Bad Boys for Life is streaming on Amazon Prime Video. (Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing)
While the lockdown is starting to ease in many parts of the country, social distancing is still the norm of the day. Amid following the new guidelines of safety, many are preferring to stay indoors and continue their work from home. Life within limited space can surely get mundane, but streaming platforms have surely come as a saviour in these unprecedented times.
Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar, Voot Select, AltBalaji, Zee5, Sony LIV, Apple TV+ and other streaming platforms are putting their best foot forward so that their audience can get the best possible content. In the last few days, Netflix’s Bulbbul, Sony LIV’s Bhosle, Disney+ Hotstar’s Aarya have gotten a great response from the audience.
Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming series Breathe: Into The Shadows is the next big OTT release. The show marks Abhishek Bachchan’s debut on the web platform.
Disney+ Hotstar is also increasing the stakes in the OTT space as the streaming platform is releasing as many as seven Bollywood films. These films are – Dil Bechara, Sadak 2, Bhuj, The Big Bul, Laxmmi Bomb, Khuda Hafiz and Lootcase. This comes after Amazon Prime Video released Ayushmann Khurrana and Amitabh Bachchan starrer Gulabo Sitabo. Vidya Balan’s Shakuntala Devi is also set to release on the platform soon. Other OTT releases include Janhvi Kapoor starrer Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl that is coming out on Netflix.
Among the international content on OTT platforms, Netflix’s Dark Season 3 seemed to please the viewers. Indianexpress.com’s Kshitij Rawat wrote in his review of the series, “Dark has been one of my all-time favourite Netflix Original series, and would easily make it to my list of best five science-fiction series. I first tried this German series because I was told it was Stranger Things, only, well, darker. And indeed, the first few episodes did make it seem as though it was Stranger Things set in an infinitely bleaker parallel universe. But Dark soon became its own thing, with a complex mythology that was knotty enough to rival Lost.”
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.
A sitcom about a bunch of police officers in a New York precinct, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is continuously funny. The performances are great, and the uniquely written characters never let you get bored.
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.
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.
Although the first season was marred by more talking than action, the definitive pirate TV show Black Sails picks up from second, gets better in third, and goes out with a bang with its fourth and final season. The story is the prequel of Treasure Island, classic adventure book by Robert Louis Stevenson.
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An adaptation of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Bengali novel of the same name, Parineeta starred Saif Ali Khan, Vidya Balan, Sanjay Dutt in lead roles. The film’s director Pradeep Sarkar won the National Award for Best Debut Film of a Director, and Shantanu Moitra along with lyricist Swanand Kirkire wove magic with their music.
The animated series follows a mad but brilliant scientist Rick Sanchez and his naive, impressionable grandson Morty Smith's adventures across faraway galaxies, planets, parallel worlds, different realities and so on. Rick and Morty boasts some of the most intelligent writing in the medium currently, with jokes that are easy to miss if the attention wavers even a little. And before you have managed to wrap your head around it, the show has already moved ahead.
Based on the 1993 novel of the same name by John le Carré, this miniseries has two of the best actors on television: Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston. It is a espionage drama and is engaging throughout its run.
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.
This Batman movie is the most Batman-esque movie. In fact, if you see only this movie, you will have a pretty good idea as to what the superhero is all about. Will Arnett's superbly written and voiced Caped Crusader is as much a tribute as a parody of every live-action version of Batman. And it is downright nuts. Voldemort and Sauron are two of the villains that the Joker recruits to take down Batman, for crying out loud, and that is not the craziest thing in this movie. Zach Galifianakis, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson and Ralph Fiennes are also part of the film's voice cast.
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.
A low budget film that tells the story of screenwriter Emily V Gordon and her husband and comedian Kumail Nanjiani, who have also written the story together. This is a no-holds-barred story that does not gloss over anything a relationship is - messy, sometimes infuriating and perplexing, but beautiful and worth it nonetheless.
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.
After a child disappears, the residents of the town discover that in a cave system adjacent to the power plant, there is a wormhole from which characters can travel through time. The discovery leads to new, truly fascinating revelations that often change the way one looks at the whole story. For instance, one missing child, Mikkel inadvertently travelled into the past, got stuck, grew up as Michael, had a son who was older than him when he went missing in the present.
Read the review of the third and final season here.
The third installment in the Bad Boys trilogy, Bad Boys for Life brings back Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett, respectively, who investigate a series of murders.
The film received positive reviews with a 77 per cent rating at Rotten Tomatoes. The critical consensus reads, "Loaded up with action and a double helping of leading-man charisma, Bad Boys for Life reinvigorates this long-dormant franchise by playing squarely to its strengths."
Starring Ayushmann Khurrana and Amitabh Bachchan, Gulabo Sitabo premiered on Amazon Prime Video. The Indian Express' Shubhra Gupta gave the film 2 stars and wrote in her review, "I missed the zest, the drollness and sharpness, that Juhi Chaturvedi’s writing is so full of. Some of that edge shows up in the way the women, old and young, are etched, all happily themselves, never at a loss for words: you wish they had more to do."
Read the full review here.
The Big Bang Theory started as the story of two geeky scientists Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon (Jim Parsons) who have a new neighbour Penny (Kaley Cuoco). The socially awkward science geeks live in a different world as compared to Penny, who works as a waitress and is an aspiring actress. It’s the clash of these two worlds that forms the base of this sitcom. Over time, supporting characters like Raj (Kunal Nayyar) and Howard (Simon Helberg) were given leading parts and Amy (Mayim Bialik) and Bernadette’s (Melissa Rauch) characters were also given top billing.
Also Read | The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon, hold the fort!
Written and directed by Rajat Kapoor, Kadakh is set during the day of Diwali when an unexpected incident derails the course of a marriage and many friendships. STarring Ranvir Shorey, Chandrachoor Rai, Mansi Multani, Rajat Kapoor, Cyrus Sahukar and Kalki Koechlin, this Rajat Kapoor film is streaming on Sony LIV.
Read movie review here.
Starring Tripti Dimri, Avinash Tiwary, Rahul Bose, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Paoli Dam among others is Anvita Dutt’s directorial debut. Produced by Anushka Sharma and Karnesh Ssharma, the film has been receiving rave reviews.
Read the movie review here.