Tag Archives: Aparshakti Khurana

Movie Review: Stree 2 (2024)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Stree 2 on Amazon Prime

Stree 2: Sarkate Ka Aatank (“Woman 2: Terror of the Headless“) works very well as a sequel, but its place in a shared movie universe presents complications.

Stree 2 begins with a well-executed refresher on the events of the original film from 2018. The ghost from Stree arrives at the outskirts of Chanderi, the town she used to terrorize by abducting men who were out after dark. Seeing the statue erected in her honor, she turns away and leaves. Inside Chanderi, she’s further celebrated at a festival where the town’s oddball bookseller Rudra (Pankaj Tripathi) delightfully recounts her story in song form.

Unfortunately, Stree’s absence opens the door for another threat to take her place. The ghost of the conservative village leader who murdered Stree hundreds of years ago visits the town at night, abducting all the “modern” women with aspirations beyond cooking and cleaning for their husbands. Having been beheaded in life, the ghoul rolls his detached dome at his victims, coiling them in his long hair and dragging them away.

The responsibility for dispatching the monster and rescuing the missing women falls to the “Hero of Chanderi,” Vicky the tailor (Rajkummar Rao). However, Vicky is preoccupied, pining for the beautiful unnamed woman (Shraddha Kapoor) who disappeared after helping him drive off Stree years earlier. Even Vicky’s dad (Atul Srivastava) is worried enough about his lovelorn son to give him money to pay for some “friendship.”

Thankfully, the unnamed woman returns to help Vicky, Rudra, and their friends Bittu (Aparshakti Khurana) and Jana (Abhishek Banerjee) vanquish the new threat. But will she stick around after this job is done or vanish into thin air again?

Stree 2 comfortably picks up where Stree left off. Amar Kaushik returns as director, and Niren Bhatt does a fine job taking over writing duties. The film’s world-building is terrific, and the actors fall right back into their familiar characters. It’s fun to hear Vicky’s dad speak about sex only in euphemisms again, and Banerjee’s gullible Jana is as charming as ever.

The main issue with Stree 2 comes from it being a part of the Maddock Supernatural Universe of movies, which besides Stree includes 2022’s werewolf flick Bhediya and 2024’s monster movie Munjya. Jana is a major character in Bhediya opposite Varun Dhawan’s lead werewolf Bhaskar, and both cameo in the closing credits of Munjya. What’s important is that Bhaskar plays a major role in the climax of Stree 2.

Nothing about this is inherently problematic. There’s tons of crossover within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the YRF Spy Universe promises more going forward. What those universes have going for them is that all of the properties are available on a single streaming platform (Disney+ for Marvel, Amazon Prime for Yash Raj Films). If you missed a film during its theatrical run on want a refresher before a new release, it’s easy to catch up.

That’s not the case for the Maddock Supernatural Universe movies. Stree and Stree 2 stream on Amazon Prime, Munjya is on Hulu (in the United States, Disney+ Hotstar in India), and Bhediya is on JioCinema — a service that isn’t even available in the US. If Maddock wants to embed such crossover into the narrative these movies, then it needs to make them all easy to access without unnecessary overhead and costs. You can’t weave these movies’ plots together but sell the streaming rights to each title to the highest bidder.

It’s a shame that an operational choice by the studio is the only major knock against Stree 2. It’s otherwise a fun, enjoyable movie.

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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: Luka Chuppi (2019)

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1.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Buy the soundtrack at Amazon or iTunes

“I go to the gym. I am lean.
You speak to me like a machine.
You say that you watch Scooby-Dooby Doo.
Let it be, Don’t have to say I love you.”
— “Coca Cola Tu”, lyrics by Tony Kakkar and Mellow D or a random word generator

The romantic comedy Luka Chuppi (“Hide and Seek“) tries to appeal to a youthful demographic, but its story is stale.

Small town reporter Guddu (Kartik Aaryan) falls in love at first sight with Rashmi (Kriti Sanon), a new intern at Guddu’s cable station. Rashmi wants to wait on marriage until she’s established her own journalism career in Delhi, but she’s willing to try out a live-in relationship with Guddu first. Traditional Guddu balks at the idea, not least of all because a local conservative Hindu political party — led by Rashmi’s father, Vishnu (Vinay Pathak) — is waging a crusade against couples dating or living together before marriage.

A reporting assignment in another town gives Rashmi and Guddu the chance to cohabitate in secret, at the encouragement of the station’s cameraman, Abbas (Aparshakti Khurana, who was great in Stree). When their new neighbors get suspicious, the couple pretends that they are already married — a lie that spirals out of control once their families get wind of it.

Luka Chuppi is written in the chauvinistic tradition that insists on having a male “main” character, rather than true co-leads (hence why Aaryan gets first billing in the credits even though Sanon is a bigger star). The story is set in Guddu’s world, populated by his friends, enemies, and extended family. Though Rashmi is from the same town, she’s treated as an outsider, returned from Delhi to a hometown in which she mysteriously knows no one except her father, his toady, and her mother, whose face is covered in every shot save one.

Even on his home turf, Guddu is the least-active participant in the story. Abbas offers almost all the answers to every ridiculous new problem the couple faces while Guddu stares silently. Guddu undergoes very little character growth, written as he is in the mold of Bollywood male protagonists who are inherently flawless to begin. As such, the obstacles on the couple’s path don’t force them to evolve, making the march to their inevitable happy ending feel increasingly ponderous.

Guddu’s position as the story’s fulcrum would be hard to embrace even with a more talented actor in the role, but Aaryan isn’t up to the challenge. He seems unsure what to do with his face, maintaining the same bland expression no matter what reaction is required, and his voice has a strange, hollow affect as well. Aaryan’s whole performance seems like a lackadaisical Akshay Kumar impression.

Aaryan and Sanon have zero chemistry, although she has a delightful rapport with Khurana. When the three are in scenes together, Aaryan is an obvious weak link. It’s a shame that a romance between Rashmi and Abbas is precluded outright by his being Muslim, but Luka Chuppi is clearly a one-issue movie, and interfaith romance isn’t it.

As is his wont, Pankaj Tripathi steals every scene he’s in as Guddu’s tacky, lascivious brother-in-law, Babulal, who wants to mess up Guddu’s relationship with Rashmi. If the movie were nothing but shots of Babulal snooping about in his absurd attire, it would be an improvement.

That still wouldn’t solve the film’s biggest problem, which is that there is zero chance that Guddu and Rashmi will break up once they decide to get together (which Rashmi does out of the blue after a song montage). Luka Chuppi‘s message is that young people would like their parents to stop freaking out about live-in relationships, but the film’s presentation of the live-in relationship as a trial run for marriage is moot if the subsequent marriage is mandatory — which is why the movie has no narrative tension. Luka Chuppi is a polite request for open-mindedness, not a demand.

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Movie Review: Stree (2018)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Buy or rent the movie at iTunes
Buy the soundtrack at iTunes

A female ghost teaches the men of a small town to respect women in the hilarious horror comedy Stree, from the filmmaking duo Raj & DK.

Legend has it that, every night during a four-day holy festival, a ghost known only as “stree” — which translates as “woman” — steals any man wandering the town of Chanderi alone at night, leaving only his clothes behind. Residents write “Oh stree, come back tomorrow” on the walls of their homes, hoping to deter the ghost until the festival ends and she disappears until the next year.

Some of Chanderi’s young men doubt the story’s truth, none more so than Vicky (Rajkummar Rao), a gifted tailor of ladies’ clothing. He and his cronies Bittu (Aparshakti Khurana) and Janna (Abhishek Banerjee) attend a raucous guys-only house party where one of guests is snatched — right after Vicky pees on the outside wall, washing away the protective writing.

Earlier that day, Vicky met a beautiful woman (Shraddha Kapoor) in need of a new dress, falling in love “at first eyesight,” he brags in English. The woman — who never gives her name — says she’s only in town for the festival, so she needs the dress completed quickly. After the disappearance at the party, Bittu and Janna assume that this mystery woman is “stree”, driving a wedge between the friends right when their survival depends on them sticking together.

My chief complaint about one of Raj & DK’s earlier horror comedies — the 2013 zombie flick Go Goa Gone — is that the jokes dragged on too long, but Stree‘s jokes are crisp and well-timed (as was the humor in the duo’s 2017 action comedy A Gentleman). Perhaps it helped that the duo ceded directorial duties to Amar Kaushik, who does a wonderful job interpreting their screenplay in his feature debut.

The superb cast deserves a ton of credit as well. Rao is charming as a lovestruck dope, and Kapoor gets her character’s befuddlement at Vicky’s naiveté just right. Banerjee primarily works in films as a casting director, but he’s hysterical as Janna. Khurana is great as well, as is the always reliable Pankaj Tripathy as the town’s ghost expert, Rudra. Atul Srivastava — who plays Vicky’s father —  gets a stand-out scene opposite Rao. Dad tries to talk to his son about sexual responsibility, but Dad is so uncomfortable he resorts to euphemisms for everything. Sensing the discomfort, Vicky plays dumb, goading his father to explain exactly what he means by the advice: “Be self-reliant.”

The real surprise of Stree is how deftly it conveys its message of respect for women within such a funny movie. The men of Chanderi — young and old — are all losers in love, too immature to be able to form the kinds of romantic relationships with women that might actually lead to sex (without having to pay for it). It’s a legacy that’s haunted the town for centuries, when “stree” was murdered before her wedding night. Though Stree doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, there’s a narrative justification for it, since this is a story of men learning from one another how to stop objectifying women.

Two of the film’s song numbers help illustrate the men’s progress. “Kamariya” features Nora Fatehi in a more traditional item number, dancing at the house party just before the first man is snatched. The camera focuses on specific features and body parts as she performs in the living room among all the rowdy men. This kind of item number in which a woman dances at the center of a group of male audience members — as opposed to out of reach on a stage — is intimidating, yet the number ends with Fatehi escorted from the party by two bodyguards, letting the movie’s audience know that she was never in any danger. It’s an important cue that most other filmmakers neglect to include in similar numbers.

Contrast “Kamariya” with the closing credits song “Milegi Milegi”. The men in the audience are along the sides of the room while Kapoor dances in the middle of a group of female backup dancers. There are no closeups of specific parts of Kapoor’s body. When Rao joins in, Kapoor first manipulates his body to dance the moves she wants him to before he starts dancing alongside her. It’s a clever way to show the characters’ moral development while also making sure there are enough catchy tunes to fill out the soundtrack.

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