Rohan Naahar

What if the endlessly affable characters of Manjummel Boys (a 2024 Malayalam survival thriller) were constantly bickering, entitled 20-somethings instead? Chances are, you’d begin to wish that the cave they’re trapped in swallows them whole before rescue services could be alerted. This is the central problem with The Devil’s Mouth, the new survival horror movie on Prime Video. Instead of rooting for its protagonists to make their way out of the mess they’re in, you kinda-sorta-maybe start rooting for their adversary — a lost bull shark in basically the same predicament as they are. Both parties cross streams one day after a series of events that are too boring to get into here.

The fundamental issue with adapting mythological epics in India is that there’s very little adaptation going on, avoiding straying too far from the source. But the issues with SonyLIV’s new animated series, The Legend of Karna, are twofold. Not only does the show struggle to find anything new to say about one of the greatest stories ever told, the Mahabharata, but it also can’t decide whom it is targeting. Too verbose for children and too simplistic for adults, The Legend of Karna ultimately finds itself in no man’s land, fighting a war that it was always going to lose. The irony. A retelling of the Mahabharata from the warrior Karna’s perspective, the series has been created by Sharad Devarajan and Jeevan J. Kang, with none other than Anup Soni, of “Saavdhan Rahein, Satark Rahein” fame, voicing the titular character. The Legend of Karna, to its great misfortune, finds itself sandwiched between Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and the upcoming two-part Ramayana starring Ranbir Kapoor. Needless to say, it cannot compete with either of those projects in terms of production values or scope. There was, however, an opportunity to present a more internal take, especially since the writers were under no burden to flesh out the scores of characters in the Mahabharata.

The new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a mixed bag. It’s both conventional and kinetic, sombre and silly. Under the stewardship of director Destin Daniel Cretton, the movie isn’t as synthetic as the franchise’s previous instalments — especially the previous two films starring Tom Holland as Spider-Man. Brand New Day is more grounded than those movies, less bothered by multiverses and mayhem and more concerned with the characters. The action is spectacular (and most definitely inspired by the popular Spider-Man video games by Insomniac), the superhero shenanigans are reliably rote, but Brand New Day is at its best when it’s being a Bollywood emotional drama from the mid-2000s

After succumbing to the sophomore slump a few years ago with the dreadfully dull psychological thriller Don’t Worry Darling (2022), Olivia Wilde has reaffirmed herself as a phenomenally talented filmmaker with her third feature, The Invite. It is as astute a dissection of long-term relationships as this year’s The Drama was of the honeymoon phase. Wilde stars as an anxious woman named Angela, who secretly invites her new neighbours for a casual get-together in a naked attempt to impress them. However, she neglects to run this by her husband Joe, a failed musician-turned-teacher played by Seth Rogen. He isn’t into it one bit. Joe has an axe to grind against the neighbours, because their love-making has kept him awake for weeks. He doesn’t know whether to be angry or jealous, but he most certainly isn’t going to be rolling out the red carpet for them. Played by Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton, the neighbours are the perfect foils to utterly bored Angela and Joe. Even before the chic couple from next door arrives, the two are at each other’s throats about everything from back posture to charcuterie boards.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that Dhamaal 4, directed by Indra Kumar, isn’t a good movie. At 2 hours and 20 minutes long, it’s simply a collection of gags, stitched together with weaker connective tissue than a physiotherapist could detect in the body of a 90-year-old. The film begins with a suspiciously AI-generated-looking prologue about pirates — you read that correctly. Years later, a collection of greedy buffoons sets out on a quest to locate treasure that these pirates left hidden.

Miranda Priestly probably wouldn’t tolerate Angelina Jolie’s character from Couture, a new drama set in the world of high fashion that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2025. Jolie plays Maxine, an indie filmmaker who’s been hired to bring her brand of transgressive edginess to a promotional short for Paris Fashion Week. With neither the patience nor the experience for promotional work, Maxine can barely mask her contempt for her new gig — and that’s before a call from her doctor flips her world upside down. Couture couldn’t be further removed from the glossy world of this summer’s fashion world-set blockbuster The Devil Wears Prada 2. And while that movie makes excuses for the same industry that Couture wants to dress down, director Alice Winocour’s attempt to offer a ground-level perspective of an industry that has been glamorized for far too long turns out dull, directionless, and mildly delusional.

The term “deconstruction” is often thrown around in the world of haute cuisine, which director Michael Sarnoski took a long whiff of in his phenomenal debut feature, Pig. It starred Nicolas Cage as a reclusive former chef who lives in a self-imposed exile in the woods, accompanied by a pet truffle pig and his many demons. Pig remains one of the finest directorial debuts of the last decade, and is a great lead-in to Sarnoski’s latest film, The Death of Robin Hood.

A computer whiz and a tech-challenged cop team up to solve a missing person case in Hotstar’s new crime-comedy series Pritam and Pedro, co-created by the illustrious Rajkumar Hirani. The series essentially serves as a launch vehicle for his son, Vir, who plays the mysterious Pritam. We meet the young man as he’s trying to report his grandfather’s missing tape recorder at a Goa police station run by Pedro, played by Arshad Warsi. The cops throw him in jail when he refuses to leave without registering his complaint. Instantly, Pritam stands out as an honourable young man, while Pedro comes across as a no-nonsense veteran who has seen it all. On paper, they make for the perfect odd-couple — the Indian film industries don’t make nearly enough buddy comedies. However, that’s about as interesting as things get, because, at the end of the day, this is a Hirani production.