Sun, November 8 2026

Even though Valmiki’s Ramayana is one of the most revered epics, the question remains: does it really warrant a film, particularly after Adipurush (2023) turned out to be such a disappointment? Produced by Namit Malhotra and directed by Nitesh Tiwari (of Dangal fame), the film certainly goes all out in terms of scale. The budget runs into four figures in crores, although one wonders if all that expenditure was necessary. At its heart, the Ramayana is about the triumph of good over evil. While vanquishing evil is central to the story, the film could probably have done without the long, drawn-out battle sequences that often resemble a video game.

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Sun, November 8 2026

Sat, November 7 2026

அசுரக் குலத்தை அடிமைகளாக நடத்தும் தேவர்கள், இலங்கையையும் பிடித்துக்கொள்ள, அங்கிருக்கும் ராணியின் (ஷோபனா) புதல்வன் ராவணன் (யஷ்) பிரம்மனை நோக்கி தவம் இருக்கிறான். மானுடனைத் தவிர எந்த வகையிலும் தனக்கு மரணம் நேராது என்ற வரத்தைப் பெற்று மூவுலகையும் தன் கட்டுக்குள் கொண்டு வருகிறான். அவனை அழிக்க விஷ்ணு, தசரதன் மைந்தன் ராமனாக (ரன்பீர் கபூர்) பிறக்கிறார். சீதையை (சாய் பல்லவி) திருமணம் செய்துகொள்ளும் மானுடன் ராமன், தன் பிறவிக்கான காரணத்தைக் கண்டறியும் பயணமே இந்த ராமாயணம் முதல் பாகத்தின் கதை.

தெரிந்த கதைதான். ஆனால் அதில் பிரமாண்டம் கூட்டி, செயற்கைத்தனங்கள் பெரிதும் இல்லாத கிராபிக்ஸையும் சாத்தியமாக்கி மிரட்டியிருக்கிறார் இயக்குநர் நிதேஷ் திவாரி. திரையில் அதிகம் சொல்லப்படாத பின்கதைகளையும் தொட்டு திரைக்கதைக்காகவும் பிரத்யேகமாக உழைத்திருக்கிறது நிதேஷ் திவாரி - ஸ்ரீதர் ராகவன் கூட்டணி. ராமனாக ரன்பீர் கபூர், அறத்தின் பக்கம் நிற்கும்போதும், வேறு வழியின்றி அழிவுக்கான போரைத் தொடங்கும்போதும் கம்பீரமாக மனதில் பதிகிறார். ஆனால், காதல் காட்சிகளிலும் சீரியஸ் முகம் காட்டுவது ஏனோ? சண்டைக் காட்சிகளுக்கான உழைப்பு, கதாபாத்திரத்துக்குத் தேவையான உடல்வாகு போன்றவற்றில் குறைகள் இல்லை. சீதையாக சாய் பல்லவி, நடிப்பில் அதற்கான நியாயம் சேர்க்கிறார். மற்ற ராமாயண திரை வார்ப்புகள் போலப் பயந்த சுபாவம் கொண்ட நாயகியாக நிற்காமல், அவரும் வாளேந்தி சண்டை புரிவது நல்லதொரு மாற்றம். ராமனுடனே பயணிக்கும் லக்ஷ்மணன் கதாபாத்திரத்தின் மூலமாக காமெடிக்கும் தோரணம் கட்டியது புத்திசாலித்தனமான முடிவு. கச்சிதமான துணைப் பாத்திரமாக அதைச் சரியாகச் செய்திருக்கிறார் ரவி தூபே.

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Sun, November 8 2026

Just like Ullas Chemban’s debut work Anchakkallakokkan, Disco too is strong in its technical department, but that is not enough to save a film which banks a little too much on stylistics

Everyday is Halloween in the ganglands of Ullas Chemban’s sophomore film Disco. In whatever grim situation they may be caught in, the mafia men in this film somehow find the adequate time and mood to dress up in matching colourful costumes before they carry out the hit. While the opening sequence has one gang dressed up in Santa Claus costumes, another sequence has yet another gang with goat head masks launching an attack on a police van. Going by how this keeps repeating for the entire length of Disco, its costume designer was probably working overtime. Or, the screenwriter also pitched in, since the film borrows much of its story from typical gangster films and hopes to get away with it using its stylish treatment. Just like Ullas Chemban’s debut work Anchakkallakokkan, Disco too is strong in its technical department, but that is not enough to save a film which banks a little too much on stylistics.

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Sat, November 7 2026

While Ullas Chemban's thriller has a handful of moments that hint at a more ambitious film, it relies a bit too heavily on swag to power over what it lacked in terms of real drama.

In an otherwise unwatchable thriller that prioritises swag over everything else, there’s a handful of moments with genuine spark which suggests a film with particularly idiosyncratic ambitions. One of these is an interrogation scene in which the character played by Gayathri Suresh negotiates with two nosy police officers. Just when you think of the need for this scene, the camera angle shifts downward to capture the top angle, drawing our attention to Gayathri’s naked legs. It’s staged awkwardly and one can make the case for it being her negotiation tactic. Linger a second longer and it’s just the film’s way to pay tribute to the infamous interrogation scene from Basic Instinct (1993) featuring Sharon Stone in similar predicament. After working overtime to build a world that’s part Guy Ritchie, part Latin American gang movie, it feels refreshing to see this hat-tip to classic 90’s Hollywood.

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Sun, November 8 2026

The 61-minute Netflix film breathes life into the Diwali genre of tender, tangy family dramas.

If those conveyor-belt, Hallmark-card-coded Christmas romcoms on Netflix starring versions of Lindsay Lohan are anything to go by every year, it’s normal to be wary of their Indian festive counterparts: the Cadbury-advert-coded Diwali family movie. Last week it was Meethe Mein Kya Hai; this week, it’s the 61-minute-long terribly-tiny-feature Dilwali Diwali. Both minor-key and glossy, both in and around ancestral houses, both sweeter than sugar — and both surprisingly disarming. These are the sort of streaming productions that used to be skit-like YouTube featurettes: a little bit of heart and soul posing as content.

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Sun, November 8 2026

t is like that random page-turner one buys before boarding a train. We might not put too much thought into it, but a few surprises here and there makes the ride worth it

Truth. Throughout our lives, well-meaning people tell us to stick to the truth and stand by what is right. But that pursuit is rarely pure and never simple. It gets even more complicated in legal cases, where the lines between objective and subjective truth blur. Probably why director Balaji Selvaraj’s ZEE5 series, Sattamum Needhiyum, is titled so. Between what is legal and what is just, many stories reside, and the second season tells the story of dirty cops, not-so-dirty lawyers, and what happens when the two worlds collide.

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Sun, November 8 2026

Love Always is a no-frills exploration of what it means to be in love, what it means to be married, and what happens when you get a chance to tame those completely different beasts

Regret. Indian arranged marriages are a concept that, on paper, should make absolutely no sense in a society. What do you mean when you say two strangers are suddenly asked to marry each other just because the elders in their respective families decided it was the right thing? How does “forever” make sense when you don’t even know your prospective partner’s favorite colour? Such is the system, and even today, our Indian society continues to swear by it because why repair something that isn’t broken? Yes, some arranged marriages seem like a dream come true, but there are enough examples that lay bare the broken, flawed, and limiting factors of the system. In director Madhumita’s Love Always, we see a marriage that looks dreamy from the outside and dilapidated from the inside. But what happens when life, and a lot of magic, lets you turn regret into restoration? Basically, Love Always understands that ‘love’ is special, but questions whether ‘always’ should be taken for granted.

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Sun, November 8 2026

With Suriya in terrific form and stellar turns from Nazriya and Naslen, Jithu Madhavan gives the familiar a fabulous makeover in Scene

Vision. While it might not be the case now, there was a time when almost every interview inevitably had this question: Where do you see yourself in five years? Five years is a long time, right? If we are being interviewed, most of us would give some generic answer. If we are the ones doing the interview, we know how to see through the generic answers. Some people offer an answer so wild and audacious that you never ask that question the same way again. Jithu Madhavan’s Scene is one such answer to a question about what star films should look like in a few years’ time. Yes, star vehicles need to service the star, but if the star decides to serve the story, keeps their whims behind the camera, steps into the frame without a chip on their shoulder, and trusts the director’s vision to focus on the story first, the star will invariably be seen.

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Sun, November 8 2026

Sat, November 7 2026

Thanks to an in-form Suriya, Naslen and Nazriya, director Jithu Madhavan dares to venture into territory that might seem too risky for a film with such serious undertones

Jithu Madhavan is a Malayalam director (Romancham, Aavesham) making his first Tamil film. But if there’s one sequence that needs to be studied to understand a Malayali’s undying love for Tamil cinema, it’s the one in the second half of Scene. At first glance, it might seem like another Easter egg referencing one of the many films that made Suriya the superstar he is today. But dig a little deeper, and it brings together two aspects of Tamil cinema that are particularly important to every Malayali cinephile: legendary composer Ilaiyaraaja and the films that Suriya made in the early 2000s.

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Sat, November 7 2026

In the breathless action on screen, there are very few scenes that are truly moving, laugh-out-loud funny, or even those that evoke a smile.

It’s hard to believe that this is only the second feature-length film on the beloved Dr Seuss character, and the first animation. It also means that Warner Bros Pictures and directors Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja have to work doubly hard to make The Cat in the Hat stand out from the current deluge. The effort shows, with the film a dizzying cornucopia of action and colours, with little of the unworldliness of the book and all the worldliness of a studio-backed venture, which also lets it be known that it is hoping to spin at least one more movie out of a character.

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Sat, November 7 2026

Joe Barton's dark spy dramedy about a secret organisation trying to infiltrate the British government faces a new threat.

The first season of Netflix’s Black Doves introduced a pair of spies who become friends while trying to survive assignment given out by their secret organisation. Two years later, the British spy drama is back with a new crisis for the duo as they face their biggest threat yet. Black Doves is led by Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw and Sarah Lancashire, who become our anchors in this latest instalment as the entire organisation is targeted, leaving Knightley’s Helen and Whishaw’s Sam to make some risky moves. The six-part is a thrilling binge watch that sets up the next season nicely.

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Sat, November 7 2026

Created by Jason Keller, the sports comedy settles down by turning its attention on Owen Wilson's has-been golf hero and succeeds

In 2025, the Owen Wilson starrer Stick introduced an earnest sport series about a man redeeming himself by coaching a golf prodigy. As the Apple TV series returns for a second instalment, it smartly refocuses its attention on its smooth-talking hero, Pryce Cahill (Wilson), who finds a new purpose in his golfing journey. The result is a comedy series with renewed resolve to push its characters and the story. While the show does stick to usual tropes found in sports narratives, here in the series, it feels earned instead of clichéd. The addition of the winsome Emmy winner Rhea Seehorn and more screentime to Pryce’s old rival Clark Ross, played by Timothy Olyphant is another smart choice.

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Sat, November 7 2026

Director Sundar C's film, starring Nayanthara, Duniya Vijay and Regena Cassandrra, is an outdated devotional drama devoid of any emotion or devotion.

Growing up in the 90s, devotional films were a staple on television. Audiences were introduced to several different Ammans (mother goddess), but they all had one duty: to protect the innocent and destroy evil. As cinema evolved, these devotional dramas gradually became passe. In 2020, RJ Balaji revived the genre with Mookuthi Amman, giving it a contemporary spin through political satire. Six years later, veteran filmmaker Sundar C takes the franchise forward with Mookuthi Amman 2, turning that political satire into a full-fledged devotional drama. Did the gamble work? The answer is a resounding no.

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Tue, November 3 2026

A moving portrait of an elderly Kumaoni couple confronting loneliness, migration and abandonment, where the Himalayan landscape becomes a silent witness to a vanishing rural world and forgotten lives.

Set in a picturesque yet increasingly desolate hamlet in Uttarakhand’s Kumaon region, Vinod Kapri’s Pyre is a quietly devastating meditation on old age, abandonment, loneliness and the inexorable erosion of rural life. The two-hour Hindi-language film centres on Tulsi (Hira Devi) and Padam (Padam Singh), an elderly goat-herding couple who have been married for over six decades. Their only son, Harish, migrated to Mumbai many years ago and has never returned. As their neighbours gradually desert their crumbling ancestral homes, the couple find themselves among the last remaining inhabitants of what is fast becoming a ghost village.

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Sat, October 31 2026

While director Vinod Kapri evocatively captures the painful desolation of Uttarakhand’s ghost villages through raw, life-like performances, its cinematic grammar occasionally feels deliberately engineered for a global festival gaze

High in the Himalayas, where the wind murmurs through timber and stone, sits a village that time forgot and the world walked away from. This is the stage for Vinod Kapri’s Pyre(Chita), an elegy carved in the lines of timeworn faces and the vast, aching silence of mountains. It is a story born of memories from Uttarakhand’s ghost villages, where the young have shifted to the heartless cities, leaving only the old to watch over a crumbling community. At its heart, Pyre is a poem to the endurance of love. It follows an elderly couple bound by shared devotion and bickering, and the tenuous hope of their son’s return. With the patience of a documentary and the soul of a tragedy, Kapri creates a meditative piece of minimalist cinema where soaring peaks serve as both a majestic sanctuary and an indifferent prison.

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Fri, October 30 2026

Vinod Kapri's Pyre follows an elderly couple growing old in an emptying Uttarakhand village. Their tender bond exposes the isolation, migration and hardships shaping life in remote communities.

What does growing old look like when the world around you is slowly disappearing? When your children are too far away, your village is emptying out, and even visiting a doctor becomes a challenge? Vinod Kapri’s Pyre explores these realities through an elderly couple in the mountains of Uttarakhand. Beneath its story of loneliness, migration and old age lies a more intimate question: who will hold your hand when life gets difficult? If there is one thing this film makes you want, it is someone to grow old with.

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Sun, November 1 2026

Created by Rowan Joffé, the crime thriller features Adolescence star Stephen Graham as a manipulative serial killer who enjoys baiting his victims.

In Apple TV’s Nocturne, Stephen Graham plays a sadistic serial killer, Jurek Walter, who holds an entire town on edge, looking for a missing young girl. The criminal enjoys riling up the entire police force and the FBI, who are on the hunt, while also digging up additional clues. Nocturne is based on a Scandinavian thriller, The Sandman, by Lars Kepler, and moves the Nordic setting to a quiet Pennsylvania town surrounded by woods. The makers build up the tension and dread about Walter’s games and who he might go after next, but the narrative’s slow pace hinders. However, the performances by the Nocturne cast keep you invested.

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