We recommend: The best new movies and TV series

Editor’s note: Highlight of the week online is the terrific Russian documentary My Undesirable Friends on MUBI—a startling look at the cost of speaking truth to power in Putin’s Russia. Offline, you have Robert Pattinson and Zendaya as a couple mostly bickering and sometimes smiling in The Drama. Lurking behind is the horror-action flick Ready Or Not 2, which is fun stuff. A host of recent theatrical releases are now online, including Wuthering Heights and Marty Supreme. There’s also Ravi Kishan in here somewhere.

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New Releases

My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow (Russian)

Are the journalists doing alright? Julia Loktev's documentary observes a group of independent Russian journalists slightly before and immediately after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Close to six hours long, the docu goes close and personal into the lives of professionals dutybound or just plain driven to speak truth of power—many of them young women.

Russian president Vladimir Putin's government increasingly brands media orgs as "foreign agents", while journalists deal with relentless surveillance, legal pressures and professional struggles. Here’s Justin Chang for The New Yorker.

What we see unfold, during those terrible few months, is an astonishing epic of uncertainty, anxiety, and despair, and of defiant, illogical hope—and Loktev, a filmmaker of exacting patience, hurries none of it along (...) The film’s transfixing power arises from our knowledge of what is coming, even as the people onscreen, for all their professionally honed smarts and well-founded suspicions, have no idea. 

Where to watch: MUBI

The Drama (English)

This is an easy sell. Hotties Robert Pattinson and Zendaya in a romcom, hey, a genre we thought had become a fossil. Close to the wedding, the screenplay has the couple play a game where they have to reveal the worst thing they have ever done. Turns out these characters don’t know the concept of lying, more so in front of another couple they are playing the game with. Emma (Zendaya) admits something so scary, Charlie (Pattinson) is flabbergasted. Couple #2, of course, exists to make matters worse. Above all, a cautionary tale about oversharing.

While it’s a charming package, discerning critic Angelica Jade Bastién of Vulture was found frowning. 

The Drama is brittle. Dry to the point of aesthetic suffocation. The color grading may be warm, but the blocking and understanding of bodies reveals the film to be an aseptic exercise. Is this A24 house style now? A slick constitution that rose in prominence in the 2010s due to the scant novelty of that era? The once-indie company is maintaining the middlebrow while holding space for prestige filmmakers like Jonathan Glazer, Ari Aster, and Celine Song. Sure, it’s making work that the major studios wouldn’t think about touching. But if provocation is promised, I want to walk out of the theater pissed off. And if romance is on the table, I want to fret over the stakes of it. Instead, I wasn’t that affected at all.

Where to watch: Theatres

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (English)

The latest film about a young, spunky woman bloodily surviving devil-worshipping elites is here. The good news is it's superfun. A sequel to the scrappy 2019 horror-action flick Ready or Not, the sequel takes off right where the first film ended. After Grace (Samara Weaving) survived her insane in-laws in part one, rival crazy families need to kill her as part of a ritual. Upping the stakes is Grace's estranged sister (Kathryn Newton), who must be protected.

Horror hounds will be excited to know that the cast includes body horror maestro, the filmmaker David Cronenberg, and horror impresario, Elijah Wood, who has maintained a steady, low-key career starring in and backing strange genre films.

Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting loved it: “More is more in Ready or Not 2. Bigger stakes, larger playing field, a higher (and more gruesome) body count, and even double the protagonists. All designed to deliver maximum crowd-pleasing fun. It more than delivers on that front, even if it loses some of the original magic in the process.”

Where to watch: Theatres 

Maa Ka Sum (Hindi)

Mona Singh, off the back of the roaring success of Kohrra’s new season, stars as Vinta, the titular ‘Maa’. Her 19-year-old son, Agastya (Mihir Ahuja), is a mega nerd and a bit of a math genius. He’s also a bit too invested in his mum’s life. And so, like any mama’s boy worth his salt, he decides to create an algorithm that’ll help her find a perfect match. Uh…

These broad parameters define the narrative of this dramedy, with an ex-girlfriend hovering in Agastya’s orbit and a professor, Ira (Angira Dhar), that he falls for. As you’d expect, Maa Ka Sum explores the imperfect complexities of love, and how they defy mathematical convention. The reviews are mixed at best, but Singh’s performance has been praised. Sana Farzeen at India Today wrote: “At the centre of it all, Mona Singh remains the emotional anchor. There’s grace, vulnerability, and quiet strength in her performance, especially in moments where the narrative pauses to acknowledge her sacrifices as a single mother.”

Where to watch: Prime Video 

Hey Kay Navin? (Marathi)

Priya Bapat and Umesh Kamat, real-life couple, star as Rama and Aditya in this Marathi language series. The two are a perfect couple: married for a decade, stable, blissfully child-free and deeply in love. But then she decides to quit her job and do her own thing and, while he remains supportive and loving, some cracks begin to emerge.

Nandini Ramnath at Scroll, while praising the performances by the two leads (especially Bapat), wrote that the series “explores scenes from a marriage in a seriocomic vein.” It’s an “often honest, superbly performed but ultimately conservative examination of a relationship that one of the two halves comes to regard differently.”

Where to watch: Zee5

Eat Pray Bark (German)

A breezy 90-minute German comedy about dogs—what’s there to not love? Five dog owners, each a bit of an oddball (one of them is a politician who hates dogs but is trying to whitewash her public image), can’t figure out how to deal with their lovable monsters. As a Hail Mary, they travel to the mountains and link up with Nodon (Rúrik Gíslason), himself an off-kilter dog trainer in the Tyrolean mountains who goes around telling people that he has lived with a wolf pack in the past. Fun times ensue, as the motley crew goes through stages of self-reflection and personal discovery. Archi Sengupta of Leisurebyte called it a “pleasant, albeit shallow, experience.”

Where to watch: Netflix

Sins of Kujo (Japanese)

A thrilling live-action adaptation of the popular Manga series Kujō no Taizai by Shohei Manabe. Taiza Kujo (Yuya Yagira) is the controversial, morally ambiguous lawyer at the heart of the series, developing a clientele that consists almost entirely of wastrels and villains. From petty criminals to hotshot yakuza mobsters, he represents them all, using the law to defend his clients to the best of his abilities. This dense, richly layered legal drama explores Kujo’s motivations, and tries to understand his complex moral stands. Is he, underneath it all, a good person?

Where to watch: Netflix

Agent From Above (Mandarin)

Fantasy series from Taiwan based on the novel of the same name. Kai Ko stars as Han Chieh, a young man with a troubled past and a history of drug use who is thrust into a chaotic world of humans and deities. He is recruited as an agent for the deity the Third Crown Prince, and must battle against vicious, evil forces to protect humanity and atone for his past mistakes. Joel Keller of Decider wrote, “Like many shows that combine folklore with the real world, Agent From Above tries to be funny and scary at the same time, and only sometimes succeeds.”

Where to watch: Netflix

Fresh off the big screen

Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos (Hindi)

With this, comedian-actor-director Vir Das ticks off his dream of making a theatrical feature film from his to-do list. Watch Das play a buffoonish spy from Britain dispatched to Goa to complete a mission and get Hindi lessons. Action and romance follow, in this order.

Where to watch: Netflix

Wuthering Heights (English)

Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi star in this reportedly dumb and horny adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights that earned nearly 3X its $80 million budget. It’s finally here, so you can judge it (or get judged) in the comfort of your own home.

Where to watch: Buy and rent on BookMyShow, Prime Video and Apple TV

Marty Supreme (English)

The film Timothée Chalamet hoped would get him his first Oscar for a leading role, for which he troubled the entire planet for close to six months, is finally here. Chalamet plays a resourceful and kinda crazy table tennis player in ‘50s America. Marty (Timmy) sees the sport as not just a game but a means of personal and ethnic glory. Quite an interesting psychosis, explored by director Josh Safdie with maniacal energy.

Where to watch: Buy and rent on BookMyShow, Prime Video and Apple TV

Sitaare Zameen Par (Hindi)

Aamir Khan is back to doing what he does best: prescribing through a home production how to behave in the world. This time, he is a basketball coach for teenagers with intellectual disabilities. Lots of laughs and tears.

Where to watch: SonyLIV

Vadh 2 (Hindi)

A galaxy of highly watchable and inspiring thespian talent star in this grim and tender crime drama. Neena Gupta, Sanjay Mishra, Kumud Mishra and Shilpa Shukla are among those caught inside a prison where a ghastly crime has taken place. The inmates are ghastlier.

Where to watch: Netflix

One more chapter

Maamla Legal Hai S02 (Hindi)

Ravi Kishan chews scenery as advocate-turned-judge in a district court in Delhi. It’s an attempt at a funny look at a most grim subject: the Indian legal system. Also starring Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Kusha Kapila, and the most reliable Nidhi Bisht. So you are in safe hands. “Sexual harassment, gay rights, the death penalty: Maamla Legal Hai attempts to acknowledge the serious aspects of litigation. But the show’s heart beats faster for tomfoolery, which is deftly portrayed by the ensemble cast,” wrote Scroll’s Nandini Ramnath.

Where to watch: Netflix