The Best Performances On Streaming In November 2020

In a film filled with a dozen lovely characters, Kondal Rao's Goparaju Rama stands on its own with some of the film's best moments. Take for instance the scene early on when he asks his wife to massage his feet. At that point, siding with the film's protagonist Raghava (Anand Deverakonda), we see him merely as the strict patriarch who finds no worth in his son. But slowly, the tough exterior makes way for the man he really is. Later, in the scene when his wife convinces him to part with his chit fund to help Raghava start his business, we see how he really is. He's massaging her feet now and it's not even a big deal. Kondal Rao agrees with his wife, but only partly. His annoyance is hilarious when he stops massaging mid-way. He's a good guy but he's also an familiar kind of selfish. All that conveyed through one scene.

Streaming Platform: Netflix

In Ludo, Rajkummar Rao reinstates the art of the ham as Alok Gupta, a lovelorn hustler and lifelong Mithun-da fan. He brims with nervous energy, turning a cartoonish loser into a genuinely affecting man-child who is only capable of de-stressing through his Disco-Dancer-ish limbs. As opposed to most Bollywood-obsessed fanboys who break into dance when joyous, Rao's "Alu" spontaneous moves are a form of self-therapy. In the process, he redefines the role of the romantic martyr: accidentally comical, deliberately daring.