There are a bunch of T-series music videos masquerading as movies in this week’s pile of releases. Let us harden our hearts for Loveshuddha, Rhythm, Direct Ishq and Ishq Forever and instead focus on the titles that matter.
Neerja Advertising filmmaker Ram Madhvani’s second feature after Let’s Talk is a biopic of Neerja Bhanot, the brave air hostess on the Pan Am flight that was hijacked on September 5, 1986. Bhanot, along with the rest of her crew, courageously shielded the American passengers from the wrath of the Palestinian terrorists who were on board. Bhanot paid for her valour with her life. She was 23. Sonam Kapoor gets the role of a lifetime, as well as the opportunity to prove to sceptics that she is not merely a clotheshorse. The redoubtable Shabana Azmi plays Bhanot’s mother, while music composer Shekhar Ravjiani makes his acting debut.
Spotlight Tom McCarthy’s acclaimed and Oscar-nominated movie reveals how the Boston Globe newspaper exposed the cover-up of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the early 2000s. The movie is named after the investigative team headed by Michael Keaton that starts digging into allegations of sexual abuse and comes up with more dirt than the paper or the clergy can handle. Spotlight’s other team members are played by Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Brian d’Arcy James, while Liev Schreiber portrays the editor who backs his team to the hilt.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Jane Austen’s 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice finds a new way to survive – or not – in Burr Steers’s adaptation of Seth-Grahame Smith’s 2009 novel of the same name. This Gothic horror parody features five sisters who have to fight off unwanted suitors and undead people. Lily James plays Elizabeth Bennett, while Sam Riley is Mr Darcy.