Poison 2 is now streaming on Zee5. Film theatres are slowly but gradually reopening across the country, but it is going to take a lot of convincing to get people out of their homes to watch movies with hundreds of people during a pandemic. It will be a few weeks before theatres in the country are fully functional.
For now, streaming services remain the primary source of entertainment for millions of Indians.
Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of Chicago 7 is one of the most important releases on streaming services this month. It is the only second directorial after 2017’s Molly’s Game and is about the titular Chicago Seven, a group of men who protested against the US involvement in the anti-Vietnam War. The film is a courtroom drama and follows their trial after they were charged with inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.
The film stars Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jeremy Strong, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Alex Sharp, Thomas Middleditch, Frank Langella, William Hurt, Michael Keaton and Mark Rylance.
Evil Eye is another big recent release on OTT. It is one of Blumhouse’s film productions made for Amazon Prime Video. In the film, a typical Indian mother fusses over her daughter, who is living in the United States. Unable to secure a good sanskari Indian boy as a match for her despite all the astrology knowledge at her disposal, she is unnerved by the man her daughter does end up liking.
Here are the movies, web series and TV shows on platforms like ZEE5, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar, SonyLIV, ALTBalaji and Voot
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.
Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One paints the picture of a dystopian society in which most people are poor and have a virtual reality world called OASIS as an escape from their humdrum reality. Ready Player One, starring Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Simon Pegg and Mark Rylance among others, is an escapist film in every sense of the word.
Before Game of Thrones, HBO had Rome, a lavish and no-holds-barred take on Roman Empire around the time of Caesar’s assassination. It is a gorgeously shot show that unfortunately turned out to be simply too expensive and was discontinued after 2 seasons in spite of huge success.
Based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s stories, which also inspired a hugely popular series of open-world RPG video-games, the world of the witcher resembles Westeros (from Game of Thrones) in many ways. For one, it is a gritty, dirty world full of violence, sex, and so on. For another, there is no clear division of good or bad like in most fantasy tales. However, The Witcher boasts of a lot of magic and fantastical creatures, which George RR Martin’s novels shied away from. The hero itself, Geralt of Rivia, is a mutated human with superhuman abilities. Game of Thrones in comparison had magic, but only on the periphery, at least in the first few seasons.
Helmed by Drew Goddard and co-written by him and Joss Whedon, The Cabin in the Woods is a subversive horror film that takes the hackneyed remote forest cabin premise of so many horror films and turns it on its head. The result is a smartly written and acted movie. Chris Hemsworth plays the role of Curt Vaughan, who is one of the college students who go on a vacation to that forest cabin.
The Good Lord Bird’s episodes lead up to the events of the raid on the Army depot in West Virginia which led to Brown being executed, and the series stays engaging throughout.
The Boys is about a bunch of vigilantes (the titular Boys) who have their own reasons to abhor the ‘supes’ or superheroes. This is a world in which superheroes like Justice League and Avengers exist, and instead of being symbols of hope and nobility, they are blinded by their fame and many of them are more like supervillains.
Space Shuttle: Triumph and Tragedy tells the inside story of NASA's spaceships. As the title says, it explores both the triumphs and tragedies, and the latter includes the death of Kalpana Chawla and her team in Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003.
A Tamil anthology film, Putham Pudhu Kaalai is made up of five parts directed by Sudha Kongara, Gautham Menon, Suhasini Maniratnam, Rajiv Menon, and Karthik Subbaraj.
The Indian Express film critic Shubhra Gupta wrote about the film, "The lockdown and its impact has already been seen in many similar efforts by filmmakers around the world. But despite some perky moments here and there, this anthology remains mostly blah."
Ever wondered what it is like to live in space? This film should satiate your curiosity. It tells the story of what it takes to spend a whole year in space.
Rooting For Roona is the story of Roona Begum in the form of a documentary. Roona was a child who had a severe birth defect. She got a chance at a life-changing surgery after her photos went viral. Pavitra Chalam and Akshay Shankar have directed this documentary.
A typical Indian mother fusses over her daughter, who is living in the United States. Unable to secure a good sanskari Indian boy as a match for her despite all the astrology knowledge at her disposal, she is unnerved by the man her daughter does end up liking.
The Indian Express film critic Shubhra Gupta gave the film two stars. She wrote, "You pick on the central theme of the film early enough: misogyny is global, whether it is something that Usha suffered in her early years in Delhi, or Pallavi, losing her independence because of her new love, in the US. The film speaks out loud about daughters looking out for daughters, just in case we missed it, right in the end. But you wish it was done better: it goes back and forth like a metronome, swinging between the two sets of people – Pallavi and her too-good-to-be-true boyfriend and Usha and supportive spouse. Contrivances pop up, and the actors use exaggerated accents which keep slipping, especially Krishnan The ‘South Indian’ Dad underlining his ‘ths’ whenever he remembers to do so. And if you want to lace your film with ‘these superstitious Indians’, then you have to be careful that your characters don’t appear to be stereotypical."
Zakariya Mohammed's Halal Love Story is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. The film stars Indrajith Sukumaran in the lead role. Indrajith earlier spoke about his character in the movie. He said, "This character’s name is ‘Shareef’ and he is basically a bad actor so when considering actors for cinema inside the cinema, he’s probably the last option among many but they end up coming back to ‘Shareef’ and he gets casted as the lead in this film so there is a thin line because there are these portions where Shareef performs inside the movie and he’s not a good actor, so he has to be bad while performing."
Also Read | Halal Love Story review: A charming film about love and faith
Wish to learn more about the man who took the one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind? Then this is for you. This special features interviews given by Neil Armstrong to shed more light on this icon.
Aftab Shivdasani stars in this Zee5 web series that revolves around vengeance. The official description of the series reads, “Old players Nandu, Rani, and Pawan are back with their old story of deceit. Find out what their new game plan is in Poison 2”.
The series also features Raai Laxmi, Pooja Chopra, Rahul Dev, Vin Rana, Zain Imam, Asmita Sood, Joy Sengupta and Pawan Chopra among others.