Shubhra Gupta

Do not mess with a mother. She can go to any extent to save her family. Mixing mythology and technology, ‘Maa’ presents Kajol as a contemporary woman fighting with all her might to keep at bay the dark forces targeting her young daughter. Ambika (Kajol) and Shuvankar (Indraneil Sengupta) have succeeded in keeping his family’s troubled history from the artistically-inclined Shweta (Kherin Sharma). But the 12-year-old’s constant curiosity coupled with a tragic incident leads the mother and daughter to travel to their ancestral haveli in Chandrapur in the Bengal countryside, where time seems to have come to a stand-still.

An insensitive, full-of-himself basketball coach, suspended from his job, finds himself doing community service: in three months he has to shape a group of young adults, largely with Down’s Syndrome, into a team that is capable of participating in tournaments. Based on the 2018 Spanish film Campeones, ‘Sitaare Zameen Par’ adopts the original’s determinedly cheery vein to win its matches; in the process, it also wins our hearts. Gulshan (Aamir Khan) is the guy with an attitude problem, and he uses it to make everyone around him unhappy. His wife Sunita (Genelia d’Souza) wants a baby. He doesn’t. His senior coach wants compliance. Gulshan behaves badly. A drunk driving incident leads him, reluctance and truculence firmly in place, to a vocational centre for people with special needs. Here he encounters a group of spirited youngsters who challenge his idea of ‘yeh bechaare bachche’: Satbir, Guddu, Bantu, Hargovind, Sharmaji, Lotus, Raju, Kareem, Sunil, Golu are all young people with specific personality quirks which go beyond their facial Down’s distinctiveness, often unclear vocalisation and other limitations which are part of the autism spectrum. These are young people who have a sense of self, and fun: slowly but surely, Gulshan finds himself being drawn into their circle, and what started as a punishment becomes pure affection.

A billionaire is found dead. It is murder most foul. His will reveals a shocker. His fortune is split between his favourite canine and a complete outsider. Cue, shock and outrage. Enter sharp sleuth Sherdil, and the worms come wriggling out. On the suspects’ list is Pankaj Bhatti’s (Boman Irani) entire family, starting with wife Rajeshwari (Ratna Pathak Shah), son Angad (Sumeet Saigal) and daughter Shanti (Banita Sandhu). The dead man’s driver is also under the scanner, but the family’s ire is directed against Shanti’s boyfriend Poorvak (Arjun Tanwar), a deaf-mute like her, who is the biggest recipient of Bhatti’s generosity.

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.