Fri, August 15 2025

Easy and a rich watch

The Assasin is a crime thriller created by Harry and Jack Williams and led by Keeley Hawes and Freddie Highmore, which follows a mother and son duo as their past begins to haunt them. While the mother is an assassin the son returns to her asking questions about who his father is. Meanwhile, a unknown group puts a heavy bounty on her head making it impossible for the two of them to have real conversation without racking up dead bodies around them. The show begins with Keeley Hawes as Julie at a young age in 1994, fighting off a group of Russians to get to her target. Despite being offered a lot of money, she finished her mission and left the money behind. However, just as she confirms her kill and is about to move on to her next, the timer on her watch rings out to let her know it’s time to check the pregnancy test. 31 years later, Julie has retired and is living on a small Greek island alone while waiting for her estranged son to come visit her.

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Fri, August 15 2025

Pavan Malhotra is as dependable as ever in the latest TVF offering.

Shifting focus from panchayats and chikitsalayas, TVF takes the legal route to tell the story of a generational conflict revolving around small-town court kacheris. Is Harish Mathur, whose acumen in the court-room has earned him legions of fans, wrong to assume that his son Param will follow in his footsteps? Is Param right in wanting to forge his own path, which will take him far away from both his father’s chosen profession, as well as the land of his birth?

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Thu, August 14 2025

कोर्ट कचहरी और काले कोट वाले वकीलों से लोग अमूमन दूर ही रहना पसंद करते हैं, इसलिए उनकी दुनिया से अंजान भी होते हैं। ऐसे में, न्याय के इस मंदिर के इर्द-गिर्द ढंग से कहानी बुनी जाए तो एक ताजगी और नयापन जरूर महसूस होता है। जैसा कि बीते साल आई वेब सीरीज ‘मामला लीगल है’ को लेकर महसूस हुआ था। रवि किशन स्टारर यह सीरीज टीवीएफ (द वायरल फीवर) से निकले विश्वपति सरकार और समीर सक्सेना ने बनाई थी। वहीं, अब TVF के मूल कर्ता धर्ता अरुणाभ कुमार इसी विषय पर नई सीरीज ‘कोर्ट कचहरी’ लेकर आए हैं, जिसमें दो पीढ़ियों यानी पिता-पुत्र के बीच करियर की आजादी को लेकर तनातनी का तड़का भी है, मगर इसके बावजूद मामला सही से सेट नहीं हो पाया है और उनका यह केस (सीरीज) कमजोर रह गया है।

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Wed, August 13 2025

Starring Pawan Malhotra and Ashish Verma, the 5-episode TVF series resembles a sweet-talking man who becomes a red flag

Court Kacheri does a lot right for its first three (out of five) episodes. It unfolds as a legal dramedy that questions its own identity. The young protagonist, Param (Ashish Verma), is a reluctant second-generation lawyer by virtue of being the son of a popular senior advocate, Harish Mathur (Pawan Malhotra). Param detests the profession — he’s seen his dad entertain all kinds of criminals, shady clients and corrupt politicians over the years. All he wants to do is leave for either Dubai or Canada, but a Police Clearance Certificate (PCC) becomes a conflict after he’s caught in a fake-marksheet scam. Basically, he’s a nepo-baby who can’t handle the pressure of legacy. The outsider, Suraj (Puneet Batra), is Harish’s loyal assistant. Unlike Param, he wishes he was his mentor’s son with silver-spoon privileges; his passion for law sees him hustle to start a secret practice with a friend (Amarjeet Singh) behind Harish’s back. In short, there’s a toxic patriarch and two boys desperate to escape his shadow and become their own men.

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Thu, August 14 2025

Based on the 1936 novel by Manik Bandopadhyay of the same name, Suman Mukhopadhyay’s film is far from a straightforward story of an educated, upright man reforming rural India.

Shashi (Abir Chatterjee) is not the ‘hero’ we’re used to seeing in mainstream cinema. He comes off as someone perpetually irate at the people around him, but it’s probably his powerlessness that gives way to his anger. The one and only doctor in a tiny hamlet in West Bengal, despite his best attempts, Shashi is never able to meet his own expectations. In the film’s first scene – he discovers a dead acquaintance, killed by a bolt of lightning. The man was on his way to find an educated groom for his teen daughter. More than anger, Shashi is disappointed how a life is lost in search of a 10th-pass prospect.

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Tue, February 4 2025

Suman Mukhopadhyay’s Putulnacher Itikatha or The Puppet’s Tale (part of the Big Screen Competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam this week) begins with a man on a boat, the twilight glistening in the swampy conditions surrounded by rural Bengal of the late 1930s. On the boat is Dr Shashi Bhuto (Abir Chatterjee), encountering his ancestral village and with it, death. “Everyone must face death someday”, his voiceover drones, insisting that he doesn’t, therefore, mourn. He lives a double life, one in his physical manifestation, as a doctor in a village in pre-Independence India, populated by people with little to no education and beset by all kinds of issues, from religious dogma, superstitions and lack of access to basic services amidst war in Europe and freedom struggle. His other life is in his head, his future he dreams of in a city, maybe London, as the affluent, posh doctor he wishes to be. In many ways, The Puppet’s Tale — adapted from Manik Bandopadhyay’s 1936 novel of the same name — is a curious film. It can be placed in the context of a particular time in India as well as a particular period in Indian cinema. It is set during a transitional, commotion-filled phase in modern Indian history — less than a decade for independence from British rule—with the movement touching every corner of the country. The film intentionally refrains from registering any of that. In cinema terms, it is almost two decades before Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, which itself is a certain rural time capsule of new India, followed by forced migration towards busier parts of the country. Here, Shashi’s existential crisis takes precedence over India’s own. That’s not to say he is unbothered by the condition of a country that is just about incubating. His existential crisis eats away at him, he holds dreams of moving to London to be the doctor that he wants to be instead of toiling away treating the local villagers who are sceptical about his methods.

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Wed, August 13 2025

Writer-director Celine Song's Materialists can't distance itself from the objectively concerning worldview of its protagonist, played by Dakota Johnson.

The most distressing observation that Materialists makes about modern romance is that not much has changed since Elizabeth Bennet went on a quest to find a ‘single man in possession of a good fortune’ back in the 1800s. The business of marriage is still just that: a business, a financially motivated arrangement that many pretend is something purer. They do this to delude themselves into thinking that they aren’t as superficial as the sort of people they enjoy passing judgement at. In writer-director Celine Song’s highly anticipated second film, Dakota Johnson plays a rom-com version of Seema Taparia, a matchmaker who weighs her client’s ‘criteria’ and connects them with potential life partners with the dispassion of someone tying two shoelaces together.

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Fri, June 20 2025

Since its release, Materialists has stirred a fair amount of conversation, inviting diverse interpretations of its theme, tone and treatment. A recent article in Indiewire goes as far as to state that the film not only subverts the conventional romance genre but is also director Celine Song’s takedown of the transactional nature of Hollywood itself, a ‘business’ where commerce weighs heavy on art; one in which cinema has largely been reduced to an assembly-line product that needs to ‘check boxes’. Where films are no longer films, but generically referred to as content. It is an interesting way to read the film, like many of the other exegesis of Materialists that have sprung up over the last week. At its core, Materialists poses the age-old question of what makes two people come together in a marriage — love or security. Song uses an unexpected and clever sequence set in prehistoric times to frame her film’s central theme, that of romantic relationships being either transactional or emotional, or often both.

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Tue, June 17 2025

“Are we in the right film?" a girl in the row behind me asked her friend. You could see why she’d be confused. They’d turned up for a New York romance with Pedro Pascal and here was an unkempt man wearing animal hide handing a bouquet to a woman in front of a cave. He puts a ring fashioned out of single flower on her finger. The title drops and then we’re in New York, watching Lucy (Dakota Johnson) get ready for another day as an in-demand matchmaker.

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Tue, August 12 2025

There is such a thing as a Festival Discovery. When you walk into a theatre blind and watch in awe a film taking shape and culminating into everything you wanted to see but did not know. There is such a thing as a film seeing you in a crowd, acknowledging you for what you are and smoothening the jagged edges of what has become of you. Like offering a handshake in the dark. Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was that film for me. The description on the festival website was vague: “Something bad happened to Agnes. But life goes on… for everyone around her, at least.” It said something and nothing. Something bad happened to Agnes (Victor), the tall, awkward protagonist of the film who lives in a quaint house and is overjoyed every time her best friend, Lydie (Naomi Ackie) visits her from New York. They sit on a couch and collapse into a lived-in comfort of years. You look around and see no one else around. When they meet their other friends from college, Agnes is asked, “Do you still live there?” Her gaze falls and Lydie holds her hand beneath the table. But even she has her own apprehensions. “Don’t kill yourself,” she urges. “I won’t,” Agnes reassures with a certitude that implies that she had considered it.

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Tue, August 12 2025

Hollywood has done some excellent work in the post-MeToo era. This film adds to the list.

My first reading of Agnes (played by Eva Victor) was that of a buoyant 30-something person struggling to hold on to her twenties, shirking responsibility of a long-term relationship (or anything that we consider ‘grown-up’), sleep-walking through a listless mid-career, and probably too afraid to leave the comfort of her surroundings. Living in a small home in New England, she’s visited by her best friend and former house-mate, Lydie (Naomie Ackie), a writer in New York, working on her next book. It appears some time has passed since they last met. As they catch up, Lydie talks about her book, and Agnes deflects any conversation about herself. I braced myself for a film that ends with Agnes acting like a responsible adult, exiting her dream world.

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Sat, August 9 2025

What is remarkable about Eva Victor’s Sundance breakout, a taut 104 minutes, is the way it refuses to position its protagonist as a classic victim, even though there’s enough reason for it.

Often, a woman who finds the courage, and the words, to talk about an assault that’s happened to her, is asked why she is doing it ‘so late’. It’s easier to say ‘an’ assault, rather than ‘my’ assault because disassociation kicks in. Owning up to it becomes too much, and the only way to survive is to begin distancing from ‘the event’. All too often, it goes unaddressed, lying like an unhealed wound, pushing itself to the fore when the survivor least expects it. Debutant director Eva Victor’s ‘Sorry, Baby’ in which Victor plays Agnes, a professor in a small New England town, does have a Bad Thing happen to her. Her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who is visiting her when the film opens, was her grad school roommate, when it happened. In the film’s most chilling sequences, we are rendered spectators to the Bad Thing, at a remove. We see the tall, gangling, fresh-faced Agnes go into her thesis guide’s home at dusk: the lights go, hours elapse, and we wait, at a distance, as the camera stays unmoving and unflinching, for Agnes to come stumbling out, sit on the steps, wear her boots, and get into the car and drive back home, possibly the longest, and the most difficult, drive of her life.

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Sat, August 9 2025

Tender and tense in equal measure, director Ankur Singla’s film finds life between the generation gap

In the march of civilisation, some dear words are in danger of falling by the wayside. One of them is Ghich Pich. It can be loosely translated as cramped space, but it is a state of mind that a single word can’t explain. Much like the nostalgia of the 1990s, young filmmakers continue to revisit it to tell coming-of-age stories. It is a template where the focus is on providing an experience, and in the hands of director Ankur Singla, the emotional and physical architecture feels tangible and honest as he captures a slice of life from three Chandigarh boys grappling with hormonal rush and daddy issues.

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Sat, August 9 2025

Ankur Singla's Chandigarh-set film, ‘Ghich Pich’, is a simple but reasonably effective slice of nostalgia

It’s rare to see architecturally attuned Hindi films. Basu Chatterjee in the ‘70s had an eye for it. Last year, Atul Sabharwal’s Berlin used Brutalist buildings to suggest forbidding bureaucracy. I wouldn’t go as far as to say architecture informs Ankur Singla’s Ghich Pich, but the film is alive to it. Every now and then, a deliberate framing will dwarf the characters and call attention to the building in the back. It’s a welcome strategy. Why set your film in Chandigarh if you’re not going to use Le Corbusier’s creations? You can tell Singla grew up in the city. His vision of Chandigarh in 2001 feels unforced but specific, a series of quick, confident sketches rather than a laboured recreation. The central trio, fast friends and classmates in high school, are deftly drawn too. Anurag (Aryan Singh Rana) is a promising student, the one likeliest to make the jump to a metro like Delhi. Gurpreet (Kabir Nanda) is a sad sack who spends all his time thinking of ways to impress classmate Ashima. Gaurav (Shhivam Kakar) mostly gets in trouble at school, content with a future working in his doting father’s eyewear store.

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Sat, August 9 2025

2000s Chandigarh is the protagonist of Ankur Singla’s well-acted friendship drama

In this streaming era, I’m suspicious about stories set in the 1990s and early 2000s. When nostalgia becomes the only selling point, it’s hard to enjoy the curated slice-of-life-ness. I’m also wary of the term ‘Mindie’ (mainstream+indie): a tonal signifier of low-budget productions with a commercial pitch. Ankur Singla’s Ghich Pich (a colloquial term for “emotional turmoil”) is a Mindie marinating in post-liberalisation nostalgia. The year is 2001, the setting is Chandigarh. Posters of Chandrachur Singh, Sonali Bendre and Shawn Michaels dot the coming-of-age narrative of three teen friends in the late-night-drives and single-ring-on-landline phase of their lives. Board exams are around the corner; middle partings, blissful ignorance (“I’ve heard it spreads through eye contact,” whispers a kid about homosexuality), pre-digital innocence (“Kiss? No, my love for her is pure,” a boy declares) and letters inked in blood are all the rage.

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Sat, August 9 2025

The Davans are an influential family in the fictional town of Bindiya, Bihar. With the family patriarch, Bada Davan, in jail, the eldest son, Chhote Davan, tries to seize control of both the empire and local politics. However, his ambitions are threatened by a new colonel, rival gangs, and internal family conflict, all while a dedicated police officer seeks to bring down their criminal enterprise. Saurabh Shukla’s role starts with a bang, but is eventually relegated to the sidelines, and his presence is wasted. Ranvir Shorey looks his part as a son desperate to snatch power in the family, though his performance could’ve benefited from more gravitas. Vineet Kumar and Govvind Namdev get past their roles like a walk in the park; they’re barely challenged.

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Sat, August 9 2025

An Indian spy, Adhir, is on a mission to stop Pakistan’s president, General Zia Ullah, from developing the country’s first nuclear bomb. Many years later, in 2025, he is racing against time to protect an undercover agent, Mariam a.k.a Shrishti, who unearths a dangerous secret about a Pakistani officer, Ashfaq, his past and is making a perilous escape. Naveen Kasturia holds his own as an upright spy who does what it takes to fulfil his duties. He maintains appreciable restraint with his body language, diction, lending authenticity to the portrayal. Mouni Roy’s role, Shrishti, comes with many limitations, while she does her best to rise above them. However, her character could’ve exhibited more agency with her choices, actions.

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Sat, August 9 2025

Inspired by real events, 'Salakaar' shows an invincible Indian spymaster humiliating Pakistan across two timelines

Sometimes it takes less than a minute to realise that something is going downhill. It could be a tacky shot, a corny line, a childish sound cue or an awkward actor; broken craft is the first (and only) indicator. But when it takes less than 30 seconds to realise that an entire show is going downhill, the day ahead can be long and sobering. The politics don’t matter; the theme is futile; the genre is secondary; the bigotry takes a backseat. It just becomes impossible to engage with at a basic level of storytelling. All you can do is befriend your fate and hope for the least damage.

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Sat, August 9 2025

The only actors who rise above this series is Naveen Kasturia and Mukesh Rishi. Both deserve better.

In 1974, Pakistan’s vaulting nuclear ambitions were spiked single-handedly by an Indian spy. And now, in 2025, the chatter around nukes is back again. Will Pak succeed this time around? How will India deal with the new threat? That’s the thrust of Faruk Kabir’s five-part series, ‘Salakaar’, reportedly based on real-life agent Ajit Doval’s canny moves back in the 70s, which find a fresh airing. This is yet another show built on showing the Pakistani establishment, including its then-president, as violent clowns, and the Indians as whip-smart. But it’s hard to take this iteration (writing credits are shared amongst Kabir, Spandan Mishra, Srinivas Abrol and Swati Tripathi) seriously: a scene which is meant to drip menace, has the supreme leader Zia Ullah (clearly based on Zia Ul-Haq, played by Mukesh Rishi) turn up himself at the Indian embassy with a dinner invitation for undercover agent-cum-attache Adhir Dayal (Naveen Kasturia).

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Sat, August 9 2025

Parshi, a carefree youngster, is head over heels in love with Anitha, who just can’t seem to give her consent to marriage. Sattaiah, Anitha’s father, and his younger brother Narsing Yadav remain on good terms until they discover a share of their deceased father’s land. What connects Parshi to the land, and how far will it affect his marriage prospects? Will the warring brothers mend their ways? Mothevari Love Story isn’t a show where you expect refined performances, but the young guns and a few experienced hands do what’s necessary to sustain its momentum. Anil Geela’s underdog act and easy-going persona make him instantly relatable, while Varshini Junnuthula’s crankiness as Anitha is generally charming.

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Sat, August 9 2025

Director Shiva Krishna Burra’s Telugu web series plays it safe, aiming to tap into the social media audience that has long connected with the relatable content created by some of its cast and crew

Life in rural Telangana is often portrayed in Telugu cinema as laidback and unpretentious, with its residents adding quiet character to the setting. Mothevari Love Story, now streaming on ZEE5, draws from this familiar image to tell a gentle tale of romance, sibling friction, and family ties. The series stars Anil Geela, best known for My Village Showon YouTube, in a role that nudges viewers to reflect on familial bonds. Set in Lambadipalli village, the story centres on brothers Sattaiah (Muralidhar Goud) and Narsing Yadav (RS Nandha), nicknamed Ram and Lakshman for their close bond and reputation for settling disputes at the local panchayat. But beneath the harmony, the series hints at tensions: of ego, inheritance, and simmering rivalry.

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Sat, August 9 2025

Despite a heart-wrenching premise, the VV Surya Kumar-directed Telugu web series leaves us wanting for more

Arabia Kadali starts with an obvious disadvantage, basing its premise on incidents that have already inspired a widely watched Telugu film, Thandel (a major hit this year). It tells the story of fishermen from Andhra Pradesh arrested in Pakistan for straying into foreign waters, waiting tirelessly to return home and reunite with their loved ones, which feels like a distant dream by the day. The show, co-written by Krish Jagarlamudi (and Chintakindi Srinivas Rao), underlines the extraordinary grit and persistence of the fishermen, while a woman back home fights tooth and nail to ensure their release. The VV Surya Kumar directorial begins by casting light on the mundane realities of fishermen, their debt-ridden families, the air of hopelessness that pushes them to migrate to Gujarat for employment and the exploitation of the corporates.

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Fri, August 8 2025

Krish Jagarlamudi and Chintakindi Srinivas Rao have created the Telugu series for Prime Video.

The Telugu show Arabia Kadali takes viewers on a sweeping maritime journey through the lives of fishermen caught in the net of geopolitics. The Prime Video series from Krish Jagarlamudi and Chintakindi Srinivas Rao spans eight episodes and covers over a year. Directed by VV Surya Kumar, Arabia Kadali explores what happens when men from rival villages are forced to depend on each other after being captured in foreign waters and incarcerated in a hostile environment. The story centres on Badiri (Satyadev) and the struggles of other local fishermen like him. The coastal villages of Andhra Pradesh are in crisis. The once-bountiful Bay of Bengal has been overfished and polluted. There’s no jetty or proper boats. The fishermen migrate to Gujarat for long weeks at sea as hired hands on company fishing boats. The lure of the Arabian Sea’s richness draws them further westward. What begins as a desperate mission for livelihood turns into a nightmare when the fishermen inadvertently cross into Pakistani waters and are arrested on the charge of being Indian spies.

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Sat, August 9 2025

Confusion gets seriously confounded when the swap this time is split four ways, with the foursome becoming recipients of each other’s bodies.

There’s much that’s similar between the 2003 Freaky Friday and the 2025 Freakier Friday, starting with the central body-swapping premise, and the return of two main stars, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan. The films may be separated by more than two decades, but the vibe is very much the same: get the sentiments out, but keep it broad and light, and make things right. In the previous one, Dr Tess Coleman (Jamie Lee Curtis) and teenage daughter Anna (Lindsay Lohan) are at loggerheads by the former’s impending marriage, with the latter not thrilled at the prospect of a stepdad. This time around, it is the turn of former rocker-present celebrity events manager Anna’s Gen Z daughter Harper (Julia Butters) to be unhappy at the former falling hard for single hot dad Eric (Manny Jacinto), who is in possession of a daughter of his own, the very British Lily (Sophia Hammons), said girl being satisfactorily snooty and stand-offish, and therefore Harper’s enemy number one.

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Sat, August 9 2025

Emotional and nostalgic, what more could you want?

Freakier Friday is directed by Nisha Ganatra, who has also worked on hit comedy shows like Fresh Off The Boat, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Mindy Project and many more. The sequel follows both main characters from Freaky Friday 2003 film, a mother daughter duo who could not see eye to eye even after switching their bodies. Almost three decades later Anna and Tess have returned with more complications in life (two daughters), and a much needed lesson waiting for four of them which will bring them even closer. The film begins with a quiet recap of what everyone has been up to since the OG film’s release in 2003. Jamie Lee Curtis’ Tess Coleman has been happily married, she now runs a podcast from her closet and is a published author, on the other hand, Lindsay Lohan’s Anna has stopped performing and now works for a pop star Emma while being a single mother to a strong-willed teenage daughter, Harper. When a food fight ensues at the school because of Harper and her British nemesis Lily, both Anna and Lily’s father Eric are called to the school.

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Sat, August 9 2025

Horror meets drama done well

Together written and directed by Michael Shanks has been surrounded with controversy about the origins of the story as the makers face a copyright infringement lawsuit based on how similar it is to another film. The producers of Better Half in their lawsuit claimed that the story was originally pitched to Franco and Brie in 2020, but they turned it down. Husband and wife Dave Franco and Alison Brie are leading Together and were widely praise for their performance after Sundance debut. Rightfully so, as this is one the best psychological thrillers in recent times with chilling and very real, relatable concept. The film begins with an unusual incident taking place in the small town where a couple has already gone missing. Community volunteers can be seen searching the forest walking trails when two dogs of a of volunteer wonders off into a dark cave. They end up drinking from a well in the cave and begin to have some kind of a hypnotic reaction to it. Even after they go home with the volunteer, they continue to behave different, and at night when the dogs won’t stop barking, the volunteer walks in on them having consumed half of each other.

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