Nonika Singh

In the minds of millions of Indians, Gandhari, one of the many towering female figures of Mahabharata, stands out as an epitome of sacrifice and dignity. As a movie by the same name streams on Netflix, you expect an electric analogy. Alas, the comparison with the epic character is only wafer-thin and restricted to our heroine suffering from temporary blindness. Yes, we get it. Gandhari could see but chose to be blindfolded, and so does our heroine. The problem, however, is that the clickbait title rarely moves beyond surface level.

“Violence is my mother tongue, the universal language.” Indeed, this dialogue delivered by Kannada ‘rockstar’ Yash with the panache it deserves says it all. ‘Toxic’, as the name suggests, is about repressed emotions, which in their own convoluted way define toxic masculinity. Before we arrive at this emotion-charged and relevant conclusion, there is a set violence piece in this gangster drama every 10 minutes. The film moves at breakneck speed, leaving you no room to breathe — and often not in a good way. Just when you recover from the onslaught of the piling body count, yet another dance of death unfurls. Who is killing whom is not as important; half the time you don’t know either, as the symphony of violence unspools right through the film.

Yet another crime thriller in the OTT space, but without a feeling of deja vu or excess of familiarity. Swedish series ‘Blodsoffer’, ‘Blood Sacrifice’ in English, by creator George Kay, the maker of heist drama ‘Lupin’, doesn’t just take you into the blood-soaked killings on the streets of Stockholm, but also into the minds of policemen. What happens when those whose job it is to provide security are the victims? Can they protect themselves? The five-part Netflix series opens with the macabre killing of two police officers. To begin with, we don’t see the dance of goriness. The fact that the killer murders with utmost bestiality is mentioned more than it is shown.

Many of us have seen Asghar Wajahat’s poignant and widely staged play ‘Jis Lahore Nai Vekhya, O Jamya E Nai’. And most of us have seen Sunny Deol create ‘Gadar’ in cross-border love stories. So what happens when the two come together? Well, in Raj Kumar Santoshi’s ‘Batwara 1947’, Sunny Paaji’s dhai kilo ka haath is very much intact, if not forever in action, as he bashes up rioters on both sides of the border. What is heartening, though, is the emotive power of the film, which resonates with a fair degree of sentimentality, but is not misplaced. It is adapted from Wajahat’s play, written in 1989 and staged by eminent theatrepersons such as Habib Tanvir, Nadira Babbar and Arvind Gaur. The play might have been set during Partition, but there is no denying its universal timelessness.

The good news is ‘Bhai Tera Star Hai’ is not your regular underdog story of an upstart reaching for the stars, even though the opening song would have you believe so. The not-so-good news, however, is that the Raghav Juyal-starrer isn’t the madcap it aspires to be. Director Vivek B Agrawal and co-writer Sudipto Sarkar do try not to follow the beaten path, but that by itself isn’t enough. The moment Sanjay Kapoor appears as bar owner Fatty, who doubles up as a betting don, you know the makers are aiming for the experimental touch. And the very second you see dialogues popping up on the screen as comic book graphics, you expect an innovative idea.

Love conquers all… only here, the heroine, Sudha (Vedika Pinto), believes: “Sahi pyar hamare liye sahi ho yeh zaroori nahi (It’s not essential that true love is right for us).” She meets her suitor Chander (Vikrant Massey) for a matrimonial alliance. He is a software engineer who wants to set up a cafe in the mountains, hence the title of the series. Sudha is a lawyer whose ambitions touch sky high and marriage figures nowhere in her scheme of things. They fall in love and the villains here are not ma-baap or a ‘judgy’ society, but a clash of aspirations. As the storyline set in Bhopal moves in two timelines set apart by eight years, we clearly see they have moved on. Chander has not only realised his dream in Mussoorie, but found love again in Preeti (Mahima Makwana).

“Fantasies and dreams… A nightmare of thought. A face, a fleet, a war…” Add to it a human being who towers above all with fierce courage and a beating heart. Odysseus’ epic story, as told by Greek poet Homer some 3,000 years ago, comes alive in Academy Award-winner Christopher Nolan’s fantastical ‘The Odyssey’. Those clued into Greek mythology know all too well who Odysseus was: King of Ithaca, a true blue war hero, the man behind the treacherous Trojan Horse, instrumental in making the invincible Troy fall. Unlike Achilles, he did not die on the battlefield, but lost his way back home. And it’s his odyssey — full of travails, encounters with monsters, sirens, the dead and gods — which gives wings to Nolan’s extraordinary cinematic vision.

It begins with madness and climaxes with mayhem, but then you expect no less, no more from the popular franchise that thrives and hinges upon humour and humour alone. As ‘Dhamaal’ moves forward towards its fourth outing, it is more of the same in a way. This time, the madcap comedy centres on a treasure, some Shaitain Singh Ka Khazana that a whole lot of fumbling/bumbling characters are after. Ravi Kishan plays a pirate, Adhura, who is holding hostage Prithvi (Upendra Limaye), the man who has the map and can decode it too. Ajay Devgn as Guddu lands on his ship; what happens hereafter is meant to be a roller-coaster where nothing is to be taken seriously. To give the devil his due, the film does offer you some laugh-out-loud moments but gets painful and laborious in equal parts as well.