Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Actor: Aubrey Joseph, Brandon Rogers, D.C. Young Fly, Darell M. Davie, Jim O'Heir, John Lewis, Nikki Blonsky, Theo Rossi, Thomas Jane, Tory Lanez, Tyrese Gibson, Vivica A. Fox
Director: Nicholas Manuel Pino
In life and cinema, drama is everywhere. You’ll find it in thrillers, animations, romances, you name it. For entertainment that explores the human experience with sensitivity and sincerity, here’s a mixed bag of the best dramas to stream now.
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Actor: Aubrey Joseph, Brandon Rogers, D.C. Young Fly, Darell M. Davie, Jim O'Heir, John Lewis, Nikki Blonsky, Theo Rossi, Thomas Jane, Tory Lanez, Tyrese Gibson, Vivica A. Fox
Director: Nicholas Manuel Pino
Genre: Drama
Actor: Afrah Sayed, Akshita Sood, Aneet Padda, Avantika, Dalai, Gauri Malla, Loveleen Mishra, Pooja Bhatt, Suchitra Pillai, Tanya Abrol, Tenzin Lhakyila, Vidushi, Zoya Hussain
Director: Karan Kapadia, Kopal Naithani, Nitya Mehra, Sudhanshu Saria
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Actor: Alexander Hodge, Avery Cole, Britne Oldford, Chase Liefeld, Genevieve Angelson, Jamie McRae, John Gallagher Jr., Laura Kai Chen, Lucy Hale, Marceline Hugot, Michael Mulheren, Mitzi Akaha, Nat Wolff, Reilly Walters, Ward Horton
Director: Peter Hutchings
To The Hottest Summer's credit, it doesn't shy away from its title; as an erotic romcom, it gives us more sexual content than you'd expect, while still keeping away from anything too explicit. There's an undeniably exciting quality to how much the film is willing to show in its forbidden romance, and lead actors Nicole Damiani and Gianmarco Saurino have chemistry to spare. But while the film can be refreshing in how undaunted it is by the supposed taboo at the center of its story, its desire for simple, carnal thrills means the characters are much flatter than they probably deserve to be. Deacon Nicola's complicated relationship to his faith is never quite explored until it's too late, and Lucia's friendship with Valentina (played by Alice Angelica) seems to be of little consequence, even as the story tries to create drama between their competing affections for the young priest-to-be.
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Actor: Alberto Rossi, Alice Angelica, Balkissa Souley Maiga, Barbara Tabita, Gianmarco Saurino, Giuseppe Paternò Raddusa, Luca Capuano, Mehdi Meskar, Michela Giraud, Nicole Damiani, Nino Frassica, Stefania Sandrelli
Director: Matteo Pilati
There’s something frightening about being consistently spurned due to circumstances out of your control. This is the main concern of Pulimada’s Vincent, since he’s not marriage material due to his family’s history of mental illness. The twisty plot is reminiscent of old gothic mysteries, complete with a tiger metaphor, but the execution is off, especially since it takes more than two thirds of the film before there’s anything to fear. It’s clear that Pulimada has an engaging, though dated concept, and Joju George’s transformation for Vincent could have definitely gotten there. But entering this tiger’s den feels like a letdown when there’s no risk, no style, no intrigue in the film’s approach.
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Actor: Abu Salim, Aishwarya Rajesh, Balachandra Menon, Chemban Vinod Jose, Dileesh Nair, Jaffer Idukki, Jeo Baby, Johny Antony, Joju George, Krishna Prabha, Lijomol Jose
Director: A K Sajan
When a group of people have to band together for survival, whether it be due to zombies, bus accidents, or being lost from civilization, there’s no higher stakes than life or death. If we care about the characters enough, the will to survive already drives the plot. However, Netflix show Pending Train doesn’t trust in the entertainment of this survival premise. Instead of focusing on the group’s survival, it constantly shifts to flashbacks depicting everyday drama. When the group finds out that they got lost way into the future, there’s less strategizing, and even more flashbacks. This strange episode structure makes the series feel less like a compelling survival show and more like a soapy melodrama.
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Actor: Ayaka Onishi, Eiji Akaso, Goki Maeda, Kai Inowaki, Kotone Furukawa, Miho Kanazawa, Moka Kamishiraishi, Sara Shida, Sayaka Yamaguchi, Sho Nishigaki, Shunya Shiraishi, Takayuki Hamatsu, Tetta Sugimoto, Yasuko Matsuyuki, Yoshiyuki Tsubokura, Yuki Yamada
Director: Kenta Tanaka, Naoki Katō, Okamoto Shingo
It definitely has all the hallmarks of a mystery series—intertwining investigations, corruption at the police level and higher, a dark past that vaguely reflects the central cast—but there's something about P.I. Meena that keeps it from being more than just a collection of genre markers. It neither feels urgent nor specific enough to separate itself from so many similar shows, and it often jumbles up the stories it tries to tell, leading to a fluctuating tone and hurried pacing. Tanya Maniktala makes for a charming lead, but she can't help but be overwhelmed by the show's attempts to hit the familiar beats we expect to see.
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Actor: Jisshu Sengupta, Parambrata Chatterjee, Samir Soni, Tanya Maniktala, Vinay Pathak, Zarina Wahab
Director: Debaloy Bhattacharya
The idea of a fitness instructor suddenly discovering the thrill of selling military armaments is promising in its absurdity, so it's unfortunate that Los Farad doesn't maintain this offbeat sense of humor for too long. It moves relatively quickly into tense criminal activity, but the series isn't able to really capture the magnetic pull that this world of luxury has on protagonist Oskar. Without enough table-setting, the crime family he finds himself becoming a part of can't help but seem ordinary, and the last-minute solutions he finds weaken the urgency of the situations he's in, as cinematic as they appear on screen.
Genre: Crime, Drama
Actor: Adam Jezierski, Amparo Piñero, Fernando Tejero, Igal Naor, Miguel Herran, Nora Navas, Omar Ayuso, Pedro Casablanc, Susana Abaitua
Genre: Action, Drama, Romance
Actor: Birkan Sokullu, Esra Bilgiç, Fırat Tanış, Hakan Ummak, Nil Keser, Osman Alkaş, Ushan Cakir
Director: Recai Karagöz
If you’re familiar with the classic supernatural romance Ghost (1990), Why Didn’t I Tell You A Million Times? will remind you of it. It doesn’t have the comedic banter of Whoopi Goldberg, but it does have a back-and-forth dynamic between the ghost and the detective that sees him. It doesn’t have the leading lady’s potential murder, but it does have a murder to investigate. It also has more food porn, as the main couple is bound by Japanese hamburg steak and salty custard puddings. There’s something here about love transcending the physical realm and troubled pasts lead to a lifetime of service or a lifetime of crime. However, the series can’t decide on one perspective to start from and relies too much on flashbacks to tell its story. Why Didn’t I Tell You A Million Times? had the potential to be a moving supernatural romance, but it’s let down by lackluster execution.
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Actor: Kami Hiraiwa, Kenichi Matsuyama, Mao Inoue, Shim Eun-kyung, Takeru Satoh
With a premise that just seems inherently emotionally manipulative, it should take an especially sensitive touch to make a story like this work on screen. Unfortunately, See Hear Love—itself based on a South Korean webcomic—is both overdramatic and not nearly stylized enough in any meaningful way to help its subject matter evolve beyond melodrama. It remains a well-shot and decently acted film that, at the very least, treats its characters as adults and not as caricatures with disabilities. But the movie makes little effort to place these characters in believable situations that should shed a light on what it's like to live with blindness or as a Deaf person. See Hear Love takes the easiest (and slowest) way out, bringing its two lovers together under somewhat creepy circumstances, and having them endure cartoonishly exploitative "antagonists"—all for the sake of portraying the romance as grand and artificially tragic.
Genre: Drama, Romance
Actor: Dai Watanabe, Daikichi Sugawara, Mahiro Takasugi, Maika Yamamoto, Mari Natsuki, Masaya Kato, Motoki Fukami, Sayaka Yamaguchi, Tomohisa Yamashita, Tomoki Kimura, Yuko Araki
Director: John H. Lee
If Pippa makes one crucial mistake that derails its drama, it's not that the film opens with a violent but necessary scene of Bangladeshi people being massacred by Pakistani troops. It's that the film never actually returns to any Bangladeshi characters, instead becoming an overly familiar story about more privileged soldiers and their sacrifices as they get to act as heroes to the camera. It's executed fairly well, with a good bit of suspense as the larger objective focuses up into a specific rescue mission. But even the flashiest production design and the most unique tank-based action can't get rid of the nagging feeling that we're being told a much less important story. In the end, this is still about the glory of military service for a greater good, which just isn't the most interesting direction for this film to take.
Genre: Drama, War
Actor: Avijit Dutt, Chandrachoor Rai, Inaamulhaq, Ishaan Khattar, Kamal Sadanah, Mrunal Thakur, Priyanshu Painyuli, Soham Majumdar, Soni Razdan
Director: Raja Menon
Turning 30 is a milestone that is a staple drama storybeat; it's own coming-of-age subgenre for facing unrealized dreams and heartbreak. This South African take adds a few dashes of sex as the lead quartet look back on their college years and mostly lament their dysfunctional, or lacking, love lives. All four women get equal screen time (impressive) and a series of devastating hardships (sad, yet expected), but the predominant focus on their relationship with men cornered it into predictable territory. Ultimately, the film is formulaic, always on the cusp of prioritizing friendships until its archaic romances and interpersonal drama remind you that a man and a job will make you MUCH happier.
Genre: Drama, Romance
Actor: Anthony Oseyemi, Bahumi Madisakwane, Candice Modiselle, Lunga Shabalala, Terence Bridgett
Director: Stephina Zwane
The American Christian film industry hasn't been terribly successful at crossing over to general audiences, and Journey to Bethlehem still succumbs to corny attempts at humor and performances that can still feel too self-conscious. But not unlike a musical such as Jesus Christ Superstar, this movie finds moderate success at balancing its faith-based elements with a focus on individual characters. Creative license has obviously been taken here to varying results: the songwriting is generally uninspired and lacks a unified style, but the songs add much-needed shades of humanity to a story that most people probably know as a Sunday school summary.
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Family, Music
Actor: Alicia Borrachero, Antonio Banderas, Antonio Cantos, Antonio Gil, Fiona Palomo, Geno Segers, Joel Smallbone, María Pau Pigem, Milo Manheim, Omid Djalili, Pedro Aijón, Rizwan Manji, Stephanie Gil
Director: Adam Anders
As far as heist stories go, Choona gets points for placing so much importance on the act of getting its team together. The first two episodes watched for this review don't advance forward in plot as much as they pivot from one point of view to another around the same moments in time. Unfortunately, because the series is so particular about its own structure, it loses sight of the reasons why we should be emotionally invested in the heist in the first place. There is a world of gang violence sketched out in these early episodes, but little sense of what's actually at stake. And with the show's over-reliance on voiceover narration, Choona sucks the tension out of its plot, as this seemingly omniscient voice constantly keeps us at a distance.
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Actor: Aashim Gulati, Arshad Warsi, Atul Srivastava, Jimmy Shergill, Namit Das, Vikram Kochhar
Director: Pushpendra Nath Misra