Sat, January 17 2026

Sat, January 17 2026

Twenty minutes into Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos, I was reminded of a question someone asked me around the Golden Globes recently: “How did One Battle After Another win in the Musical/Comedy category? There were no songs and there wasn’t any comedy.” While I chuckled then, watching Vir Das and Kavi Shastri’s film made me re-realize his perception of comedy. Happy Patel is set in a satirical world with a nice lineup of eccentric characters and even weirder events. Somehow, the filmmakers are hell-bent on making us laugh in a Bollywood-comedy sort of manner. Which is why, it was awkward when Happy Patel could not make me laugh. Not even once. It was like your younger sibling trying to tickle you in childhood, only to fail miserably. I may have smiled a couple of times here and there, notably during the climax. That was it.

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Sat, January 17 2026

It’s all there, but not quite. Vir Das, known primarily for his stand-up comedy, co-directs (with Kavi Shastri) and co-writes (with Amogh Ranadive) Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos,which starts on a promising note, but the chaos and the humour that come along with it runs its course midway through the film. I was seated when the film began, which showed Aamir Khan as a dreaded gangster in Goa’s fictitious Panjore out on a killing spree and engaging in a gun fight with two British agents.

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Sat, January 17 2026

Sat, January 17 2026

Sat, January 17 2026

Sreeleela, in her first Tamil film, plays the male protagonist's romantic interest and not much else

In her fifth outing and first collaboration with actor Sivakarthikeyan, director Sudha Kongara crafts a relevant but way less than scintillating Tamil period drama that, notwithstanding the numerous censorial excisions it has suffered, makes full use of all the ingredients one expects from a star vehicle targeted at a mass audience. The balancing act is by no means easy and Parasakthi frequently teeters on the edge of a pulpy precipice. To her credit, the director, who is also the film’s co-writer with Arjun Nadesan, does not let the commercial aims of the project overly blunt the edges that the emotive subject matter imparts to it.

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Sat, January 17 2026

Starring Emraan Hashmi, the Neeraj Pandey-helmed series falls into old habits despite exploring uncharted territory.

A Neeraj Pandey-created film or series comes with a specific aesthetic: neither television plus nor streaming pulp. Or perhaps both at once. To be fair, this treatment has remained consistent over the years. You know what to expect from the filmmaking: physical momentum is used to manufacture the illusion of narrative intellect. There are those long tracking shots of characters walking importantly from one space to another and one mood to another. The camera and background score move faster than the plot; they work overtime to defeat inertia and convey a sense of coolth and cleverness. Even if people are merely looking at one another, the lens rotates around their bodies in circles and sometimes follows their gaze as if there’s a reveal of Big Foot at the end of every shot. There’s the fake-flashback formula; an incomplete scene or conversation plays out at first only for the story to later show the full scene/conversation that conveniently omitted the twist. And there’s the ‘cultural’ colour-grading: the Middle East is yellow-sepia, Europe is blue, India is yellow-blue, Africa is green, the sky changes tones like an errant disco ball rather than AQI markers.

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Sat, January 17 2026

Emraan Hashmi leads Neeraj Pandey’s thriller that trades explosive momentum for nuanced depictions of smuggling and the personal cost of integrity

Neeraj Pandey has this knack for taking us to those forbidden spaces where offenders and upholders of the law become two sides of the same coin. He teases you with dribs and drabs of information, making us guess which side his characters would flip. This week, with Taskaree, the coin is golden, and the field of special ops is Mumbai International Airport. Celebrating the unsung heroes of India’s customs department, the series portrays their battles against organised crime with limited firepower.

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Sat, January 17 2026

Taskaree begins as a smart, textured look at the hidden machinery of smuggling, but its compulsion to outwit the viewer ultimately turns ingenuity into excess.

Neeraj Pandey’s latest Netflix series, Taskaree: The Smuggler’s Web, rests on ingenuity. It foregrounds a world that is mostly wrapped in intrigue and focuses on a group of people who aren’t necessarily under the spotlight. In a streaming landscape crowded with an assembly line of thrillers, even an inventive premise counts a great deal, and Pandey offers it in plenty. His latest show is concerned with the machinery of customs and widespread smuggling syndicates that continue to bypass them — a swing that pays off till it does not.

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Sat, January 17 2026

Director Nalan Kumarasamy and Karthi's film doesn't do enough with its several fascinating ideas and premise

Among the many clever ideas that make Nalan Kumarasamy’s Vaa Vaathiyar a peculiar beast is how the first half both begins and ends with death. The film opens on December 24, 1987, the very day MGR passed away. We see crosscuts of a pregnant mother being taken to the hospital, when a group of the idol’s die-hard fans force the local theatre to play the print of an old MGR classic. They’re worried about their idol’s health who is being treated in the US and try to pacify themselves by re-watching the same film, arguably for the 100th time. The moment news of MGR’s death arrives, we see the first cries of a baby boy taking over the screen. He even has a mole under his right foot, just like MGR did. It’s a mass movie miracle, reminding one of how KGF opens with the discovery of gold, just as Rocky is born. Nalan doesn’t just want to make a tried-and-tested star vehicle…. he also wants to remix the formula upon which the biggest-ever star was created.

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Sat, January 17 2026

Karthi nearly carries the film by himself, most notably in his measured, non-mimetic portrayal of MG

Apart from moral ambivalence, the commonality of all Nalan Kumarasamy’s feature film protagonists is that they are aware of being so. Daas of Soodhu Kavvum can’t resist being a kidnapper. He understands the risks and therefore adopts a ‘middle path’ by finding non-violent ways to go about his business. Ka Ka Po’s Kathiravan is a paper tiger who has served time for crimes he never committed. He strives hard to let go of his past, which is not even his.

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Sat, January 17 2026

Nalan Kumaraswamy weaponises the idea of MGR, the screen hero, staging a pulpy vigilante drama that is as much about cinema’s myths as it is about the state’s abuse of power.

Nalan Kumaraswamy has been around Tamil cinema forever now. Yet the first winner of Naalaya Iyakkunar, the programme that gave us a handful of new-age filmmakers still working today, has only made three films. It’s surprising, considering the prolific output of his contemporaries and the value of the singular voice he brings to cinema. Thirteen years after his debut, his third film, Vaa Vaathiyaar, finally made it to theatres this week. The one quality that stands out in Nalan’s work is the postmodernism that permeates his characters and extends beyond mere window dressing in his frames. It is present in entirety of Soodhu Kavvum (2013) and very much central to his script contributions in Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s Super Deluxe (2019). Funnily enough, his sophomore film Kadhalum Kadanthu Pogum (2016) is far from cynical and serves as one of the best romantic films from Tamil in the past two decades. Vaa Vaathiyaar is marketed as a masala or commercial fare from Nalan, and it is easy to see why.

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Sat, January 17 2026

Starring Fukrey alumni Varun Sharma and Pulkit Samrat, Rahu Ketu is a vapid Bollywood comedy that gives up on itself

Rahu Ketu is the sort of inane and aggressively stunted Bollywood comedy in which the interval is so long that it feels like the movie doesn’t want to continue. But it does continue. For 70 more minutes. In all directions and no directions, unfolding like it’s made for a human demographic that doesn’t exist. I know there are takers for this brand of leave-your-brains-and-veins-at-home gibberish, but I am not one of those takers. I’d like to believe I’m a giver, because nothing else explains the fact that my body stayed seated in the cinema hall throughout, even though my spirit escaped (and probably had an accident on the way back). If it sounds like I’m exaggerating for effect, it’s true. There’s no other way to open the review of a movie where Piyush Mishra is still playing a Himachali storyteller who pretends he’s not in Tamasha, Manu Rishi Chadha is playing a writer who pretends he’s not in RK/RKay, Chunky Panday is playing a retired Mossad spy turned drug kingpin whose punchline is “Karma is a switch, join me and I’ll make you rich,” and Varun Sharma and Pulkit Samrat play dim-witted buddies who pretend like they’re not in Fukrey. Everyone seems to be pretending — except me.

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Sat, January 17 2026

Created by George RR Martin and Ira Parker, this smaller on-the-road story set in the world of Game of Thrones captivates from the get-go, with an underdog character and plenty of action.

There are a lot of familiar themes in the Game of Thrones (GOT) spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Based on the Dunk and Egg novellas from George RR Martin, the six-part series follows a different kind of hero, a hedge knight named Dunk, who wants to make a name for himself. This is the story of the gentle giant who goes on to become Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) and his trusty squire Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell). Created by Martin and Ira Parker, the HBO series stands out from the other shows in this world, GOT and House of the Dragon. What makes A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms more appealing is its story of the underdog who goes up against the noblest names in the kingdom. This tale of valour and honor will immediately grab attention.

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Fri, January 16 2026

After three years, Idris Elba's Sam Nelson is back in another hijack situation, but this time, the action moves underground in a narrative that wears viewers out.

Planes, trains, and automobiles. If there is a third season of Hijack, a car seems the most likely scenario. Until then, the series has relocated to snowy, cold Berlin for its second season. Idris Elba stars as the unlucky Sam Nelson, who finds himself in another life-or-death situation after the Flight KA29 hijacking. Created by George Kay and Jim Field Smith, the Apple TV series gives Sam Nelson a personal reason to be invested in this latest hijack. The eight-episode series cannot sustain the tension as it introduces new obstacles for Sam to face.

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Thu, January 15 2026

Despite predictable elements typical of rom-coms, its charm is amplified by solid performances from Emily Bader and Tom Blyth.

We find ourselves in an age where romance — not to be confused with love — is manufactured, off screen as much as it is on it. The list of perennial favourites in the Hollywood romantic-comedy genre rarely deviate beyond When Harry Met Sally, Notting Hill, The Notebook, and You’ve Got Mail, and I am not just talking about someone like me who is of a certain vintage. Gen-Z may argue — “What about To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before?” or “Haven’t you watched La La Land?” — and with solid enough reason, but a classic rom-com for the ages has been a long time coming.

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Sat, January 10 2026

Adapted from Emily Henry's popular book, the story of best friends Alex (Tom Blyth) and Poppy (Emily Bader) soars beyond the cliches.

The first adaptation of author Emily Henry’s work is off to a flying start. Director Brett Haley stays close to Henry’s work with People We Meet on Vacation, as two best friends, Alex (Tom Blyth) and Poppy (Emily Bader), reunite every summer to travel to new places. Of course, with every trip, their relationship changes as they wonder if they could be right for one another. The Netflix film doesn’t change the genre by any means, but Blyth and Bader elevate the material with their chemistry and witty banter.

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Thu, January 15 2026

Created by Susanna Fogel and David Iserson, Ponies attempts to take viewers back in time to the 1970s at the height of the Cold War with two widows leading the charge.

Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke and The White Lotus’s Haley Lu Richardson team up as two American women bound by the same fate in an unknown country. The dramedy Ponies, created by Susanna Fogel and David Iserson, has the two women who are opposites in every way become undercover CIA operatives to solve a personal case. While the situations the two find themselves in grow increasingly wild and unbelievable, the actresses manage to carve space within the story for their characters to stand out. The title Ponies stands for ‘Persons of No Interest’ in intelligence terms.

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Wed, January 14 2026

Naveen Polishetty and director Maari give a hilarious spin to a wafer-thin story. Though the gag-fest feels overdrawn and uneven, the lead actors make it watchable

Two years after the urban romcom Miss Shetty Mr Polishetty(2023), actor-screenwriter Naveen Polishetty returns with another film laced with humour. In contrast to the restraint he showed in that film, Naveen unabashedly plays to the gallery in Anaganaga Oka Raju. The humour is delivered through gags that come at such a rapid pace that the audience may not get a breather to pause and reflect.

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Mon, January 12 2026

Director Anil Ravipudi plays to the gallery once again, with comedy and a dash of nostalgia

Certain things are a given in a film written and directed by Anil Ravipudi. There will be ample comedy, even if much of it is unabashedly silly. Viewers familiar with his work know not to expect nuance, or much by way of technical polish. In Mana Shankara Vara Prasad Garu, his first collaboration with Telugu superstar Chiranjeevi, Ravipudi leans into these strengths, loading the film with humour and fanboy moments that bank on the actor’s nostalgic appeal. The chief pleasure lies in watching Chiranjeevi clearly enjoying himself, aided by an extended cameo from Venkatesh Daggubati and the presence of Nayanthara.

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Mon, January 12 2026

A fraught, exciting second season of Nikkhil Advani's ‘Freedom at Midnight’ looks back at the months before and after India's independence

In the third episode of Freedom At Midnight’s second season, Abhishek Banerjee turns up as an unnamed Hindu rioter. Towards the end, he confronts Gandhi (Chirag Vohra), who’s fasting in yet another attempt to end the terrible sectarian violence in Calcutta. He berates the frail old man, yelling at him to eat, confessing to murder, finally breaking down. Gandhi, barely able to speak, advises him to wipe his heart of hatred.

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Mon, January 12 2026

लेखक विलियम एल शीरर की किताब ‘राइज ऐंड फॉल ऑफ थर्ड राईच’ की शुरुआती लाइन है, ‘दोज हू फॉरगेट हिस्ट्री आर कंडेम्ड टू रिपीट इट’ यानी जो अपना इतिहास भूल जाते हैं, वे उसे दोबारा दोहराते हैं। इसलिए, फिल्मकार निखिल आडवाणी अपनी सीरीज ‘फ्रीडम एट मिडनाइट’ के जरिए 1947 के उस ऐतिहासिक लेकिन विवादित पन्ने को पलटते हैं, जब देश को आजादी की कीमत बंटवारे के अब तक रिसने वाले जख्मों से चुकानी पड़ी थी। लैरी कॉलिन्स और डोमिनिक लैपियर की इसी नाम से लिखी चर्चित किताब पर आधारित इस सीरीज का दूसरा सीजन आ चुका है, जिसमें निखिल हिंदुस्तान और पाकिस्तान के स्वतंत्र अस्तित्व में आने के दौरान हुई हिंसा और उसके बाद के राजनीतिक-सामाजिक हालातों, चुनौतियों को बहुत ही गहराई और संवेदनशील ढंग से पर्दे पर उतारा है।

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Sat, January 10 2026

Intense, reflective, but selective in its depiction of events and agent provocateurs, the series humanises political icons and puts their era-defining decisions in perspective

History lovers often crave the human drama behind epochal events. They pine for the backroom intrigue, the clash of egos, the creases in the starched characters that decorate our history books, not to forget the impact of their moral stand on the man on the street. These days, ancient and medieval history offers plenty of elbow room to play with the past, but when it comes to modern Indian history, filmmakers tend to draw back, as the wounds are still fresh and memories of Partition linger.

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