Guild Reviews by Film Page 2 of 114
Love Always
Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy (Tamil)
A heartfelt tale of rediscovery about life and an unexpected second chance at love.
Cast:
Jayaprakash, Jayasudha, Gouri G Kishan, Ramzan Muhammed, Maya S. Krishnan, Smruthi Mohankumar, Arul D. Shankar, Mu Ramaswamy, Pradeep Rudra, Mythili Sathyajith
Director:
Madhumita
Sun, November 8 2026
Love Always is a no-frills exploration of what it means to be in love, what it means to be married, and what happens when you get a chance to tame those completely different beasts
Regret. Indian arranged marriages are a concept that, on paper, should make absolutely no sense in a society. What do you mean when you say two strangers are suddenly asked to marry each other just because the elders in their respective families decided it was the right thing? How does “forever” make sense when you don’t even know your prospective partner’s favorite colour? Such is the system, and even today, our Indian society continues to swear by it because why repair something that isn’t broken? Yes, some arranged marriages seem like a dream come true, but there are enough examples that lay bare the broken, flawed, and limiting factors of the system. In director Madhumita’s Love Always, we see a marriage that looks dreamy from the outside and dilapidated from the inside. But what happens when life, and a lot of magic, lets you turn regret into restoration? Basically, Love Always understands that ‘love’ is special, but questions whether ‘always’ should be taken for granted.
Scene
Comedy, Crime, Romance, Action (Tamil)
Inbaraj, a police officer, is forced to reopen a case he left unfinished years ago. This time, he must solve it with a chaotic and troublesome team. As they struggle to work together and deal with the twists and turns of the case, the investigation takes them on a chaotic and unpredictable ride.
Cast:
Suriya, Nazriya Nazim, Naslen, Lal, Anandaraj, Raj Priyan, Gajaraj, Suresh Mathiyalagan, Tovino Thomas, Jyothika
Director:
Jithu Madhavan
Writer:
Jithu Madhavan
Sun, November 8 2026
With Suriya in terrific form and stellar turns from Nazriya and Naslen, Jithu Madhavan gives the familiar a fabulous makeover in Scene
Vision. While it might not be the case now, there was a time when almost every interview inevitably had this question: Where do you see yourself in five years? Five years is a long time, right? If we are being interviewed, most of us would give some generic answer. If we are the ones doing the interview, we know how to see through the generic answers. Some people offer an answer so wild and audacious that you never ask that question the same way again. Jithu Madhavan’s Scene is one such answer to a question about what star films should look like in a few years’ time. Yes, star vehicles need to service the star, but if the star decides to serve the story, keeps their whims behind the camera, steps into the frame without a chip on their shoulder, and trusts the director’s vision to focus on the story first, the star will invariably be seen.
Sun, November 8 2026
Sat, November 7 2026
Thanks to an in-form Suriya, Naslen and Nazriya, director Jithu Madhavan dares to venture into territory that might seem too risky for a film with such serious undertones
Jithu Madhavan is a Malayalam director (Romancham, Aavesham) making his first Tamil film. But if there’s one sequence that needs to be studied to understand a Malayali’s undying love for Tamil cinema, it’s the one in the second half of Scene. At first glance, it might seem like another Easter egg referencing one of the many films that made Suriya the superstar he is today. But dig a little deeper, and it brings together two aspects of Tamil cinema that are particularly important to every Malayali cinephile: legendary composer Ilaiyaraaja and the films that Suriya made in the early 2000s.
The Cat in the Hat
Animation, Fantasy, Adventure, Family, Comedy (English)
Assigned his toughest mission yet, the Cat must cheer up siblings Gabby and Sebastian as they adjust to life in a new town. Known for pushing boundaries, this agent of chaos must prove himself or risk losing his magical hat forever.
Cast:
Bill Hader, Xochitl Gomez, Tiago Martinez, Matt Berry, Quinta Brunson, Bowen Yang, America Ferrera, Paula Pell, Tituss Burgess, Giancarlo Esposito
Director:
Erica Rivinoja, Alessandro Carloni
Sat, November 7 2026
In the breathless action on screen, there are very few scenes that are truly moving, laugh-out-loud funny, or even those that evoke a smile.
It’s hard to believe that this is only the second feature-length film on the beloved Dr Seuss character, and the first animation. It also means that Warner Bros Pictures and directors Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja have to work doubly hard to make The Cat in the Hat stand out from the current deluge. The effort shows, with the film a dizzying cornucopia of action and colours, with little of the unworldliness of the book and all the worldliness of a studio-backed venture, which also lets it be known that it is hoping to spin at least one more movie out of a character.
Black Doves S02
Action & Adventure, Mystery, Crime (English)
When a spy posing as a politician's wife learns her lover has been murdered, an old assassin friend joins her on a quest for truth — and vengeance.
Cast:
Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw, Sarah Lancashire, Andrew Buchan, Ella Lily Hyland
Sat, November 7 2026
Joe Barton's dark spy dramedy about a secret organisation trying to infiltrate the British government faces a new threat.
The first season of Netflix’s Black Doves introduced a pair of spies who become friends while trying to survive assignment given out by their secret organisation. Two years later, the British spy drama is back with a new crisis for the duo as they face their biggest threat yet. Black Doves is led by Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw and Sarah Lancashire, who become our anchors in this latest instalment as the entire organisation is targeted, leaving Knightley’s Helen and Whishaw’s Sam to make some risky moves. The six-part is a thrilling binge watch that sets up the next season nicely.
Stick S02
Comedy, Drama (English)
Pryce Cahill was headed for golf greatness when an on-course meltdown derailed his career. Now struggling to stay afloat, he goes all in to mentor Santi—a teenage phenom with immense potential—and maybe save himself.
Cast:
Owen Wilson, Peter Dager, Lilli Kay, Mariana Treviño, Marc Maron, Rhea Seehorn
Sat, November 7 2026
Created by Jason Keller, the sports comedy settles down by turning its attention on Owen Wilson's has-been golf hero and succeeds
In 2025, the Owen Wilson starrer Stick introduced an earnest sport series about a man redeeming himself by coaching a golf prodigy. As the Apple TV series returns for a second instalment, it smartly refocuses its attention on its smooth-talking hero, Pryce Cahill (Wilson), who finds a new purpose in his golfing journey. The result is a comedy series with renewed resolve to push its characters and the story. While the show does stick to usual tropes found in sports narratives, here in the series, it feels earned instead of clichéd. The addition of the winsome Emmy winner Rhea Seehorn and more screentime to Pryce’s old rival Clark Ross, played by Timothy Olyphant is another smart choice.
Mookuthi Amman 2
Fantasy, Drama, Comedy (Tamil)
A queen sacrifices herself to protect her son, the prince, from invading enemies.Mookuthi Amman returns to protect the child and confronts a mysterious woman who embodies a new and dangerous evil.
Cast:
Nayanthara, Urvashi, Regena Cassandrra, Yogi Babu, Duniya Vijay, Myna Nandhini, Ramachandra Raju, Abhinaya, Singampuli, VR Suwaminathan Rajesh
Director:
Sundar C
Writer:
Sundar C, Venkat Raghavan
Sat, November 7 2026
Director Sundar C's film, starring Nayanthara, Duniya Vijay and Regena Cassandrra, is an outdated devotional drama devoid of any emotion or devotion.
Growing up in the 90s, devotional films were a staple on television. Audiences were introduced to several different Ammans (mother goddess), but they all had one duty: to protect the innocent and destroy evil. As cinema evolved, these devotional dramas gradually became passe. In 2020, RJ Balaji revived the genre with Mookuthi Amman, giving it a contemporary spin through political satire. Six years later, veteran filmmaker Sundar C takes the franchise forward with Mookuthi Amman 2, turning that political satire into a full-fledged devotional drama. Did the gamble work? The answer is a resounding no.
Pyre
Drama (Hindi)
In the Himalayan Mountain range, a rural village loses its inhabitants to the city’s allure while an elderly couple, Padam Singh and Tulsi, live in desolate isolation. Their days are filled with routine and occasional humour as they mask their loneliness. Their son’s absence gnaws at them, and when a letter arrives promising his return, it reignites their hearts with joy and anticipation. However, the reunion does not unfold as expected, shattering their hopes. As the film climaxes, the spectator is confronted with a more rueful plight, deeply engaging the audience’s empathy.
Cast:
Padam Singh, Hira Devi Mishra, Subhash Chandra, Shubham Chaudhary, Sadab Khan, Sadab Khan, Alok Verma, Jaya Shah, Gopa Nayal, Deewan Kanwal
Director:
Vinod Kapri
Writer:
Vinod Kapri
Tue, November 3 2026
A moving portrait of an elderly Kumaoni couple confronting loneliness, migration and abandonment, where the Himalayan landscape becomes a silent witness to a vanishing rural world and forgotten lives.
Set in a picturesque yet increasingly desolate hamlet in Uttarakhand’s Kumaon region, Vinod Kapri’s Pyre is a quietly devastating meditation on old age, abandonment, loneliness and the inexorable erosion of rural life. The two-hour Hindi-language film centres on Tulsi (Hira Devi) and Padam (Padam Singh), an elderly goat-herding couple who have been married for over six decades. Their only son, Harish, migrated to Mumbai many years ago and has never returned. As their neighbours gradually desert their crumbling ancestral homes, the couple find themselves among the last remaining inhabitants of what is fast becoming a ghost village.
Sat, October 31 2026
While director Vinod Kapri evocatively captures the painful desolation of Uttarakhand’s ghost villages through raw, life-like performances, its cinematic grammar occasionally feels deliberately engineered for a global festival gaze
High in the Himalayas, where the wind murmurs through timber and stone, sits a village that time forgot and the world walked away from. This is the stage for Vinod Kapri’s Pyre(Chita), an elegy carved in the lines of timeworn faces and the vast, aching silence of mountains. It is a story born of memories from Uttarakhand’s ghost villages, where the young have shifted to the heartless cities, leaving only the old to watch over a crumbling community. At its heart, Pyre is a poem to the endurance of love. It follows an elderly couple bound by shared devotion and bickering, and the tenuous hope of their son’s return. With the patience of a documentary and the soul of a tragedy, Kapri creates a meditative piece of minimalist cinema where soaring peaks serve as both a majestic sanctuary and an indifferent prison.
Fri, October 30 2026
Vinod Kapri's Pyre follows an elderly couple growing old in an emptying Uttarakhand village. Their tender bond exposes the isolation, migration and hardships shaping life in remote communities.
What does growing old look like when the world around you is slowly disappearing? When your children are too far away, your village is emptying out, and even visiting a doctor becomes a challenge? Vinod Kapri’s Pyre explores these realities through an elderly couple in the mountains of Uttarakhand. Beneath its story of loneliness, migration and old age lies a more intimate question: who will hold your hand when life gets difficult? If there is one thing this film makes you want, it is someone to grow old with.
Nocturne
Crime, Drama, Mystery (English)
When a victim of notorious serial killer Jurek Walter unexpectedly turns up alive, detective Jonah Lynn races against time to find the one person still missing, while his protégé Saga Bauer goes undercover to get answers from the killer himself.
Cast:
Liev Schreiber, Zazie Beetz, Stephen Graham, Bill Camp, Rory Culkin, Chrissy Metz, Poorna Jagannathan, Gary Carr, Landon Valentin
Sun, November 1 2026
Created by Rowan Joffé, the crime thriller features Adolescence star Stephen Graham as a manipulative serial killer who enjoys baiting his victims.
In Apple TV’s Nocturne, Stephen Graham plays a sadistic serial killer, Jurek Walter, who holds an entire town on edge, looking for a missing young girl. The criminal enjoys riling up the entire police force and the FBI, who are on the hunt, while also digging up additional clues. Nocturne is based on a Scandinavian thriller, The Sandman, by Lars Kepler, and moves the Nordic setting to a quiet Pennsylvania town surrounded by woods. The makers build up the tension and dread about Walter’s games and who he might go after next, but the narrative’s slow pace hinders. However, the performances by the Nocturne cast keep you invested.
Akka
Drama, Crime (Tamil)
In a kingdom ruled by women, matriarch Bhavani faces her biggest threat in Rudra, a ruthless rebel eyeing her land and legacy.
Cast:
Keerthy Suresh, Radhika Apte, Tanvi Azmi, Nivedita Bhargava, Anshumaan Pushkar, Poornima Indrajith, Vishak Nair, Mahesh Manjrekar, Monika Panwar, Pooja Mohanraj
Director:
Dharmaraj Shetty
Writer:
Dharmaraj Shetty
Sun, November 1 2026
This drama series, starring Keerthy Suresh and Radhika Apte, turns the patriarchal order on its head, but its promise is only partly realised
An ambitious premise, an elaborate period setting and a struggle for power between two women give Akka plenty to work with. Set in the imagined kingdom of Pernuru, where women have ruled for generations, the story moves back and forth from ancient times through British rule till the mid 1980s. Pernuru is divided into three powerful houses which fiercely guard their positions. But when a young woman arrives from Mumbai, bent on revenge, the fine balance of this matriarchal society is threatened.
Sat, October 31 2026
This game of revenge might tantalise to begin with but is finally unsatisfying
It’s the usual game of cloak and dagger, blood and gore, only cloaked under the garb of a matrilineal society. In the very first episode, we go back to the history of these fictional places where women once ruled. In post-Independence India, they still call the shots, literally and metaphorically. Lineage runs from mother to daughter, marriage is forbidden and men are at best companions and at worst, wimps. On the face of it, what can be more progressive and delectable than women being hailed as Akka? Men here are no more than superfluous appendages. Keerthy Suresh is Bhavani, who straddles this world and your screens with indomitable strides of strength. For those who dare to cross her path, she does not squirm away from resorting to killing in a brutal fashion.
Sat, October 31 2026
Udta Teer
Comedy, Action (Hindi)
An amnesiac Pakistani spy wakes up believing he is a patriotic Indian counter-terrorism officer.
Cast:
Ayushmann Khurrana, Sara Ali Khan, Rahul Bose, Supriya Pilgaonkar, Brijendra Kala, Ram Kapoor, Mukul Dev, Suhail Nayyar, Sandeep Anand, Gulshan Grover
Director:
Aakash Kaushik
Writer:
Aakash Kaushik
Sun, November 1 2026
In the end, Udta Teer is a frustrating case of what could have been. It possesses sparks of genuine literary flair and brilliant satirical bite, only to abandon them to toe a safer, more conventional line. It is funny in parts, certainly, but it ultimately forgets which direction it was headed mid-flight.
There is a distinct moment in Aakash Kaushik’s Udta Teer where the film, much like its titular airborne projectile, loses its trajectory entirely. It begins with the intoxicating promise of a high-wire act. A sharp, irreverent subversion of the subcontinental spy thriller. The premise itself is delightfully absurd. Bilal (Ayushmann Khurrana), an undercover Pakistani mole embedded deep within India’s counter-terrorism service under the alias Vikrant, suffers a convenient bout of amnesia. He wakes up thoroughly convinced that he is a hyper-patriotic, flag-waving Indian counter-intelligence officer. What follows is a comedy of profound errors as a man who is supposed to sabotage the nation becomes its most zealous, unpredictable protector, leaving both sides of the border thoroughly bewildered.
Tue, October 27 2026
Directed by writer-turned-director Akash Kaushik, Udta Teer wants to be a Dhurandhar when it comes to patriotism but a comedy when it comes to everything else. The result is a film caught between two incompatible impulses. One moment, it is a straight-faced spy thriller invoking desh bhakti with songs like Jai Hind gaaye; the next, it breaks into comedy, as if it cannot bear to take itself seriously for too long. While some of the humour lands, the patriotism is largely performative, playing to the gallery without making much of an impact.
Mon, October 26 2026
Aakash A. Kaushik's ‘Udta Teer’, starring Ayushmann Khurrana, takes the temperature of Indo-Pak relations down several notches, but can't sustain the charm
Of the many musical gags in Udta Teer, one made me surprisingly wistful. Agent Vikrant (Ayushmann Khurrana) watching the video for A.R. Rahman’s ‘Maa Tujhe Salaam’ and becoming emotional is intended as parodic patriotism. But it reminded me of when this version of ‘Vande Mataram’ came out in 1997 and was received as a dynamic reworking, not an imposition. It’s also hard not to think of ‘Gurus of Peace’, a Rahman-Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan track on the same album, especially when Udta Teer reminds us, with a cover of ‘Dum Mast Qalandar’ playing over a shootout, how Pakistan’s music is still a presence in our films but not Pakistani artists.
Body
Drama (Hindi)
In the post covid world, Manoj, a young, struggling actor, is trying to cope with his personal trauma. On a village trip with his theatre peers he gets brutally bullied in the name of drunken fun. His friends leave him. He tries to find his way out of the village, battling shame and fear, without a stitch on. He comes back to Mumbai and starts stripping in public spaces. His life starts fragmenting to pieces. In his almost dysfunctional state he makes friends with a little boy living in the opposite apartment and finds that he is regularly abused by his father. This discovery sets him off on a complex journey of uncertainty and intrigue.
Cast:
Amol Deshmukh, Khushboo Upadhyay, Sandeep Shridhar Dhabale, Shivam Parekh, Jatin Negi, Manoj Sharmaa, Kritika Pande
Director:
Abhijit Mazumdar
Writer:
Abhijit Mazumdar
Sat, October 31 2026
Body, a Hindi film, takes place after the COVID-19 pandemic and revolves around a group of friends, who are actors. These include Manoj (Manoj Sharma), Khushboo (Khushboo Upadhyay), Amol (Amol Deshmukh), Jatin (Jatin Negi) and Shivam (Shivam Parekh). Once the four men from the group are having a swim in a lake during their trip outside Mumbai. After the swim, Manoj’s clothes are snatched from him during an episode of drunken fun, headed by Amol, and he is left stark naked. The incident triggers such profound trauma in Manoj that he randomly starts getting fully naked at various public places. Khushboo, who is also Manoj’s girlfriend, Amol, Jatin and Shivam are deeply concerned about his state with their theatre performance being around the corner.
Tue, December 17 2024
Abhijit Mazumdar’s troubled-actor drama is in the International Competition section of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK)
Once adulthood sets in, and once we’ve accumulated enough years, most of us have two types of recurring dreams (and nightmares). One revolves around the terror of remembering that the exam is tomorrow and we haven’t touched the school syllabus. The other is shaped by the horror of finding ourselves naked in routine situations, while being totally helpless about it. Both of these are trauma responses to our fraught relationship with society. Both feature a link between social conditioning and shame, but Abhijit Muzumdar’s Body confronts the steeper task of exploring the second dream. It’s a testing watch, but ultimately quite a rewarding one.
Nakhrewaalii
Romance (Hindi)
Sumit Mishra cross-dresses as a woman to win over his love interest, Paridhi.
Cast:
Ansh Duggal, Pragati Srivastava, Akash Makhija, Gopal Datt, Kumud Mishra, Aayush Verma, Kajol Bhadana, Rishi Raj Bhasin
Director:
Rahul Shanklya
Writer:
Divy Nidhi Sharma
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?