Sat, February 14 2026

Sat, February 14 2026

Director Bejoy Nambiar finally marries craft with content in a class-crossed romance with a reptilian twist

This Valentine’s week, love floats in a pool infested with primal danger as Bejoy Nambiar blends genres to create a triangle between two contrasting social media influencers and a crocodile in Tu Yaa Main. Playing out like a nightmare with a message, when a privileged, polished Avani Shah and a gritty, ambitious rapper, Maruti Kadam, collide in Mumbai’s content scene, their calculated collaboration ignites a passionate romance that bridges class chasms and exposes raw vulnerabilities beneath curated personas. Beneath the swag, we discover that both are survivors who want to change their existing profile. She wants to escape her luxurious loneliness, and he is eager to climb the social ladder.

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Sat, February 14 2026

Sat, February 14 2026

Despite strong performances and dramatic scenes, achieving a balance between its dual themes remains challenging.

O’Romeo is a story of revenge served hot and bloody. Vishal Bhardwaj’s latest film — on many parameters the director’s most commercial outing yet — gets off the blocks with a visceral and violent scene in which Shahid Kapoor’s Ustara whips out his signature ustara (aka razor) and proceeds to cut open half a dozen men. The scene takes place in a single-screen cinema with Madhuri Dixit going “dhak dhak karne laga” even as Ustara goes about slicing and dicing his adversaries with both dramatic precision and poetic choreography. The sequence lays the foundation for the vibe as well the visual language of O’Romeo — a film that often relies on gratuitous violence but can also be vulnerable and tender (mostly when the ‘Romeo’ in O’Romeo surfaces) when it chooses to be.

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Sat, February 14 2026

नब्बे के दशक में जब मुंबई अंडरवर्ल्ड पर दाउद की डी कंपनी का राज था तो उसका एक विरोधी था हुसैन उस्तरा। इसी हुसैन उस्तरा ने अशरफ खान नाम की उस औरत को बढ़ावा दिया था जिसके पति को दाउद के कहने पर मारा गया। अपने पति के कत्ल का बदला लेने के लिए अशरफ बन गई थी सपना दीदी और उसने उस्तरा के साथ मिल कर दाउद को शारजाह के स्टेडियम में टपकाने का प्लान भी बना डाला था। लेकिन ऐसा हो न सका और डी कंपनी ने पहले सपना को टपकाया, फिर उस्तरा को। मुंबई अंडरवर्ल्ड को करीब से जानने वाले पत्रकार हुसैन ज़ैदी की किताब ‘माफिया क्वीन्स ऑफ मुंबई’ के सपना दीदी पर लिखे अध्याय पर आधारित विशाल भारद्वाज की यह फिल्म ‘ओ रोमियो’ (O’ Romeo) सपना और उस्तरा की कहानी को कुछ अलग नज़रिए से देखती है, कुछ अलग ढंग से दिखाती है।

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Sat, February 14 2026

It is brooding, bloody, and beautiful in parts, but ‘O’ Romeo’ eventually turns out to be boring and burdened by the filmmaker’s past brilliance

In the middle of ‘O Romeo, Afshan, the revenge-filled girl from a rich music background, tells Ustara, the razor-wielding contract killer of the Mumbai underworld, that she is from Muzaffarnagar, but her gharana is Gwalior. Ustara responds as if his home is Lucknow, but his gharana is Mumbai. The conversation is writer-director Vishal Bhardwaj’s way of reminding us that his home is Bollywood street, but his gharana is Shakespearana.

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Sat, February 14 2026

Preet Bajwa is found dead on her family’s poultry farm. Cops Dhanwant Kaur and Amritpal Garundi soon discover the family has been hiding a dark secret for twenty years: they were keeping people as slaves. As the police get closer to the truth, the family takes desperate, violent steps to hide their crimes. The story shows how old secrets eventually catch up to people and destroy their lives.

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Sat, February 14 2026

An unflinching social lens, a haunting atmosphere, and strong lead performances make wading through Sudeep Sharma’s ‘Kohrra’ a lingering emotional experience all over again

There has always been a gap between the Punjab we watch on screen and the one we actually experience off-screen. Of late, there has been an attempt to look beyond the lavish weddings, bhangra beats, and bucolic humour. Carrying forward the Maachis that Gulzar lit in 1996 and Gurvinder Singh nurtured over the years, Sudeep Sharma’s Kohrra is one such significant attempt to pierce through the miasma that hangs over the mustard fields.

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Sat, February 14 2026

The show is a forceful knock on our head which splits the class divide wide open

When ‘Kohrra’ came in 2023, it was a breath of fresh air which not only put a majorly Punjabi language series on the world map of OTT, but showed a state dipped in shades of realism. Now, as its second season streams, the template is kind of… same. It’s still a police procedural with loads of human drama at the centre of it. ‘Kohrra 2’ starts on a similar note: murder of an NRI. But, hereafter, the series — again set in the hinterland of Punjab — takes a life of its own and envelops you as much in the mysterious air of whodunit as the lives of its protagonists. Investigation begins and we are all agog to know who has murdered this young lady Preet (Pooja Bhamrrah), a divorcee who loved to make reels and by no stretch of imagination was a pushover.

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Sat, February 14 2026

First-time director Ashwin Chandrasekar uses a breezy, slice-of-life exterior to capture the ebbs and flows of modern-day relationships

Until the early 90s, Chennai (then Madras) served as a common backdrop for Telugu films. However, the subsequent industry shift to Hyderabad gradually altered the geographical canvas of its stories. Despite Chennai remaining a preferred destination for the Telugu community in nearby regions of Andhra Pradesh for livelihood for years, modern-day filmmakers have seldom explored their enduring connection with the city through a contemporary lens.

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Sat, February 14 2026

Packed with meta jokes, the film unfolds like a Greatest Hits redux of memories that have come to make Jayaram feel special to us.

‘History repeats itself’ is the phrase that kept coming to mind while watching Jayaram’s delightfully old-school Ashakal Aayiram, co-starring his son Kalidas. Yet, when you think of a film reuniting this real-life father-son duo, you might first be tempted to recall Kochu Kochu Santhoshangal, the charming Sathyan Anthikad comedy that brought them together the first time. But if you observe closely, the soul of Ashakal Aayiram is closer in spirit to another Anthikad classic, the 1999 family drama Veendum Chila Veettukaryangal.

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Sat, February 14 2026

Starring Sasikumar and Chaithra J Achar, 'My Lord' begins with promise, but unfortunately ends with a loud message delivered without any cinematic subtlety

There might be a hundred things you may not like about Raju Murugan’s cinema, but not having a voice that is distinctly his own, cannot be one of them. This voice isn’t just limited to the overarching themes he wants to discuss, his films’ politics or plot, or the manner in which even familiar actors behave differently when they’re in his movies. Even when you get in and out of his movie, there could be dozens of frames only this man could have thought of.

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Sat, February 14 2026

Starring Vishwak Sen and Kayadu Lohar, Funky is an absurd comedy drama in classic KV Anudeep mould. While his previous films worked, his third film leaves you with a bitter aftertaste.

Naaku galeej anipisthundhi, which translates to “It’s all too awkward,” is a repetitive phrase in KV Anudeep’s third film, Funky. After two hours and eight minutes, it’s this thought – and the only one – that you are left with. Director KV Anudeep’s unique sense of humour may not be everyone’s cup of tea. In three films, he’s made that loud and clear. But there’s a sense of earnestness and honesty in Jathi Ratnalu and Prince that hardly makes you look away. You’d want to know what new trick he has up his sleeve the third time around.

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Sat, February 14 2026

The Vishwak Sen and Kayadu Lohar starrer is undone by a non-existent plot and directionless storytelling

Jathi Ratnalu director KV Anudeep’s latest film, Funky, is set in a bubble—the Telugu film industry, a world the filmmaker has immediate access to. The premise itself—where an emerging director falls for the daughter of an eminent producer—is a fictional take on the love story of industry couple, director Nag Ashwin and producer Priyanka Dutt (who are often referenced in the film).

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Fri, February 13 2026

Sabar Bonda, the Marathi film that won a prestigious honour at Sundance last year, is either a poetic exploration of the road not taken or a pretentious try-hard desperate to feel important. We discuss the film’s unconventional dramatic choices, the effects of its stillness, and the lacklustre quality of the central performances. We also debate its performative nature and wonder how it turned out to be so divisive.

Sat, September 20 2025

Sat, September 20 2025

Fairly early in Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears), a character is instructed on how to grieve. Don’t cut your hair, don’t ask for a second helping and walk bare feet for the next couple of days. Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) has just lost his father but his extended relatives have no time for feelings. The mourning ought to be communal and hence regimented, an ask which falls in line with their larger curiosity in Anand’s life: at 30 years of age, why is he still unmarried? The demand to conform and the desire to live form the crux of Kanawade’s Sabar Bonda, a strikingly assured debut and the first Marathi film to be premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. After Anand’s father passes away, his mother persuades him to go to his ancestral village for the stipulated 10-day mourning period. He resists suggesting that he will go to pick her up instead. A quiet telling-off changes his mind as they both journey back to a place which has more memories than people.

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Mon, February 9 2026

Rudra Jadon’s low-budget indie about an interfaith couple in a crisis is undone by weak craft

“A manhole cleaner and vegetable vendor fall in love during secret meetings in a train bathroom” is a great one-liner. Especially for an indie made on a shoestring budget. Especially in an India that’s gotten too real and complicated for love stories to make sense. It’s even better if said India then gatecrashes the love story, revealing why the title contains the term “Ki Kahani (the story of)” rather than the Bollywood-coded “Ki Prem Kahani (the love story of)”. With those like Pinaki (Sanjay Bishnoi) and Mariyam (Eshita Singh), it’s not falling for each other that’s the conflict; it’s the audacity to fall for each other that is.

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Mon, February 9 2026

Jaspal Singh Sandhu’s Vadh 2 examines crime, companionship, and moral ambiguity through ageing protagonists navigating prison life, vigilante justice, and emotional solitude, powered by deeply nuanced performances from Neena Gupta and Sanjay Mishra.

A sequel is always a perilous undertaking. Once a film has established its tonal register and moral grammar, the space for reinvention narrows considerably. The past looms large, often shackling imagination and circumscribing execution. Jaspal Singh Sandhu’s Vadh 2 negotiates this terrain cautiously. While it is not a narrative continuation of Vadh (2022), it inhabits the same ethical cosmos, tethered by mood rather than plot. The connection is atmospheric, not anecdotal, and viewers are best served by leaving memories of the earlier film at the threshold.

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Mon, February 9 2026

The two protagonists don’t have a heightened moral code and are involved in underhand dealings

Justice, we all know, by and large eludes the powerless. On screen, however, poetic justice as well as its vigilante variant has been delivered time and again. At times with a loud thump and less often in a quiet, restrained tone. ‘Vadh’, as the name suggests, is about killing. Since the word has much significance in mythology, we know it would be for the right reasons. Enter a jail in Madhya Pradesh. Now the much-acclaimed series ‘Black Warrant’ and many other Indian films have already shown us what all the innards of a jail possibly entail. So you bet the presence of a despicable criminal like Keshav (Akshya Dogra), with deep political connections, hardly comes as a surprise. What does is the tender love story brewing between a criminal serving life sentence and one of the jail’s guards. Trust both Neena Gupta and Sanjay Mishra to breathe life into their characters of Manju Mishra and Shambhunath Mishra.

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Sun, February 8 2026

Thoughtful writing and nuanced portrayals by Neena Gupta, Sanjay Mishra, and Kumud Mishra are washed up by execution hiccups in director Jaspal Singh Sandhu’s righteous take on crime and punishment

Over the years, carceral imagery has been an important creative device for shaping tales of confinement and social control. This week, Shambhunath Mishra (Sanjay Mishra), a prison guard struggling with financial burdens and personal isolation, forms an unlikely bond with Manju Singh (Neena Gupta), an inmate serving a life term for crimes she may not have committed. The intimacy amid isolation gets a jolt when one night a politically-connected predator disappears from prison, triggering an investigation. As a determined officer, Ateet Singh (Amitt K. Singh) takes charge, and elements of caste dynamics and power struggles surface, involving a strict but prejudiced superintendent (Kumud Mishra) and a perverted inmate (Akshay Dogra).

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Mon, February 9 2026

Sthal, the Marathi-language feature from debutante director Jayant Digambar Somalkar, is one of the best films of 2025. It’s a deftly written, confidently shot, and expertly performed psychological drama about the commodification of women. We discuss the anger at the film’s core, its bleak view of Indian society, and the catharsis it provides with an instant-classic climax.

Sat, February 7 2026

Sthal, the Marathi-language feature from debutante director Jayant Digambar Somalkar, is one of the best films of 2025. It’s a deftly written, confidently shot, and expertly performed psychological drama about the commodification of women. We discuss the anger at the film’s core, its bleak view of Indian society, and the catharsis it provides with an instant-classic climax.

Sun, March 9 2025

Mon, February 9 2026

Based on true incidents that shook Hyderabad, director Gunasekhar’s ‘Euphoria’ touches a raw nerve, takes bizarre turns, but hits the right notes

Euphoria is a difficult watch that demands viewer discretion; its ‘A’ certification is justified. Eschewing the mindless violence common in mainstream cinema, writer-director Gunasekhar delivers a sharp fictional drama rooted in a harrowing true story that shook Hyderabad. The film uses its narrative to pose urgent questions through three interconnected lenses: a survivor reclaiming her life, a mother desperate to reform her son, and the perpetrator’s uneasy and long path toward redemption.

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