We recommend: The best new movies and TV series
Editor’s note: Some great stuff in the theatres. Tumbbad director Rahi Anil Barve’s sophomore film, Mayasabha, is an atmospheric question mark starring Jaaved Jaaferi in a strange lead role. Battle-of-the-sexes thriller Send Help ought not to be missed. Some avenging angels out on the streets; Rani Mukherji in Mardaani 3, Bhumi Pednekar in Daldal. Marathi series Devkhel also tackles a serial killer. And Dhurandhar is finally online, but minus four minutes, it is being screamed on social media.
New releases
Mardaani 3 (Hindi)
Rani Mukherji is back to avenging India’s daughters. If you can just get past the peculiarity of the franchise’s title (meaning: manly woman), you are likely to appreciate Mukherji’s supercop chasing down exploiters of our bahu-betiya with the bluster and thunder of our unkempt, macho heroes.
Reviews are mixed. Scroll’s Nandini Ramnath appreciated the film’s well-oiled functionality: “The 137-minute movie is fleet, efficient and gripping, neatly balancing its heroine’s stardom with a plot that ticks all the right boxes.”
The Hollywood Reporter India’s Rahul Desai was unimpressed. Pointing out that the third part is a blend of the first two, he predicted the next villain Mukherji’s Shivani Shivaji Roy may have to face: “a copycat killer looking for online virality and relevance in a culture that is desensitised to originality.”
Where to watch: Theatres
Mayasabha (Hindi)
Remember Tumbbad (2018)? A most audacious and beguiling folk horror feature, Rahi Anil Barve’s directorial debut instantly cemented him as a talent to never stop watching out for. His new film has Javed Jaaferi accessorising a gas mask, while he lurks about in a run-down movie theatre sporting a luscious grey mane. The surrounding film is just as clinically designed, the images aestheticising Mad Max punched with Alex Proyas’s Dark City (1998).
Barve’s mood piece will surely be an acquired taste. Critic Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV loved it, and how.
If you care for cinema that does not look to guide audiences into their comfort zones and does not shy away from risks, Mayasabha is the film that you must vote for with your feet. Help it go the distance.
Mayasabha is a miasmic movie experience that takes its time to reveal its hand fully. Once it does, it sucks you in. And it lingers long after it has run its course.
Where to watch: Theatres
Send Help (English)
Trust Sam Raimi (A Simple Plan, The Quick and The Dead) to deliver a darkly comic battle-of-the-sexes survival thriller.
The worst boss on the planet (Dylan O’Brien) and his capable but weird employee (Rachel McAdams) get stranded on an island after their flight crashes. Suddenly, the woman has the upper hand. Raging and frothing at his mouth, her injured boss first resists, then succumbs to, and then flips back to resisting the demented woman who has decided to tame him. Bloody hell.
Sample Meagan Navarro’s enthusiastic review on Bloody Disgusting:
Though it might be a bit of a tough sell to buy McAdams as such a peculiar, frumpy woman, at least at first, Send Help quickly becomes a showcase of her talents as she fully commits to every bit of insanity that Raimi, working from a screenplay by Damian Shannon & Mark Swift (Freddy vs. Jason), throws at her. More than just embracing the splatstick mania, taking and dishing out violence with gusto, McAdams injects affecting vulnerability with effortless ease, disarming both the audience and her trapped boss. O’Brien also keeps you guessing, wondering if his moments of humanity are to be trusted or if he’s slowly learning the error of his ways.
Where to watch: Theatres
Daldal (Hindi)
Bhumi Pednekar plays a cop who has to hunt down a serial killer. Adapted from Vish Dhamija’s novel Bhendi Bazaar. One day, Indian streaming will run out of the zeal to dress up their actors as badass cops and invent serial killers, a cliche from 20th century United States. That day is far away.
Udita Jhunjhunwala from Scroll praised Aditya Rawal’s performance but wrote, “Ultimately, Daldal feels stuck between ambition and execution. It draws on dark material (trafficking, abuse, cyclical violence) but pares down the investigative rigour and narrative clarity needed for such material to resonate.”
Where to watch: Theatres
Devkhel (Marathi)
These cops and serial murders just won’t stop! The highlight, critic Nandini Ramnath noted, is the performance from lead Ankush Chaudhari. He is a bad-boy cop (are there any other kind?), who feels he has earned the right to be “oafish”, in the midst of barrelling through the seven-episode plot.
Where to watch: Theatres
Take That (English)
The rollercoaster story of Take That finds a new home via this Netflix documentary series. The English pop group were legitimate superstars back in the early- and mid-nineties, with smash hit party anthems their forte. And then they crashed and burned, as young bands often do when faced with massive fame, success, and public scrutiny. They disbanded. Robbie Williams (of ‘Rock DJ’ fame) became a breakout solo star in the years after.
A decade later, they got back together and became bigger than ever. Williams returned to the fold, locked in an on-off relationship with the group. This new doc—sans Williams and Jason Orange (who left the band)—details the journey (with few surprises). The Guardian calls it a “straightforward and refreshingly unembittered retelling of the band’s story”.
Where to watch: Netflix
Wonder Man (English)
Two friends, each with a secret. Simon (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a struggling actor trying to make it big in LA; he also has superhero powers that he keeps concealed. Trevor (Ben Kingsley) works for a shadowy government organisation that tracks people like Simon. This Marvel Cinematic Universe mini-series is willing to veer away from stock superhero tropes in its treatment: “Replacing the comic-book heroics is a playfully bittersweet story about a character as outside the norm as the average superhero,” The New York Times noted.
Where to watch: JioHotstar
The Wrecking Crew (English)
Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa, both of superhuman build, have a lot of fun in this classic buddy cop comedy. James (Bautista) is the straight shooter: well-heeled family man. His half-brother, Jonny (Momoa) is the maverick with long hair and a drinking problem. They’ve been estranged for 20 years until their father’s death brings them together. Needless to say, shenanigans ensue.
Praising the performances of the lead duo, Rogerebert.com noted: “They’re convincing as the squared away but tightly wound older brother with a stable home life and the flamboyantly self-destructive younger brother whose adulthood has been warped by rage at what happened to them in youth.”
Where to watch: Prime Video
Fresh off the big screen
Dhurandhar (Hindi)
Now that the moneyspinner has exhausted its luck at the theatres, it’s out online for the five people who haven’t watched it. Ranveer Singh, Indian superspy, infiltrates Pakistan, filled with a gallery of rogues chewing scenery: Akshaye Khanna, Arjun Rampal, Sanjay Dutt. Impossibly well-made, Dhurandhar’s second and final part will hit theatres in March.
Bee-tee-dublew, Dhurandhar is four minutes shorter online. Bunch of violent scenes have apparently been trimmed or eliminated. The purveyors of good taste must be pleased.
Where to watch: Netflix
One more chapter
Shrinking S03 (English)
Creator Bill Lawrence excels at the very American style of cutesy, heartfelt comedy where a lot goes wrong. And, by the end, everyone hugs and makes up, viewer and characters sharing big moments of catharsis together. (Exhibit A: Ted Lasso.) Shrinking—starring Harrison Ford and Jason Segel as mentor-mentee shrinks—tackles fairly heavy themes around grief, therapy, anger, mortality, tracking this group of "found family". And it has a huge heart, which isn't going anywhere in season three either.
Where to watch: Apple TV
Bridgerton S04 Part 1 (English)
The much-discussed Regency Era romance series is back for part one of its fourth season. The story revolves around the eight siblings of the noble Bridgerton family. Scandal, drama, heartbreak, swanky masquerade balls, shimmering period sets—it’s all there as, this season, we spend more time with the Cinderella-esque story of Benedict Bridgerton (played by Luke Thompson) and Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha).
There are a few threads running through this season, and AV Club noted that “volume one, with its staunch focus on Benedict and Sophie’s undeniable bond […] is just what the doctor ordered.”
Where to watch: Netflix
souk picks