Sun, September 6 2026

In the cinematic transition of the popular OTT series, director Gurmeet Singh and writer Puneet Krishna get the mood, moments, and the motivations right but flatten the political nuance.

There is an old saying in the film trade that in Indian cinema, audiences can forgive a weaker plot if they fall in love with the people inhabiting it. Much like Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay and Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar, the plot of Gurmeet Singh’s Mirzapur is ultimately just scaffolding; the characters are the architecture, and the dialogues lend it vibrant color. You don’t merely watch the characters, you develop a deeply personal, at times toxic, yet fiercely loyal bond with them. The plot occasionally wanders into generic gang-war territory, but we stay glued because of Akhanadand Tripathi, aka Kaleen Bhaiya’s (Pankaj Tripathi) cold pauses and crisp one-liners, Munna’s tragic yet explosive desperation for love, winsome Guddu’s (Ali Fazal) terrifying, unpredictable rage, and Bablu’s (Jitendra Kumar is not as effective as Vikrant Massey) dilemma between a book and a gun.

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Sat, September 5 2026

After three ‘Mirzapur’ seasons of diminishing returns, the 197-minute film sets out to recapture the pulpy spirit of what made the series a cultural moment

After straying far and wide into the golden fields of mediocrity, the 8-year-old Mirzapur franchise returns to the comforting folds of its past like an ex-lover aching to rekindle a lost romance. Mirzapur: The Movie erases memories of the doomed third season, doing a factory reset of a cinematic universe that had reached its natural demise. It places us bang in the middle of the famous Season 1 — back when all the primary characters were alive and perverse; back when the narrative was yet to become a pale imitation of itself; back when guns, gore, profanity and sex were the law of the land; back when emasculated men were still desperate for validation from toxic fathers and brothers; back when the heartland-porn-coded vibes of the Tripathi mansion was yet to be hijacked by multiple storylines and half-hearted wokeness.

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Sat, September 5 2026

Mirzapur The Movie starts off after some time has passed in the first season of the web series. Akhandanand Tripathi aka Kaleen Bhaiya (Pankaj Tripathi) is the king of Mirzapur’s underworld. His son Munna (Divyenndu) is feared more because of his lineage. Kaleen Bhaiya doesn’t trust his son because of his short temper and immaturity. He is more impressed by Guddu Bhaiya (Ali Fazal) and Bablu (Jitendra Kumar), two brothers working for his empire with dedication. Guddu and Bablu’s father (Rajesh Tailang) is embarrassed to see his sons working for an underworld don. However, their mother (Sheeba Chadha) thinks the opposite since the two are able to earn big bucks in quick time, even if the means are illegal. Kaleen Bhaiya’s empire and Mirzapur ki gaddi gets threatened when the Jaisalmer-based businessman-cum-gangster Babban Yadav (Ravi Kishan) offers to make a deal with him involving large quantity of drugs.

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Sun, September 6 2026

As much as it’s tightly acted, I got a sense that Furious is also a writer’s show

At the height of the #MeToo movement in 2018, something I read seared itself into my brain. “Men should be grateful that women are asking for equality. Not revenge.” For all the patronising tone at home, casual sexism at the workplace, catcalling on the street, groping in public transport, full-blown sexual assaults/attempts in most known/unknown corners of the city, the isolation and gaslighting that takes root after – I’ve often wondered why women still speak to men. In fact, why don’t they start their day by attacking the first man they meet? It’s an urge buried deep within Elizabeth Merriweather’s Furious – a first-rate serial killer mystery, which reveals itself as a reckoning of female rage at its most unvarnished, unbridled and intricate.

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Sun, September 6 2026

Nahas Hidhayath and Dulquer Salmaan aim big, but beyond its rich production values, the film remains stuck between a peculiar body-horror thriller and a template revenge drama

I’m Game is essentially the story of two men. On one hand (pun intended), we have Dan John (Dulquer Salmaan), a compulsive gambler, and on the other, Vicky (Antony Varghese Pepe), a passionate cricketer. It so happens that their lives get ‘accidentally’ intertwined by a sheer twist of fate, leading to plenty of confusion, drama, realisation and eventually, resolution. Nahas Hidhayath’s story may not be entirely fresh, with many films in the past, including in Malayalam, exploring similar territories, but the material is still pulpy enough for a commercial potboiler. If you think of it, the director’s debut, RDX, a smashing hit, also had a generic storyline, but the execution was right on the money for an action-heavy entertainer. With I’m Game, the young filmmaker aims really big. Bigger stars, better production values, broader themes, but the ambitious vision is spoilt by some mediocre writing and shoddy execution, resulting in a mishmash of a genre hybrid film that’s stuck somewhere between a promising body-horror thriller and a template revenge drama.

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Sat, September 5 2026

Nahas Hidhayath's film, starring Dulquer Salmaan, has some flair but extends a neat hook beyond its elasticity

It’s quite easy to describe I’m Game, Nahas Hidhayath’s follow up to his wildly entertaining debut, RDX (2023). Imagine if SP Muthuraman’s Enakkul Oruvan (1984) and Madonne Ashwin’s Maaveeran (2023) had a baby. The older film is a kooky reincarnation saga played with melodramatic earnestness while the latter maintains an irony-tipped sharpness through its serious action-oriented storytelling. I’m Game doesn’t always get the ratio of this mix right, but it hedges its bets on the handful of inventive ideas that keeps the proceedings engaging.

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Sat, September 5 2026

This over-stretched comedy stars Arshad Warsi as a debt-riddled husband who fakes his own death to secure a fat life-insurance cheque

Jeevan Ya Bheema Con? is what happens when Delhi Belly tries (but fails) to be a Kunal Kemmu comedy from the 2010s. It’s the sort of chaotic middle-class gag that occasionally remembers that it’s a movie. It begins with the title itself: a play on the name of the government life-insurance scheme (Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojna), where the premise features broke characters called Jeevan, Yojana and Bheema stumbling through a last-ditch insurance con. Unfortunately, there’s nobody named Pradhan, Mantri and Jyoti — why stop halfway?

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Sat, September 5 2026

The Gentlemen season 2 finds Guy Ritchie leaning harder into his enduring theme: men who mistake owning something with being someone. This season, Eddie (Theo James) leans into this even harder than ever. Among other things, he spends this run muscling into Italian mafia territory, even as he is chasing a seat in the House of Lords. And at the same time, the Netflix series, which is a spinoff of 2019’s action comedy movie of the same name, drops the zany energy that made season 1 so much fun. It’s a riskier season than the first. It is also colder and darker and, for my money, it is a better one, even when its reach outpaces its grip.

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Fri, September 4 2026

Theo James is back as the Duke of Halstead in Guy Ritchie's entertaining crime thriller as Edward Horniman tries to reclaim his legacy.

Created by Guy Ritchie, Netflix’s crime drama The Gentlemen is back for a darker and more serious second season. Eddie Horniman (Theo James) and Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario) have even more ambitious plans for their illegal drug business that face several obstacles. With several returning and new characters popping up in the gangster thriller, the Netflix series takes an unexpected twist at the halfway mark of Season 2, leaving audiences gasping with every twist and betrayal depicted in eight episodes. Written by Ritchie and Matthew Read, The Gentlemen Season 2 is more about purpose as Eddie and Susie try to break out from the expectations set upon them by others. Bold and ambitious, the second season does not repeat any formulas of previous Ritchie productions.

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Fri, September 4 2026

An incoherent ‘Gandhari’ stars Taapsee Pannu as a mother who pretends to be blind to search for her kidnapped daughter in a shady town

If I were younger and brasher, I’d start this review with something as direct as: Gandhari is one of the worst Hindi films of the year. I’d rant about how it creates a world record for the number of scenes in which characters speak off-screen so as to hide the clunky exposition and dialogue added in post-production; how lip-syncing is a mythical concept; how this is salvage-job filmmaking at its peak. I’d go on about how the movie treats feminism, motherhood, child trafficking, gender-based violence, trauma and breathing as a smug SoBo aesthetic; how the phrase “my culture is not your costume” was invented for screenplays like these. I’d balk at the Do Patti-coded twists, disorienting music and editing, disjointed acting and disingenuous metaphors. I’d be outraged by the film’s Haseen Dillruba-coded lens of toxic love, where the scene of a husband and wife literally clobbering each other is scored to a romantic ballad: such a ‘punchy’ love language. I’d be angry to the point of incoherence, much like the film in question.

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Fri, September 4 2026

Directed by Devashish Makhija and written and produced by Kanika Dhillon, Gandhari — the story of a traumatised mother looking for her kidnapped daughter — struggles with elementary mechanics of storytelling.

The opening 10 minutes of Devashish Makhija’s Gandhari is perhaps the clearest indication of the film’s intentions — and its intellect. Written and produced by Kanika Dhillon, it opens with the kidnapping of a five-year-old travelling with her parents on a train. When her mother, Bani (Taapsee Pannu), realises her daughter is missing, she tears through a crowded platform after the kidnapper, only to be knocked unconscious by a blow to the head. And because Gandhari apparently has no interest in leaving suffering at merely one notch, we soon learn that the injury has also temporarily robbed Bani of her eyesight. From there, the film’s idea of character development appears to be little more than a contest in accumulated misery. A traumatised and blind mother, leaning on a walking stick and waiting outside a police station, hoping they will help find her daughter: it is an image so nakedly engineered to elicit pity and helplessness that it barely registers as characterisation. In the next scene, the film piles on another layer of dread: as the parents grow increasingly desperate, a passerby tells them that if kidnapped children are not found within 48 hours, they are unlikely to be found at all. This is, in fact, Gandhari’s preferred mode of persuasion: pile misfortune onto a character, arrange it into a sufficiently potent image, and assume the audience will fall in line.

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Fri, September 4 2026

Taapsee Pannu-starrer is about a child sex trafficking ring (strike one for unoriginality), run by devilish characters (strike two for ditto), upended by, who else but the ultimate saviour, the mother.

The moment you see a happy family in a train compartment, with a little girl and her big doll, you know something wicked this way comes. The girl vanishes, and her increasingly distraught parents, Bani (Taapsee Pannu) and Gokul (Ishwak Singh) find no help from the local police in Joypurra (fictional, of course), somewhere in Bengal. This is the kind of small town we see in streaming shows, as constructed as their plots, sequence after sequence filled with loud background music trying to stand in for tension because nothing on screen cuts it, either because we’ve been inundated with similar stuff, or we simply can’t buy any of it. Or both.

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Fri, September 4 2026

Co-directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the period comedy plays off Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh's odd couple energy.

The filmmakers behind Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, bring a Cold War comedy that is far more entertaining than it looks on paper. Ryan Reynolds plays an American pilot who crash lands in enemy territory, aka the former USSR, during a covert mission, while Kenneth Branagh plays his new Russian friend, a former KGB agent, who is his only way out. With great Top Gun (1986) references and gasp-inducing action sequences, the streaming entertainer ideally deserved a big-screen outing.

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Fri, September 4 2026

A downed American pilot and a former KGB officer discover that they have been told lies about each other’s countries all their lives, in this film set in the height of the US-Soviet Cold War years.

Ryan Reynolds repurposes his Deadpool routine in Mayday, the new Apple TV action-comedy film, in which he plays a downed American pilot during the height of the Cold War. With the blockbuster Deadpool and Wolverine (2024) having proven that his fast-talking, quip-based acting style works only in short doses and when it’s offset by an on-screen foil, Reynolds is made to team up in Mayday with Kenneth Branagh, who plays a stoic former agent of the KGB (Soviet intelligence and internal security agency), having a crisis of conscience. Together, they make a bid for freedom in a stylishly made, briskly paced and surprisingly sensitive entertainer that has no business being this good.

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Fri, September 4 2026

Venu Gopal Reddy’s Telugu film works better as a buddy comedy than a love story, and could have benefited from sharper writing

In the final portions of Romanchakam, written and directed by Venu Gopal Reddy, the comedy of errors is in full swing. The narrative wants us to root for the lead pair, Anvesh (Sumanth Prabhas) and Mythili (Ananthika Sanilkumar). However, what lands better is the commotion created by Anvesh’s friends as they try to salvage the situation. Despite being consistently silly and overly talkative, their bond feels more convincing than the romance at the centre of the story. For a love story to work, the female protagonist needs to be well written. Perhaps in an attempt to keep the narrative breezy and humorous, the writing holds back from establishing who Mythili is. We know little about her background, aspirations or what stands in the way of her getting what she wants. A passing scene hints at differences between her and her parents, but the idea is not explored further. There are also sporadic references to suicide, but these remain vague and are never treated with much sincerity. At one point, an incident involving a suicide attempt is even played for humour. This imbalance between comedy and emotional depth makes it difficult to fully invest in the love story.

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Fri, September 4 2026

‘अर्जुन का तीर था, उड़ती शमशीर था। देवों में सूर्य था, वायु रणवीर था। सेना का जोश था, बादल मदहोश था। सीमा के पार जो जाता था तीर सा, दुश्मन काे मारकर आता था वीर सा।’ डॉक्यूमेंट्री ‘द लास्ट सैल्यूट: अ लव लेटर टू मिग-21’ की ये शुरुआती पंक्तियां ही ये साबित कर देती हैं कि कुछ मशीनें सिर्फ मशीनें नहीं होतीं। वे इतिहास का हिस्सा बन जाती हैं, पीढ़ियों की यादों में बस जाती हैं और उनसे जुड़े लोगों के लिए एक भावनात्मक रिश्ता बना लेती हैं। भारतीय वायुसेना के साथ मिग-21 का रिश्ता भी कुछ ऐसा ही है, जिसे डॉक्यूमेंट्री ‘द लास्ट सैल्यूट: अ लव लेटर टू मिग-21’गर्व, रोमांच और भावुकता के साथ दिखाती है। खुद पूर्व वायुसेना सदस्य रह चुके डायरेक्टर कुशल श्रीवास्तव की यह डॉक्यूमेंट्री भारतीय वायुसेना संग 62 साल लंबे रिश्ते के बाद अलविदा कहने वाले मिग 21 को सलामी है। कहानी उन 23 स्क्वॉड्रन से शुरू होती है, जो मिग 21 को ऑपरेशनल भूमिका में उड़ाने वाली आखिरी स्क्वॉड्रन थी। फिर 26 सितंबर 2025 को चंडीगढ़ में हुए मिग-21 के विदाई समारोह को भावुक अंदाज में दिखाती है। दिलचस्प बात यह है कि 1963 में इसी चंडीगढ़ एयर स्टेशन पर मिग-21 को भारतीय वायुसेना का हिस्सा बना था। यानी जहां से इसकी यात्रा शुरू हुई, वहीं उसका अंतिम अध्याय भी पूरा हुआ।

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Mon, August 31 2026

The Last Salute celebrates the MiG-21's immense power while honouring the pilots who flew it

The heady roar of the legendary supersonic fighter jet that served the Indian Air Force (IAF) for 62 years is muffled by nostalgia-dripping voices, an emotionally redolent background score, and a mind seeking to absorb loads of information. The “kick” inherent in the MiG-21 story is, however, given full rein in this engaging Netflix documentary conceived and executed as a companion piece to the hit web series Operation Safed Sagar. “Kick” is the word that several retired and serving pilots interviewed on camera use in describing what they felt when they sat in the cockpit of the now-retired-from-active-service MiG-21 and revved up the engine for take-off. The documentary transmits much of that to the audience.

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Mon, August 31 2026

From the creator of ‘Operation Safed Sagar,’ this neat little documentary features the final hurrah of the Indian Air Force’s prized possession, the MiG-21 fighter jet

There’s something innately sincere about The Last Salute, a documentary about the 62-year-old marriage between the MiG-21 and the Indian Air Force (IAF). It revolves around the retirement of the iconic Soviet fighter jet in 2025, leading up to its farewell ceremony while telling its story through the lens of the chosen few who were qualified to fly them. “A Love letter to MiG-21” is part of the title, so it’s more of a personal ode than a formal chronicling; its reputation as “a flying coffin” is hastily dismissed and neatly glided over. It’s just like watching one partner say goodbye to another after a long and eventful relationship, choosing to remember them fondly despite all the flaws and illnesses. Given that it’s from the creator of the recent Kargil series, Operation Safed Sagar, perhaps this apolitical and isolated wistfulness isn’t surprising.

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Wed, September 2 2026

Unrest begins at home in Ambiecka Pandit's small-town crime film that doubles as a bleak social drama

A young woman is visiting her in-laws for the first time. She’s eager to impress them. She cooks, cleans, runs the house. She’s hurt by their jibes but tries not to show it. Her husband is mild-mannered but thin-skinned; she has to apologise for pulling his leg. Their lovemaking is awkward. She puts her interests on hold, but it isn’t enough. Slowly, she comes to a boil. She’s played by Nimisha Sajayan. The film is The Great Indian Kitchen. Or is it Babita Singh Reporting? It’s a little strange to watch Sajayan, one of the best actors in India today, undergo similar trials and humiliations to ones she endured five years ago, in her most celebrated role. Ambiecka Pandit’s Hindi film is a world removed from Jeo Baby’s Malayalam drama. But Sajayan’s Babita is a close cousin to her unnamed wife in that film, a silent sufferer until all the silence is wrung out of her.

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Mon, August 31 2026

Director Ambiecka Pandit mounts a small-town murder mystery which functions far more effectively as a breakdown of hypocrisy than as an unconventional procedural.

At a time when the diary of police procedurals is cluttered with gravity-defying cops and preachy social commentaries masquerading as investigative dramas, Babita Singh reports with a quiet yet telling subversion. The biting social critique tells us how our society tolerates a woman’s professional ambition only on the condition of absolute domestic continuity. Her career must remain invisible to the men of the house; it cannot cost them their hot meals or their sense of absolute supremacy. It captures how this cycle is policed not just by men, but by the matriarchs of the family, the mothers and sisters-in-law. Of course, there is a murder investigation as well, but it works as a narrative camouflage. The mystery lies in decoding the pervasive patriarchy.

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Mon, August 31 2026

Mon, August 31 2026

Nayanthara and Kavin are great when it’s all fun and games in director Vishnu Edavan's 'Hi,' but they’re not able to navigate the film through the more serious portions

There’s a forgotten brand of humour that works really well for the most part in Vishnu Edavan’s Hi. Reminding one of the loud, but likeable comedies from the ’90s made by directors like Ezhil and Sundar C, the intentional old-schoolness of Hi has a way of surprising you with its silliness. It doesn’t even attempt to play it safe or try the logical approach. If there’s a joke to be milked, the film will do anything, even if means hitting someone on the head with a pole. It’s desperate and immatur, but oftentimes also feels oddly sincere.

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Mon, August 31 2026

The journey of Hi is made even more beautiful by the easy charm exuded by Nayanthara and Kavin, who ensure the romance doesn’t overshadow the comedy, and the comedy doesn’t overpower the romance

Desire. Almost every relationship is based on a desire of some sort. It can be a desire for companionship, touch, love, family, respect, and of course, lust. But at the base of it all is a desire to feel desired. Wanting someone to want you for who you are is a high that many go through life without ever feeling. It is in pursuit of this uns that people give their all. Vishnu Edavan’s Hi is about one such guy, Mayilsamy (A wonderfully understated Kavin), who has everything but love of the romantic kind. He meets a down-in-the-dumps woman, Devayani (A superb Nayanthara), who has nothing but the belief that love is destined for the more fortunate ones. No prizes for guessing where the movie goes from here, and the best part? Vishnu isn’t interested in making you play the guessing game, and just wants you to sit back and enjoy a simple, cheery romcom that hits you right at the feels.

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Sun, August 30 2026

Director Vishnu Edavan's Hi, starring Nayanthara and Kavin, is a harmless romantic comedy that has some delightful stretches. The film aims for low-stakes and achieves them too.

Rom-coms have a timeless charm. They make you smile, tug at your heartstrings and, at their best, leave you walking out of the theatre with a little more hope than you walked in with. But very few films manage to get that emotional balance right these days. Last week, the Malayalam film Bethlehem Kudumba Unit did it effortlessly. This week, Tamil film Hi attempts to recreate that magic with a story rooted in romance, family and second chances. But does it work? Let’s find out.

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Mon, August 31 2026

What might happen when a woman filmmaker gets the opportunity to make a film about violence and sex? What might happen when she gets access to all the familiar toys of the male-star vehicle: the punch dialogues, the star, the swagger, the slow-motion sequences, the sex, the violence… What might she bring to this cinema that we don’t generally get? As it turns out… quite a lot. First, she refuses to see the protagonist, Raya, as a ‘hero’. Quite the opposite, in fact. The film isn’t interested in hero-villain demarcations, right-wrong judgments. Raya (Yash) himself says as much at one point. When you are in pain, morality stops seeming important. The film, in fact, has a lot to say about the nature of pain, about what happens when you live with it for so long that you begin to fall in love with it, when it begins to feel more like home than any real home ever could, ever did. There’s a fantastic song in the Tamil version, ‘Vittupogaadha Yen Vali’, that speaks of this dichotomy. “Vittupoiduma en vali, poi vidaadhe en vali…”

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Sun, August 30 2026

Three years after being announced, Toxic has reached theatres with its gangster world intact, but its women viewed largely through Raya. The central disappointment is that the promised female gaze never meaningfully shapes the film's perspective.

Three years after Yash and Geetu Mohandas announced Toxic, the film is finally in theatres. And after all the waiting, the anticipation and the speculation, one question remains stubbornly unanswered: where is the female gaze Geetu promised? In a throwback interview, Geetu described Toxic as a “gangster film”. She said, “It’s a gangster genre with a female gaze. How about that?” When the teaser dropped in July, that was the question everyone asked. Now, after three hours of Toxic, a more pointed one takes its place: does the film ever really see its women at all? Rewind to 2023. When Yash and Geetu Mohandas announced their collaboration, eyebrows went up. Here was a star coming off the monumental success of the KGF franchise, joining forces with a filmmaker known for her distinct, uncompromising voice. Would these two very different cinematic worlds click, or would the pairing end up a spectacular miss? There seemed to be little room for anything in between.

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Fri, August 28 2026

The film moves at breakneck speed, leaving you no room to breathe

“Violence is my mother tongue, the universal language.” Indeed, this dialogue delivered by Kannada ‘rockstar’ Yash with the panache it deserves says it all. ‘Toxic’, as the name suggests, is about repressed emotions, which in their own convoluted way define toxic masculinity. Before we arrive at this emotion-charged and relevant conclusion, there is a set violence piece in this gangster drama every 10 minutes. The film moves at breakneck speed, leaving you no room to breathe — and often not in a good way. Just when you recover from the onslaught of the piling body count, yet another dance of death unfurls. Who is killing whom is not as important; half the time you don’t know either, as the symphony of violence unspools right through the film.

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