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At this point of my life, I am so done with ‘blockbusters’. I watched a few of them recently and could not relate to the hype they got. I mean why would people line up in the wee hours of the morning to watch a movie that has no logic, poor screenplay and is just a collection of visuals that together make no sense? Different folks, different strokes, I guess.  

But what pains me more are films that get good critical reviews but fail in the box office as they’re overshadowed by the blockbusters. The 2022 Hindi-language sports drama “Jersey” turns out to be one such film. Written and directed by Gowtam Tinnanuri, Jersey, now available on Netflix, is a remake of a 2019 Telugu film with the same name. 

I have watched both the versions, and thoroughly enjoyed each. Why? Because both have a brilliant script, earnest storytelling and impressive acting. (Here I review the Hindi version.) Shahid Kapoor in the lead gives one of the best performances in his film career–a role that unfortunately was criminally underrated. 

Arjun Talwar (Shahid Kapoor) is an amazing cricketer from Chandigarh, India in the mid-80s. He has the highest batting average in all of India and is a strong contender to enter the Indian national team. Unfortunately, because of nepotism in selection, he does not make the cut. A frustrated Arjun then quits cricket for good. 

Fast forward to 1996, Arjun is living a quiet life with his wife Vidya (Mrunal Thakur ) and son Kittu (Prit Kamani). He has been fired from his job on corruption charges with an ongoing trial to settle the matter. He is basically jobless and dependent on Vidya. When Kittu, a cricket academy student, asks Arjun to buy him an Indian team jersey for his birthday, he is rendered helpless. The jersey is unaffordable and Vidya outright refuses to lend him the money since she is running the house on a tight budget.

This brings Arjun back to the cricket ground, solely for money at first. But when his son nudges him to play more, Arjun, at 36, rejoins professional cricket. His attempts at regaining form and making another attempt to get into the Indian national team again makes up the rest of the story. 

Jersey is a feel-good movie with a sad, unexpected ending. But it is also a story of hope and struggle which does not leave the audience depressed in the end. The makers have put in every effort to make the movie realistic and relatable to a nation that eats, sleeps and breathes cricket. 

This is not Shahid Kapoor’s first film as a cricketer but this is where he shows how much he has matured as an actor. Kapoor drives the film forward with his skills and temperament. I read some people complain about how his acting in Jersey is similar to the 2019 movie “Kabir Singh” and I beg to differ. 

Kabir Singh was an arrogant, possessive and violent lover who had a wealthy family to back him up. Arjun Talwar is a desperate father who wants to make enough money to buy a cricket jersey for his son. There can be no comparison between the two characters. 

Kapoor gives a brilliant acting performance and makes you believe no one else could have carried out this role of a professional cricketer with such aplomb. The effort he has put in picking up the nuances of batting shows. But the credit must also go to the filmmakers who hired sports action director Rob Miller to ensure all the cricketing scenes are professionally choreographed and directed. The team deserves extra points for making that effort because many Bollywood sports films just fail to convince the audiences that their characters can actually play the sport in question. 

Who should watch it?

Jersey is a beautiful film without much theatrics and can be enjoyed by people who love cricket or just enjoy good movies. The 2hrs 50mins length seems a little long but then I can’t recall many boring scenes that drag the film down. 

Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Sports drama

Director:  Gowtam Tinnanuri

Actors: Shahid Kapoor, Mrinal Thakur

Run time: 2hrs 50mins

People gather on an island, off the coast of Ireland, for a wedding. The groom, Will, is a rising television star. He is handsome and charming. The bride, Julia, runs a successful magazine. She is driven and smart. Everything has been planned meticulously, by Aoife and Freddy, under Julia’s strict instructions. 

But as the couple’s friends pour in, secrets and grudges are slowly revealed. People don’t like one another even when they seem really amicable and close. They are cut off from the rest of the world. The cell phone service is spotty. Then someone ends up dead. ‘The Guest List’ by Lucy Foley creates an atmospheric wedding vibe where tensions run high. There’s no mystery from the beginning of the story but you get the idea that something is off despite the perfect, ultra-glamorous setting. 

None of the characters is particularly likable. They all seem to have an ulterior motive. Johnno tricks Will into making him the best man and then forgets his suit at home. The bridesmaid, Olivia, who is Julia’s half-sister, ruins hers on purpose. Hannah, who is married to the bride’s best friend, Charlie, isn’t comfortable with the bond her husband shares with Julia. It doesn’t help that Charlie has started drinking since getting on the island, and alcohol always makes the otherwise calm geography teacher a bit aggressive. Aoife, the wedding planner, offers a 50 percent discount to host the wedding on the island. She wants to promote it in Julia’s magazine, The Download. But is that all she wants? 

There’s a lot going on—it’s sometimes a bit much to grapple with but in a good way. Also, the story is narrated from six POVs which keeps things interesting. I’m a sucker for thrillers and murder mysteries. It’s my guilty pleasure. It’s a great distraction from whatever is bothering me in life. For a few hours, I can stress about someone else’s problems and that, as weird as it sounds, is a wonderful way to create some distance from my own issues.

The Guest List is outlandish. It is ominous. And I loved it for the sense of fearful anticipation I felt in the days I was reading it. It also has a very Agatha Christie vibe to it—a cleverly concocted plot with plenty of juicy secrets for readers to discover as they read. This is the kind of book you’ll find yourself binge-reading, eager to find out how it ends. I now want to read the author’s most recent release ‘The Paris Apartment’—about a journalist who mysteriously disappears while living in an apartment in Paris. I need Foley to tell me another story.  

Four stars

Fiction

The Guest List

Lucy Foley

Published: 2020

Publisher: Harper Collins 

Pages: 378, Paperback

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, OTTs were uncharted territory for me. I loved the cinema hall experience with that smell of hot coffee and warm popcorn. But that love is now gone, especially when I think about the whole process of driving to a theater, buying an expensive ticket, sitting with random strangers and then having to pay exorbitant parking fees. No, sir, not happening. 

With OTTs (I have Netflix and Amazon Prime), you get everything for cheap, and the convenience of starting a movie or series whenever and from wherever you want cannot beat anything. The bigger plus are the new releases on the platforms. OTT releases are winning big time compared to what cinema halls have been screening of late.

Recently released on Amazon Prime, “Panchayat 2” is one such winner–and the perfect justification for why I don’t waste any more time in cinema halls. The first season of the comedy-drama web series, created by The Viral Fever, was first aired in April 2020 and went on to win multiple awards in India. 

Banking on the critical and commercial success of the first season, our favorite characters from Panchayat return to the screen with the same lovableness and charisma. Abhishek (Jitendra Kumar), the reluctant Panchayat secretary, is now more adjusted to the life and people of Phulera, Uttar Pradesh. 

He has built synergy with his office team Prahlad (Faisal Malik) and Vikas (Chandan Roy). He has a cordial relationship with Brij Bhushan Dubey aka Pradhan ji (Raghubir Yadav) and Manju Devi (Neena Gupta), the actual Panchayat Pradhan. Abhishek’s proximity to the Pradhan family also brings him close to their daughter Rinki (Sanvikaa). Everything is going well with the Phulera Panchayat group when Bhushan (Durgesh Kumar), dubbed Banraakas by the villagers, starts meddling in their affairs, mainly owing to a past grudge with Pradhan ji. 

Although there is continuity for some plots from the first season, Panchayat Season 2 can be watched and enjoyed as a standalone series. Deepak Kumar Mishra again takes the director’s seat for the eight episodes of the web series written by Chandan Kumar.

Centered in a small rural village, Panchayat’s simple, organic story has the underpinnings of a broader political statement. Instead of complicating the plot with a heavy juxtaposition of the personal and political, it uses narratives to tell the story of most of rural India, which is still far away from the mainstream filmmakers’ lens. 

There is not one name in the lead roles that overpower the others in Panchayat. Yes, sachib ji Abhishek gets to be the center of attention in the series. Still, the rest of the cast, composed of industry veterans Neena Gupta and Raghubir Yadav, is the film’s lifeline. My personal favorite is Vikas, the office assistant. Actor Chandan Roy excellently portrays a dehaati villager who is not one of the most intelligent in the group but still loyal and dependable.

Panchayat’s imagery of a rural UP village is grounded and realistic. The attachment to simplicity and realism is probably what makes this series loved by scores of people watching it. Maybe they can relate more to Abhishek, Pradhan Ji or Vikas than Bachhan Pandey or Chulbul Pandey. We are talking about real people and real lives in a fictional village, and people identifying with everything within. Maybe mainstream Bollywood filmmakers need to be more mindful of the audiences’ changing preferences from some of the latest OTT releases.

The rest of the production seems to be aligned to entertain and not overwhelm the audience–not just the film’s writing, acting, screenplay and direction. The whole package works for Panchayat. 

Who should watch it?

Everyone! No exception. Even if you don’t understand Hindi, the subtitles are good enough to tell you what's going on. Panchayat 2 makes it to my ‘must watch’ list, and I am sure it is on the lists of most of my fellow movie buffs. 

Rating: 4.5 stars

Genre: Comedy, drama

Actors: Jitendra Kumar, Neena Gupta, Raghubir Yadav

Director: Deepak Kumar Mishra

Run time: 4hrs (approx.)

Cho Nam-Joo’s novel ‘Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982’ centers on a woman who goes about her daily life in South Korea. It sounds simple enough. Yet the story—about everyday sexism that women face in their personal and professional lives—is moving and makes you think. It narrows in on how women, in South Korea and the world over, face unnecessary pressures, scorn, sexism and even assault and how they can lead to a loss of self and lack of confidence. The book was published in 19 countries, becoming an instant bestseller in Japan, China, and Taiwan, and has sold more than two million copies. 

Middle-class, 30-something Kim Jiyoung, whose mind starts unraveling suddenly, could easily be any woman we know. She has dealt with the effects of Korea’s misogynistic society from a young age. Her paternal grandmother is disappointed by her birth. She had hoped for a grandson. As a child, Jiyoung had to share a room with her elder sister while her brother got his own. At work, she is overlooked for a promotion. Men make random remarks about her appearance and her father blames her when she is stalked. When she becomes a mother, she has to give up work to look after her child. 

Jiyoung also endures many cases of sexual assault and discrimination in her life. Her school had many male teachers who sexually assaulted young girls. One of her male high school teachers touched female students in class using a pointer stick: “He carried around a pointer that had a hand pointing just the index finger on the tip, which he used to poke girls in the breast under the guise of drawing attention to missing nametags, or to lift girls’ skirts to “check their school uniform.” 

At work, there’s a hidden spy camera in the ladies’ room and men pass around naked photos of their female colleagues. When found out, the company’s director tries to brush the incident under the carpet saying, “The accused male employees have families and parents to protect. Do you really want to destroy people’s lives like this? Do you want people to find out that your pictures are out there?” 

Sexism dictates the lives of most women and through Jiyoung we are made to realize just how it can potentially ruin us, sometimes even without us noticing until it’s too late. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is a slim book but it will take you time to finish it because the content is quite heavy. Cho Nam-Joo’s fiction is backed by hard facts in the form of statistics and reports that are cited as footnotes. You might find yourself googling these articles to learn more. I certainly did—actually, going through the references online took more time than reading the book. All in all, the book is an important read that calls for some much-needed introspection.

Three and half stars

Fiction

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

Cho Nam-Joo

Published: 2020

Publisher: Liveright

Pages: 176, Paperback