Udita Jhunjhunwala

There is something almost inevitable about Drishyam: The Conclusion arriving in theatres on 2 October. The date has been woven so deeply into the mythology of Vijay Salgaonkar and his family it seems to belong, at least partly, to this fictional alibi. In the third and final chapter of Abhishek Pathak’s Hindi-language franchise, the familiar date returns, as does the question that has followed Vijay (Ajay Devgn) since 2015: can he stay one step ahead of the law? Six months after the events of the second film, Meera Deshmukh (Tabu) and her husband Mahesh (Rajat Kapoor) are still living with the loss of their son, Sam. The case of his death, however, has been closed. The Salgaonkar family has moved on, but Meera has not. Her need for justice has been replaced by a desire for revenge. When a senior police officer reveals that new evidence has surfaced, the fragile truce ruptures. The case is reopened, and Vijay once again finds himself being hunted.

Balaji Mohan’s six-episode Tamil series on Netflix sets up a wager between chemistry and compatibility. What makes two people fall in love: chemistry or compatibility? #Love gives the familiar romantic question a contemporary spin through dating apps, algorithms and start-up culture. The result is breezy viewing that raises potentially interesting questions about how we connect. Written by Nirmal Williams along with Sharada Subramanian and Shweta Chakravarty, the series revolves around two competing dating apps. Tara (Aishwarya Lekshmi), the self-made founder of Found, believes that relationships are built on compatibility. Matthew (Arjun Das), a wealthy investor and adventure junkie, backs Find My Bae, which puts chemistry first.

There are movies that make you jump out of your seat, and then there are movies that make you sit very still, your shoulders slowly tightening, waiting for something terrible to happen. Heart of the Beast belongs to the latter category. Brad Pitt leads this affecting survival drama in which the bond between a retired soldier and his service dog becomes the heart of the story. Director David Ayer’s film is remarkably spare. There is very little dialogue, few characters and, for long stretches, just Brad Pitt and Odin, a German Shepherd, navigating an unforgiving wilderness. Yet the film rarely feels empty. Its silences become part of the storytelling, allowing the landscape, the sounds of the forest, Jared Michael Fry’s evocative score and the two central performances to carry the weight.

Prime Video’s new Hindi original film centres on Shyamili ‘Shy’ Das (Aarushi Bajaj), a college student who has her entire life mapped out. Shy has absorbed the rules of The Perfect Woman, a book that promises to show women how to get life right. Plan A revolves around Shy’s future with boyfriend Mayank (Piyush Khati), the heir to a business empire, and an imagined version of herself that bears little resemblance to her actual existence. Shy has no Plan B.

Mirzapur: The Movie has the peculiar challenge of starting in the middle of a story, a set of relationships and a world that its audience already knows intimately. There are no introductions, no explanations, no time wasted telling us who these people are, what they want and what they mean to each other. They arrive on the big screen with histories, grudges, loyalties and complicated equations that audiences have watched unfold over three seasons of Mirzapur. During the movie’s 197-minute running time, writer Puneet Krishna’s screenplay begins to introduce a new plot and new players, and what initially seems like an elaborate exercise in fan service gradually finds a life of its own.

Before Anthony Bourdain became the chef, author and TV host who taught an audience to eat, travel and look at the world with curiosity, he was Tony, a 19-year-old who didn’t quite know what to do with himself. “I was—to be frank—a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking,” Bourdain wrote of himself in Kitchen Confidential, his 2000 memoir. It is an unusually unsparing assessment, and very much the man we meet in director Matt Johnson’s coming-of-age film about the young Bourdain. Johnson and his co-writers Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels and Lou Howe take their ideas and inspiration from early chapters of the bestselling Kitchen Confidential, particularly Bourdain’s experiences in Provincetown, while taking cinematic liberties to shape it into a comic drama. Tony is less interested in recreating a life than in capturing a formative moment.

Some films return because they have a story left to tell. Others return because they want to revisit a memory. Awarapan 2 sits somewhere in between—revisiting a 2007 film that underperformed theatrically but slowly acquired a second life on television, streaming platforms and through Emraan Hashmi’s enduring image as Shivam Pandit. Nearly two decades later, the sequel continues that story while also serving as a re-entry into its mood.

Schools have long served as fertile ground for stories, but few recent series have captured the joy, absurdity and quiet idealism of a government school quite like Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya. Sharing the gentle spirit of Panchayat and Gram Chikitsalay, this easygoing seven-part show is funny, sharp and only occasionally sermonises. Created and executive-produced by Biswapati Sarkar and Sameer Saxena under the Posham Pa Pictures banner, the Hindi-language Prime Video comedy feels like a natural extension of the storytelling both have come to be associated with through shows such as Maamla Legal Hai and Home Shanti. Saxena has also helped shape the observational worlds of Gullak and Kota Factory. This latest series brings a similar specificity and humour to a struggling government school in the Delhi region. Sarkar and Saxena also pop up in brief cameos.