Mon, October 26 2026

The film’s simple but lovely conceit —involving angels and demons — is let down by the makers’ need to double down on ‘Aadu’-style juvenile comedy

In director Prince Joy’s Titans, there’s an earnest effort to make us rethink the way we imagine mystical concepts that feel larger than us. In a clip from the teaser that went viral, we see the character played by Jayasurya ask another person if the character played by Vinayakan can be trusted. “Does he look like someone who smokes or does drugs?” is the rhetorical question, as the camera cuts to a close-up of Vinayakan smiling innocently. It’s an easy laugh that plays on our stereotypes of what a smoker or an alcoholic looks like, made funnier by the real-life incidents that contributed to Vinayakan’s infamy.

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Sat, October 24 2026

Jayasurya and Vinayakan's fantasy entertainer, Titans, has its moments of humour and impressive technical craft, but an undercooked screenplay keeps it from realising its potential

Jayasurya playing a loser is fun. We have seen him ace that part in the Aadu franchise. Antony Yakuza in Titans is cut from almost the same cloth as Shaji Pappan, just more cutthroat. Antony is a small-time thug in Peter’s (Baby Jean) gang, boasting that he was once the right-hand man of Peter’s late father. But now Antony has become a liability to the gang, constantly sneered at and mocked, and rightly so. In his introduction scene, as two gangs are caught in a Mexican standoff, Antony is seen in the last row with a tiny pistol, which he ends up misfiring. The sneering continues.

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Fri, October 23 2026

One of the film’s few positives is that some of the fantasy elements are seamlessly weaved into the story of a man aspiring to be a big-time gangster, that they almost seem believable

Quite a few unusual writing choices can be seen in Prince Joy’s Titans, especially with how it treats its protagonist Antony Yakuza (Jayasurya), a small-time outlaw. Although the hangover of Jayasurya’s Shaji Pappan character from Aadu is very much visible in Antony, he is perhaps one of the most unheroic lead characters in a movie of this kind. In every situation, he is expected to either fail or do the wrong thing and he keeps up with that expectation much of the time. The other interesting approach is in how writer James Sebastian portrays the done-to-death fight between good and evil, going behind the mechanics of how both sides operate, with Lucifer getting a glitzy corporate office and the other side in a location that is a stark contrast. Much of this might have looked great at a conceptual level, but it does not translate that well onto the screen.

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Mon, October 26 2026

In Orijinal , the time travel trope becomes an excuse for the portrayal of a man introspecting his life choices and then using the accidental gift of time travel to make amends, not always in the right way

When the makers of Orijinal named the film so, with the play of alphabets signifying protagonist Rijin’s name, they were probably acutely aware of the lack of originality of the time travel concept on which the film is built. This awareness is also acknowledged in hat tips to classic films of the genre such as Back to the Future in the dialogues as well as through a character wearing a yellow jacket inspired from the popular German series Dark. Director Ramees attempts to make up for this lack of novelty by using the whole film to raise pertinent questions on originality, especially in cinema. The time travel trope becomes an excuse for the portrayal of a man introspecting his life choices and then using the accidental gift of time travel to make amends, not always in the right way. It mostly plays around the inherent wish in many humans to correct their past.

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Mon, October 26 2026

Manoj Bajpayee is the film's highlight, putting his low-life superiors in their place, elevating himself to the status of a hero who is on the take, but who will never be taken over.

Another of those iss raat ki subah nahin sagas, featuring bent cops, greedy politicians, gun-toting hoods, and sundry others chasing a common target, the best thing about Gajab Raat is its lead actor. Manoj Bajpayee, unerringly playing a very efficient but very corrupt cop whose conscience is not completely dead, kept me watching even when the pace slackened. A film whose level of interest depends entirely on how pacy it is has no business losing track of time, but given that it goes over two hours, what else could we have expected. After losing no time in getting everything kickstarted, with a grievously injured girl (Aditi Sandhya Sharma) slides out of a moving car in the middle of Connaught Place, followed by a rapid if reluctant response from an investigating officer (Manoj Bajpayee) and his team, a whole host of shady characters target the victim who is left fighting for her life.

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Mon, October 26 2026

The restless and uncertain Netflix thriller stars Manoj Bajpayee as a crooked Delhi cop who wades through a mysterious case over the course of one night

Gajab Raat is a film about one eventful night in New Delhi, the capital of what many say is the world’s biggest democracy. A corrupt cop, SI Ajay Nirvit (Manoj Bajpayee), is wondering how to fill his coffers when a high-profile case falls into his lap: a young and grievously injured woman (Aditi Sandhya Sharma) flings herself out of a moving car in front of Connaught Place’s PVR Plaza. Before Nirvit even reaches the spot, images shot by late-night moviegoers go viral in a very Bollywood-depicting-social-media way (flying tweets filling the screen). By the time the ambulance arrives, he is dealing with a fearsome social activist (Shraddha Das); he has gotten calls from higher-ups; no politician wants “women’s safety” to be an issue again. By the time the victim enters surgery in a curiously empty hospital, the important people who want her dead crash the party: a shady CBI officer (Akshay Oberoi) sweet-talks Nirvit, who’s still desperate to leverage his sudden spurt of power. Another CBI officer offsets the previous one. A handover of the case is discussed for ulterior motives. Nirvit becomes a shady broker of sorts, but he keeps wondering: Why is this comatose girl ruffling so many feathers?

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Sat, October 24 2026

Manoj Bajpayee has the fluctuating mood graph of his character down path whether hustling away his quick-witted energy in good faith or greed. It's a tricky terrain but few understand balance like this man.

Conscience awakens, corruption collapses and justice is served over the course of a night in Ritesh Shah’s Gajab Raat. Co-written by him and Producer Neeraj Pandey, Shah’s directorial debut captures flawed characters and grim realities through social structures and sardonic eyes leaving Manoj Bajpayee to hold the fort. There’s no cinematic style or technical wizardry to be found in Shah’s storytelling. Dialogues are his strong suit and he uses peppery exchanges to fire up drama on OTT screen. Inspired by the Neeraj Pandey school of corridor strolls, the screenplay engages in prolonged scenes of walking and talking on phone and in person at hotels and hospitals.

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Mon, October 26 2026

Can it even be a Luv Ranjan film without a girl being the bad guy? Or will we need to wait for the teesri baar for that to happen?

Three flatmates sitting around lumpy couches, slinging slang, while looking for the love of their lives : remember the 2011 Pyaar Ka Punchnama trio, which refreshed these tropes with a distinctly desi vibe?. Cut to 2026. The threesome slumming it on the outskirts of Delhi, more gender inclusive by dropping a guy for a gal, has switched it up for a swisher look, both in terms of office-and-home decor. What hasn’t changed, even if the director of that one has a producer’s credit on this one, is the search for The One: a school reunion is used as an excuse to hook up with those who remained stubbornly out of reach. Will he, won’t she? That eternal question, as well as bad mouthing frenemies, will never get old, whichever decade it may be, so if that’s the endeavour of the youngies at the centre of this Gen Z-coded rom com, so be it: my interest lay in whether this bunch of new faces will be able to pull it off.

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Mon, October 26 2026

Although the film is backed by competent performances, there is a certain plasticity to Pehla Pyaar Doosri Baar

Both OTT and social media discourse were years away when Pyaar Ka Punchnama came out in 2011. Before people could understand the difference between feminine and feminism, the “Every guy’s pain” monologue had gone “viral” on messaging apps. Newbie Kartik Aaryan got overnight popularity but everybody later wanted to know who that “Liquid” (played by Divyenndu) guy was. Pyaar Ka Punchnama popularised the Delhi corporate slave lingo and gave people characters they could relate their frustrations with. Everybody in the film spoke in a rant-y way, concreting people’s (read guys) desires and disdains. It was a relatable buddy comedy before we caught on its overwhelmingly misogynistic lens.

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Sat, October 24 2026

Mon, October 26 2026

Sonakshi Sinha-Zaheer Iqbal film has the kind of plot which can either fly or collapse. I’m here to tell you that this film never even achieves lift-off.

There’s this woman in 2026 who finds a flip-top phone which connects her to a man in 2016. Disbelief — is this some kind of bad joke — turns into shock. How is this even possible? On either side of the decade stand the happily-married Kiran (Sonakshi Sinha) and the jobless stalker Samar (Zaheer Iqbal) who fall into a circuitous loop of breaking-and-joining, till there arrives a tipping point. This is the kind of plot which can either fly or collapse, depending on the skill of the writers. I’m here to tell you that this film, which borrows its title from a film whose stalker hero saga became a super-hit in the 90s, never even achieves lift-off.

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Sat, October 24 2026

A science-fiction thriller about obsessive love that struggles to transform an intriguing premise into a compelling cinematic experience.

Obsessive love, with its unsettling mix of desire, delusion, and possessiveness, has long provided fertile ground for cinema. The idea of a man consumed by an all-encompassing fixation on a woman, and the havoc such an obsession wreaks on her life, can make for a compelling psychological thriller. But obsession, however disturbing or intense, cannot by itself sustain a two-hour film. Without a credible storyline, a tightly constructed screenplay and characters who behave in ways that make psychological sense, even the most intriguing premise risks becoming an exercise in narrative excess. Karan Rawal’s Tu Hai Meri Kiran, now in cinemas, borrows its title from the song of the same name in Yash Chopra’s Darr (1993), the blockbuster that turned a deranged stalker’s obsessive pursuit of a woman into one of Hindi cinema’s most memorable explorations of pathological love. Rawal’s film attempts to give this familiar theme an inventive twist by introducing a science-fiction element: a mysterious telephone connection between two people living a decade apart. Unfortunately, what promises to be an absorbing psychological thriller never quite manages to get off the ground.

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Sat, October 24 2026

Kiran and Samar connect across a decade through a mysterious flip phone. Their unusual bond turns disturbing as Samar's affection becomes obsessive.

If Shah Rukh Khan’s Darr taught us anything, it’s that a man who refuses to take no for an answer is a BIG red flag. Tu Hai Meri Kiran takes that obsession, throws in a time-travelling phone and stretches it across a decade. Sounds interesting, right? It is, until the film gets so busy juggling time, love and obsession that it forgets to make sense. Starring Sonakshi Sinha and Zaheer Iqbal, the film connects two strangers from 2016 and 2026 through an old flip phone. Samar (Zaheer) and Kiran (Sonakshi) strike up an unusual connection, and you expect them to solve a mystery, change their destinies or perhaps prevent something terrible from happening. Instead, things take a detour when Samar decides that talking to Kiran isn’t enough. He wants her.. and he wants her at any cost.

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Mon, October 26 2026

Fashioned as a coming-of-age saga of a young woman and a nation’s belief in itself, the film falls short.

A girl who never fits in her skin. A cricketer who comes into his own, leading his country to a colossal win. This parallel play between two characters is channelled through Doosra’s docu-fiction format: the choice is interesting, but the results are mixed. Tara (Plabita Borthakur) lives in a Rajasthan village with her conservative father (Ankur Vikal) and obedient mother (Samidha Guru), and an older brother (Navin Ratwa). Like all traditional families, Tara is expected to fetch and carry for the men — get me water, orders her father, and she has to leave her books, even as the bada bhai lounges — with her mother toeing the patriarchal line, because that’s what women have done for centuries. The film begins in the 90s, with a snapshot ride of the decade — the declaration of liberalisation, the empty RBI coffers, the banking on our gold reserves, the rath-yatra and the rise of the ruling party, amongst other important markers — along with developments in the Indian cricket team, with its highs and lows.

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Sat, October 24 2026

भारत में क्रिकेट सिर्फ एक खेल नहीं है, बल्कि वो जोश, जुनून, और जज्बा है जो हर जाति-धर्म, ऊंच-नीच से परे, हर तबके के दिल में एक सा धड़कता है। फील्ड पर एक पल में हार को जीत में बदल देने वाला यह करामाती खेल तमाम युवाओं की आंखों में सपने बोता है। क्रिकेट के इसी असर की बानगी है फिल्म ‘दूसरा’। फिल्म में क्रिकेट के मैदान पर मिली एक ऐतिहासिक जीत को घुटन भरी जिंदगी जी रही एक लड़की की आजादी से दिलचस्प अंदाज में जोड़ा गया है, लेकिन लड़की की कहानी पर कहीं न कहीं क्रिकेट का करिश्मा भारी पड़ जाता है। प्‍लॉट साल 1991 से 2002 तक दरम्यान का है। यहां दो कहानियां एक साथ चलती हैं। एक तरफ प्रिंस ऑफ कोलकाता सौरव गांगुली भारतीय क्रिकेट की पुरानी छवि तोड़कर कामयाबी की नई इबारतें लिख रहे थे, तो दूसरी ओर राजस्थान के एक रूढ़िवादी परिवार की बगावती बच्ची तारा (प्लाबिता बोरठाकुर) सौरव दादा की हर जीत में अपनी कामयाबी देख रही थी।

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Fri, October 23 2026

The docudrama forcibly seeks parallels between the life of a small-town girl in the 1990s and the rise of Indian cricket under captain Sourav Ganguly

A small-town girl, Tara (Plabita Borthakur), grows up in a patriarchal and regressive household in 1990s Rajasthan. She wants to break free; she is different from the rest. Like millions of Indians, she finds inspiration in the clutter-breaking career of a cricketer. So we see Tara’s coming-of-age journey intercut with the story of Sourav Ganguly transforming a meek Indian cricket team into a combative force. Doosra, directed by Abhinay Deo, is a docudrama that plays out like a fragile film-school idea inflated into a feature-length production. At its best, it feels like one of those patriotic World Cup commercials with farfetched allegories and corny copywriting. The entire cricket-as-a-metaphor-for-life analogy is well past its sell-by date.

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Sat, October 24 2026

Kaushal Oza’s film stars Hridansh Parekh, Gulshan Devaiah and Rasika Dugal.

Thomas Miranda (Hridansh Parekh) has two pressing concerns: where do babies come from, and how can he get a baby brother? When he was six, he wanted a zoo; now at seven, he is convinced that he needs a sibling. His attempt to find answers lead him to a priest, his kindly neighbour Mrs Braganza (Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal) and conversations with his two friends: Nigel, who has an insatiable appetite, and Murthy, a science enthusiast. Thomas’s parents Desmond (Gulshan Devaiah) and Jessie (Rasika Dugal) run a bakery, but business is slow. Jessie teaches piano, but dwindling interest among children in learning music threatens her livelihood. Desmond and Jessie’s disagreements are shaped by everyday pressures, though Thomas, naturally, sees things in much simpler terms.

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Sat, October 24 2026

A gentle slice-of-life tale about growing up and holding on to wonder.

When he witnesses his parents fighting over the everyday struggles of middle-class life—expenses, responsibilities and survival, seven-year-old Thomas Miranda (Hridansh Parekh) realises that life isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. Yet, in his innocent logic, he believes that a little brother could bring the family closer and make them happier. But with their finances crumbling, his parents – piano teacher Jesse (Rasika Dugal) and baker Desmond (Gulshan Devaiah) are too preoccupied with keeping their household afloat to think about expanding their family or rekindling their romance. At the heart of director Kaushal Oza’s tender tale is a child who wants to believe in miracles but must eventually confront reality. Set in the sleepy neighbourhood of Fontainhas in 1990s Goa, the film unfolds like a gentle childhood lullaby, evoking a time when life moved at a slower pace and childhood was unburdened by the noise of the world.

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Sat, October 24 2026

Little Thomas is a little overstretched in the last third of its 125-minute runtime, but it does something few children films are able to do in India: it lands gracefully.

It’s hard to make a worthy film for children in India, where the mainstream inherently infantilises its audience. It’s not surprising then that a large section of supposed films for children that come out in India, are often trying too hard. The lack of assurance stems from a film second-guessing itself, and serving what adults presume children will like. The result, more often, are films so unbearably screechy and annoying that one has to wonder who the filmmakers were even targeting in the first place. At the very least, Kaushal Oza’s Little Thomas doesn’t have that insecurity, as it balances its protagonist’s sense of wonder with adequate padding of the gritty world of the grown-ups, which pokes holes into the fantasy.

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Sat, October 24 2026

Director Kirtan Nadagouda's 418, backed by KGF and Salaar fame Prashanth Neel, is a horror thriller with a message about mental health. With a predictable storyline, the film relies heavily on jump scares and sound design to unsettle the audience.

Indian cinema has often diluted the horror genre by blending it with comedy, making genuinely frightening films a rarity. And even among those that attempt pure horror, finding one that delivers consistent scares is no easy task. 418, backed by KGF and Salaar filmmaker Prashanth Neel, made headlines after the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) reportedly found it too scary. After several delays, the film has finally arrived in theatres. Does it live up to the hype? Let’s find out.

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Sat, October 24 2026

Four cash-strapped friends turn to car theft as Inspector Sumati Bhalerao closes in. Their chase loses momentum amid an overextended screenplay and crowded subplots.

Four friends, empty pockets and a talent for turning every good day into a disaster. Chaar Yaar looks like a cool, young crime caper about hustling your way to the top. There are stolen cars, dangerous gangsters, messy friendships and a cop on their trail. The boys have the jugaad, the attitude and the ambition. They believe their story is an RGV-style drama, but what they don’t have is a screenplay that knows when to stop.

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Sat, October 24 2026

Fri, October 23 2026

The busy 8-episode series revolves around four talkative friends and their template-riddled descent into the Mumbai underworld

Somewhere between passive-viewing content and algorithmic entertainment, there is a field. Shows like Chaar Yaar (“Four Friends”) will meet you there. It is not bad. It is not good. It is arguably something worse: middling and overlong. The 8-episode crime drama takes a stacked cast full of watchable performers and flattens them into a distracted underworld tale that keeps chasing its own tail. Watching the series is strange because most scenes look fine at an individual level: the acting, writing, staging, banter. But they don’t make sense as an aggregative experience, pulling us in multiple directions like a shopkeeper trying to exhaust his stock on a lazy customer.

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Fri, October 23 2026

Created by Erin Foster, the romance series moves Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Noah (Adam Brody)'s relationship to the next stage, leading to lovely moments of togetherness.

It’s time to say mazel tov! Kristen Bell’s Joanne and Adam Brody’s Noah are now living together, and the former decides to take the next big steps in her conversion to Judaism. The Netflix rom-com had a shaky second season where the couple questioned their relationship status, but now, their bond is stronger than ever. Based on creator Erin Foster’s real-life experiences, Nobody Wants This Season 3 also explores the connection between Joanne and Noah’s siblings, Sasha (Timothy Simons) and Morgan (Justine Lupe). From family interferences to sibling tiffs, the new instalment has plenty of fun and chaotic sequences.

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Fri, October 23 2026

The bittersweet five-episode series revolves around a studious teenager who decides to lose her virginity, much to the chagrin of her single father

It’s easy to suggest that a low-key dramedy about girlhood feels refreshing because it’s written entirely by women. But that’s a generalisation of sorts. We’ve seen women-led shows behave like their sensationalist counterparts in an aggressive tit-for-tat way; they tend to be reactionary — a statement to all testosterone-driven productions — rather than natural. The reason Matargashti works is because it refuses to look like the defiant story of a 19-year-old girl. It doesn’t pretend to be the unapologetic female (or feminist) version of those sex comedies featuring funny boys trying to lose their virginity. If anything, it reclaims the diversity of middle-class conflict from the clutches of male-created TVF family universes. You almost don’t expect the setting to be Lucknow. It unfolds like a lightweight antidote, not a conscious subversion, to a genre largely dominated by men.

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Fri, October 23 2026

Directors Steve Cox and Matthew Walker pull off a wholesome entertainer, which is simple, straight and touching, without having pretensions, or songs-and-dances, about being anything else.

With 190 episodes over seven series, Shaun the Sheep is among the longest-running animated series on British and German television, with the characters around for over 30 years. In all that time, the sheep have hardly changed. It is a remarkable success given that the stop-motion animation involves no dialogue; its animals don’t talk and its humans only utter unintelligible words. The Beast of Mossy Bottom underlines why, as directors Steve Cox and Matthew Walker pull off a wholesome entertainer, which is simple, straight and touching, without having pretensions, or songs-and-dances, about being anything else.

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