Akshay Kumar's Ghis Ghis Ghis is not here to win critics; it's here to hijack weddings, reels and meme pages

There are songs that arrive with mood lighting, designer costumes, international locations, 400 background dancers, drone shots, neon frames and a marketing deck longer than the screenplay. And then there is Ghis Ghis Ghis from Welcome To The Jungle, which seems to have arrived with only one mission: Boss, speaker phaadna hai. In an industry that has become painfully obsessed with looking cool, sleek, premium, curated and Instagram-safe, Ghis Ghis Ghis feels like that one loud baraati who enters the wedding before the groom, dances with the band, argues with the dholwala, eats two plates of chaat and still becomes the most memorable person of the evening. The recently released song from Welcome To The Jungle features Akshay Kumar with Bhojpuri star Akshara Singh has clocked more than 6 million views in the past 24 hours. But the bigger story is not just the song. The bigger story is what the song represents. Bollywood has spent the last few years trying very hard to decode virality. T...

Golda review – lifeless Meir biopic hides Helen Mirren’s talent in a cloud of cigarette smoke

As a drama about the Yom Kippur war, this film is bafflingly dull. As a portrait of Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister at the time, it’s even worse

Helen Mirren’s latexed and enhanced portrayal of Golda Meir, Israel’s “Iron Lady” prime minister during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, has been overtaken by a debate about “Jewface” casting because Mirren is not Jewish – addressing why Jews are casually excluded from the otherwise fiercely policed sensibilities about authenticity and identity on screen. (Would they get a white actor, for example, to black up as President Anwar Sadat?) It’s a valid and important question, but not exactly the problem in this stately, stuffy and at times almost comatose TV-movie-type drama about tension in Israel’s corridors of power as the Yom Kippur war exploded and the country faced off against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in a battle for its very existence.

Mirren, normally such a sparkling performer, is lumbered with a grey wig, false nose and jowls, with occasional headscarf and handbag, making her look as if she is playing the Queen doing an impression of Richard Nixon. This Golda Meir impassively chainsmokes her way through wooden potted-history dialogue scenes with her military top brass, while everyone blows cigarette smoke at each other; occasionally she takes a break to lie prostrate on a hospital bed, stoically smoking and dying of cancer. Is she going to die? Why not? The film is flatlining.

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