REVIEWS
A guide to the latest Indian and international films and web series
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It’s hard to imagine how something as basic as a spelling bee competition – in which contestants are required to spell words of varying degrees of difficulty – can make for an entertaining documentary. But that’s where Sam Rega’s Spelling the Dream succeeds. Rega profiles a group of aspiring competitors of Indian descent preparing for this very American competition.
Four suspects are apprehended for a conspiracy to murder. Their target is Sanjeev Mehra (Neeraj Kabi), a reputed news anchor at a Delhi channel. At the Outer Jamuna Paar police outpost, much to the chagrin of his senior officer, Hathi Ram Chaudhary (Jaideep Ahlawat), a pot-bellied policeman with poor prospects, is assigned the high profile case.
The first season of this girls-in-the-city show ended with the BFFs breaking up with each other. The new season of Four More Shots Please! opens four months later with the quartet reuniting on the banks of the Bosphorus in Istanbul. The reconciliation happens fairly quickly, but the rest of the season swings from one emotionally charged event to the other.
The untimely death of the youngest member of the Naik Raikars, Goa’s leading business family, sets the police and political power into a tailspin. Was it suicide or was Tarun Naik Raikar murdered?
After a shadowy start, Asur starts to build, sucking you into a dark and dangerous world, ending each episode with a dramatic hook. The story unfolds on two timelines. The web series opens 11 years ago, in Varanasi. A boy and his father are on a boat during an initiation ceremony, which ends in tragedy.
State of Siege: 26/11 on Zee5 is an exhaustive recreation and re-imagining of the attacks on Mumbai in November 2008. Created by Abhimanyu Singh and directed by Matthew Leutwyler, the eight-part web series systematically sets up the key players in this life-changing and horrific event: the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists at the attack sites, the handlers in Lahore, the victims, the police on the ground and in the control rooms, the National Security Guard commandos prepping and strategising for the final encounter, and the media that breathlessly chased breaking news.
In an episode towards the end of the Hotstar series Special Ops, an officer from the Research and Analysis Wing likens the intelligence-gathering organisation’s service and relationship with the country’s rulers to a game of chess. He speaks of pawns and officers, kings and protectors. Several episodes of this eight-part thriller, created by Neeraj Pandey (A Wednesday, Baby, Aiyaary), are spent placing the players on the chessboard.
The newest Netflix stand-up comedy special Ladies Up has a nightclub style setting and 15-minute sets featuring a female comedian each. The first of four episodes, Recently Empowered, is hosted by Prashasti Singh. The 32-year-old comedian, who describes herself as an “UP transplant”, made a switch to stand-up six months ago. Using Hindi and English, Singh blends urban issues with the experiences of a daughter of the soil
This ‘tribe’ is too cool for school, more focussed on music band practice and throwing shade to the new student at St Martin’s College. Nanki (Kiara Advani), the lyricist, is a rebel without a cause. She’s dating the lead singer and college heartthrob VJ Pratap (Gurfateh Singh Pirzada). Hardy, KP and Tashi make up the rest of the band.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra use the device of a love story to zoom in on the status of Kashmiri Pandits forced out of their homes and living as refugees in other parts of India. With the rise of militancy, around 400,000 Pandits were forced to flee from the state in late 1989-1990. 19 January 1990 is known as the day of mass exodus, chillingly conveyed in Chopra’s drama via a convoy of trucks snaking along winding mountain roads.
Two boys dressed in identical red bodysuits with flowing capes are running towards train number 377. Writer-director Hitesh Kewalya is not shying away from the same sex conversation. He’s not subtle about it either, but he treats the relationship between Kartik Singh (Ayushmann Khurrana) and Aman Tripathi (Jitendra Kumar) with respect and sensitivity.
Shrek meets Harry Potter in Pixar’s latest animated adventure that hangs on the hook of family, relationships and coming of age. Set in a modern day fantasy-land called New Mushroomton, an urban town that looks a little like the Shire from Lord of the Rings, populated with elves, trolls, Cyclops, Manticores, centaurs and other mythical creatures.
Robert Downey Jr leads an ensemble of animated and human characters in this latest reimagining of Hugh Lofting’s classic story of a doctor with the unique ability to talk to animals. Deeply affected by the passing away of his wife, veterinarian John Dolittle has become a recluse.
Set in the last year of World War II in a quaint little town in either Austria or Germany, 10-year-old Johannes (Roman Griffin Davis) is pumped for a weekend with a Hitler Youth training camp. The adults leading the camp are played by Sam Rockwell, Rebel Wilson and Alfie Allen.
Being a child star is not a thing to envy. Judy, a musical drama, is both a warm and loving tribute to the actor and singer Judy Garland as well as a cautionary tale about the pressures and impact of celebrity.
Director HE Amjad Khan’s biographical drama, on Malala Yousafzai and her family, opens in 2006. The Taliban has infiltrated Pakistan. As oppression and terrorism spread, we see the impact of the intolerance and bullying on a nuclear family in Mingora, Swat Valley.
A commitment-phobic, unmarried middle-aged Punjabi man in London misreads a nightclub pick up. After a routine of drinking, dancing and meaningless hook-ups, Jazz (Saif Ali Khan) meets his match in an uber-confident Tia (Alaya F). While he sets his apartment to seduction mode (mirror ball, mood lighting, and white wine), she has other things on her mind.
From the opening scene of Malang, you know director Mohit Suri’s intention: to create a larger-than-life hero out of his leading man. As a camera tracks around the back of a prison inmate, he systematically and without effort pummels his way through repeated attacks by other prisoners. He rips off a ragged shirt and exposes his tattoos and muscular frame. He continues the thrashing until the camera tracks around to finally reveal what we knew five minutes earlier.
A 10-storey high ship on its way to the ship breaking yard, gets grounded on a Mumbai beach. It’s unoccupied and, according to reputation, haunted.
Maybe the young couple that decided to explore the Sea Bird in the dead of night didn’t know that. Why else would they put their lives at risk?
A gentle tribute to the unsung side hero in Bollywood films, Hardik Mehta’s meta movie turns the spotlight on to the central character of Kaamyaab, Sudheer and, perforce, Sanjay Mishra.
In a new Amazon Prime Video India Original, creator The Viral Fever (TVF) gently follows Abhishek Tripathi (Jitendra Kumar) from his city life to a bottom-shelf posting as the secretary of a gram panchayat in Phulera village, Uttar Pradesh.
Jabariya shaadi or pakaruah vivaah is the practice of groom-napping: capturing an eligible bachelor and forcibly marrying him to a prospective bride, all for an agreed sum paid to the fixer. In writer-director Karan Vishwanath Kashyap’s film, co-written by Brijendra Kala, local politician Baba Bhandari (Akshaye Khanna) is the designated and reputed fixer of marriages between kidnapped grooms into families unable to pay hefty dowry demands.
In 2016, after one female news anchor files a case against Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, a number of other women also speak out about the inappropriate and often exploitative activities conducted in the senior executive’s private chambers.
The new Netflix series Jamtara – Sabka Number Ayega is extremely binge-able. Creators Trishant Srivastava and Nishank Verma and director Soumendra Padhi stick close to the milieu of a modest agrarian small town experiencing unprecedented prosperity through ill-gotten means.
In a dusty battlefield during the ongoing World War II, a soldier pulls up a dhol (drums), and starts beating out a tune. His song emboldens the deflated company to charge into battle. Sunny Kaushal plays the soldier. The next scene cuts to a modern day college in Amritsar, where girls are auditioning for a spot in a Bhangra troupe. The lead dancer of this college troupe is also Sunny Kaushal.
It’s a mix-up of epic proportions. A fertility clinic that prides itself on its success rate messes up when it interchanges the vials of two Mr Batras and impregnates the wrong Mrs Batra. Both couples have been struggling to get pregnant for years. Adoption is not an option because blood is blood after all, so they take a chance with in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
After 42 years and eight films, creator George Lucas and co-writer and director JJ Abrams close out the Star Wars series with a 142-minute crowd-pleaser. It’s a challenge tying up a story that was first told in 1977 and has travelled forwards and backwards and then leapt ahead in time. Like the preceding episodes, this chapter too opens in a galaxy far, far away, but it quickens to a resolution.
Sadashiv Rao Peshwa (Arjun Kapoor) returns home to Pune victorious from the battle at Udgir Fort. But his reward is not the command of a greater army. Instead, Peshwa king Nanasaheb’s jealous wife ensures that Sadashiv is put in charge of the treasury and has the unpopular job of collecting taxes.
When Inside Edge was premiered on Amazon Prime Video service in 2017, it had a first-mover advantage. Two years later, with Indian episodic content slowly coming of age, this show, set in the world of a sponsor-driven cricket league, is still skating on mediocrity.
The game is afoot, but it’s not the format its players know. Destroyed at the end of the last adventure (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, 2017) and reassembled by Spencer (Alex Wolff) in this sequel, the immersive video game’s hardware is now glitchy.
This is a delight for fans of the drama series set in the world of the British aristocracy. Picking up where the sixth season ended, writer Julian Fellowes takes a story idea and compacts an entire season into a 122-minute film, directed by Michael Engler.
In Johri village, Uttar Pradesh in 1999, three wives of the Tomar men are perpetually veiled. They are identifiable to the male stronghold primarily by the colour of their veils. Bimla, the eldest is red and Chandro (Bhumi Pednekar), the middle one, is blue. So when the youngest wife Prakashi (Taapsee Pannu), comes to her new home, she must choose her own colour.
Having wrapped up Pitch Perfect, her trilogy on an all-girls a-capella group, producer-director-actor Elizabeth Banks turns to a reboot of Charlie’s Angels. The popular American TV show from the 1970s, which made stars of Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson, Cheryl Ladd and Jaclyn Smith, had earlier been adapted as the action-comedy films Charlie’s Angels (2000) and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003) with Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz.
The mundane life of a paediatrician in Guwahati is enlivened by her acquaintance with a young PhD student. Sumon (Arghadeep Barua) passionately shares details of his study on the food and eating habits of the North East with Nirmali (Lima Das). His interest in unusual meats fascinates Nirmali, who is curious about sampling some of the dishes Sumon speaks of.
Keeping within the genre of disaster/survival movies, writer-director Anthony Maras zooms into one of the sites of a horrific attack on Mumbai on 26 November 2008. The Taj Mahal Hotel and Mumbai city were under siege for 72 hours as terrorists rained bullets indiscriminately around the city.
Harry (Akshay Kumar), Max (Bobby Deol) and Roy (Riteish Deshmukh) have to pay back a vast sum of money to a gangster in London. So they decide that marrying the three daughters, imaginatively named Kriti (Kriti Sanon), Pooja (Pooja Hegde) and Neha (Kriti Kharbanda), of a wealthy man is the best get-rich-quick scheme. So far, so Housefull. But this time Batuk, or Batook, Patel is absent. In this reincarnation comedy, Ranjeet plays Thakral, the lascivious father of the unwitting brides.
Laal Kaptaan is set in the late 1800s, around 25 years after the Battles of Plassey and Buxar. The British East India Company has begun to cement its position in India. British army men, Afghan warriors, bounty hunters, Marathas, and other tribes are roaming the land. Among them is a Naga sadhu seeking vengeance.
Jeethu Joseph, who helmed Drishyam, takes charge of the Hindi remake of the 2012 Spanish language film El Cuerpo. Staying largely true to Oriol Paulo’s original script, The Body is a mystery about a missing corpse.
A police officer rudely awakes in the middle of a nightmare about a car crash. A phone call later, he’s headed to the local forensics lab in Port Louis, Mauritius from where a dead body has a mysteriously disappeared.
Infidelity, and the web of lies around it, spun with the help of a trusted buddy, has the same flavour in 1978 as it does when remade in 2019. Notably, the differences in writer-director Mudassar Aziz’s modernised version of BR Chopra’s original give the women some agency, and don’t paint the Pati (husband) in an entirely heroic light.
Devika Bhise (last seen in The Man Who Knew Infinity) is both the screenplay co-writer (along with her mother Swati and Olivia Emden) and the one who takes on the ambitious role of the legendary Rani. Since research has clearly been an integral part of the script foundation, the dialogues too come across as phrases from historical texts or research papers. The characters carefully deliver platitudes in English, Hindi, and Marathi.
What do you do when an astrologer predicts that your 30-year-old son must marry before he turns 31 or risk a lifetime of celibacy? If you are mummy and daddy Kohli (Atul Kumar and Grusha Kapoor) then you go into a tailspin and panic about your first-born’s fate.
In 135 minutes, Motichoor Chaknachoor director Debamitra Biswal takes the audience on a roundabout ride about this odd couple. The story is limited to the two adjoining houses and their various inhabitants. Biswal works well to use this limited setting populated by a cast of characters including Annie’s parents and unmarried aunt on one side, and Pushpinder’s pushy mother, his younger siblings and other members of a joint family on the other. Both houses are determined to get their respective offspring married – but not to each other!
Deva Katta directs the Hindi adaptation of his 2010 Telugu film Prasthanam about political ambition and corruption leading to downfall and tragedy in a family. The drama unfolds around one family. Sanjay Dutt plays Baldev Pratap Singh, a man with political ambitions, which gets fast-tracked when he is handed over charge of a rural power centre. He cements his hold when he agrees to marry the dying leader’s widowed daughter-in-law and adopt her two children.
An analyst is lecturing candidates about a legendary spy who is code-named “Adonis”. While the name rankles, fortunately one does not hear it more than a handful of times. As soon as a covert mission gets underway, every operative on this and the other side of the border refers to Adonis by his given name: Kabir Anand.
Maybe it was a sign that this film was ill-fated when it took almost 20 years for it to get off the ground. During this time numerous directors were attached at some point or another and an equal number of leading men stepped in and out of this sci-fi thriller. Finally it fell upon director Ang Lee and leading man Will Smith to film the story by writers David Benioff, Billy Ray and Darren Lemke.
Akshaye Khanna and Richa Chadha's courtroom drama Section 375 grossed Rs 8.04 crore in its three day opening weekend run at the domestic box office. The film earned Rs 1.45 crore on its opening day, Rs 3.07 crore on Day 2, and saw a slight increase with Rs 3.52 crore on Day 3.
Director Nitesh Tiwari offers the ultimate homage to his college days with this film about his time as an engineering student and the lessons one learns outside of the classroom. Chhichhore operates on two planes.
In the third film of this franchise, Gerard Butler is back as US Secret Service Agent Mike Banning, assigned to the protection of President Alan Trumbull (Morgan Freeman). Banning has proven himself to be a one-man fighting machine, who has singlehandedly saved a former US President during an attack on the White House in Olympus Has Fallen and then shielding the President from a terror attack on the British capital in London Has Fallen.
With Batla House, Nikkhil Advani takes charge of a script by Ritesh Shah that is “inspired by” real life events. In 2008, the Batla House encounter in Delhi became controversial with the public and media questioning the police’s intentions and rigour. The opening credits of Batla House inform us that Sanjeev Kumar Yadav and his wife were the “inspiration” for this film.
This 119 minute-long crime drama opens with a man in a blood-soaked white shirt stumbling around in the dark till he reaches the doors of a modest home. The beginning of writer-director Sanjiv Jaiswal’s film is also the end. The rest of the story is told as a flashback. In happier times, Ajay (Rajeev Khandelwal) was studying for his Indian Administrative Service (IAS) exams. His father, an unskilled worker employed at the local government office, harboured dreams of his son one day becoming a Collector.
When a deadly virus goes missing, Hobbs and Shaw are recruited by the CIA to track down the virus and save the world. Hobbs, the lawman from America, is forced to team up with Shaw, the former MI6 agent from the UK. The problem is they cannot abide each other.
A director pleads with a film producer to listen to a narration of the script he’s written over three years. The producer is already satisfied since the script fulfils his requirements of five songs, five villains, a romance and an item number (featuring Sunny Leone). But there’s more to it, insists the writer, thereby persuading the producer to settle down for a detailed narration.
As the camera tracks across the plains of the African Savannah, strains of Circle of life waft over shots of animals grazing. It comes to rest on Pride Rock. Mufasa (James Earl Jones) is watching over his kingdom and celebrating the birth of his son, Simba. As Rafiki the mandrill (John Kani) anoints the heir apparent, all the animal species bow dutifully.
Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is a struggling musician of average talent. He has three committed fans, including one who’s his manager and roadie, Ellie (Lily James). Jack is the guy who gets a gig at a major music festival on a side stage with no audience.
In Blank, Sunny Deol plays SS Diwan, chief of the Anti-Terrorist Squad, who is trying to beat the clock when a man is found with a ticking bomb sutured into his chest.
After the clumsy assassination attempt on his life, Ameya Rao Gaekwad and his family should have immediately sacked his incompetent security team.
Mithi Kumar (Soni Razdan) is skating through life, one day at a time. A lonely 50-something woman, she is on the threshold of retirement from a job that she does methodically and without passion.
After a spate of dramas across Indian OTT platforms, Mind the Malhotras is a refreshing change. This adaptation of the Israeli show La Famiglia unwraps the Malhotra family’s daily issues. Many of these are exaggerated, of course, and some are familiar.
Based on French novelist Romain Puertolas’s bestseller The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe, this English language film adaptation stars Dhanush as Ajatashatru Lavash Patel, aka Aja.
An upscale boarding school in the hills is the setting for this English language film that takes William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice as the subtext for this dark rites-of-passage tale.
What he could not do due to the due process of law and its defined limits, Justice Tyagi (Anupam Kher) decides to do after his retirement. Taking the law into his hands, he sets up a justice system of his own, one where there are no limits to the nature of punishment.
The latest edition opens nine years after the events of Toy Story 3. In the elapsed time Andy, the former owner, has grown up and passed on his toys to wee Bonnie. Bonnie is about to start kindergarten, and as she is showing signs of growing up, Woody becomes painfully aware that she might be outgrowing him.
The trend of superhero spin-off movies continues. This time it’s Jean Grey’s origin story, as she goes from a child with powers her parents cannot fathom to an all-powerful member of the X-Men team. (Dark Phoenix is the 12th of the X-Men films.) Under the guidance and mentorship of Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), Jean (Sophie Turner) productively channelizes and utilizes her telekinetic powers.
They made the first one in 2014, and you asked why, and then they went ahead and made another one, and it'll make you scream, Why!
This dark comedy is quintessentially British with its wry sense of humour about the birth of the Antichrist and the unlikely friendship between an angel and a demon.
Late one night, Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) gets a phone call. He excitedly asks that his wife Joan (Glenn Close) get on the extension. The voice at the other end informs Joe that he has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Director Sujoy Ghosh takes charge of the Hindi language adaptation of Oriol Paulo’s 2016 Spanish crime thriller Contratiempo (“The Invisible Guest"), and works in enough changes to smoothly localise Badla. A revenge story with a murder mystery at its core, the film follows a three-hour conversation between Badal Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan), the lawyer entrusted with defending murder accused Naina Sethi (Taapsee Pannu).
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s overly earnest drama lands on the intersection between Toilet: Ek Prem Katha and Gully Boy. Through the wretched lives of eight-year-old Kanhaiya/Kanhu (Om Kanojiya) and his mother, Sargam (Anjali Patil), Mere Pyare Prime Minister spotlights the issue of open defecation and the lack of toilet facilities for the underprivileged.
The calm of floating leaves covering placid lakes belies the tension in the mountainous region of Kashmir, where a simple boat-maker’s rhymes are misread as coded messages of treason. Director Aijaz Khan’s drama opens late one night when questioning at a check post sets up the mood for the tragedy that lies ahead.
In Tim Burton’s version of the Disney story, the baby elephant, born in a circus van, had me at the first flap of his oversized ears. Writer Ehren Kruger adapts the 1941 animated classic about a miracle elephant that can fly.
The year is 1971 when relations between India, Pakistan and East Pakistan were tense and seminal events would determine the future of the three regions. In that mood, the Indian intelligence network, under the guardianship of R&AW (Research and Analysis Wing) was bolstering its presence on the other side of the border.
Writer-director Ashvin Kumar draws you into the story of Kashmir through a coming-of-age teenage love story. Noor (Zara Webb), a 16-year-old British girl, is visiting her grandparents in Kashmir. Her single mother (Natasha Mago) is hoping to find closure after the disappearance of her husband years ago so that both she and her daughter can move on.
Based on Stephen King’s horror 1983 novel of the same name, Pet Sematary has the perfect set-up for scares. The Creed family relocates from busy Boston to a quiet country home in Maine. The family has packed its bags, and some have brought along their baggage.
It’s the day before Christmas and Holly Burns (Julia Roberts) gets the most unexpected surprise. She returns home with her three children to find her 19-year-old son waiting on the doorstep.
Meet the squad of Amazon Prime Video’s latest 10-part series, written by girls about girls for girls.
A chance meeting in a hip new bar leads to four women becoming BFFs. Since then, they meet in the same Truck Bar every few days and drink.
An adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s novel of the same name, six-part series Selection Day is the story of two brothers and their unequal and uneasy equation with cricket, their cricket-mad and authoritarian father and their own identities.
They say the journey is more important than the destination. But director Indra Kumar’s adventure comedy (a very, very loose definition) is all about the journey, which is troublesome, even frightening, and all together tedious. So much so that by the time a motley crew of opportunists find their way to a buried treasure, the adventure comedy has begun to feel like a disaster film.
In the 2013 romantic comedy Shuddh Desi Romance, a young couple pretended to be siblings in order to disguise their cohabiting status. In Laxman Utekar’s version 2019, live-in relationships are not just frowned upon, but discovery of such an arrangement can be humiliating and lead to violence.
The easiest place to set an eerie story is in the confines of a car with a solitary driver travelling down a dark and lonely road. The setting is a circumstance replete with dangerous, scary, chilling possibilities. This is also the most common centrepiece in the short films screening on the Voot platform.
Besides his father, he meets up with childhood friends Shankara (Pooja Sawant), a mahavati (mahout) and Dev (Akshay Oberoi), a forest ranger. Also hovering around is a zealous journalist (Asha Bhat) who is doing a story on the sanctuary.
Writer-director Soumitra Ranade describes his film Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai as a “conceptual remake” of Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s original 1980 film, which starred Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil. Manav Kaul steps into the shoes of the angry Albert Pinto.
How much gold is too much when it comes to a big fat Indian wedding? How much drama is shielded behind the silks, gemstones and floral arrangements as the couple prepares to take centrestage? Wedding planners Tara and Karan have the answers to both these questions.
The show begins with the discovery of the beaten boy and grievously damaged girl discarded on the side of road. Based on the case files, Mehta’s police procedural is mostly factual with some dramatic and cinematic license to take us behind the scenes on the investigation that followed.
Writer Peter Moffat’s series Criminal Justice premiered on BBC in 2008. The first season consisted of five one-hour long episodes. The show was remade in America as the eight-part Night of in 2016. Now Hotstar is streaming a 10-part Indianised version of the same story.
This ambitious period film explores the battle of wits and the power struggle between two queens: Elizabeth I of England (Margot Robbie) and Mary Stuart of Scotland (Saoirse Ronan). Beau Willimon’s screenplay, an adaptation of John Guy’s book Queen of Scots: The true life of Mary Stuart, has been directed by Josie Rourke.
When a film boasts a formidable team comprising writer/ producer James Cameron (Terminator, Avatar) and director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) uniting for the adaptation of Yukito Kishiro's manga, its time to sit up and take notice.
Director Svati Chakravarty Bhatkal’s documentary opens with a reference to Rumi’s couplet: ‘The wound is the place where the light enters you’. Having no idea what this 110-minute film was going to be about, Rubaru Roshni took me by surprise.
Radhika Apte's comedy is riddled with a disorderly screenplay, too many loopholes
Bombairiya is set during one day in Mumbai, which begins with a misfit in a religious group bolting from a gathering and arriving on a beach, where she is trying to burn a larger-than-life cut-out.