Thu, January 22 2026

Despite differing opinions about their individual personas and careers, viewers are often drawn to their collaborative works

Cognitive bias based on the positive traits of a person often makes human psychology assume that the individual in question has other unrelated qualities that are also likable. This is the ‘Halo Effect’. The Halo Effect, by association, extends itself to assuming that if you like a person, you tend to start liking (sometimes, not always) those he or she associates with, even if you may not have had a good impression of them in the first place. That happens with me when it comes to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. I like Damon — actor, human, overall great guy, et al. Affleck — sporadically interesting on screen, controversial off it, perpetual hangdog demeanour — I am not a fan of. But I always enjoy watching the two together. One of Hollywood’s strongest, lasting friendships makes for a great creative partnership — as co-actors, co-producers, co-writers — meeting as they did 45 years ago when Damon was 10 and Affleck two years younger. They even have an Oscar together, and their joint interviews are tinged with warmth, wit, charm and congeniality.

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Wed, January 21 2026

The actor-director’s spy spoof aims for absurdist satire but collapses under stereotypes, scattered themes, and overextended gags, despite flashes of wit and a fun Aamir Khan cameo.

The directorial debut of Vir Das and Kavi Shastri, Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos, introduces us to Happy—played by Das himself—a 34-year-old, UK-based wannabe secret agent whose most dangerous skill is assembling a sandwich so good it brings joy to his British dads. He is earnest, clumsy, and armed with optimism rather than competence. Naturally, chaos follows. Written by Vir Das and Amogh Ranadive, the 121-minute film operates on hope—hope that a goofy British spy of Indian origin can carry a full-blown absurdist comedy. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it really, really hopes it works.

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Mon, January 19 2026

Sun, January 18 2026

Comedy is serious business – and not everybody can get that right. The gags could be physical (think of ‘thoda khao thoda pheko’, in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, (1983) or any Bustor Keaton, Charlie Chaplin film), situational like Chupke Chupke (1975) or a Golmaal (1979) that got everything right. Then we had the Kadar Khan Shakti Kapoor comedy in the 80s & 90s and Aamir Khan Productions own Delhi Belly (2011) had some funny situations.

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Mon, January 19 2026

Kalamkaval—the new investigative thriller in which Mammootty plays a serial killer—is a dull, dour, and deeply frustrating film. We talk about director Jithin K. Jose’s indisciplined screenplay, which repeats the same information over and over again as if it knows audiences are going to tune out. We also discuss its lack of interest in the killer’s victims, whom it treats as mere plot devices. We find that the performances of the two leads are entirely mismatched, and the movie is more interested in pulling the rug from under the audience’s feet than examining why people do what they do.

Thu, December 11 2025

It’s one thing to make a biography or documentary on an over-exposed crime episode. It’s another to sprinkle it with cinematic liberties and hope it magically transforms into a chilling superstar saga. Jithin K. Jose’s debut feature Kalamkaval attempts the latter and ends up as an engaging yet deeply implausible effort that feels dystopian. Tragically so, because almost nothing in its setup or screenplay reflects the conservative, observant, and perpetually inquisitive social fabric of Kerala.

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Mon, December 8 2025

Mon, January 19 2026

Nia DaCosta's masterfully written zombie thriller does the unthinkable: it strips the genre of its dangerous flights of fancy, reclaiming the Zombie as a monster of science, not faith.

Nia Dacosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple directly takes off from where Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later (2025) left off. The setting is quarantined Britain, 28 full years after the Rage Virus — a mutated strain that transformed its victims into hyperaggressive zombie-like creatures — tore through the continent in 28 Days Later (2002). Few humans have survived. Young Spike (Alfie Williams) leaves the sheltered isle after the death of his cancer-riddled mother (Jodie Comer) to “come of age” on his own terms in the zombie-infested mainland. This film opens with him getting roped into the weird ‘gang’ that rescued him at the end of the last film — except they turn out to be a toxic Satanic cult run by a psychopath named Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Sinners’ Jack O’Connell). Spike is too scared to escape the Jimmys, a group that spends their days skinning and killing survivors as a sacrifice to the devil. Parallely, a lonely Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who urged Spike to find his own way, forges an unlikely bond with Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), the Alpha leader who terrorised them not too long ago. It’s apparent that, at some point, the paths of the iodine-smothered orange-skinned doctor and a Jimmy’d Spike will cross. What’s not apparent is how a post-apocalyptic zombie thriller can be unexpectedly funny and profound at once: not spoofy-Shaun of the Dead funny, more like Tarantino-Spike-Lee-revisionism funny.

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Sun, January 18 2026

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple comes within a year of its predecessor’s release, with both films being shot back-to-back. Directed commendably by Nia DaCosta, this is the fourth film in the 28 Days Later franchise that started back in 2003 with Danny Boyle at the helm as the director with a script conceptualized by Alex Garland who has also written the last two 28 Years Later films.

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Sun, January 18 2026

Nia DaCosta's graphic, exhausting but also ambitious sequel continues Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's zombie series

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is an unsettling, often punishing sequel that connects directly and deliberately to Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later (2025), while escalating the franchise’s visual and thematic intensity. Where Boyle’s film found terror in suggestion and absence (screams heard but not seen, horror registered in the faces of those left behind) director Nia DaCosta brings that terror into full view. Violence is explicit, gore is confrontational and discomfort is sustained rather than fleeting.

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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

Directed by Nithish Sahadev, the political satire starring Jiiva, Thambi Ramaiah and Ilavarasu is a realistic drama that's harmless and full of heart. It brings forth how human egos affect the lives of their loved ones.

In a world where audiences constantly gravitate towards big spectacle films, your heart still aches for a cute, funny movie that tugs at your heartstrings, makes you laugh, and lets you simply enjoy your time at the theatre. While these films don’t get the same attention as big-budget entertainers, they hold a special place in your heart. That’s exactly what Jiiva’s Thalaivar Thambi Thalaimayil offers.

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Thu, January 15 2026

फलां एयरपोर्ट पर इतने लाख का सोना पकड़ा गया। फलां आदमी शरीर में इतने किलो ड्रग्स बांधकर ला रहा था। तस्करी की ऐसी खबरें हम अक्सर सुनते रहते हैं। बीते साल ही कन्नड़ अभिनेत्री रान्या राव के सोने की तस्करी के किस्से सुर्खियों में रहे। तस्करी के इसी काले धंधे और इन पर लगाम लगाने वाले कस्टम अधिकारियों की चुनौतियों का रोचक ताना-बाना दिखाती है, वेब सीरीज ‘तस्करी: द स्मगलर्स वेब’। नीरज पांडे और राघव जयरथ निर्देशित यह सीरीज एक ओर जहां स्‍मगलिंग के इंटरनेशनल नेटवर्क से रूबरू करवाती है, वहीं कस्टम अफसरों की जिंदगी, काम के तरीकों, और चुनौतियों को भी गहराई से दिखाती है। हालांकि, बाद में ट्विस्ट और कमर्श‍ियल मसाले जोड़ने के चक्कर में यह बॉलीवुडिया फॉर्मूलों में फंस जाती है।

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