‘Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior’ is cartoon history…

‘Dabangg 3’ is Hindi action cinema at its daftest…

‘Panipat’ gives a sense of history falling into place…

Laal Kaptaan is the sort of film I wish there were more of – an exploration of the richness and weirdness of old India, one which doesn’t try to smooth the edges or create a Disney-esque franchise. Recent films have used our nation’s distant past as a reflecting pool of orthodoxy (Padmaavat) and proto-nationalism (Manikarnika). Singh, on the other hand, admits that we’ve always been a complicated, fractured country, and that entire lives can be defined by nothing more than a desire for revenge.

Between the griminess of Lawrence Sher’s photography and Hildur Guðnadóttir sawing violins, Joker is impressively queasy for a studio film. Phoenix’s turn, too, is anti-beauty: greasy hair, twitchy manner, nails-on-blackboard laugh

‘War’ is the best silly-smart Hindi action film in a while…

There’s a smarter, sharper film somewhere inside this one, with insightful things to say about fandom and celebrity and superstition. As it stands, however, The Zoya Factor offers little cheer to those invested in the return of the Hindi romantic comedy or the halfway-decent post-Lagaan cricket film.

As Hindi film micro-genres go, Ayushmann Khurrana Chips Away At Masculine Tropes is a stellar one. It may have become a formula of sorts – there’s one about hair loss coming up, and another built around a gay character – but the films have by and large been smart, funny and unusually perceptive about middle-class insecurities. Unfortunately, this makes matters worse for Dream Girl, a film that’s slight to begin with, and which looks even slighter in comparison to Dum Laga Ke Haisha, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan and Badhaai Ho.

Saaho seems to be aiming for Mission: Impossible. But there’s no wit to the proceedings, just an endless series of twists that make no sense, accompanied by the dull pounding that is Prabhas onscreen.

Mission Mangal consistently champions scientists and science. Yet, by linking the team’s breakthroughs to puris and pillowcases and stray comments by family members, and by explaining everything in layman’s terms, it diminishes the complexity of their achievements.