She kills a lot more people than Munna Bhai does.

 James Bond (2015) is also known as Lady Gangster, and that's a much better title; the movie does feature a lady gangster, but has a notable lack of suave British superspies, or really any spies, super or not.

The lady gangster in question is Pooja (Sakshi Chaudhary), professionally known as "Bullet", and she is the reigning Don of Dubai. Bullet has a gang of loyal henchman,but she controls her empire of unspecified crime through her John Wooesque action skills, shooting and punching her rivals as well as throwing the occasional CGI shuriken.

Bullet has a sympathetic backstory told via  a brief animated flashback: her father was a gangster, and after her parents split over the whole mafia thing, he brought young Pooja to Dubai with him,raising her to be the instrument of his vengeance on the gangsters who crossed him.  Now she has reunited with her terminally ill mother (Prabha) and she's playing the part of the dutiful and not at all criminal daughter, determined to fulfill every one of her mother's wishes.  And because this is an Indian movie,that means getting married, so Bullet has a marriage broker look for an eligible man to play the part of her husband for as long as her mother lasts.

Meanwhile, Nani (Allari Naresh), or "Johnny" according to the subtitles, is an eligible young bachelor looking for love. The problem is that Nani is a coward, and when women find that out they don't really find him attractive.  One day at the temple Nani catches a glimpse of Pooja and immediately falls in love.  When a friend spots her picture in the marriage broker's office, Nani rushes down to express his interest, agreeing to all of her conditions without actually reading them.

Pooja accepts what she thinks is a fake marriage, and Nani accepts what he thinks is a real marriage.  They don't really talk about it beforehand, so Nani is very disappointed on the wedding night when she pushes him away, but he is a decent person so he's willing to give her space until she feels she's ready.

Standard romantic comedy rules apply here, so these two mismatched souls are bound to fall in love eventually, and sure enough Pooja starts warming to her new husband, especially since her mother is now so happy that she's on the road to recovery, and hints that what she really wants is a grandchild. However, one of Bullet's rivals from Dubai (Ashish Vidyarthi) has tracked her to Hyderabad, which means that between romantic comedy scenes she kills an awful lot of people. And Nani accidentally spots his wife during one of these scenes and realizes that his wife is in fact a lady gangster, so while Pooja is falling for him, he's plotting to escape.  Which is complicated when Nani's family shows up for an extended visit.

This is a very silly movie, but it's silly in predictable ways.  Of course Nani is going to learn that some things are worth fighting for and overcome his fears, and of course Pooja will learn that her awkward but kind husband is exactly what she needed all along.  It's decently entertaining along the way,  though; the action scenes were clearly filmed on a budget,but many of them are creative and fun,particularly the sequence where rival gangsters attack while the couple are shopping for clothes, and Pooja quietly deals with them while trying to hide the carnage from Nani.

 

When I first started watching Bollywood,Indian movies were not widely available on streaming services,meaning that I had to find DVDs, and sometimes that meant buying DVDs in bulk for less than a dollar each.  That was always risky; sometimes the movies weren't subtitled, sometimes they were sleazy revenge melodramas or incomprehensible slapstick comedies.  Sometimes they were great, and sometimes they were silly but reasonably entertaining low budget movies that I never would have discovered if I hadn't taken a risk. Lady Gangster is a dollar DVD movie.

All that's missing is a bag of diamonds.

Despite its release date, Love Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega (2001) is a pretty typical early Nineties Bollywood farce, with an overbearing father-in-law, alleged heroes engaged in a morally dubious scheme, a briefcase full of cash getting passed around, and a happy ending that solves nothing.  Well, mostly typical.

Prakash (Saif Ali Khan) is a charming and ambitious man who hopes to marry into money,and he's set his sights on Sapna (Sonali Bendre), an aspiring artist with a wealthy father and a short attention span. And it works!  The couple are quickly married, but Prakash discovers that while he's found a comfortable life, he doesn't have the respect of his father in law Rajiv (Dalip Tahil), who gives him a large office to sit in all day but refuses to let him have any responsibility,and berates him at every turn.  Prakash decides to start his own business, but he'll need money for that, and Rajiv isn't going to give him any.

Meanwhile, roommates Rahul (Fardeen Khan) and Harry (Aftab Shivdasani) have their own problems. Rahul is looking for a job without success, so  he hasn't  paid the rent in six months. This is especially awkward because he's in love with the landlord's daughter, Anjali (Twinkle Khanna).  Harry, meanwhile, just wants to have fun with as many ladies as possible, and he's borrowed money from the feared gangster Aslam Bhai (Johnny Lever)

Rahul finally has a chance to land a job, he'll have to pay a sizable bribe in order to seal the deal. Meanwhile, Anjali's father (Tanikella Bharani) has arranged a marriage for her in a month; he's willing to reconsider, but only if Rahul is employed, so they now have a deadline. And Harry has an idea - they can do some crimes to get money!  Not big crimes, just a little bit of mugging in the parking lot of a five star hotel.

Harry and Rahul attempt to mug, and Prakash is one of their first targets.  Despite dressing well, though, he doesn't really have much money. What he does have is an idea - the se skilled and totally trustworthy criminals can kidnap Sapna for a few hours, and demand a large ransom. Prakash will split the money with them, Rajiv is rich enough that he won't miss the money, and everybody will be happy!

And then wackiness ensues.  Sapna turns out to be surprisingly capable of defending herself, but Rahul and harry finally manage to kidnap her, only to realize that their tiny apartment is no place to keep a hostage, while Anjali is starting to suspect that something is up. It's a bit like "The Ransom of Red Chief" mixed with a dash of Fargo without the body count.  This is a silly movie.

Aslam Bhai has an extended subplot about being scammed by a fake movie producer named Aaj Kapoor (Snehal Dabi) who exploits his dreams of Bollywood stardom, and it is also silly, but silly in an unexpected way.  For a long time Johnny Lever was  Bollywood's reigning King of Comic Relief, a reputation he earned through incredibly broad acting and mugging for the camera, but he plays Aslam Bhai almost completely straight; it's arguably a more serious performance than the leads put in. 

Johnny Lever is interesting, Saif Ali Khan is reliably good, Sonali Bendre and Twinkle Khanna are charming but don't have much to do, and Fardeen Khan and Aftab Shivdasani are also in the movie.

Lanka is burning.

 Singham Again (2024) is the latest installment in Rohit Shetty's Cop Universe,and while it does feature all of the maverick supercops who play by their own rules and get results, as well as establishing some new result getting rule-breakers, it's still not The Avengers.  It does include even more avenging than previous installments, though, and significantly more avenging than any of the Avengers movies did.

At the end of Sooryavanshi, supercop Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn) swore to bring terrorist mastermind Omar Hafeez (Jackie Shroff) to justice. Then, apparently, he took a job in Kashmir and eventually lucked into an encounter with Hafeez, arresting him after a surprisingly mundane fight scene. (The laws of physics usually bend in the vicinity of Singham, but this was a scene that could really happen.)  After the failure of his previous schemes, Hafeez moved into drug smuggling, bringing drugs into India from Sri Lanka, and using the profits to finance terrorist activities.  Singham is appointed to lead Shiva Squad, a new organization drawn from police departments across India, to combat this threat.

Two years later, Singham's wife Avni (Kareena Kapoor) is producing and hosting a nine day production of Ramlila, interspersing the reenactment of the Ramayana with a tour of the places described in the epic. Singham is kept busy with Shiva Squad, and they've finally caught a break - a group of fishermen have been caught off the coast of Tamil Nadu carrying drugs. The prisoners refuse to talk until Singham arrives to threaten them personally, but they eventually give him a name: Danger Lanka (Arjun Kapoor).

Thanks to the tip, DCP Shakti Shetty (Deepika Padukone), also known as "Lady Singham", captures three of Lanka's men.  She's supposed to deliver them to Singham in the morning,but that night Lanka and his men rescue them, setting the police station on fire and killing everyone there in the process.  Shakti is devastated, but Singham convinces her to avenge her fallen colleagues.

Lanka is playing a different game, though.  With the help of Avni's assistant (Sara Arfeen Khan) she's lured into a trap and abducted.  Thanks to the timely intercession of ACP Satya Bali (Tiger Shroff) and the sacrifice of another police officer (Dayanand Shetty) Avni manages to escape, at least temporarily.  Bali takes her to the ashram run by his adopted mother, but Lanka and his men attack in force, and Avni is shot and then recaptured; Singham arrives, but he's too late to do anything but beat up a lot of people.

Lanka has a hidden agenda.  His real name is Zubair Hafeez, Omar's grandson, and he's avenging his uncles, who were summarily executed by the heroes at the end of Sooryavanshi.  He promises to release Avni,but only if Omar is turned over to him, along with Singham and his fellow maverick cops, Simmba (Ranveer Singh) and Sooryavanshi (Akshay Kumar).  Singham won't do anything unless he is sure that Avni is alright, so Lanka will allow Simmba to visit his lair and see for himself.

Lanka's  evil plan is based on the Ramayana, casting himself as Ravan.  And that might have been a surprise except that the movie hammers home the Ramayana connection at every opportunity, cutting back and forth between the contemporary action and the performance of the Ramlila, making it absolutely clear that this plot is just like the Ramayana and pointing out the Ramayana counterparts of all of the characters, while the Ramlila's narration spells out exactly what the intended moral is.  

The action scenes are every bit as over the top as you'd expect from a Singham movie, but everything else is completely po-faced, from Singham's many, many dramatic speeches about family and vengeance to Avni making condescending remarks about people like her son Shaurya (Viren Vazirani) who consider the Ramayana to be mythology rather than history.

Things brighten up considerably when Simmba is on screen; Ranveer Singh switches between action hero and comic relief at the drop of a hat, but he seems to be having a fantastic time, and he livens up the overly serious action/drama/patriotic epic proceedings.

But my real problem with Singham Again is the problem that I have with all of the Cop Universe movies. Singham and friends are presented as the incorruptible ideal police officers, but they are happy to step outside of the law   and summarily execute people when they feel it's right. We're supposed to trust them toact as judge, jury and executioner because the movies assure us that they're good cops, but it doesn't want us to consider the possibility that these cops could be wrong, or even less  than perfect. Absolutely nobody points out that the only reason Lanka started his campaign of bloody revenge is because Singham and company executed his relatives without a trial.  

Simmba is fun and the action scenes are visually impressive, but overall it's less realistic than the time that Young Singham turned into Aquaman and rescued a mermaid princess.

The rare Triple Reverse Scooby-Doo.

 As the title implies, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 (2024) is the latest installment in the Bhool Bhulaiyaa franchise.  While it shares much of the cast of Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, and one key actor returns form the first movie, this is a spiritual sequel rather than a direct sequel; there's no shared universe, but character names are the same and plot points echo the previous films, up until the point when they do not.

The first real difference is in the choice of protagonist. In the first movie, Aditya (Akshay Kumar) is a psychiatrist, using the trappings of spiritualism to help a patient suffering from a spooky but ultimately natural problem. In the second movie, Ruhaan (Kartik Aaryan) is forced by circumstances to pretend to be Rooh Baba, and winds up dealing with a very real ghost. Here Ruhaan (Kartik Aaryan again) is already posing as Rooh Baba, cheerfully driving away fake ghosts and fleecing the wealthy and gullible with the help of his sidekick Tillu (Arun Kushwah.)

A potential client (Rajesh Sharma) turns the tables by faking a haunting by the ghost of his actually very much alive niece Meera (Triptii Dimri).  Even though they know he's a fake, Meera and her uncle need the help of Rooh Baba, and the video of him freaking out over an apparent ghost provides excellent blackmail material.

Meera's father (Vijay Raaz) is the Raja of Rakhtghat,but the entire family are living in squalor in the cowshed across form the palace. The place is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of Manjulika, a supremely talented princess of the family who murdered her brother Debendrenath two hundred years ago, was burned alive as punishment, returned as a ghost to kill her father, and was ultimately sealed up behind a scary door which must never be opened under any circumstances, which is surprisingly common in this sort of movie.  Ruhaan looks so much like the portrait of Prince Debendrenath that everyone assumes he is the prince's reincarnation, here to drive away Manjulika and restore the family to prosperity.  That is certainly the thesis of the family's spiritual advisor, a Rajpurohit (Manish Wadha), who tells Ruhaan that he must open the scary door, but only on the night of Durga Ashtami.

The family moves back into the palace and starts to live comfortably for the first time in ages - the villagers are sure that Manjulika is about to be exorcised, so they're willing to lend money to the Raja again, and once the palace is ghost free it can be sold for enough money to support them indefinitely, and pay Ruhaan a tidy commission.  And soon enough Mallika (Vidya Balan) and her team show up to handle the restoration; she's not the person Meera was expecting, but Mallika explains that he's suddenly left on a long vacation.

Spooky things begin to happen, because this is a haunted house movie. But Ruhaan quickly realizes the truth: the scary door is already open, and three grifters (Rajpal Yadav, Sanjay Mishra, and Ashwini Kalsekar) have been living in the forbidden room and faking the haunting to keep people away. Ruhaan knows a thing or two about faking hauntings, so he arranges a public ceremony to drive the ghost out,and asks Mallika to play the part of Manjulika.  Everyone buys it, and nobody seems to notice that Mallika really threw herself into the part.

The "ghost" is gone, and the palace is put up for sale, drawing a few interested buyers,but no one is willing to pay the Raja's asking price. Mallika's team accidentally break a wall, revealing yet another scary door, and the Rajpuroihit discovers that Manjulika had an older sister, Anjulika.  The Raja and Ruhaan open the new scary door but don't discover much, and soon after the glamorous Mandira (Madhuri Dixit) arrives to buy the palace, though she won't sign anything until Durga Ashtami.

And then rich jerk Vicky Khanna (Shataf Figar) arrives and announces he's willing to buy immediately. He can easily match Mandira's price, so the raja quickly agrees.  Khanna doesn't want to restore the palace, he wants to remodel it and turn it into a five star hotel, which is always a recipe for disaster in an Indian ghost movie.  It makes the ghosts angry, and it seems to infuriate both Mallika and Mandira. Khanna dies in an apparent car accident that night, and suddenly Mandira is the top bidder again. 

The haunting intensifies, the masked red burning phantom of Manjulika appears to multiple characters,and both Mallika and Manjira are acting very strange indeed.  The Rajpirohit prepares Ruhaan for a final supernatural confrontation, but what nobody realizes is that this isn't a house haunted by two sisters, it's haunted by three.  

"Bhoolm bhulaiyaa" translates roughly to maze or labyrinth, and this is easily the most labyrinthine plot in the series, with a haunting that is being faked by a different ghost.  While it's complicated, the plot mostly hangs together. It's never especially scary,but the smoldering masked ghost of Manjulika is an arresting image.  And it's a movie with its heart in the right place, though I am not really qualified to judge how well it handles the social issues it touches on.

All that aside, though, there are two real reasons to watch Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3: Madhuri Dixit and Vidya Balan. They're both veteran actresses at the top of their game here, mixing spooky scenery chewing, quiet menace, and surprisingly touching moments of genuine emotion.