Tusshar Sasi

Patriotism is a difficult sentiment to practise in India today. Unlike religion, which you can choose to keep private, patriotism is something you are often expected to perform in public. The social pressure is such that you might invite a rude stare if you don’t shout “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” after the National Anthem in a cinema hall, which is perhaps the least patriotic of places. Director Akash A Kaushik’s Udta Teer raises a tricky question in this climate: is love for one’s homeland interchangeable? The film’s recurring line, “mulk ke aage kuch nahin”, makes us wonder which nation truly belongs to whom, and who gets to decide what patriotism should look like.

There are children’s films. There are child-friendly films. And then there are films like Dhurandhar – The Revenge that irresponsible parents take their kids to watch anyway. Little Thomas belongs to the first kind. Kaushal Oza’s feature debut, set in mid-90s Panaji, joins a growing list of Indian films made for younger audiences, including Baththa, Ohh My Dog, The Great Grand Superhero, Village Rockstars 2 and Boong. The idea, as with these films, is to tell children a story without talking down to them. The trouble is that children today have enough entertainment at their fingertips to know when they are being bored. Little Thomas has a lovely setting, a promising premise and an adorable young lead. What it lacks is the writing to make the most of them.

What new can a formulaic Tamil actioner offer in 2026? At a time when global event cinema is finding new ways to engage with themes such as climate change and animal abuse, our superstar vehicles remain stubbornly risk-averse. In a political and cultural climate where taking a stance carries commercial liability, a legend of Rajinikanth’s stature is unlikely to put his legacy on the line. And that is precisely where Jailer 2 fails to flourish: it prioritises maximum scale and safe fan-service over any kind of narrative courage. Back in 2023, director Nelson Dilipkumar’s Jailer delivered unadulterated Thalaivar spectacle. Despite a wafer-thin plot, Rajinikanth carried the weight on his shoulders, bolstered by showy cameos, a viral soundtrack, and Nelson’s signature deadpan dark comedy. It was hardly innovative, but it knew exactly what it had going for it and had fun with its superstar.

What if you eventually become what you feared most? The bullied becomes the bully. The abused becomes the abuser. The hunted becomes the hunter. In Balaji Tharaneetharan’s Tamil drama Baththa, a feared gangster (Vijay Sethupathi in the titular role) is locked inside a school restroom and shouts from inside, “I’ll kill you when I come out.” Terrified by his words, the one who accidentally locked him in, third-grader Sabari (Master Sai Prithviraj), refuses to open the door. He flees the scene, leaving the village to look for him while the school remains shut for summer vacation. Sabari is far from a delinquent. There’s a beach scene early on with his factory-worker father (Hari Krishnan) and his homemaker mother (Santhy Balachandran). He wants a toy that costs three rupees. In 1986, that isn’t nothing for them, but they buy it for him anyway. When the teacher takes it away during exams, the boy sneaks back into the empty school. He finds the pile of confiscated things and takes only his own. The moment is small and exact.

When will this travesty end? I ask that of almost every Bollywood remake and forced franchise, particularly those anchored by Ajay Devgn. Drishyam: The Conclusion was a rare exception that actually made me curious. Once a line-by-line remake and now an independent continuation, Abhishek Pathak’s film finally steps away from Jeethu Joseph’s Malayalam blueprint. After the second Hindi instalment, that fresh canvas looked like a chance for Devgn’s Drishyam to come into its own. The story picks up six months after Drishyam 2. A distraught Meera Deshmukh (Tabu) is all set to kill herself, and for a moment it looks like the Malayalam film again. Thankfully for us, she aborts her plans soon enough, opens her wardrobe, grabs the make-up box, and returns as the wounded cop and grieving mother the Hindi franchise knows how to deploy.

Any publicity is good publicity. Any act of social reform can be justified if the intent is right. Primetime asks the colder question underneath both slogans: how far can that intent be stretched before the act itself is the product? Lance Oppenheim’s first narrative feature, adapted from Luke Dittrich’s Esquire piece “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die,” does not treat To Catch a Predator as a curiosity from the MySpace years. It treats it as a machine. Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) works the chatrooms, then the doorway, then the camera. NBC has given him primetime. ABC’s Lost is eating the other side of the dial. The numbers have to land.

Acceptance is a hard pill to swallow. Perhaps that is why “tolerance” survives in the lexicon of diversity. Here, the word feels almost offensive. Who are we to tolerate someone simply because they fall outside a dictionary definition of who they are supposed to be? Early in Dorothy, Subbu (Sananth) quotes a line about gender discrimination being the worst form of bias. The film treats that not as a slogan but as a first cut. The binary comes first: male or female. Only after that hurdle do caste, class and the other divisions get their turn. Karthik Subbaraj starts with those smaller divisions. When Subbu befriends Karthi (Rishikanth), a young boy from a lower-caste, lower-class family, the film looks ready to walk a familiar road. This is still a Subbaraj film, though, and it is not heading towards a hackneyed triangle, least of all one built around a woman named Dorothy (Keerthy Suresh).

Can a German Shepherd out-act Brad Pitt? David Ayer’s survival thriller Heart of the Beast treats that as an open contest. Pitt plays James Belmont, a retired Special Forces veteran stranded in the Alaskan wild with Odin (Uber), his beloved combat dog. After their seaplane goes down, they have one job: cover 58 miles to a road before the land, the weather and their shared ghosts close in. The film’s real wager is simpler than the trek. Who owns the story: the global superstar, or the dog who never learned to miss a mark? Minutes into Heart of the Beast, Mauro Fiore’s camera and some of the year’s most exacting sound design by Aaron Glascock drop you into cold air and colder water. James suffers a mid-flight heart attack. The seaplane hits the lake. Odin is thrown into the trees. Clearly, this is not Marley & Me.