forced but something which organically gels in with the rest of the plot. The man comes across as borderline repulsive in his introduction scene, barking at his subordinates and violently attacking women suspects, so much so that we are more intrigued by the officer’s behaviour and are curious about his past than the minor crime regarding a fake gold chain that he is after. The screenplay works its magic in upsetting our initial assumptions, regarding both the protagonist and the case that he is pursuing.