It's probably complicated.

Abhay Deol is the nephew of Dharmandra, the "He-Man" of Bollywood, and the cousin of nineties action stars Bobby and Sunny Deol.  Despite belonging to the Deol dynasty, though, Abhay has really focused on what's called "parallel cinema", and even when he dabbles in mainstream films, he tends to play complicated and nuanced characters rather than the usual action and romantic roles.  So when I sat down to watch Velle ( 2021), I knew I would be getting an Abhay Deal movie, but I did not realize how very Abhay Deol the movie would be.

Deol plays Rishi, a ghost-writer in the film industry who hopes to finally make a movie under his own name. He's hoping that Bollywood star Rohini (Mouni Roy) will agree to play the lead, and when they finally meet, he begins narrating the story to her in traditional Bollywood fashion.

Cut to Rahul (Karan Deol), Rambo (Savant Singh Premi) and Raju (Vishesh Tiwari), a trio of high school slackers who call their tight-knit circle of friends "R3".  (They all look too old to be in high school, but the film helpfully explains that they've failed the twelfth grade several times.)  When they meet the principal's troubled daughter Riya (Anya Singh) she quickly becomes their partner in mischief, joining the group as R4.

Riya wants to dance, but her father insists that she focus on her studies, and forces her to take late night tuition sessions with one of the teachers.  When the teacher touches her inappropriately, her father thinks she's lying to get out of work.  Riya turns to her friends, and Rahul suggests that she just leave, go to another city and study dance.  Of course, she'll need money, so they hatch a ridiculous scheme to fake Riya's kidnapping and get her father to pay a ransom.

And it works!  Riya leaves town and enrolls in dance school.  The plan is for the other three Rs to join her later, but before they can, Riya is actually kidnapped.  The real kidnappers want a million rupees, but instead of contacting her father they accidentally contact Rahul.  He promises to get the money somehow.

Meanwhile, Rishi and Rohini have grown closer as he works his way through the story.  They are so close that when Rishi receives a call from his mother telling him that his father is in the hospital and they'll need a million rupees for the operation, Rohini immediately volunteers to help.  The money is withdrawn from the bank, and as the pair are driving to the hospital, a stone flies through the windscreen, Rohini is knocked out and seriously injured, the car crashes, and the money is stolen . . . by Rahul, Rambo and Raja.

And then things get complicated.  Riya is in real and immediate peril.  The three Rs try to negotiate her release, but it gets much harder when they realize that Rahul has lost his phone.  Rishi is scouring the city looking for the money he needs to save his father.  And Riya's father has put lazy but very clever police inspector Rajni Verma (Rajesh Kumar) on the case.

Velle handles its shifts in genre well, but I have questions!  Rishi is narrating a story which he says is fictional, but with some elements of truth.  The movie certainly implies that that movie plot is the story of Rahul and Raya, but nobody bats an eye about the story within a story escaping from within the story, and Rishi doesn't seem to recognize any of R3, so if they weren't his story, then what is his movie actually about?  Why does every single named character who appears onscreen have a name that starts with R, and what;s with all the Rs appearing in the background of various scenes?  Is the police inspector doing a deliberate Rishi Kapoor impression?  Is all of this deliberate ambiguity or just me missing things because I am watching a movie that's in a language I do not actually speak?

Having questions is good, I think?  I will certainly be thinking about this movie for a while.  And there's one thing I know to be true: Abhay Deol stars in some weird movies.

(And yes, Karan Deol is related; he's Sunny Deol's son.)

Bahubali: The Clone Wars.

Bahubali: The Lost Legends (2017-) is an animated series set in the Bahubali universe.  The series acts as a prequel to the movies, detailing the adventures of the young Amarendra Bahubali (Viraj Adhav) and his obviously evil brother Bhallaldeva (Manoj Pandey) as they compete and cooperate in an attempt to prove themselves worthy of the throne of the kingdom of Mahishmati.  Other important characters include unflappable Queeen Mother Sivagami (Manini Mishra), her treacherous husband Bijjaladeva (Mukesh pandey), and the throne's incorruptible retainer Kattappa (Samay Thakkar).  The series has original characters as well, most notably Pradhan Guru (Vinod Kulkarni), who is obviously up to something, but I haven't seen enough of the series to know what that is.   

Amazon has only two episodes of Lost Legends available for streaming.  In the first episode, Riot in Mahishtami, when food shortages and systemic prejudice lead to the death of a government official, Bahubali is charged with dispensing justice while still preserving the city's fragile peace.  because Bahubali represents an ideal king, he does this by listening to what people have to say, and in the end he manages to uphold the letter of the law while still striving to make amends for a historic injustice.  

The second episode, The Blood Moon, is a bit more action oriented; Bahubali opens an ancient urn, and when a local family disappears, the people assume that demons released by the prince are responsible.  Naturally, Bahubali investigates, and discovers that the truth is much more Scooby Doo.  This episode is notable for a much more nuanced depiction of tribal peoples than in the actual Bahubali movies.  

Bahubali is not the only Indian movie franchise to get a cartoon spinoff, but it's it's much more straightlaced than some of the others.  While Little Singham is wooing mermaids and fighting ancient sorcerers at the bottom of the sea, Bahubali is . . . . doing the same sort of things that he does in the movies.  The scale is much smaller, though.  The Bahubali movies are epics, with massive and deeply improbable battles, stupid vows, gorgeous musical numbers, and queens who SHOUT ALL THE TIME!!!!  Cartoon Sivagami is remarkably restrained, and there are a few minor skirmishes and one murder attempt but nobody enters the city via catapult.

That's not a bad thing, though.  The quieter tone and slower pace means that the characters have a chance to be fleshed out a bit more - instead of characters telling each other that Bahubali is an ideal king, he gets to show his kingliness on a regular basis.  It's not a necessary tie in by any means, but it does expand the universe and fill out the characters.

It's like the mirror universe version of "Jab We Met."

 Uday Chopra is the youngest son of legendary Bollywood director Yash Chopra, and he has a number of credits as a writer, assistant director, and producer.  As an actor he is probably best known for his role as Ali Khan, the comedic sidekick in the Dhoom series.  But there was a brief time in the early 2000's when people were really trying hard to make "Uday Chopra, romantic hero" happen.  And that's how Neal 'n' Nikki (2005) happened.

Neal (Uday Chopra) is an enthusiastic athlete and self-proclaimed "super star" leading a contented life on his family's horse ranch in Canada. Neal loves the ladies and leads a very active social life, but when his parents start pressuring him to agree to an arranged marriage, he's happy to go along with it; as he explains to his stereotypically henpecked friends, he has terrible taste in women and he trusts his parents' judgement.  (Does this movie lean heavily into skeezy "women you date vs. women you marry" tropes?  Enthusiastically.)  After a few false starts, his parents arrange a match with Good Indian Girl Sweety (Richa Pallod), and Neal is . . . reasonably pleased.  However, he asks permission to spend the twenty one days before the engagement in Vancouver, so that he can have a little fun.

Of course, when Neal says he wants to have a little fun, he means women.  His plan is to meet twenty one women, one for each remaining night of unmarried life, and he starts off strong, almost accidentally scoring a date with famous model Kristy (Kristy McQuade).  (Does this movie also lean heavily into the all too common Bollywood trope that white women are just there to be objectified?  Oh yes.)

It's on that date that Neal meets bartender Nikki (Tanisha Mukherji), and she's . . . awful.  Loud, obnoxious, aggressive, and very drunk.  She's also just been fired, and celebrates her unemployment by dancing on the tables.  Neal is suddenly paying a lot of attention, which gives Abhishek Bachchan the opening to swoop in and take Kristy away.  By this point Nikki is very drunk indeed, and she asks Neal to take her home.  He doesn't know where she lives, so he takes her to a nearby hotel, the Thorny Rhino, and . . . 

Okay, nothing happens.  Nikki falls asleep, and Neal leaves her alone.  We're supposed to think that this show's Neal's inner core of nobility, but he still took an obviously intoxicated woman to a hotel room - way to show the bare minimum of human decency at the last possible minute, Neal.  

Of course, this is a sex comedy, so thanks to a series of unfortunate events Neal is naked and standing beside the sleeping Nikki when the police arrive to raid the hotel.  The misunderstandings are eventually cleared up, and Neal and Nikki go their separate ways.  Neal continues his quest while Nikki goes back to drinking and bouncing from one job to another.  (Does the movie ever confront the issue of Nikki's obvious drinking problem?  It does not.  We're supposed to find it quirky.)

Once again, sex comedy, so every time Neal looks like he's about to achieve his goal, he's interrupted.  By Nikki.  Along the way, they get to know each other a bit better, and Nikki offers to take him to a small resort which is full of beautiful women.  Neal agrees, which means it's time for a road trip.  And whenever the hero and heroine take a road trip together in a Bollywood movie, they are bound to grow closer.

Of course it's a trick - Nikki wants Neal to help her make her ex boyfriend Trish (Alexandre Montez) jealous.  Naturally, they do that by staging a mid-nineties Bollywood romantic song and dance number, and the movie briefly becomes entertaining. Nikki wins Trish back, then dumps him, getting the closure that she needs.  She takes Neal to a bizarre midsummer Christmas party to repay the debt, and that's when they realize that they love each other after all.  They spend the night together, and after an awkward morning after Nikki preemptively dumps Neal before he can reject her, not realizing that he's about to propose.  After a bitter argument they go their separate ways.

Neal returns home and finally meets his fiance Sweety, along with Sweety's family, including her cousin Nikki.  The movie is no longer a sex comedy, it's a straight romance. Will Nikki and Neal be able to overcome their differences and unite, finally becoming the Neal 'n' Nikki that they were clearly meant to be?  Probably, but they're not very likeable, so at this point in the movie I was much more invested in the romantic travails of incredibly minor character Happy (Gaurav Gera), who's spent most of his limited screen-time singing traditional Punjabi songs in the background.  Can Happy be happy with the sweet girl of his dreams?  Hopefully!  And Neal and Nikki are there too, I guess.

Citizen Kane meets Sunset Boulevard, but with more dance numbers.

CLIMAX (2021) falls in the uneasy territory between quirky art film and loud and glitzy entertainer, being both a character study of the rise and fall of a wealthy eccentric, and a silly detective story in which the two big crimes are committed by different people, in the same room, about twenty minutes apart.

After a failed political campaign, eccentric multimillionaire Vijay Modi (Rajendra Prasad) has spent the last two years living in a hotel room, brooding and occasionally presiding over tawdry parties like an aging Jay Gatsby.  It's not exactly a life of solitude; in addition to the parties, Modi makes frequent talk show appearances to discuss his bizarre and often offensive statements on Twitter.  Still, Modi has separated himself from his businesses and his family; both his wives and their respective sons are staying at the family mansion, though he does pay them the occasional visit.

When he notices the young and beautiful Navya (Sasha Singh, looking a bit like a young Juhi Chawla) watching him, Modi is intrigued.  He thinks . . . well, it's pretty obvious what he thinks, but perhaps he also thinks he's found his Nick Carraway, since when he finally meets the young woman he offers her a great deal of money to stay the night and listen to his story and his philosophy of life.  Which he delivers as a freestyle rap, because it's that kind of movie. 

The next morning, Navya leaves in a hurry, and later that day Modi's body is discovered in the hotel room, badly mutilated.  The rest of the movie is a mystery, as the police explore Modi's history of cynical self-promotion, his brief (and self-financed) career as a movie star, the quick collapse of his political career as soon as people learned his political positions.  And then there's that mountain of debt and the nine life insurance policies taken out in the weeks before his death.

It's not a very hard mystery.  Everything hinges on the the mysterious woman who shut off the CCTV cameras, and once her identity becomes clear the solution is obvious.  That's not necessarily a problem, since the mystery is just an excuse to explore Modi's character.  

And that's the tricky part; the movie has to make us want to spend time with Modi.  And they do try - Prasad's performance is great, but Modi as presented is never as charming as he or the movie wants us to think he is, and he certainly isn't as profound as the movie pretends.  Most of his cynical platitudes sound like a moody teenager who has just discovered Ayn Rand, and while he sometimes stumbles into a reasonable opinion, "Children should take care of their aging parents" is not a stunning new insight.  CLIMAX is a well-executed character study about a character who really isn't that interesting.

Couldn't get away.

At first glance, Looop Lapeta (2022) might look like your average movie about a woman stuck in a time loop as she desperately runs through the streets, trying to raise a small fortune in order to save the life of her hopeless boyfriend.  It look s that way on a second glance, too.  The third glance is when things start getting weird.

Savi (Taapsee Pannu) is a former track star whose career was ended due to a bad fall during a race.  She's tempted to end it all, but her life is saved by Satya (Tahir Raj Bhasin), and the pair quickly fall into a relationship.  The good news is that Satya has all the enthusiasm, charm, and loyalty of a big floofy puppy.  Unfortunaterly, he also has all of the brains and common sense of the same big floofy puppy; Satya is a slacker and compulsive gambler who works for violent restaurateur and drug kingpin Victor (Dibyendu Bhattacharya).  Satya is really, really into the relationship with Savi, while she's just tired of running and ready to settle down.

It's Savi's birthday, so Satya asks Victor for an advance on his salary so that he can buy her a nice present.  Victor isntead offers to let him work for it; all Satya has top do is deliver a package to a particular address, then bring a bag of money back within eighty minutes, which is just long enough for Victor's turkey to cook.  (Honestly, the eighty minute turkey is the most unbelievable thing about the movie.)  Satya is, as mentioned, a compulsive gambler who is not very smart, so he decides to gamble with the money, return the original amount to Victor, and keep the profits for himself.  Within eighty minutes.  Shockingly, it does not go well.

Savi is trying to wrap her mind around a positive pregnancy test when she gets a panicked phone call from Satya.  He explains the situation, and she vows to find the money to save him.  First she tries to get the money from her estranged father and former coach Atul (KC Shankar), but there's too much bitterness there, especially since she has never accepted Yash (Varun Pande), the man her father started dating after her mother died.  

Savi keeps trying, in the process crossing paths with Jacob (Sameer Kevin Roy), a cabdriver who is heartbroken that his beloved Julia (Shreya Dhanwanthary) is marrying another man.  Meanwhile, Satya decides to rob the jewelry store owned by Malesh (Rajendra Chawla), only to be interrupted by Malesh's incompetent sons, who are also trying to rob the place.  In the confusion, Satya is shot and killed in front of Savi.

Savi remembers Satya telling the story of Savitri, who matched wits with the death god Yama in order to bring back her husband Satyavan.  (And yes, our leads are named Savi and Satya.  Subtle allusions are for cowards.)  

And then the day starts again, because this is a remake of Run, Lola, Run, giving Savi another chance to get it right.  All she manages to do is get Satya killed by a different person.  She remembers more of the story, and then she's back at the beginning of the loop, ready to try again and this time try to make all the right choices.

A good remake, Bollywood or otherwise, should bring something new to the story.  Otherwise, why bother?  Looop Lapeta shifts the cultural context of the original film, but it also shifts the genre; it's not just a thriller, it's also a quirky romantic comedy with gangsters and time loops.  It's shiny and fun and manages to feel new, even when telling a story that I've heard before.

Whaaaat?

 This is apparently real.  There's a long way to go between "announcement" and "actual movie that I can watch", but I'm going to be excited for a while anyway.

You get what it says on the tin.

Some movies take a while to figure out; they are full of symbolism and careful characterization, all leading to a deeper meaning than what you see on the surface; sometimes, there are multiple layers of meaning that a careful viewer can sift through.  Biskoth (2020) is not one of those movies.

Dharmarajan (Aadukalam Naren) is a hard working baker with a small business selling biscuits to local stores.  With the help of his friend Narasimhan (Anandaraj), and especially with some useful advice from his young son Raja, "Magic Biscuits" becomes a success, and Dharmarajan dreams that one day it will become a big business, with Raja as general manager.  He dies before his dream can come true, but sure enough, after many years Magic Biscuits is a big company, with Raja (Santhanam) . . . working on the factory floor.  Narasimhan runs the company now.

Raja is ambitious.  He wants to fulfill his father's dream and take over the company, and he'd also like to move his relationship with Narasimhan's daughter Laya (Swathi Muppala) from "childhood friend" to "girlfriend."  But his immediate problem is his supervisor Ganesh (Bharath Reddy), a smug jerk who has used Raja's hard work and bright ideas to secure a promotion for himself.

Raja volunteers at a nearby rest home, where he clashes with the beautiful Doctor Anitha (Tara Alisha).  It's also where he meets Janaki (Sowcar Janaki), a resident with a gift for storytelling.  Janaki tells him a story about a brave prince who was unjustly passed over for the throne, but who earns another shot at becoming the heir through his skill and bravery.  And then it rains money for no reason.

The next day Raja notices that events in his life start mirroring events in the story, culminating with money raining don on him while his bike is stopped under an overpass.  He returns to Janaki for another story, this time giving her suggestions to shape it into a cool Seventies action thriller which ends with the hero getting the girl and the company.  It doesn't work - Janaki's parts of the story come true, but Raja's additions do not, leading to a confusing day of failure.

Humbled, Raja asks for one last story, and Janaki tells him a story about 12th Century Rome, in which the Princess of Rome's faithful Spartan bodyguard gets everything that he ever wanted and then ruins everything.  Raja is bad with subtext, so he follows the same path.

You may be thinking that this sounds an awful lot like the Hollywood movie Bedtime Stories.  Is this just a Bollywood ripoff of an Adam Sandler movie?  Of course not.  This is a Tamil film, making it a Kollywood ripoff of an Adam Sandler movie.  This is not a deep movie, it's a harmless bit of fluff. The stories are fun, at least, and each echoes a different movie; the tale of the prince looks a lot like Bahubali, the cool seventies thriller has a cameo by Jeeva playing Rajnikanth playing the title character from Billa, and the story of the Roman princess sounds like 300 with even less historical accuracy. And the process of cultural translation has at least provided the film with a very clear moral: Be nice to old people, because they have magical powers.