Member Reviews

Shankar has an unrelenting confidence in his socio-political conscience, and he seems to be constantly bothered about the ills around him. Nothing else explains his grip on the anti-corruption ideas, which fuels most of his films. After the disastrous Indian 2, Shankar’s Game Changer, starring Ram Charan, is another addition to his list of political films. The filmmaker not only holds onto his politics in Game Changer but also strongly believes in the old-school commercial entertainer where the film breaks to a song every twenty minutes. In a sense, this familiar screenplay formula works in the favour of Game Changer as you know what to expect from the film at any given point. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more than what it is. Hence, there is no room for disappointment with Game Changer. That said, Game Changer, at the end of the day, is a dated film that would have probably been fresh a decade back.

When one looks at Shankar’s filmography, it is interesting how his mind doesn’t gravitate towards the easiest way to elevate the hero. Almost all of his leading men could have been typical straightforward police officers who take on the system. But instead, he makes them a small-time entrepreneur moonlighting as a Robin Hood, a young lover fighting for his love, an old revolutionary who wants to eradicate corruption, a journalist who becomes the chief minister, an NRI who returns to his homeland to weed out societal ills, and even a robot. But never a cop.

At a pre-release promotional event, director Shankar mentioned how his new film, Game Changer, considers the audience’s diminishing attention spans, shaped by Instagram Reels, and delivers engaging sequences in quick succession. This is perhaps why two-hour 45-minute film feels like a patchwork of segments opting for hurried transitions rather than seamless segways. Is Shankar’s first Telugu film (his older Tamil films were massive hits in Telugu) fun? Yes, quite a bit. Do the face-offs between Ram Charan and SJ Suryah live up to the hype? Sure, there are clapworthy lines and segments. The bigger question is, beyond the instant gratification, will these segments, or the film, stand the test of time?

For all intents and purposes, Sunil Kumar Gupta (Zahan Kapoor) is not a good fit for Tihar jail. He has a slim build and his oversized uniform hangs loosely on him. He’s grown a moustache to mask his lack of depth in an institution fuelled by testosterone; Gupta is too stuck in his ‘decent’ ways to even inadvertently cuss. He refers to his mother as ‘Mumma’ – a seemingly ordinary-but-revealing detail about his dynamic with her and how he’s been raised. He’s called ‘Baby’ by family members and neighbours – a detail almost trying too hard to sell his obvious displacement in Tihar.

You can tell when someone—especially an actor—is directing their first action movie. The craft is more impressive than expressive. Sonu Sood’s Fateh, starring himself, has telltale signs. For instance, there’s that ambitious mirror shot in the beginning: The hero looks straight at his reflection but you can’t see the camera; it then floats through the glass like a ghost. There are the over-excited transitions and snazzy editing. At least twice, shots of spilled blood cut to ketchup on a plate; a cop ordering a steamed momo cuts to a villain eating a momo (“my long-time weakness”); a victim opens his mouth to scream and you hear a honking car. There’s an interval slate that reads “Brace yourself, you’ll need this break”. A pointless overseas sequence is inserted only so that a Hans Zimmer-composed track can be flaunted. A random close-up of a henchman’s ear is seen seconds before his severed ear is served on a plate.

A woman decides to make fun of a man. Honestly, it is all in good faith. However, the man isn’t quite happy about being the butt of collective humour. Honestly, it is okay for the man to get riled up. Now, he decides to beat the woman. And it is not just a push or a shove, but an active beating that leaves her clothes in tatters, lips bleeding, and marks of the assault very visible on her face. Now, the hero sees her in this condition. Plus, she is the heroine of the film. What should the hero do? What can he do when he is the man who beat her up. And we are asked to laugh at the predicament because she is used to being ‘playfully’ beaten up like this, and when asked for an apology, all he can manage is a fart? These are the protagonists of Bala’s Vanangaan, but there’s no need for judging them for this, simply because in the worlds the filmmaker has been creating for 25 years now, this is par for the course. But then, we can’t really move past this either, because Vanangaan tackles the theme of sexual violence against women, and this dichotomy is rather jarring.

Cyber crime is in the crosshairs of Sonu Sood’s ‘Fateh’, in which he plays an In and As role: the name of the film is his, which means victory. So how much of a win is the 127-minute film, the actor’s debut directorial? Sood has mostly played strong supporting roles up until now; this one has him as hero, front and centre. That’s one thing checked off from any actor’s wish-list: solo hero in an action movie, the guy with the gun, leading from the front.

After Law & Order, NCIS, and Chicago TV universes, veteran producer Dick Wolf makes his first streaming show with On Call. The new series is situated in Long Beach, California, where a seasoned police officer trains a newbie after one of her former trainees is murdered on the job. Starring Troian Bellisario and Brandon Larracuente in the leads, Amazon Prime Video’s On Call flies right out of the gate but circles around the same few issues over and over again. Troian Bellisario is by-the-books officer Traci Harmon, who never fired a weapon in 12 years. Meanwhile, Alex Diaz is an overeager rookie who wants to do it again. Following the death of officer Delgado (Monica Raymund) for a routine traffic stop, the Long Beach police force is on the hunt for a cop killer. However, it is Harmon who takes the search to heart while maintaining the on-the-job lessons for the new guy on the beat.

It’s been 20 years since the last Wallace & Gromit feature film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. And this follow-up does not disappoint, largely due to the reappearance of the greatest villain in the franchise, Feather McGraw. Yes, that dastardly silent penguin is back, and he wants revenge on the duo that sent him to jail all those years ago. Will he succeed? Not if Gromit has his way. With Nick Park back as co-director, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is a funny, delightful romp in the neighbourhood. Wallace’s newest invention in the film is a Norbot, a smart gnome robot ready to help poor Gromit around the house. Even when he doesn’t need any help. What the pair don’t realise that someone’s got their eye on them, all the way from jail, as the quick-witted penguin has been biding his time, waiting to get back at Wallace for turning him into the authorities in the 1993 short film The Wrong Trousers for attempting to steal the Blue Diamond. Soon, Wallace and his trusty dog Gromit are evading the police, who believe he might be the recent spate of neighbourhood robberies.

Her father died nearly 11 years ago. About the same time, her fiance disappeared from her life and it seems from the face of the earth. And she is no ordinary woman but the dogged Detective Inspector Kat Donovan. Could the plot get thicker? Yes it does, often too thick. Indeed, the story unfolds with much intrigue if not cutting-edge tension. Kat, played by Rosalind Eleazar, is in charge of tracing missing persons. Why she has not cared to find out where her boyfriend vanished is as baffling as his sudden popping up on a dating site. Instead, she seeks the help of her friend, private investigator Stacey Embalo (Jessica Plummer), to track him down, actually do half her jobs, including finding her way into a prison hospital. Stacey’s job otherwise is to nail cheating husbands and wives. Amidst fishing in the woes of failing marriages, she plays agony aunt to Kat and directs her to a dating app.