News & Movie Review

  Name - The Suicide Squad Director - James Gunn Runtime - 132 mins Platform - In Select Theatres and HBO Max James Gunn is a deranged maniac, in a good way. The Suicide Squad, the second 2021 offering by Warner Bros. and DC Comics, is quite easily both DC and James Gunn at their most unleashed. Now I realize that by stating that, I am alienating at least a quarter of the audience who loves Gunn for his PG-13 offerings for Marvel (Guardians of the Galaxy 1 & 2). This isn't Guardians of the Galaxy 1 & 2, not by a mile. If anything The Suicide Squad is Gunn's irreverence dialed up to 11, the weirdness and gross out humour of The Toxic Avenger coupled with a big budget Hollywood production, and a cast of characters who are truly expendable, because as the name The Suicide Squad suggests, not many people are walking out of this movie alive. Looking at the above roll call, anybody would be under the misconception that this is a large ensemble and thus narrative-wise it wou...

  Any Marvel Cinematic Universe tv series has two tasks it needs to accomplish. It needs to move the overall plot of that universe forward, while also establishing itself as a standalone TV series in which characters have their own motivations and points of view. Wandavision and The Falcon and Winter Soldier were more interested in bringing out an individual identity of their own, but ultimately weren't really successful because they couldn't resist relishing in the MCU trappings, especially in the season finale of Wandavision, which is basically a CGI generated red skies filled slugfest. All of this is to say, Loki is the first MCU show which finally pushes the plot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe forward, building on the foundations of the last 10 years, breaking those foundations and charting a new course. And it succeeds, far more than its two other counterparts. One of the bigger reasons is show-runner Michael Waldron's confidence in leaning in to the absolutely goofy...

   Crime Procedurals are a dime a dozen nowadays. The genre, which has become a staple for channels like CBS, with its 20 or 22 year run shows of Law and Order - SVU, NCIS, Criminal Minds, has a high possibility of becoming stale or running its course. And after 2020, police procedurals and even comedies related to cops (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) started to feel decidely unsavory and valorizing towards a profession historically involved with societal ills, both for its cure as well as for its increasing effect. Among the glut of these police procedurals, very few stand out, evolve and become something almost multi-generational in impact. Be it The Wire or Homicide - Life on the Streets, shows like those evolve past the constraints of the police procedurals because of the change in its key foci. Most police procedurals would be very plot heavy each episode, with the plot resolving itself by the end of the episode. The beauty of shows like The Wire, or Homicide, and currently Bosch is...

   Leave it to Amit Masurkar to direct a movie which could only be characterized as an environmental thriller. Like his previous film Newton, Masurkar takes a very unconventional story material - here the story of a forest ranger's effort to catch a man-eating tiger, and the rural politics which transform into a circus.   There are a couple of nuances and instances which make Sherni into a compelling watch. Firstly the acting. Vidya Balan plays the role of a steely determined Forest Ranger dedicated to the duty transposed on her, and frustrated by her superiors' and other extenuating circumstances causing the focus of the mission to zig zag. Her only allies is Mr. Noorani, a nerdy Biology Professor played by Vijay Raaz, and Noorani's young followers called Forest Friends, environmentalists dedicated to protection of the jungle and the balance between environment and development. The second instance is the slow burn. The majority of the first hour is intended for developme...

      Yunaka Kanzaki, the world renowned wine critic has passed awak. Shinzuku Kanzaki, a salesman at a Beer company learns of this news, and  is Summoned to the family home, a splendid European style mansion, to hear the reading of his father's will. There he learns that, in order to take ownership of his legacy, he must correctly identify, and describe in the manner of his late father, thirteen wines, the first twelve known as the "Twelve Apostles" and the thirteenth known as the "Drops of God", that his father has described in his will. He also learns that he has a competitor in this, a renowned young wine critic called Toomine Issei, who his father has apparently recently adopted as his other son.  The key to any good story is in knowing how to tell it, acknowledging all of the tropes of said storytelling, which also delving completely into the specificity.  If you read the first 2 pages above, and see the description of the wine, the procedure ...

      Name - The Family Man (Season 2) Creator - Raj & DK No. of Episodes - 9 Runtime - 33 - 60 mins each Platform - Amazon Prime Video   The abject lesson in crafting a cliffhanger ending to one season, especially a cliffhanger ending as exciting as Family Man Season 1, is that the new season would immediately continue from the first season. What it shouldn't do is just jump a couple of months into the future, and showcase the characters moving off from the events , and then by storytelling structuring reveal what actually happened, which could easily have been used to end Season 1.   This is not an opinion of a show, this is a view of a storytelling structuring which doesn't work in the current landscape.   Thankfully though Family Man Season 2 is the prime example of one of those shows which proves that even if censorship can dull the teeth off your show, it won't completely damage the impact your show would have if the story actually is good. And...

  Name - Mare of Easttown No. of Episodes - 7 Runtime - 55 mins each Creator - Brad Ingelsby Director - Craig Zobel Platform - HBO Max, Disney + Hotstar There are very few shows which perfectly encapsulate the feeling of living in a small town, knowing each and every member of the said locality, and the subsequent feeling of both a closeness as well as claustrophobia and exasperation. Mare of Easttown follows Mare Sheehan, a detective investigating the murder of a local teen, which causes old secrets of the inhabitants of the small Philadelphia town to spill over.  Mare is a character with a lot of baggage, which slowly gets revealed as the series progresses. She also is a person haunted by a similar case she had been unable to solve for over a year leading to people in the community doubting her detective skills. Her personal troubles include a divorce, her son lost to suicide, an ex-heroin addict daughter-in-law fighting for the custody of her grandson. All of the above issu...