Naxalbari is available on ZEE5.Despite the reopening up of cinema halls, OTT platforms remain the major source of entertainment. That’s because the audience is still unsure about stepping in to a theatre. This has given an advantage to the OTT platforms, which continue to churn out new content every week. With big players like ZEE5, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, SonyLIV, Disney Plus Hotstar, Voot Select and ALTBalaji among others competing to grab maximum viewers every week with original web shows and films, it looks like the digital medium is here to stay.
While we saw several big projects making their OTT premiere in the festive season, this week looks no different. From Tamil supernatural thriller Andhaghaaram to reality series Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives and web series Naxalbari, there’s something for everyone.
Rajeev Khandelwal’s crime thriller series Naxalbari is streaming on ZEE5. The official synopsis of Naxalbari reads, “Get ready for Naxalbari, a first-of-its-kind ZEES Original crime thriller series that explores Naxalism and its impact on the people fighting it. Starring Rajeev Khandelwal, Tina Dana, Sreejita Dey and Satyadeep Mishra, the series revolves around an STE’ agent who is on a secret mission to uncover the truth.”
Other titles which have released on OTT platforms this week include Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix), Dark 7 White (Zee5) and Uncle Frank (Amazon Prime Video).
Miss India is a Telugu-language drama film directed by Narendra Nath and starring Keerthy Suresh. Dani Sanchez-Lopez and Sujith Vaassudev have cranked the camera while S Thaman composed the music for the film. Rajendra Prasad, Jagapathi Babu and others also star.
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.
Julia Roberts stars in this psychological thriller based on the podcast of the same name created by Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg. Roberts plays the role of a social worker at a facility that apparently helps soldiers coming from war zones transition to the civilian life. Though, it is done by making the soldiers basically forget the bad stuff, creating a blank space in its place. There is a second season as well.
Hugh Jackman’s final outing as Wolverine is one of the best superhero movies ever made. This is the Wolverine movie we needed and deserved. A no holds barred film filled with ample gore and eye-popping action, a compelling desolate setting, and marvellous work by Jackman and Patrick Stewart in their last hurrah, Logan is fantastic. A fitting swansong.
The Tale is written and directed by Jennifer Fox. It is based on her own experiences of child sexual abuse. This is no sanitised version of events, mind you, this is harsh reality laid bare -- unsparing and unstinting
The Man in the High Castle is an alternate reality show. Instead of the Allies, Axis powers won in the World War II and the United States was carved up in two parts by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Directed by Prakash Jha, Pareeksha stars Adil Hussain, Priyanka Bose, Shubham Jha, Sanjay Suri. The Indian Express critic Shubhra Gupta gave the lm 2.5 stars and wrote, 'Prakash Jha knows his Bihar. The accents, the cadences, the characters, including the gold-chained festooned ‘sahukar’ and the entitled ‘sahebs’, feel right. An underdog-as-winner is an alwaysin-demand subject; a little less exposition would have made this well-intentioned lm better.'
It is a pity that one of the best sitcoms on television is not as publicised as others. Curb Your Enthusiasm is an out-and-out Larry David show, who is the writer behind probably the greatest sitcoms of all time, Seineld. He plays his own fictionalised version in this show. This show delivers more laughs in one episode than a popular sitcom like The Big Bang Theory would in an entire season.
The dark comedy series stars Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Sushant Singh, Priya Anand, Yashpal Sharma, Gopal Datt and Ayaz Khan. In her review of A Simple Murder, The Indian Express film critic Shubhra Gupta wrote, "So we get a rising body-count, shiny-grimy West Delhi Dwarka-Janakpuri-Mayapuri locations– a grungy watering-hole where would-be assassins meet, perchance, a hotel where you can hire ladies of the night for a bit of S&M, a junkyard where the carcasses of cars and humans get the same treatment, and a bag stuffed with pink notes which keeps changing hands. The writers display flair and imagination, and that’s more than half the battle won. The other half is taken up by the actors, and what a blast they are."
Director Atlee's production venture Andhaghaaram stars Vinoth Kishan, Arjun Das, Pooja Ramachandran, Kumar Natarajan, and Meesha Ghoshal. Talking about the film, the makers shared, "Andhaghaaram is a blind conjurer's struggle for survival, a washed-up cricketer's fight for deliverance and a desolate psychiatrist's quest for reclamation, which lead them all to a labyrinth of obscurity as their lives are intertwined in a web of deceit, dismay and darkness."
The Netflix original follows the life story of four 'Bollywood wives' Seema Khan (wife of Sohail Khan), Maheep Kapoor (wife of Sanjay Kapoor), Bhavana Pandey (wife of Chunky Panday) and Neelam Kothari Soni (wife of Samir Soni). The show, produced by Karan Johar's Dharmatic Entertainment, also has a guest appearance by Bollywood's power couple Shah Rukh Khan and Gauri Khan.
The action-thriller web series, directed by Kunal Kohli, is backed by a strong ensemble cast including Rajeev Khandelwal, Tina Datta, Sreejita Dey, Satyadeep Mishra, Shakti Anand and Aamir Ali. The narrative of the eight-episode series alternates between the dense jungles of Maharashtra and metropolitan cities which are increasingly becoming hotbeds for Naxal ideology. Khandelwal’s Raghav is a tough cop who is ready to go up against all odds to save the country and fight back against a red uprising.