Staff Picks: A Bollywood Studio chaser and a potent video game remaster

This series also pulls back the curtains—albeit with exaggeration—on the chessboard that is Bollywood, the cunning moves people make to stay ahead in the game, and the pawns that get sacrificed along the way. The saga centers on Aasmaan Singh (Kill‘s Lakshya Lalwani), a newcomer who turns into an overnight success after his first film is a big hit. Soon enough, he gets caught up between two feuding producers, finds a foe in superstar Ajay Talvar (Bobby Deol), and a love interest in Ajay’s daughter, Karishma (Sahher Bamba). There’s also endless paparazzi attention, a surprising family history, and a connection with local gangsters to add to the drama. Cameos from a roster of real-life celebrities as heightened versions of themselves, including Karan Johar, Salman Khan, Emraan Hashmi, Lagaan‘s Aamir Khan, and RRR director S.S. Rajamouli, adds to the charm. 

Underneath its chaotic revelry, groovy songs (“Ghafoor” hasn’t left my brain since I heard it), fiery fight scenes, and at least one mindbending twist lies an incisive, often moving take on how moviemaking happens. And that’s possible because the story is told through the lens of co-creator Aryan Khan, who makes his directorial debut with this project. Khan, the son of Indian legend Shah Rukh Khan, was embroiled in controversy when he was arrested in 2021 in a drug probe (all charges were dropped and the case was dismissed within weeks). After a long period of silence, his retort to the intense media scrutiny over the years comes through a well-made TV show that subverts pre-conceived notions about his personal life and the industry he grew up observing and analyzing. It’s no wonder The Ba***ds Of Bollywood is as detailed and fun as it is. For those still unfamiliar with the subject matter, it all makes for a sneakily good introduction to Bollywood and its heroes. You’ll be tempted to press play on several other films after you’re done watching this. (I suggest movies like Om Shaanti Om, Luck By Chance, Gupt, and the Hindi-language series Jubilee on Prime Video). [Saloni Gajjar] 

William Hughes: Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles

It’s a rare and incredible relief to return to something you first experienced as a teenager—movie, book, game, what have you—only to find that it’s somehow even deeper and richer than what exists in those gold-tinged memories of youth. Final Fantasy Tactics has, admittedly, had a lot of help in this regard: The script for the 1997 strategy RPG classic got a massively improved translation in 2007, allowing the elegance of its tale of politics, religion, and idealism to better shine through. Its new remaster, The Ivalice Chronicles, completes the work that that War Of The Lions release started, creating a definitive, highly playable version of one of the single best games in Final Fantasy‘s nearly four-decade history. Added voice-acting, a fast-forward command for battles, and other quality of life features all help The Ivalice Chronicles go down smoother than any 28-year-old title has any right to. (Among other things, the game has finally been freed of irritating mid-battle slowdown.) 

But Square-Enix’s remaster team has also diligently preserved those things that made the game so compulsive, even for a 13-year-old kid with a PlayStation 1 controller gripped in his hand, struggling his way through sometimes-punishing difficulty and a frequently obscure script. To wit: A game that massively respects its players’ intelligence, whether that’s the speed with which it layers its complex web of plots, loyalties, and ambitions, or the way it asks them to master what is still the single-finest implementation of the franchise’s character-customizing Job system. Some video game remasters are about reinventing a technologically-challenged classic, sometimes to great effect. But The Ivalice Chronicles demonstrates that, when it comes to a masterpiece, all you really need to do is wipe off the dust and let the original shine through.