So you wanna watch something…

Editor’s note: We’re afraid all the key releases this week are kinda grim. But hey, it’s almost holiday season for Hollywood. So we’ll soon be complaining about all that ghastly Christmas cheer.

Mili: Filmmaker Mathukutty Xavier’s ‘Mili’ is a Hindi remake of his own 2019 Malayalam hit ‘Helen’. Janhvi Kapoor plays Mili Naudiyal who is having a very bad day. First, she becomes trapped in the cold storage of a fast food joint where she works as a waitress. The movie is about her struggle to stay alive—with only a friendly rat for company. A big part of the plot is also her close relationship with her widowed father—played by Manoj Pahwa—and his frantic search for his missing daughter. The Quint describes the movie as a “survival thriller”—so we don’t expect a lot of laughs. There are no reviews but The Hindu has more on the making of the movie. ‘Mili’ releases in theatres today.

My Policeman: Here’s yet another Harry Styles flick—soon after the release of ‘Don’t Worry Darling’. This time he has fellow Brits Emma Corrin and Rupert Everett for company in a complicated love triangle. Based on the novel by Bethan Roberts, it is inspired by the true life story of the famed novelist E.M. Forster, his lover, who was a police officer, and his lover’s wife. Much of the 1950s-era movie is about conflicting motives and desires of the main characters. There’s the wife who seems wilfully blind, the husband who betrays her in an era of sexual repression, and finally the lover—who inserts himself as the third wheel in their lives. 

BBC News describes it as “not an easy-to-love crowd pleaser, but a romance that is more about denial, self-delusion and deceit than about passion”—and says “the film works best at capturing the pain and occasional joy of the triangular arrangement.” The New York Times calls it “a film that buckles under the weight of purgatorial disappointment.” The Guardian gives it three stars and calls it a “melodrama of repression and regret.”

‘My Policeman’ drops on Amazon Prime Video today. 

Causeway: Jennifer Lawrence stars as a US Army Officer returned from Afghanistan—where her vehicle was blown up by a bomb. She has come back with injuries, both emotional and physical–including a brain haemorrhage. The film tracks her physical recovery as she relearns how to stand, walk, bathe etc—and the spiritual and emotional road to healing which is far longer and harder. 

Whether you like this movie or not depends on whether you have a soft spot for what Variety calls “the slow-burn non-verbal indie gloomfest”—and “a drama of redemption that’s both touching and a little arduous.” LA Times praises Lawrence’s “small, detailed physical performance” as “a wonder to study”—and flags “the gritty, dim, digital look that is de rigueur in independent cinema.” But it doesn’t have anything more upbeat to say about this downer of a movie. Causeway streams on Apple TV+ today.

A list of good reads

• Scroll has a good piece on the latest amendments to the Information Technology Act—and why they bode ill for free speech both on social media platforms and news sites.
• The Atlantic has an excellent essay on the negative framing of “only children”—who are falsely cast as both selfish and deprived.
• Can’t sleep and need out-of-the-box solutions? Look no further than psychologist Aric Prather’s guide in the New York Times (splainer gift link).
• Raksha Kumar in RestOfWorld takes a deep dive into sexism in the Indian tech industry.
• Asim Ali argues in The Telegraph that the entire Indian school system is about imprisoning children’s minds—calling its culture “a peculiar fusion between the regimentation of a military garrison and the ritualisation of an authoritarian cult.”
• Finally, here’s something a little fun: this excellent Twitter thread assigns personalities to all of Delhi’s leading bookshops.
• Washington Post (splainer gift link) has a useful and alarming read on the many younger people who suffer from hearing loss—and don’t even know it.
• If you have an iPhone that is always on mute, Huffington Post shows you how to locate it.
• Leila Latif in BBC News pens a thoughtful piece on how some films help you face death.
• Wired offers a fascinating look at a tiny peptide that determines whether a memory is happy or sad.