Sonal Pandya

Prolific filmmaker Tyler Perry’s latest is a departure from his usual fare. The actor-director tells the story of the inspiring women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black unit of the Women’s Army Corps that served in Europe. It is a tale not many were aware of, and the movie highlights how the women endured and served with dedication despite the odds against them.

The new music documentary Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous attempts to show the darker side of fame. It prods and probes, but eventually, it allows the artist to be. The Netflix documentary is engaging enough, showing how an ordinary young man from Punjab rises to become the Indian music industry’s most well-known artist and goes on to open doors for others as well. The real truth of the docu-film lies when it features the man himself and those closest to him to open up about what he went through during his self-imposed break.

The ‘mismatched’ couple Dimple and Rishi is back for another season in the popular Netflix series. Mismatched Season 3 returns with a three-year time jump as viewers are plunged back into the long-distance couple’s lives, with updates on their friends and family. Against the background of the virtual versus real world, the show puts its characters through new sets of problems that often feel misplaced. Focusing on its large cast and some faces, the new season feels like an odd reset back to its first season.

Inside Out 2 returned this year to theatres with great fanfare as the sequel took audiences back to Riley’s life as she begins high school. The new animated series, Dream Productions, is set slightly before the film and follows Riley as a pre-teen adjusting to the time in-between being a kid and a teenager. Instead of the core gang of emotions that we are used to, the miniseries focuses on bubbly dream director, Paula Persimmon, who finds herself being obsolete.

Returning after two years, the second season of the political drama Tanaav was split into two parts. The first six episodes premiered in early September, and the remaining six episodes of Vol. 2 wrap up the story that was introduced in part one. Manav Vij’s Kabir Farooqui and the Special Task Group (STG) race to contain Fareed aka Al Damishq (Gaurav Arora) before a crucial peace conference in the valley. While the first part felt like unfinished business, the second part comes to a thrilling end.

More than two decades ago, Love Actually became the quintessential British Christmas film. The rom-com featured connected stories of love, family, and, of course, Christmas. Writer-director Richard Curtis’s latest holiday offering is a family film, That Christmas, that follows the same template, but even with the mighty touch of Santa Claus, it can’t recreate that one-of-a-kind feeling. However, for a younger audience, the craziness of the narrative might be just passable.

The newest Star Wars series is a good old-fashioned space adventure led by a bunch of pre-teen heroines and heroes. Skeleton Crew brings together four imaginative children who embark on a trip to the outer galaxies that they won’t forget. The series also features Jude Law as a mysterious space pirate, whose role is yet to be determined. With only two episodes airing so far, the sci-fi series Skeleton Crew looks to unite Star Wars fans, young and old, in a classic adventure saga.

Neeraj Pandey’s Sikandar Ka Muqaddar is a face-off between two stubborn men played by Jimmy Shergill and Avinash Tiwary, both of whom believe they are in the right. The Hindi feature goes back and forth between their perspectives, and as the story goes from 2008 to 2003 after a diamond heist remains unsolved. The writer-director tries to get us emotionally invested in this twisty tale of wills, but the nearly two-and-a-half-hour film drags out its premise.