Rohan Naahar

If Bollywood were any more exploitative than it already is, it would’ve got the struggling Dibakar Banerjee to direct Loveyapa as a gun-for-hire. But then, it wouldn’t have been the same garbage movie. Banerjee would’ve spotted the inherent toxicity of its protagonists — played by two-time offenders Khushi Kapoor and Junaid Khan — and attempted to unpack the patriarchal systems that made them this way. Had Banerjee directed this movie, Khan would’ve almost certainly become a mascot for toxic masculinity at just two films old. The only difference is that Maharaj, his debut film, had no idea that his character was a terrible person. Loveyapa, on the other hand, appears to at least recognise his ‘flaws’, but expects you to root for him regardless.

Movies like Officer on Duty make it difficult for you to give Indian filmmakers the benefit of the doubt. How could the widely celebrated writer Shahi Kabir, who broke out with the excellent Malayalam-language procedural Nayattu some years ago, produce something as misguided as Officer on Duty? Now out on Netflix after a successful theatrical run, the police thriller lacks everything that made Nayattu such a memorable pandemic-era experience; little attention is paid to the cultural specificities, the writing prioritises plot over characters, and unlike the rather progressive themes that Nayattu niftily wove into its riveting narrative, the politics in Officer on Duty are highly objectionable.

Deva is like one of those movies that Mahesh Bhatt would ‘direct’ over the phone in the 90s. It has all the ingredients — a brutish hero with a heart of gold, plenty of flimsy female characters that exist purely to serve him, and plotting that relies almost entirely on contrivances and clichés. The only thing it doesn’t have is Avtar Gill in a supporting role, but guess what, Upendra Limaye more than makes up for it. Starring Shahid Kapoor, Deva is directed by Rosshan Andrrews; it’s a remake of his Malayalam-language original, titled Mumbai Police. They downplayed the remake angle during the promotions, to the point that it almost felt like they were pretending that Deva was an original. And then, news began to spread about Andrrews having shot three different climaxes for the movie, perhaps in an effort to throw audiences off, or — and this is more likely — to lure them into theatres with the tease of something new.

Embracing the immaturity of a sitcom and the put-on sophistication of prestige TV, Netflix’s The Residence nestles into a comfy stylistic nook that makes more than eight hours of (surprisingly dense) storytelling go by in a flash. The murder mystery show is produced by the prolific Shonda Rhimes but spearheaded by writer Paul William Davies, who injects it with such an infectious sense of fun that you can’t help but play along. At least until the feature-length finale, which strains to deliver the sort of satisfying climax that you’d expect from a show that name-checks The Murder of the Orient Express and Knives Out with such affection. The genre’s ongoing resurgence didn’t, as many have decided, begin with Rian Johnson’s hit. The movie did admittedly well, leaving Netflix with no option but to hurl a reported $100 million at Daniel Craig to lure him back as the smooth-talking detective Benoit Blanc. But a couple of years before Knives Out, however, director Kenneth Branagh reintroduced Agatha Christie’s enduring detective Hercule Poirot to audiences with his largely reverential The Murder of the Orient Express. Believe it or not, the movie was a bigger hit than Knives Out. Branagh made the correct decision to not tinker with the book’s now-legendary climax, having understood that without it, it’s no different from the scores of other murder mysteries that Christie would churn out on a monthly basis.

After breaking out with the horror-thriller Fresh a few years ago — this was the movie in which Daisy Edgar-Jones played a young woman on a blind date with a man who turns out to be a cannibal — director Mimi Cave stays firmly in her comfort zone with her sophomore project, this week’s Holland. The cast is bigger, as is the budget and the scale. Fresh was mostly restricted to one large house, where the predatory male protagonist would lure his female prey and then, literally feast on them. An entire suburban town serves as Cave’s playground this time around; and at least one of its citizens is a killer of women. Nicole Kidman plays Nancy, a seemingly mild-mannered woman who works at the local school and dotes on her husband, Fred, played by Matthew Macfadyen. The one-time heartthrob — he played Mr Darcy in 2005’s Pride & Prejudice adaptation — seems to have been typecast as weaselly villains following his memorable performance as Tom Wambsgans in HBO’s Succession. Fred works as an optometrist; he’s the sort of guy that everybody seems to be friendly with, but crucially, not friends with. Nancy becomes suspicious when he starts going on weekly work trips, often using the flimsiest excuses.

Perhaps the single greatest scene in any movie released last year was the one where Colman Domingo’s character — a convict named Divine G — pleads his case during a clemency hearing in the startling prison drama Sing Sing. He tells the examining committee about the theatre programme that he has spearheaded at the facility, and how uplifting the experience has been not just for him, but each and every prisoner who has participated in it. The scene purposefully recalls the many similar moments in The Shawshank Redemption, in which a hopeful Red, played by Morgan Freeman, desperately begs for mercy. It isn’t a flashy scene, but one that relies almost entirely on Domingo’s (mostly reactionary) performance — easily the best that he has delivered in his career. The same is true of the film itself. Directed by Greg Kwedar, Sing Sing debuted on Max after a negligible theatrical run abroad. Based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts programme that is conducted at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York, the movie features a handful of ex-convicts playing semi-fictionalised versions of themselves. This gives it a layer of authenticity that would’ve been difficult to achieve with professional actors. There’s a rawness to the drama that’s mostly missing from mainstream American cinema these days, although Sing Sing — the movie premiered at Sundance in 2023 — doesn’t exactly qualify as mainstream.

The Studio has two things going against it. Films and shows about the entertainment business often struggle to crawl out of their niche corners, unless, of course, they’re packaged like Argo. Second — and this might be a bigger problem — The Studio is on Apple. Nobody watches stuff on Apple. At most, they watch Ted Lasso and Severance and swiftly cancel their subscriptions. The best that The Studio can hope for is to organically find an audience like those flagship shows did, because it certainly deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as them. Clever, crafty, and caustic when it needs to be, it’s the best new comedy series of 2025 so far. The Studio features Seth Rogen in the lead role of Matt Remick, an executive who lives and breathes cinema, and harbours a long-held dream of becoming a studio head. In the first episode, he’s handed the proverbial keys to the castle on a conditional basis by the head honcho of Continental Studios, played by Bryan Cranston in a performance so boozy that it might require a breathalyser test. Tasked with fast-tracking a movie based on the beverage brand Kool-Aid — you read that right — and turning it into a billion-dollar hit akin to Barbie, Matt finds himself torn between his artistic aspirations and the primal impulses of his lizard brain.

Netflix should be flexing its UK arm more often. It seems to be doing all the heavy-lifting, especially when it comes to long-form programming. After last year’s One Day and The Gentlemen, Netflix UK has already delivered two stellar new shows this year; incidentally, the same writer is involved with both. Just a few weeks ago, the prolific Jack Thorne spearheaded Toxic Town, a crowd-pleasing drama about social injustice, told from the perspective of the women that were most affected by it. Thorne’s latest is the even better Adolescence, a psychological thriller that he co-created with actor Stephen Graham. It’s only March, but Adolescence, the fascinating examination of masculinity and urban alienation that it reveals itself to be, is already a contender for the best show of the year.