BOLLYWOOD.

‎Celine Song’s sophomore feature, Materialists, opens with an unexpected image: a prehistoric couple standing together, perhaps in love, perhaps just surviving. It’s a jarring yet deliberate prelude to a film steeped in the cold calculations of contemporary romance—where love, like everything else in a hypermodern New York, is a matter of metrics. ‎ Chris Evans, Dakota Johnson, and Pedro Pascal for 'Materialists.' ‎A24 ‎ ‎Following her critically acclaimed debut Past Lives, Song shifts tone and tempo. Materialists is edgier, more sardonic, less about longing and more about navigating the absurdities of modern dating. Where Past Lives mourned love postponed, Materialists questions whether love, in an age of apps and algorithms, can even be real. ‎ ‎At the center of this romantic economy is Lucy, played with icy precision by Dakota Johnson. A professional matchmaker with nine successful marriages under her belt, Lucy approaches romance like a financial planner: method...

Karan Singh Tyagi’s Kesari Chapter 2 is a curious entry in India’s growing catalogue of period dramas with nationalist overtones. Drawing inspiration from The Case That Shook The Nation — a 2019 book chronicling lawyer C. Sankaran Nair’s unprecedented legal crusade against the British Empire following the Jallianwala Bagh massacre — the film is as ambitious in scope as it is inconsistent in voice. ‎ ' Kesari Chapter 2. ' ‎Kesari Chapter 2 ‎ ‎At the heart of the story is Nair (Akshay Kumar), whose journey from a knighted loyalist to a defiant rebel forms the film’s spine. But this is no straightforward biopic. Rather, it’s a cinematic cocktail that attempts to combine old-school patriotism with the defiant spirit of new-age political resistance. It speaks the language of rebellion but wears the costume of a commercial blockbuster. ‎ ‎Director: Karan Singh Tyagi ‎ ‎Writers: Karan Singh Tyagi, Amritpal Singh Bindra, Sumit Saxena ‎ ‎Cast: Akshay Kumar, R. Madhavan, A...