Shubhra Gupta

Rana Naidu is back for a second-go-round, and this season is as kinetic as the first, fists and bullets flying. It also dials down the crassness, which is a good thing. The close ties that keeps the Naidu parivaar together are still intact, though, and that gives this heavy-on-action saga the occasional emo touch, which we saw in the first season. This franchise, adapted from American crime drama ‘Ray Donovan’ for India by Karan Anshuman, is shaping up to deliver on what it promises: a family man trying to do his best to keep his embattled flock safe even as he goes full tilt at what he is paid to – fix things for powerful people.

The gorgeous vistas of the Kullu and Lahaul valley become the backdrop for a story of loss and healing. Subhadra Mahajan’s debut feature, out in a limited release after a festival run (Karlovy Vary, Trivandrum), is about a Delhi-based young woman recovering from heartbreak. Nia (Dheera Johnson) spends her time being miserable, being coaxed to eat by housekeeper Bhemi (Thakri Devi). An evening with an old flame, visiting with his wife, becomes a brief distraction, but the rest of Nia’s time is spent watching Bhemi’s grandson Sunny (Kanav Thakur) being a boy — getting up to mischief in school, playing cricket in the lawns, waiting for his father to return from a trip to get his birthday gift. A playful kitten shows up, and becomes part of the menage, and when furballs snuggle into your arms, it is hard to hold on to misery.

The Life Of Chuck movie review: Based on a slim Stephen King novella, ‘The Life Of Chuck’ is a near-faithful cinematic adaptation which aims at giving us the warm fuzzies-in-this-dark-and-dismal-world, and succeeds, more or less. Just like the story, the film starts backwards, where we see Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) reconnecting with his ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillan) even as the world is coming to an end.

Me: Oh brain, braaaain. It’s that time again.

Dead Silence

Two brothers stuck in an impossible situation spiralling out of control without a lid in sight, in a Living-In-Two-Indias set-up: the premise of Stolen is sharp and current, and it starts out by pushing its unprepared protagonists, and us, into a state of high alert. Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee) is in a swanky SUV outside a train station in the dead of night, waiting for his ‘chota bhai’ Raman (Shubham Vardhan) to alight from a horribly delayed train. At around the same time, a baby is snatched from next to a sleeping woman.

There is comfort in watching characters we know go through a new story arc, a mix that allows for both familiarity and freshness. The fourth season of Criminal Justice re-unites us with the core team of Madhav Mishra, played by the affable Pankaj Tripathi, his perky wife Ratna (Khushboo Atre), her eager-beaver brother Deep (Aatm Prakash Mishra), and the immaculately-turned out Shivani Mathur (Barkha Singh), which is plunged into a roiling family affair featuring murder and mayhem. Only three episodes of the eight are streaming currently, in which we are introduced to the prime suspects of a murder most foul in a fancy Mumbai high-rise. A domestic help arrives in a flat in the morning and sees a woman, all bloodied, being cradled by a man, who appears to be distraught. Another woman is present, who has already called the cops.

Sister Midnight, which premiered at Cannes in 2024, and is out in limited release this week in India, is a bizarro-serio-comedy like no other. Radhika Apte plays Uma, a newly-wed on a train heading into Mumbai. The vastness of the city is reduced to a ramshackle kholi that is as alien to her as the man she is married to: Gopal (Ashok Pathak). He is as uncomfortable as she is, when it comes to holding out any kind of comfort or consummation. UK-based British-Indian director Karan Kandhari uses his varied music video experience to layer his debut feature with sounds drawn from around the world. It takes a bit getting used to, and feels all over the place at first, but then you realise how the discordance matches the movie, which is all about jangled people trying to find their rhythm.

Adapted from Israeli show ‘Magpie’, a chirpy synonym for police informers, Kankhajura brings the tale home, to Goa. Ashu (Roshan Mathew), out from prison after 14 years, goes looking for his beloved older brother Max (Mohit Raina), and finds him very well-off, and looking to expand his construction business, along with his old pals Pedro (Ninad Kamat) and Shardul (Mahesh Shetty). This cosy little triangle has no place for Ashu, and once again, he finds himself on the periphery, desperate to get an in. As he tries wriggling into his brother’s personal and professional spaces — getting close to Max’s svelte wife (Sarah Jane Dias) and daughter, and hovering around Max and his bros — he finds himself constantly rebuffed. His only solace is another old friend Amy (Trinetra Haldar), who used to be Amay, and who now runs a tiny bakery in one of those picturesque Goan villages.