We recommend: The best new movies and TV series

 

Editor’s note: The establishment is being raked over the coals in twin releases this week. Rape culture is the target in Anubhav Sinha/Taapsee Pannu's theatrical release Assi. The whole world is being machine-gunned in Anurag Kashyap's Zee5 release Kennedy. Sam Rockwell is having fun battling AI in Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski's Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die. There's a sunnyhearted Korean romance on Netflix. And a Kartik Aaryan-starrer romance(?) too.

 

New releases

 

Kennedy (Hindi) 

 

Legend shall have it, Anurag Kashyap has ensured, that Kennedy was written in one night in a daze of anger, depression, and the good stuff. Were Kennedy to be a narcissistic writer, he would have been dragging his family and friends through the mud for personal catharsis. But in the hands of gunmaster AK, the haunted Kennedy is gun-wise.

 

Uday Shetty (Rahul Bhat) is a cop presumed dead, but actually lurking in the shadows with a new name: Kennedy. A painfully stoic hitman, his mask helps him not get caught with his foot in his mouth. A failed father and husband, Kennedy takes out his ancient resentment on all of Mumbai, infatuated with the institution-backed carte blanche he has to be cruel, under the convenient guise of being a hired gun.

 

Perhaps target practice is all you got when everything else has failed. Scroll’s Nandini Ramnath praised the film’s skewering of contemporary Mumbai and its dharma to which one either succumbs—or tries to ingratiate themselves with: “...the capital of anomie, in which greed has reached stratospheric proportions and values have no meaning.”

 

Charlie (Sunny Leone) is as an accidental beneficiary of Kennedy’s wrath. Ramnath wrote about Leone, 

 

The movie’s biggest surprise is an excellent Sunny Leone, in her first real performance. Leone’s Charlie personifies Kennedy’s overall uncanniness. It’s never quite clear what Charlie is up to, which makes her a perfect fit in Kashyap’s out-of-control universe.

 

Where to watch: Zee5

 

Assi (Hindi) 

 

In a post-Dhurandhar climate, no half-measures in getting your point across to a numb audience. Anubhav Sinha takes a sledgehammer to remind that every day, 80 rapes, give or take, happen in India.

 

Sinha has been a singularly focused filmmaker building ensemble-cast projects around what is slotted as 'social issues' in an insulated film industry: Mulk, Article 370, Thappad, Bheed. His reliable muse is Taapsee Pannu, who also seeks out work of this nature: Pink, Mulk, Thappad. This is not Sinha's first courtroom drama, not Pannu's first film about rape.

 

Plot: Maverick Malayalam actor Kani Kusruti plays the gang-rape victim. Pannu plays her lawyer. The cast includes: Kumud Mishra, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Revathy, Naseeruddin Shah, Manoj Pahwa, Jatin Goswami, Satyajit Sharma. The co-writer is Gaurav Solanki (Article 15, Amazon’s infamous Tandav, and Dibakar Banerjee’s even-more-infamous Tees).

 

Hard to miss. Hear Shubhra Gupta from The Indian Express: “Assi has flaws, but is never not an urgent, imperative call to arms. Watch it.”

 

Where to watch: Theatres

 

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (English) 

 

Haters of artificial intelligence, and the general state of things we are in and that which is to come, do not miss this wacky but emotional science-fiction comedy from Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean, The Ring, Rango). A man from the future (Sam Rockwell) shows up in a diner and declares he is on a mission to stop AI from taking over the world. This is only his 117th attempt, and a specific combination of patrons in that diner that night will help him in his mission.

“Somewhere, inside of you, you know the way things are, the way we are heading, the way people are with each other, you know the world’s going to shit,” the future-man pep-talks, “… come along on this ride because you see the writing on the wall, and you’re ready to wake up and do something about it.”

 

Here’s film critic Peter Travers:

 

With Rockwell as the ringmaster, Verbinski has assembled a paradise for gamers that plunges into an abyss no one would call a game. That ballsy move is reflective of the big swing that is “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die—words that become a chant for joining the enemy. The film ends with a challenge: accept the comforting illusion AI is selling to control you or suffer the pain of a reality that comes with a harsh but possibly healing truth. Bad luck, No Fun and Certain Death? Maybe. But this movie thinks the risk is worth it. How about you?

 

Where to watch: Theatres

 

Being Gordon Ramsay (English)

 

Only the latest Netflix docuseries on an aging celebrity tackling a present project while reckoning with the past is here. Bad-boy chef Gordon Ramsay is ambitiously attempting to open five restaurant concepts inside London's 912-feet, 62-storeyed 22 Bishopgate skyscraper. The scenes frequently cut away to celebrity-sanctioned glimpses of childhood, fatherhood, marriage, and professional woes. 

 

Where to watch: Netflix

 

 

Firebreak (Spanish)

 

Tight, 100-minute thriller, where there's a forest fire, and a widowed mother has to search for her missing eight-year-old daughter in this chaos. Isolation and desperation seem to find a saviour in a local forest ranger, but nothing is as it seems. 

 

Pramit Chatterjee of Digital Mafia Talkies noted,

 

Firebreak is layered. A surface-level reading will tell you that this is just about a family’s paranoia getting the better of them and causing them to lash out instead of focusing on finding this little kid who has gone missing. But as you dig deeper, you start noticing that it’s a critique of the growing sense of mistrust amongst people.

 

Where to watch: Netflix

 

Pavane (Korean)

 

What are South Koreans eating and drinking, nay, smoking, that they manage to roll out life-affirming romances with such ease and aching glow?

 

Pavane concerns three lonely individuals: a comic-book artist tormented from having abandoned his dreams; a department-store saleswoman who hides from people afraid of judgement; a free-spirited parking attendant hiding economic precarity behind a smile. It takes three to tango for a self-respecting romance.

 

Where to watch: Netflix

 

Heated Rivalry (English)

 

They hate each other on the streets, love each other beneath the sheets. Ilya (Connor Storrie) and Shane (Hudson) are rising professional ice hockey stars who can't keep their hands off each other IRL and otherwise. Luca Guadagnino didn't make Challengers for nothing. The acclaimed queer sports series is finally out in India.

 

Where to watch: Lionsgate Play

 

 

Fresh off the big screen

 

Tu Meri Main Tera, et cetera (Hindi)

 

Dharma Productions’ latest romanceslop stars Kartik Aaryan and Ananya Pandey. Ray (Aaryan) is a cynical wedding planner, Rumi (Pandey) is a romantic… um, writer? Anyway, haters turn lovers. Then, a crisis. Family schamily. But all’s well in the end. The soundtrack is by Vishal-Sheykhar, but good luck if you could guess that by just listening.

 

Here’s Ishita Sengupta from OTTplay:

 

A pivotal moment occurred when Rumi, an author, cried about getting poor reviews on her novel, and Rehaan consoled her, saying that he would give it 4 stars. At a time when critics as a profession are undergoing a crisis of faith, this isn’t a good sign, but the film insists we roll with it, and we do.

 

Where to watch: Prime Video

 

 

One more chapter

 

The Last Thing He Told Me S02 (English)

 

In the first season, Hannah Hall (Jennifer Garner) was on the search for her husband who had disappeared while building some kind of relationship with her stepdaughter. Season two (based on a second novel by Laura Dave after the success of the first) has Garner spending time with her mysterious, previously missing husband, Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau)—and they’re in love.

 

Cristina Escobar of Rogerebert.com was not impressed—calling it “dumb”—but did praise Garner’s performance. 

 

Where to watch: Apple TV

 

The Night Agent S03 (English)

 

A treasury agent has gone rogue, bumping off his boss and fleeing to Istanbul with top secret government info. It’s upon Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso), our all-action protagonist, to save the government from crashing as he chases shadowy networks and fends off paid assassins. 

 

Where to watch: Netflix