Sat, September 13 2025

In the Konkan region of Maharashtra, Dashavatar presentations continue to be a huge draw. The traditional theatre form is centred around the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu, and its performers command immense respect and popularity. Subodh Khanolkar’s Dashavatar is the story of one such performer – Babuli Mestri (Dilip Prabhavalkar). Having performed in the traditional theatre all his life, Babuli is almost synonymous to Dashavatar in his village, so much that his entry in the presentation is all that people look forward to. Age is fast catching up with Babuli, but he refuses to hang his boots despite repeated pleas from his doctor and even his son Madhav (Siddharth Menon). Babuli promises to retire only when Madhav gets a job and starts earning. When that happens, the veteran performer stays true to his word and announces his last performance during a Mahashivratri celebration. On the other hand, Madhav also decides to ask for his girlfriend Vandana’s (Priyadarshini Indalkar) hand in marriage on the auspicious day. But tragedy strikes, derailing everyone’s plans and putting in motion a series of entirely unexpected events.

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Sat, September 13 2025

Raghav Khanna’s documentary on Indian-American cricketer Unmukt Chand is shaped by Bollywood stageyness and empty access

In Indian cricket, as in most religions, the tragedies are as mythical as the triumphs. Certain names become adjectives in the lexicon of the game — antonyms to the gods, like cautionary tales mentioned in the same breath as the fairytales. It’s hard to love Sachin Tendulkar without grieving for Vinod Kambli: two sides of the same Bombay-fabled coin. Similarly, it’s hard to worship Virat Kohli without feeling for Unmukt Chand: two sides of the Delhi-swag coin. Chand’s story is almost like an alternate-reality version of Kohli’s — a batting prodigy, a dizzying rise as Under-19 World Cup winning captain and star batsman, a lucrative IPL contract, a Ranji knock to remember, unprecedented brand endorsements for a teenager, and suddenly, a failed transition to senior cricket. He left India at 28 after all doors of an international debut were shut, moved to the USA to play minor-league cricket and work towards a 2024 T20 World Cup spot as an American-Indian player. As someone who’s closely followed his career in the hope of a miraculous resurgence, I’ve often found myself randomly googling “Unmukt Chand” to see what he’s up to. There are no ready answers. The fame-to-anonymity curve is second to none; being forgotten is worse than being notorious (public scrutiny is reserved for those like Prithvi Shaw — whose genius as a 12-year-old unfolded in the 2013 documentary Beyond All Boundaries).

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Fri, September 12 2025

Though director Koushik Pegallapati’s Telugu film offers a potent mix of drama, horror, humour and thrills, it doesn’t rise above the sum of its parts

Film after film, horror enthusiasts continue to get a raw deal as storytellers lazily rehash old tropes for cheap thrills — a haunted house, mysterious deaths, a ghost with a flashback, a possessed woman, and a man who braves it all to end the menace. However, Kishkindhapuri is at least forthright about not being any different, embracing its masala mishmash exterior earnestly. Kishkindhapuri, while showcasing glimpses of a tragedy at a radio station in the 1980s, shifts to a contemporary timeline with the story of a much-in-love couple, Raghav (Bellamkonda Sreenivas) and Mythili (Anupama Parameswaran), who offer spooky experiences in haunted houses through their ghost walking tours. The tours, while deceptively curated, bank more on their participants’ fears.

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Fri, September 12 2025

Director Vishal Venkat's 'Bomb', starring Arjun Das, Kaali Venkat, and Shivathmika Rajasekhar, is a rural drama that explores the themes of superstition and faith. While the film's messaging is commendable, the format doesn't lend enough to an enjoyable social commentary.

‘Bomb’ begins with a bedtime story about a fictional village, Kallakammaipatti, which splits into Kallapatti and Kammaipatti due to superstition, faith, and perceived superiority. This separation sparks a rivalry that is the film’s primary conflict: the ongoing division between the two communities shaped by these beliefs. The story sets the tone for a quirky social commentary, but raises the question: Does director Vishal Venkat execute this central conflict effectively? Let’s find out! Mani Muthu (Arjun Das) and Kathiravan (Kaali Venkat) belong to different communities. Kathiravan, an atheist, looks beyond local politics and dreams of bringing water, electricity, and education to the village. Fighting a lonely battle, he often takes refuge in alcohol. His sister (Shivathmika Rajasekhar) cares for him and secretly harbours feelings for Mani Muthu.

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Fri, September 12 2025

How does artificial intelligence interact with a developing economy, particularly at its lowest rung? Humans in the Loop hits like the casual threats you hear in corporate offices: “Everyone’s replaceable. This is the AI era,” echoing memories from when computers began replacing paper and people. The immediate question then, as I recall, was: “Who will operate them?” Okay, let’s face it. There is no running away from technology. It will only get sharper and smarter, but will human beings grow more intelligent alongside it? In Aranya Sahay’s quiet yet powerful feature, we meet a sharp woman whose natural intellect is tested as she struggles to earn a livelihood. Set in India’s rural Jharkhand, the film opens with Nehma (Sonal Madhushankar), who belongs to the Oraon tribe, failing a CAPTCHA test in a village recruitment drive. She fidgets her fingers, applying human logic as she identifies traffic lights, taxis, and zebra crossings. It is important to mention her caste identity in light of her marital status (or its legitimacy at all). Nehna’s ex-husband, Ritesh (Vikas Gupta), seeks custody of their children, one of them a toddler. A regular job is the only way Nehma would stand a chance against the upper-caste man who lives in the state capital, Ranchi.

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Sat, September 6 2025

Using the motif of a porcupine, considered one of the shyest beings in nature, the film emphasises on how one has to be cautious and mindful enough with their surroundings.

I’ve always likened the opening stretch of a film to a train about to leave the station. The best films give the impression that the train has been running long before we boarded, and one that will continue after we get off. It’s during these opening moments that, as viewers, we decide if we want to get on the train and go on a journey the director has planned for us. In Aranya Sahay’s Humans in the Loop, this opening stretch features a woman waiting to take a test at a data labelling centre, in rural Jharkhand. Haunted by visions of a childhood spent with a porcupine in her ancestral village, one she’s forced to unceremoniously return to after her divorce begins, Nehma (Sonal Madhushankar) fails the test for a job at the centre. She has an infant tied to her back, as her friend pleads her case in front of a superior. “She belongs to the local tribe, and is undergoing her divorce. She really needs it,” the friend advocates in front of the manager (Gita Guha). “She’s a graduate and fairly acquainted with computers.”

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Wed, March 12 2025

Aranya Sahay’s beautifully conceived story won top honours at the 16th Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes)

A great concept can be a curse. Take the one-liner of Humans in the Loop, for instance. An Adivasi single mother named Nehma (Sonal Madhushankar) starts working as a ‘data labeller,’ a job that requires her to train AI models to recognise the world in pictures and videos. This one-liner alone is so fertile — so ripe with cultural parables and documentary minimalism — that it’s hard to imagine a fictional film that expands on it. What can a feature-length story express that isn’t already implicit?

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Thu, September 11 2025

Tue, September 9 2025

The lighthearted tone is kept up for much of the film but runs out steam in the end.

A markedly distinct genre of Mumbai films have emerged in the Hindi mainstream (Kaun Pravin Tambe?, Lootcase, Madgaon Express) in the last decade. The director is Mumbai-bred for the most part, the dialogues flits from Hindi, Marathi and the in-between language laced with Mumbai slang. The underdog protagonist usually lives in a cramped central Mumbai chawl, and the films tend to have the wry humour and the wisdom of the city’s many pot-holed streets. Chinmay Mandlekar’s Inspector Zende fits into this slew of breezy, playful and intentionally cartoonish films — which are modest in their ambitions, enjoyable in the moment and rarely able to sustain the joys of their first hour. Madhukar Zende (Manoj Bajpayee) is a cog in the Mumbai police machinery, battling the underworld. Like any good fielder in the 30-yard circle, Zende can anticipate his moment to shine. Whether it’s out of a sense of duty or his ‘supercop’ ego is up for debate. A thing I liked about Mandlekar’s film is how it accounts for someone’s ability to exaggerate while regaling anecdotes. It’s amused by the self-mythologising, while also being affectionate towards its subject. It results in a film that is consistently amusing, even if it doesn’t break any new ground.

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Sun, September 7 2025

70 के दशक में ‘बिकनी किलर’ के नाम से मशहूर हुए और दिल्ली की तिहाड़ जेल से कैदियों व स्टाफ को नशीला खाना खिला कर फरार हुए कुख्यात अपराधी चार्ल्स शोभराज पर दुनिया भर में किताबें लिखी गईं और उसकी कहानी को सिनेमा में भी उतारा गया। तो नेटफ्लिक्स पर आई इस फिल्म में नया क्या हो सकता है? जवाब है-यह फिल्म चार्ल्स की बजाय मुंबई पुलिस के उन इंस्पैक्टर मधुकर झेंडे के बारे में है जिन्होंने चार्ल्स को पहले 1971 में पकड़ा था और फिर 1986 में उसके तिहाड़ से भागने के बाद गोआ से। चूंकि चार्ल्स ने अपनी कहानी के अधिकार यहां-वहां बेचे हुए हैं इसलिए इस फिल्म में सिर्फ इंस्पैक्टर झेंडे का नाम असली है और बाकी सब के नाम, काम बदल दिए गए हैं। मसलन चार्ल्स शोभराज यहां कार्ल भोजराज है, ‘बिकनी किलर’ की बजाय ‘स्विमसूट किलर’ है, नशीले खाने की बजाय नशीली खीर है, वगैरह-वगैरह…! लेकिन इससे क्या फर्क पड़ता है, कहानी मज़ेदार होनी चाहिए, काल्पनिक हो या वास्तविक। और बस, यहीं आकर यह फिल्म मात खा गई है क्योंकि इसे ‘मज़ेदार’ बनाने के लिए जो रंग-ढंग चुने गए हैं उससे यह हल्की, कमज़ोर और उथली हुई है।

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Wed, September 10 2025

Fever FM

Sun, September 7 2025

Following “Animal” instincts, director Harsha creates the fourth instalment of the ‘Baaghi’ series for the hack of it

During the pan-Indian wave, one thing that has reached Bollywood shores from the South is the toolkit of the Iron Age. Armed with cleavers, these days our heroes are slashing and slashing hard. It is not always when the stakes or tempers run high. It is just for the hack of it. Bored of firing gunshots from a distance, now they wield an axe and a hammer to grind the opposition to pulp. With an adult certificate becoming a sign of misplaced maturity, the makers can play with as much blood as they want. There is nothing like excess anymore. If Ranbir Kapoor can do it, how can Tiger Shroff be far behind? In this fourth installment of the action franchise, Ronny (Tiger) is madly in love with a girl named Alisha (debutante Harnaaz Sandhu), who the world feels doesn’t exist.

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Sat, September 6 2025

Tue, September 9 2025

The fifth season of the dependable comedy show explores newer mysteries in the Arconia building, as familiar faces return.

How many murders can you have in a building? Turns out one every season, and we hope the corpses continue to fall because the fifth season of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building is warm, funny, and oddly delightful. Several new characters are added this season, but it doesn’t take away from the core protagonists as they investigate the murder of one of their own. Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez are once again the highlight, while Meryl Streep is the best addition to the stellar show. Season 5 of the series looks at a New York institution, the doormen of the Big Apple who keep the buildings running. Viewers knew from last season that the Arconia’s beloved doorman, Lester (Teddy Coluca), was found dead in the courtyard fountain. Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short), and Mabel (Selena Gomez) decide to investigate the mysterious circumstances, which takes them down memory lane into the history of the Arconia itself with interactions with mobsters and billionaires that provide more clues.

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Mon, September 8 2025

Let's talk Murder

Only Murders In The Building season 5 returns to the hallways of the Arconia after touring to LA in the previous season. This time, our podcast hosts stay in the building and in and around New York as far as the iconic Godfather would take them. The new season doubles down on what works best for them and brings back some iconic characters while introducing another set of crazy characters New York has to offer. The show is obviously coming to an end, but it still maintains its niche writing, and that’s the biggest win for Only Murders In The Building. The show begins at the end of the previous season when the now beloved doormen Lester is found dead in the pool of his own blood in the building’s fountain. Charles, Oliver and Mabel don’t take much time to start looking for clues around the building and among their neighbours before the body is cold and under. However, it isn’t enough, especially when the police reports claim it was an accident. As every season of the show unfolds, the latest instalment also follows the trio as they track a list of trails left behind by the killer, which may or may not lead them to the end.

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Mon, September 8 2025

2 and half hours is not enough

Demon Slayer Infinity Castle has finally hit the big screen in India, and though the tickets have caused quite the ruckus among fans, the 155 minutes are worth the long wait. The film kicks off right at the end of the last season, with almost the entire Demon Slayer corps being pulled into the Infinity Castle after Muzan is attacked by the Hashiras at Kagaya Ubuyashiki’s house. Infinity Castle is filled with fan service as each character is touched upon, while also diving deeper into the story for a few of the characters in the same format that the show goes through. All Demon Slayer films, or other franchise anime films, have focused on providing a recap of the final battle and then diving into the new season. However, with the new films for the Infinity Castle arc the makers are taking a filmmaking approach. For the first time, we do get a recap, but through a new perspective to avoid any kind of repetition. Instead of watching the final moments of Muzan’s fight or Kagaya Ubuyashiki’s interaction with Muzan, we get the preparation he put into the trap through Hashira Gyomei Himejima’s perspective.

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Mon, September 8 2025

Anjali Sivaraman’s Ramya is curious about her sexuality, all the while raging against the conservative elements which think boys sowing their wild oats is par for the course, but girls doing the same only bring 'shame' upon themselves.

You know that a film baldly calling itself Bad Girl will be about a girl who is ‘bad’, but you also wonder how it will be different from films about a similar subject that have preceded it. Bad Girl makes no bones about telling us why Ramya (Anjali Sivaraman) is labelled so. All her instincts rebel against what ‘good girls’ are expected to do– be seen, not heard– in fact, not even be seen if that is going to upset her core family, which in Ramya’s case is her mum, dad, and grandmum, as well as school-teachers, principal, and every one else who makes a girl’s business their own, because, of course, a girl has no business that’s strictly her own.

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Sun, September 7 2025

Bad Girl is about engaging with the very real experiences of a young woman without slipping into a territory where pity and regret unite for a chokehold.

In Varsha Bharath’s Bad Girl, the eponymous protagonist keeps returning to one question that hovers over her life like a single dark cloud obscuring the galaxy of stars beyond. “Naa yen ipdi irukken?” (Why am I like this?) The girl is Ramya, a name that is so commonplace in South India that it could be its own Jane Doe for half a country. For a whole generation that grew up between the 1980s and the first decade of the 21st century, the name bears no real characteristic. In a certain class of society, it is as regular as music class after school or the insistence to speak in textbook perfect English outside of the classroom. Bad Girl begins around the mid-2000s — a generation that was sneaking mobile phones into school and beta tested Orkut before the exodus to Facebook; so probably the last to stick to a name like Ramya. And yet, there are three Ramyas in the classroom. Bad Girl’s Ramya (Anjali Sivaraman), daughter of a teacher (Shanthipriya as Sundari) in the same school, is so feral that she strives to be the main character in her life, a life of banality according to her. The life of all Ramyas.

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Sun, September 7 2025

'Bad Girl' is a terribly narcissistic film—and it might make sense, because it is about a narcissist; but should a film borrow its protagonists’ vices?

The most terrifying stretch of growing up is between the feeling that you are the only one who is going through life—masturbation, bleeding, heaving, wet dreams, shattered hearts—to knowing, no, there are others, too, who are transgressing. “Naan yen ippudi irukkein? (Why am I like this?),” a frustrated, teenaged Ramya (Anjali Sivaraman) asks herself as Bad Girl opens, and you think the film will iron out this misconception—that no, she isn’t alone. But Bad Girl’s preoccupation is elsewhere. The central protagonist of the film, also its central hurdle, Ramya pulls the film from her high-school years, to college, to her early thirties, roughly more than a decade. The film begins frenetically, moving swiftly between her inner and outer world—dialogues delivered in the same decibel—between mid-shots and close-ups, between dreams and reality, life-rooted and life-fabulated. Even the close-ups are wide, rushing the whole world into the image of her face in the trembling foreground.

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Sun, September 7 2025

Presented by Anurag Kashyap, Anuparna Roy’s 'Songs of Forgotten Trees'—the only Indian title in Venice’s Orizzonti section—follows two migrant women in Mumbai as they navigate loneliness, survival, and fleeting moments of connection

Songs of Forgotten Trees is a clear-eyed, restrained, moving story of two young women, lonely and bruised, finding solace in each other. Thooya and Swetha are migrants in Mumbai. Thooya, played by Naaz Shaikh, is an aspiring actress and part-time sex worker — it helps to pay the bills. Swetha, played by Sumi Baghel, is a call center employee, hoping to find a soulmate in the matrimonial market. Both are navigating an indifferent, manic city. Swetha, a new arrival, is still a little starry-eyed. She really wants to see the ‘samudra’ but Thooya tells her with the amused awareness of an old timer – itna bhi khubsoorat nahi hai. The film, presented by Anurag Kashyap, is the debut feature of Anuparna Roy and the only Indian film selected for the prestigious Orizzonti section of the 82nd Venice Film Festival (Karan Tejpal’s Stolen and Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court also premiered here). The scenario might remind you of Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light, also about the bond between two migrant women in Mumbai. But Anuparna’s vision is far less lyrical. With stillness, long takes and an understated tone, she creates an anguished portrait of what it takes for women to survive. The heart of this film is a scene in which the two women are in two bathrooms next to each other — one is washing clothes in the bathing space, and the other is using the commode as a chair. What starts out as buoyant banter shifts seamlessly into grief and tears. The scene is beautifully staged and performed.

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Sun, September 7 2025

Samuel Umman, a businessman involved in real estate, is killed in a road accident. Antonio George, entrusted with the case, smells something fishy. An investigation into Samuel’s life leads him to a confidante, Francis. He unearths an alleged loan scam in connection with a local cooperative bank. A thug Shaji, Samuel’s own son Ebin, and a few bank employees are also under the scanner. It’s Sudev Nair and Arun Sol, who enjoy bulk of the screen-time in the show. Sudev’s past appearances in both positive/negative roles work in favour of his casting, though Arun gets better scope to deliver a portrayal with space for histrionic talents. Akhil Kavalayoor, Ajay Vasudev, and Kalfan have one-note roles, and they deliver okayish performances. The women hardly have any prominence and get to make much impact.

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Sat, September 6 2025

The ZEE5 show’s source material deserved more patience and more mood.

In Shan Thulasidharan’s frantically paced Kammattam (Coinage), not a minute is wasted to push us into the world of crime. A man named Samuel (Jeo Baby) has been struck down by a moving car, and it’s clear, right from the word go, that this “accident” was very much intentional. A police officer named Antonio (Sudev Nair) is deputed to investigate. Within the first 10 minutes, the crime, the world around and the people involved have all been established with reasonable efficiency. Samuel is said to have had a chequered past, and this makes him susceptible to almost everyone around him, including close family. The red herrings are laid out with similar swiftness, and by the end of the first episode, we’re left with a handful of suspects, each with enough reason to have committed the crime(s).

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