Cheeni Kum is being reviewed and dismissed by some veteran critics as not sweet enough. Others are more appreciative of what they call a ‘feelgood’ film. And yet, while the beautifully composed frames of the film do show an aesthetic sensibility in director R. Balki and his famous cinematographer P.C. Sreeram, the film has a lot more to recommend it than just good packaging.

Because ‘Cheeni Kum’ actually brings us close to quite a few ‘life and death’ questions, and this theme has been very skillfully woven into the film. There are only five characters – covering almost the full range of the age spectrum. Amitabh’s neighbour, little 6 year-old Sexy, played by Swini Khara, spends evenings on the sofa with his mother, ninety-year old Zohra Segal. Amitabh, as her 64 year-old son, keeps inviting advice from her about staying as fit as the WWF wrestlers, by making regular trips to the gym! Tabu is a beautiful, cool and composed 34 year-old, who has matured enough to appreciate life in a way different from a hormonal teenager, or a woman in her twenties, anxious to please others and ‘fit in’ to things. The final twist is provided by Paresh Rawal, Tabu’s father, who is a diabetic 58 year-old.

SPB Charan has produced a Tamil film with an intriguing title – what could this film with a pin-code name be all about? ‘Chennai 600028’ is, as promised, a film about the lower middle class tenements of R.A.Puram, Mandaiveli and R.K. Nagar in Chennai, where life throbs and teems in a tight circle. All day and night I listen to the sound effects of this particular area – hand pumps and arguments over water, drinking sessions and loud singing or cursing, roosters and hens, dogs and cats, and the blaring of the latest Tamil hits from radios and cassette players.

Vinay Pathak’s antics as Bharat Bhushan in Sagar Ballary’s film Bheja Fry, put the actor on par with established Bollywood veterans. His comic forte has been noticed earlier of course, as a veejay, and as a partner of Ranvir Shorey in the hilarious curtain raiser to the matches of the football World Cup last year. But with ‘Bheja Fry’, Vinay has really scored a century. Critics have remarked that he carries the film on his shoulders, and indeed he does.

Having seen the Arshad Warsi-John Abraham starrer ‘Kabul Express’ twice in the first week, I am reflecting on some of the things that make this Kabir Khan film such a good one. The promo shows John and Arshad singing a song called ‘Kabul Fiza’ but this is completely misleading – there are no songs in the film. The only woman in the film, an American journalist played by Linda Arsenio, does not break out into an item number. And the man playing the villain, Pakistani actor Salman Shahid, playing a member of the dreaded Taliban, does such a good job, that he walks away with a major chunk of the audience’s sympathy!

How does all this happen? The truth of course, is that ‘Kabul Express’ is a story that Indians ought to have heard a long time ago. With historical links to Afghanistan for centuries, Indians also have cultural links to this Central Asian country, whose ‘Kabuliwalla’ character has been immortalized in literature by none other than Rabindranath Tagore. And yet, in the globalized world of today, where American versions of the truth dominate the world media, it is difficult to penetrate behind the facts of the ‘shock and awe’ campaign unleashed in Afghanistan after 9/11. The collective memory of the world is so fickle that the current history being made in Iraq, or in Sudan, or Lebanon, is quickly forgotten while the latest insincere statements by politicians world over, are being reported.

I did not shed a single tear in ‘Don’ when I saw it recently. For someone who responds to the merest nudge of the tear glands in any average Hindi movie, this was something of a record. And yet, I did enjoy the film. The effort that had been put in to provide its thrills, spills and chills was evident at every stage and I was just recognizing that with my appreciation.

The funny thing was, I do not remember the ‘Don’ I watched some thirty years back, and I think this film was distinctly different in story and execution. So it is not really a remake and people must stop making unfair comparisons to whether Kareena can ever be like Helen, or whether Shah Rukh did justice to his role by acting as well as Amitabh. The truth is that ‘Don’ is a remake of ‘Duplicate’, with one good and one bad Shah Rukh Khan, rather than the original ‘Don’.

If ‘Don’ is turning into a commerical success, as it seems to be doing, by all accounts, it is one more pit-stop in the Formula One journey of Shah Rukh Khan’s narcissism, or self-love. Ever the height of modesty, Shah Rukh had declared in one interview how his and Gauri’s was a happy marriage because both he and his wife loved the same person - Shah Rukh Khan.