The courtroom drama Ikka (“Ace“) is billed as a tense showdown between veteran actors Sunny Deol and Akshaye Khanna, and in that regard, it delivers. With a different directorial focus, Ikka could have been more than that. An intriguing premise goes unexplored in favor of an approach that is broad and shallow.

Deol plays undefeated celebrity defense attorney Arjun Mehra, nicknamed “Ikka” for his penchant for playing his key evidence in dramatic, last-minute fashion. He and his wife Avantika share…

A lawyer from a wealthy family learns that justice has a price in the courtroom drama System. The film’s politics are in the right place, but tonal incongruities hamper the storytelling.

System opens with a prisoner lamenting that he can’t afford the cost to appeal his unfair sentence, only to hang himself in the next shot. It’s a grim opening that sets the stage for a critique of the Indian justice system.

Then the action shifts to the main character:…

I'm happy to call out sexism in movies when I see it, but I think some have been quick to judge this version of CINDERELLA as a typical "damsel in distress" tale and leave it at that. Shortly after Lady Tremaine locks Cinderella in the attic, seemingly for good, Cinderella steels herself against her present circumstances, twirling as she remembers her night at the ball for what it is: a memory. She's not expecting to be rescued. She's making peace…