Fri, May 15 2026

Director RJ Balaji's Karuppu, starring Suriya, Trisha and himself, is a fantasy courtroom drama that exposes how corruption is deeply ingrained in the system. While the film taps into a familiar idea, it doesn't capitalise and use it to its full potential.

It’s the 90s and early 2000s. Do you remember watching the Amman movies getting replayed on KTV? Ah! Nostalgic, right? Director RJ Balaji took us to the same time period with Nayanthara’s Mookuthi Amman in 2020. With Suriya’s Karuppu, he has returned to the same space, but mounted it as a stylised commercial entertainer. But, does Karuppu hit the jackpot? Let’s find out!

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Fri, May 15 2026

Pulkit's ‘Kartavya’, starring Saif Ali Khan, is a slow-burn crime drama that doesn't break much new ground

By the time four thugs corner SHO Pawan Malik (Saif Ali Khan) in his home, Kartavya has been simmering for an hour and 15 minutes. Threats are made; Saif folds his arms and tells them to do their worst. I was ready for him to knock them out cold, but then something interesting happens. There’s a fight. It’s not even close. Saif barely gets two punches in and he’s overpowered. It took me a while to realise this wasn’t some clever ploy on the cop’s part. When’s the last time an Indian film hero lost a fight? It doesn’t take the small-town cop film anywhere new. There’s nothing in its view of khap panchayats or corrupt local police forces that hasn’t been explored before. Still, it’s hard to argue that Pulkit’s film doesn’t capture something of the spirit of these dejected times. Everyone in the film is resigned to their place in a rigged system, so much so that Pawan’s attempts to ensure justice are seen by well-wishers not only as foolhardiness but irresponsibility towards his family and his own prospects.

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Fri, May 15 2026

Starring Saif Ali Khan as a small-town cop who grows a conscience, 'Kartavya' is a technically sound and politically expressive film

The protagonist of Bhakshak (“Predator”), the Netflix film directed by Pulkit and produced by Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, was a scrappy female journalist (Bhumi Pednekar) who uncovers a small-town sex abuse racket in a shelter home involving some very powerful figures. Kartavya (“Duty”), the Netflix film from the same makers, shares a universe of sorts. It opens with the murder of a senior female journalist who arrives to uncover a small-town child abuse racket in a spiritual cult involving some very powerful figures. The protagonist is the cop who fails to protect her from those bullets; her film ended before it could begin. SHO Pawan (Saif Ali Khan) is then forced to grow a conscience and do the work of a brave reporter who is reduced to a gun-wielding uniform. Both films unfold largely under the cover of night, and have central characters who realise that doing their duty is no longer about doing their job — it’s about doing the right thing. Both also feature Sanjay Mishra in top form as the loyal subordinate.

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Fri, May 15 2026

साफ लगता है कि दो चवन्नियां चिपका कर अठन्नी बनाने की कोशिश हो रही है। इन्हीं चिपकी हुई चवन्नियों को ट्रेलर में देख कर दर्शक फिल्म देखने बैठता है और जब खुद को ठगा हुआ महसूस करता है तो सोचता है काश, रिव्यू पहले पढ़ लिया होता...

एक पुलिस वाला दूसरे पुलिस वाले से कह रहा है-‘धरम करते हैं करम छूटता है, करम करते हैं धरम छूटता है। कर्तव्य तक तो बात ही नहीं पहुंचती।’ गौर करें तो यह संवाद ही अपने-आप में गलत है। कर्तव्य का अर्थ ही होता है ‘धर्मानुकूल कर्म’ यानी अपने धर्म को निभाते हुए किया गया कर्म। लेकिन हमारे फिल्मी लेखकों को तो भारी-भरकम संवाद लिखने हैं, भले ही उनका कुछ अर्थ निकले या न निकले। रही-सही कसर तब पूरी हो जाती है जब ये भारी संवाद एक हल्की कहानी और कमजोर स्क्रिप्ट में जबरन घुसाए जाते है। साफ लगता है कि दो चवन्नियां चिपका कर अठन्नी बनाने की कोशिश हो रही है। इन्हीं चिपकी हुई चवन्नियों को ट्रेलर में देख कर दर्शक फिल्म (Kartavya) देखने बैठता है और जब खुद को ठगा हुआ महसूस करता है तो सोचता है काश, रिव्यू पहले पढ़ लिया होता।

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Fri, May 15 2026

Ayushmann Khurrana hams it up as a forest guard trapped in a fake-cheating tangle involving three women, one man and one clueless wolf

As a child, I used to enjoy flipping through pages of the Limca Book of Records. There were the weirdest categories: longest moustaches, walking on hands, typing with noses. I always imagined that I could some day qualify by doing an outlandish feat that nobody else thought of. You must be wondering where this is going; who starts a review like this? Wonder no further (like the film at hand). The closest I’ve gotten to being in that book is today. The feat: watching a two-hour “laugh riot” without a single expression on my face. Forget chuckling, I think I anti-chuckled: minus-humour, if that’s a thing. Which surely must be some kind of record. The problem is I’m not the only participant. From the reactions in a cinema hall every other Friday, there’s plenty of competition. And there are sub-categories: watching a comedy without watching it (eyes glued to the phone), maximum yawns in a screening, most planted viewers to elicit reactions. I don’t know if I’ll win. As a film critic, though, I’m a strong contender.

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Fri, May 15 2026

Trade analysts say, the film has no buzz. But the content is fun and fizz. It takes a short while to get used to forest officer Prajapati Pandey (Ayushmann Khurrana) and his over-the-top decibel. But by the time “Casanova” leopard catcher nets his “tenduyi” and reaches home to wife and TV journalist Aparna Trivedi (Wamiqa Gabbi), his effervescence catches on. The viewer is all in as writer-director Mudassar Aziz rolls out the chuckles with Prajapati stepping in to help distressed collegemate Chanchal Kumari (Sara Ali Khan), unwittingly letting loose a string of misunderstandings.

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Fri, May 15 2026

Fri, May 15 2026

Fatherland could loosely be considered a trilogy with ‘Ida’ and ‘Cold War’, even if it’s the first time the Polish auteur has portrayed a version of real-life characters.

Black-and-white frames can be rendered either warm or cool, depending on what you’re going for. Pawel Pawlikowski manages to combine stateliness and intimacy in his signature look, where both those colours are given several shades of grey. As soon as ‘Fatherland’ (Cannes competition) begins, in which unfolds a fraught chapter of the famous author Thomas Mann’s life and times, we know we are back in Pawel territory. It is 1949. Mann (Hanss Zischer), who had fled Nazi Germany for the US, is back, readying for the Goethe prize to be conferred upon him. The film loses no time in setting the context: here is a man who has essentially given up on his country — not motherland; Hitler had turned it into fatherland, a paternalistic, authoritarian, murderous dictatorship — and is to be welcome back at a time when the recently-concluded war has drawn a line separating the East and West.

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Fri, May 15 2026

It is sometimes not important to know exactly what will happen tomorrow - the definitive is not what Nagi Notes seeks in Nagi Notes - but just the comfort that there will be another day is enough.

There’s been a recent upsurge of the interest in Japan, as both location and metaphor, in Indian cinema. The romantic leads in both Toh Ti Ani Fuji ( Marathi) and Ek Din (Hindi), wander around Japanese hills and vales, looking for themselves. The four central characters in Koji Fukada’s latest Nagi Notes (his first in Cannes Competition) are also searching, and their quest turns into a ruminative marvel, which sneaks into your heart without fanfare. Two women, co-sisters-in-law in spirit even when the man in question has vanished from their lives, reunite for a week in Nagi, the kind of small town where everyone knows everyone else, public service announcements on radio talking about mundane civic affairs (as well as the war in faraway Ukraine) become the chief source of information, and where the rhythms of nature reflect the inner turmoil of the characters.

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Fri, May 15 2026

Contemporary French cinema appears to delight in giving us 50-something women, beautifully acknowledging their age, never downplaying their sensuality.

What is a woman’s life? It’s been one of those questions that filmmakers down the ages have grappled with, and will continue to do so, as we engage with the eternal dance of identity, gender politics, roles and responsibilities. Some of the answers that Charline Bourgeoise-Tacquet comes up with in her second feature, prosaically titled, A Woman’s Life (Cannes Competition section), are a surprise. Gabrielle (Lea Drucker), 55, is clearly on top of her profession, a surgeon of repute, who heads her section in a city hospital. When we come upon her, she is juggling multiple things: a long day at work, a husband (Charles Berling), a mother (Marie Christine-Barrault) with advancing dementia, and a room full of interns who seem to think work is a picnic.

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Fri, May 15 2026

The standalone Marvel Television special takes viewers inside the broken mind of Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle.

Last seen in Daredevil: Born Again, The Punisher, played by Jon Bernthal, returns for a bloody adventure before Spider-Man: Brand New Day this summer. Fans wondering about what happened to the character get a brief catch-up with the character as he comes back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Bernthal, who is also a co-writer on The Punisher: One Last Kill, gives viewers some insight into his trauma as the vigilante returns to patrol the city. The purpose of the special is to serve as one long action sequence for a character that has lost his purpose.

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Wed, May 13 2026

Struggles with depth amidst its promising ideas.

Unchosen reels you in with its intriguing synopsis and makes you regret the next six hours of your life. This Netflix series — attempting to tell a story about a religious cult thrown into disarray by forces both within and outside of it — starts tepid, grows tiresome and ends tedious. Which is a major missed opportunity for creator Julie Gearey, who wastes a premise that had the potential to score with both familial drama and psychological intrigue, but falls short on both counts. And many more.

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Wed, May 13 2026

Krishnavataram Part 1: The Heart is adapted from the Gujarati book ‘Satyabhama’ by Raam Mori. The film narrates quite a few important chapters from the life of Lord Krishna (Siddharth Gupta). It focuses on his life after he gets Mathura residents along with himself shifted to the west coast of India in Dwarka. The story basically follows the three women that enter at different stages in his life – Radha (Sushmitha Bhat), Satyabhama (Sanskruti Jayana) and Rukmini (Nivaashiyni Krishnan). Along with that, the film also depicts how Krishna fulfils his responsibility on earth as the eight avatar of Lord Vishnu.

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Mon, May 11 2026

‘तो जाऊं राधे…?’ वृंदावन छोड़ते समय कृष्ण ने पूछा। ‘जाओ, अब हम तुम्हारे साथ-साथ तुम्हारी प्रतीक्षा से भी प्रेम करेंगे।’ राधा का जवाब था। कहिए, वह कौन-सा हृदय होगा जो प्रेम से पगे ऐसे मीठे संवाद सुन कर भर न आएगा…! यह फिल्म ‘कृष्णावतारम’ (Krishnavataram Part 1) देखिए तो ऐसे अनेक संवाद, ऐसे अनेक दृश्य मिलेंगे जो आपके अंतस में गहरे उतरते हुए आपको भावुक करेंगे। कृष्ण और राधा को मानने वाले तो न जाने कितने ही दृश्यों पर अपनी आंखों में भर आए प्रेमाश्रुओं को भी महसूस करेंगे। यह इस कहानी की सफलता है। यह राधा और कृष्ण के हमारे दिलों में बसे होने का प्रमाण है। इधर कुछ समय से भारतीय सिनेमा में धार्मिक, पौराणिक कथाओं की जो आवक बढ़ी है उस पंक्ति में यह फिल्म मजबूती से आ खड़ी हुई है। इसके पूरे नाम ‘कृष्णावतारम पार्ट 1-द हार्ट (हृदयम)’ [Krishnavataram Part 1-The Heart (Hridayam)] से स्पष्ट होता है कि यह तो अभी शुरुआत है, आगे इस कथा के और भी अध्याय आने वाले हैं।

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Fri, May 8 2026

Wed, May 13 2026

Reliance on traditional horror tropes leads to a lack of innovation

Only one name made me tune into Keeper: Osgood Perkins. The filmmaker, who has earned his stripes in horror for over a decade and gave us a terrifyingly unrecognisable Nicolas Cage in the critically-acclaimed Longlegs two years ago, attempts to bring on the chills through his atmospheric thriller Keeper. After a limited release in select theatres, Keeper is now streaming on Prime Video. The film employs a trope as old as the horror genre itself. Spooky events — some real, some imagined… but who can tell? — unfold at a cabin in the woods, but Perkins, surprisingly, is unable to do anything new with it. What we, therefore, have in this 99-minute watch is a film that delivers on its “experimental horror” ambitions, but falls short of its promise of a truly engaging watch.

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Mon, May 11 2026

Releasing five years after it was made, Ritwik Pareek’s film about blind faith looks more urgent and relevant.

Ritwik Pareek’s Dug Dug is quite the tease. In a gloriously meditative opening sequence, a visibly inebriated man steps out of a liquor shop with a ‘quarter’ in one hand, and a beedi in another. He rides into a dark highway on a luna (a two-wheeler), zigzagging with abandon. SUVs, trucks and buses whiz past him from either side of the road. A car advises the man to stick to one corner of the highway, which he promptly rebuffs with profanities. The foreboding begins as the drunk man struggles to stay awake on his two-wheeler, risking his own life and others. He seems to know where he’s headed, suggesting he’s done this many times before. Watching this opening stretch, felt like seeing a nation coasting through a lonely, dark road.

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Sat, May 9 2026

Sat, May 9 2026

A witty examination of superstition, faith, enterprise and opportunism in modern India

Ritwik Pareek’s film opens with the image of a temple on a hill after dusk, prayer bells on the soundtrack. This gives way seconds later to shots of distant highway traffic and a great reverberating spaghetti western guitar chord. A man stumbles out of a dive bar, slurs a farewell “Jai siya Ram” and rides off into the night. In the world of Dug Dug, the distance between sacred and profane can be covered in one drunken lurch. The opening stretch, around 11 minutes, is as mesmeric as anything I’ve seen in this decade of Indian film. Walking out of the bar, the man stands in semi-darkness, takes a swig from a quarter bottle, tries to light a beedi. He’s successful on his third try. At this exact moment, lights come on overhead, a brilliant mesh of blue and purple neon. A gravelly voiceover mulls the mystery of life. The man sets off on his motorbike, straight down the middle of a badly lit highway. More ominous twangy music. Vehicles whiz past; some curse at him and he curses back. He veers off the main road onto a less crowded one, but having got this far, skids and crashes. Under a gaze of a lurid billboard announcing a magic show, he lies, gasping. The camera pans away just in time for a passing truck to run him over.

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Mon, May 11 2026

Stuck somewhere in between its two confused protagonists is a film that becomes unrecognisably confusing

Like its protagonist Sathya (Vidhu), 29, the film too seems to be suffering from an identity crisis. For 29-year-old Sathya, he’s exactly at that age where he’s starting to realise that he’s made nothing of himself. At times, we see him dressed to play the part of an accountant in a Chennai startup. A scene or two later, we see him working as a server for a catering company. Then we see him dressed as a shopping centre mascot, and through all these costumes, we hear Sathya’s voiceovers asking out loud who he really is.

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Mon, May 11 2026

Even if the packaging isn’t all glossy or wrinkle-free, 29 works because there is a sense of honesty and warmth, even if some make your eyes roll to the back of your head

Cringe. Gone are the days when the world collectively rejoiced in the celebration of romance with grand gestures and seemingly over-the-top overtures. Now, especially on social media, any such move showcased there for posterity falls into just two categories: Cringe and Cringe-free. This slotting is done by the people witnessing these gestures, overtures, and everything in between. What about the ones who are doing these gestures? Do their hearts still flutter when they see a balloon that is filled with their partner’s carbon dioxide? Do butterflies swarm their stomach when their partner holds their hand, or when they see each other in their favourite dress for the first time? If all of these are as special in 2026 as they were in 1976, then what exactly is cringe? Is it the action or the packaging for an audience who might not necessarily want to witness this action? Even if the packaging isn’t all glossy or wrinkle-free, director Rathna Kumar’s latest film, 29, works because there is a sense of honesty and warmth in these actions, even if some make your eyes roll to the back of your head.

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