Member Reviews

The newest Star Wars series is a good old-fashioned space adventure led by a bunch of pre-teen heroines and heroes. Skeleton Crew brings together four imaginative children who embark on a trip to the outer galaxies that they won’t forget. The series also features Jude Law as a mysterious space pirate, whose role is yet to be determined. With only two episodes airing so far, the sci-fi series Skeleton Crew looks to unite Star Wars fans, young and old, in a classic adventure saga.

While watching Mufasa: The Lion King, all I could think about was this: 4 precious years of Barry Jenkins’ career were spent in front of Disney green screens and sound stages to not even create something madly original? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against effects-driven or photo-realistically animated movies; visionaries like Peter Jackson and James Cameron have redefined the relationship between technology and storytelling over the years. But Disney? Another Lion King film? My viewing experience was laced with the frustration of realising that yet another Hollywood studio franchise was doing wasteful Hollywood things.

The standard for Indian documentaries about cultural icons is so low that Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous, out now on Netflix, comes across as a refreshing change of pace. The streamer is itself guilty of lowering the bar with glorified PR exercises like Nayanthara: Beyond the Fairytale, Modern Masters: SS Rajamouli, and the worst of them all, The Romantics. They functioned more like corporate orientation films than the genuinely engaging journalistic profiles that they’re supposed to be. Not that the Honey Singh doc provides any real insight into his artistic process, barring the hilarious scene in which he is stumped by none other than Salman Khan. It does, however, do a decent enough job of giving audiences a peek inside his troubled mind. And for his fans, that will be enough. Many of them appear on camera, either commenting on his well-publicised fall from grace, or expressing their dismay at the lacklustre music that he has been releasing recently. In one scene, a woman tails him on a bike, and weeps openly as he stops to interact with her. A highly sensitive person himself, Honey recognises the emotions that she is experiencing, and begins serenading her with his biggest hit, “Blue Eyes.” Any cynical suspicion that you might have had about the woman being a plant disappears instantly. In another scene, a couple of flower sellers attempt to sell him a garland at the traffic signal. Honey quips that he needs a woman in his life to gift it to. They recognise him, and comment about his past troubles. “You’re looking smart now,” the young flower seller says to him. Honey is ecstatic.

A gruesome murder shakes Kolkata. Seasoned cops Kanishka Chatterjee (Tota Roy Chowdhury) and Naseer (Anirban Chakrabarti) of the Kolkata Police Detective Department see an uncanny similarity in the execution from an old case. Along with these two, Ritesh Kumar (Shantanu Maheshwari) – a young enthusiastic IPS, and Bishwa (Indrajeet Bose) get together in action. Soon there are more bodies. Nothing beats a chilling thriller on a winter night, and Pratim D Gupta serves it with a delectable plot garnished with a handful of red herrings. The film, which occasionally runs into predictability, is far too engaging to find flaws. It is fast, lethal, and entertaining, keeping the guessing game on.

The blood begins to flow even before the first scene in Marco. For a film about a bastard son avenging the murder of his adopted brother, it’s appropriate for even the opening credits to show his family tree in the form of a (literal) bloodline, as blood flows from one generation to next. Haneef Adeni, after the unwatchable comedy Ramachandra Boss & Co, returns home to a world he is most familiar with, in Marco. All his obsessions return too, including the Biblical references, Christian symbolism, Malayali men dressed for black tie events in peak summer, and the cringiest of English dialogues that are too lethal even for TikTok.

Even as an Ayushmann Khurrana-coded small-town comedy that’s a decade too late, Jhansi Ka Rajkumar feels dated. The film stars Gulshan Devaiah as Rajkumar, a stay-at-home dad struggling to adjust to a move from Delhi to Jhansi — or, more accurately, struggling to function in a judgmental society. His wife, Devayani (Namita Dubey), is the breadwinner with a government job. You know the drill. Gender role reversal. Ridicule. Stigma. Pressure to conform. Marital conflict. Speech. Resolution. This is basically a middle-class Ki & Ka (2016), just not as gimmicky and self-satisfied. But it’s also not as self-contained as Barun Sobti’s track in Raat Jawaan Hai, a show where the guy’s “progressive househusband” tag silently gnaws away at him.

At best, documentaries on celebrities tend to be an ode to their stardom; at worst, these end up as an exercise in image makeover for those who have fallen from grace. Rare is a documentary, especially of a living person, that dares to look truth in the eye and provides a balanced, insightful account. Is Sikhya entertainment’s Netflix film that endeavour? Maybe yes, maybe no, but while documenting the story of Punjabi singer Yo Yo Honey Singh, who has seen both dizzying heights of fame and the lows of infamy, director Mozez Singh does address the elephant in Honey’s life from the word go.

Mufasa is the prequel to the Disney’s iconic film The Lion King. However, the film takes a different route than a typical prequel, we also get to see a follow-up plotline for Simba, Nala and their kids along with what’s going on at Pride Rock aka Milele. The Hindi Dub remains as close to the original names and essence of the characters while also adding a bit of a twist. While Simba and his family remain the prideful ruling family of Pride’s land, Timon, Pumbaa and some supporting characters get a twist with the Hindi Dub adding more comedy to the screenplay.

Appuram/The Other Side unfolds like flashcards, like shards of memory that Janaki (Anagha Ravi) collects and rearranges in her mind. A series of Polaroids, seemingly disconnected in time, each capturing a fleeting moment of joy or grief, burned into the teen’s psyche. At the core of the film is her mother, Chithra (Mini IG), who was pulled towards self-harm and death by acute depression, even as the daughter and her father, Venu (Jagadish), did everything in their power to keep her alive.

Cinema as a medium commands and deserves respect, both from its audience and those who work in it, especially directors and actors. So, how does one review a film where the hero and director are the same person, and when both work in tandem to leave you with a confused set of images that lead nowhere. What if they rest on past glories, justified or not, and leave you with problematic imagery and dialogues that leave your head spinning, and make you so want to say, ‘Boss, idhu 2024. 1980s alla’.