Thu, September 25 2025

The Ba***ds Of Bollywood revolves around Aasmaan Singh (Lakshya), who dreams of becoming a famous movie star. After arriving in Mumbai from his hometown Delhi and struggling for some time, he gets an opportunity to showcase his heroic skills and bags the film Revolver. The movie becomes a hit and he achieves initial stardom. Aasmaan stays with his uncle Avtar (Manoj Pahwa), who has been struggling all his life to become a singer and musician, and his loyal best friend Parvaiz (Raghav Juyal). His mother Neeta (Mona Singh) once dreamt of becoming an actress but could not be more than a background dancer. His father Rajat (Vijayant Kohli) is suffering from a liver disease.

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Mon, September 22 2025

Aasman Singh is an overnight sensation, having made a remarkable acting debut and working wonders. He gets into a salty banter with Karishma, the daughter of a star, Arjun Talvar, at a roundtable interview. Cashing in on the controversy, Aasman and Karishma are paired in a new film, and love is in the air. Yet, their romance struggles to take off, thanks to an ugly tiff, an underworld deal and a long-buried secret.

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Mon, September 22 2025

Part personal and part parody, his directorial debut paints the glossy and seamy sides of the industry that has defined his life

For as long as Bollywood has existed, dynasties have shaped its stories, both on and off screen. Shah Rukh Khan, however, was the self-made outlier—the Delhi boy who rewrote the rules of stardom. His son Aryan Khan inherits not just wealth and visibility, but the paradox of being heir to self-made Bollywood royalty. So, when Aryan steps forward as writer-director of The Ba***ds of Bollywood, the series is inevitably being measured against not just his craft but his surname also. From its opening frames, The Ba***ds of Bollywood announces itself as more than just another OTT drama. Aryan’s debut as director is glossy, meta, and occasionally satirical, as eager to lampoon the industry as it is to luxuriate in its glossy surfaces. The series is, in many ways, a tug-of-war between love and resentment: for the power of Bollywood mythology, for the spectacle of its excess, and for the suffocating hierarchies that govern who belongs and who does not. That tension animates the show, and also exposes its unevenness.

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Mon, September 22 2025

The Trial, the Hindi adaptation of the popular show The Good Wife, didn’t particularly have a good start with its first season, although it garnered enough viewership for Jio Hotstar to renew it for another instalment. The show struggled to rise above a collection of stray events in a middle-aged woman’s life, desperately rushing through episodes in a bid to keep a viewer hooked.

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Mon, September 22 2025

जानी-मानी अदाकारा काजोल की डेब्यू वेब सीरीज ‘द ट्रायल’ का पहला सीजन काफी चर्चा में रहा था। अपने पति से धोखा खाने के बावजूद समाज में उसका हाथ थामकर खड़ी होने वाली पत्नी, अपनी बच्चियों को प्रोटेक्ट करने वाली एक मजबूत मां और वकालत की दुनिया में फिर से अपनी पहचान तलाशती वकील नोयोनिका सेनगुप्ता के रूप में काजोल को काफी पसंद गया था। अब इसका दूसरा सीजन आया है, लेकिन इस बार वो पहले वाला तेवर और रोमांच नदारद है। इस बार के कोर्ट केसेज जहां फीके हैं, वहीं राजनीति के मैदान में चलने वाली बयानबाजी भी खोखली मालूम देती है। चर्चित अमेरिकी सीरीज ‘द गुड वाइफ’ पर आधारित यह कहानी पिछली बार से ही आगे बढ़ती है, जहां नोयोनिका (काजोल) के ना चाहते हुए भी उसका पति राजीव (जिशु सेनगुप्ता) राजनीति में उतर जाता है। इस कारण उनके रिश्ते में तल्खी बनी रहती है, जिसका असर उनके बच्चों पर भी पड़ता है। उसकी जिंदगी में राजीव की विरोधी नेता नारायणी भोले (सोनाली कुलकर्णी) की भी एंट्री होती है, जो नोयोनिका की लाख कोशिशों के बावजूद उसके परिवार को राजनीति का दलदल में घसीट ही लेती है।

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Sun, September 21 2025

Remaking The Good Wife was never a good idea. Having a poorly-made second season follow up what was at best an average Season 1 has been disastrous. The Trial, that marked Kajol’s web series debut, recently dropped its sophomore season — making for six episodes of unnecessary melodrama, surface-level courtroom action and a soap opera feel to what should have been a gripping, intense legal thriller. Streaming on JioHotstar, Season 2 takes place three months after the first season ended (which was in 2023). The Sengupta couple — Noyonika (Kajol) and Rajiv (Jisshu Sengupta) are caught in an increasingly fractured relationship. Noyonika is now a much sought-after lawyer while Rajiv is trying to clean his scandal-ridden image by joining politics (but, of course!). Noyonika’s colleague Vishal (Alyy Khan) still holds a candle for her, even as their law firm acquires a new partner (Param Munjal, played by Karanvir Sharma) who has his own rules of how to keep the system going, thus disrupting the balance of power. Malini (Sheeba Chaddha), the Khanna in Khanna & Chaubey, feels increasingly threatened enough to want to start her own firm, seeking Noyonika’s allyship.

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Mon, September 22 2025

With Shakthi Thirumagan comprising a myriad of possibilities, the way everything unfolds as a boring lecture in a post-lunch session becomes its biggest undoing

Power. In this world, which is all about the ones on top governing the kinds of lives lived by the ones on the bottom, power is ultimate. Of course, there is the adage that ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ But when presented with the possibility of having absolute power, there are not many who would deny that opportunity. Shakthi Thirumagan is about a person who refuses to deny that opportunity. One which he carefully crafted over time, greased more than a few palms, did more than his fair share of nefarious activities, and gained the key to ultimate power: information. In many ways, Arun Prabu Purushothaman’s Shakthi Thirumagan is a film about how the biggest power in a democracy, even if it might seem increasingly futile in an intolerant world, is the right to ask the right questions to the right people at the right time to get the right kind of information.

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Sun, September 21 2025

olly LLB 3’s backstory dates to 2011 in Parsaul, a remote village in Rajasthan. An aged farmer Rajaram Solanki doesn’t agree to sell his land to India’s richest businessman Haribhai Khetan (Gajraj Rao) for his ‘Bikaner To Boston’ residential complex project. He is then framed in a fake case about non-payment of dues. He loses the case. Dejected, he dies by suicide. But his wife Janaki (Seema Biswas) vows to get justice, not just for Rajaram but also for various other farmers, whose lives are negatively affected by the project. The story moves few years later in Delhi, where advocate Jagdishwar Mishra aka Jolly (Akshay Kumar) from Lucknow and advocate Jagdish Tyagi aka (also) Jolly from Meerut are always seen fighting over stealing each other’s cases in a lower court. The two can’t see eye to eye. One day, Janaki approaches them with her late husband and other farmers’ case. However, she no fees to pay to any of the two Jollys.

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Sun, September 21 2025

Film ideas often originate from a simple “spark”—a personal experience, a keen observation, or even an arbitrary thought—that is subsequently nurtured through creative techniques such as brainstorming, research, and writing. Once an idea takes root and begins to blossom, there’s no turning back for the creator. Following the phenomenal success of Jolly LLB (2013), writer-director Subhash Kapoor drew inspiration from the complexities of the Indian legal system, rather than from a specific case, and capitalized on this concept with the sequel Jolly LLB 2 (2017). Now, the third instalment in the series, Jolly LLB 3, continues this tradition, promising yet another legal comedy-drama that blends elements from real judicial cases into entertaining, and often humorous, narratives that highlight both the legal system and its human side. Directed by Kapoor, the film stars Akshay Kumar, Arshad Warsi, and Saurabh Shukla, with Amrita Rao and Huma Qureshi reprising their roles from the previous films. The plot is inspired by the 2011 land acquisition protests in Uttar Pradesh.

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Sat, September 20 2025

Most of us grew up with elders who constantly chimed, “Do not waste food.” On one hand, it was the sentiment that a wasted serving could have fed someone poor. On the other hand, they knew the effort it takes to harvest a basket full of cauliflowers or tomatoes. Having grown up (and past these ideas), we now casually discard food if the preparation isn’t to our liking. But where do the raw materials come from? After all, a typical Indian dish requires ten ingredients, including oil. In Subhash Kapoor’s Jolly LLB 3, we take a riveting trip down those lanes – into the thankless lives of Indian farmers, steeped in poverty and systemic neglect. As we know, Jolly LLB 3 is a franchise film where a not-so-smart lawyer (Arshad Warsi and/or Akshay Kumar) takes on the system and earns justice for a needy person or community. Also, the guys share a common name. Jolly No. 1 (Arshad Warsi) and Jolly No. 2 (Akshay Kumar) practice in a Delhi court, and their squabbles over hijacking each other’s clients are a running joke.

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Sat, September 20 2025

The series follows the story of an SI Raja and a gambler named Murali, and how they clash and unite for a common purpose later. Giving up his past, Murali seeks redemption by helping Raja solve a crime. After Raja’s aggressive actions in a few cases, his manipulative colleague Vaavar rises to prominence. Meanwhile, Raja tries to reestablish his position by making an offer to Murali to turn a cop.

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Sat, September 20 2025

Writer-director Anoop Lokkur’s debut Kannada feature had its world premiere at the 30th Busan International Film Festival

Maybe the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz was right—“When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.” Artists look at their past as grist they can reframe on their terms. And this anxiety of re-writing one’s personal history sometimes shines through—the best memoirs are, after all, shameless and transgressive, and timid are those that cave under the weight of this trespassing anxiety. or writer-director Anoop Lokkur’s debut Kannada feature Don’t Tell Mother, which had its world premiere at the 30th Busan International Film Festival, this anxiety has been swept aside and muscled under by nostalgia. Set in Jayanagar, Bangalore in the 1990s—a significant Brahmin bastion—the film follows two siblings, Akaash (Siddharth Swaroop) and Adi (Anirudh P. Keserker), young boys inching towards self-hood, as they make space for their childhood alongside punctures of parental influence and interference, school-day routines, classmate cacophony, and the sudden calls and catfights with neighbourhood friends. They live next to a mosque, so the azaan becomes part of their life’s sounds—one the film makes forceful, by cutting to images of the chanting minarets. (In a post-Babri 1990s, when the Infosys IPO is being launched, you feel the film will say more about this, but it doesn’t, and lets these images, like that of Muharram, puncture the proceedings as a form of spectacle without discourse.)

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Sat, September 20 2025

Director JSS Vardhan’s Telugu film is an aching tale of parental bonds, a woman’s quest for love, and the danger that lurks at the corners

At a time when Telugu cinema often leans on grand canvases and visual effects to mask weak storylines, it is refreshing to find reminders that storytelling still matters, even in modestly budgeted films. Little Hearts, released recently, captured the innocence of young romance and parental bonding with crackling humour. This week’s release, Beauty, written by RV Subramanyam, takes a darker path. Director JSS Vardhan, credited with additional screenplay and dialogues, slowly peels back the layers to deliver an unexpected jolt. Led by Ankith Koyya, Nilakhi Patra and VK Naresh, the film gradually assembles what first appears a frustrating puzzle into a striking whole.

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Sat, September 20 2025

The absence of a coherent, believable screenplay and the compulsion to deliver one shocking twist after another drains ‘Mirage’ of any impact

Sometimes, the final moments in a movie suddenly brings its title to mind, making us marvel at the ingenuity of naming it that way. Jeethu Joseph’s Mirage attempts something similar, only that one is left wondering how the titular warning was not fully understood. The final act of the movie is filled with mirages, one scene after another, each of which misleads us into thinking that this is the big reveal, only for the screenwriter to throw another ‘twist’ in the tale at us. After encountering several such mirages, one huffs and puffs to reach the real climax of the film, vowing never to trust any character in a film. In the larger scheme of things, screenwriters Jeethu and Srinivasan Abrol are also seeking a mirage — that of the perfect thriller climax which no one would guess. Red herrings, convoluted stories and obscure incidents tenuously connected to the narrative are thrown at us with this sole aim. That also proves to be the film’s undoing.

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Sat, September 20 2025

Asif Ali stars in a Jeethu Joseph film that’s surprisingly devoid of thrills.

It must have been some sort of a cruel in-joke to name the company Ashwin Kumar (Asif Ali) runs ‘Pure Facts’. It’s an online media company based out of Coimbatore, and we listen to Ashwin talk repeatedly about how he doesn’t believe in sensationalism or emotions, believing in a brand of objective journalism that provides pure facts to its viewers. You assume that he’s the stereotypical idealist but there’s always a dissonance between what he says and how he behaves. A few scenes later, after he’s tried to convince us of his ethical ways, he nonchalantly reveals how his modest operation makes money. Without making it sound like blackmail, he says he investigates the inner workings of big corporates and agrees to not reveal them on his platform for a “fee”.

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Sat, September 20 2025

Fri, September 19 2025

Despite a powerful premise and timely themes, the film is over-scored and underwritten. Moments never have room to breathe, resulting in a highlight reel that struggles to leave a lasting impact.

In Athiyan Athirai’s sophomore film, Thandakaaranyam, the eponymous forests become a MacGuffin that is forever out of reach of the protagonists. It’s a story that’s ostensibly about the fault lines and simmering tensions between the state, comprising a nexus of the police, paramilitary forces that collude with politicians and conglomerates, and the tribal population that is given the unqualified title of Naxalites. The forests remain in the margins in Athirai’s film (his Irandam Ulagaporin Kadaisi Gundu remains one of the best debuts in Tamil cinema of the last decade); they are not landscapes for conspiracy, separatist forces or ambushes — it comes across as a conscious decision. The forest is more life and livelihood, one that is as one with the self as skin. But the forest security offices and the training camps, the locations where injustices truly roost, are the places of interest.

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Fri, September 19 2025

Vetri, a debt-ridden entrepreneur, turns a gigolo after seeking financial help from a college senior, Karthikeyan. In his new role, he encounters Namrata, a lonely woman dealing with a miscarriage and a broken marriage. Meanwhile, Shraddha, a rebellious college student, keeps her romance with a classmate, Adi, a secret. As they meet at her home when her parents are away, the night takes a wild turn.

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Fri, September 19 2025

Directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg, the biopic on Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd sticks to the surface of what it wants to tell.

Swiped recounts the history of the dating app explosion of the 2010s, which was led by Tinder and followed by Bumble. Whitney Wolfe Herd was at the center of both, and the Hulu film explores her journey from someone who started out wanting to make a difference with charitable work to the woman who ended up changing the face of dating. The biopic benefits from having the likeable Lily James star in this average retelling of the rise of startup culture, which only dips into the more controversial points. Swiped follows Whitney (James) as she goes from a 24-year-old marketing director to the CEO of Bumble/Badoo at 31. The film shows the early days of Tinder and how it evolved into the biggest dating app on the scene. Whitney had a big hand in its success, but it is her word against the founders, who block her out of the company. She picks up the pieces to start her own app, Bumble, which puts the safety of women above all.

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Fri, September 19 2025