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Cake

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Cooking Up Drama Pakistani film,  Cake , was streamed recently to an appreciative audience. The Asim Abbasi film, was released in the UK, and was the country’s entry for the Academy Awards. TV serials from Pakistan have been popular across the Urdu-Hindi speaking world, but hardly any film crosses the border, and those that do (pirated) are usually shoddy copies of Bollywood films—though Bollywood is known to filch their music. Some of the better films—like Khuda Ke Liye or Khamosh Pani— have been screened at festivals, but now even that channel seems to be blocked. Cake   takes Pakistani cinema up a few notches and presents a picture of the country that is modern and sophisticated. Set in the well-appointed home of a wealthy landowning family, the film tells the story of two thirty-something sisters Zareen (Aamina Sheikh) and Zara (Sanam Saeed), single and independent.  Their married brother Zain (Faris Khalid) lives in the US with his wife and son.  While Zara has a fina
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Chopsticks

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Babe In The Hood The first original Indian film that  Netflix presents is  Chopsticks , directed by  Sachin Yardi, whose writing credits include the  Kya Kool Hain Hum  films, and he directed something called  C Kkommpany , so obviously a  Roma  (the Alfonso Cuaraon Oscar-winning film) is not expected here. Somehow, many directors never get over their ‘Bhai’ (gangster) fixation, and try to come up with the most eccentric, colourful or nasty piece of work that they can. But before the film gets into the underworld zone, the viewer is introduced to Nirma Shastrabuddhe (Mithila Palkar), the young woman from Aurangabad (with a washing powder name that evokes sniggers), working as a Chinese interpreter. At her snooty place of work, she is called “behenji” and mocked for her incorrect pronunciation of English words. Because of this, she is also saddled with taking Chinese tourists to downmarket spots like Dharavi and Dhobi Ghat. She needs motivational audio lesson to cope, and practic
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Shehjar

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The Wounded And The Damned A young boy looks at the hands of a woman and pronounces her age to be in the late twenties. When asked his age he snaps, that a man’s age is determined by not by his appearance, but by his experience. What remains unsaid, is that this child, barely in his teens, has seen and endured suffering far beyond his years. The scene is one of the most moving in Nikhil Allug’s film,  Shehjar  (Shade in Kashmiri), that takes up, indirectly, the issue of Kashmir and the continuing agony of the people of the state torn apart by militancy. The film begins, with a group of four –  Nasif (Sunil Kumar Palwal), a burqa-clad Mariyam (Ira Dubey), Jasim (Zahid Mir), and Khalid (Burhan Shafi Itoo), as they embark on a long journey, starting by boat somewhere in Kashmir, then walking through a forest, taking a car to the town of Katra, from where,  after a brief stopover at the home of an acquaintance, they catch a train to reach Mumbai. On the way, as they exit Kashmir
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Mauli

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Double Deshmukh When Mauli (Ritiesh Deshukh), walks into the frame in slow motion to rescue two abducted girls, his weapon of choice is a brick. This could be because Lord Vitthala stands on a brick (there’s a folktale to explain why); the dark-skinned version of Lord Krishna is a popular deity in Maharashtra, and a recurring motif in the Marathi masala movie, directed by Aditya Sarpotdar and produced by Deshmukh. It is not a sequel to the 2014 hit  Lai Bhaari  also produced by the star, who led the cast, but it is part of the franchise with a character called Mauli—played by Deshmukh, a flamboyant fighter of goondas and righter of wrongs. What’s common between the two films is that Desmukh plays a double role. In  Mauli , Deshmukh, the eponymous protagonist, a cop, arrives in Kaapur, a village ruled by the villainous Nana (Jitendra Joshi), whose gang is into water control, illicit alcohol and land grabbing. Besides being evil and corrupt, Nana also seems to be an atheist, bec
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Tigers

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The Whistleblower Chronicle   It’s a pity that  Tigers , a film by  Oscar-winning Bosnian director  Danis Tanovic (he won for the 2001 film  No Man’s Land , the year  Lagaan  was also a nominee), did not get a wide theatrical release in India, and went straight to a streaming platform, where, hopefully, it will be seen by those who look for meaningful content. Emraan Hashmi, going against his serial-kisser image, plays a man with a conscience and courage of conviction, never mind the suffering he and his family has to go through. The film took years to make, but it is a story that needs to be told-- the fight by a salesman called Syed Aamir Raza against an unscrupulous multi-national company (MNC). His fictional version, Ayan (Hashmi), works as a salesman with a Pakistani pharmaceutical company, but finds the going tough because doctors prescribe, and medical stores sell, more expensive products manufactured by MNCs. On the advice of his new bride Zainab (Geetanjai Thapa), he
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