Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is streaming on Netflix. The film marks the last appearance of Chadwick Boseman who passed away in August due to cancer. The film also stars Viola Davis, Colman Domingo, Michael Potts, Glynn Turman, Dusan Brown and Taylour Paige. Directed by George C. Wolfe, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is produced by Denzel Washington and Todd Black.
Set in the 1920s, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom has Viola Davis playing Ma Rainey, a celebrated performer, who is trying to get control of her own music against her white manager. Chadwick Boseman plays Leevee, an ambitious trumpeter who wants to make his mark in the music industry.
Netflix's Tamil anthology Paava Kadhaigal features short films of directors - Sudha Kongara, Vignesh Shivan, Gautham Vasudev Menon and Vetrimaaran. The cast includes - Anjali, Bhavani Sre, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Hari, Kalidas Jayaram, Kalki Koechlin, Padam Kumar, Prakash Raj, Sai Pallavi, Shanthnu Bhagyaraj and Simran among others.
On his short Oor Iravu, Vetrimaaran told The Indian Express, "I knew casting Prakash Raj and Sai Pallavi as father and daughter would reduce my work by half. When an actor like Prakash Raj becomes part of a story like this, he adds value to it. That apart, he has the ability to shift (emotionally) from one end of the spectrum to the other within seconds — from being a loving father to an aggressive patriarch who would do anything to assert his belief."
Vignesh Shivan, who has directed Love Panna Uttranum, said in an earlier statement, "Paava Kadhaigal helped me explore such an authentic theme in an honest way and gave me the opportunity to work alongside some of the most experienced filmmakers from the industry."
Guillermo del Toro loves monsters. In his movies, they are a stand-in for people and creatures that are shunned by society. In del Toro’s highly underrated Pan’s Labyrinth, a young girl meets a strange faun creature in a labyrinth Spain in 1944, five years after the country’s Civil War. The film is firmly rooted in its setting, and the context is not accidental.
Peter Jackson’s adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings trilogy is still without equal. The scale, the vision, the visual effects, the performances, the writing, the small character moments that are given as much importance as the big moments, LotR is a staggering achievement.
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Based on the eponymous series of books by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi, The Spiderwick Chronicles is a fun and adventurous fantasy movie involving fantastic creatures and an engaging story. It is for young adults, but just like Harry Potter, it is good enough for people of all ages. Freddy Highmore delivers a really good performance in the movie.
With Cate Blanchett, Rose Byrne in the lead roles, this mini-series is set during the second-wave of feminism in the US where feminists like Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and many others were spearheading a revolution for women’s rights but to their shock, one of their biggest opposers came in the form of Phyllis Schlafly.
This film was all about repairing the supposed damage that the previous entry in the sequel trilogy, The Last Jedi, did. Essentially, it tried to please the fanboys and turned out to be so messy that it did not please anybody. However, as a send off it is pretty good and if you are a fan, it will make you emotional and teary-eyed.
A science fiction drama TV anthology series, Tales from the Loop is a gripping, superbly shot and well-written piece of entertainment that will delight everyone, but specifically those who liked HBO's Westworld and FX's recent series Devs.
Based on an intriguing what-if premise, The Man in the High Castle is an alternate reality show. In this world, the Axis powers won and the United States was carved up between Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. Common Americans live under two foreign, oppressive regimes and they are resigned to their fate... until the people come across another reality -- our reality -- according to which things could be better.
Chernobyl, a miniseries based on the nuclear disaster of the same name, is scarier than any horror story in existence, precisely because it did happen in the past and a similar event can happen in future. Human incompetence, after all, has no limits. Read more
Paava Kadhaigal is an anthology film starring Kalidas Jayaram, Shanthnu Bhagyaraj, Bhavani Sre, Gautham Menon, Simran, Anjali, Kalki Koechlin, Prakash Raj, Sai Pallavi, Jaffer Sadiq.
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Chadwick Boseman's swan song revolves around Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (Viola Davis), one of the earliest African-American blues singers, and one of her recording sessions in Chicago of the 1920s. The session had Rainey clashing with her white manager over the control of her music.
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While the sunny Los Angeles is not as compelling a setting for horror as the dank streets of Victorian London, The City of Angels, Showtime horror series Penny Dreadful's spinoff, is surprisingly good, with a nice amalgam of contemporary social issues and the supernatural.
Two men go hunting deer in Scottish countryside and get more than they bargained for.
This is the film that put Netflix on the Academy’s map. A solid, emotional drama set in 1939, Mudbound is about race relations. A story of two families – one black and one white – that while sharing farmland are divided by the social hierarchies. The World War II also plays a pivotal role. The film is gorgeously shot and directed. Rachel Morrison, the cinematographer of the film, was nominated for an Academy Award for her work.
There are few movies that manage to outdo their source material. There are fewer movies that are based on a Stephen King book and still manage to outdo the source material. Gerald’s Game is one such movie.
The concept of child soldiers is incredibly repelling. But it is not hypothetical. In some parts of the world, it is a reality. Beasts of No Nation involves Idris Elba’s sadistic commandant conscripting a child into his army in Sierra Leone, West Africa. The film is a brutal blow to the viewer, and asks the question that how can we be so complacent when there still exist kids who are forced to fight and die?
Bong Joon-ho's Okja is a scathing critique of capitalism and also a satire on unrelenting human greed. A young South Korean girl and her father is given a specially bred super-pig that will potentially be used in pork production if the experiment is successful. But when the time comes to retrieve the animal, the girl, Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun, who does splendid work), refuses to let it go.
Directed by Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang, One Child Nation talks about the ramifications of the one-child policy of China that lasted for almost 25 years. It’s a harrowing account of people who emotionally talk about the harsh experiences their families went through as China enforced the policy on all its citizens.
The classic Doordarshan TV series based on RK Narayan's charming small-town based stories still holds up well. Relive your childhood (if you watched Malgudi Days as a child, that is) with this series.
Netflix’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Victorian-era Gothic horror novel was a surprisingly clever, well-performed piece of entertainment. While it was a considerable departure from the source material, it remains an interpretation that Stoker himself probably would have been proud of.
A Series of Unfortunate Events is based on the book series of the same name by Daniel Handler who uses his pen name Lemony Snicket to write the books. The story follows three Baudelaire children – a baby girl, a boy and his elder sister. The children have a fortune to their name, but a certain Count Olaf (played with a patent delight by Neil Patrick Harris) would like the fortune to himself. He will kill the children if that is what it took. The devilish Count is assisted by even nastier minions.
Larry David plays his own fictionalised version in this HBO series. The show is uproariously funny, and it really brings out the talent of the writer behind Seinfeld.
This documentary film chronicles Chinese city Wuhan’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in its initial days. For those who do not know, Wuhan is now considered to be the place from where the novel coronavirus originated.
Uriyadi (2016), starring Vijay Kumar in the lead role, is considered one of the best political thrillers in Kollywood. The film is set in the 1990s and follows four socially-conscious college-going boys. Even though the second part which hit screens last year was a let-down, Uriyadi is an unmissable film, and I highly recommend it.
Manoj Bajpayee plays agent Srikant Tiwari who has to deal with his domestic life whilst leading dangerous missions. Leading a double life can be hard on anyone, and The Family Man shows how tiresome and stressful the whole thing can get after a point. Srikant smokes cigarettes and eats chocolates when the pressure gets too much. He sometimes vents out his frustration on close friend and agent JK Talpade (played wonderfully by Sharib Hashmi).
This one is among the weirder and eccentric shows. Frodo of Lord of the Rings movies, Elijah Wood, plays an everyman whose life is turned into a veritable whirlwind a flamboyantly British "holistic" detective; holistic because he believes everything in the universe to be interconnected. And indeed, he has a seemingly preternatural ability. The feel of the show is like from one of the more strange comic-books from the 80s came to life. The story is loosely based on the writings of the great Douglas Adams.
In India, marriages are not the union of two people, but two families. Krish (Arjun Kapoor), a Punjabi boy and Ananya (Alia Bhatt), a South Indian girl, fall in love with each other. After graduating from IIM, the two decide to get married and arrange a meeting for their parents. The difference in their culture makes it difficult for the parents to adjust with each other and thus begins all the drama.
This Martin Scorsese directorial is about the rise and fall of mobster Henry Hill (a real figure) and stars Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta. The film is easily one of the best Scorsese film -- it is that good -- if not the best.
Starring Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, Vikrant Massey, Divyendu Sharma, Rasika Dugal, Shriya Pilgaonkar and Shweta Tripathi, Mirzapur revolves around drugs, guns and lawlessness. It depicts the rule of mafia dons and the crime prevailing in the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh. The much awaited second season debuted earlier this year.
They Shall Not Grow Old is a World War II documentary directed by Peter Jackson. It is an extraordinary experience, which has rightly earned plaudits around the world. Jackson, best known for directing the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has used modern post-production techniques, both visual and sound, including new voice-acting, and colourisation to bring alive World War II in all its terrible glory.
Starring Bhumi Pednekar, Durgamati is now streaming on Prime Video. The Indian Express’ Shubhra Gupta wrote in her review of the film, “Of course, life can be stranger than fiction, and there are things in this world that no one can explain. That’s what ‘horror-thrillers’ are meant for, and if you want to go down that path, you have to ensure that the viewers will fall for it, hook, line and several sinkers. But there are zero thrills or chills in Durgamati, the Hindi remake of the Tamil-Telugu bilingual Bhaagmathie, by the same director. The whole thing, which stretches for an inordinate 2.5 hours, is almost entirely unintentionally hilarious.”
Starring Radhika Apte, Sarah Megan Thomas, Stana Katic, among others, this film is set during World War II. The Indian Express’ Shalini Langer gave the film four stars in her review and wrote, “Director Lydia Dean Pilcher uses Radhika Apte well in the role of Noor Inayat Khan, not overplaying or undermining her Eastern ancestry, placing the talented actor shoulder-to-shoulder among her contemporaries.”
The Queen's Gambit on Netflix is based on a 1983 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis. The show stars Anya Taylor-Joy who is an orphan chess prodigy. It captures her attempt at becoming the greatest chess player while dealing with emotional issues and overuse of drugs and alcohol. The story is set in the mid-1950s and goes into the 1960s. As she gets better and more famous in chess, she has further trouble with substance abuse. Just the seven episodes in this one and can be binge-watched in a day.
Akshay Kumar and Kiara Advani’s horror-comedy Laxmii is streaming on Disney Plus Hotstar. The Raghava Lawrence directorial revolves around an unsuspecting man whose body gets taken over by a spirit. The Indian Express’ Shubhra Gupta wrote in her review of the film, “Somewhere deep inside the mess that’s Laxmii, is the kernel of a solid idea: to give us the story of a transgender person, with empathy and sympathy. But this Akshay Kumar-starrer is a two-hour clutch-your-head, can-I-really-be-watching-this nonsense, from beginning to end.”
Starring Swara Bhasker, the show follows her character as she steps away from a cookie-cutter life to follow her dream of becoming a stand-up comic. The Indian Express’ Shubhra Gupta wrote in her review of the series, “Bhaag Beanie Bhaag, written by comics who are meant to have cracked the stand-up scene, comes together only intermittently. For the rest, we are left looking for laughter, the kind that emerges from uncontrived, genuinely original situations.”
Watch Jallikattu, India’s Oscar entry for 2021, on Prime Video. The Lijo Jose Pellissery film examines the nature of the relationship that’s shared between humans and nature. Jallikattu derives its name from the controversial bull-taming event that is held in the southern part of the country. The film is about a group of men coming together to stop a bull that is running wild in their village.
Unpaused is an anthology of five short films directed by Raj & DK, Nikkhil Advani, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Avinash Arun and Nitya Mehra. The five directors share five stories from lockdown when the world around us came to a standstill. The five stories examine the loneliness, the struggles and even the epiphanies that changed our lives during the lockdown.
Starring Mona Singh, Swastika Mukherjee and Shamita Shetty, Black Widows follows three women who decide to stand up against their respective husbands and end the cycle of domestic abuse that has been inflicted on them for years. But, the way they choose to do this, comes back to haunt them years later.