Fri, June 5 2026

Rai's film is an authentic portrait of a young woman who refuses to let her standing and opinions be defined and restrained by gender

All Bishnu wants is to show she can do it all. Lift a gas cylinder. Ensure the family in the orange orchard pays up. Get her elder sister to finish her graduation. Get into a relationship. And not care ‘ki log kya kahenge’. But patriarchy lurks like a dark shadow in the village to which she has returned after a stint in New Delhi. And women have made peace with their roles and gender dynamics. So when Bishnu behaves like the man of the house, there are clashes with her mother and sister. For Bishnu’s mom, asserting independence is a way of disbanding from the community; for Bishnu, it is just the natural way to be. For her pregnant sister, there are regrets; for Bishnu, it’s never too late to do what you want. “I’ll see what kind of a husband a judgemental person likes you gets,” remarks her sister while her mother has had it with her temper and irritable behaviour.

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Sun, May 31 2026

Why would anyone name a cat Azaadi? Perhaps every time you call your companion animal by that name, you give voice to an ache to break free. At the heart of the Nepali-language film Shape of Momo is Bishnu’s (Gaumaya Gurung) tabby cat, named exactly that. Aazadi isn’t an animal protagonist so much as a metaphor for the film’s politics of gender. The family rues that they should have liked a tomcat instead because a female cat would keep having litters. While it’s a perfectly practical concern in a domestic setting, Tribeny Rai’s debut feature is also about a generational belief that a family is somehow incomplete without a son.

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Sun, May 31 2026

A nuanced exploration of womanhood, belonging, identity, and resistance within the confines of a traditional Sikkimese society.

Shape of Momo (Nepali title: Chhora Jastai), directed by Tribeny Rai, emerges as one of the most compelling independent films of the year. Set in the picturesque landscapes of Sikkim, this intimate coming-of-age drama explores themes of womanhood, identity, migration, family expectations, and personal freedom. In this review, critic Saibal Chatterjee examines how Rai crafts a powerful narrative about a young woman’s struggle to reconcile her evolving sense of self with the expectations of the community she once called home. First-time director Tribeny Rai’s Nepali-language Shape of Momo starts with a poem that the protagonist, a young woman who has quit her job in Delhi and retreated to her family home in Sikkim, recites, intoning each word with intent and clarity.

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Thu, June 4 2026

With its satirical tone and engaging performances, 'Maa Behen' celebrates the complexities and strengths of its female characters.

As a society, when we can’t put women in a box, we often use a predictable and largely over-used term to describe them — messy. The word, somehow, acts as an all-encompassing crutch to encapsulate everything about these women that we can’t put a finger on. In small-town India (though that may be a limiting demographic to cite on our part), a woman who not only refuses to be helpless, fragile or vulnerable, but also cocks a snook at so-called community norms is often branded a “daayan”. That is the description that Rekha has had to live with all her life. A sensation among her (male) neighbours ever since she stepped into Adarsh Colony as a young bride, Rekha’s sleeveless blouses, come-hither looks and bold walk and talk (read: the desire to be a single, independent woman who derides judgment and doesn’t feel the need to explain herself or her actions) has given rise to loose talk, unfounded suspicion and strong rumours that she not only preys on men sexually, but also makes quick work of them, the urban legend being that their skeletons are stashed beneath the bed of marigolds in her garden.

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Thu, June 4 2026

An entertaining crime-comedy that never turns into a pity party, Maa Behen has no interest in reforming society's self-appointed moral guardians. Instead, it offers women a far simpler solution: why care?

Set in the conservative north Indian Adarsh Colony, single and glamorous mother Rekha (Madhuri Dixit) makes a hysterical late-night phone call to her daughters, Jaya (Triptii Dimri) and Sushma (Dharna Durga), summoning them home after discovering the dead body of her nosy neighbour, Guptaji (Ravi Kishan), inside her house. Review: As the estranged and constantly bickering sisters reluctantly reunite with their seemingly reckless mother, the chaotic trio scrambles to figure out how to manage the crime scene. But there’s a twist lurking around the corner that none of them see coming. Director Suresh Triveni (Jalsa, Tumhari Sulu) uses humour layered with tragedy to hold up a mirror to a society that views women simply existing on their own with suspicion. The resemblance to actress Rekha and the long-standing gossip surrounding her personal life and marital status inevitably come to mind. How can women thrive without being subject to the watchful gaze of men? Society’s inability to process that question forms the heart of this sharply written story by Triveni and Pooja Tolani.

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Thu, June 4 2026

हमारे समाज में औरतों का चरित्र अक्सर उनके कपड़ों की साइज से तौला जाता है। जितने छोटे कपड़े, उतनी चरित्रहीन औरत। मर्दों को भी ऐसी औरतों के साथ कुछ भी करने-कहने का लाइसेंस मिल जाता है। आखिर कौन उनकी बात पर यकीन करेगा कि उनके साथ गलत हुआ? लोग तो यही कहेंगे ना कि इनके लक्षण ही ऐसे हैं, उसने खुद ही उकसाया होगा, फंसाया होगा। डायरेक्टर सुरेश त्रिवेणी की फिल्म ‘मां बहन’ समाज के इसी संकुचित सोच पर मनोरंजन की भारी-भरकम पोटली से जोरदार प्रहार की कोशिश करती है। फिल्‍म सीधे OTT प्‍लेटफॉर्म Netflix पर गुरुवार, 04 जून 2026 को रिलीज हुई है। फिल्‍म की कहानी के केंद्र में है आदर्श कॉलोनी की एक हॉट सिंगल मां रेखा (माधुरी दीक्षित) और उसकी दो बेटियां जया (तृप्ति डिमरी) और सुषमा (धारणा दुर्गा)। स्लीवलेस ब्लाउज पहनने वाली रेखा की खुद की बेटी भी उस पर उंगली उठाती है, मोहल्ले वालों का खैर कहना ही क्या! बला की खूबसूरत रेखा जब पहली बार स्लीवलेस ब्लाउज पहने अपने पति के साथ इस मोहल्ले में दाखिल हुई थी, तभी से सब उसे करैक्टर सर्टिफिकेट बांटने लगे थे। फिर पति के मौत के बाद तो अफवाहें यहां तक फैली कि खुद उसी ने अपने पति को मारकर अपने गेंदे के फूलों के नीचे गाड़ दिया है।

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Wed, June 3 2026

Where Made in India's docudrama scores is its feel-good sincerity

A brand’s biopic by virtue is hagiographical. Conventional wisdom says telling the story of what made a product so great without becoming its mouthpiece kind of defeats the purpose. Even the likes of Barbie or Air, showing a shrewd acumen for perception versus pop culture, cannot shrug off the weight of the legacy they’re inherently protecting. Made in India: A Titan Story chronicles the history of a homegrown brand at a time when the market was too conservative to dream big. It may not carry the nostalgia of HMT, its more iconic predecessor whose monopoly Titan founder Xerxes Desai ended with a mid-1980s collaboration between the Tata group and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation that gave birth to the quartz timepiece in the era of mechanical. But there’s enough of the likeability synonymous with the brand. Titan’s accessibility, appealing appearance and after sales service, boosted by a catchy advertising campaign riding high on Mozart’s Fifth Symphony, proved to be another feather in Tata’s cap.

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Wed, June 3 2026

A breakout success in the indie horror genre

n a market and year where Hollywood tentpole has been dominant — think Project Hail Mary, think Michael, think The Devil Wears Prada 2, led by the biggest so far, namely, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie — the last few weeks have seen film buffs worldwide defy every kind of algorithm, glossy packaging and blockbuster potential, to troop into cinemas worldwide for a film which has quickly become what one can only describe as a “phenomenon”. Horror is having a moment on the Holly screen, and Obsession — to quote an unavoidable cliche — is now an obsession.

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Tue, June 2 2026

As Nikki, Navarrette delivers an eerily physical performance, contorting her face, body and voice, shedding every last bit of vanity and going the distance for the film’s demented idea.

At the heart of Curry Barker’s Obsession lies a simple, contained but brilliant premise: what if your dreams come true; but those dreams turn out to be your worst nightmare. Starting out writing comedy sketches under “That’s a Bad Idea”, this is only the writer-director’s second feature. Maximising the thin conceit and wringing the idea for social commentary, Obsession keeps the audience unsettled, as Barker takes the narrative to ludicrous and shocking heights. Bear (Michael Johnston), a young introverted man, probably in his 20s, is hopelessly in love with friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette). They work together in a music store, living a harmless life in American suburbia: going to trivia nights, taking turns at the karaoke, hopping between bars and house parties. When she puts in her two-weeks notice at the workplace, he must hurry and tell her how he feels. He buys a ‘one-wish willow’ (a bark that is supposed to be split into two after one makes a wish) as her going-away present. Too shy to give it to her after he drops her home, Bear, without thinking too much, wishes ‘Nikki would love me more than anyone in the world’ and then breaks it. Much to Bear’s shock, his wish is granted, as Nikki turns around from near her door-step, walks towards his car, and insists if she can sleep at his house.

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Fri, May 29 2026

A YouTuber who is all of 26, Curry Barker has delivered a tragi-comic horror film that subverts gender roles.

Boy likes girl. What next? A lot of possible romances end right here. But what happens when the shy boy gets one miracle wish that can turn romance into a love story. A YouTuber on the road to fame after Obsession wowed audiences at Toronto International Film Festival, and got horror impresario Jason Blum onboard as executive producer, director Curry Barker is all of 26. He is also the writer of this tragi-comic horror film, with Cooper Tomlinson who plays one of the key characters, his long-time collaborator. Barker taps right into Gen Z’s au courant crisis and places Obsession in the irresolute territory where love is an all-consuming but never-consummate emotion. Relationships are situationships, and situations are at the mercy of just too many things. Commitment is a word – and world – too long.

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Mon, June 1 2026

Preity, Abhirami, and Arjun shine in a story about a middle-class family becoming a mean killing machine that is more John Wick territory than Drishyam

Choices. A lot about a person can be known by the choices they make. The same holds true for a filmmaker, whose decisions on camera angles, narrative detours, character depth, use of musical cues, and the scenes chosen and left at the editing table prove their mettle. The same holds true for an actor, whose decisions on whether they accept to do a full-fledged role, or a glorified cameo, or an important yet minuscule part, appear in a ‘special’ dance number, or a ‘friendly appearance,’ or play a role that doesn’t add anything anywhere except to the bank balance, decide their worth. But what happens when the Yhprum’s Law is in full force, and almost every choice, despite a few hurdles, ends up for the greater good? You get Subash K Raj’s debut film, Blast, starring Arjun, Abhirami, and Preity Mukhundhan.

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Sun, May 31 2026

Director Subash K Raj's Blast, starring Preity Mukundhan, Arjun Sarja and Abhirami, is an interesting dark thriller with promising ideas. However, the film's predictable screenplay and long runtime keep it from reaching its full potential.

A middle-class family full of Karate fighters. A Rs 7,000 crore mining project on the line. A corporate villain. And his assassin to get things done for him. When all these collide,you get a script with ample scope for a wild ride. Director Subash K Raj attempts an action-heavy thriller about a happy family that just wants to mind its own business. Blast, at a runtime of nearly two hours and 30 minutes, is a blend of multiple genres. At one point, it is about a middle-class family fighting to protect their peace. When Nila (Preity Mukundhan) is young, her father (Arjun Sarja) teaches her the most important lesson in life: stand up for the victim, even if they are not related to you. This, along with karate training from her father, makes her impossible to dislike.

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Fri, May 29 2026

An engaging action comedy that’s written for and around the high moments

Subhash K Raj’s Blast is a movie that’s written for and around its high moments. It’s almost like Subhash knows how these moments will be received in the theatre, and he also understands the careful plotting and planning that’s required for them to land, once he allows them to. For this, he has figured out his own method to create a reasonably engaging action comedy around an idea that may have been too small, even for a short film.

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Sat, May 30 2026

90ஸ் கிட்ஸின் ஃபேவரைட் படத்தொடர்களில் ஒன்றான `தி மம்மி'-யை 2017-ல் டாம் க்ரூஸை வைத்து ரீபூட் செய்தது ஹாலிவுட். ஆனால் படம் எதிர்பார்த்த வரவேற்பைப் பெறவில்லை. இப்போது மீண்டும் ஒரு `மம்மி'. `ஈவில் டெட் ரைஸ்' இயக்குநர் லீ குரோனின் இந்த முறை `மம்மி'யை சாகசப் படமாக அணுகாமல் முழு நீள ஹாரர் படமாக மாற்றியிருக்கிறார். இந்த `மம்மி' டெரர் காட்டுகிறதா?

எகிப்தின் கைரோவில் டிவி நிருபராக பணியாற்றுகிறார் சார்லி கேனன் (ஜேக் ரெய்னோர்). மனைவி லரிசா (லையா கோஸ்டா), மகள் மற்றும் மகனுடன் வாழ்ந்து வருகிறார். இதனிடையே ஒருநாள் வீட்டுத் தோட்டத்தில் விளையாடிக்கொண்டிருந்த மகள் கேட்டி காணாமல் போகிறாள். எங்குத் தேடியும் கிடைக்காத நிலையில், சார்லியின் குடும்பம் மெக்ஸிக்கோவுக்கு மாற்றலாகிறது. எட்டு வருடங்களுக்குப் பிறகு கேட்டி கிடைத்துவிட்டாள் என்ற செய்தி எகிப்திலிருந்து வருகிறது. ஆனால் இப்போதிருக்கும் கேட்டி சுயநினைவின்றி மனநலச் சிக்கலோடு இருக்கிறாள். உண்மையில் கேட்டிக்கு என்ன நடந்தது, அவளால் வரும் ஆபத்துகள் என்ன என்பதை ஹாரர் விருந்தாக முன்வைக்கிறது படம்.

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Sat, May 30 2026

A charming, sincere children’s film marked by a joyful jugaldbandi between Jackie Shroff and Mihir Godbole that one wishes had trusted its own early imagination a little longer.

The greatest superpower of cinema is the ability to make us believe again. Jackie Shroff’s little summer adventure, The Great Grand Superhero: Aliens Ka Aagman doesn’t just ask us to believe in flying grandfathers or marauding aliens, it invites us to believe in something far more radical in these times of attention and trust deficit. The film tells us that a wrinkled, mischievous Dadaji can still be the mightiest hero in a child’s universe, and that childhood imagination isn’t childish — it’s the original superpower. Intelligent, imaginative, but lonely, young Dipu (Mihir Godbole is pitch-perfect) fabricates grand stories to win over new friends in new schools and new towns where his father gets transferred. In his script, his grandfather (Jackie Shroff) is a superhero who fights aliens. The tone is secretive, and Dipu limits the age group to under-18 because he perhaps knows his adventure will not pass the adult scrutiny.

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Fri, May 29 2026

There’s a scene in The Great Grand Superhero: Aliens Ka Aagman where Jagdish alias Dadaji (Jackie Shroff) narrates what must be a superhero origin story. Dipu (Mihir Godbole), his grandson, is visibly appalled that the tale, however preposterous it may sound, contains no bombs, explosions, or gunfire. Of all things, it has orange candy. How ridiculous is that, asks the sharp kid, staring at his grandfather like a man completely out of touch with the times. The moment is amusing, but it also defines the spirit of Manish Saini’s film. In an era where children’s cinema has almost disappeared from theatres, replaced either by loud spectacle or violent and jingoistic content, The Great Grand Superhero arrives like a relic from another time. And yet, to call it “small” would be inaccurate.

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Fri, May 29 2026

Jackie Shroff and the kids are more than alright in this charming and occasionally clumsy tale of friendships and fictions

The Great Grand Superhero has one of the most charming setups in recent memory. The first half is funny, poignant, satirical and very inventive. It also has the best child actors since Stanley Ka Dabba, a film it shares an editor (Deepa Bhatia) and narrative spirit with. There’s a new mid-term admission in a small-town school; his name is Deepu (a pitch-perfect Mihir Godbole). Deepu is a clever student; he knows all the answers to all the teachers’ toughest questions. The other kids envy him and find him strange. He confesses to one of them that he’s “different” because his grandfather (Jackie Shroff) is — suspenseful drum beat — a superhero. It’s a secret, he says, that only kids below the age of 18 can know, otherwise the grand old man will lose his superpowers.

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Fri, May 29 2026

Almost everything expected of a horror film, from blood to gore to jump scares, happens in the film. Almost everything that you know will come to pass does.

The wise woman Diane (Melissa Leo) who knows all about the things that can go wrong on the road advises Maddie (Lou Llobell) seriously: “People don’t take trips. Trips take people.” That’s just her way of saying that please avoid lonely, dark roads at night, and should you have to, never, ever stop. But by then, the road trip of Maddie and Tyler (Jacob Scipio) has put them in the path of a demonic being that is mythically known as Passenger (Joseph Lopez). Once he has latched on to you, for whatever reason, he travels with you, so to speak.

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Fri, May 29 2026

Style overshadows susbtance in ‘Kattalan’ which belongs to the same universe of ‘Marco’. Despite a strong cast, Paul George’s film falters in all departments

One can sit through something as intolerable as Kattalan only if one can invent some distraction. A possible diversion could be to keep a count of the humans and elephants killed during the film’s two-hour duration. But halfway through, you are bound to lose track as the killings are just too many, even in a single sequence, to get an accurate number. In the end, one realises that the biggest casualty of this relentless assault on the senses is neither humans nor elephants, but cinema itself. The dishonesty of it all is evident in how it treats its characters. To fill the emotional void at the centre of the film, one or two characters, like a physically challenged young girl, are introduced randomly and immediately turned into victims of some violent act, which would then set off some pathos-inducing background score. The writers are clearly not interested in these characters. They are deliberately using them for the film’s emotional impact and to underscore the need for revenge.

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Fri, May 29 2026

Apart from the film being written as a broad revenge saga between two rival gangs, there’s almost nothing resembling character development, motivations or a payoff.

First-time director Paul George’s Kattalan is what one may call a graphic novel movie. Almost all of its dialogues can be fit into two sides of an A4-sized page, and the effort that’s gone into it is only to re-create a storyboard that was made as a part of the film’s “writing”. As a film that follows the hyper-violent Marco in the same cinematic universe, Kattalan is a film that feels like it was forced to be made into a pan-Indian title. Apart from a handful of leads, almost the entire supporting cast is imported from all the other film industries of the country. Dialogues switch between Malayalam, broken Malayalam, Tamil, and English, and none of them delivers the impact it is meant to. And when they are not conveying plot points or exposition, Kattalan becomes home to some of the most pompous punchlines in all of our cinema.

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Wed, May 27 2026

The Spider-Man Universe comes alive with Nicolas Cage playing the live-action version in this new Marvel-Sony series

After voicing Spider-Man Noir in the Sony animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), Nicolas Cage brings a version of the character to the small screen with Amazon Prime Video’s Spider-Noir. The Marvel and Sony co-production is part superhero saga and part classic noir. Interestingly, Spider Noir gives viewers the chance to see the show both in colour and black and white, which can also change perspective on the story. Developed by Oren Uziel, Spider Noir is a character portrait of a broken-down man named Ben Reilly who rises to the occasion when really required. The ongoing mystery woven in the narrative also keeps audiences engaged.

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Mon, May 25 2026

Seemingly discordant storylines are strung together into a pleasing whole by director-co-writer Daniel Roher, largely due to the effortless charm of its cast.

Paraphrasing Billy Joel’s Piano Man, if you’all in the mood for a melody, this film has got you feelin’ alright. Seemingly discordant storylines are strung together into a pleasing whole by director-co-writer Daniel Roher (who won an Oscar for his Navalny documentary), largely due to the effortless charm of its cast. Leo Woodall is Niki, a piano prodigy who now tunes pianos for a living, having developed a hearing condition that has left him allergic to loud sounds. Two years of therapy, of being kept in a dark room, means he can just about get around the world of noise via ear plugs and noise-cutting headphones. Dustin Hoffman is Harry, a piano player of some repute and a friend of Niki’s late dad, who runs the piano tuning and fixing company where Niki works. The film begins with their effortless banter as Harry trades his wisdom and tricks with his beloved Niki, and tries to evade the sharp eyes of his wife Marla (the unmissable Tovah Feldshuh) who is worried for his failing health.

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Mon, May 25 2026

“Everything is planned…” When Ajnabee had Bobby Deol exposing Akshay Kumar in a corny yet wildly entertaining climax, we watched with amusement while tapping our feet to an infectious Anu Malik tune. It was never meant to feel intelligent. The same planning by a sharp-minded person made the Malayalam film Drishyam a national sensation. Georgekutty (Mohanlal) put Malayalam cinema on the national movie map, perhaps for the first time in history. Shockingly enough, Drishyam 3, the sequel to Drishyam 2, finds its tension in spontaneity and unpredictability, not foolproof planning. The question is: are we ready for this version of Georgekutty?

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Fri, May 22 2026

Fri, May 22 2026