Sat, October 31 2026

This over-the-top comedy about a sexist playboy who pretends to be a woman to aid his love story is a red flag pretending to be a green flag

Think of the hundred ways in which a story about the transformation of a small-town playboy can happen. Think of the hundred ways in which the sexist hero learns his lesson. Love? Heartbreak? Big city humbling? Grief? Falling for a feminist? Falling for a gangster? Falling for Ravi Kishan reels? Trust Bollywood, however, to find the 101st way. Trust mainstream Hindi cinema to come up with a gimmick that pretends to be entertaining and edgy and self-aware but is unwittingly creepy and regressive. Trust it to provide an answer to a question nobody asked: What if Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and Dream Girl had a baby that grew up to become a Tanu Weds Manu fan stumbling out of the bar?

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Sat, October 31 2026

Dharamshala Film Festival 2026 | Roshan Mathew and Divya Prabha front a delightfully unbound drama shuttling through films, their makers and characters

Meta movies are tricky. The balance between sincerity and showiness is a constant negotiation. To what point can the filmmaker hold up to view the skeins of their work? When does this authorial mischief skid over into an unanchored experiment? Among India’s most consistently surprising, striking filmmakers working today, Don Palathara’s latest, Ekadesham (The Uncertainty Principle), is a vivid, scrambled drama, flitting between the folds of life, art, ambition, wishfulness and failure. Celebrating its Asia premiere at the Dharamshala Film Festival, the film doesn’t always stay grounded but remains curious, exploratory and eager to gauge its ruptures. Movies charged by a spirit to peck at their own edges are always an exciting proposition. Even their shortcomings reflect daring.

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Sat, October 31 2026

More than two centuries after Jane Austen’s novel appeared, the Dashwood sisters, now essayed by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles, remain the quintessential play of opposites—passion and reason

Jane Austen continues to speak vividly to our times. Her 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility met a brilliant, beloved match in Ang Lee’s 1995 benchmark adaptation with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet. The challenge Georgia Oakley must have experienced while mounting her new adaptation is immense. But, for the most part, she conjures a drama of such freshness, buoyancy and emotional churn you can overlook the minor bumps, few jarring choices.

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Fri, October 30 2026

Georgia Oakley's Sense and Sensibility follows Elinor and Marianne Dashwood through love and loss. The adaptation finds fresh warmth in patient romance, familial bonds and Austen's humour.

In a world where dating apps, situationships and the dreaded “what are we?” conversation have become part of the romantic vocabulary, Georgia Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility feels like a gentle reminder that love can be beautiful when it takes its time. But this Jane Austen adaptation is not just about making yearning romantic again. It is also about sisterhood, the absurdities of society, the courage to feel deeply and the sheer joy of getting lost in a beautifully told story. Based on Austen’s beloved novel, the film follows Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esm Creed-Miles, two sisters who approach life and love rather differently. While Elinor keeps her emotions firmly in check, Marianne wears her heart on her sleeve. Their differences make for some amusing exchanges, but it is their bond that gives the story its warmth.

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Fri, October 30 2026

Director Georgia Oakley refuses to romanticise Regency era in this grounded, subdued take on Austen.

The new adaptation of Sense & Sensibility offers a gloomier, grimmer take on Jane Austen’s classic tale of two sisters, their contrasting perspectives on love and heartbreak, and their struggle to navigate life, financial uncertainty and rigid social hierarchies in 19th-century England. It is fascinating to see how two sisters perceive love in their own distinct ways. One believes in restraint, the other in revelation. “We have neither of us anything to tell; you, because you do not communicate, and I, because I conceal nothing.” The older Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and younger Marianne Dashwood (Esmé Creed-Miles) embody the central philosophical conflict between Sense (rationality and restraint) and Sensibility (emotion and openness). Their contrasting attitudes towards emotional reserve, understanding and the expression of love shape their individual journeys, their sisterly bond and Austen’s larger commentary on women’s survival in a society that leaves them with little agency.

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Sat, October 31 2026

Trivikram revisits familiar territory with a story built around Venkatesh’s family-man image, delivering entertaining twists before the narrative loses its way

In the Telugu film Aadarsha Kutumbam: House No. 47, the leading man (Venkatesh) acknowledges the age gap, in fact a generational gap, between him and his wife (Srinidhi Shetty). It is more than a passing reference, with several dialogues returning to the subject. Some of Venkatesh’s recent films have also acknowledged the age difference between him and his leading ladies, even if only in passing. What sets this film apart, marking his reunion with writer-director Trivikram Srinivas after more than two decades, is a later reveal that puts their relationship in context, explaining how the two characters crossed paths. It gives the audience just enough to draw their own conclusions while keeping them entertained with the comedy and suspense.

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Sat, October 31 2026

Meethe Mein Kya Hai's pursuit of happiness and finding joy in the little things exudes the emotionality of a greeting card, not life.

You know how the Hallmark holiday movies are designed to fill its target audience of sentimental fools with a warm fuzzy feeling? Meethe Mein Kya Hai is a bit like that. Set against the backdrop of Diwali, its slice-of-life enthusiasm aims for a low key charm. The problem is, only the low key bit registers. First-time director Radhika Bansal’s drama, centred around a family reunion, is about nothing in particular except follies and foibles of its folk unraveling against the festival of lights. Hosting this annual gathering at her sprawling Lucknow bungalow is the head of the Rastogi family (Rohini Hattangadi) even as her children, their partners and grandchildren lounge about devouring mathris with pickle, dissing pesky uncles and aunts while platters full of samosa, kachori and chai are slipped into the frames to lay bare its snack over storytelling momentum.

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Fri, October 30 2026

दिवाली के त्योहार को केंद्र में रखकर बुनी यह हल्की-फुल्की फिल्म खोने के दर्द, अपनों के साथ और परिवार की अहमियत पर जोर देती है।

वो कहावत है न कि सुख-दुख में परिवार और अपने ही साथ देते हैं। लेखिका-निर्देशिका राधिका बंसल की डेब्यू फिल्म ‘मीठे में क्या है’ इसी एहसास को और पुख्ता करती है। दिवाली के त्योहार को केंद्र में रखकर बुनी यह हल्की-फुल्की फिल्म खोने के दर्द, अपनों के साथ और परिवार की अहमियत पर जोर देती है। कहानी जय (ऋ‍त्विक भौमिक) और उसकी हंसती-खेलती फैमिली की है। जय दो साल पहले गुजर चुकी पत्नी तारा (कनिका कपूर) को खोने के गम से उबर नहीं पा रहा है। वह सब कुछ बेचकर विदेश में बसने जा रहा है, पर तभी उसकी बहन सना (दलाई) बिना किसी को कुछ बताए करम (विक्रम बख्शी) से शादी कर लेती है। इसलिए, उसे दिवाली पर अपनी नानी (रोहिणी हट्टंगड़ी) के घर लखनऊ आना पड़ता है, जहां पूरा परिवार इकट्ठा है। अब दिवाली का त्‍योहार है। परिवार का री-यूनियन है। सना की शादी का सरप्राइज है। लेकिन बड़ा सवाल ये है कि पूरा घर इस पर कैसे रिएक्ट करता है? जय इन सबके बीच अपने दर्द से कैसे उबरता है? परिवार की इसी हल्की-फुल्की मस्ती, नोकझोंक, प्यार और अपनेपन को एकसाथ सजाकर परोसती है यह फिल्म।

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Fri, October 30 2026

Netflix's three-part documentary retraces Matthew Perry's life through family, friends and colleagues. Their memories reveal the private struggles behind his celebrated portrayal of Chandler Bing.

There is something particularly cruel about being remembered for making people laugh when your own life is anything but funny. Matthew Perry knew that contradiction all too well. For 10 years, as Chandler Bing on Friends, he made awkwardness charming, sarcasm endearing and vulnerability funny. Behind the character we continue to adore, however, was a man battling demons that fame, fortune and the love of millions could not defeat.

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Fri, October 30 2026

As The Fix labours on for an inexplicable length of 142 minutes, you can’t help but feel it has lost the plot – not unlike the lay of the land in real life.

It doesn’t matter if it ain’t broken, trust good red-blooded Americans to try fix it. If it is in the larger direction of the Middle East, don’t bother keeping them away. Here, Tucker (Zachary Levi) and his gang (Wes Chatham, Jake Choi, Augusto Aguilera, Quincy Isaiah) fly into the embers of a US intervention gone south in, first, Afghanistan, and then Iran. In Kabul, it is 2021, as America is making a hasty retreat in the face of a resurgent Taliban. In Iran, in a lucky or unlucky (depending on your geographical location) break for the film, the war is still not on the horizon. However, the Revolutionary Guards are villainous enough to justify Tucker’s excursion.

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Fri, October 30 2026

Alexander Skarsgaard plays the Wickerman softly, gently, but never lets us forget that he is also a manly man, with all his bits in perfect working order.

Once upon a medieval time, in a village populated largely by an assortment of dislikeable types, there lived a Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman). Sick of being bullied, accused of stench arising from her string of tench (a kind of fish), she goes off to the resident Weaver (Peter Dinklage), and requests him to ‘make’ her a husband. Behold the Wickerman, duly created in the image of the ideal man, who has almost ceased to exist, if he ever did. That he is a veritable green forest makes sense not only because he is made of wicker, but also because he is incapable of a single evil thought. When you find one of those, let me know.

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Thu, October 29 2026

For all its political urgency, Shashank Walia’s film, too often, mistakes solemnity for substance.

There’s a particular kind of independent film from India that has permeated the festival circuit in the last few years. They hint at the recent political turmoil, the social inequities and taboos of an increasingly rigid society. The sound design is decidedly sober, the camera is mostly still, the characters speak soft and slow. The titles are usually long English phrases or sentences (more frequently in the aftermath of Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light). It’s a hard trick to pull because a ‘meditative’ film can easily tip over into a ‘self-conscious’ one. Shashank Walia’s Birds in the Dark (Punjabi title: Hanere de Panchhi), which premiered at the Busan International Film Festival, lands somewhere in the middle of its fine intention and self-serious form.

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Thu, October 29 2026

It’s messy, pulpy, sometimes predictable, but it has the good sense of embracing its grotesqueness. For a film about a man that can become anyone, it understands the real horror might be no longer knowing yourself.

Life’s great for actor Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) when he arrives on set, one morning. Coming from ‘the Narrows’ – the most impoverished, tough neighbourhood in Gotham city – Hagen has paved his way to becoming the hottest upcoming actor in Coast City (possibly a stand-in for Los Angeles). And with his name being announced as an Oscar nominee, the ‘buzz’ around him understandably goes stratospheric. Hagen takes his best friend Corey (Joshua James) for a celebratory weekend on a private jet. The weekend quickly turns into a nightmare, as Hagen flirts with the girlfriend of the most dreaded mobster in Gotham, Markos Szabo (David Dencik), despite Corey’s words of caution. The one-night stand ends with Hagen waking up to find his bed surrounded by Szabo and his men. He doesn’t take kindly to Hagen’s transgression, using a razor to carve his face beyond recognition. Just like that, a blooming life is knocked into hell.

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Mon, October 26 2026

This may be as good as it gets for Clayface, before it is simply yet more putty to be moulded and fit into DC’s world.

In its rebooted form, the DC Universe has been doing some interesting things – tinkering with the format of Superman to give it a different tone, giving a kickass Supergirl who holds her own, and now making the first standalone feature film on a minor character from the Batman comics, Clayface. It’s a surprisingly winsome outing, with the origin story of the antihero staying close to the dingy, shabby, forgotten parts of Gotham City, and from all that, creating a character you are rooting for till the end. The script was originally written by Mike Flanagan – who is having a moment with his Carrie TV series – with Hossein Amini (Drive) stepping in later. If their decision to keep it simple, with no grand superhero-like flourishes, serves the film well, the credit also goes to Tom Rhys Harries in the titular role of Matt Hagen/Clayface, whose sharp, rugged face is handsomely craggly and feels disarmingly innocent. He switches modes as required of his character, but an essential earnestness remains about him of a boy who has risen from the worst part of town to Oscar’s glitzy heights.

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Fri, October 23 2026

Clayface works best as a tragic character study, a tale of human suffering wrapped in visceral body horror. It stands out as one of DC’s most promising cinematic outings since Todd Phillips’ Joker (2019).

Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), a promising young actor on the brink of stardom, sees his world shatter when a ruthless mob boss brutally disfigures his face. Unable to accept his world crumbling beneath his feet, Hagen vows to reclaim everything he has lost, warning his tormentors: “I will be back, and I am coming for everything.” For a movie star whose face is his identity and currency, losing it is nothing short of a living nightmare. Matt begs Dr. Corr (Naomi Ackie) to restore his features, urging her to resort to any unapproved medical means necessary. The procedure gives him back his face, but at a terrifying cost: an uncontrollable shape-shifting ability that he initially struggles to control. His body stretches, melts, bubbles, and contorts, allowing him to assume any shape, size, or identity he desires or even one that crosses his mind. The transformation wreaks havoc on his psyche and unleashes chaos upon his adversaries.

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Wed, October 28 2026

In Dorothy—the new Tamil film written and directed by Karthik Subbaraj—what begins as a familiar rural gangster story seamlessly shifts genres into a sensitive exploration of a transgender woman embracing her true identity. We discuss how the film deliberately contrasts the suffocating, patriarchal toxicity of its village setting in the first half with a liberating, nature-filled journey in the second. We praise Subbaraj for defying the harmful “bury your gays” trope, allowing the protagonist to find a hopeful and positive resolution rather than facing the usual cinematic tragedy. However, we critique the film’s heavy-handed and preachy dialogue, particularly during a pivotal mountaintop scene where the characters feel more like directorial mouthpieces delivering social commentary than lifelong friends expressing their genuine feelings.

Mon, October 5 2026

Mon, October 5 2026

Dorothy is the work of a film-lover. That’s, perhaps, its biggest strength. But, by the end of the film, it also seems like its most glaring limitation.

One of the great joys of watching a Kartik Subbaraj film is enumerating a list in your head of his possible sources of inspiration. It remains true for his latest directorial venture, Dorothy, too. Like how a home without a woman’s touch has echoes of Kanu Behl’s Titli (2013) – a film about a carjacking crew, comprising a father and his three sons. A scene where the couple bows down to touch an elder’s feet, only to cut to a marriage scene when the couple gets back up, but the man has been replaced by someone belonging to the same dominant caste as the woman. It’s the kind of deadpan comedy scene I’d expect in a modern Malayalam film. A character tries to clumsily kill someone, and repeatedly fails, reminiscent of the assassins in Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges (2013). A black-and-white track takes place in the present, while cutting to a flashback in colour, like in Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000). There’s also the grit and rigour of the Madurai gangster film, championed by the likes of Vetri Maaran, M. Sasikumar, given how the film centres itself around young boys being taught to ‘man up’ each time they walk, eat or wince while seeing a floating corpse, violence. They’re also repeatedly told crying ‘like a woman’ is disgusting.

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Tue, October 27 2026

Forget K-dramas and K-pop. The real deal is here. Directed by Na Hong-jin, Hope is reportedly the most expensive Korean film ever made, and it shows. Unlike many Hollywood films that rely heavily on CGI, Hope combines computer-generated imagery with real action to deliver some astounding chase sequences. The film makes a compelling case for how to spend big bucks on an action thriller, with is fingers pointing towards Hollywood- this is how you do it.

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Mon, October 26 2026

Writer-director Na Hong-jin, whose films combining horror and thrills have had both commercial and critical success, overplays his hand in Hope.

At 160 minutes, this film is double the length it should have been. At one and a half monsters, it had just the right number, before becoming greedy. Writer-director Na Hong-jin, whose films combining horror and thrills have had both commercial and critical success, overplays his hand here. So much so that even charismatic actor couple Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander have to make do with crumbs, hidden under make-up and prosthetics. Hope begins very promisingly, as Beom Seok (Hwang Jung-min), police chief of the town on which the film is named, is called by his cousin Sung ki (Zo In-sung) to investigate the sudden appearance of a dead and badly mutilated bull in the middle of a lane, amidst fields. Sung Ki has gathered his “boys”, that is other men with a lot of time and dubiously procured guns on their hands like him, anticipating that what they are looking at is a monster that will need hunting.

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Fri, October 23 2026

Starring Hoyeon and Hwang Jung-Min, Na’s latest creature flick arrives a decade after The Wailing, a mix of preposterous delights

A decade after South Korean auteur Na Hong-jin took the world by storm with horror hit The Wailing, he returns with a demented monster movie. Hope premiered in Cannes Competition earlier this year, an audacious, eyebrow-raising outlier choice. Expectations are naturally immense. At its best, Hope is a thrilling demonstration of dynamite action filmmaking. But it’s also scraggly, unwieldy and prone to flat characterisation. Your experience will vary dramatically on certain expectations. As a big-scale apocalyptic outing, Hope is ambitious, frustrating, misjudged and yet genuinely surprising. That it can flit between so many things is in itself a total departure from the dead-eyed generic drudgery that hogs popular Hollywood blockbusters.

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