Tue, April 15 2025

Expanding Survival Saga Starring Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey Takes Series To Dark Places

The post-apocalyptic drama The Last of Us instantly became a global hit after its release in 2023 on HBO. Based on the enormously popular game, which sees players take on character perspectives, the series returns with a darker tone and new conflicts. The first episode reintroduces viewers to the story while taking the story down a dangerous path that could expose several characters. Co-created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, The Last of Us Season 2 wastes no time in getting hooked in again. Returning with a five-year jump, the show picks up with an estranged Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) adjusting to life in Jackson, Wyoming, and integrating within the community there. Within the safe haven, there are lots of little conflicts while other threats seem to be on the horizon. The premiere episode is set around New Year’s Eve 2029, which should indicate promise but instead holds foreboding for the residents of the tight-knit community seeking a peaceful life away from the pandemic and the zombie clickers infecting the rest of the world.

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Sun, April 13 2025

Viral online content has now begun seeping into screenplays, to elicit easy applause. This “memeification” of screenplays is not necessarily a bad thing, especially in cases where it works like a charm

Cinema has for long provided an endless supply of content for social media memes, but the flow appears to have reversed in recent years. First came the influencers with their massive online reach, bagging noticeable roles. Now, viral online content has begun seeping into screenplays, to elicit easy applause. For instance, in debutant Sivaprasad’s Maranamass, co-written with Siju Sunny, Suresh Krishna’s recent online image as the “convincing star” is used to the hilt in one of the many humorous passages in the film. This “memeification” of screenplays is not necessarily a bad thing, especially in cases where it works like a charm. Incidentally, at the centre of Maranamass is Luke (Basil Joseph), a popular YouTuber and a self-proclaimed ‘sigma male,’ who has become a headache to the people in his neighbourhood owing to his public-spirited actions, like sticking wall posters of the panchayat president’s Internet search history or putting the local police station on sale to convey a point to the idle police officers. So it is not a surprise that when a series of killings of senior citizens takes place, the needle of suspicion points towards him.

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Sat, April 12 2025

The film pulls us in right from the first frame, and even when there are moments when the grip loosens, it gets a hold back at just the right times.

Serial killer films are mosty about unmasking the killer and unravelling the reason behind the killings. And then there are films where you know the killer’s identity right from the first scene, and it is all about how they are brought to justice. And then there is Sivaprasad’s Maranamass which tells us about the killer, his modus operandi, and his targets. There is no ‘surprise’ in what happens in the life of this serial killer who has a method to his madness of stuffing a banana in the mouth of his victims. Of course, the identity of the serial killer, played to perfection by Rajesh Madhavan, is known to the audience, and yet… we are invested in what happens. Why? Because the makers of Maranamass fill the narrative with eclectic characters who have individual arcs, and quirks.

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Fri, April 11 2025

Director Sivaprasad's 'Maranamass' is a dark comedy starring Basil Joseph, Rajesh Madhavan, Siju Sunny and Suresh Krishna. The film has plenty of laughs, but also meanders as it progresses.

Dark comedy is a tricky genre that could yield results both ways. The film can turn out insanely funny, or it can fall flat on its face. Of late, there are a lot of dark comedies coming from South. Director Sivaprasad’s ‘Maranamass’ is an addition to the dark comedy genre with Basil Joseph at its core. Basil, who is on a golden run with multiple hits to his credit, picks up Maranamass, elevates it and proves why he is the one to watch out for. A serial killer, known as the banana killer because of his signature move, has murdered three elderly men in a village in Kerala. The police are naturally inclined to suspect Luke PP (Basil Joseph) as the one, courtesy his off-beat character. From burning a school staff room to leaking the search history of a politician, he is the ‘destructive’ force in the village. Luke is in love with Jessie (Anishma Anikumar). But, Jessie is unimpressed with him and has broken up with him.

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Sat, April 12 2025

Chhorii 2 is so obvious in its badness that it makes dismissing it a lesser problem. The real horror? A third part in the works — and Nushrratt Bharuccha's painfully grating return.

If there is a perfect audience for a horror film, I’d like to believe it is me. This is not false bravado but an honest confession. Bring in someone with green eyes, throw in a jump scare, pull someone from under the bed, and you will see me scream my lungs out. I am always scared and always jumpy. I am the reason that other people, those not scared in the least, are rattled because I make my fear everyone’s business. And yet, Vishal Furia’s Chhorii 2, Vishal Furia’s sequel to his 2021 film, left me disinterested, unscared and, worse, bored. In the last couple of years, there has been a resurgence of the horror genre, except that the effect is softened by comedy. Horror comedy, the consequent hybrid result, has in turn evolved into a commercial goldmine. The context is important because Furia does not give in despite obvious temptations. He remains admirably focused and crafts Chhorii 2 in the same world as Chhorii. Except even the latter, a remake of his 2017 Marathi film Lapachhapi, was not effective to begin with.

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Sat, April 12 2025

Sat, April 12 2025

When Chhorii 2 begins, it doesn’t just pick up where the original story left off. It drags us deeper into a mythology soaked in fear, grief, and generational trauma. Seven years have passed since Sakshi escaped that cursed village. She’s now a mother and someone who’s tried very hard to build a life from the wreckage of what she survived. But as fate would have it, she gets dragged back, literally in one sense, to the village. Here is all you need to know about Chhorii 2, its plot, ending analysis, release date, cast, reviews, where to watch, and more. Sakshi is now raising her daughter, Ishani, a quiet child with a mysterious condition — her skin burns in sunlight. It’s not fully explained, but it seems to be photosensitivity. It reminds one of the Nicole Kidman-starrer psychological horror movie The Others (2002). Except instead of a Victorian mansion, this one is set against the backdrop of rural superstitions and unresolved trauma.

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Sat, April 12 2025

Fri, April 11 2025

Adhik Ravichandran turns Good Bad Ugly into a chaotic shrine to nostalgia and heroism. It’s a party you can dance through, if you're in the mood

Adhik Ravichandran’s cinema is a genre unto itself—it’s not so much a film as a rave party. And like all parties, some are more intoxicated than others. It’s not a space for nuanced conversations or emotional coherence. At any given moment, someone’s dying in slow motion, as we laugh and cheer or both. A moment later, the protagonist (AK, played by—you know who) is making soft, sorrowful eyes, while his wife makes the strange transitions between gratitude and anger. This isn’t a flaw with the film; this is its mood. Loud music, neon lights, stylised violence, dancing, homages—everyone’s high on one thing: stardom. Specifically, Ajith Kumar’s. If you should not really be one with the crowd, well, GBU, maamey.

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Fri, April 11 2025

Nothing in Adhik Ravichandran's Good Bad Ugly is original, and more importantly, nothing truly feels sincere. It's a disservice not just to Ajith, but to his entire fandom.

Here’s a social experiment. Pick someone who is unaware of the beats of the hero worship and masala film in Indian cinema. Scratch that. Let’s pick Tamil cinema because the beast is almost unrecognisable at this point as the concept of stardom is nearing, if not an end, at least a lull. Ageing male stars fall back on their history, and idolising filmmakers lean on intertextuality to create hysterical theatrical moments. Show them Adhik Ravichandran’s new film with Ajith Kumar, Good Bad Ugly, and ask if there is any possibility that this is a spoof or a parody. They will most likely answer in the affirmative. To the innocent bystander, Good Bad Ugly comes across as a spoof, as if CS Amudhan made another Thamizh Padam (2010) solely focusing on Ajith and his career. The greatest trick Adhik ever pulled is convincing Ajith and maybe the audience that he is making a fan service film. What he’s really done instead is lampoon the star for two hours and twenty minutes. But again, it really depends on who you ask.

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Sat, April 12 2025

Sat, April 12 2025

Bazooka tries to mimic The Usual Suspects but fails with predictable twists and no real conflict. Despite Mammootty's style, pretentious direction and weak writing hurt the film.

The impact of Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects is so enormous and timeless that even after three decades, filmmakers are unable to escape its influence on heist thrillers. Bazooka is another attempt at creating an elusive character like Keyser Soze. The catch is that such an attempt requires several things to fall into place, including clever casting that throws the audience off track and creates red herrings. Director Deeno Dennis misses out on this, leading to a predictable twist that’s visible from the get-go. The genius of The Usual Suspects lies in how the characters become real—everyone involved in the heist has something at stake, making their downfall feel impactful. Bazooka, on the other hand, lacks any real conflict. By the end of the film, when the motive behind the gamer villain is revealed, it feels like we’ve been played by the makers.

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Fri, April 11 2025

For a film branded as a “gaming thriller”, ‘Bazooka’ ends up as a dull film with barely an exciting passage of play worthy of the star it is supposedly celebrating

A few late flourishes can sometimes redeem a film even though it might be hurtling downhill till that point. But, in Deeno Dennis’s directorial debut Bazooka, that supposed redemption arc comes way beyond a point where most of us would have stopped caring for the characters or the plot. It comes almost like a dessert that arrives after a tasteless main course that made your stomach feel queasy. As for the dessert, beyond the dressing on top, it turns out to be the same old under it. In Bazooka, hardly a moment passes without a background score. In a film tailor-made for the superstar’s fans, a good part of this score is dedicated to accentuating his every random movement. It begins right from the moment we see John Caesar (Mammootty) at a bus stop, reading a self-help book and waiting for a bus — inside which a good part of the film takes place. But then, ACP Benjamin Joshua (Gautham Vasudev Menon) also gets the same treatment when we first see him getting out of his car to carry out a routine vehicle check. This is not surprising in a film which survives mostly on its cosmetics.

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Sat, April 12 2025

Featuring a committed Viola Davis at its centre, Prime Video's action-thriller is like something that the BeerBiceps crowd would watch for geopolitical insight.

Viola Davis is an EGOT. She’s one of only 20 people in history — fewer, when you consider persons of colour — to have won at least one Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. She’s done August Wilson on the stage and screen; she went to Juilliard, like Jessica Chastain and Adam Driver. For her to star in a movie like G20 — think Air Force One, but worse — isn’t unlike Javed Akhtar waking up one morning, slipping into a crisp kurta, and deciding to script one of KRK’s rant videos. Released on Prime Video, G20 is a glorified bargain bin movie — the kind of movie for which Amazon should be paying you, and not the other way around. Davis plays POTUS Danielle Sutton, an Iraq War veteran who became famous after being photographed carrying a baby out of a bombed building. The movie doesn’t show us what happened next, but you could easily imagine Danielle being deified in the press, buying into her own myth, and deciding to run for president. America loves its celebrities, and electing Danielle into office is exactly what you’d expect from the folks who’ve voted Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump into power. We first meet Danielle as she’s disciplining her teenage daughter for giving the secret service the slip, and partying with her friends at a local bar.

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Thu, April 10 2025

Directed by Patricia Riggen, the political thriller allows its star, Viola Davis, to play the action hero, but its central story is flimsy.

In the new Amazon Prime Video action film, Viola Davis checked off two items in her career that most of her male contemporaries have probably done several times over theirs. G20 sees the Oscar winner as American President Danielle Sutton, who is heading an important international summit when it is hijacked by terrorists. The action thriller, directed by Patricia Riggen, doesn’t have anything new to offer. Although Davis gets the chance to save the day over and over again. Before heading to South Africa for the G20 summit, President Sutton has a mini crisis to deal with at home after her teenage daughter Serena (Marsai Martin) is caught at a party after she snuck out without her security detail. Soon, the Sutton family has bigger problems to contend with. The hotel where the G20 summit is held is taken over by terrorists who oppose the world leaders plans to end world hunger through cryptocurrency. Neither side’s plans are explained properly. Luckily, Sutton and a handful of leaders manage to escape, and soon it is a game of cat and mouse.

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Sat, April 12 2025

The Legend of Hanuman, which enters its sixth season this week, has consistently pushed the bar in retelling the Ramayana through animation on OTT across age groups, supplemented by its new-age visualisation, playful storytelling and impactful writing, exploring major events, the traits of each of its pivotal characters (apart from Hanuman too) with equal sincerity. The new season is about the fall of Ravan as much as the rise of Hanuman. Greed and ego get the better of Ravan. Emerging victorious over Ram is no longer his only priority, he wants the world for himself. While losing the support of Vibheeshan (and Mandodari partially), he misses being with his other brothers, sons (who’re no more) and hopes to meet them on the other side of the world.

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Sat, April 12 2025

Amateur, directed by James Hawes, is a contemporary adaptation of the novel of the same name, which was previously made into a film featuring John Savage and Christopher Plummer. This spy thriller, while not groundbreaking, delivers sufficient thrills. It could easily be likened to a Jason Bourne or Jack Reacher film, but instead, we follow Charlie, the titular Amateur. Unlike James Bond, who possesses a license to kill, Charlie holds a license as a cryptographer for the CIA. With an IQ exceeding 170, he adeptly gathers and synthesizes information from diverse sources, quickly proving his exceptional skills. It is also evident that he is deeply in love with his wife, Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), and their affection is reciprocated. However, when Sarah embarks on a business rip to London, she never returns, having been taken hostage and subsequently killed.

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Fri, April 11 2025

Marking Dharma Productions’ foray into Punjabi cinema, Gippy Grewal-starrer Akaal’s grand ambitions are thwarted by an underwhelming storyline.

Akaal movie review: Known for their bravery and courage despite all odds, the awe-inspiring legends of Sikh warriors have reverberated through the annals of history. Inspired by historical events, Gippy Grewal’s Akaal (2025), starring Grewal, Nimrat Khaira, Gurpreet Ghuggi, and Nikitin Dheer, is the story of a Sikh warrior who protects his village in the face of gruesome attacks by the enemy. With Bollywood embracing a wave of high-octane dramas inspired by mythology and history, it was only a matter of time before Punjabi cinema followed suit. Sharan Art’s Mastaney (2023), starring Tarsem Jassar, captivated audiences with its portrayal of Sikh valour in the face of invading forces in the 18th century, unfolding historical events against a visually captivating backdrop. Written and directed by Grewal, Akaal sets its sights further, which is reflected in the grand scale and detailed execution of the film. Released in Hindi and Punjabi, it also marks the foray of Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions into Punjabi cinema.

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Thu, April 10 2025

Fri, April 11 2025

The film makes a choice not to dwell on the Israeli-Palestine conflict which looks myopic in the current context.

The 1972 Munich Olympics massacre famously featured in Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005), where 11 Israeli athletes were taken hostage and later killed. The event became a springboard in the Eric Bana-starrer, to showcase Mossad’s efforts for retribution – through a series of assassinations. This was before actors, filmmakers called out Hollywood’s implicit Islamophobia – and the fatigue around the binary depictions of Muslims in mainstream Hollywood as dutiful or barbaric. Relatively speaking, Spielberg’s film was pretty nuanced for its time – even showcasing an argument between Bana and a Muslim character in an apartment, which they’re forced to share at one point. A lot has changed in the last two decades leading up to the release of Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5, especially with Hollywood’s apparent ambivalence around Israel’s ongoing bombing of Gaza, triggered by the October 7 attack carried out by Hamas. As much as Fehlbaum’s film would like to revel in being a single-room thriller and tackle the ethical dilemmas that the ABC team went through while observing the coverage of a tragedy, it’s simply not enough for the macro storytelling elements at play today.

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Fri, April 11 2025

This modest film’s most sparkling trait is its determination to bring selflessness and community back to mainstream cinema.

It is easy to forget the what we have lost because of Hindi cinema’s tilt towards the right. Initially a mouthpiece for secular values in a post-Partition India, the film industry soon became an emblem for the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (culture). It was the place where a Muslim man would become a newly-independent India’s first superstar, where dialogues in Urdu, Khariboli and Hindi would invent a new concoction of Hindustani, which would trickle down into everyday parlance. It’s only in the movies where the three biggest stars of their time would get separated at birth into homes of different religions, only to reunite and take down the villain in the climax. Sure, some part of it was an echo of popular sentiment, and carried a whiff of opportunism. But the tragedy of our new-age Hindi cinema is how it’s eviscerated even performative niceness in favour of unbridled, authentic hate.

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Sat, March 15 2025

Fri, March 14 2025

Avinash Das’s tribute to the spirit of India makes a timely and touching statement

Sometimes, the timing of a film’s release makes it special. A few years back, Inn Galiyon Main would have been dubbed dated for repeating the obvious. Today, its theme is here and now. Mostly, social values inform a film, but sometimes, a social churn leads to a creative outpouring. At a time when festivals and cricket matches have become a stick to browbeat a community, Inn Galiyon Main celebrates Holi and Eid at a space where Hanuman and Rahman Gali coalesce in Lucknow. An ode to the syncretic culture that has almost been reduced to a slur in hate-filled narratives on social media, the film exposes the divisive politics fuelled by cheap data with a poetic parable.

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Fri, April 11 2025

Created by Jonathan Tropper, the dramedy features an aimless Jon Hamm who goes from finance man to thief.

Your Friends and Neighbors really wants you to feel bad about Jon Hamm’s Andrew Cooper, a suburban family man who loses it all and resorts to stealing from the wealthy neighbourhood. But the deeper trouble Coop lands himself in, the harder it becomes to worry about his easily avoidable problems. Hamm gives Coop some depth as he struggles after life post-divorce. However, creator Jonathan Tropper’s dark comedy tiptoes around certain issues while giving the protagonist opportunities to keep behaving badly. The Apple TV+ series deviates midway with a big twist that leadens the narrative even further. After 18 years of marriage, newly divorced Coop (Hamm) finds himself adrift from his wife, Mel (Amanda Peet), and teenagers in more ways than one. He resents his friend Nick (Mark Tallman), who is now dating Mel. To make matters worse, he is fired from his job as a hedge fund manager. Living in a wealthy community and taking care of his family, who have expensive taste, gets worrisome too. Coop also takes his sister Ali (Lena Hall), who is struggling with mental health issues. So what does Coop do? He begins to steal from his friends and neighbours to fund his lifestyle. Coop manages to stay under the radar for a bit and even picks up a partner. Until, however, the house of cards that he’s erected around himself begins to come down.

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