Member Reviews

CTRL lacks control. The new Indian Netflix original movie—directed and co-written by Vikramaditya Motwane—has a lot on its mind. It wishes to tackle the perils of building a business with your partner, the blurred lines between online validation and offline happiness, generational malaise and being severely attached to devices, and the dangers posed by Big Tech, deep fakes and generative AI models. There’s a lot more, some of it frivolous and the rest bordering on spoilers. And that’s exactly the problem—it cannot pick a lane. CTRL tries to pack in so much in its 100-minute runtime that it ends up doing none of it well. Worse, everything it does feels stale. We’ve heard and seen variations of this. Nothing it does shocks or surprises.

मोबाइल, इंटरनेट और सोशल मीडिया आज हमारी जिंदगी का एक बड़ा और अहम हिस्सा बन चुका है। हममें से कई की जिंदगी तो इसी के इर्द-गिर्द घूमती है। उस पर, अब ज्यादा एडवांस तकनीक AI भी दस्तक दे चुका है, जिसके फायदे-नुकसान को लेकर खूब हलचल मची हुई है। लेकिन क्या इन नई और एडवांस तकनीक का इस्तेमाल हम कर रहे हैं या फिर ये तकनीक ही हमारा इस्तेमाल कर रहे हैं? इन्हें हम कंट्रोल कर रहे हैं या हम खुद इनके कंट्रोल में हैं? इसी चिंताजनक सवालों के जवाब ढूंढने की कोशिश करती है, डायरेक्टर विक्रमादित्य मोटवानी की फिल्म CTRL यानी कंट्रोल। सोशल मीडिया या पब्लिक ऐप किस तरह लोगों के प्राइवेट डेटा इकट्ठा करते हैं, उनका गलत इस्तेमाल करते हैं, फिल्म हमें यह बात याद दिलाती है और उसके प्रति सचेत करती है।

Nick and Charlie are back with a summer to remember. The third season of Heartstopper, based on the best-selling graphic novel by Alice Oseman, continues with the love story between Kit Connor’s Nick and Joe Locke’s Charlie as their relationship grows stronger despite their fears and insecurities. There is a whole new vibe to the series (the teens are now allowed to curse and become sexually active) that shows how the material has evolved along with its characters. At its heart, Heartstopper is a sweet romance with depth, especially due to the sparkling chemistry of its leads.

While most filmmakers focus on the bigger aspects of their story to substantiate the so-called big-screen experience, C Prem Kumar belongs to a niche group of directors who like to concentrate on the finer, intimate moments of life. Probably because of his time spent behind the viewfinder as a cinematographer, Prem’s scenes look like animated still photographs, and just like his directorial debut 96, his sophomore outing Meiyazhagan is a series of moments in motion.

Vijay Antony is on a spree with his recent films. While his contemporaries rarely churn out a couple of releases each year, the music director-turned-actor starred in four films last year and his latest release Hitler marks his third outing of 2024. But given how almost all of them turned out to be underwhelming, it feels like he’s shooting for quantity over quality, and Hitler, unfortunately, is the latest addition to that list.

When a man who wears his masculinity on his sleeve laments at how his son is growing up, displaying feminine traits, his wife tries to make him understand the importance of accepting an individual’s natural expression of gender. This segment and the portion that follows gives writer-director Hasith Goli’s Telugu film Swag the much-needed emotional anchor. Until then, the narrative is like a satire, with elements of farce and ‘absurd theatre’ as the several characters played by Sree Vishnu and the dual characters of Ritu Varma slug it out to assert the power of male versus female.

Being a true-crime drama in the Indian streaming landscape is like being an aspiring batsman in India’s cramped bylanes and crowded fields. Everybody is one — and everybody is advised to be one. Consequently, it’s harder to stand out. The default level has to be high: an engrossing story, a solid cast, a sense of place and time, technical competence. Most shows opt for an atmospheric setting to conceal a convoluted plot; the logic is that a visually striking tone will compensate for pacing and structural issues. In other words, the style can distract from a lack of substance. But Manvat Murders, helmed by Aatmapamphlet (2023) director Ashish Avinash Bende, is a Marathi-language series that does the reverse.

“Let’s give the people what they want,” Lady Gaga’s Harleen “Lee” Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn) declares at a key moment in Joker: Folie a Deux. That seems odd coming from a film that is committed to giving audiences quite the opposite.