Recent Reviews by Shamayita Chakraborty
OTT Play
Shamayita is a journalist and film critic for OTT Play with over 15 years of experience. She has previously worked with Times Of India, Bangalore Mirror and Zee 24 Ghanta. She reviews and writes on Bengali, Hindi and English films and web series.
Films reviewed on this Page
Chaalchitro: The Frame Fatale
Kaalratri
Talmar Romeo Juliet
Nikosh Chhaya
Tekka
Bohurupi
Kaantaye Kaantaye
Parineeta
Manikbabur Megh
Chaalchitro: The Frame Fatale
Pratim D Gupta comes back to Bengal with a strong plot in a gritty thriller
Tota Roy Chowdhury, Shantanu Maheshwari, Anirban Chakrabarti, and Indrajeet Bose build a brand-new cop universe that is too engaging to find flaws
A gruesome murder shakes Kolkata. Seasoned cops Kanishka Chatterjee (Tota Roy Chowdhury) and Naseer (Anirban Chakrabarti) of the Kolkata Police Detective Department see an uncanny similarity in the execution from an old case. Along with these two, Ritesh Kumar (Shantanu Maheshwari) – a young enthusiastic IPS, and Bishwa (Indrajeet Bose) get together in action. Soon there are more bodies. Nothing beats a chilling thriller on a winter night, and Pratim D Gupta serves it with a delectable plot garnished with a handful of red herrings. The film, which occasionally runs into predictability, is far too engaging to find flaws. It is fast, lethal, and entertaining, keeping the guessing game on.
All 2 reviews of Chaalchitro: The Frame Fatale here
Kaalratri
Soumitrisha’s OTT debut has Hoichoi written all over it
Directed by Ayan Chakraborti, the thriller also has Anujoy Chattopadhyay, Debesh Chattopadhyay, Rajdeep Gupta, Indrasish Roy, and many others.
Devi (Soumitrisha), who only remembers the past six years of her life, gets married to Rudra Roy Burman (Indrasish Roy) — a drunkard and lecherous son of Samaresh Roy Burman (Debesh Chattopadhyay). Devi’s mysterious friend Maya (Koushani Mukherjee) — known for her ominous presence – predicts that Rudra will die the next day after their marriage. Her prediction becomes real.
Talmar Romeo Juliet
Forget Shakespeare, watch it for Anujoy Chattopadhyay and Anirban Bhattacharya’s duel
Directed by Arpan Garai and penned by Durbar Sharma, Talmar Romeo Juliet is a love story that broadly borrows the outline of Shakespeare’s tragedy.
Badal Majumder (Kamaleswar Mukhopadhyay) and Liyaqat’s (Joydeep Mukherjee) families harbour animosity for each other for years. Badal’s eldest son Somnath (Anujoy Chattopadhyay) and Liyaqat’s nephew pugnacious Mostaq (Anirban Bhattacharya) do not see eye to eye. However, Rana – Badal’s younger son, and Jahanara – Liyaqat’s daughter and the apple of his eye, love each other. All this drama takes place in a small town, Talma.
Nikosh Chhaya
Kanchan Mullick shines in this creepy drama
Parambrata Chatterjee brings the second season of Bhaduri Moshai drama with Chiranjeet Chakraborty, Gaurab Chatterjee, Surangana Bandyopadhyay, Kanchan Mullick and others.
A couple of corpses disappear from a morgue. Police officer Amiya (Gaurab Chakrabarty) and his team start investigating. They learn about a little stinky monster, Genu, who reminds him of an old story. Amiya and Titas (Anindita Bose) remember that their old friend Sanjay (Anujoy Chatterjee) told them a story of a similar monster 10 years ago and both the descriptions match. That’s when Amiya seeks help from Bhaduri Moshai (Chiranjeet Chakraborty).
Tekka
Rukmini Maitra and Dev shine in this hostage drama
The film’s story is pretty much what you have seen in the trailer. For those who are uninitiated, here is the plot in brief. Iqlakh (Dev) loses his job, randomly kidnaps a young girl Avantika (Aameya) from her school, and takes her hostage. He demands to get his job back. Maya (Rukmini Maitra) from Kolkata Police comes to negotiate. Even after his company’s maintenance manager (Anirban Bhattacharya) verbally promises to give his job back to him, he demands the owner of the firm Anubrata Adhikari (Paran Bandyopadhyay) to come personally. Meanwhile, in a turn of events, little Aratrika’s mother Ira (Swastika Mukherjee) hunts down Iqlakh’s house and takes hostage of his little boy.
Bohurupi
Shiboprosad Mukherjee and Abir Chatterjee gift us a wholesome entertainer
Directed by Shiboprosad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy, Bohurupi features Abir Chatterjee, Ritabhari Chakraborty, Koushani Mukherjee, and Shiboprosad.
Shiboprosad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy’s Bohurupi delivers what it promises: unadulterated entertainment. It is fun watching this mad cat-and-mouse game. The film is lavishly shot, and most importantly, made with care. It excels in almost every department with Shiboprosad’s skillful acting hogging the lion’s share of the limelight.
Kaantaye Kaantaye
Saswata Chatterjee’s web series is too long
Kaantaye Kaantaye is a one-time watch for those who don’t know the story. You can give it a miss if you are an Agatha Christie fan
After their daughter died in a car crash, advocate PK Basu (Saswata Chatterjee) and his wife Rani (Ananya Chatterjee) go to North Bengal to recover from their grief. They visit their family friends Sujata (Ayoshi Talukdar) and Kaushik (Somraj Maity) who open a homestay there. A series of murders take place in Kolkata and North Bengal. As a number of characters get stranded in the homestay, PK Basu catches the culprit.
Parineeta
Gourav Chakrabarty and Debchandrima Singha Roy present unadulterated old-school romance
Aditi Roy has created an engaging unadulterated love story with Gourav Chakrabarty and Debchandrima Singha Roy with Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s Parineeta
Neighbour duo Lolita (Debchandrima Singha Roy) and Shekhar (Gourav Chakrabarty) have unending claim on each other. Despite a marriage in haste, they parted ways because of Shekhar’s prejudices and Lolita’s pride. In Parineeta, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s classic takes a makeover in Aditi Roy’s series on Hoichoi.
Manikbabur Megh
Abhinandan Banerjee and Chandan Sen present a magical love song through their cinema
Chandan Sen’s Manikbabur Megh is clearly a disruption in the current space of the Bengali cinema. It is nothing that one wants to watch and yet it is everything that we cherish on the screen.
Manikbabu (Chandan Sen) lives a lonely life. He is first chased and then romanced by a whiff of cloud that only he can see. What do we see when we look at the sky? Manikbabu sees a whiff of cloud that refuses to leave him. He decides to embrace that celestial piece of cloud in his life. This lonely man and his quirky environment – his noisy ceiling fan, his rooftop greenhouse, the hanging lizard in the bathroom, the pile of files on his office table, and so on – tell a lot of hitherto bottled-up stories. The film is a collage of those chronicles.