The Paradise
Action, Thriller, Drama (Telugu)
In 1980s Secunderabad, a marginalised tribe battles discrimination and fights for citizenship under an unexpected leader's guidance, challenging systemic oppression. (more…)
Shaque: Trust No One
Drama, Crime, Mystery (Hindi)
A mother receives yearly photos of her missing child. After nine years of searching, she discovers the truth about the abduction lies not far away, but hidden among her closest circle. (more…)
The Vvaan: Force of the Forest
Action, Adventure, Thriller (Hindi)
A rational urban man defies his ancestral forbidden forest and awakens a divine goddess, only to realise that not only do some powers exist beyond logic but he must rise as the village’s only saviour to protect his people from (more…)
The Vvaan Force of the Forest
Guild Reviews by Film
Bandkhor
Drama (Marathi)
Six women from different backgrounds unite to challenge societal expectations. Bandkhor chronicles their journeys toward dignity and freedom as they reclaim their lives and forge their own paths through courage and determination.
Cast:
Nityashree Dnyanlaxmi, Priyadarshini Indalkar, Chhaya Kadam, Pooja Katurde, Mrinal Kulkarni, Mayur More, Titeeksha Tawde
Director:
Mahesh Manjrekar
Writer:
Irawati Karnik
Sun, September 27 2026
Directed by Mahesh Manjrekar, Bandkhor deals with the emancipation of women across generations. While it occasionally takes a sledgehammer approach to make its point, it never strays from its central theme—the main plot and subplots all revolve around women. As for the sledgehammer approach, given the state of affairs in society, some messages are perhaps best conveyed that way.
The Uprising
Action, History, Drama (English)
As war and plague devastate 14th-century England, a humble peasant ignites a rebellion, uniting an army of commoners to defy the King’s might in a desperate fight for justice and survival.
Cast:
Andrew Garfield, Jamie Bell, Stephen Dillane, Tom Hollander, Cosmo Jarvis, Thomasin McKenzie, Jonny Lee Miller, Woody Norman, Katherine Waterston, Stanley Townsend
Director:
Paul Greengrass
Writer:
Paul Greengrass
Sat, September 26 2026
Fri, September 18 2026
Shot in bleak greys offering little by way of colour, on the muddy grounds or the cloudy skies, or the person of its characters – who are dressed uniformly, but for the royals, in clothes made of worn, torn sack material – The Uprising is often hard to see or follow.
In a world where ever-new oligarchs, from oil to tech, run the world, who cares for a peasants’ revolt 700 years ago? So, doff hats to Paul Greengrass and Andrew Garfield for lending their weight to this film about the 1381 uprising, widely considered the first populist rebellion in England. But, uprising does not mean uplifting. Shot in bleak greys offering little by way of colour, on the muddy grounds or the cloudy skies, or the person of its characters – who are dressed uniformly, but for the royals, in clothes made of worn, torn sack material – The Uprising is often hard to see or follow.
Dhoomakethu
Comedy, Thriller (Malayalam)
On the morning of his wedding, 36 year old Kuttan wakes from a disturbing dream about his own death. As the day unfolds, familiar moments begin to repeat and reality becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish from memory. Realizing that something is terribly wrong, Kuttan races to uncover the truth before the day repeats itself again.
Cast:
Nikhila Vimal, Sajin Gopu, Ganapathi S. Poduval, Shine Tom Chacko, Sidharth Bharathan, Manju Pillai, Rajesh Pandian, Abel Twinkle, Adish Praveen
Director:
Sudhi Maddison
Writer:
Sonny, Manu
Sat, September 26 2026
The film’s repetition is deliberate, designed to evoke the claustrophobia of having no control over your day. But to break free from its own monotony, the answers to some questions needed to be far more shocking than what the film ultimately offers.
Writers Manu and Sonny seem to have stumbled upon a terrific premise for one of Malayalam’s first time-loop comedies (Sajin Gopu himself has starred in Lijo Jose Pellissery’s darker Churuli) with Dhoomakethu (comet). Not only is the setting obviously Malayali, with much of the film taking place in a typical small-town home as it gets wedding-ready, but there’s also the theme of jealousy that feels peculiarly Malayali in this joyous setting. This includes sneaky caterers wondering out loud about how a man as old and unappealing as Kuttan (Sajin Gopu) can score a wife like Sharmila (Nikhila Vimal). This includes nosy neighbours reminding each other of Sharmila’s ‘colourful past’ and of reasons why Kuttan has remained single for this long. Just as hilarious is one of Kuttan’s frenemies deciding to buy himself a new car exactly on the date of the wedding.
Fri, September 25 2026
For a part of the film’s runtime, a blend of the now familiar time loop trope with humour seems to work, until some of the hard work unravels due to weak writing of the background story
Any out of the world concept can lose its sheen when it becomes too commonplace and is overused. So it is with the time loop concept in cinema, the latest iteration of which is in Sudhi Maddison’s Dhoomakethu (comet). There is some irony in naming a film with a now commonplace concept with something as rare as a comet. Yet for a part of its runtime, the blend of this now familiar trope with humour seemed to work, until some of the hard work unravels due to weak writing of the background story.
Shaque: Trust No One
Drama, Crime, Mystery (Hindi)
A mother receives yearly photos of her missing child. After nine years of searching, she discovers the truth about the abduction lies not far away, but hidden among her closest circle.
Cast:
Parineeti Chopra, Jennifer Winget, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Anup Soni, Chaitannya Choudhry, Sumeet Vyas, Soni Razdan, Harleen Sethi
Director:
Renzil D'Silva
Fri, September 25 2026
Director-writer Rensil D’Silva weaves an interesting albeit clichéd storyline
Illusion meets reality… those of us who have watched Christopher Nolan’s ‘Inception’ with rapt attention know all too well what a fascinating blend it is. Of course, Netflix’s latest web series ‘Shaque: Trust No One’, which too marries phantasmagoric elements with truth, bears no similarity with the acclaimed film. Rather, on the surface, it bears an uncanny resemblance with another of Netflix’s new films, ‘Gandhari’. Yes, like the Taapsee Pannu starrer, ‘Shaque’, which marks the web-series debut of Parineeti Chopra, too, deals with a mother’s search for her daughter.
Fri, September 25 2026
The corny seven-episode series stars Parineeti Chopra as an unhinged mother who receives a photograph of her missing child every year
When I was little, my mother’s very North Indian family would clink glasses, raise voices and play card games on winter nights. As the only sober primate in the room (I wasn’t sure about the wayward dog), calling the adults’ bluff was a cinch, because their intoxicated minds and muscles kept failing them: they’d place the cards face-side up by mistake, coughed harder every time they tried to lie, or even forgot the name of the suits (“3 of Souls!”) before playing their hand. If they ever played poker, I thought, we’d end up homeless. Shaque: Trust No One is the cinematic equivalent of those nights: the harder it strives to be serious (or just convincing), the funnier it gets. Some might call that entertainment; I call it the comforting embrace of mediocrity. At times, I got excited at the prospect of those farcical, downright incompetent card games.
Fri, September 25 2026
एक मां के लिए इससे बड़ा सदमा क्या होगा कि उसकी नवजात बच्ची उससे दूर हो जाए? वो मां ना अपनी पहली संतान को भूल सकती है, ना ही उसे वापस पाने की उम्मीद चैन से जीने देती है। एक मां की ऐसी ही भावुक कहानी वाली वेब सीरीज ‘शक: ट्रस्ट नो वन’ से परिणीति चोपड़ा ने ओटीटी पर वेब सीरीज की दुनिया में अपनी पारी शुरू की है। हालांकि, मेकर्स ने मां-बेटी की इस भावनात्मक कहानी के इर्द-गिर्द शक और साजिशों के ढेर सारे जाले बुनकर इसका मजा थोड़ा किरकिरा कर दिया है।
The Vvaan: Force of the Forest
Action, Adventure, Thriller (Hindi)
A rational urban man defies his ancestral forbidden forest and awakens a divine goddess, only to realise that not only do some powers exist beyond logic but he must rise as the village’s only saviour to protect his people from annihilation.
Cast:
Sidharth Malhotra, Tamannaah Bhatia, Nimrat Kaur, Maniesh Paul, Sunil Grover, Shweta Tiwari, Yo Yo Honey Singh, Manu Rishi Chadha, Durgesh Kumar, Anup Soni
Director:
Deepak Kumar Mishra
Writer:
Arunabh Kumar
Fri, September 25 2026
Engineered to exploit the current devotional fervour at the box office, in this tale of divine retribution, both the plot and the message are ultimately buried beneath a high-pitched, artificial theme-park aesthetic.
What happens when the custodians of ecological preservation form a corrupt alliance with political forces in the name of progress? Arunabh Kumar and Ekta Kapoor combine to present the dialectic between ecological conservation and modernisation, wrapped in a glossy, high-pitched divine intervention, for a mass audience that, these days, looks South for grand mytho-mystical experiences. When Rishi (Sidharth Malhotra), a rational professional, returns to his ancestral village with his wife Mamta (Tamannaah Bhatia) to sell off his inherited land, he is sucked into a raging debate. Led by the double-faced Deepak (Sunil Grover), those aligned with the development agenda offer a better rate because they want to build a road through the forest to reduce travel time to city infrastructure. In contrast, the traditionalists, including his well-meaning brother Shashi (Anup Soni) and bitter sister-in-law (Shweta Tiwari), don’t want to upset the forest’s reigning deity and invite her curse. Because of a past incident, Rishi has lost faith in the goddess, but Mamta remains devoted. When Rishi ignores the sacred decree forbidding entry into the forest after sunset, fury breaks loose as we gradually discover that beneath the supernatural lies a timely message: reneging on a pact with nature can unleash self-seeking dark forces. Drawing from folklore, it reminds us that the ruler has a role to protect nature and what happens when the custodian goes corrupt.
Fri, September 25 2026
Some films are bad. Some are terrible. And some are pure torture. Sidharth Malhotra-Tamannaah's The Vvaan falls neatly into that third category.
Some films are bad. Some are terrible. And some are pure torture. The Vvaan falls neatly into that third category, in which I struggled to find a single redeeming feature, and failed spectacularly. When we first come upon a Mumbai-based engineer (Sidharth Malhotra) and his wife (Tamannaah Bhatia), childless but certainly not loveless, they are a) singing songs in a large sea-side bungalow, b) fetching up at a quack who hands out potency powders and c) participating in a hideous racist-colourist joke. The Vvaan never recovers from this early blow. Nor did I, as the film kept drawing me deeper into an off-colour, off-putting mix of so-called fantasy and folklore, of the kind that involves dark forests and their resident guardian devis, and evil spirits which devour those who dare walk into their domain after dark.
Fri, September 25 2026
The Paradise
Action, Thriller, Drama (Telugu)
In 1980s Secunderabad, a marginalised tribe battles discrimination and fights for citizenship under an unexpected leader's guidance, challenging systemic oppression.
Cast:
Nani, Mohan Babu, Kayadu Lohar, Sonali Kulkarni, Raghav Juyal, Sampoornesh Babu, Vishika, Tanikella Bharani, Priyadarshi Pullikonda, P. Vijay Kumar
Director:
Srikanth Odela
Fri, September 25 2026
Directed by Srikanth Odela and starring Nani, Mohan Babu, and Sonali Kulkarni, The Paradise is so fragmented that it struggles to establish cohesion and continuity and, most importantly, lacks a substantial story to hold it together.
Nani, the Natural Star and one of Telugu cinema’s most relatable, family-friendly heroes, has been steadily pivoting towards action-heavy films over the past few years. His latest outing, The Paradise, is his biggest yet in terms of scale and action. But does Nani’s second collaboration with director Srikanth Odela work as well as their first? Can The Paradise take the actor and filmmaker to the next league? What works, what doesn’t, and what really goes wrong? Let’s find out.
Fri, September 25 2026
Nani’s physical transformation in this Srikanth Odela-directed film is striking, but it cannot make up for a narrative that struggles to establish its characters or conflict
The Paradise begins by paying tribute to some of the Indian cinema legends we have lost in recent times. It also remembers revolutionary Telangana poet Gummadi Vittal Rao, better known as Gaddar. It is director Srikanth Odela’s way of tipping his hat to his Telangana roots and the region’s textured history. In his debut, Dasara, also starring Nani, Srikanth explored caste hierarchies around Telangana’s coal mines during the era of prohibition, weaving a tale of friendship, loss and revenge. It wasn’t a perfect film, but it established its emotional conflicts well.
Thu, September 24 2026
It is an opportunity lost, especially for a director who proved his mettle beyond doubt with his very first film. His second, scattered and uneven, is no patch on Dasara
Excessive violence and predictable storytelling suck the air out of The Paradise and reduce it to a limp, messy heap despite all the technical wizardry and visual vim and vigour that director Srikanth Odela packs into it end to end. A Telugu mass movie that pulls out the stops, The Paradise homes in on a man who takes up cudgels on behalf of his mother and his marginalised tribe to avenge the brutal oppression that a feudal lord has subjected them to for many years. Lead actor Nani, reuniting with Odela three years after the super-successful Dasara, plays Jadal, a seething rebel with a cause who returns to his people after serving a long prison sentence. He sets out to settle scores with the viciously exploitative Malik (Mohan Babu).
Brothers
Comedy (English)
Hollywood actors Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have been best friends for years, but a shocking family secret suggests their connection might be closer.
Cast:
Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Natalie Martinez, Brittany Ishibashi, Nolan Almeida, Ella Grace Helton, Noah Carganilla, Highdee Kuan, Oona Yaffe, Holland Taylor
Fri, September 25 2026
The Hollywood stars act as fictionalised versions of themselves in this far-out comedy that imagines the two as brothers after a real-life rumour.
Actors Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have been good friends since they met on the film Edtv (1999) and went on to collaborate on HBO’s award-winning series True Detective (2014). In recent years, a rumour about the two keeps surfacing from an interview with Matthew’s mother Kay revealing that she ‘knew’ Woody’s father, Charles, a felon, in her past. While it was suggested that the two actors could be brothers, a DNA test was never taken. In the new Apple TV series, Brothers, created by the two stars, David West Read and Lee Eisenberg, the outlandish series imagines a fictional scenario in which this plays out. The cheeky, wink-wink narrative works best when it remains on the actors, as it gets way too sitcom-ish when applied to their extended families.
Mobland S02
Crime, Drama (English)
Two mob families clash in a war that threatens to topple empires and lives.
Cast:
Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, Paddy Considine, Joanne Froggatt, Lara Pulver, Anson Boon, Mandeep Dhillon, Jasmine Jobson, Teddie Allen, Emmett J. Scanlan
Fri, September 25 2026
The British crime thriller returns to London as the Harrigan family finds themselves in the middle of another turf war.
The first half of MobLand Season 1 moved around at a slow pace, introducing characters and setting up the chaotic world of the Harrigan crime family. Returning for its second season, the series, created by Top Boy’s Ronan Bennett, wastes no time in setting up another threat for the Harrigans, who find themselves in the midst of a civil war. Directed by Guy Ritchie, the Paramount+ show has been in the news for its on-set drama, with reports of discord between the leads. However, the show is back with gusto on Season 2 that quickly establishes the stakes and the players. It remains to be seen if it can stick the landing with what lies ahead.
The Love Hypothesis
Romance, Comedy (English)
Olive Smith, a biology PhD candidate, and Dr. Adam Carlsen, a hotshot professor and well-known tyrant, enter into a fake relationship, seeing each of their carefully calculated theories on love get thrown into chaos.
Cast:
Lili Reinhart, Tom Bateman, Rachel Marsh, Jaboukie Young-White, Nicholas Duvernay, Arty Froushan, Jeananne Goossen, Aladeen Tawfeek, Kenny Wong, Daniel Brochu
Director:
Claire Scanlon
Fri, September 25 2026
Tom Bateman is tall and handsome, but like all good love stories, he must also be cussed and stuck-up, and it seems too contrived.
Writer Ali Hazelwood is a romantic novelist and a neuroscientist, a kind of bond that is hardly organic. The Love Hypothesis, the film based on her bestselling novel by the same name, mixes together the same chemicals. The couple in question, and the people in their lives, walk the rarefied corridors of Stanford. She is a PhD student, he is a professor, and they do top-of-the-line work such as detecting pancreatic cancer. However, barring the lab coats, some mice, a few beakers and mentions of molecules, chemicals and controlled experiments, this could be a love story from anywhere, any time — though, because Hazelwood knows this territory, the science part looks and sounds genuine.
Fri, September 25 2026
The film whimsically sways from one end to the other leaving yawning gaps in the process of transitioning.
The eponymous forest - it has been in existence since the 7th century, the audience is told in a rushed introduction - has a human voice. It emanates from a goddess carved in stone. The rock deity has eyes that glow in the dark like traffic lights. Only those who dare to venture into the forbidden, mystical woods at night witness the phenomenon but only a few survive to tell the tale. It is deep-rooted fear of the unknown that keeps people away from the forest after sunset. In the climax, a crowd divided by what they know or what they don’t congregates there. A protracted fracas erupts. The skirmish is of the sort that leaves one completely cold.
Vibe
Action, Comedy, Drama (Hindi)
Two inseparable friends' ordinary, unassuming lives spiral into an unpredictable, high-energy adventure that pushes their survival instincts and friendship to the limit.
Cast:
Preity Zinta, Kunal Kemmu, Sparsh Shrivastava, Vanshika Dhir, Dinesh Lal Yadav Nirahua, Yashpal Sharma, Sharmila Tagore, Aditya Kulshreshtha
Director:
Kunal Kemmu
Writer:
Kunal Kemmu
Tue, September 22 2026
Unlikely heroes, friendship, espionage, humour, chemistry, tonal balance, comic heroism, and contemporary Hindi cinema.
A film may possess an ingenious premise, an assured director and a cast brimming with talent, yet still lack the one intangible quality that can make or break a genre exercise: the right vibe. Not vibe in its loose, fashionable sense, but the precise tonal alchemy of mood, rhythm, atmosphere and attitude that tells us how seriously—or how gleefully—we are expected to take what unfolds on screen. For an action-comedy, that equilibrium is particularly precarious. Too much solemnity makes the jokes feel intrusive; too much frivolity diminishes the stakes. Vibe, for the most part, negotiates this tonal tightrope with considerable assurance.
Sun, September 20 2026
But director-actor Kunal Khemu overplays his hand and assumes that the audience does not get the joke.
Unfortunately, I’m not on team Kunal Khemu. I used to be, when I thought of him as an actor who didn’t get his due. However, his directorial debut, Madgaon Express (2024), changed that. Laced with typical “boys-will-be-boys” silliness, I found myself drifting off during many points of the inanity that was unfolding on screen. It needs a special kind of wit and sorcery to keep people invested in a film where nothing truly matters but the makers’ whimsy. Then I heard his views on pay parity, on his wife Soha Ali Khan’s podcast, and he didn’t seem all that wise. It’s futile to assume the above instances wouldn’t colour my perspective of his directorial venture, Vibe, a film he has also co-produced, and is starring in. But for the sake of fairness, I have to concede that there are few things more effortless in Hindi cinema than Khemu enacting a gag he wrote.
Sat, September 19 2026
Gondhal
(Marathi)
A suffocating young bride, Suman, uses her lover Sarjerao's obsession in Gondhal ritual and turns sacred tradition into a deadly chess match.
Cast:
Kishore Kadam, Ishita Deshmukh, Yogesh Sohoni, Nishad Bhoir, Anju Prabhu, Suresh Vishwakarma, Madhavi Juvekar, Aishwarya Shinde, Kailash Waghmare, Poonam Patil
Director:
Santosh Davakhar
Tue, September 22 2026
Santosh Davakhar's formally ambitious Marathi folk drama is India's official submission to the 99th Academy Awards
Gondhal begins with what is, roughly, a 25-minute single shot at night. It follows an old man, Bhivaba (Kishor Kadam), and his grandson Vishnu (Dhruv Thoke) walking towards the gondhal, a ritual folk celebration in the village for newlyweds, and on that long-ish walk, the old man meets other men, and gossip is exchanged under the guise of curiosity, resentments are expressed under the guise of conversation, and the child’s curiosity is mistaken for his personality—he only seems to ask questions: What is this? Why is that?
Mon, November 17 2025
Gondhal, which is written and directed by Santosh Davakhar, gets the viewers transported into the interiors of the village and the ceremony of Gondhal in a thoroughly impressive manner. It does that through a long one-take shot that not only follows different characters perform different tasks but also in presence of over 100 junior actors in a large open area. Veteran cinematographer Amalendu Chaudhary makes his presence felt in various other shots as well. No stone is left unturned when it comes to portraying the ceremony and its various aspects. One can find even minute detailing with regards to the rituals, costumes and production designing.