shakeela movie review latest

Pankaj Tripathi (Salim) Richa Chadha (Shakeela) Rajeev Pillai (Arjun) Kajol Chugh (Young Shakeela) Vicky Kadian (Young Arjun) Kafeel Jafri (Zubair, the journalist) Ahaana Kochar (Jasmine) Valerian Menezes (Director of Salim) Ester Noronha (Suhana) Sheeva Rana (Silk Smitha)

Indrajit Lankesh

A biopic based on the life of adult star Shakeela, who ruled the South Indian film industry for over two decades. The film features Richa Chadha in the lead role.

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Shakeela Review: Biopic Starring Richa Chadha Is Soulless And Tone-Deaf

Shakeela review: neither richa nor pankaj tripathi can clean up the dreary mess. the two stars are for the two actors, none for the film..

Shakeela Review: A still from the film. (courtesy YouTube )

Cast : Richa Chadha, Pankaj Tripathi

Director : Indrajit Lankesh

Rating : 2 stars (out of 5)

The inexplicable decision to send the titular protagonist into "a dream state" in order to get her to come clean about her life and work and the rather strange choice of Richa Chadha to play the role of a 1990s Malayali softcore adult actress are only two of the many things that Shakeela , written and directed by Indrajit Lankesh, gets horribly wrong. But these are bad enough. They undermine the film irretrievably.

Not that Richa Chadha is a write-off. In the scenes that matter, she is pretty strong. She conveys the predicament of the eponymous protagonist, a woman caught between an exploitative industry and a manipulative mother, with considerable force.

The writing, however, is so pedestrian and predictable that the central character - a sex symbol who gets the goat of the reigning male superstar by asserting her right to do her own thing, besides sparking a shrill, hypocritical, career-stymieing reaction from a morally ambivalent society that laps up her titillating films but does not have the courage to own up to its obsession with her - does not acquire the layers that might have lent the portrayal genuine heft.

Shakeela , which has been released in theatres this Christmas Day, is both soulless and tone-deaf although parts of it touch upon the still-relevant theme of male domination over the entertainment industry. Shakeela is constantly judged and pilloried because she isn't part of movies that families can watch together. Worse, she earns the wrath of an industry A-lister by daring to spurn his advances.

The relationship between Shakeela and her body double Suhana, played by Ester Noronha, constitutes a significant parallel track that would have been infinitely better served had the writer-director seen percentage in diving a little deeper into it. But because it remains only an incidental plot detail, it fails assume a logic of its own and help in lifting the film out of its morass of mediocrity. The Shakeela-Suhana sub-plot loses its way in a hackneyed do-jism-ek-jaan (two bodies one soul) spiel about female bonding, professional inter-dependence and betrayal.

The Shakeela cast has Pankaj Tripathi, too. He plays a supercilious yet insecure superstar who does not take too kindly to Shakeela's meteoric rise as a box-office star after the suicide of the super-successful Silk Smitha. He emerges as the villain in her life.

As always, Tripathi does a great deal with his face, eyes and body postures - that in itself is a delight to watch. In a better film, it would have worked wonders. In Shakeela, there is a complete disconnect between what the actor is capable of delivering and what the film is able to extract from him.

Shakeela has a scene in which the protagonist, who is still a nobody, gets a walk-on part in a Silk Smitha film. The nervous girl spills fruit juice on the senior actress and is promptly slapped. Shakeela swallows her pride and carries on regardless. She can't afford to take umbrage. Ironically, Silk Smitha's untimely death creates a vacuum in the sexploitation movie space and she moves in and makes hay over a period of a whole decade.

After a trashy dance number that goes with the opening credits - Chadha's suggestive moves are meant to tell the audience what kind of films Shakeela did at the height of her acting career, not to indicate what this film is going to be like - we jump to 1999 and street protests against her films. " Shakeela hatao, cinema bachao, Kerala bachao ," the placards read. Angry slogans are raised against and her detractors move in to strike.

Cut to Shakeel's conversation with a patronising writer who has been engaged to pen the story of her chequered career. She wants to break away from the B-movie rut and act in a film that will allow her to demonstrate that there is more to her than just sleaze and skin show. The man talks down to Shakeela. She takes it in her stride. She is a woman who has had success, but respect has eluded her. When she agrees to share her life story on the writer's terms, she is subjected to a narco test as she narrates her tale and, with a doctor in attendance, the writer takes notes.

A bulk of the film is made up of flashbacks. The character's voice links one segment of the story to the other, but the pitching of the narration is marred by inconsistencies. At times, Shakeela's voice resembles a murmur because she is in a semi-conscious state. At others, it turns into a full-throated commentary. The background score, too, is overly intrusive.

The flashbacks reveal Shakeela's childhood in a verdant coastal village. She is happy as long as her indigent fisherman-father is around her. The man, afflicted with tuberculosis, has to take care of a large family, which includes his wife, a former junior artiste who laments the opportunities she has lost, and six daughters. Shakeela is the eldest.

Her acting talent is revealed early in life. In school, she plays Draupadi in a play and wins a trophy. By the time she gets home to share her joy, her life has changed and the family is forced to relocate to Cochin. Once there, her ambitious mother pushes her into the shady world of C-grade movies. The girl has to keep going because she is the family's sole breadwinner.

Matters come to a head when a spurt in rape cases in the state is blamed on the films that Shakeela does. The moral police sharpen their knives and the media goes after her hammer and tongs. Left to fend for herself, she begins to feel the heat.

Instead of being what it promises to be - an exploration of the wages of stardom in an exploitative industry - Shakeela turns into a patchy melodrama involving a childhood sweetheart (Rajeev Pillai) who encourages the woman to reinvent herself and fight.

Eventually, the climactic clash is between a Shakeela biopic and the top male superstar's latest cop drama. But even in success - Shakeela, at the peak of her career, spawns a genre of her own - she is repeatedly reminded that there is a price to be paid.

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Shakeela is a woman in a man's world: that is the point that the film wants to make. But it ties itself up in knots in trying to get the point across. Neither Richa Chadha nor Pankaj Tripathi can clean up the dreary mess. The two stars are for the two actors. There's none for the film.

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SHAKEELA MOVIE REVIEW CLICK TO RATE THE MOVIE

Yes, it is right. The two S of South Cinema, who called the shots in the 90s and the next decade are getting their due. Admittedly, The Dirty Picture which was supposed to be a take on Silk Smitha's journey to stardom was anything but that. Only the presence of Vidya Balan helped the makers break even.

Cut to the present. The other queen and darling of the masses, Shakeela should have enough reasons to be pleased with the faithful biopic of her.

Kudos to director Indrajit Lankesh and lead actor Richa Chadha, who walked the extra mile to get the facts right from the one, who was second to none in box office appeal. That some of the big names of the industry in a male-dominated industry ensured that their movies did not clash with the queen of the South is indeed a testimony to the prowess of Shakeela.

The concerted efforts of the team effectively bring to light the agony, dedication and the selfless life of an individual. Among the seven siblings, pushed into the oldest profession, by her own admission, before her entry into the cine arc, Shakeela took the onus of taking the mantle on her shoulders at just 16.

Lankesh sticks to the bare facts, portraying the early days of Shakeela with sincerity, not taking any cinematic liberties. He recounts the sway of Shakeela, exploited by the producers but not falling in the soft-porn category.

Shakeela had to ward off so many evils in the industry, none more than her mother, who kept pushing her to break the cordon and the limits set by the earlier ones of her ilk. The director summons courage to show how the actress could play all her characters based on one solitary scene, where her inhibitions had to take a huge knock.

Viewers are enlightened as to how the body double was used to bring in the youth audience. Repeated ones were the trade secret for the sleeper-hit collections whenever her movie got released. The release date was the festival one for her die-hard fans which Lankesh so effortlessly brings to light.

Having acted together in the 2015 starrer Maasan, the pair of Pankaj Tripathi and Richa have a ball, so to say. As a shrewd tactician and a top-rated star, Pankaj is the perfect foil for Richa to explode in the end segments. They hardly have chemistry but the chilling and menacing effect is all there to see in the body language of Tripathi, a natural at whatever he does.

Staying truthfully with the intriguing narration, the 127-minute offering is an ode to the other side of Shakeela. That she is an introvert and a totally transformed person the minute camera rolls on has been well structured on the big screen.

With over 1,000 screens in five languages in the pandemic times is a tribute and testimony to Shakeela, who had no peers. Not even Smitha, who only had to bring in the oomph as the added input in a big line-up of brand names.

That the actor is still around to partake the joy of the offering unlike Smitha, gives an aura of joy to the final denouement.

BEHINDWOODS REVIEW BOARD RATING

PUBLIC REVIEW BOARD RATING

REVIEW RATING EXPLANATION

பிரேக்கிங் சினிமா செய்திகள், திரை விமர்சனம், பாடல் விமர்சனம், ஃபோட்டோ கேலரி, பாக்ஸ் ஆபிஸ் செய்திகள், ஸ்லைடு ஷோ, போன்ற பல்வேறு சுவாரஸியமான தகவல்களை தமிழில் படிக்க இங்கு கிளிக் செய்யவும்      

SHAKEELA NEWS STORIES

Here’s everything you need to know about Christmas release Shakeela

Shakeela to take new avatar; Soon on your screens

Shakeela makes a request to fans about her latest - Ladies Not Allowed. "Boys watch the film, girls..."

Shakeela's biopic Bollywood actress hugs strangers, says it's magical - Video Viral!

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SHAKEELA RELATED CAST PHOTOS

Richa Chadda

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SHAKEELA RELATED LINKS

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Shakeela trailer: Richa gets into the skin of an adult star

Starring richa chadha in the title role, shakeela releases on december 25. directed by indrajit lankesh, the film also stars pankaj tripathi..

The trailer of Shakeela, starring Richa Chadha in the lead role, is out. Directed by Indrajit Lankesh, Shakeela is a biopic of adult star Shakeela who made a name for herself in the south Indian film industry in the 90s.

The trailer offers a peek into Shakeela’s journey from the time she lived a simple life as a teenager to her tryst with showbiz. Shakeela became popular among the masses after she started appearing in films which many termed as ‘soft porn’.

The trailer also introduces us to Pankaj Tripathi as a star who eventually gets threatened by Shakeela’s success.

Watch the trailer of Shakeela here:

The much-awaited #Shakeela trailer is OUT! https://t.co/5tJgFAc6fG @TripathiiPankaj @RichaChadha #EsterNoronha @SheevaRana @ILankesh @UFOMoviez @ShakeelaMovie @malanitalkies — Zee Music Company (@ZeeMusicCompany) December 16, 2020

The film is quite reminiscent of Vidya Balan ’s Dirty Picture as they both charter similar territory where the protagonist isn’t apologetic about her decisions and proudly owns her career, despite the social norms of the day.

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Filmmaker Indrajit Lankesh said in a statement, “Shakeela is truly a labour of love and commitment to show Shakeela’s story is iconic in so many ways. Her story is almost folklore today, but the truth is that so much happened to her while she soared to success from nothing and then came back to nothing again.”

Shakeela is releasing in theatres on December 25.

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Shakeela Reviews

Soul-crushingly boring and frustrating.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Dec 31, 2020

• Shakeela Movies

The issue of humans and simians in existential conflict arises again in a new “Planet of the Apes,” this time with a coming-of-age sci-fi adventure that’s a piece of visually stunning world-building more thoughtful than coherent.

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” (★★★ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters Friday) is a sequel to the stellar “Apes” trilogy led by Andy Serkis’ iconic chimpanzee leader Caesar, set in a landscape where people have gone feral while super-smart apes rule thanks to a man-made virus. Director Wes Ball ( “Maze Runner” ) is a proven commodity in the post-apocalyptic space, and “Kingdom” aims to bring big ideas into a sprawling blockbuster atmosphere, though that gambit winds up weighed down by its own ambitions. 

The new “Apes” is set “many generations later” after the death of Caesar, a kind and compassionate sort who believed humans and apes could one day live together. His specter looms large over “Kingdom,” which centers on a naive young chimp named Noa (played via performance capture by Owen Teague) and an Earth where nature has reclaimed the land. Noa and his friends, Anaya (Travis Jeffery) and Soona (Lydia Peckham), ready for a big day in their lives among the Eagle Clan – so called because of the birds they raise. But the peaceful existence in their village is disrupted by a brutal attack from a horde of masked apes, who burn Noa’s home and leave him for dead.

Noa wakes, battered and vowing to save his friends and family who’ve been taken, and he first falls in with Raka (Peter Macon), a wise orangutan who lives by Caesar’s idealistic beliefs. They meet a young human named Mae (Freya Allan), who’s at first distrustful of her new allies until they save her from the same big bad apes that torched Noa’s village.

The trio learns these villains are goons for the tyrannical bonobo Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand). Ruling a coastal kingdom of apes, Proximus has taken Caesar’s name yet twists his words to force his prisoners to crack a large vault and plumb the mysterious human treasures within. He’s both a fan of mankind and a symbol of our innate cruelty in ape form.

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Just like the previous films, the main draw is the apes themselves, computer-generated simian wonders who immerse audiences into their world. They look better than ever, with Noa’s tearful eyes delivering so much fragility and emotion in a close-up after a tragic scene, and the performance-capture wizardry, a signature aspect of these new "Apes" movies, feels more groundbreaking than ever.

At the same time, none of the major players in "Kingdom" reach the same level of acting or personality as Serkis’ Caesar. That is an extremely high bar, though, and there are some pretty great apes: Teague's Noa grows on you because of his plight while Macon makes Raka a scene-stealing hoot with a kind soul. Allan, a regular on Netflix’s “The Witcher,” also shines in a meaty role as a human who’s more complicated than she appears.

The early “Apes” movies from the ‘60s and '70s were defined by genre innovation and shock endings, and the Caesar movies were simply a great tale well told. “Kingdom” is less confident in its storytelling: It explores themes of legacy and species coexistence with a metaphor-laden plot that feels too long at 2½ hours, and it begs for more exposition at the beginning before overdoing it later on. The movie ultimately does satisfy by its end, even as it emphasizes philosophy and message over logical narrative choices.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, the last stop in yuma county.

Now streaming on:

"Last Stop in Yuma County" is the kind of movie where you root for the worst to happen, because every escalation of misfortune makes things more entertaining.  

Written and directed by  Francis Galluppi , "Yuma" is a period piece that makes the most of a small budget. It's set in the Arizona desert, roughly fifty years ago. Much of the action occurs in and around a diner and its adjacent gas station. The owner, a lumbering but sweet-souled man named Vernon ( Faizon Love ), tells travelers that the next station is four hours away, so it behooves them to fill up while they can. But the pumps are empty, and the fuel truck is behind schedule, so anyone who doesn't have enough gas in the tank to keep going must sit in the diner and wait. The central air isn't working. The place is a hotbox. Tempers tend to flare in a place like this.

Our entry into the story is a knife salesman, listed in the credits simply as The Knife Salesman ( Jim Cummings ). He seems anxious and depressed before he's even opened his mouth. He wants to get to Calabasas, California, to visit his daughter, who is living with her mom and mom's second husband. His waitress is Charlotte ( Jocelin Donahue ), a smart, sweet lady who keeps urging patrons to try the rhubarb pie. Charlotte is married to Sheriff Charlie (Michael Abbott Jr.), who dropped her off at work that morning. 

The Knife Salesman and Charlotte bond immediately, but their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of two more customers, Travis and Beau ( Richard Brake and Nicolas Logan ), perpetrators of a bank robbery that's all over the news. They're surly and menacing. They stare. Sometimes they glower. Travis is smug and cold and has an insinuating, at times invasive way of speaking. Beau is an impulsive meathead who chain-smokes and wipes his armpits with napkins. Eventually, somebody's going to identify these two.  

As "Yuma" goes along, it adds more characters and ... what's the word I'm looking for here? Not levels. The movie stays at one level (thumbscrew-tightening comedy-thriller), and that's fine because few American films know how to operate that way, and it's a treat to see one that does. Maybe "trajectories" is the word. All these characters are going somewhere, if only in their minds. Their pit stop at the diner interrupts their momentum, then traps them in a limbo that becomes a purgatory and ultimately a hell on earth. (The movie could've been titled "The Fuelman Cometh.") 

There's an old married couple with a wife ( Robin Bartlett ) who knits and a husband ( Gene Jones ) who shoehorns his way into other diners' mental space when he isn't snoring at the table. Miles ( Ryan Masson ) and Sybil ( Sierra McCormick ), younger criminals who fancy themselves the next Bonnie and Clyde, end up in the diner as well. Everyone in the place has a weapon of some kind. This is not the kind of movie that will end with hugging.

Galluppi, who also edited, has clearly studied the collected works of the Coen Bros and Sam Raimi and absorbed a lot (including a repertory company member: Gene Jones was in " No Country for Old Men "). After seeing "Yuma County," you'll understand how Galluppi went immediately from this, his feature debut, to writing and directing an " Evil Dead " movie based on an original idea he pitched to Raimi.

"Yuma County" is descended from the 1980s and '90s gritty American crime flick subgenre that included the Coens' " Blood Simple " and " Fargo " and Raimi's "The Gift" and " A Simple Plan "—movies that made you laugh, then cut the laughter short with spectacular violence, then made you laugh again by having the characters continue to be their worst selves even as they bled out. ("Are we square?" Steve Buscemi's kidnapper grimace-growls  in "Fargo," holding a blood-soaked rag against the gunshot wound in his face.)

Good as it is, you might wish the movie were better, or there was a bit more to it, all the way up to the last act. For an instant, it seems as if the movie has crested prematurely or run out of ideas when there are another 30 minutes to go. Then it takes a left turn into the kind of gloriously desperate black-hearted comedy that defines a cult classic. Cummings is at the center of this final act, and he's the perfect anchor: he brings a tamped-down variant of the hyper-verbal weasel persona he displayed in 2021’s " The Beta Test ," a black comedy about a morally vacuous Hollywood agent who suffered greatly for his numerous sins but was too arrogant to learn and grow. Cummings is conventionally handsome in a way that would have been standard-issue Anglo suburbanite in the 1950s but seems unreal and unnerving today. It's a face from an ad for black-and-white televisions. His very existence is satirical.

But Cummings is more than an Eisenhower-era sight gag. You've never seen anything quite like the energy he puts out when playing characters who've been hoisted by their own petards but deny that any hoisting occurred. He's in peak form here. When the character is so unhinged that Cummings is flailing and stumbling and stammering and panic-whining, it's like seeing Kermit the Frog in a film noir.  

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Movie Review: ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ finds a new hero and will blow your mind

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Noa, played by Owen Teague, in a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Proximus Caesar, played by Kevin Durand, in a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Raka, played by Peter Macon, in a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Soona, played by Lydia Peckham, left and Noa, played by Owen Teague, in a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Noa, played by Owen Teague, from left, Freya Allan as Nova, and Raka, played by Peter Macon, in a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Freya Allan in a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

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Fans of the “Planet of the Apes” franchise may still be mourning the 2017 death of Caesar, the first smart chimp and the charismatic ape leader. Not to worry: He haunts the next episode, the thrilling, visually stunning “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”

We actually start with Caesar’s funeral, his body decorated with flowers and then set alight like a Viking, before fast-forwarding “many generations later.” All apes talk now and most humans don’t, reduced to caveman loin cloths and running wide-eyed and scared, evolution in reverse.

Our new hero is the young ape Noa (Owen Teague ) who is like all young adult chimps — seeking his father’s approval (even chimp dads just don’t understand) and testing his bravery. He is part of a clan that raises pet eagles, smokes fish and lives peacefully.

That all changes when his village is attacked not by humans but by fellow apes — masked soldiers from a nasty kingdom led by the crown-wearing Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand, playing it to the hilt). He has taken Caesar’s name but twisted his words to become a tyrannical strongman — sorry, strongape.

Unlike the last movie which dealt with man’s inhumanity to animals — concentration camps included — ape-on-ape violence is in the cards for this one, including capturing an entire clan as prisoners. Proximus Caesar’s goons use makeshift cattle prods on fellow apes and force them to work while declaring “For Caesar!”

Screenwriter Josh Friedman has cleverly created a movie that examines how ancient stories can be hijacked and manipulated, like how Caesar’s non-violent message gets twisted by bad actors. There’s also a lot of “Avatar” primitive naivete, and that makes sense since the reboot was shaped by several of that blue alien movie’s makers.

The movie poses some uncomfortable questions about collaborationists. William H. Macy plays a human who has become a sort of teacher-prisoner to Proximus Caesar — reading Kurt Vonnegut to him — and won’t fight back. “It is already their world,” he rationalizes.

Along for the heroic ride is a human young woman (Freya Allan, a budding star) who is hiding an agenda but offers Noa help along the way. Peter Macon plays a kindly, book-loving orangutan who adds a jolt of gleeful electricity to the movie and is missed when he goes.

The effects are just jaw-dropping, from the ability to see individual hairs on the back of a monkey to the way leaves fall and the crack of tree limbs echoing in the forest. The sight of apes on horseback, which seemed glitchy just seven years ago, are now seamless. There are also inside jokes, like the use of the name Nova again this time.

Director Wes Ball nicely handles all the thrilling sequences — though the two-and-a-half hour runtime is somewhat taxing — and some really cool ones, like the sight of apes on horseback on a beach, a nod to the original 1968 movie. And like when the apes look through some old illustrated kids’ books and see themselves depicted in zoo cages. That makes for some awkward human-ape interaction. “What is next for apes? Should we go back to silence?” our hero asks.

The movie races to a complex face-off between good and bad apes and good and bad humans outside a hulking silo that holds promise to each group. Can apes and humans live in peace, as Caesar hoped? “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” doesn’t answer that but it does open up plenty more to ponder. Starting with the potentially crippling proposition of a key death, this franchise has somehow found new vibrancy.

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” a 20th Century Studios release that is exclusively in theaters May 10, is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action.” Running time: 145 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Online: https://www.20thcenturystudios.com/movies/kingdom-of-the-planet-of-the-apes

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for a... Read all Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike. Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

• Josh Friedman
• Amanda Silver
• Freya Allan
• Kevin Durand
• Dichen Lachman
• 8 User reviews
• 14 Critic reviews

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• Trivia This film is not a reboot and is set after the previous trilogy.

Proximus Caesar : What a wonderful day!

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• May 8, 2024

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• May 10, 2024 (United States)
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• Runtime 2 hours 25 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• 12-Track Digital Sound
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'New Life' Review: A Tense Horror-Thriller With a Twist You Won't See Coming

John Rosman’s feature debut twists one of horror's most overused tropes to create a deeper emotional character journey.

The Big Picture

• New Life is a bold movie that offers a fresh take on overused tropes.
• The film explores themes of solidarity, adversity, and the power of hope in the face of chaos.
• New Life skillfully uses contemporary concerns, such as corporate greed and cyber surveillance, to enhance its background story and add depth to its thriller narrative.

This review was originally part of our coverage for the 2023 Fantasia International Film Festival.

New Life is a genre-bending movie that defies simple definitions. At first, writer-director John Rosman 's feature debut presents itself as an engaging cat and mouse game played by Sonya Walger and Hayley Erin that doesn't seem like it will add something new to spy thriller conventions. As it turns out, though, that's part of New Life 's charm, with big second-act revelations pushing Rosman's feature straight into horror territory and changing the story’s stakes. While getting into the major twist would completely spoil the film, it's worth noting how the filmmaker takes one of the most overused tropes in horror and approaches it from a new angle. That alone would make the movie a standout, but New Life has much more to offer .

The film opens with an image of a young woman covered in blood , sneaking through the streets of suburbia while constantly looking over her shoulder. The woman, Jessica (Erin), is being chased by people with guns, all dressed in suits. Her only chance to escape is to go North and do whatever she can to remain hidden until crossing the Canadian border and starting a new life for herself. While Jessica is on the run, Elsa (Walger) is ordered to take over the hunt for her. Once a prominent field agent, Elsa has been recently diagnosed with ALS, and her body is slowly refusing to respond to her will. She hides her condition from her colleagues and hopes that bringing Jessica in might help prove she can still do her job.

New Life (2023)

In a dramatic series, a recently widowed woman struggles to rebuild her life in a small coastal town where she finds new beginnings and complex relationships. As she connects with the local community, she discovers that healing comes in many forms and sometimes unexpected places.

In Jessica’s segment of the story, New Life tells a tale of solidarity, as she is lucky to cross paths with people who offer help without expecting any explanations about her past. She’s then free to build something new after evading whoever's chasing her. Elsa’s story echoes that of Jessica, as the agent is forced to upend her life due to the limitations of ALS. So, on one level, Rosman’s movie is about the chaotic elements of life where everyone must choose how to deal with adversity either by embracing hope or giving in to despair. That theme is echoed throughout both main characters' storylines, as Jessica and Elsa fight to reclaim the life that has been taken from them , either by other people or by unfair diseases.

'New Life' Boasts a Pair of Excellent Performances

As a character-driven story, New Life can only work thanks to Eron's and Walger's commitment to their respective roles . Even as Jessica and Elsa are on opposite sides, they both have to deal with secrets and mistrust, which gets reflected in how they keep their pain concealed and hold everybody at arm's length. Eron and Walger help give both women emotional layers by using body language to convey the complex feelings they cannot talk about openly as we observe their reactions to curveballs that are thrown their way as the plot unfolds. Walger, in particular, helps give the ALS storyline more weight by masterfully capturing the frustration and fear that comes with the diagnosis while maintaining the facade of gritty antagonist that her hunter position demands. This offers audiences an intriguing drama, which improves when New Life plays with genre conventions to subvert expectations.

At first, New Life doesn’t explain why Jessica is running away , nor does it reveal who Elsa’s contractors are. All we know is that two women who never crossed paths before have their lives uprooted by the chase. This narrative framing allows audiences to explore each character’s internal struggle. In addition, the movie also makes a statement about the dangers of technology.

As Jessica travels the country, she must do so while avoiding electronics. Meanwhile, Elsa’s army of technicians scour the web for clues of her prey’s whereabouts. With dynamic editing that adds a welcome and fast-paced energy to Rosman's compelling direction, New Life uses images of surveillance cameras, official government transcripts, and social media to showcase the alarming web of cyber surveillance we are all trapped in. As much as Jessica wants to vanish, there are just too many digital footprints people can follow to learn more about her . There’s a never-ending flow of information surrounding human lives, making it almost impossible to believe privacy still exists when street cameras can track people’s every move without alerting them.

'New Life' Takes a Turn That Brings Everything Together

That scary thought elevates the classic woman-on-the-run film, painting a grim picture of the power wealthy companies can have over people’s lives. Once New Life reveals why Jessica is on the run, that message immediately underscores how corporate greed often gets in the way of individual safety and privacy, regardless of the dangers it presents to us. So, even though these themes are not the movie's main focus, Rosman's writing skillfully uses contemporary concerns to polish up New Life 's background story .

It would be a disservice to the film to comment on its genre-bending twist. Still, it’s important to emphasize how the horror elements introduced in the second act add to the tense atmosphere of the thriller, tying Jessica’s and Elsa’s personal journeys closer than either could have anticipated. Rosman’s script is also clever enough to avoid tonal dissonances by smoothly adding these new components without losing track of the main story, at least until the end. The third act of New Life could have been cleaner, as some of the plot points that come with the horror portion of the movie get in the way of the thoughtful exploration of ALS that the film does through Elsa. Even so, despite using genre conventions both for its thriller and the mysterious horror story layers, New Life feels fresh and innovative , presenting a mix that works so well that it’s a wonder no one ever tried to do something similar before.

New Life is a bold, genre-bending feature debut with excellent performances and great writing.

• The film provides a new take on a familiar story, upending our expectations in the best way.
• Sonya Walger and Hayley Erin each give great performances, providing emotional layers through every aspect of their body language.
• The twist brings everything into emotionally resonant focus, showing how our two characters were more similar than they were different.
• The third act could have been cleaner as certain horror developments don't always connect with the more thoughtful elements of the film.

New Life is now available to stream on VOD in the U.S.

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‘The Idea of You’ Review: Surviving Celebrity

Anne Hathaway headlines a movie that’s got a lot to say about the perils of fame.

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By Alissa Wilkinson

Women of a certain age (that is, my age) feel like they grew up alongside Anne Hathaway, because, well, we did. We were awkward teens together when she made “The Princess Diaries” in 2001. We felt ourselves to be put-upon entry-level hirelings right when “The Devil Wears Prada” came out in 2006. We understood her broken-down narcissistic addict in “Rachel Getting Married,” because who couldn’t? And we watched the Hathaway backlash, pegged to public perception that she was trying too hard, and worried that people saw us the same way.

Now we’re 40-ish. We know for sure that Gen Z considers millennials to be cringe, and, thankfully, we no longer feel the need to care. The greatest gift of reaching middle age is having settled into yourself, and that is apparently what Hathaway, age 41, has done . She has been through the celebrity wringer (and more ) and come out the other side looking radiant, with a long list of credits in movies that swing from standard commercial fare to auteurist masterpieces.

This is perhaps why it’s so satisfying to see her name come first — alone, before the title credit — in “The Idea of You,” which is on its surface a relatively fluffy little film. Based on the sleeper hit novel by Robinne Lee, “The Idea of You” is plainly fantasy, in the fan fiction mold, that poses the question: What if Harry Styles, the British megastar and former frontman of One Direction, fell madly in love with a hot 40-year-old mom? In this universe, the Styles character is Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), the British frontman of a five-member boy band called August Moon.

Hathaway plays Solène Marchand, an art gallery owner whose arrogantly useless ex-husband, Daniel (Reid Scott), buys v.i.p. meet-and-greet tickets for their 16-year-old daughter, Izzy (Ella Rubin), and her two best friends, all of whom were huge August Moon fans … in the seventh grade.

The event is at Coachella, and Daniel is set to take the teenagers but backs out at the last second, citing a work emergency. Solène reluctantly agrees to take them, and while at the festival, mistakes Hayes’s trailer for the bathroom. They meet, it’s cute, and you can guess what happens next.

Or can you? It was clear about 10 minutes into the movie that what was required for enjoyment was to surrender to the daydreaming, and so, with very little internal protest, I did. How could I resist? Solène is smart, competent, kind and secure; she has great hair and a great wardrobe; and most important, she seems like a real person, even if the situation in which she finds herself greatly stretches the bonds of credibility.

More than once, I was struck by how authentically 40 Solène seemed to me — a woman capable of making her own decisions, even ones she thinks might be ill-advised — and how weirdly rare it is to see that kind of character in a movie. She has a kid, and friends, and a career. She reads books and looks at art, and she is flattered by this 24-year-old superstar’s attention but takes a long time to come around to the idea that it may not be a joke.

Solène also feels real shame and real resolve in the course of the winding fairy tale story, which predictably has to go south. But most of all, she’s in a movie that doesn’t try to shame her, or patronize her, or make her appear ridiculous for having desires and fantasies of her own. She’s just who she is, and it’s simple to understand her appeal to someone whose life has never been his own.

Directed by Michael Showalter, who wrote the adapted screenplay with Jennifer Westfeldt, “The Idea of You” succeeds mostly because of Hathaway’s performance, though she and Galitzine spark and banter pleasurably (and he can dance and sing, too). It tweaks the novel in a number of ways — Hayes is older than the book’s character, for one thing — and also seems to implicitly know it’s a movie, and that movies have a strange relationship with age-gap romances.

In fact, that’s one of its strengths. Several times, characters remark on the double standard attached to people’s judgment of Solène and Hayes’s relationship, hypothesizing that in a gender-swapped situation, people would be high-fiving the older man who landed the hot younger star. Sixteen years looks like a lot on paper, but in the movies, at least, it is barely a blip.

That musing is interesting enough, if a familiar one. More fascinating in “The Idea of You” is its treatment of the cage of celebrity. Hayes seems mature compared with his bandmates and the girls who follow them around, but he’s also clearly stuck in some kind of arrested development. And I do mean stuck: He is self-aware enough to tell Solène, plaintively, that he auditioned for the band when he was 14 and not much has changed beyond his level of fame. He wants a life beyond the spotlight, badly.

And that’s just what he can’t get. Neither can Solène, nor, eventually, anyone around her. The idea of living a quiet life might obviously be out of reach, but the added elements of tabloid news and rabid fans unafraid to treat Hayes as if they know him make things far worse. The film starts to feel a little like the tale of a monster, but the monster is parasociality, encouraged by the illusion of intimacy that the modern superstar machine relies on to keep selling tickets and merch and albums and whatever else keeps the star in the spotlight.

It’s probably coincidental that “The Idea of You” comes on the heels of Taylor Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” on which she strongly implies that her carefully cultivated fandom has made her love life a nightmare. But spiritually, at least, they’re of a piece — even if the origins of the film’s plot seem as much borne of parasociality as a critique of it. And that makes Hathaway’s performance extra poignant. She’s been dragged into that buzz saw before. And somehow, she’s figured out how to make a life on the other side of it.

The Idea of You Rated R for getting hot and heavy, plus some language. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Prime Video .

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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‘doctor who’ review: ncuti gatwa’s run gets off to a peppy, promising start on disney+.

Russell T. Davies returns to the 'Doctor Who' universe with a 14th season starring the 'Sex Education' breakout.

By Daniel Fienberg

Daniel Fienberg

Chief Television Critic

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It’s my obligatory caveat that I am not a Doctor Who “fan,” per se. I’m much more Who -curious.

Related Stories

Ncuti gatwa says while "white mediocrity" gets celebrated, black people must be "flawless" to get half that, varada sethu, millie gibson named companions in 'doctor who' second season photo.

Draw your own conclusions.

Based on his introduction in a pair of December 2023 specials and the first two episodes premiering on Disney+ this week, the Fifteenth Doctor — please don’t ask me to explain how or why David Tennant was both the Tenth and Fourteenth Doctor — is off to a lively and accessible, if not necessarily rousingly memorable, start.

Those looking to jump into Ncuti Gatwa ‘s Doctor tenure could maybe watch “The Giggle,” which featured Fifteen’s “bi-generation,” which is different from a “regeneration” in ways that are either really obvious or really confusing, depending on how much you choose to care.

Much more necessary is the Christmas episode, “The Church on Ruby Road,” which is the first pure evocation of this Doctor’s personality and introduces the dynamic with new companion Ruby Sunday ( Millie Gibson ). It’s a generally fun episode, with lots of holiday spirit and a full-fledged musical number with goblins. I mean, what’s not to like?

So there’s no question that Russell T. Davies, who previously ran the franchise from 2005 to 2010, is introducing Gatwa’s Doctor in a way that’s designed to be welcoming to a demographic who fell in love with the actor on Sex Education , without catering to viewers for whom the idea of a Scottish-Rwandan Doctor is somehow a bridge too far.

The bottom line for this casual viewer is that Gatwa is a thoroughly likable addition to the franchise, fully capturing at least one plausible aspect of the Doctor’s personality. If it turns out that he doesn’t work, it will have much more to do with the series’ writing than his contributions, which has always been the case. Gatwa is a lively burst of energy, bringing back some of the wide-eyed, loopy enthusiasm that I enjoyed in Smith’s take on the role.

For 800 episodes, Doctor Who explored the world of a character through the prism of only a single gender and racial identity, and it’s hard for me to fathom being a fan of the premise and not being excited to see all the ways a different type of Doctor could yield different types of adventures. Less immediately exciting is Gibson’s Ruby, a very middle-of-the-road companion, a “foundling” whose parental mysteries will surely play an important role eventually.

Now as for these first two episodes? They’re more matching Gibson/Ruby’s sensibilities than Gatwa/The Doctor’s. Doctor Who is a show that’s more than capable of going dark and twisty and mythological, but the first two episodes have easily digestible hooks and — perhaps out of an over-abundance of caution — keep their thematic underpinnings muted.

Is “Space Babies” a potentially provocative treatise on reproductive freedom, pointedly mocking societies that force babies to be born but don’t provide the necessary infrastructure to support them? Yes! But it’s also a very silly and slightly weird answer to what would happen if you combined Alien and Look Who’s Talking . So it’s a lot of adorable gabbing babies, some very low-brow humor related to bodily fluids and a man-in-a-suit monster. You can get more than that out of the episode if you choose to, but the point is “talking babies with British accents.” Sold.

Some of the padding in “The Devil’s Chord” seems to be in service of setting up the season-long arc, and the trailer for the third episode suggests that a darker installment is coming next for those who find these openers to be too frivolous.

As for the biggest question for this Doctor Who tourist: Are Ncuti Gatwa’s first few Doctor Who installments good enough for me to watch at least one or two more? Yes, they are.

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