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.

I have grown up on stories about my father’s not-so-secret childhood crush on Madhuri Dixit from the time when they were neighbours in Mumbai. As a child with a congenital heart condition, Papa had spent a large part of his childhood as the one-boy audience for her daily kathak practices. She didn’t know it, but Madhuri Dixit was making life a little bit bearable for an angry teenager.

Masoom is an ode to motherhood that does not rely on lazy tropes and bland generalisation. It is a story that elevates the idea of motherhood beyond biological compulsions. It reminds us that the greatest gift we can give our mothers is to allow them their humanity.

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.

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.

Few films seem further from today’s cinemascape of chest-thumping nationalism than the 2004 film Main Hoon Na. The lighthearted patriotic film about “Project Milaap”, an Indo-Pak peace operation would probably be labelled “anti-national” in today’s times.

In Damini, which released 26 years ago, Meenakshi Seshadri plays a housewife who beats impossible odds in her quest for justice for a rape survivor, the family’s domestic help. In some ways, the movie is the origin story of a conviction that has defined my life and given it purpose — that women are not second-class citizens of the world.

Twenty years ago, John Mathew Matthan’s Sarfarosh released during the Kargil war and could have easily been a hyper-masculine journey of revenge. Instead, it was a rare Bollywood patriotic film that explored identity and conflict within the borders.