Sun, September 20 2026

Daayra poses an interesting question concerning the relationship between law and morality: if culprits are likely to get away with murder, is it acceptable to take the law into one’s own hands and deliver justice? And who gets to decide the quantum of punishment, assuming the accused are indeed guilty of a heinous crime? Are extrajudicial killings justified in such circumstances? Meghna Gulzar’s film raises several thorny questions. That is essentially the point of the story, though the film becomes somewhat heavy-handed in making it.

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Sun, September 20 2026

Kareena Kapoor Khan and Prithviraj Sukumaran star in Meghna Gulzar's film about cops doling out their own justice

Daayra opens with a city in celebration. It looks like a festival—the streets are teeming, sweets are distributed, fireworks set off. Eventually, the hero of the hour arrives: DCP Raman Kumar (Prithviraj Sukumaran), who led the team that shot and killed four men accused of rape. Officially, it was in self-defense, but no one, not the cops or the revelers, pretends it’s anything but an encounter killing. Meghna Gulzar’s film is loosely based on the 2019 Hyderabad rape case, in which the accused were killed in police custody and the cops widely praised afterwards. It offers the illusion of balance, but its heart is with the celebrating public. A week after the deaths, DCP Ajooni Kohli (Kareena Kapoor Khan) of the Special Investigative Team is tasked with looking into the case after human rights activists raise concerns. In contrast to Raman’s heroic introduction, we first meet Ajooni conducting a comic sting operation on an avocado-desiring inmate—a small clue to how the film sees their respective roles.

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Sat, September 19 2026

A gritty examination of the cost of instant retribution, the police procedural, anchored by a fantastic Prithviraj Sukumaran and an unusually off-key Kareena Kapoor Khan, probes the grey area where the line between justice and vengeance blurs.

Coming at a time when society is increasingly seduced by the idea of instant, extra-judicial justice, Meghna Gulzar’s Daayra takes a diagnostic look at the rot within the body politic where ‘encounters’ are routinely packaged and sold as desperate acts of self-defence, and a frustrated public gleefully buys it for the wheel of justice is excruciatingly slow. Heavily informed by the details and fallout of the 2019 Hyderabad case, the film takes away the sensationalised, high-octane tropes synonymous with Bollywood police procedurals that have long normalised law enforcement officers becoming a law unto themselves.

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Sun, September 20 2026

Based on the Japanese video game, the Resident Evil franchise had a good run at the box office from 2002 to 2017. And, like most films based on video games, all six films were quite mediocre. There was also the eminently forgettable Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City in 2021. Just when you thought the franchise was dead and buried, it has now resurrected itself-like the zombies in the film.

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Fri, September 18 2026

A drive through icy desolation on the edges of Raccoon City boasts one of the year’s most arresting movie openings.

With Resident Evil, Zach Cregger builds one of the year’s most pin-sharp, nerve-rattling cinematic openings. It lurches between extremes amid an expert orchestration of unpredictability. Bryan (Austin Abrams) is a medical courier who’s having issues with his girlfriend, Michelle, over having kids. She wants an honest, direct conversation, but his deliveries keep coming in the way. He’s not sure if he’s ready for such a big change as parenthood. The film opens at a hospital. Amidst his efforts to get a delivery signed, he’s tapped to ferry a critical bag to Raccoon City. He’s cautioned that the location is far and the terrain snowy. But the pay is double. In just a beat, he agrees. However, shortly after, he realises things might be way harder than it seemed.

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Fri, September 18 2026

Constantly hurtling and hurting, bustling and bursting, this adaptation of that much-filmed video game lives up to expectations, as a very good Austin Abrams steers us through a new-virus-outbreak hell.

If five words capture the spirit of this Resident Evil, they have to be these: “What is this sh*t now?” Constantly hurtling and hurting, bustling and bursting, this adaptation of that much-filmed video game lives up unapologetically to its legacy. And, it happens to be quite a joy(stick) ride with Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons) steering a very good Austin Abrams through a new-virus-outbreak hell. Abrams is Bryan (Weapons), a courier guy delivering medical supplies, usually organs for donation. He enters a hospital while on the phone with his girlfriend, who we realise has just discovered she is pregnant. Bryan keeps talking of “false positives”, enough for that conversation to fall apart in an argument.

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Sun, September 20 2026

But director-actor Kunal Khemu overplays his hand and assumes that the audience does not get the joke.

Unfortunately, I’m not on team Kunal Khemu. I used to be, when I thought of him as an actor who didn’t get his due. However, his directorial debut, Madgaon Express (2024), changed that. Laced with typical “boys-will-be-boys” silliness, I found myself drifting off during many points of the inanity that was unfolding on screen. It needs a special kind of wit and sorcery to keep people invested in a film where nothing truly matters but the makers’ whimsy. Then I heard his views on pay parity, on his wife Soha Ali Khan’s podcast, and he didn’t seem all that wise. It’s futile to assume the above instances wouldn’t colour my perspective of his directorial venture, Vibe, a film he has also co-produced, and is starring in. But for the sake of fairness, I have to concede that there are few things more effortless in Hindi cinema than Khemu enacting a gag he wrote.

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Sat, September 19 2026

इस फिल्म (Vibe) को एक्शन-थ्रिलर-कॉमेडी कह कर बेचा जा रहा है तो सबसे पहले एक थ्रिलर वाला देखिए-भारत की एक खुफिया एजेंसी अगले हफ्ते थाईलैंड जा रहे दो साधारण लड़कों को एक मिशन सौंपती है। एजेंसी की हैड कहती है-‘हम कोशिश करेंगे कि हमारी दो साल की ट्रेनिंग तुम्हें एक हफ्ते में करा सकें।’ इस बचकानी बात के बाद बाकायदा कोशिश की भी जाती है और इस कोशिश में उन दोनों मरगिल्ले लड़कों को जिम में कसरतें करवाई जाती हैं गोया कि विलेन थाईलैंड में इनसे बाल्टियां भरवाएगा। सोचिए कि इतनी मरगिल्ली प्लानिंग लेकर जा रहे लड़कों के इस मिशन में कैसा थ्रिल होगा? अब कॉमेडी वाला सीन देखिए-हवाई जहाज में बैठे इन लड़कों में से एक अचार के साथ थेपले खा रहा है। दूसरा लड़का कहता है-‘यह ठीक है, वे गोलियां मारेंगे, तू पाद मारियो।’ सोचिए कि इतनी सड़ी हुई कॉमेडी देख कर आपको कितनी हंसी आएगी?

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Sat, September 19 2026

“Kaise soldier banunga? Bobby Deol hoon kya main?” Hardik (Kunal Kemmu) wails at Madam H (Preity Zinta) in Vibe, and the line does what most Hindi spy films refuse to do: it cheerfully winks at its own tropes. From that micro-meta gag here, Kemmu, directing himself, builds a legitimate ode to the ’90s actioner in a later scene, played for joy rather than piety. Fun is not a garnish here; it is the method. And I enjoyed watching almost everyone have some. I could only feel bad for Deol, who had none in the recent Alpha, a cousin film that took itself far too seriously, as if seriousness alone could give it a pulse. Alpha treated its serum like doctrine. Vibe lets Hardik and Bhagirath “Bugs” (Sparsh Shrivastava) pocket something similar and keep walking. Few questions asked, which is both the joke and the design. They are corporate slaves, one a buffoon, the other a nerd, who become accidental spies after Hardik’s planetarium date with his crush Kareena (Vanshika Dhir) goes sideways. Romance is the door he knocks on. Espionage is what he falls into.

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Sun, September 20 2026

With an animatedly ever-complaining father, a “modern” son, a pacifying mother, and a house that tells this story in Vijay Raaz’s voiceover, this could very well be an Ayushmann Khurrana middle-India comedy

Child might be the father of man but the Indian father is often a manchild. Raised under the patriarchal system which limits men to their hunter-gatherer history, the Indian dad provides for his family more out of a sense of duty than love. This man, whose idea of strength is curbing emotional release, lives his middle-age as a disciplinarian, commanding his family, his tribe, with an iron hand. But when the kids grow up and the wife discovers her calling, the dad, now retired, witnesses his grip loosening over the family. Then comes the annoyance, the mean comments, the thumping around the house like a wrecking ball.

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Sat, September 19 2026

TIFF 2026 | In 1960s Nagaland, a Konyak chief and his son grapple with the advent of Christianity.

Modernity arrives in several garbs all at once. It shifts between assimilation, a promise of progress and a threat of complete cultural loss. Development can wholly wash over a sharp sense of identity that once existed, chipping away at it one by one. Premiering in Platform competition at the Toronto International Film Festival 2026, Theja Rio’s brilliantly immersive debut, Angh, understands every shade of this complex negotiation. Rio, born in Nagaland’s Kohima, brings alive the state’s churning historical moment as Christianity burst in the 1960s. At the centre of the quiet, reflective drama is a tribal chief, Anghba (Anghlong Konyak). He’s a mournful witness to his community’s transformation under the sway of an American missionary (Douglas James Henshall). There’s a gentle ache in Angh that seeps under your skin, without a hint of rush.

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Wed, September 16 2026

Theja Rio‘s film, set in 1960s Nagaland, patiently archives the feeling of dislocation without putting forth resolved arguments

Aiming for a boar on the other side of the river, the Anghbha (Anghlong Konyak), or tribal chief, sights a “white ghost” floating by—a flesh and blood American missionary (Douglas James Henshall) on a boat, with his jeep and some Nagas who have converted. The music is ominous. The ghost waves at him—does the Angbha understand this gesture? The ghost takes out a camera and captures him in film—does the Angbha understand this technology? All we see is his face, shaped by doom. He is hunting the boar with a gun, and not bow and arrows, nor spears, so technology has seeped even into his cloistered world from beyond. What else has slipped through the cracks? What has he resisted?

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Sat, September 19 2026

A mirror to modern relationships, the franchise’s third instalment sheds its past shock value for the disturbing terrain of emotional isolation

If the birth of Lust Stories was a shout for liberation, a tearing down of the velvet curtains that long hid Indian intimacy, then the third iteration is the echo. Helmed by a new set of original voices — Shakun Batra, Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, and Vishal Bhardwaj — and bolstered by an ensemble of actors who translate subtext through the vocabulary of body language, it does not seek to shock, nor does it carry the heavy burden of breaking taboos. It treats desire not as a provocative statement, but as a messy mirror. The four-part anthology shows how physical proximity often masks isolation in modern relationships. It shows how lust is weaponised, bargained with, or surrendered to. In the earlier films of the franchise, the stories followed a clear arc of liberation, a character realising their worth or claiming their pleasure. Here, within the recognisable OTT beats, the liberation is rarely external. In three segments, intimacy is readily available, but real emotional safety is scarce.

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Sat, September 19 2026

Lust Stories 3 sticks to the format of the previous films in the franchise, keeping female desire at the core of all the films. The anthology film has four distinctive stories which are propelled by great performances.

Lust Stories, right from the beginning, when the first part was released in 2020, raised eyebrows. Since then, several other similar films and series have come up on OTT- all exploring female sexual desires- some landed, some did not, but the charm of Lust Stories and subsequently of Lust Stories 2 has had a different effect on the audience. How many mainstream filmmakers have attempted to explore what women want and ultimately got it right? In Lust Stories 3, filmmakers Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, Shakun Batra and Vishal Bhardwaj speak of Lust, an emotion that often brings out the best and worst in any human being.

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Sat, September 19 2026

One thing I genuinely appreciated about all four films is their intent to showcase the length and breadth of Hindi cinema, and its varying aesthetic, refusing to paint Bollywood as a monolith.

Netflix’s Lust Stories is the only anthology to have made it to its third season, and there might be good reason. For a society as repressed as ours, sex brings out adequate intrigue on the part of the audience, assuring a base viewership. Meanwhile, by constantly shuffling filmmakers, the interpretations remain fresh, and sex becomes a capsule to be filled with commentary on inequities, female desire, and a rarely spoken language in an otherwise verbose film industry. Lust Stories 3 features a line-up of directors, which audiences will forever be curious about: Kiran Rao, Vikramaditya Motwane, Shakun Batra and Vishal Bhardwaj. The results are middling to positive. But one thing I genuinely appreciated about all four films, is their intent to showcase the length and breadth of Hindi cinema, and its varying aesthetic, refusing to paint Bollywood as a monolith – which it has begun to seem like, given its over-dependence on star-led spectacles. Also, I enjoyed the music in all films, complimenting the sensibility of the respective mise en scene.

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Fri, September 18 2026

TIFF 2026 | The Oscar-nominated All That Breathes director mines the creeping loneliness of a termite exterminator in Old Delhi.

Once again, the alleys of Delhi hum their ache, regrets and yearnings in Shaunak Sen’s debut fiction outing, Termite. It’s a short film as if Sen is testing the ground before hoisting his flag on it. Like his Oscar-nominated 2022 breakout doc, All That Breathes, the fiction short is also alive and porous to an ecological world, the fellow non-inhuman inhabitants we share our lives with, marginality and the deep curl of thoughts and fears you swat away in recesses.

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Sat, September 12 2026

In competition at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Oscar-nominated documentarian’s short returns to the bylanes of old Delhi.

Termite, a 30-minute short, is documentary maker Shaunak Sen’s first fiction film. But it’s hard to tell the difference. He treats life as the introverted ally of storytelling; his nonfiction often designs the truth of an invisibilised India. It finds a controlled language to present what already exists. While Cities of Sleep traced the gloomy lyricism of Delhi’s insurgent sleeper communities, the Oscar-nominated All That Breathes shadowed two Muslim brothers who run a bird clinic in old Delhi. The camera — steady, studied, often static — reframes the people as characters, spaces as settings, and ecological relationships as cultural metaphors. Termite looks like it’s ‘following’ two men in the capital, too. A Tamil migrant, Ajith (Valavane Koumarane), shares a rooftop room with his Muslim friend, Saud (Faisal Malik); they spend tired evenings drinking tea and passively watching television.

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Fri, September 18 2026

Directed by Abhiramm Naidu, this European road trip Telugu film means well but struggles to shake off its old-fashioned undertones

The prospect of a bright, colourful Telugu film about women across age groups and walks of life bonding over a European holiday is like music to the ears. The sheer rarity of such a narrative in an industry that often functions like an all-boys club can make some of us root for it instantly. After all, an all-woman road film offers abundant room to unpack how these characters view the world while indulging in some mischief. Director Abhiramm Naidu’s film is packed with contrasting characters wanting to set themselves free and forget the voids in their lives, albeit temporarily.

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Fri, September 18 2026

The best part remains the sibling jousting between Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, with Bullock again showing how underused she remains as a performer with great comic timing.

You can’t pull a rabbit out of a hat every time. Sometimes, all you can do is pull out hair. In 1998, Sandra Bullock was still awash in the success of the Speed films and gathering up more, while Nicole Kidman was already a big star. Besides, their joint film Practical Magic wasn’t even much of a critical or commercial hit – though it has had a better afterlife. However, clearly a lot of people, the two actors now lying on either side of 60 included, thought there was some power left in the old spell to rustle up a Part 2.

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Fri, September 18 2026

Shot in bleak greys offering little by way of colour, on the muddy grounds or the cloudy skies, or the person of its characters – who are dressed uniformly, but for the royals, in clothes made of worn, torn sack material – The Uprising is often hard to see or follow.

In a world where ever-new oligarchs, from oil to tech, run the world, who cares for a peasants’ revolt 700 years ago? So, doff hats to Paul Greengrass and Andrew Garfield for lending their weight to this film about the 1381 uprising, widely considered the first populist rebellion in England. But, uprising does not mean uplifting. Shot in bleak greys offering little by way of colour, on the muddy grounds or the cloudy skies, or the person of its characters – who are dressed uniformly, but for the royals, in clothes made of worn, torn sack material – The Uprising is often hard to see or follow.

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Fri, September 18 2026

In 'Modha Rathri', there is an excitement for the form of cinema—and what it is capable of saying, doing, and undoing — but there is such a chasm between the design and the delivery

I can understand why people warmed up to Modha Rathri (now out on Netflix). In a landscape ransacked by Anirudh’s BGM shoring up reluctant films and heroes whose heroism is leaning more towards parody than piety, here is a film and filmmaker—debutante Raja Karuppasamy—who dared to tell an intimate, many-splendoured story set over the course of a day. Based on events that director Karuppasamy has himself witnessed and endured, casting family members, there is a warmth here that filters through even the most devious observations of its heady, nauseating cast of characters, and a desire to tell a story that means something, where reformed characters are, in fact, part of the arc—but Karuppasamy does this without flat finger-wagging. A clutter-breaking miracle.

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Fri, August 21 2026

Fri, September 18 2026

A promising premise and a reliable Karunas are let down by clumsy staging and a bloated, repetitive courtroom drama

Sajeev Pazhoor, the first-time director of Enna Vilai, is no ordinary writer. He’s written the new-age Malayalam classic Thondimuthalum Drikshakshiyum and the directors who have worked on Sajeev’s scripts include Dileesh Pothan, G Prajith (the director of Oru Vadakkan Selfie) and the master Shaji N Karun. Sajeev has also made dozens of documentaries and short films before turning director with Enna Vilai, a Tamil drama set in Rameshwaram. What shines through, even at a premise level, is this writer’s mind and a short story-like quality that could have been made into a better film.

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