Maa: Kajol’s Thriller Has Myth & Motherhood — But No Real Scares
| A loose script tangled in myth and mythology gives Maa a confused core; its orthodox fear of pregnancy dulls the genre’s bite and grasp of female anxiety, writes Ishita Sengupta .
| | | | | Cast: Kajol, Indraneil Sengupta, Ronit Roy, Kherin Sharma | | | | EVERYTHING about Vishal Furia’s Maa is about the optics. The film is touted as mytho-horror, a shorthand of mythological horror, which has existed before. Aditya Sarpotdar’s Munjya (2024) is an example, yet Maa spells it out as though the film is a product undergoing rebranding by a new CEO. Again, given the title, the end credits feature names of the makers and producers with their mothers' names pencilled in the middle. Even for a persuasive film this is too much posturing, and Maa is far from it. Hindi cinema has reached a point where the success of a genre should frighten us. The moment something works, 10 similar projects are lined up, and this does not consider the sequels of the patient zero. Furia’s Maa is an upshot of this; it belongs in the same world as Shaitaan (2024) and exists because of the latter’s success. Vikas Bahl’s film was about a young girl being trapped by black magic and manipulated by a stranger. Shaitaan ’s conflict between good and evil was clear, but the roots were dunked in superstition, and the intent was vile. The crisis of a girl following the orders of a grown-up man felt specifically designed to cater to the male gaze, and its success only validated it. In comparison, Furia’s Maa leans on mythology and uses it not just to supply subtext but to authenticate it. Between the shared parents' universe, it is difficult to tell which one is more nefarious. | | | Mistry: A Soulless Adaptation Of Monk
| In Mistry , director Rishab Seth reimagines the popular American drama Monk in an Indian setting but waters down everything that made the procedural drama fun.
| | | | | Cast: Ram Kapoor, Mona Singh, Shikha Talsania, Kshitish Date | | | | THE CURRENT LANDSCAPE of the Hindi language streaming space is so dire that for every bad show, there is something worse waiting in the wings. This not just complicates comparisons but makes objective criticism impossible. For every “this is really the worst show” thought in your head, there is another informed thought that counters with “but don’t you remember that ?” Mistry, the new JioHotstar show, is a little of this and that. Which is to say, it is an objectively bad series, but a worse series than it exists. Directed by Rishab Seth, Mistry is the remake of the popular American drama Monk. And while Seth reimagines it in an Indian setting, he also waters down everything fun in the procedural drama, making a damp squib of a series. The premise is the same: a detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder, grappling with the sudden death of his wife, helps the police force to solve cases. Much of the allure of Monk resided in its character development and in using humour not as a means to make light of mental illness, but as a vessel to make it accessible. Mistry goes for cheap thrills. Psst! The toughest cases need the quirkiest detectives. From Sherlock to Sherdil , browse their case files now — only on OTTplay Premium. Armaan Mistry (Ram Kapoor) is perturbed by everything. Crumbs on the floor, pencils not arranged in order, dirt on the walls, the sight of someone eating sloppily. Sharanya (Shikha Talsania) is his caretaker-cum-nurse. A single mother, she follows him around with a box of tissues and promptly hands them out whenever Armaan cowers in annoyance. He is soon called by the Mumbai Police for help. Although ACP Sehmat Siddiqui ( Mona Singh ) and her subordinate Bunty (Kshitish Date) are not thrilled about it, they soon realise they need his assistance. Mistry might not be the easiest person to be around, but he is the sharpest person in the room. — I.S. | | | F1: In Loving Memory Of The Blockbuster
| Joseph Kosinski's F1 is designed to make us realise that this is the last gasp of superstardom in an age where influence is a profession rather than a halo. Rahul Desai reviews. | | | | | Cast: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem | | | | I HAVE THIS VIVID IMAGE of the future in my head. It’s a bit like the opening vignettes of Interstellar . People buy tickets and shuffle into a museum. This museum was once an out-of-business IMAX theatre. On its giant screen — a screen that’s alien to an ultra-digitalised planet — rushes of a bygone era flicker to life. There’s a long queue outside a section called “Stardom”. The term is strange and antiquated, like a sound of history that current generations have only heard of. They think it has something to do with space travel; perhaps it does. As the kids take their seats, a curated montage of two ‘old’ titles begins. The crowd goes “ooh” when a dashing chap named Tom Cruise lights up the screen in Top Gun: Maverick ; the crowd goes “aah” when a hunky guy named Brad Pitt lights up the screen in F1 . The men no longer exist, but these two movies are the closest approximation of a world in which aura mattered. There is polite applause. The guided tour moves on to the next section. Maybe more Jurassic Park than Interstellar . Snatch , Fury , Once Upon A Time In...Hollywood | Watch these Brad Pitt flicks now...only on OTTplay Premium. | Joseph Kosinski, the director of both Top Gun: Maverick and F1 , knows what he’s doing. One might assume he’s wistful for the transcendental fame that Cruise and Pitt represent. By pitting their analogue personas against younger and brasher heroes on the biggest screen possible, he has conflated the nostalgia for old-school blockbusters with the nostalgia for pre-social-media celebrity. Their rivals are keypad-tapping successors who don’t get the hype — until they do; it’s a war for relevance, not victory. One might even say F1 is a spiritual sequel to Maverick , where Pitt’s character — a combative veteran who comes out of motor-racing wilderness to mentor a prodigy in a crisis-stricken team — becomes a celebration of yore. But once the rose-tinted glasses are off, it’s the extinction of stardom that looms large in Kosinski’s filmmaking. It’s not immortality but mortality that shapes his storytelling. | | | The one newsletter you need to decide what to watch on any given day. Our editors pick a show, movie, or theme for you from everything that’s streaming on OTT. | | Each week, our editors pick one long-form, writerly piece that they think is worthy of your attention, and dice it into easily digestible bits for you to mull over. | | In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an hour on this. | | | Hindustan Media Ventures Limited,
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