Category Archives: Reviews

Movie Review: Do Patti (2024)

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1.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Do Patti on Netflix

I’m no expert on the Indian legal system, but I’m 99% certain the events of Do Patti (“Two Cards”) could not play out the way they do in the movie.

The Netflix Original film is Kriti Sanon’s first venture as a producer, and she chose a project in which she plays a double role as identical twins Saumya and Shailee Pundir. You can tell them apart because “good” twin Saumya dresses conservatively while “bad” twin Shailee wears shorts.

The relationship between the girls has been fraught since their mother’s death when they were five. Saumya became anxious and depressed, requiring more attention from the family’s housekeeper Maaji (Tanvi Azmi). Shailee felt ignored and acted out, so their dad sent her away to boarding school. Shailee stayed away even after Dad died a few years later.

Now, as adults, shorts-wearing Shailee is determined not to let Saumya win again. When Saumya lands handsome, adventurous boyfriend Dhruv (Shaheer Sheikh), Shailee seduces him. Her efforts are thwarted when Dhruv’s rich dad threatens to cut him off if he doesn’t drop the party girl and marry someone more domestically inclined, like Saumya.

This family history is told by Maaji to Inspector VJ (Kajol), who functions as the film’s rickety narrative scaffolding. VJ is the new cop in a touristy hill town, and she’s introduced with dopey music as she and her subordinate Katoch (Brijendra Kala) argue over who’s supposed to check the fuse box when the lights go out. We get a voiceover as VJ rides her motorcycle, thinking about the differences between her “letter of the law” father and her “spirit of the law” mother.

This ethical conflict comes to bear later when Saumya accuses Dhruv of trying to kill her while they are paragliding. VJ has seen the bruises on Saumya’s face and encouraged her to report him for domestic violence before. So when Saumya is finally ready, VJ jumps at the chance to represent her in court. She’s not just a cop! She’s also a lawyer!

There’s no reason for VJ to be both investigator and attorney, other than to give Kajol more screentime. It feels gimmicky and old-fashioned, which I suppose fits with the goofball cop treatment her character gets early on. But something about the tone feels off, especially since director Shashanka Chaturvedi and writer Kanika Dhillon want to be seen as taking the issue of domestic violence seriously. Some of Dhruv’s abuse is shown in detail, and statistics at the end of the film highlight how widespread the issue is globally.

Those statistics come after a finale that is so silly that it undermines any salient points the film tries to make. The courtroom scene plays out in a way that I’m confident no Indian judge would ever allow. The corny way it tries to guide audience emotions feels outdated, and not in a nostalgic way. It’s just messy.

Dhillon’s Haseen Dillruba films for Netflix are more outlandish than Do Patti — which she co-produced — but feel more tonally consistent. Though Sanon acquits herself well in front of the camera, I wish her first turn as a producer would have been on a film with a stronger screenplay.

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Movie Review: Vijay 69 (2024)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Vijay 69 on Netflix

Vijay 69 is a compact slice-of-life flick that’s funny and touching. The new Netflix Original movie created by Yash Raj Entertainment — the OTT arm of Yash Raj Films — fits perfectly on a streaming service.

Anupam Kher stars as the titular 69-year-old Vijay. A neighbor sees him jump into the ocean for a late night swim and assumes it’s a suicide attempt. Curmudgeonly Vijay turns up at church the next morning in the middle of his own funeral.

Even more upsetting to Vijay than being declared dead after only a few hours of fruitless searching is the eulogy his best friend Fali (Chunky Panday) wrote for him. The speech mentions that Vijay was good at rummy and once won a garba dance contest, but that’s about it.

Vijay is incensed that the eulogy didn’t mention the bronze medal he won in a national swimming competition, but that happened decades ago. When he sits down to write his own list of achievements, he can’t think of anything else. Though he has good friends, a caring daughter and grandson, and memories of his beloved wife Anna, he realizes he’s been running out the clock since she died from cancer fifteen years ago.

Inspiration for how to beef up his eulogy comes when an 18-year-old boy in his apartment colony starts training to become the youngest Indian to complete a triathlon. A quick internet search reveals that Vijay would beat the current record holder for oldest Indian triathlete by two years if he competed. Even though no one believes he can do it, Vijay vows to finish the triathlon.

The conflict in Vijay 69 is absurd in a good way. Vijay becomes rivals with the teenage athlete Aditya (Mihir Ahuja, who played Jughead in The Archies). Vijay trains under the eccentric Coach Kumar (Vrajesh Hirjee), who has local kids pelt Vijay with water balloons to make him run faster. As the old man swims laps, Coach shouts, “You’re a sea snake! You’re a sea otter! You’re an underwater mountain goat!”

Writer-director Akshay Roy (Meri Pyaari Bindu) clearly had fun with the dialogue in Vijay 69, making Vijay’s foul mouth a continual source of laughs. One can only imagine the challenge subtitler Neena Kiss faced trying to come up with English equivalents for Vijay’s colorful language.

Kher does a nice job humanizing Vijay, making him more than just a grumpy Gus. He’s vulnerable and openly shows gratitude for his friends. The unexpected alliance he eventually forms with Aditya is quite sweet.

Panday stops just short of making Fali into a caricature, allowing the affection his character feels for Vijay to shine through. Hirjee is delightful in a role I wished was bigger.

Vijay 69 suffers most when it tries to be a more conventional sports movie. Filmmaker Roy doesn’t trust the drama inherent in sport to carry the story, and instead relies on too many shots of characters struggling to increase dramatic tension. After the umpteenth closeup of Vijay looking like he’s going to have a heart attack while riding a bike, the emotional effectiveness wanes.

That said, the film’s sub-two-hour runtime keeps it from overstaying its welcome, even if it does become heavy-handed at the end. Vijay 69 is a nice story that’s small enough in scale to suit at-home viewing but worthy of one’s undivided attention.

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Series Review: Citadel – Honey Bunny (2024)

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1.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Citadel: Honey Bunny on Amazon Prime

A streaming franchise with multiple international spin-offs is intriguing in theory, but not so much in practice, at least in the case of Citadel: Honey Bunny. There’s barely enough material in the new Indian spin-off to support a feature-length film, let alone a six-episode series with a nearly five-hour runtime.

Citadel: Honey Bunny is a prequel to the original series created by the Russo brothers and an origin story for Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s character. Surprisingly, Chopra Jonas doesn’t make a cameo at the beginning or end of Honey Bunny to make that connection explicit. Instead, the show creators count on you to remember her character’s name: Nadia.

This new series flashes back to India in 2000, where 7-year-old Nadia (Kashvi Majmundar) is on the run with her mother Honey (Samantha Ruth Prabhu). Honey is a former spy waiting for her past to catch up with her, training Nadia to fight, hide, and run when the time comes.

Honey’s own entry into the world of espionage happened in 1992. With her Bollywood acting career floundering, a stuntman named Bunny (Varun Dhawan) hired her for an unorthodox gig: distract a rich guy in a hotel bar long enough for Bunny and his colleagues to grab something from his room. When Bunny’s crew fails, she offers to nab the item herself, and thus a spy is born.

That’s about where Episode 1 leaves off and the descent into boredom begins. Episodes 2 and 3 are primarily filler, cutting between the 1992 and 2000 timelines. Real forward momentum resumes in Episode 4, continuing a slow build until a very entertaining finale with some truly exciting action sequences.

It’s not just that little happens through the middle of the series. It’s that there’s nothing fun about it. The action scenes are forgettable, as are the settings. The 1992 timeline sends Honey & Bunny’s crew to Belgrade to recover a piece of all-powerful tech. Given the geographical, architectural, and cultural diversity within India itself, taking the action out of the country is a disappointing choice.

Worst of all, the acting is monotone from an impressive cast that — besides the two popular leads — includes Kay Kay Menon as Baba, head of Bunny’s spy organization; Saqib Saleem as Baba’s flunky KD; and Sikander Kher as the rival spy Shaan.

The most obvious explanation for the show’s flat tone is network interference, because the cast is much better than they are allowed to be (at least until the last couple of episodes). There’s a generic “OTT spy drama” feel to Honey Bunny, as if the cast and crew were shoved into a mold with no room for them to utilize their unique talents.

Same goes for Raj & DK, who directed the series and co-wrote it with Sita Menon. There’s little of their signature wit until very late in the proceedings. It feels like they created the show in reverse, making sure to end with a great finale but running out of time to flesh out the rest of the story. Subplots and character development points are introduced but not explored, despite long stretches where not much happens.

Another big reason why this isn’t Raj & DK’s best work is that the whole series is terribly lit. They rely on natural lighting that often leaves the actors in shadows or backlit. It’s frequently hard to make out character’s faces, even during pivotal emotional moments. I kept squinting at the screen, not that it helped.

The (probable) network-mandated homogenizing squashes a lot of what could have been good about the series — and a lot of what would have made it feel very Indian. Though the 1992 timeline starts on the set of a Bollywood film, the location is abandoned after the first episode in favor of the Belgrade jaunt. How fun might it have been to imagine rival spy agencies operating within a film industry that was the domain of organized crime at the time?

Then there’s the waste of talent. Especially given how slow and dull Citadel: Honey Bunny is through its midpoint, I can’t imagine it winning over many new fans who only watched because of the Citadel name. Will they be inspired to seek out any of the actors’ other projects? Will they watch Raj & DK’s other Amazon Prime series — Farzi and The Family Man — after this? I doubt it.

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Movie Review: CTRL (2024)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch CTRL on Netflix

Filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane’s Netflix Original film CTRL chillingly reminds the audience to do something we regularly neglect: read the fine print.

The film opens with the rapid social media ascent of influencers Nella (Ananya Panday) and Joe (Vihaan Samat), a romantically-involved couple who document their dates and travels on their channel. We see their relationship evolve through their social media posts, which increasingly feature sponsored products. Their lives are entangled as much financially as they are emotionally.

Nella surprises Joe on-camera while he’s out at a meal with friends, only to find him kissing a girl she doesn’t know. Nella’s dramatic meltdown in the restaurant becomes meme-fodder, and we see other creators using her blowup to make their own material.

As she deals with the implosion of her relationship and career, Nella spots a comment advertising an AI service that can remove someone from your digital life. She signs up for the service and creates a virtual assistant “Allen” — who looks like a mop-topped cartoon version of Ranveer Singh and is voiced by Aparshakti Khurana — instructing him to erase Joe from all of the photos and videos on her computer.

Allen asks Nella questions about the photos as he removes Joe pixel by pixel, acting as the confidant she lost in her breakup. When she’s ready to go to sleep, Allen says he can keep deleting Joe overnight if she gives him full access to all of her computer’s systems. She doesn’t think twice before agreeing.

If this were a sci-fi movie, this is where Allen would turn out to be a super-smart AI that takes over Nella’s life. But because CTRL is set in reality — where AI is nowhere near capable of doing that — what happens next is less dramatic, but more frightening because of its mundanity. Nella’s permission allows a developer to remotely access her desktop and all of her apps and files. The human on the other end can snoop around as much as they want — writing, copying, and deleting to their heart’s content while Nella snoozes.

We’re all guilty of agreeing to corporations’ conditions without really knowing what we’re consenting to, whether that’s how the company uses our data or signing away our rights to sue. CTRL is so effective because of how believable it is in its depiction of a worst-case corporate overreach scenario borne out of consumer inattention.

Ananya Panday has been a compelling performer since she debuted, and she demonstrates what a top-tier leading lady she is in CTRL. She acts nearly all of her scenes alone, addressing the camera directly while filming her own video content or interacting with Allen on her laptop. Even without other actors to play off of, she hits every emotional note perfectly, making the audience care deeply for Nella even as she creates new problems for herself.

In the hands of a less-skilled filmmaker, telling a story entirely via social media posts and footage shot through laptop cameras and video calls could come across as gimmicky. But Motwane is so talented that the visual flow of the film feels totally natural. The spell breaks a little when we’re shown footage of other influencers’ posts or cable news reports, but since it’s clear that this is what Nella is watching, it makes narrative sense.

Here’s hoping that some politician watches CTRL and makes it their mission to pursue greater regulation of AI. Trusting corporations to do the right thing is foolish.

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Movie Review: Chhorii (2021)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Chhorii on Amazon Prime

Chhorii (“Girl“) isn’t an out-and-out scare-fest, but rather a thoughtful exploration of the real threats faced by expectant mothers.

Nushrratt Bharuccha carries the film as Sakshi, a woman 8-months pregnant with her first child. She loves the kids she works with at her charity in the city, and she’s particularly keen to make sure girls are given the same opportunities as boys.

When thugs beat up her husband Hemant (Saurabh Goyal) for not paying back a loan, the couple’s driver Kajala (Rajesh Jais) offers to let them hide at his family’s home in a remote village until they can figure out a plan. This seems risky given Sakshi’s condition, but Kajala assures them that his wife Bhanno Devi (Mita Vashisht) will be there to help.

Kajala drops them off outside of a labyrinthine sugarcane field and tells them to follow the path to the house. When they find the house, Bhanno Devi is welcoming enough, but her conservatism — such as making Sakshi wait to eat until after Hemant and Kajala have finished dinner — puts modern Sakshi on the back foot.

Then there’s the fact that Hemant doesn’t advocate on her behalf in that situation. Add that to Hemant’s belief that taking Sakshi far away from her doctors to a place with no cell service is a smart idea, and it raises some red flags, at the very least regarding his situational awareness.

Sakshi gets comfortable enough with Bhanno Devi that she okays Hemant’s plan to return to the city for a few days to raise some funds. As soon as he leaves, things get weird. Bhanno Devi’s mute daughter-in-law Rani (Pallavi Ajay) shows up, bearing an angry scar across her abdomen from when she lost her own fetus. And three mischievous little boys appear to Sakshi, asking her to come play with them.

Bhanno Devi is awful to Rani and short with Sakshi when the pregnant woman brings up the three boys. The older woman only ever calls Sakshi “chhorii” (“girl”), and insists that Sakshi follow her rules without question. And don’t get Bhanno Devi started on her former sister-in-law, whom she refers to as a witch.

The supernatural aspects of Chhorii don’t take center stage until the second half of the film, but with good reason. Writer-director Vishal Furia’s story (co-written with Vishal Kapoor and based on their Marathi film Lapachhapi) emphasizes that there are a lot of threats to Sakshi’s well-being beyond ghosts and witches. As sad as it is, she can only be sure of her own devotion to the health of her unborn child. Her understandable mistake in following the judgment of Hemant and Kajala ceded a dangerous amount of control.

Sakshi makes for a satisfying horror heroine. She’s trusting, but not naive; curious, but not reckless. Bharuccha does a nice job in the lead role and plays beautifully off of the undercurrent of menace Vashisht laces into her performance as Bhanno Devi.

Chhorii is most compelling when it leans into its folktale roots. Bhanno Devi tells a parable about a crow in a poisoned tree that is as sad as it is chilling. It’s a little disappointing and unnecessary when Furia includes real-world stats on female infanticide at the end of the film. The moral of the story is already clear as can be.

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Movie Review: All We Imagine as Light (2024)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Mumbai — a crowded city where it’s easy to be lonely. A place to live that never quite feels like home. That’s the experience of three women in the engaging international feature All We Imagine as Light.

Prabha (Kani Kusruti) is head nurse at a hospital in Mumbai. She grew up elsewhere speaking Malayalam but has learned Hindi to thrive in the city.* She’s married, but her husband works in a factory in Germany. He hasn’t called in over a year.

Since she’s effectively single and rent is expensive, Prabha lives with Anu (Divya Prabhu), a junior nurse who’s also a transplant to the city. Anu has something of a reputation, since other hospital workers have seen her meeting up with a young man: her Muslim boyfriend Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon).

Prabha’s own beau — kindly Dr. Manoj (Azees Nedumangad) — knows she is married, but he waits for her after work to give her treats or share his poetry. The relationship is chaste, but it fills a void in Prabha’s life.

The arrival of a mysterious package shakes up Prabha’s routine and forces her to look at her life as it truly is. There’s no note in the package or a return address, only a fancy rice cooker — made in Germany.

Director Payal Kapadia lets these scenes in the city unfold at an unhurried pace, giving the audience time to understand the rhythms of the characters’ lives. It’s an enjoyable way to be carried along in a drama where the problems are important, but not necessarily urgent. It took a long time for Prabha’s life to become the way it is, after all.

She and Anu get an outside perspective when Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam, Laapataa Ladies) —  a widow who works at the hospital — asks for their help moving back to her village. Parvaty has lived in the same Mumbai apartment for two decades, but lacking the proper paperwork, re-developers are evicting her. It’s like she was never there at all.

Only in stepping outside the bounds of the city can any of the women see the way it constrains the very opportunities it promises to make possible: opportunities for love, belonging and happiness.

Outside of the city, the story loses a bit of momentum. Some of that is intentional, as it represents a new physical and mental space for the characters to inhabit, but it didn’t quite work for me. Kapadia has such a clear vision of life in the city that I was sad to let that go.

Kusruti, Prabhu, and Kadam are great individually, but especially together. Their performances are easy and natural, and that extends to their rapport. They are the heart of a movie that is very enjoyable to watch.

*One thing I’d love to see the film do before its US theatrical release is to code the English subtitles in different colors depending on which language is being spoken. The characters speak a mix of Hindi, Malayalam, and Marathi, and it would enhance the understanding of their relationships if it was easier for non-Indian-language speakers to tell who was speaking in what language with whom.

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Movie Review: Sector 36 (2024)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Sector 36 on Netflix

One of Netflix’s most challenging Original Hindi films makes insightful social commentary in a fictional retelling of a real-life tragedy.

Sector 36 is based on the 2006 Noida serial murders and takes place in approximately the same area at the same time. Over the course of a couple of years, more than twenty children go missing from a slum in Sector 36 populated by poor families who’ve migrated from other parts of India to find work near Delhi. Inspector Ram Charan Pandey (Deepak Dobriyal) — the police officer in charge of the area — tells each parent the same thing: the kid will turn up, just hang your “Missing” poster on the board with all of the other posters. That’s as far as his investigations ever go.

The audience already knows what’s happening to the missing children. They’re being abducted, raped, and murdered by Prem (Vikrant Massey), caretaker of a large home next to the slum owned by businessman Balwar Singh Bassi (Akash Khurana). Prem disposes of parts of the bodies in the sewers outside the house, so he isn’t going out of his way to conceal his crimes. Since the police won’t investigate, he can do what he wants.

That changes when Prem mistakenly tries to abduct Ram Charan’s daughter Vedu (Ihana Kaur) during a festival. Prem is masked, so Ram Charan doesn’t see his face after he drops Vedu and runs off. However, the close encounter is enough for the inspector to follow up on some of the tips provided by other parents of missing children, one of whom was last seen entering Bassi’s house.

It’s quite the indictment of Ram Charan’s lack of empathy that he isn’t compelled to act until his own daughter is endangered, but he’s undeterred once he begins. Yet he quickly realizes that his own prior laziness is not the only obstacle standing in the way of justice for the missing kids. His interview with Bassi is cut short when the businessman calls his old school friend, Jawahar Rastogi (Darshan Jariwala) — Ram Charan’s boss. Rastogi tells the inspector to back off and suspends him when he doesn’t.

At the same time that Ram Charan is warned against investigating further, the child of a rich industrialist is abducted and held for ransom. Every resource at the police department’s disposal is thrown at retrieving the child and catching his kidnappers. Ram Charan sees where the department’s priorities lie, and they aren’t with the citizens of Sector 36.

Systems theorist Stafford Beer coined the phrase: “The purpose of a system is what it does.” Sector 36 is a perfect example of that phenomenon. The purpose of the police force that Ram Charan works for is not to protect the innocent, or solve crimes in an effort to give them justice. It’s to protect the rich and keep the poor vulnerable–basically, to ensure nothing threatens the current power structure.

I’m not qualified to speak to caste elements that may factor into Sector 36‘s story, but the film does a wonderful job illustrating how those at the top of the class hierarchy foment discord among those beneath them in order to maintain their own positions. Ram Charan feels superior to those living in the slum he oversees and lords his authority over the officers working under him. Rastogi knows that any of those lower officers would jump at the chance to take Ram Charan’s place. Because Prem works in a comfortable house for a boss with connections, he feels superior to those migrant workers living in the slum, even though he came from a small village himself.

Yet even as powerful men like Bassi and Rastogi purport to look out for those who report to them, they really only look out for one another. They use the system to maintain their protected positions. Ram Charan, Prem, the other cops, and the migrant workers all have more in common with one another than Bassi or Rastogi — but you could never convince any of them that that’s true.

Director Aditya Nimbalkar and screenwriter Bodhayan Roychaudhury convey all this through compelling character interactions and clever pacing. There’s a real level of finesse from a first-time feature director and first-time screenwriter. It’s a little less surprising when you realize that Nimbalkar previously worked as an associate director for Vishal Bhardwaj, whose productions are basically a farm system for future directorial talent.

The main thing working against Sector 36 early on — besides a subject matter that will be too intense for some — is that it’s disgusting. The camera cuts between shots of a human body being chopped and a shots of a butcher chopping meat. It feels like a cheap shock tactic.

That said, it’s worth enduring the gore for career performances by Massey and Dobriyal. This will likely be the most vile character Massey ever plays, and he makes Prem as intriguing as he is loathsome. Dobriyal shines as a character who is flawed and complicated and up against a system that makes it hard for him to be his best self. His performance is outstanding.

Sector 36 is not an easy film to watch, not just because of the crimes that inspired it but because of what it reveals about the system that allowed them to happen in the first place (and that still exists). As grim as the movie is, the only way to imagine a better world is to really examine what’s wrong with the one we have now.

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Movie Review: Munjya (2024)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Munjya on Hulu

Munjya is a nice-looking horror comedy that struggles with its central theme.

The story begins in 1952 in a village in Konkan. A young boy named Gotya (Ayush Ulagadde) is furious that the teenage girl he has a crush on is marrying someone else. He poisons the bride Munni’s fiancé and is publicly whipped by his parents for his destructive obsession. At night, Gotya takes his younger sister Gita (Khushi Hajare) to a sacred tree, intending to sacrifice her to a demon in exchange for Munni’s hand. But Gotya fatally injures himself, binding his spirit to the tree and becoming an evil spirit known as Munjya.

Generations later, timid hairdresser Bittu (Abhay Verma) suffers from frightening visions and hears Munjya’s voice. His mother Pammi (Mona Singh) and paternal grandmother Gita (Suhas Joshi) — the little sister from the intro — shielded him from the family’s sordid history and the role it played in his father’s death. Bittu learns the truth when the family returns to his father’s ancestral village, and he sets out to find the voice that calls to him.

Munjya — who is now a creepy blend of boy and tree — seizes the opportunity to escape, binding himself to Bittu. Death follows, and Munjya vows to kill everyone Bittu cares about in his quest to marry Munni. While Munni herself is now an old woman, her granddaughter Bela (Sharvari) — who happens to be Bittu’s childhood friend and unrequited crush — is her spitting image. Munjya decides he wants Bela instead.

The parallel’s between Munjya’s one-sided love and Bittu’s crush are obvious, but they don’t overlap enough to meaningfully support a theme. Bittu is never in any moral danger of his own preoccupation turning into a violent obsession, and Munjya is so single-minded that he never twists Bittu’s feelings to his own ends. There’s a late mention about mutual consent in relationships, but the idea is otherwise underdeveloped.

Instead, the story — directed by Aditya Sarpotdar and written by Niren Bhatt — treats Bittu’s cowardice as the flaw he must overcome. Yet Bittu is more shy than cowardly. Sure, he’d rather not upset his overbearing mother, and he hasn’t told Bela how he feels, but he’s otherwise pretty brave. He’s planning to study cosmetology in America by himself, and he seeks out Munjya all on his own.

If he’s afraid of Munjya, it’s with good reason. Munjya’s persistence and his capacity for violence are legitimately scary. While there aren’t many jump scares, imagining what it would be like to live harboring a killer demon is frightening enough.

Though billed as a horror comedy, the first 45 minutes are straight horror. Things lighten up a bit when Bittu enlists the help of his filmmaker friend Spielberg (Taranjot Singh), but by that point things are so grim that the balance feels off. The chaotic comic action sequence when the heroes confront Munjya is more tedious than humorous. There are a few very funny jokes, however, including the fraudulent faith-healer Padri’s (Sathyaraj) dubious story about the original vision for Indiana Jones.

An unfortunate side effect of Munjya‘s lackluster story is that none of the acting performances stand out. Everyone is adequate.

Given that the character Munjya is entirely computer generated, one of the big questions is: how does he look? Pretty terrific, actually. He’s substantial enough that his interactions with the characters and the environment feel believable. Munjya sets a new standard for the level of effects quality fans should expect from Hindi films going forward.

Overall, Munjya is a very good-looking movie. The seaside setting and gloomy forests are lovely in their own right. Nighttime shots are perfectly lit to set the mood without obscuring the action. The movie has all the style but needs more substance.

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Movie Review: Kaali Khuhi (2020)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Kaali Khuhi on Netflix

The Netflix Original horror film Kaali Khuhi (“The Black Well“) centers on a compelling theme but falls flat in its execution.

10-year-old Shivangi (Riva Arora, who was delightful as Young Supri in Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota) lives in the city with her dad Darshan (Satyadeep Mishra) and mom Priya (Sanjeeda Sheikh), who’s pregnant with a baby girl.

The family is called back to Darshan’s village because his mother (played by Leela Samson) is seriously ill. She was afflicted shortly after a tormented man opened up a sealed well outside of the village, letting something out.

When they arrive at the family home, Darshan’s aunt Satya (Shabana Azmi) is agitated. Shivangi sees an apparition of a girl, and the adults hear strange noises in the house. Shivangi suspects that the truth lies in a scrapbook kept by Aunt Satya that is full of horrifying drawings and lists of girls’ names. This is not a safe place, but Darshan refuses to leave, even after his mother dies.

Director Terri Samundra — who co-wrote Kaali Khuhi with David Walter Lech — goes for an eerie tone rather than out-and-out scary, but it’s not totally successful. Apprehensive characters approach every spooky sound at such a slow pace that any tension dissipates by the time they find the source. The film is only 90 minutes-long, but it still feels padded.

In all that padding lies a missed opportunity to better connect the family’s story to that of the town. The curse applies to the whole village for its traditional practice of female infanticide, yet we really only see what’s happening to Shivangi’s family. They feel removed literally and figuratively from the rest of the village, even though they weren’t the only ones to participate in the heinous tradition. As such, the theme isn’t explored as thoroughly as it could have been.

This disconnect between the village and the events at the family homestead make it especially confusing when Darshan insists that they stay, presumably abandoning their life in the city along with Priya’s doctors and Shivangi’s school. Possibly it’s the curse making him do it, but it’s unclear.

The performances are underwhelming when the most common direction is: “look concerned and move slowly.” Prolonged periods of quiet are interrupted by a character suddenly screaming, making for unpleasant sound design. And there’s a moment at the end when things get very, very gross.

The most interesting thing about Kaali Khuhi is positioning a 10-year-old girl as the protagonist. Shivangi hasn’t hit puberty yet, so she may not have gotten the “birds and the bees” talk from her parents. Burdening a young kid with the knowledge that her ancestors murdered their newborn daughters feels unfair. But Shivangi demonstrates that sometimes you have to act with courage even when you’re unprepared.

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Movie Review: Bloody Ishq (2024)

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Zero Stars (out of 4)

Watch Bloody Ishq on Hulu

Don’t let the above star-rating fool you — Bloody Ishq is a helluva fun movie. It’s just terribly made.

Director Vikram Bhatt’s fascination with computer-generated imagery dates back at least as far as 2013’s unintentional comedy gem Creature 3D, which featured the titular CGI monster. 2022’s Judaa Hoke Bhi marked the first time Bhatt would shoot a film entirely in a virtual production studio, generating just about every image in the movie apart from the actors using Unreal Engine (most commonly used for making video games).

Bloody Ishq presumably follows suit, since the entire movie looks like it was shot in front of a green screen. Other than the actors and the props they interact with, everything else on screen is computer generated. It looks like trash.

Bhatt’s latest horror venture — co-directed by Manish P. Chavan and written by Mahesh Bhatt and Shubham Dhiman — features his standard blend of supernatural mystery with sexy undertones. Neha (Avika Gor) survives a near-drowning with major gaps in her memory. She returns to the remote island mansion she lives in with her husband Romesh (Vardhaan Puri), but there’s something malevolent in the house.

While Neha is stuck on the island, too fearful to go near the water to ferry to the Scottish mainland, her best friend “Ayesha” (Ram Setu‘s Jeniffer Piccinato) appears in the house out of nowhere. Ayesha reminds Neha that she’d been looking into Romesh’s shady dealings before her accident, including the suspicious death of Romesh’s father.

The trouble is, Neha can’t remember anything — until she plays the piano! Then she’s able to see letters floating in the air like they’re part of some futuristic hologram that she can rearrange with her hands to form the title of a book she was reading before she almost died.

She only utilizes this magical ability once.

Herein lies the problem with the movie. Shooting in a virtual environment allows Bhatt to indulge whims without any regard to the shackles of physics, and he takes way too much advantage of this freedom. Why stop at ghosts when you can CGI mind powers, explosions, or a pointless car race? Having to adhere to the laws of physics forces a kind of economy of space and movement that in turn shapes the plot. Absent those restraints, Bloody Ishq‘s story spirals out of control.

It would be one thing if the use of CGI was limited to things that couldn’t be done safely or easily in reality — like having Neha scale a cliff in a mini skirt — but all the sets are CGI, too. Bhatt isn’t creating a whole world from scratch, a la James Cameron’s Avatar. It’s not hard to build a bedroom set or find a cafe to film in. Bloody Ishq was made the way it was in order to save money, and the final product looks cheap.

However, all the things that make Bloody Ishq a movie of low quality help to make it a film of vast unintentional comedy. I enjoyed watching every second of it. The floaty unreality of the CGI mansion interior and the way characters move throughout it is funny. As a bonus, the home is decorated with the same kind of creepy paintings as the haunted hotel in Bhatt’s goofy 2015 horror flick Khamoshiyan.

The acting is not good, although one can hardly blame Gor and Puri for not doing their best work in front of a green screen. Gor plays Neha in overdrive, culminating in a hilarious scene in which she reacts to someone impaled with a stake by screaming, “First aid! First aid!” and hunting for a kit full of BAND-AIDs and Bactine.

There is nary a Scottish accent to be heard among the “Scottish” extras. The sex scenes are not at all sexy, consisting mostly of closeups of faces that make it unclear as to whether the participants were even in the same room during filming.

Perhaps the secret to enjoying Bloody Ishq is a matter of calibrating expectations. Revel in all the things that don’t work about it, and you’ll have fun. Bloody Ishq is so bad it’s good.

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