Member Reviews

Most directors make you feel like you’re watching their film — their technical prowess, their intent, their voice, their commercial and arthouse ambitions. But directors like Vasan Bala make you feel like you’re watching their dreams come true. His movies aren’t shown, they’re shared. His craft isn’t flaunted, it’s realised. In Jigra, there are no shots, only fulfilled aspirations. There are no scenes and set pieces, only childhood memories. There is no action, only the physicality of emotion. There is no story, only the narrativisation of storytelling.

Perhaps Karan Johar, Alia Bhatt and director Vasan Bala, who co-writes with Debashish Irengbam, hope that nobody remembers Gumrah (1993), the Sanjay Dutt-Sridevi starrer which Mahesh Bhatt directed for Dharma Productions’ founder Yash Johar. In 1993, it was a besotted Sanjay Dutt who’d helped Sridevi break out of a Bangkok prison where she faced a death sentence after being framed by her boyfriend for drug trafficking. Bhatt had helped himself to the theme from the 1989 TV series Bangkok Hilton where an estranged father helps his daughter break out of a Bangkok prison in similar circumstances as Sridevi in Gumrah.

Citadel Diana is one of the many spin-offs set around the American Citadel led by Priyanka Chopra. The series explores the world of a covet organisation across the globe trying to take down the world’s most evil organisation Manticore. While Citadel carried the story more straightforward, Citadel vs Manticore, we get to see a different side in Diana. The Italian show led by Matilda De Angelis, Lorenzo Cervasio and Maurizio Lombardi explores more on the side of how things are done at Manticore. Released in Italian, with few dialogues in English, the show is expected to have a stronger opening than Citadel.

Rajkummar Rao and Triptii Dimri’s latest release Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video is a social comedy that focuses on the length of the story more than logic. With a shorter, more crisp story the film would have managed to give the very serious and important message it wishes to. The film is a cautionary tale in the 1990s but the fear is very relevant and still prevalent given the growing use of AI, instead of finding a way to incorporate the fear throughout, the story focuses a bit too much on the comedy punch lines and hopes a long monologue will make up for the rest. But it doesn’t.

Normally, one of the most frustrating things that a movie can do is to abandon its characters and become too consumed by the plot. Our mainstream cinema has always struggled with this, and things have only become worse in the streaming era. It is said that show runners, in particular, can get away with anything on digital platforms as long as there is a murder in the first episode. Well, someone most certainly dies at the end of the first act in CTRL, the new film from Vikramaditya Motwane — his first feature since AK vs AK in 2020.

You’d think that the world was a less paranoid place five years ago, when the collective trauma of the pandemic hadn’t clobbered us on the head with a comically large mallet. But remember when governments were put on high alert before the release of a comic book movie about a murderous clown? Prepared for the riots that the supposedly incendiary film might incite, teams of police were stationed outside certain screenings of Todd Phillips’ Joker — a movie that was viewed by alarmists as a sort of dog whistle for basement-dwelling incels.

There is a moment early in Todd Philips’ latest film Joker: Folie à Deux featuring the leads Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga that summarises the film well. It is the first courtroom scene in the film and Phoenix’s Joker is desperately looking at the door waiting for Lee or Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga) to walk into the court. Joker or Arthur Flec is on trial for killing six people including a popular chat show host live on television. While the tension in the room is palpable, Arthur keeps looking at the door. Lee enters and the two lovers exchange a smile. As Lee settles in, Arthur looks at her and pretends to stifle a yawn- referring to how boring the legal proceedings and the room is. The moment accurately captures the mood of the film.

Set in the late 90’s, the pre-Instagram era, when ‘get ready with me’ reels were non-existent, privacy had a different meaning. Without having the platform to post their private life anywhere, couples voluntarily recording their intimate moments was still a rare phenomenon. So on paper, the film’s script sounds promising. What happens when this private video belonging to a middle-class couple from Rishikesh goes missing? What are the repercussions and can they retrieve it?

The promo promised entertainment around the missing CD of a video shot by a couple on its first night. Written and directed by Raaj Shaandilyaa, the promo stirred a strong pre-release buzz. The sense of fun does spill into the first few scenes as glib-talking mehndiwala Vicky (Rajkummar Rao) stages a scene at the engagement of his girlfriend Vidya (Triptii Dimri). It ends the way Vicky and Vidya had planned it with her lawyer-fiancé walking off in a huff and the man who applied mehndi at functions, stepping in to marry his girl.