Big Mistakes on Netflix may not make a lot of sense, but it is highly engaging. In a landscape crowded with self-serious prestige dramas and nostalgia content that teeters on the dark side, chaotic fun is always welcome.
About The Author
Debiparna Chakraborty is a film, TV, and culture critic dissecting media at the intersection of gender, politics, and power.
For decades, the “Tragedy Queen” label defined Meena Kumari more like containment, as though her grief was her only recognisable feature. But to look at her beyond the tragedies is to acknowledge that she was more than the many mishaps of her life.
One might argue that holding actors accountable at such a time is mere distraction. But those who have profited off trans lives in India—lives already marked by disproportionate levels of violence and social exclusion—do deserve to be questioned.
Hollywood may prefer its politics fictional, but artists, the stubborn creatures that they are, keep rabble rousing. One of the first major flashpoints in Hollywood arrived in the late 1970s with Vanessa Redgrave.
A decade on, what makes Kapoor & Sons still stand the test of time is not just that it addressed taboo subjects, but how it did so. For a change, it was not the “ungrateful” children, but the unwittingly manipulative parents who were under the microscope in this film.
For much of its history, Indian cinema looked at women. Increasingly, women are now looking back. And the frame has never felt more brimming with potential.
Suresh Triveni’s film, released on Amazon Prime Video, is far more interested in packaging the 69-year-old Anil Kapoor as an action hero again. The arc of the everyday man who has tolerated enough is incoherent as he does not engage meaningfully with the oppressed for most of the film.
Young Sherlock, streaming on Amazon Prime Video, is more wholesome than shrewd or cynical, unlike the other renditions that have been resurrected before.
In this Frank E. Flowers film streaming on Amazon Prime, insipid and uninspired writing drains urgency from scenes that should crackle with tension.
Madhubala’s stardom was not just national mythology. In a potent illustration of pre-internet global fandom, her star image also travelled in unexpected ways to far off places like Greece.
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