Sat, May 16 2026

Saif Ali Khan makes it easy to overlook the rough edges

Writer-director Pulkit has quietly become one of the most prolific filmmakers strutting around Hindi cinema these days. Red Chillies Entertainment’s blue-eyed boy has had four releases in the last two years, with two more currently in production. His finest work to date is his previous team-up with Netflix—2024’s Bhumi Pednekar-starrer Bhakshak. His latest, Kartavya, is a cousin of that film. Kartavya is not quite as concentrated, focused, and hardhitting as Bhakshak, but wrestles with similar themes of lone heroes taking a stand against injustice, systemic corruption, and the power structures that allow those at the top to prey on children.

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Sat, May 16 2026

Kartavya might have made more sense as a limited series, if it took its time with the characters. The world itself is ripe enough for exploration, and there’s just no doubt that Pulkit assembles a fascinating group of actors, willing to go that extra mile.

While watching Kartavya, one can spot a pattern in the films Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment (RCE) wants to champion. After Atul Sabharwal’s Class of 83 (2020), Shanker Raman’s Love Hostel (2021), Pulkit’s own debut, Bhakshak (2024) comes the upstart director’s latest release – a cop procedural set in a faux-Haryana town called Jhamli, centered around a notorious Godman, a murder and the village elders set on avenging their humiliation with corpses. Given how the space for the political film has been severely curtailed in the last few years, RCE’s films seem built around the socially vulnerable: orphaned girls, runaway lovers, kids imprisoned in service of Godmen. In a time when the studio could be making anything, props to RCE for picking these grim subjects and lending adequate gravitas to them.

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Sat, May 16 2026

The film shuns unwarranted glamour, melodrama and unnecessary violence

“Dharm karte hain karm chhoot-ta hai, karm karte hain toh dharm; kartavya tak toh baat hi nahi pahunchti hai…” Pithy dialogue indeed, summarising the dilemma of modern-day mankind. Yet Saif Ali Khan-led ‘Kartavya’ is all about our hero’s duty towards his job and society at large. In the OTT space, Saif, who made a killer impression with ‘Sacred Games’, once again plays a conscientious cop, Pawan Malik. The very first few scenes, banter with his colleague Sanjay Mishra’s Ashok, establish him as abrasive. The scene where Pawan cuts a cake with other policemen also reminds us he has just turned 40. At home, he has an authoritarian father (Zakir Hussain), a loving wife (Rasika Dugal), a son and a younger brother, Deepak. Birthday celebrations at home can wait as he is expected to give cover to a journalist in town. That she would be murdered is obvious from the moment she lands in Jhamli, somewhere in Haryana.

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Sat, May 16 2026

दिसंबर, 2019 में आई मुदस्सर अज़ीज़ की ‘पति पत्नी और वो’ असल में 1978 में आई दिग्गज निर्देशक बी.आर. चोपड़ा की फिल्म ’पति पत्नी और वो’ का रीमेक थी। मूल फिल्म में संजीव कुमार, विद्या सिन्हा और रंजीता थे जबकि 2019 वाली फिल्म में कानपुर में सरकारी नौकरी कर रहा इंजीनियर कार्तिक आर्यन अपनी पत्नी भूमि पेढनेकर से छुपा कर अनन्या पांडेय से अफेयर कर रहा था। यह रीमेक ओरिजनल फिल्म की तरह क्लासिक भले ही नहीं थी लेकिन मसालेदार थी, सो कामयाब भी हुई। उस फिल्म के रिव्यू में मैंने लिखा था कि अब क्लासिक फिल्में किसे चाहिएं? जब दर्शक जंक-फूड से खुश हों तो फिल्म वाले भी क्यों ज़ोर लगाएं।

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Sat, May 16 2026

Hindi cinema still struggles to imagine emotional intimacy without romantic suspicion or possessiveness creeping in

Pati Patni Aur Woh Do belongs to that familiar subgenre of Hindi comedy where men create catastrophes through lies and cowardice, then expect applause for surviving the consequences. Ayushmann Khurrana plays Prajapati Pandey, a forest ranger introduced with the kind of exaggerated masculinity the film both mocks and indulges. When on a mission to trap a roaming leopard in Prayagraj, where Mudassar Aziz locates the chaos, Prajapati is described as a “leopard Casanova.”

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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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Sat, May 16 2026

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

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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Thu, May 14 2026

In times of long, perpetuating conflicts, The Sheep Detectives glimmers with hope – for how it reclaims the ‘sheep’ of the world. Just because someone is sweet-natured and trusting doesn’t mean they’re stupid.

Before we discuss the joys of Kyle Balda’s The Sheep Detectives, we must dwell on the obstacles around it (and there are a few). First, that flat title – possibly suggested by a business mind. I can’t imagine many people looking at the title and being remotely excited by it. Second, this is a difficult genre. Creating an idealised version of a world (aimed at children), it’s hard to preserve the sweetness of the world without making it egregious for adults.

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Sun, May 10 2026

Kyle Balda brings woolly charm to his adaptation of the 2005 novel about a flock of sheep solving a murder mystery

The shepherd in question is George (Hugh Jackman), who dotes on his flock to the extent that he has named each one of them. Jackman gives George a comforting warmth. His scenes reading murder mysteries aloud to the sheep, despite insisting they understand nothing (but they do), establish the film’s gentle absurdity early on. After his sudden and mysterious death, the animals—grief-stricken and shocked by the loss—begin to step up to solve the case of George’s murder. For this, they also need to leave the meadow and cross over into the nearby town of Denbrook. Local policeman Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun) and junior reporter Elliot Matthews (Nicholas Galitzine), who recently arrived in Denbrook, lead the investigation. But the movie increasingly belongs to the sheep themselves, particularly Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), George’s favourite ewe, who becomes the emotional and moral centre of the story. Her line, “Sheep don’t die, they turn into clouds,” is delivered with such simple sincerity that it forms the film’s defining sentiment.

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Sat, May 9 2026

A film about sheep who solve a murder mystery? Bring it on, one would say. Given the volume of pedestrian stories doing the rounds these days, sheep involved in solving a crime is as refreshing as it gets. The Sheep Detectives, directed by Kyle Balda — the man behind Minions — is a charming film with some good old-fashioned wit. Executive producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are well-known names, recently associated with Project Hail Mary.

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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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