Laal Singh Chaddha (in theatres)
Aamir Khan’s long-gestating dream to remake Forrest Gump has finally come to fruition. Directed by Advait Chandan, Laal Singh Chaddha, like the Tom Hanks original, sews together key events in this country’s history through the experiences of one man. Khan plays Chaddha, Kareena Kapoor Khan co-stars.
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Nothing Serious (Amazon Prime)
Woori (Son Sukku) is asked by his boss to take over the sex column of the magazine. “But I write on culture,” he says. “Isn’t culture sex?” she asks. To get a hang of his new project, he joins a dating app where he matches with Sleep Around. Ham Ja-young (Jeon Jong-seo), who has her own podcast, has a disastrous dating history; she’s only looking for sex. The two meet up, and, predictably, hit it off. Unlike the mushy, almost convent school, approach to dating/love in most K-dramas and films, Nothing Serious is modern in its outlook, the dialogue bold and fun with great chemistry between two talented actors.—Nipa Charagi
Raksha Bandhan (in theatres)
Akshay Kumar will be hoping his third release of the year fares better than the previous two. He plays a chaat shop owner who’s promised to marry his love (Bhumi Pednekar) only after he gets his four sisters married first. Aanand L. Rai directs this film written by Himanshu Sharma and Kanika Dhillon.
The High Note (Netflix)
Maggie (Dakota Johnson) is assistant to the 11-time Grammy winner Grace (Trace Ellis Ross), who is stuck in her career. Maggie, who wants to be a music producer, thinks Grace should produce new material, while her manager Jack (Ice Cube) wants the singer to take up residency at Las Vegas. He ticks off Maggie, telling her to find her own clients if she wants to be a producer. Find one she does: David (Kelvin Harrison Jr), also the love interest. It’s a pleasant, breezy watch with a serving of melodrama.—NC
After a buzzy, if not always well-received, season one, Netflix's matchmaking reality show is back. We'd written of the first season: “To begin with, unlike most dating reality shows, it doesn’t force its characters into an artificial environment but meets them in their own setting, letting us into their homes and lives. It does not have a competitive element, or villains and victims, or built-in artificiality: tropes that reached their peak with Netflix’s last big reality hit Love is Blind (in which participants don’t get to meet each other but can only talk through specially built ‘dating pods’). Indian Matchmaking is a far gentler, meandering show that follows the lives of several young Indians living in India and the US and allows us to get to know them, as well as their families and friends, in some depth over eight 40-minute episodes.”
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