We recommend: The best new movies and TV series

Editor’s note: After a string of bombastic releases last week, this week has smaller but interesting palate cleansers. A president in his final term is plagued by indecision in Italian master Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, out on MUBI. Do not miss the charming Hindie Dug Dug, featuring a bike that can drive itself in a Rajasthani village. Nawazuddin Siddiqui is depressed and trying to act his way out of it in Main Actor Nahin Hoon. Priyanka Chopra is again globetrotting and doing stunts. Season two of a grim Danish crime series. Above all, John Lennon on the big screen!

*****

New releases

La Grazia (ItaIian)

“It just comes down to one question,” a daughter tells her father, “Who owns our days?” The father is De Santis, an Italian president nearing the end of his term. He needs to sign or not sign a bill legalising euthanasia.

At the same time, De Santis needs to sign or not sign the pardon petitions of two individuals—one is the murderer of an abusive husband, the other the killer of his wife who had dementia.

A dry comedy of grief, regret, and philosophising cut to buzzy electropop. De Santis is turning to everyone for answers. But is there one answer? Or is the right answer the answer that suits him? Or is it the one that may not suit him but the one he needs? What shall the widower and former judge do? The title means “grace”.

Critics loved it. This is the Italian master Paolo Sorrentino and his alter-ego/muse/star Tony Servillo’s eighth collaboration, having left behind gems like Il Divo (2008) and The Great Beauty (2013). Here’s a fun chunk from Owen Glieberman’s review in Variety.

Servillo is such a sly actor, and the director showcases his deadpan performance with such slow-build curiosity, that the film is always cueing us to read his mind, to see the glimmers of thought and soul behind the façade. Sorrentino also gives De Santis a wild card or two, like making him a fan of Italian gangsta rap who likes to rap along with it, or having the editor of Vogue come on to him. De Santis is also obsessed with the idea that his wife had an affair, and he keeps pestering their old friend, Coco (Milvia Marigliano) — one of the director’s vintage high-decibel cantankerous divas — to tell him who it is. 

Where to watch: MUBI

Dug Dug (Marwari)

Here’s the latest way to know post-Independence India has truly aged, and the old world is now meant for a museum or blind faith. A Luna moped (older millennials and Gen X out here must remember this) gets its own movie. Belonging to a man who has just died, the bike develops self-motoring abilities and quickly gathers devotees in a Rajasthani village. 

Critics have loved it, particularly Ranjit Singh’s loud production design and Aditya A Kumar’s trippy cinematography, cut to Salvage Audio Collective’s jazz-rock BGM. Having premiered in 2021 at the Toronto International Film Festival, Dug Dug has finally found a theatrical release. 

Nandini Ramnath of Scroll wrote, "Pareek’s inventive feature debut has a tactile texture and a serious feel for the eccentric. Dug Dug is initially perfectly calibrated, with just the right doses of deadpan humour and technical prowess."

The Hollywood Reporter India’s Rahul Desai added, “Debut director Ritwik Pareek leaves no stone unturned to expand what is essentially a 10-minute satire about blind faith into a wicked 105-minute origin story of religion, monetised spirituality and the loud privatisation of belief. It’s a tough sell, but the gimmick is that Dug Dug is privy to its own irony: the film is designed to resemble a brand spot about the absurdities of selling.”

Where to watch: Theatres

Lukkhe (Hindi)

Punjab, rap, drugs, youth, neon. Tragedy first. Revenge and/or redemption later. We have seen this in Udta Punjab (2016). Sony LIV’s series Chamak was another ode to the OG legend of Amar Singh Chamkila, the infamous folk singer-songwriter who was shot dead in broad daylight by unknown men in 1988. Chamkila himself directly inspired two films, one from Imtiaz Ali, another from indie filmmaker Kabir Singh Chowdhry. 

So what’s new? Reviews have noted some welcome freshness in the series, particularly the filmmaking and the lead performance from Lakshvir Singh Saran. Here’s Udita Jhunjhunwala for Scroll.

Every time the narrative slips into intoxication, emotional triggers or psychological delirium, the palette shifts into blues, pinks and purples. The lighting becomes hallucinatory, almost dreamlike. Lakshvir Singh Saran’s Lucky emerges as the soul of the series. He carries guilt and emotional responsibility with sincerity.

Where to watch: Prime Video

Dridam (Malayalam)

Here's what first-time filmmaker Martin Joseph told The New Indian Express about the problem of making a serial killer film ahead of Dridam’s release: "The biggest challenge with the genre is that people start predicting what’s going to happen next after almost every scene. So the real challenge is finding ways to stay ahead of those expectations."

Dridam arrives marketed as a production from the makers of Por Thozhil, the superb 2023 Tamil serial killer film, and "presented" by the Malayalam hit machine Jeethu Joseph, creator of the Drishyam franchise. The star is Mollywood's talented and troubled Shane Nigam, all grown-up now, playing a newly appointed sub-inspector suddenly confronted with serial killings. Can he—and the film—prove themselves? Reviews are middling. But genre fans wouldn't mind.

Where to watch: Theatres

Main Actor Nahin Hoon (Hindi)

Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays a former banker based in Frankfurt. He is depressed. Chitrangada Satarupa plays a struggling actor from Mumbai. She is not depressed. Director Aditya Kripalani’s low-budget indie brings the two together on a day-long video call. The actor gets the non-actor to confront his woes, asking stuff like, “Do you love your father?” 

Reviews are middling—most noting that the film never gets over its cute and precious premise of two strangers healing one another in 24 hours. But praise was reserved for Chitrangada Satarupa’s role and performance. Rahul Desai of The Hollywood Reporter India wrote,

Mouni is a bitter and withered cynic who resents her peers for ‘selling out’ while she remains a stubborn purist who can barely make the rent with side-hustles. The toll of being in it for the love of the game is evident; she’s whiny, eccentric and plain unlikable. (...) Chitrangada Satarupa blurs the lines effectively enough, internalising a person that’s both easy and difficult to empathise with. 

Where to watch: Theatres

Power to the People: John Yoko Live in NYC (English)

Miss anything but try to not miss this documentary featuring John Lennon's only full-length concert performances after splitting from The Beatles. The concerts at Madison Square Garden, NYC, were put together to raise funds for abused schoolchildren. The highlight of the film, which itself is a highlight, is its split-screen treatment: you see a part of the concert on one half, another part on the other.

Most critics were giddy. Variety's Owen Gleiberman wrote,

In his Army jacket and lollipop-blue round sunglasses, with shaggy long sideburns, Lennon gives off a fascinating air of self-involved indifference, expressed in the way that he chews gum for the entire concert. (...) He and Yoko and the band perform 15 songs, and at certain points he’s doggedly sincere, yet he’s also got the Lennon cheek ('Welcome to the rehearsal,' he warns the audience), and also the Lennon detachment, that underlying vibe of 'Who gives a fuck, really?'

Where to watch: Theatres

Mortal Kombat II (English)

This next line is again for the Luna moped generation: surely you all remember the Mortal Kombat video game and the superhit and pretty well made 1995 film adaptation whose highlight was its fantastic techno theme. They are still rebooting the franchise and making sequels as the global film industry appears to be in the ICU. Still, no harm with some retromania? Stars Karl Urban (The Boys) in the lead role.

Where to watch: Theatres

Fresh off the big screen

Neelira (Tamil)

Sri-Lankan filmmaker Someetharan looks back at memories of Lankan Tamils trapped between rebels and the Sinhalese, aided by Indian forces, through the civil war that lasted almost three decades—an inspiration for several great films, including French director Jacques Audiard’s must-watch Dheepan (2015).

A woman is about to get married the next morning. But Indian peace-keeping forces try to take shelter in the house that very night. The Tamil rebels see this as an opportunity to attack the soldiers. Coming off mostly positive reviews.

Where to watch: Zee5

One more chapter

Citadel S02 (English)

Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Richard Madden, and Stanley Tucci reunite for the second season of the world’s second-most expensive show after Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. It’s a spy series featuring two competing spy agencies, where employees across the aisle have been ex-lovers and/or ex-rivals, with the ringmasters trying to control the fate of the world.

After S01 was thoroughly slammed, critics are saying season two is a marked improvement. Scroll noted,

There’s clear flab-cutting at work and a sharper emphasis on continuing the main spy-versus-spy narrative. (...) Citadel S2 works harder than its predecessor on the typical revenge-remorse-redemption trifecta that governs every spy thriller. There is nothing wildly new here, only a more efficient examination of the ways in which adversaries are more similar than they care to admit.

Where to watch: Prime Video

The Chestnut Man: Hide and Seek (Danish)

Two detectives reunite in the second season of a most acclaimed Nordic noir series. The job is to grab a serial killer who stalks and taunts their victims with a nursery rhyme before kidnapping, torturing and murdering them. Check. A decades-long gap between two similar crimes? Check. Good ol' reliable. The critics are saying the new bottle is fab. Based on the series of novels written by Søren Sveistrup, the creator of possibly Scandinavia's most popular global crime offering, The Killing.

"...not only takes a dark turn in terms of story but also in style, with life-threatening fights, a lot of gun action, and more," wrote Felipe Rangel of Screen Rant. "The new season feels like the show has evolved in the years it was away, and the result is what I believe to be one of the best seasons for any show on Netflix."

Where to watch: Netflix