It’s 2019 and yet in some of the year’s biggest scripts, actresses continued to play second fiddle. Save for Gully Boy’s Safeena, most of them were devoid of a personality. In one of the highest grossers of the year, Kabir Singh, Preeti exists only to get exploited, and in Kesari, we still don’t know if Parineeti Chopra is a ghost or a memory.

Hrithik Roshan’s rendition of Anand Kumar is basically playing a tanned version of Hrithik Roshan who has single-handedly murdered the Bihari accent. But Super 30’s biggest failure is as a biopic: We are told little about the genius mind of Anand Kumar, even though Roshan occupies almost every frame of the film.

In the last six years, Lootera’s legacy has assumed a life of its own. Now, the film feels so much like a personal indulgence: It wordlessly captures a specific kind of yearning that we often fail to define during the length and breadth of our own lives. Even though we recognise it the moment we see it.

At this point, Divine, who has fronted crackling music collaborations, founded a band, an independent hip-hop label, a hip-hop fest, and inspired a Bollywood film, has stopped being just a musician. Instead, he is now, a cultural commodity – a gully-bred Indian rap franchise. A new documentary unearths Vivian Fernandes, the man behind Divine.

Anubhav Sinha’s Article 15 revolves around an upper-class police officer investigating the gang-rape and murders of two minor lower-caste girls. For a film industry that tip-toes around caste, the mere existence of Article 15 is commendable. But the movie often feels disconnected from the ills of casteism.

Every woman watching Kabir Singh isn't just watching a film. They're inevitably imagining a scenario where they are stripped of their agency, only to have a man cross the boundaries of what qualifies as love and what it is never anything but violence. The trouble is, the box-office is applauding.

Disguised as a love story, Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Kabir Singh justifies what Indian men have been trying to normalise since time immemorial: That anger is a man’s birthright. That rage is necessary for a man to exert his dominance over a woman and the world needs to accept it.

It’s hard to remain invested in a show whose physical universe doesn’t come across as dystopian at all. Leila’s identifiers of the future — social inequality, water shortages, and extremism — aren’t as shocking for these are troubles that play out in present-day India with alarming regularity.

A woman’s body is both, her biggest weakness and her greatest weapon. If the world derives pleasure out of brutalising it, women respond to that assault by using their bodies as tools of resistance. Ashwin Saravanan’s Game Over thrives on this precise duality and there’s no actor who can bring this out better than the physically alert Taapsee Pannu.

At one point in the opening episode of the second season of Big Little Lies, Meryl Streep’s Mary Louise nonchalantly makes an admission, “I’m a wanter myself..” After witnessing her terrifying turn in these 44 minutes, I’m a wanter too. I want more Meryl Streep.

Nahnatchka Khan’s Always Be My Maybe isn’t perfect but it is that rare rom-com that comes the closest to responding to the modern times by making its lead actress’s professional identity the sexiest thing about her. In the movie, love involves compromise, just not that of a woman’s career.

Ali Abbas Zafar’s Bharat goes the extra mile to prove that anything can happen in a Salman Khan film. The film feels like a parody that reduces the horrors of Partition to a millennial MTV reality show and has Khan play a 70-year-old with the attitude of a 20-year old.

Richard Shepard’s The Perfection is a film of our times: It is designed to fuel polarising opinions and is impossible to dissect without giving out spoilers. It’s a given that a thriller that uses sexual abuse as its plot twist is bound to teether on the lines of being exploitative and The Perfection is no different.

In this week’s forgettable Chopsticks, Abhay Deol plays a conman who has a refined taste. His filmography is now littered with peculiar outings that primarily serve the cachet of being Abhay Deol. And his early films – Dev.D and Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! – resemble the slate of an actor who peaked even before his career took off.

It’s now been almost a year since Priyanka Chopra decided to no longer be a part of Bharat but Salman Khan seems to have been unable to get over her decision. The digs he has taken at her since then are a prime example of how the Indian male’s ego is unable to process a simple “no” from a woman.

Aziz Ansari performed his comeback stand-up tour, “Road to Nowhere” in India this weekend. In the sold-out show in Mumbai, the comedian’s new set spiritedly acknowledged the predominant concern of the post-Me Too world: Are you trivialising the transgressions of outed men if you’re willing to renegotiate with their art?

Biographical films, by design, are expected to remain true to facts. But PM Narendra Modi is bound by no such restrictions, mainly because director Omung Kumar hasn’t made a film. Instead he’s directed a 131-minute-long product placement of Narendra Modi.

Omung Kumar B, the director of PM Narendra Modi, is a man of contradictions. He claims he is not “politically inclined” but endorses the Prime Minister by directing a biopic on him. He insists that he is a neutral filmmaker, because he did not meet the PM – only sought his permission.

In Pyaar Ka Punchnama, Sonu Ki Titu Ki Sweety and now De De Pyaar De, Luv Ranjan creates male universes where women are always the enemy. For Ranjan, the joke isn’t just on the woman; it is the woman. Clearly, he understands us as much as Vijay Mallya understands the concept of debt.

Even though De De Pyaar De revolves around a 50-year-old man falling for a 26-year-old woman, it never quite addresses the peculiarities of being with someone from a different generation. It doesn't help that Ajay Devgn, used to playing heroes who are half-his age, plays Ashish with the attitude of a 30-year-old from Delhi.

Student of the Year 2 is a bland and thoughtless knockoff of its predecessor. It lacks originality, so much so that “Ishq Wala Love” becomes the intolerable “School Wala Love”. With Ananya Panday and Tara Sutaria reduced to props, it seems like the movie is written only for Tiger Shroff’s muscles.

There’s more to Netflix’s Knock Down the House than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her journey to becoming a Congresswoman. Instead, the documentary is a record of the struggle of “getting everyday Americans represented by everyday Americans” and the near lack of space that the nation’s politics reserves for women.

The lonely don’t endure loneliness; they live with it. Sanjoy Nag’s Yours Truly evocatively establishes the essence of that feeling through the eyes of 57-year-old Mithi Kumar, played by a terrific Soni Razdan, who gives a face to middle-aged longing.

Back in 1981, 26-year-old Soni Razdan debuted with a small role in 36 Chowringhee Lane, a film that revolves around a lonely, older woman. Today, Razdan is 62. Life has come full circle: This week, she stars as the lonely, older woman in Sanjoy Nag’s Yours Truly.

Bilkis Bano was 19 when she was gang-raped in Godhra during the 2002 pogrom; her family was murdered in front of her. Seventeen years later, the Supreme Court instructed the Gujarat government to pay her ₹50 lakh as compensation – the highest amount provided to a rape victim in India. The order recognises not just the state’s inaction but also its obligations to survivors of horrific acts of violence.

Unlike the West that depends on Hollywood comedians to deliver intelligent shows, most Indian web-series created by Indian stand-ups feel like an extension of their comedy specials. But Biswa Kalyan Rath who is insistent on not letting his involvement in creating Laakhon Mein Ek dictate its ownership, could be the exception.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge reclaims the idea of female coping in Fleabag. It remains a mordant exploration of what comes into play when women aren’t made to obsess over terminating the umbilical cord of pain, but instead taught to cope by tolerating it.

Kalank, a period epic about star-crossed lovers in the time of Partition, has all the makings of being the next Thugs of Hindostan. Its threadbare plot feels as believable as Vijay Mallya’s innocence and has the shock value of a rejected saas-bahu serial.

Biswa Kalyan Rath’s Laakhon Mein Ek comes across as a rarity in the Indian landscape of fiction series by refusing to drag season one’s resonant storyline to inspire a second season. Instead, it paints a compelling portrait of the breakdown of India’s healthcare system.

Vivek Agnihotri's The Tashkent Files keeps raising questions and presents multiple conspiracy theories on Lal Bahadur Shastri's death like an insufferable Quora thread. By the end of the movie, we’re back where we started – no one is certain how Shastri died or why Agnihotri continues making films.

Criminal Justice comes across more like a faithful remake than an adaptation of the eponymous BBC series, undone by its inability to contextualise the proceedings and Indianise them. The sluggish, over-explanatory pace of the initial episodes ruins the chance of a tense build-up.

Ashvin Kumar’s No Fathers in Kashmir, is a tender portrait of first love in the time of the Kashmir crisis. It’s a riveting narrative that feels novel, given that most of Hindi cinema’s love stories set in Kashmir remain completely unaffected by the state’s chaotic past and present.

In the borefest set in 1971 called Romeo Akbar Walter, John Abraham plays a RAW spy. For an espionage thriller, the movie has just one chase scene, and even that is so inept that it’ll make you believe that apart from losing cricket matches and wars, Pakistanis also can’t run.

In the age of e-books, the purpose of a library, whose datedness once gave a neighbourhood character, is probably only to invoke nostalgia. We feel sad when our neighbourhood libraries die, but we do little to ensure they survive.

Super Deluxe rests at the intersection of three stories where our greatest beliefs are pitted against lethal ills: god vs porn, marriage vs a woman’s right to sexual pleasure, and family vs freedom.

Jordan Peele is an attentive filmmaker with the mind of an anthropologist and there’s ample proof of it in Us. The movie is primarily invested in uncovering what is at stake when our fractured past unleashes itself on a society that doesn’t want to recognise it anymore.

Female baldness, unlike male baldness, doesn’t invite sympathy – it’s a marker of inadequacy. It’s this narrative that debutante director Qassim Kallow attempts to dissect in Gone Kesh with the story of a small-town girl suffering from alopecia. But the movie does not do justice to a bold subject.

Vasan Bala’s Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota is an affectionate paean to childhood dreams without any filters of practicality as well as a tender tribute to a life spent at – and elevated by – the movies. Almost every frame of the film is a treasure hunt of retro movie references.

Ritesh Batra spent close to a year to put together Photograph through global pre-sales, selling it in every territory of the world to different distributors before actually shooting it. It’s a remarkable demonstration of a director maximising his reputation to buy his stories the kind of independence that even mainstream filmmakers crave for.

The Indian election episode of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj is a primer on the upcoming polls. Even if Minhaj didn’t intend it, the episode, with its alarmist tone, buys entirely into the “There is No Alternative” theory floated by the BJP.

Photograph marks Ritesh Batra’s return to writing and directing a Hindi feature film six years after The Lunchbox. His “star-crossed lovers” are separated by class, religion, and aspiration. And yet, both of them lead their lives for others, in this coming-of-age story.

In the last three years, Sanya Malhotra has acted in films like Pataakha and Badhaai Ho, which offer a testament to her versatility. Now with her extraordinary performance in Ritesh Batra’s Photograph, the actress is finally ready to step out of Dangal’s shadow.

In the decade that she has been in Bollywood, Rasika Dugal has happily inhabited films such as Manto with a single-mindedness that serves her characters without drawing attention to herself. It’s why it’s impossible to forget how her characters mould a film, even when you might fail to remember her presence in them.

Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti’s Made in Heaven dissects the transactional nature of Indian weddings and critiques the concealed social regressiveness of urban India. It’s also a rare show that explores homosexuality as an Indian identity instead of reducing it to an empty statement.

Sujoy Ghosh's Badla, starring Amitabh Bachchan and Tapsee Pannu suffers from an acute Kahaani hangover. But unlike the Vidya Balan-starrer, Badla falls short of being extraordinary or ingenious because it doesn't manage to fully sustain the mystery of its unreliable narrator.

A dacoit film set in Chambal and headlined by an all-male cast is hardly the expected backdrop for a biting commentary on gender prejudice. But for all the testosterone simmering on the surface, Abhishek Chaubey and Sudip Sharma infuse Sonchiriya with grassroots feminism.

Alex Lehman’s deeply moving Paddleton, a dramedy about terminal illness and assisted suicide is built on unassuming moments. Moments that challenge the common perception of what really constitutes love and who gets the luxury of being remembered as a couple.

Set in the ravines of Chambal in 1975, Sonchiriya resembles a Western, but presents itself as an atmospheric mood piece. The dacoits in the movie ponder deep questions like, do the deaths they inflict serve a higher purpose, and is their life meant to be their punishment?

If Kartik Aaryan and Kriti Sanon’s Luka Chuppi is to be believed, all you need to be convinced about marriage, is live with your partner for 20 days, have sex, make Maggi, two cups of chai, and play catch inside the house. Even a meme conveys more about live-ins than this logic-defying, unfunny movie.

At a time when award ceremonies – especially the Academy Awards – are proving to be woefully predictable while striving only for political correctness, the unrehearsed-ness of Olivia Colman’s winning moment felt a little too precious. The Oscars still continue to appeal because they promise us surprising moments like these.

Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt deliver power-packed performances in Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy. But the movie soon becomes predictable and seems stubborn in playing out like a 101 primer on life in the Indian slum. After 18 songs, you come out of the theatre learning as much about gully rap in India as you did going into it.

This week, screenwriter Gazal Dhaliwal will introduce to the world her most anticipated heroine in Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, the first mainstream lesbian romance poised to go down in Bollywood history as a watershed moment. It marks the end of her decade-long struggle to be “seen”.

If we’re to believe the avant-garde designers of the NaMo Merchandise, the fashion trend that is going to take 2019 by a storm is unfulfilled election promises in hues of saffron and deep blue. I’d dare Govinda to wear this.

Debutante director Ivan Ayr's Soni, isn’t as much a film about gender equality as it is about the continued endurance of gender inequality in India – riding on the back of casual sexism, male entitlement, misogyny, and uncurbed sexual violence.

Who among us hasn’t given in to the temptation of looking up Tinder matches or a new boss online, before we meet them? It’s what this “harmless” looking up leads to – when Netflix’s You implies that our soulmates might just be our stalkers – that makes it a defining series of our times.

Uri is a slick outing, which, at first pass, restrains itself from heightening its jingoism. But it’s impossible to view the film, which endorses the 2016 surgical strike, in a vacuum – especially in the current political climate. How do you turn a blind eye to the timing of its release, just a few months ahead of the 2019 general elections?

The 76th Golden Globes undid all of its sensitivity with how it dealt with two of the biggest awards of the night. It’s never a good sign when an awards ceremony warrants discussion because of its snubs rather than its wins.

The last time Deepika Padukone took up a role that showcased her versatility was four years ago, in Piku. The film is an exception in her 12-year-old career. It’s difficult not to label Padukone as risk-averse. Let’s hope, this year, the birthday girl steps out of her comfort zone.

The 620-km Women’s Wall, protesting against the tradition that bans women from entering Sabarimala Temple despite the SC verdict, is a fitting companion piece to the #MeToo wave. Like #MeToo, the Wall is as much an expression of women that cut through barriers, as it is their means to protest inequality.

Kader Khan is no more. The veteran actor, who had a prolific career as a screenplay and dialogue writer, gave us the camp classic Khoon Bhari Maang with gems like “Tune Maryam ka daaman aur Sita ki gaud dekhi hai... Durga aur Kali roop nahi dekha.”

2018 marked the arrival of the “selfish woman” on screen, who dares to prioritise her own desires over social obligations: Think Tabu in Andhadhun and Radhika Madan in Pataakha. But has Bollywood really been more inclusive of women behind the scenes?

With Simmba, Rohit Shetty reduces rape to a buzzword in an exaggerated comedy to prove that his cinematic universe isn’t all nonsensical. Ranveer Singh almost elevates this testosterone-fuelled drivel into surprisingly entertaining fare, but only until a woman is violated for him to realise his true calling.

Ratna Pathak Shah is synonymous with layered, evocative performances that acquire a fandom of their own. In the last two years alone, with stellar roles in Love Per Square Foot and Lipstick Under My Burkha, Shah has had a more envious acting resume than any of her younger peers.

Growing up, I wanted to be nothing like my parents. I spent a significant part of my teenage years defining myself in opposition to my parents. Yet, over time, the very traits that I disliked about them slowly became my own – and that’s when I truly understood them.

SRK’s Bauua Singh is a carefully orchestrated and subtle attempt to insult the intellect of audiences – exactly what makes Anand L Rai’s Zero even more manipulative than Sanju. The film might be the worst reminder of SRK’s incompetence in completely inhabiting a character.

Small affections – knowing how much sugar your partner likes in their coffee, reaching out for their hand instinctively during a Netflix binge – mould companionship. The beauty of these intimacies are that they don’t announce themselves to the world but demand a keen familiarity.

Alfonso Cuarón’s autobiographical Roma doesn’t simply imitate or recreate life in an upscale neighbourhood in 1970 Mexico City. Instead the black-and-white spectacle captures the memory of childhood, in unflinching clarity.

In Peter Hedges’ Ben Is Back, maternal love comes without an expiry date – just like drug addiction. The film investigates the aftermath of addiction, both as a raging epidemic and as a crushing emotion.

At a political rally in Alwar, Sharad Yadav called Vasundhara Raje “moti”. Sadly, he isn’t the first politician to body shame a woman colleague, and he won’t be the last.

Like most Hindi films, Kedarnath presents a love story saddled with infuriating tropes about Muslims and modern courtship. In the film, Sara Ali Khan behaves like an outspoken guy but needs a knight in shining armour to save her. And its Muslim hero has to offer a character certificate.

The “joy of missing out” is cutting off deliberately and not regretting it. This joy comes with respecting your time and dedicating it to pursuits of pleasures meant not for display – but for yourself.

Despite Rajinikanth’s presence, 2.0 ensures it is an equal battleground for its hero and antagonist. It’s the villain Pakshirajan – a fabulous Akshay Kumar – who gets the indulgent backstory; he’s the first character we see in the film and the only one to merit a song.

Green Book takes a muddled viewpoint of racism. But together, Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen bring to screen an unforgettable chemistry that’s poignant, rousing, and which single-handedly enlivens the broad strokes of the film’s script.

Matthew Heineman’s A Private War, features an electrically charged Rosamund Pike, who undergoes a physical, emotional, and vocal transformation to play slain war correspondent Marie Colvin. The film doesn’t bother itself with details, instead investing in the civilians bearing the brunt of war.

Sara Ali Khan appeared on Koffee With Karan with her famous abba. It was assumed that she’d be docile like Alia Bhatt or evade questions like Sonam Kapoor. But by the end of Koffee With Karan’s most refreshing episode of the season, she had given the rest of her peers a crash course in individuality.

Chandraprakash Dwivedi’s Mohalla Assi, starring Sunny Deol, releases today after a three-year-long fight with the CBFC. But it hardly feels like a victory. Instead the film feels weakened by its dated release, punished for being critical of the government.

A celebrity wedding is as much an entertainment commodity as a big-banner film. Ranveer and Deepika have coordinated everything from their Instagram wedding announcement, to Koffee With Karan’s opening episode which was designed only to get us hyped about the shaadi.

Vijay Krishna Acharya's Thugs of Hindostan is one of Bollywood’s most unambitious and derivative films; it redefines the idea of an epic disaster. It’s a frightening love-child of Mohenjo Daro and Mangal Pandey — only a thousand times worse.

Baazaar doesn’t have characters – just caricatures. Every plot point of the film is an extended open-mic joke that refuses to land. And you can tell a lot about a film where the lead – Rohan Mehra in his debut role – exists just to prove that Arjun Kapoor isn’t the most one-dimensional actor in Bollywood.

The unprecedented success of Badhaai Ho has catapulted Gajraj Rao straight into the spotlight. Although, the actor is no stranger to the Hindi film industry, it’s only in the 25th year of his career that he has become a film’s driving force and is afforded as much screen time as the lead, Ayushmann Khurrana.

As any Bong will tell you, our Durga Puja wardrobe is sacred, as big a deal as gulping down telebhajas without being punished by indigestion. We deliberate on our outfits as seriously as world leaders discuss pressing issues at the G20 Summit.

Badhaai Ho is a delightful comedy that exposes society’s hypocrisy toward sex. It underlines our unwillingness to view our parents as sexual beings, effectively asking, “Can Indians acknowledge love and intimacy only when it is young?”

Damien Chazelle’s First Man, a film about Neil Armstrong and his journey, isn’t about the mission to the moon. Or even about the moon. It’s a sombre portrait of what going to the moon and back does to a man.

Barely three months after Race 3, Salman Khan has bankrolled another nightmare, by introducing his brother-in-law Aayush Sharma in the hope that he’ll pass off as an actor. If this is not Being Inhuman, we don’t know what is.

Sriram Raghavan’s Andhadhun is a brilliant urban noir thriller. The film is all about clever writing, top-notch execution, and hard-hitting social commentary – but it is also a triumph of casting, and an ode to actors.

No matter how hard you scream about sexual harassment within the industry, Bollywood does not want to know. This is a machinery oiled by collective denial, which makes A-listers like Amitabh Bachchan refuse to take a stand against a male oppressor. Denial explains the flourishing careers of Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt.

There’s an unspoken understanding that men are entitled to their appetites. But any woman who eats more than her acceptable “womanly” quota is spoken about in hushed whispers. For all our liberal outlook, the food that women of my generation heap onto our plates is still coloured by the assumption that we’re meant to eat less.

Sharat Katariya’s Sui Dhaaga falters in several places, but it shines when the spotlight is on its women. In a film about dignity of labour, Katariya’s mastery is most evident in parts where the focus is on the immense emotional and domestic labour every married small-town woman inevitably shoulders.

Sisters are each other’s strength and weakness – you can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Vishal Bhardwaj’s Pataakha understands this language of sisterhood, where throwing abuses, insults, and jabs at each other is par for the course.

The National Award-winning Village Rockstars, India’s official entry to the Oscars, is a one-woman operation. While Rima Das intended the film to be a tribute to her village, her sensitivity and warmth guarantees that it also captures the innocence of childhood – and the doting bond between mothers and daughters.

Bill Hader’s Barry isn’t refreshing because of how casually it reverses all the crime-thriller tropes but because of how cleverly it employs them. The show’s best laughs arise from the fact that many of its protagonists view the business of killing as just another job.

Most Indian biopics are hagiographies, glossing over the imperfections of their protagonists. Nandita Das’s Manto is none of that. Her Manto is a dazzling writer, betrayed Indian, troubled alcoholic, and an absent family man in the backdrop of a divided nation.

We’ve long been accustomed to a bloated, overwrought kind of Hollywood film that exploits India’s poverty and suffering. Enter, Tabrez Noorani’s Love Sonia, that fetishises sex trafficking to eventually celebrate America’s saviour complex.

Anurag Kashyap’s Manmarziyaan is both a manifesto of modern love and a statement against Bollywood's unrealistic portrayal of love triangles. Aided by smart writing and affecting performances, the film subverts the nice guy trope and squashes the idea of the one true love.

For a lot of people, unwinding comes in the form of a Netflix binge, reclaiming a hobby, or yelling at random strangers on the internet for not wearing the right shade of woke. Me? I prefer listening to drunk girls inside a pub bathroom tell me how beautiful I am.

Men and women have reacted to Serena Williams’ outburst at the US Open final differently. Several men viewed it rather straightforwardly, siding with fairness in sport. The larger chunk of the support for Williams has come from women across the world – possibly because stuff like this happens to us every day.

The Supreme Court's historic judgement that repealed Section 377 was based on one universal message: The right to love. It’s an open discussion on love that benefits all of us, irrespective of our gender or sexual orientation.

Sajid Ali's Laila Majnu will easily end up as the most conflicting piece of cinema this year. It tests your patience with a frustrating first hour and then presents an affecting 30-minute sequence that offers a visceral portrait of the insanity of love.

A far cry from the standard alpha-male action hero, Jack Ryan is a mild-mannered protagonist who resembles an unassuming Everyman despite being entrusted with saving the world. In humanising its lead, the show conveys a pertinent idea: Not all spies are born with it.

Jack Ryan tracks an unassuming but troubled desk-bound analyst’s heroic turn into a duty agent heeding the call of duty. But its strength lies in its awareness that the war on terror is after all, a terror too.