Fri, June 12 2026

Main Vaapas Aaunga, Imtiaz Ali's latest film, tells a beautiful love story based in the troubled times of India's partition. Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah delivers a masterclass in acting as an ageing man longing to go back to his motherland and meet the love of his life.

No one depicts love and longing as beautifully as Imtiaz Ali does. His coming-of-age dramas like Rockstar, Cocktail, Jab We Met, and even Jab Harry Met Sejal have had these two as central themes in the plot. In Amar Singh Chamkeela, Ali’s most political film to date, love made the two lead characters brave even as they longed to belong. His latest, Main Vapas Aaunga, is based on a similar theme, but Ali goes a step forward and talks of man-made borders, refugee crisis world over and how no particular community should be held responsible for the trauma that came with the partition of India in 1947. Featuring a stellar cast comprising Naseeruddin Shah, Diljit Dosanjh, Vedang Raina, Rajat Kapoor, and Sharvari, Main Vaapas Aaunga speaks the language of love in a polarised world.

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Fri, June 12 2026

In Chandigarh, 95-year-old Ishar Singh Grewal alias Kinnu (Naseeruddin Shah) is battling a stroke and dementia; Dadaji is on his deathbed. Amidst his rambling delirium over Martians and Sargodha while making cussed comments at family members taking care of him, the searing pain of 1947 finally stands out. UK-based grandson Nirvair (Diljit Dosanjh), between IT jobs and a failure at standup comedy, leaves behind a relationship (with girlfriend Banita Sandhu) that’s defying definition, and heads to Chandigarh. Between Nirvair’s dogged attempt to decipher grandpa’s delirious but determined hold on a trauma that needs closure, the pangs of separation, the pain of Partition, the horrifying truths families seek to keep buried, emerge with ferocity.

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Fri, June 12 2026

Diljit Dosanjh and Naseeruddin Shah lead this bittersweet study of displacement. There is no nation here, only people. So the violence arrives not from one community but from history behaving like an indifferent machine.

As it turns out, Partition is now the safest address in Hindi cinema if you’re a filmmaker making a film about politics, about bigotry, and about the Hindu-Muslim wound the present government keeps raking up. To set this in the present day would mean inviting forms of censorship that could range from a notice to a ban. But that isn’t the case if you reach back to 1947, where the bloodshed is settled history and nobody can accuse you of inventing it. Sriram Raghavan did it last year with Ikkis, sending Dharmendra back to Sargodha after a lifetime, crafting a film that is essentially an indictment against the cruelty of war and the real price of bigotry. Now Imtiaz Ali sends an old man to the same town and uses the journey to say almost everything a Hindi film in 2026 is otherwise forbidden to say.

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Fri, June 12 2026

Fri, June 12 2026

Explores themes of loss and justice while unravelling a police procedural narrative

You feel the violence in Raakh before you see it. It is present right from the first few moments, in something as innocuous as two teenage siblings excitedly getting ready for a much-awaited evening out, the good-natured bickering between them and their lively banter with their mother. But you, as the viewer, find your nerves on edge, holding back a threatening lump in your throat. For you know that once they walk out of that door, the Arora siblings will never come back home again. The year is 1978. The series is Raakh, Prime Video’s eight-episode watch, streaming now, which is, without a doubt, inspired by the Sanjay and Geeta Chopra double murders. Taking place in the capital, the heinous crime shocked the country, elicited a nationwide manhunt and ultimately resulted in the death sentence for perpetrators Billa and Ranga. The case shaped India’s capital punishment jurisprudence, fundamentally altered children’s safety policies, and set landmark media rights precedents. Since then, it has been touched upon on screen, with varying degrees of fact and fiction, quite a few times, with the most recent example being the Netflix winner Black Warrant.

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Fri, June 12 2026

It could’ve turned into a documentary. But mercifully, director Chinmay Mandlekar and his array of co-writers (Ravi Asrani, Saurabh Bharat, Subhendu Bhattacharya, Vipul Amrutlal Shah) use brief touches of humour and bring human, familial elements into the storytelling, to make it an interesting watch. Outside, the financial condition is dire with spiralling prices. Inside, new RBI Governor A Ramanan (Manoj Bajpayee) is bemused by the celebrations to welcome him. There is a lightness in the office atmosphere (like the lift scene) that keep the telling easy and a tough topic like an economic crisis is put across simply, making it comprehensible to the layman. Add to it, the human inspirations that surround Ramanan. Wife Vandita (Madhoo Shah) with her pujas, prayers and positivity, the Deputy Governor (Noushad Mohammed Kunju) who inspires his senior with the line, ‘Fathers don’t quit’ to pull him out of a low mood, an office peon whose borrowings help Ramanan think out of the box.

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Fri, June 12 2026

Directed by Chinmay D Mandlekar, Governor stars Bajpayee as former RBI governor S Venkitaramanan, whose tenure overlapped with an economic crisis in the ‘90s. Venkitaramanan inherited an economy bent out of shape by the US-Iraq war. Entirely by accident, the movie finds itself playing against a similar geopolitical backdrop (this time the US-Iran war). But now, there’s no Congress to blame, as the film does for the past crisis.

You could bet your fast-falling rupees that the unit behind the film, Governor — produced by the same Vipul Amrutlal Shah who served up the deeply irresponsible The Kerala Story — had no idea that the universe would conspire to undermine whatever claims they’re trying to make here. The irony may be lost on the film’s team, of course, given a grasp of storytelling looser than the morals of mainstream Bollywood. Starring Manoj Bajpayee as an approximation of the former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor S Venkitaramanan, whose tenure overlapped with an economic crisis in the ‘90s that brought India to the brink of bankruptcy, the film is gratingly loud, ridiculously plotted and delivered with an amateurishness bordering on arrogance.

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Fri, June 12 2026

Simplistic narrative, questionable historical accuracy, underwhelming production quality

There was a time when India’s coffers were nearly empty. Impacted by the Gulf War, the Soviet Bloc collapse and a climate of political instability incensed by shaky coalition governments on the home front, reserves were drained out and revenue depleted, leaving India on the brink of bankruptcy if it didn’t get its act together. And soon. Told by an aunt to his nephew like a fairy tale in flashback, Chinmay D Mandlekar’s Governor unfolds sans any real context, without ever explaining its purpose or underlining meaning. Despite its contemporary resonance, the film insists the country is a lot more flourishing now than it was back in the early 1990s. Set against the backdrop of India’s financial troubles in 1990-1991, Manoj Bajpayee in and as Governor shows how a single man’s acumen for finding bold solutions while everybody else moped about consequences rescued the nation from dire straits.

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Fri, June 12 2026

Disclosure Day is not a commercial crowd-pleaser but Spielberg's greatest achievement is keeping you invested in the belief that the film's mysteries are building toward something larger than they appear.

Cyber-security specialist Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) and meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) race against time to reveal a truth that has been hidden from humanity for nearly 80 years. Standing in their way is Wardex, a powerful corporate entity determined to keep the secret buried at any cost. But what is this earth-shattering revelation about extraterrestrials—one capable of changing the world order, toppling governments, and forcing people to question God, religion, and even their own existence? One of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Steven Spielberg carries the burden of expectations few directors can match. His name alone demands excellence, often making even his good films seem underwhelming when they fall short of the lofty standards associated with his legacy. Disclosure Day is not a commercial crowd-pleaser but a deeply personal work, with Spielberg steering away from conventional genre tropes to follow his own instincts. He trades spectacle for existential wonder, prioritizing ideas over immediate gratification and inviting audiences to engage with his vision on its own terms, unconcerned with delivering a rewarding climax.

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Fri, June 12 2026

The 20-year-old behind the viral YouTube series turns his liminal-space nightmare into a feature that is cannier and lonelier than its origins.

Kane Parsons, the debut director of Backrooms, is 20 years old. It is the sort of detail you want to hold against the film, but you cannot. Parsons made his name in high school, helming a YouTube series called Backrooms. Like the film, it grew out of a 2019 image of an empty yellow room: the patron saint of the internet’s endless fascination with liminal spaces, those transitional, in-between places that feel wrong the moment you find them empty. The leap from that to an A24 feature (the film is based on his series) should have flattened the whole thing into content. Instead, Backrooms turns out cannier and more searching than its origins, spending its runtime worrying at questions about memory and what it means to be lost, which are far older than the internet that taught Parsons how to make it.

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Thu, June 11 2026

The landscape of filmmaking has changed. So has the language of horror. Once defined by grand big-screen experiences, some of the most exciting and innovative horror content now emerges on YouTube. A prime example is filmmaker Kane Parsons’s Backrooms, which took the U.S. and horror communities worldwide by storm. Defying the notion that creativity peaks with age, the 20-year-old director’s feature adaptation delivers relentless terror without the backing of a massive budget, proving that atmosphere and imagination can be far more unsettling than scale. Set in 1990, Backrooms follows Clarke (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a failed architect who now runs the even more dubious Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, a vast furniture store fronted by a pirate mascot with a wooden leg. Seeking therapy, Clarke begins sessions with Mary (Renate Reinsve), who notices patterns in his aggression and gradually grows curious about his mysterious claims. By the film’s third act, she uncovers what Clarke, his colleague Kat, and Kat’s boyfriend Bobby have been through, much of which we have already witnessed through a series of unsettling grainy camera footage. This time, Mary becomes our eyes and ears inside the abyss.

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Thu, June 11 2026

Thu, June 11 2026

A gripping psychological battle

In the fall of 2007, Anton Chigurh walked on to our screens and drove fear into our hearts, one which deepens with every rewatch of No Country For Old Men. The neo-Western crime thriller, directed by the irrepressible Coen Brothers, starred Javier Bardem as Chigurh, with the versatile Spanish actor turning in a deathly, remorseless, unemotional act that is unanimously cited as a masterpiece of cinematic villainy. The chilling Chigurh won Bardem a host of awards — including an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA — with one important footnote being attached to his portrayal for posterity: the cold, unstoppable killer-for-hire, distinguished by that iconic bowl-cut, has been crowned as “the most realistic film depiction of a psychopath” in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

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Fri, June 5 2026

Reinvents the classic thriller with a modern edge, anchored by Javier Bardem's chilling performance as Max Cady.

There’s a specific cruelty in asking an audience to hold Robert De Niro‘s memory in their head while watching anything. Scorsese’s 1991 Cape Fear is one of the most viscerally unpleasant American studio films ever greenlit. It was a picture so brutally disturbing that it feels like it physically assaults you. De Niro’s Max Cady showed that when the id snaps and has a grudge, it’s almost like unleashing raw fury from God. Nick Antosca’s ten-episode Apple TV limited series (executive-produced, with some degree of irony, by both Martin Scorsese himself and Steven Spielberg) has the considerable audacity to set up shop in that shadow and try to grow something in the dark. Remarkably, it partly succeeds.

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Fri, June 5 2026

Created by Nick Antosca, the series remake digs deep into the characters played by Javier Bardem, Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson

The latest star-led prestige drama from Apple TV is Cape Fear. Created by Nick Antosca, the new remake based on John D. MacDonald’s book The Executioners and the previous Hollywood films elongates the story of vengeance. It expands the roles of the Bowden family while creating an aura of ambiguity around notorious villain Max Cady, now played by Javier Bardem. With the backing of Oscar-winning filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, the new Cape Fear is a chilling page-turner and psychological thriller you just can’t get enough of.

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Wed, June 10 2026

Though the series in parts does look like a corporate film, the story and the acting make it an engaging watch.

In India, making a film/web series based on real events/people is an adventure sport. There’s no way it can criticise political powers without being selective. Real people/organisations depicted in the narrative need to sign off on permissions before one depicts them, which becomes trickier if the depiction is anything beyond heroic or idealistic. The legal departments comb through the script picking apart inane details; one might argue such films/shows are made by lawyers as much as filmmakers. No wonder most look timid and cauterised. The additional obstacle for Robbie Grewal’s Made in India: A Titan Story, adapted from Vinay Kamath’s book, Titan: Inside India’s Most Successful Consumer Brand (2018), is that it’s also partly produced by Titan.

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Fri, June 5 2026

Director Robbie Grewal’s series chronicling the origins of the Tata Empire’s iconic watch brand, for The Hollywood Reporter India. Based on Vinay Kamath’s book Titan: Inside India’s Most Successful Consumer Brand, the show follows how, through the 70s and 80s, Tata executive Xerxes Desai (Jim Sarbh) founded Titan and built a world-class watch under the guidance of JRD Tata (Naseeruddin Shah). Suchin finds the Amazon MX Player series warm, deeply felt and immensely huggable, drawing an unavoidable comparison to Rocket Boys given the shared heart-first DNA. He argues that more than a corporate success story, this is a tale framed as a fable of national pride, but one that soars because of its delicate love for its characters rather than its milestones. Across six achingly sincere episodes, he cares about the Titan story because he cares about the figures behind it.

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Fri, June 5 2026

Robbie Grewal’s six-episode drama about the rise of an iconic Indian brand unfolds as more than just a designer moment in time

In theory, nothing about Made In India: A Titan Story is supposed to work. Starting with that corporate-core title. It’s hard not to be wary of well-mounted business success stories about brands and institutions that still exist. There’s the thinnest line between promotional productions and historical dramas. This six-episode series is adapted from Vinay Kamath’s book about the rise of Titan, the world-class watchmaking company founded by Xerxes Desai in pre-liberalisation India. It’s not exactly a rags-to-riches tale; it opens with Desai well into his career, and already an integral part of The Tata Group. It’s not your typical underdog tale either; Desai’s mentor is grand old J.R.D Tata himself, so even when Titan runs into its many bureaucratic and funding roadblocks, it’s not like the team has the odds entirely stacked against them. There’s also the ready-made patriotism angle; Titan unfolds to put the country on a map dominated by shiny Swiss companies. On paper, the series has all the ingredients of a persuasive marketing campaign. For a viewer, it’s the equivalent of trying to root for a nepo-baby in a landscape full of outsiders.

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Tue, June 9 2026

பல்வேறு அரசுப் பணிகளுக்கு முயன்ற பிறகு வேறு வழியில்லாமல் காவல்துறைக்கு வருகிறார் கோட்டை கருப்பசாமி (பிரசாந்த் பாண்டிராஜ்). காவல் நிலையத்தின் பரபரப்பான சூழல், அங்கிருக்கும் நடைமுறைகள் அவருக்குப் புதிதாக இருப்பதால், அதற்கேற்ப தன்னைத் தகவமைத்துக்கொள்வதிலும் அவருக்குச் சிக்கல் ஏற்படுகிறது. ஒரு தருணத்தில் பிடிபட்ட ஒரு திருடன், அவரைத் தாக்கிவிட்டுத் தப்பித்துவிடுகிறான். அதனால் பிரச்னைகளுடன் சேர்த்து கேலிகளையும் சந்திக்கிறார். அதன் பிறகு பழைய வழக்கு கோப்புகள் அவரிடம் ஒப்படைக்கப்பட்டு வாரண்ட்' டூட்டி போடப்படுகிறது. அந்த வழக்குகளில் சம்பந்தப்பட்டவர்களை அவர் கண்டுபிடித்தாரா, காவல் நிலையத்தில் கேலி செய்தவர்கள் முன்பு தன்னை நிரூபித்தாரா என்பதை எட்டு எபிசோடுகளில் சொல்கிறது இந்த `ஜீ5’ சீரீஸ்.

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Tue, June 9 2026

The David Dhawan universe of comedies delighted at least two generations, but the impact of those tried-and-tested funny games is fading

Varun Dhawan has made a decent living playing the man who refuses to grow up. Once again, his father David Dhawan, in what’s billed as his last directorial venture, gives the son a character that requires Varun to be in ‘Energiser Bunny’ mode throughout. Pause and thairaav are negligible words in the Dhawan universe of comedies that has delighted at least two generations of viewers. But the impact of those tried-and-tested funny games is fading. That’s best evident in Hai Jawaani Toh Ishq Hona Hai’s hero, who takes the cake in his ability to believe he’s beyond wrongdoing and in the sympathy he feels entitled to.

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Sat, June 6 2026

A classic David Dhawan escapist marital roller coaster that works overtime to make us submit to the rhythm of the ridiculous.

When in form, the infectious, chaotic energy of David Dhawan’s cinema can make even the most cynical critic melt. After a lull at the box office, the sultan of slapstick invokes a title from his inventory of playful songs and recreates the vibe of a period in Hindi cinema where logic politely steps aside to make way for a relentless cascade of laugh-out-loud misunderstandings. Dressed in a slick, contemporary cover, he partners with writers Yunus Sajawal and Farhad Samji to generate rapid-fire, rhyming situational humour that once defined the Govinda-Dhawan tempo. In his son Varun Dhawan, he has a performer who can deliver Govinda’s frantic spirit and channel the charm of a lovable rascal.

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Sat, June 6 2026

Tue, June 9 2026

The film dives into the complex mother-daughter relationship, unexplored in mainstream Hindi cinema, with a distinct, quirky approach

“Daayan”. “Chudail”. “Vaishya”. “Chhichhori”. “Massage queen”. “Husband killer”. “Rekha ka dekha”. In Maa Behen, the list of slanders that Rekha (Madhur Dixit Nene) is subjected to is endless. There are multiple urban legends of her exploits in the locality—true or not is up for debate—but director Suresh Triveni and writer Pooja Tolani make one thing clear from the onset: Rekha is a single parent who has raised two daughters, Jaya (Triptii Dimri) and Sushma (Dharna Durga), on her own. That the daughters too believe some of these rumours around their mother is a source of laughs, not tension, in the film. Perhaps there’s no more complex relationship than mother-daughter. Surprisingly, it’s an unexplored dynamic in mainstream Hindi cinema, and Maa Behen dives into it with a distinct, quirky approach. There’s distrust, finger-pointing, screaming contests and constant reprimanding from both sides.

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Sun, June 7 2026

Promising premise, uneven execution, sharp performances, and missed opportunities for wickedly subversive humour.

Every actor of consequence harbours a desire to inhabit roles that foreground performance—particularly those that test their flair for comedy, that most elusive of arts requiring instinct, rhythm, and razor-sharp timing. While legends such as Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, alongside actors of formidable gravitas like Dilip Kumar and Irrfan Khan, have traversed the delicate line between the tragic and the comic with enviable ease, many have faltered in a genre that demands spontaneity and wit in equal measure. It is with such expectations that one approaches Maa Behen, a Netflix offering headlined by Madhuri Dixit. Directed by Suresh Triveni—who made a promising debut with the gently humorous Tumhari Sulu before veering into more sombre territory—the film attempts to mine a vein of humour that Hindi cinema seldom exploits with conviction: black comedy.

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Sat, June 6 2026

If you grew up in a colony in a village or small town, chances are there was that one household you were asked to stay away from. You aren’t allowed to play with the children over there. The reason is a woman – usually very beautiful – who is believed to be a femme fatale. It’s all fully based on hearsay, and we get colourful stories of the woman’s tantalizing ways, whereas the householder is blissfully unaware. In Suresh Triveni’s Netflix Original film Maa Behen, we get a woman of this kind. Attractive, coquettish, and the object of every man’s fantasy (and every woman’s disdain), Rekha (Madhuri Dixit) is a mom to two firebrand girls, Jaya (Triptii Dimri) and Sushma (Dharna Durga). Together, they headline a wild and supremely entertaining feminist rib-tickler that would force you to exclaim, “Why is this not a series?”

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Mon, June 8 2026

Directed by Ol Parker, the glossy rom-com features Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein as co-workers who fall for each other despite the odds.

It’s a plot straight out of a romance novel or maybe a K-drama. A CEO of an airline falls for the company lawyer, jeopardising their jobs and reputations. In the new Netflix rom-com, Office Romance, Jennifer Lopez plays the CEO of Air Cruz, who finds herself inexplicably falling for the new company lawyer from London. Will their secret office romance be exposed to all? Directed by Ol Parker, the opposites-attract comedy has a good dose of British humour, plenty of HR policies and some worthy scene-stealers. Jacqueline Cruz (Lopez) needs to get rid of a competitor’s lawsuit that is threatening her position as CEO of her father’s (Edward James Olmos) airline. The CEO has to make do with a replacement lawyer when their regular one, Peter Vance (Bradley Whitford), is out with an emergency. The new hire Daniel Blanchflower (Goldstein) is more than up to the task and ends up batting for Jackie in front of the board. It leads to Jackie and Daniel getting closer for the case and having a secret affair that risks both their careers. Will the odd couple make it work or call it quits?

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Mon, June 8 2026

Everything is random, proclaims Abhinav Sunder Nayak in his gutsy second feature, Mollywood Times. It is the story of a brilliant yet salty filmmaker, Vineeth Madhavan (Naslen), who simply can’t catch a break. The reason is never as simplistic as a talented filmmaker threatening the mediocrity around him. Nayak’s narrative tears apart the glossy dream of making it big in the film industry with talent alone. This very idea made me think of a street I walked down in Mumbai a decade ago. It was strangely full of young, glamorous people. They all looked hungry to be discovered in cafes or high-end gyms. “What is this lane?” I asked someone. “You don’t know? This is where all the strugglers live.”

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Sun, June 7 2026

Abhinav Sunder Nayak's Malayalam film, starring Naslen as an aspiring director, is hampered by its own sourness

Abhinav Sunder Nayak gravitates towards obsessive compulsive curmudgeons. He is only two films old but there is a pattern. If his debut film, Mukundan Unni Associates, is about a dogged, unshakeable lawyer who would stop at nothing—even murder—to accomplish his insurance scam, his sophomore film, Mollywood Times, is about another determined obstinate young man, Vineeth Madhavan (Naslen), an aspiring Malayalam filmmaker. There is a subtle but compelling difference in perception. The rigid and unnavigable world of cinema with its uncompromising characters, vicious businessmen and unforgiving mindsets make Nayak’s favorite traits almost desirable. There are more parallels between Mukundan and Vineeth. They both come from middle-class backgrounds with families that offer them nothing beyond education. It’s really their only privilege. A used car gives a young Vineeth a chance to get out on the road to take in Malayalam film posters for the first time. His father begins to trust his talents only after his short film puts his rationalist grandfather in a coma (this has a hilarious payoff in the third act). What is his reward? Not an expensive camera or budget but an offer to get him admission into a visual communications course. It’s the most a father dreaming of a doctor or an engineer son could do. This class position also determines the potency of their obsession—how far they would go or how rigid they can be in their march towards their goals.

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