Thunderbolts*: The Marvel Cinematic Universe Goes To Therapy
| Marvel's Thunderbolts* is the origin story of a new decade of people, fictional and real, hoping to move on from the Avengers into an era of uncertainty and promise, writes Rahul Desai .
| | | | | Cast: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, David Harbour | | | | THE 36TH FILM in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) features a group of antiheroes — self-loathing misfits, actually — who’re struggling with the consequences of being questionable people with traumatic pasts. They’re former assassins, disgraced supersoldiers and failed superhero successors who find themselves teaming up after realising that CIA director Valentina De Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is trying to get rid of them as ‘evidence’ of her misconduct. There’s Yelena Bolova (Florence Pugh), a numbed ‘clean-up agent’ who’s still affected by the death of her adoptive sister Natasha Romanoff. There’s John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the almost-Captain America, whose personal life is in tatters after receiving a dishonourable discharge from the army. There’s Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Red Guardian (David Harbour) and ‘Congressman’ Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) as well. But there’s also a new guy called Bob (Lewis Pullman), a mentally unstable test subject who might be reacting to the serum in unpredictable ways. Also, they christen themselves ‘Thunderbolts’ — after one of Yelena’s childhood teams (that always lost). Continue reading... | | | Raid 2: Ajay Devgn Is Listless In His Apolitical Tale Of Heroism
| The apolitical stance of Raj Kumar Gupta's Raid 2 backfires on the commentary it tries to make; its cautious intent and framing shrink the story’s broad scope into the smallness of a single act. Ishita Sengupta reviews.
| | | | | Cast: Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh, Vaani Kapoor | | | | NOTHING SPELLS CRISIS for an industry louder than a film encouraging the reading of being better than what it is. The conclusion stems from both perception and positioning. How one looks at a film is largely coloured by what came before, and where it fits into the larger scheme of things. Currently, Hindi cinema is so riddled with adrenaline and frothing at the mouth with propaganda that Raj Kumar Gupta’s Raid 2 , cautious at best and frustrating at worst, might end up as one of the bearable films of the year. But this would be a misreading — and misleading — because Gupta’s new film is as politically inert as it comes. The toothlessness undermines the premise of Raid 2, which, much like its predecessor, follows a government employee standing up to a corrupt politician. If an anti-establishment tone is inherent to the setting, the film unfolds by refusing to acknowledge it. In the filmmaker’s books, a hero is created by the system, and heroism is defined as a compliance with the state apparatus — a blind spot that shapes the parochial narrative. Continue reading... | | | The Bhootnii: Unimaginable, Unbelievable, Unfathomable
| Sidhaant Sachdev's film throws you off the cliff where, beyond the worlds of Stree and Khauf , lies a ditch. The Bhootnii can be found there, awaiting its victims: the film critics.
| | | | | Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Mouni Roy, Sunny Singh, Palak Tiwari | | | | ONCE IN A WHILE , a film comes that breaks even the toughest of the tough. That, when watching, you do not question your existence but the fact that you are still alive. That scoffs at a regular cinephile and vows to teach them a lesson for still wanting to watch Hindi films. Once in a while, a film makes sitting through it an art form and filmmaking into a joke. This year, it is Sidhaant Sachdev’s The Bhootnii. The 'the' in the title is the only, and the last, semblance of respect the filmmaker offers to anybody associated with the film – actors and audience alike. Everything beyond this unfolds as an assault to the senses and disrespect to the fact of living and the art of surviving. Rage should have made me more coherent, but Sachdev’s film has broken me. If it were a living entity, it would be sitting across and, seeing my lifeless stare into the laptop, celebrating my defeat. Continue reading... — IS | | | Nawazuddin Siddiqui's Costao Is A Watchable Biopic
| Costao stumbles in execution, its wry narrative obstructs the compelling nature of the story. Nawazuddin Siddiqui, despite being a fine choice on paper, never quite inhabits the character on screen.
| | | | | Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Priya Bapat, Hussain Dalal | | | | BIOPICS , of late, have garnered a contentious reputation in Hindi cinema and for good reason. The genre is used as a shorthand to elevate personhood without any curiosity about the person. It has devolved into an excuse to reiterate the persona without probing into the undersides. Take any biopic in the last decade, and a common problem of reverence can be found. Sejal Shah’s Costao, a dramatised recreation of the customs officer Costao Fernandes’ life, sidesteps this loop of veneration, resulting in a sobering portrait of a man without the baggage of heroism. While working at the Goa customs, one of the main highlights of Fernandes’ career was getting accused of murdering a smuggler, Alvernaz Alemao. The legend goes that in 1991, Costao went unarmed to stop a gold shipment, and during a fight that ensued, in which both men were hurt, Alemao died. What followed was a long-drawn-out case to prove Costao’s innocence. Continue reading... — IS | | | Retro: Much To Love, Little To Feel
| The weakest link in Karthik Subbaraj’s Retro is emotions. You see love, do not feel it; see oppression, not the fire or resignation in the eyes; see oppressors, not beyond their manic energy. Subha J Rao reviews.
| | | | | Cast: Suriya, Pooja Hegde, Nasser, Joju George, Vidhu, Prakash Raj | | | | YOU CAN SAY MANY THINGS about a Karthik Subbaraj movie, but one thing you can never accuse it of is being lazy—be it ideation, fine use of technology, great performances, shock value, irony, smart humour, or just the world he creates. And, with every film, you can see that he’s developing a stronger voice on what he wants to say. Jigarthanda DoubleX was an example. But, the one thing that is sorely missing in his films with the same intensity is emotion—that one thing which brings the rest together, and makes them work. Retro , starring an effervescent Suriya, falls in the same category. On the face of it, a love story that blooms on the steps of a burning ghat, between two children who have lost their mothers—a boy who can never smile and an angelic girl—makes for an interesting start. When that boy (Paari) becomes a man, little knowing the source of his immense anger or strength, and meets the girl Rukku/Rukmini, who told him to smile, like his adoptive mother did, Karthik does not opt for a saccharine sweet set-up. A dog pees on him, and the two soulmates who probably never forgot each other embrace each other like they were primordially meant to. And, you buy that love because you saw it being born by the pyre. You also buy the fact that Paari is willing to give up everything for Rukku, who is a peace and animal-loving person. Continue reading... | | | Tourist Family: A Wonderful Balancing Act of Humour & Melodrama
| Abishan Jeevinth's debut feature, Tourist Family is not satire but a light take on heavy problems like geopolitics, economic and migrant crisis, writes Aditya Shrikrishna .
| | | | | Cast: M Sasikumar, Simran, Mithun Jai Sankar, Kamalesh | | | | IN ABISHAN JEEVINTH'S debut feature, a Tamil-speaking family from Sri Lanka lands on the shores of Rameshwaram. We don’t see it, but we get the sounds of their torrential journey through opening credits and even later in the film—a rocking boat, tense waters and the fear of losing oneself to the mighty ocean. But we also get the funny side of it. The youngest kid says he doesn’t know how to swim, and the father reassures him. He is quick to retort, “But you don’t know how to swim either!” The aptly titled Tourist Family is not satire but a light take on heavy problems like geopolitics, economic and migrant crisis. Abishan’s film balances the weight of the emotion of shared camaraderie with a feathery slice of life humour. Continue reading... | | | The one newsletter you need to decide what to watch on any given day. Our editors pick a show, movie, or theme for you from everything that’s streaming on OTT. | | Each week, our editors pick one long-form, writerly piece that they think is worthy of your attention, and dice it into easily digestible bits for you to mull over. | | In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an hour on this. | | | Hindustan Media Ventures Limited,
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