Bhooty Call: Stree 2

 Stree 2: Sarkate Ka Aatank (2024) is a direct sequel to 2018's Stree, and it starts with one of the better recaps of the previous movie I've seen.  The town of Chanderi is celebrating an annual religious festival, and Rudra (Pankaj Tripathi) sings a song about Stree (Flora Saini in the last film, this time played by Bhoomi Rajgor), a terrifying ghost that once haunted the streets of Chanderi, abducting men and leaving behind nothing but a pile of clothes, until the town's champion Vicky (Rajkummar Rao) manages to cut off Stree's braid and then . . . treats her with love and respect, which is what she wanted all along.  It's a fun number, and a band of kids act out the events as Rudra describes them, but it does leave out some key details.

Vicky hasn't forgotten anything, though.  He's gone back to work as a ladies tailor, but he's still pining for the beautiful, mysterious, and so far nameless woman (Shraddha Kapoor) who helped him every step of the way, even though his family and friends keep telling him that she is never, ever coming back after she took Stree's severed braid and vanished.  Sidekick Bittu (Aparshakti Khurana) has definitely moved on, and is now sort of dating the hip and modern Chitti (Anya Singh).

Rudra receives a mysterious letter which contains extra pages of the Chanderi Puran, a mysterious history of Chanderi which proved useful in the last movie.  The pages provide more detail about Stree's death, and include a warning that "He is coming back."  Who is coming back?  They find out when a terrifying headless ghost kidnaps Chitti.  It turns out that the young women of the town haven't been going off to the big city after all, they've been spirited away by the new ghost.  And the Chanderi Puran holds the answer - the ghost is the spirit of Chandrabhan (no actor listed because he's a great big CGI thing that shouts and screams rather than speaking.)  Chandrabhan was once the village headman in Chanderi, and was an abusive and womanizing drunk who brutally murdered Stree and her love as their young daughter watched; after rising from the dead Stree returned the favor by decapitating her tormentor.

Chandrabhan is specifically targeting "modern" women, and he has a very broad definition of modern; having a job or a Facebook account is enough to be added to his collection.  The women in town do their best to avoid notice, but a group of them approach Vicky and tell him to do something about the situation; he is the town's destined protector, and Chandrabhan only returned because Vicky convinced Stree to move on, so it's his fault.

(As a sidenote, the women in Chandrabhan's collection have their heads shaved, are dressed in modest saris, and are essentially placed in supernatural cold storage.  Chandrabhan draws a lot of inspiration from the monsters found in old Ramsay Brothers horror films, and particularly the headless demon sorcerer from Purana Mandir, but the movie completely avoids the exploitative tendencies of that era of Bollywood horror.)

There's some good news: Vicky keeps seeing the Woman, and the others eventually see her too.  The group decides that they need to bring back Stree to deal with the new ghost, and to find Stree they need Jana (Abhishek Banerjee), who was possessed by Stree in the last movie.  Jana is currently living happily in Delhi with his cousin Bhaskar (Varun Dhawan), who is a werewolf from a different movie.  They bring Jana back and set him loose in the ruins outside of town, which proves to be an utter disaster.

The Woman has another plan - she gives Vicky a magic dagger and tells him to look Chandrabhan in the eyes and stab him in the heart.  To lure him out they turn to Shama (Tamannah Bhatia), a famous dancer and Rudra's old friend, to perform a spectacular dance number in the heart of the town.  And it's also an utter disaster, ending with Shama kidnapped and most of the men in town possessed by Chandrabhan's rigid rules about gender roles.  Vicky's only real superpower is listening to women, which doesn't seem like it will be that helpful.

Stree 2 isn't just a sequel to the original, it's a part of the Maddock Supernatural Universe, which also includes werewolf movie Bhediya and Munjya, which features a different sort of ghost.  This is not a cinematic universe that requires a lot of homework, though.  It;s an effective monster mash in its own right, like House of Frankenstein but focused on archetypes form Indian horror cinema, with the Ramsay-like Chandrabhan matched against the more modern J-horror inspired Stree, and there's enough context provided to explain the Wolfman who shows up at the end to help.

And it's also an effective monster mash with something to say, since the real villain here is a narrow and oppressive view of society that winds up hurting everyone, including the men it's supposed to be empowering.

Or possibly the real villain is Dracula, since Bhaskar drops some pretty broad hints at the end.

Bhooty Call: Papi Gudia

 Papi Gudia (1996) opens with a near riot at the police station; Mumbai has been hit by a wave of child kidnappings, and the people want answers now.  Inspector Yadav (Tinnu Anand) has just been assigned to the case, but he already has a plan.  And that plan is apparently to wait for a lucky break; a fearless beggar woman (the IMDB doesn't list the actress, which is a shame since she is the film's true hero) happens to interrupt the kidnapper, and gives chase.  She's on foot and he's in a car, so she doesn't catch him, but she is able to provide a decent description to the police.

The kidnapper is Charan Raj (Shakti Kapoor), also known as Channi.  Channi is a skilled necromancer, and he just has to sacrifice one more child in order to gain ultimate power and rule the world.  he kidnaps another child, and Yadav has another incredibly lucky break - they literally bump into each other on the street.  Yadav recognizes the man form the police sketch, and they have a long chase/gunfight which ends in a toy store, when a seriously wounded Channi uses a long ritual to transfer his soul into a nearby doll, just before the store blows up.

The kidnapped child is Raju (Master Amar.)  He;s fine, but the police have some trouble contacting his family.  His only relative is his sister Karishma (Karisma Kapoor), and she's a popular singer, currently blowing most of the film' special effects budget in a big dance number.  They finally manage to contact her, she picks her brother up, and the police go on their way after urging Karishma to hire a babysitter next time, for heaven's sake.

Karishma has a show the very next night, and her friend Mona (Shraddha Verma) agrees to watch Raju.  Raju doesn't want to stay with Mona, so Karishma takes him out for a fun afternoon to cheer him up after the whole "attempted kidnapping by an evil necromancer" thing.  She buys him a talking doll called Channi, and Raju immediately becomes very attached, but the good news is he's now fine with Mona watching him for the night, so Karishma goes off to her next show.

And then the murders begin.

Mona first; she annoyed Raju by turning off the TV when Channi wanted to watch the news.  When Karishma returns, the house is full of policemen, led by Inspector Vijay Saxena (Avinash Wadhavan), the handsome rich kid who broke her heart years ago.  Vijay explains the situation: Mona fell, or was thrown, out the window after being hit in the head with a very small hammer.  Vijay suspects foul play, and all signs point to Raju, but Karishma flatly refuses to let the police interview him.

Inspector Yadav dies next, then the heroic but unnamed beggar woman.  Every time Raju is seen in the area, doll in tow.  The audience has seen the murders happen.  We know that Channi is the killer, but Vijay is convinced that Raju is involved, while Karishma is convinced that Vijay is pursuing some sort of vendetta against her.

But the thing is, Vijay is right.  Raju is absolutely involved.  When Karishma asks him about Mona, he explains that she had to die because Channi didn't like her and she wouldn't let him watch the news.  Raju skips school to take Channi to Yadav's house.  Raju steals Karishma's car while she's onstage so that Channi can use it to run over the old woman.  At best Raju is an accessory to multiple murders.  he certainly needs psychological help, and he never gets it; nobody even tries to take away the doll that he's clearly obsessed with.

The special effects are an obvious issue here; the movie doesn't use computer graphics or stop motion to bring Channi to life, they just manipulate the doll for the camera, using lighting and camera angles to make him look sinister.  This can be very effective in theory, but here it's not.  It's also not very practical during any sort of fight scene, so they turn down the lights and put a small actor (possibly a child) in a costume, before giving up entirely and turning Channi back into Shakti Kapoor.  The effects are silly, but that's fine; audiences will happily suspend their disbelief for the right story.

The problem is, it's not the right story.  The writing is a mess.  Everything runs on coincidence, things happen just because it's time for a new plot point, and the heroes and villains are both wildly incompetent.  Before the climax Vijay visits Channi's magical mentor (Mohan Joshi) and learns his secret weakness, which he does not use. Instead, the ending relies on coincidence (again) and blatantly rips off some of the lesser Hammer Dracula's.

 It's not all bad news.  The music is generally good or at least catchy, and nobody sells a dance number like Karisma Kapoor.  But this is a very silly movie.

Bhooty Call 2024

 It's that time again.  The nights are getting longer, the air is getting colder, and shadows start to gather in the corners of the room.  It's the spooky season.  Time for a bhooty call.

Four funerals, no wedding.

 Dil Bechara (2020) is the official Bollywood adaptation of the Hollywood movie The Fault in Our Stars, based on the novel by bestselling author, philanthropist, internet educator, and original Nerdfighter John Green, and like a lot of Green's work it is by turns absurd, heartfelt, angry, and grappling with mortality.

"Absurd, heartfelt, angry, and grappling with mortality" is also a good description of Kizie Basu (Sanjana Sanghi), a young college student with thyroid cancer.  Kizie lives a constrained life, watched over by her overprotective mother Sunila (Swastika Mukherjee) and laid back father Abhiraj (Saswata Chatterjee, playing a good guy for obce), along with her constant companion, the oxygen tank she calls Pushpinder.  Kizie wants a normal life, but she's tied to a neverending routine of medication and hospital visits.  She wants answers, but she knows she's not going to get them, so instead she crashes random funerals, hoping to form a connection with the bereaved so she can avoid thinking of the people she'll leave behind.

And then Kizie meets Manny, properly Immanuel Rajkumar Junior (Suishant Singh Rajput), filming an amateur movie on the street with his friend JP (Sahil Vaid.)  Manny is cocky and almost deliberately annoying, and Kizie takes an instant dislike to him, but they just keep meeting.  He turns out to be a student at her college, returning after a long absence, and he takes over the school talent show in order to perform the title song.  he and JP also show up at Kizie's cancer support group, and for good reason: JP has already lost one eye to cancer and is going to lose the other one soon, while Manny lost a leg to osteosarcoma and is now in remission.  

Cancer is not the only thing that connects them, though.  Manny is an enormous fan of Superstar Rajnikanth, and the movie he and JP are making is a Rajnikanth pastiche.  Kizie isn't really into movies, but she loves music, especially the work of the reclusive songwriter Abhimanyu Veer.  Manny wants Kizie to play the female lead in the movie, while Kizie wants to share the music she loves.  They make a deal.

It's the music that they really bond over, especially Abhimanyu's final song, which was unfinished and ends abruptly.  Kizie in particular becomes fixated on meeting Abhimanyu and asking him why the song was never finished, so that at least she'll have an answer about something.  But Abhimanyu has vanished completely.  Meanwhile, she and Manny drift into a sweet and awkward romance, and adopt the Tamil word "Seri," meaning "Okay," as their private way of telling each other "Don't forget to be awesome."

And then things happen.  Manny discovers that Abhimanyu is living in Paris, and even manages to email him, but the composer won't answer any questions unless they ask in person.  They plan to go to Paris, and then Kizie's health suddenly declines.  After some drama, they go to Paris anyway, and meet Abhimanyu (Saif Ali Khan), who turns out to be a nasty, nihilistic jerk who doesn't mind taunting a young cancer patient about the inevitability of death to  her face.  Kizie and Manny are left to find their own meaning in the world, but there is more bad news to come, because this is a story that was only ever going to end one way.

Sushant Singh Rajput died on June 14, 2020, and Dil Bechara was released on the streaming service Disney+ Hotstar on July 24, just over a month later.  The movie never made it to theaters because of COVID restrictions.  Rajput's death has kind of overshadowed the film; it's better known as his last movie than for its own merits.  And if it was a different movie it would be more of a problem, but this is a movie about death and legacy and what we leave behind, a movie that asks questions even though it knows there won't be any answers.  It's absurd and heartfelt and angry, and it grapples with mortality because we all grapple with mortality.

So I'm not going to worry about whether this is a good movie or not; I enjoyed it, and I am happy to leave it at that.  However, Dil Bechara also features a good example of the double standard you often see in Bollywood casting.  Sushant Singh Rajput and Swastika Mukherjee had worked together before, in 2015's Detective Byomkesh Bakshi.  Rajput played the titular detective, while Mukherjee played the sultry femme fatale Anguri Devi.  The actors are close to the same age, but men can keep playing the young hero for decades while women are quickly shunted into roles as mothers and then grandmothers.

Four weddings, no funerals.

 Shuddh Desi Romance (2013) is part of the post Dil Chahta Hai wave of movies that try to depict the experience of modern young people living in India's cities.  It came out twelve years after Dil Chahta Hai, though, so it's much more willing to challenge the tropes of frothy Bollywood romance, largely by stripping out the froth.

 

Raghu (Sushant Singh Rajput) is a professional wedding guest; when the bride or groom don't have enough friends or relatives handy to fill out the guest list but they still want to make a good impression, wedding planner Goyal (Rishi Kapoor)  will provide ersatz friends and relatives at reasonable rates.  Now Raghu is getting married himself, an arranged marriage to Tara (Vaani Kapoor), and Goyal has provided guests for him as well, including the beautiful and intelligent Gayatri (Parineeti Chopra.)

That's a problem, because Raghu is immediately smitten with Gayatri.  They have a long conversation on the night bus to the wedding, even kiss a little, and while Gayatri puts a stop to things, Raghu starts reconsidering his wedding plans, and winds up running away before the ceremony.

Back in Jaipur, Raghu meets Gayatri again, and they start talking.  Raghu is very clear that he is not interested in any sort of "love is friendship" business; he's attracted to her, and he wants a relationship.  Gayatri ios a lot more cynical; this isn't her first rodeo, and her heart has been trampled before, so she's determined that all future rodeo-related activity will be on her terms.  Still, she feels an attraction too, and before long Raghu has moved in.

It's not always easy; this is still India, and Raghu has to pretend to be Gayatri's brother or the neighbors will talk.  (The neighbors are not actually fooled, but it's important to make the effort.)  There are some fights, because Raghu is a starry-eyed romantic who jumps into everything without thinking, while Gayatri is sure that he's going to leave her, because he's done it before.  Still, they decide to get married, and at the ceremony Gayatri runs before he has the chance.

Time passes.  Raghu is still sad, and doesn't want to attend any more weddings, ever, but Goyal pulls him back for one last job.  And that's where he runs into Tara again.  She's one of the actual wedding guests, and she's surprisingly chill about the whole "being left at the altar" thing.  Before long they're dating, and Goyal is wondering what these women see in Raghu.  

And of course Gayatri is bound to show up sooner or later, because this is almost an Archie triangle; Tara is Betty, Gayatri is Veronica, everybody is a decent person, and they all want the best for each other, but while Tara and Gayatri get along, they barely know each other.  

However, Shuddh Desi Romance isn't really trying to be Kuch Kuch Hota Hai or any of the other classic Bollywood love triangles.  This movie is almost self-consciously modern, with characters sitting down to address the camera, The Office-style, endlessly analyzing their feelings rather than silently longing for each other, and concluding that maybe conventional marriage isn't for everyone.  One of the key features of Bollywood romance is that once the characters have fallen in love they are determined; they might choose to sacrifice that love, but they never stop believing in it.  They know what they want.  In Shuddh Desi Romance, nobody knows what they want, and they spend the whole movie trying to figure it out.

So, not a grand sweeping romance, but the movie is an engaging little character study.  Parineeti Chopra in particular gives a layered performance, and Rishi Kapoor is always a welcome presence.  I do kind of miss the froth, though.

Skyway Robbery

 Crew (2024) was inspired by the real world Kingfisher Airlines case, in which CEO Vijay Mallya fled India with a fortune while the airline entered bankruptcy after not paying employees for months.  The plot also draws inspiration from the genuinely awful 2003 movie Boom, which means that the bar is set pretty low.  Fortunately Crew manages to soar above it.

Geeta (Tabu), Jasmine (Kareena Kapoor), and Divya (Kriti Sanon) are flight attendants working for Kohinoor Airlines.  They all have backstories, helpfully provided through flashbacks: Geeta is a former beauty queen who has worked for the airline for years, supporting her husband Arun (Kapil Sharma) and his struggling food delivery business as well as her younger brother (Rahul Gilani); Jamine was orphaned at a young age and raised by her grandfather (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and now works to raise capital for her cosmetics startup while dreaming of the finer things in life; and Divya was a star athlete and scholar from a tiny town who took a loan to go to flight school, but couldn't find work as a pilot and can't bring herself to tell her family.  They are quirky, flawed and interesting women.

Kohinoor Air has been going through a rough patch, and the employees haven't received any paychecks for months, instead surviving on a meager allowance.  Everyone hopes that the downturn is only temporary, and CEO Vijay Walia (Saswata Chatterjee) is on TV telling everyone that the airline is a family and everything will be okay.  Surely he can be trusted?

Things change when senior (and elderly) flight attendant Rajvanshi (Ramakant Dayama) dies suddenly on a flight, and the ladies discover that he's carrying several gold bars.  Jasmine is very tempted, but they hand the gold over to the authorities, represented by the persistent Sub-Inspector Mala (Trupti Khamkar) and dishy customs officer Jaiveer Singh (Diljit Dosanjh), who happens to be Divya's high school fling and is very interested in renewing that acquaintanceship.  

Still, it's a lot of money and times are really hard, so they do some digging,and realize that Rajvanshi was working with Kohinoor's HR Director Mittal (Rajesh Sharma), who turns out to be really easy to blackmail.   Soon the ladies take over Rajvanshi's smuggling duties, hiding balls of gold in surprisingly heavy chocolates.  Weeks pass, and the ladies have money, enough money that they risk an expensive night out on the town, where they are spotted by another flight attendant.

It can't last.  An anonymous tip puts Mala on their trail.  They're arrested, but manage to hide the current shipment of gold on the plane.  They are released for lack of evidence, but by that time the plane has already taken off, and the gold is discovered in flight.  Still nothing to tie it to our heroes, but their careers are ruined and they've alienated all their friends.  Vijay Walia has fled the country and the airline is about to collapse.  Then Divya realizes that they've been transporting Walia's gold all this time, helping to ruin themselves and their friends.  The only solution is to steal the gold back, because this is actually a heist movie.

It's a fun heist movie; hugely improbable, but full of entertaining twists, and there's a strong contrast between the grind of life as a flight attendant and the glamorous world that Walia lives in.  Ultimately, though, this is a character piece, and the cast are the real draw.  Kriti Sanon is charming and sincere, and Tabu is always a standout.  Kareena Kapoor started her career playing a succession of vain, spoiled and materialistic young women who turn out to have hearts of gold, and Jasmine is a character very much in the same mold, only older and worn down by years of struggle; it helps that Kapoor is a much, much better actor now than when she was starting out.

If you're looking for a fun, female led heist movie, Crew is a great choice.  Just don't watch Boom under any circumstances.

Return of the Yodha

 Kalki 2898 (2024) opens in the distant past, during the terrible last days of the war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas.  (You don't need a working knowledge of the Mahabharata to follow this movie, but it helps.) Ashwatthama, son of the great teacher Drona, unleashes the Brahmashirastra, the most destructive weapon in existence, in an attempt to kill the last unborn heir to the Pandava dynasty, only to be stopped by Lord Krishna (Krishnakumar).  Krishna declares that Ashwatthama is the worst sinner on the battlefield, and sentences him to live, alone and pained by his unhealed wounds, until the final incarnation of Vishnu is born.  

And he does live, for thousands of years, as an animated montage displays humanity's worst crimes, starting with Roman gladiatorial games and building up to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Holocaust; this sequence does not pull any punches.  When the movie shifts back to live action, the world is a very different place.

The world is a grim post-apocalyptic wasteland, stripped of resources; one of the early scenes is set in a truck hovering over the dried bed of the Ganges river.  Kasi is the last city on Earth, dominated by a range of scavengers and other lowlifes, but people from tiny villages in the wastelands still keep coming, because there's nowhere else to go with any resources.

Hovering above Kasi is a flying structure known as The Complex, where the fortunate few live lives of luxury.  In theory, anyone can buy their way into The Complex, but in practice gathering the required amount is practically impossible.  It's quickly made clear that these are very bad people who collect any fertile women they can find and force them into Project K, a scientific experiment at the behest of the decrepit Supreme Yaskin (Kamal Hassan), who rules the complex like a despotic god.

The Complex is opposed by a band of rebels who huddle in their hidden city of Shamballa.  many of the rebels believe in the impending incarnation of Vishnu, inspired by stories told to them by Mariam (Shobana).  Others are more cynical, but they are all devoted to overthrowing Yaskin and his minions.

But it's not all worldbuilding - there are characters as well.  It starts with plucky young girl Raia (Keya Nair) sneaks into Kasi disguised as a boy, but narrowly escapes being detected and conscripted into Project K.  She flees the city pursued by a robot, and takes shelter in the cave where Aswatthama is meditating.  he makes short work of the robot, but refuses to listen when Raia tries to convince him to join the rebels; he's here to save one person, not fight in anyone else's war.  But that's about to change.

Within The Complex, SUM-80 (Deepika Padukone) is going about her daily routine as part of Project K.  The subjects who have not been successfully implanted care for their pregnant sisters, at least until the scientists decide to brutally harvest them for the serum that keeps Supreme Yaskin alive.  What no one knows is that SUM-80 is also pregnant; she doesn't know how it happened, but she wants to keep her child from being harvested.  Unfortunately, time is running out.

And then there's designated Han Solo homage Bhairava (Prabhas), a skilled bounty hunter with an array of cool gadgets and a high tech dune buggy with a chatty AI named BU-JZ-1, or "Bujji" (Keerthy Suresh).  Bhairava is obsessed with the idea of getting into The Complex, and he's thrilled to discover that his occasional girlfriend Roxie (Disha Patini) has landed a maintenance job there.  He talks Roxie into getting him a temporary job as well, and once they make it to The Complex he convinces her to sneak away with him and explore, which involves a ride along the beach next to an artificial ocean, a dance number, and crashing a fancy party, but it all comes crashing down when Bhairava accidentally destroys Michelangelo's David.  

This leads to SUM-80 making a literally miraculous escape into the waiting arms of the resistance.  Commander Manas (Saswata Chatterjee), who acts as a sort of middle-management Darth Vader, offers an enormous bounty for SUM-80's return, which could be the one big score that Bhairava was waiting for, but he'll have to fight his way through rival bounty hunters, raiders, and Aswatthama in order to get to her.  The last one turns out to be the problem; Aswatthama isn't just a giant immortal, he's a mythical warrior from an age of legends, and is more than capable of dealing with Bhairava's technological tricks.  SUM-80, named "Sumathi" by a friendly but doomed rebel, makes it to Shambala, where she's greeted as . . . well,as the mother of the next incarnation of God.

She knows it's not safe.  Aswatthama knows it's not safe.  The audience definitely knows it's not safe.  manas and his men are searching for her, Bhairava wants to find his bounty and to outdo the one giant man who beat him in a fight.  It's all leading to a climactic battle in Shambala which will end in widespread destruction, a key character twist (which is well telegraphed if you're familiar with the Mahabharata) and a cliffhanger, because apparently this is the first movie in the Kalki Cinematic Universe.

It's easy to think of this movie as "Bollywood Star Wars," and there's some truth to that, even though the lightsabers only appear in one brief flashback scene.  On the other hand, I can see some influence from other sci-fi films of the Seventies and Eighties, like Zardoz and Warrior of the Lost World; Bhairaya even drives his AI-equipped vehicle through the illusion that masks the secret home of the Resistance.  That's not a bad thing; those movies were not great, but Kalki 2898 inherits some of their better ideas, and the whole production is infused with a gritty, run-down Seventies sci-fi style, only with a much bigger budget.

 

Prabhas is genuinely charming and the cast is engaging, but Amitabh Bachchan towers over everybody else, both literally and figuratively.  Aswatthama has the strongest backstory and the clearest character arc, and he has the added advantage of being played by Amitabh Bachchan, who is famously good at acting.  Saswata Chatterjee is another standout; Manas is a genuinely terrible person, and he alternates between over-the-top villainy and resigned banality of evil.

The movie looks great, and the plot is compelling, but there are a lot of characters and it does take a long time to get going.  Trim the padding, and we could have gotten one complete story instead of another epic that will take real world years in order to resolve, but people like their cinematic universes these days, and the movie we do get is pretty fun.