We recommend: The best new movies and TV series
Editor’s note: A busy week. Taapsee Pannu joins hands with writer Kanika Dhillon for Gandhari to mixed results. Mirzapur the Movie releases in theatres. Dulquer Salmaan plays a gambler in his latest. Sharmila Tagore with a powerful performance in Puratawn. And a delightful short documentary, Khelne Chalogi?, about three women footballers on the way to a tournament, drops on YouTube.
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New releases
Gandhari (Hindi)
It is the week of old collaborations finding their way back to the screens. Writer Kanika Dhillon and actor Taapsee Pannu have worked together for the sixth time in Gandhari. Directed by Devashish Makhija, the film centres around child trafficking and a mother’s resolve to bring her kidnapped daughter back. Although the premise is intriguing, the film fails spectacularly in its endeavour, earning the spot of “it’s so bad, it’s good.”
A review in the Hollywood Reporter laments, “But Gandhari is just fundamentally broken. You keep waiting for a story to crawl out of the debris of refurbished frames and retro-fitted chases. But the medium is accidental, not even incidental.”
Where to watch: Netflix
Mirzapur the Movie (Hindi)
Kaleen Bhaiya, Guddu, and Munna Bhaiya are back. The supremely popular (and violent) web series Mirzapur is releasing as a film with the familiar set of actors, Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, and Divyenndu, resuming their roles. Written as a prequel, set between episodes of Season 1, the narrative has a familiar design: blood-thirsty people ganging up against each other to gain power. Written by Puneet Krishna, one of the showrunners and the main writer of the series, the film returns with all the violence and gore.
A review in Scroll states, “Gurmmeet Singh, who directed many of the show’s episodes, and writer-creator Puneet Krishna are in firm control of the screen adaptation. Singh and Krishna choose the strongest characters from the sprawling cast, thrown in a few new players, rewrite some of the storylines and blast hip tunes that hop over action scenes.”
Where to watch: Theatres
Khelne Chalogi? (Hindi)
The Garima Sadhwani short film follows three female footballers as they travel to Bengaluru from Mumbai to participate in the Savitri Fatima National Football Tournament. The documentary, full of footage and tender moments shared between the girls, is an affecting exploration of ambition and grit. In their coaches, these girls find women who had treaded the same path. It is a lovely confluence that highlights the tenacity of friendship and the companionship it offers where each provides the other the gift of solidarity.
Where to watch: YouTube
Winkle Twinkle (Bengali)
A Srijit Mukherji film comes with certain caveats; being gimmicky is one of them. His latest, based on a 2002 play by Bratya Basu, frames the short story of Rip Van Winkle within a political framework. A Bengali communist (Ritwick Chakraborty) wakes up after years and realises the city has changed. His son (Parambrata Chatterjee), sharing none of his idealism, has pledged allegiance to a rival party. In the midst of all this, his wife has grown old, and communism appears like an implausible ideology. Yet his activism remains untainted.
Where to watch: Theatres
Turning Point: Generation 9/11 (English)
Few things have ever altered the present and reshaped the future quite like 9/11. The dastardly attacks by al-Qaida at The World Trade Center killed 3,000 people, and the aftermath of the tragedy continues to persist. A new documentary revisits the harrowing day through footage and clips, approximating the urgency of the particular date, and then highlights the decisions that were made following the catastrophe. Although a lot of it might sound like reiteration, the nonfiction is effective, emphasising the potency of the day that refuses to fade.
A review in The Guardian states,
Turning Point avoids coming to any firm conclusions about what is next. On the one hand, it points to Trump’s US and all the potential for utter disaster it holds. The beneficiaries of the presidential freedoms and geopolitical divisions instigated by 9/11 appear few and dreadful. On the other, it points out that the old guard is – well, old. The people who have grown up distanced from events by time perhaps have a clearer, calmer view of what is needed now. And perhaps – perhaps – they will turn in the right direction.
Where to watch: Netflix
I'm Game (Malayalam)
Dulquer Salmaan headlines this fantasy thriller in which he plays a gambler who gets caught in a supernatural set-up. Expectantly, his life is upended and what follows is unending chaos. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Nahas Hidhayath, the film has opened to mixed reviews but Dulquer’s performance has been applauded.
“Between reckless and batshit crazy, Dulquer manages to make us care for this brat, even when he has little to play with. Scenes that could easily have gone too far feel safe with Dulquer, especially when they’re written around him and his reactions alone,” notes a review in The Hollywood Reporter.
Where to watch: Theatres
Earle Meets World (English)
Content creator, super-duper influencer, skincare brand founder. And now, star of an unscripted Netflix BTS into her life. Alix Earle, American media star, certainly lives an eventful life. And, depending on one’s tolerance for influencer culture and reality TV, this one’s an entertaining (and occasionally revealing) insight into a contemporary culture and the people behind it. It’s also, in spirit, a modern day retelling of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, with multiple (real life) characters revolving in and out of Earle’s life and causing drama and intrigue periodically.
Where to watch: Netflix
Jagamae Sangeetham (Telugu)
Based on the Hindi series Bandish Bandits, this show has at its centre a young man named Balu (Akshay Lagusani), who is caught between tradition and modernity. On one hand is his grandfather’s musical legacy, and on the other is his innate urge to carve out his own identity. Starring actors like Prakash Raj and Madhubala, the outing is at once an exploration of Carnatic music and a coming-of-age story.
Where to watch: Prime Video
Mayday (English)
Ryan Reynolds plays Troy Kelly, a pilot who finds himself stranded after his plane crashes behind enemy lines. Set in the Cold War era of the ’80s, with Kenneth Branagh playing Nikolai Ustinov, an ex-KGB agent, this buddy movie action flick hits us with the right amount of comedy and bromance.
Kelly and Ustinov strike up an unexpected alliance, as they both try to make their way out, taking the audience on a journey full of stunts, laughs, and hijinks. Branagh and Reynolds’s chemistry is a thrill to watch, while directing duo John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein bring their signature filmmaking flair to the action shots and sequences.
Where to watch: AppleTV
Fresh off the big screen
Dhamaal 4 (Hindi)
Indra Kumar’s film, starring the usual suspects like Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh, Ravi Kishan, Arshad Warsi, Sanjay Mishra, and Upendra Limaye, is predictably a trainwreck of a film. Plot synopsis matters little given how everything collapses into slapstick humour and confusion. But if the plan is to watch a brainrot film, this might work.
Where to watch: Netflix
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (English)
Jon Favreau is back with another Star Wars movie, and back too is everyone’s favourite—baby Yoda. A star-studded cast returns, and this time, Mando, the bounty hunter (played by Pedro Pascal), along with Grogu, must hunt down the mysterious warlord, Commander Coin, and rescue Rotta the Hutt (played by Jeremy Allen-White). From encountering strange new creatures to facing the wrath of a deadly Dragonsnake to looking after each other in times of danger, we have it all in this film.
The Star Wars franchise and world lends itself to these funky new stories and adventures, much to our pleasure, making sure we never run out of new stories and characters to sink our teeth into. John Serba at Decider writes of little Grogu,
To see the little critter-fella — once again oh-so-endearingly-and-obviously brought to life via good old-fashioned Muppetry — be hilarious, heroic and gross on the big screen was a treat, like chilly soft-serve on a summer day.
Where to watch: JioHotstar
Puratawn (Bengali)
Most Bengali films are dunked in nostalgia. Suman Ghosh, however, employs the emotion in unexpected ways. In his story, an octogenarian (Sharmila Tagore) is steadily losing her memory and yet the one thing she remembers is her daughter. The latter, Ritika (Rituparna Sengupta) arrives, rattled upon witnessing her mother’s cognitive decline and dealing, at the same time, with the breakdown of her marriage. By placing a complex but universal bond at the centre, Puratawn questions the validity of memory and its authenticity. Do we remember to forget to forget to remember?
Tagore offers an aching performance. A review in The Hindustan Times raves, “The film expands and grows when Sharmila occupies the frame. In many ways her performance is in conversation with Anthony Hopkins' turn in The Father. In the 2020 release, Anthony Hopkins' character has similar disorienting time slips and emotional outbursts, as witnessed by his daughter Anne (played by Olivia Colman).”
Where to watch: Hoichoi
souk picks