Dibakar Banerjee returns to the big screen, a dystopian vision of America at war with itself, and other titles to watch
The Sympathizer
A Vietnamese captain living in the US in a community of South Vietnamese refugees must spy on them and report back to the Viet Cong. This blackly comic series starring Hoa Xuande and Robert Downey Jr., with a new episode every week, is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Directed by Don McKellar and Park Chan-wook, the Korean director whose last foray into episodic storytelling, The Little Drummer Girl, was a Hitchcockian delight. (JioCinema)
Civil War
One of the more talked about films of the year, Civil War imagines a dystopian USA with an authoritarian government battling its own citizens, with the states forced to choose sides. The film follows a team of journalists through the warzone. The cast includes Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Jesse Plemons and Nick Offerman. Written and directed by Alex Garland (Ex Machina). (In theatres)
All India Rank
All India Rank is a third-generation descendent of the slice-of-life films made by Sai Paranjpye, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee. It’s the first film by comic, lyricist and writer Varun Grover, a semi-autobiographical tale of Vivek (Bodhisattva Sharma), a young man sent to Kota to join the unforgiving coaching classes for the IIT entrance exams. Two exceptional performances come from Vivek’s parents back home: Geeta Agarwal as his mother, who runs a PCO, and Shashi Bhushan as RK Singh, a timid government employee. (Netflix)
Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2
Hindi film fans will remember the shock of Love Sex Aur Dhokha in 2010, Dibakar Banerjee’s triptych of stories about the then-burgeoning digital era in India. Much has changed since, and it’ll be interesting whether Banerjee can push buttons in the way 14 years later with this sequel of sorts. It’s co-written with Shubham and Prateek Vats (Eeb Allay Ooo) and features an ensemble cast with Swastika Mukherjee, Urfi Javed, Bonita Rajpurohit and Nimrit Ahluwalia. (In theatres)
