Tue, September 8 2026

Instead of a gritty, remorseful gangster saga, Toxic is an exhausting 194-minute ego trip for its lead star, Yash. We discuss the clash of visions between director Geetu Mohandas’s attempt at an emotional father-son remorse drama and Yash’s demand for high-octane KGF-style star worship. Naturally, the film collapses under the weight of its conflicting ambitions. We also talk about the baffling visual language, its performative gender dynamics, and the claustrophobic close-ups that make a ₹500 crore budget look like cheap AI slop.

Mon, August 31 2026

What might happen when a woman filmmaker gets the opportunity to make a film about violence and sex? What might happen when she gets access to all the familiar toys of the male-star vehicle: the punch dialogues, the star, the swagger, the slow-motion sequences, the sex, the violence… What might she bring to this cinema that we don’t generally get? As it turns out… quite a lot. First, she refuses to see the protagonist, Raya, as a ‘hero’. Quite the opposite, in fact. The film isn’t interested in hero-villain demarcations, right-wrong judgments. Raya (Yash) himself says as much at one point. When you are in pain, morality stops seeming important. The film, in fact, has a lot to say about the nature of pain, about what happens when you live with it for so long that you begin to fall in love with it, when it begins to feel more like home than any real home ever could, ever did. There’s a fantastic song in the Tamil version, ‘Vittupogaadha Yen Vali’, that speaks of this dichotomy. “Vittupoiduma en vali, poi vidaadhe en vali…”

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Sun, August 30 2026

Three years after being announced, Toxic has reached theatres with its gangster world intact, but its women viewed largely through Raya. The central disappointment is that the promised female gaze never meaningfully shapes the film's perspective.

Three years after Yash and Geetu Mohandas announced Toxic, the film is finally in theatres. And after all the waiting, the anticipation and the speculation, one question remains stubbornly unanswered: where is the female gaze Geetu promised? In a throwback interview, Geetu described Toxic as a “gangster film”. She said, “It’s a gangster genre with a female gaze. How about that?” When the teaser dropped in July, that was the question everyone asked. Now, after three hours of Toxic, a more pointed one takes its place: does the film ever really see its women at all? Rewind to 2023. When Yash and Geetu Mohandas announced their collaboration, eyebrows went up. Here was a star coming off the monumental success of the KGF franchise, joining forces with a filmmaker known for her distinct, uncompromising voice. Would these two very different cinematic worlds click, or would the pairing end up a spectacular miss? There seemed to be little room for anything in between.

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Mon, September 7 2026

If the first half is a wildly original re-imagination of a film like 'Idle Hands', the second half is a cop-out based around broader aspects of SS Rajamouli’s 'Eega'.

Nahas Hidhayath, both writer and director of I’m Game, does something clever by setting his second film in Hyderabad. When looked at purely as a business proposition, it makes sense given the stardom Dulquer Salmaan enjoys in the two Telugu-speaking states. From a narrative lens, the Hyderabad setting complements the film’s larger-than-life aspirations and the audacity with which it navigates a particularly improbable plotline. But instead of settling for this alien setting alone, it adds Tamil characters to its core. The film doesn’t even make a big deal of this, choosing instead to play this lack of specificity as something very natural to the film’s urban setting. What these choices do is prepare us for a film that feels like it was not made in Malayalam. But there are advantages to this too. Instead of looking for realism or the crutch of logic to enter its crazy world, we’re already there about 10 minutes into the film. This creates a distance, as though this story is happening somewhere else, but it also sets the stage for the film to take a wild swing at almost anything, as long as it entertains.

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Sun, September 6 2026

Nahas Hidhayath and Dulquer Salmaan aim big, but beyond its rich production values, the film remains stuck between a peculiar body-horror thriller and a template revenge drama

I’m Game is essentially the story of two men. On one hand (pun intended), we have Dan John (Dulquer Salmaan), a compulsive gambler, and on the other, Vicky (Antony Varghese Pepe), a passionate cricketer. It so happens that their lives get ‘accidentally’ intertwined by a sheer twist of fate, leading to plenty of confusion, drama, realisation and eventually, resolution. Nahas Hidhayath’s story may not be entirely fresh, with many films in the past, including in Malayalam, exploring similar territories, but the material is still pulpy enough for a commercial potboiler. If you think of it, the director’s debut, RDX, a smashing hit, also had a generic storyline, but the execution was right on the money for an action-heavy entertainer. With I’m Game, the young filmmaker aims really big. Bigger stars, better production values, broader themes, but the ambitious vision is spoilt by some mediocre writing and shoddy execution, resulting in a mishmash of a genre hybrid film that’s stuck somewhere between a promising body-horror thriller and a template revenge drama.

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Sat, September 5 2026

Nahas Hidhayath's film, starring Dulquer Salmaan, has some flair but extends a neat hook beyond its elasticity

It’s quite easy to describe I’m Game, Nahas Hidhayath’s follow up to his wildly entertaining debut, RDX (2023). Imagine if SP Muthuraman’s Enakkul Oruvan (1984) and Madonne Ashwin’s Maaveeran (2023) had a baby. The older film is a kooky reincarnation saga played with melodramatic earnestness while the latter maintains an irony-tipped sharpness through its serious action-oriented storytelling. I’m Game doesn’t always get the ratio of this mix right, but it hedges its bets on the handful of inventive ideas that keeps the proceedings engaging.

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Sun, September 6 2026

As much as it’s tightly acted, I got a sense that Furious is also a writer’s show

At the height of the #MeToo movement in 2018, something I read seared itself into my brain. “Men should be grateful that women are asking for equality. Not revenge.” For all the patronising tone at home, casual sexism at the workplace, catcalling on the street, groping in public transport, full-blown sexual assaults/attempts in most known/unknown corners of the city, the isolation and gaslighting that takes root after – I’ve often wondered why women still speak to men. In fact, why don’t they start their day by attacking the first man they meet? It’s an urge buried deep within Elizabeth Merriweather’s Furious – a first-rate serial killer mystery, which reveals itself as a reckoning of female rage at its most unvarnished, unbridled and intricate.

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Sat, September 5 2026

This over-stretched comedy stars Arshad Warsi as a debt-riddled husband who fakes his own death to secure a fat life-insurance cheque

Jeevan Ya Bheema Con? is what happens when Delhi Belly tries (but fails) to be a Kunal Kemmu comedy from the 2010s. It’s the sort of chaotic middle-class gag that occasionally remembers that it’s a movie. It begins with the title itself: a play on the name of the government life-insurance scheme (Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojna), where the premise features broke characters called Jeevan, Yojana and Bheema stumbling through a last-ditch insurance con. Unfortunately, there’s nobody named Pradhan, Mantri and Jyoti — why stop halfway?

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Sat, September 5 2026

The Gentlemen season 2 finds Guy Ritchie leaning harder into his enduring theme: men who mistake owning something with being someone. This season, Eddie (Theo James) leans into this even harder than ever. Among other things, he spends this run muscling into Italian mafia territory, even as he is chasing a seat in the House of Lords. And at the same time, the Netflix series, which is a spinoff of 2019’s action comedy movie of the same name, drops the zany energy that made season 1 so much fun. It’s a riskier season than the first. It is also colder and darker and, for my money, it is a better one, even when its reach outpaces its grip.

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Fri, September 4 2026

Theo James is back as the Duke of Halstead in Guy Ritchie's entertaining crime thriller as Edward Horniman tries to reclaim his legacy.

Created by Guy Ritchie, Netflix’s crime drama The Gentlemen is back for a darker and more serious second season. Eddie Horniman (Theo James) and Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario) have even more ambitious plans for their illegal drug business that face several obstacles. With several returning and new characters popping up in the gangster thriller, the Netflix series takes an unexpected twist at the halfway mark of Season 2, leaving audiences gasping with every twist and betrayal depicted in eight episodes. Written by Ritchie and Matthew Read, The Gentlemen Season 2 is more about purpose as Eddie and Susie try to break out from the expectations set upon them by others. Bold and ambitious, the second season does not repeat any formulas of previous Ritchie productions.

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Fri, September 4 2026

Co-directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the period comedy plays off Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh's odd couple energy.

The filmmakers behind Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, bring a Cold War comedy that is far more entertaining than it looks on paper. Ryan Reynolds plays an American pilot who crash lands in enemy territory, aka the former USSR, during a covert mission, while Kenneth Branagh plays his new Russian friend, a former KGB agent, who is his only way out. With great Top Gun (1986) references and gasp-inducing action sequences, the streaming entertainer ideally deserved a big-screen outing.

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Fri, September 4 2026

A downed American pilot and a former KGB officer discover that they have been told lies about each other’s countries all their lives, in this film set in the height of the US-Soviet Cold War years.

Ryan Reynolds repurposes his Deadpool routine in Mayday, the new Apple TV action-comedy film, in which he plays a downed American pilot during the height of the Cold War. With the blockbuster Deadpool and Wolverine (2024) having proven that his fast-talking, quip-based acting style works only in short doses and when it’s offset by an on-screen foil, Reynolds is made to team up in Mayday with Kenneth Branagh, who plays a stoic former agent of the KGB (Soviet intelligence and internal security agency), having a crisis of conscience. Together, they make a bid for freedom in a stylishly made, briskly paced and surprisingly sensitive entertainer that has no business being this good.

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Fri, September 4 2026

Andrew Garfield just tries too hard to be a cute hapless man-child. Claire Foy is a joy, especially when she is around the family.

On paper, this should come easy to screenwriter Simon Farnaby, with the Paddington movies and Wonka behind him, and Enid Blyton’s beloved The Magic Faraway Tree book series the source. But magic is hardly as easy as a fruit picked off a tree. It is either there, or it is not. And the more this film juggles its many British thespians, two known faces in Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy, and a very modern message about a childhood lost to electronic devices, the less and less it seems magical.

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Fri, September 4 2026

There is not enough slash for a slasher, if that is your thing; and there is not enough surprise for it to be a thriller.

Celeste (Adria Arjona) is a troubled ex-Marine roughing it out in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by similar misfits and discontents, and guns, loads and loads of them. When others shoot the breeze, she literally takes her guns out and does target practice, on carved Halloween pumpkins. Having her ex drop their young daughter (Blake Kennedy) for the weekend to this trailer park is a dangerous enough proposition. But that’s not the half of it.

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Fri, September 4 2026

Venu Gopal Reddy’s Telugu film works better as a buddy comedy than a love story, and could have benefited from sharper writing

In the final portions of Romanchakam, written and directed by Venu Gopal Reddy, the comedy of errors is in full swing. The narrative wants us to root for the lead pair, Anvesh (Sumanth Prabhas) and Mythili (Ananthika Sanilkumar). However, what lands better is the commotion created by Anvesh’s friends as they try to salvage the situation. Despite being consistently silly and overly talkative, their bond feels more convincing than the romance at the centre of the story. For a love story to work, the female protagonist needs to be well written. Perhaps in an attempt to keep the narrative breezy and humorous, the writing holds back from establishing who Mythili is. We know little about her background, aspirations or what stands in the way of her getting what she wants. A passing scene hints at differences between her and her parents, but the idea is not explored further. There are also sporadic references to suicide, but these remain vague and are never treated with much sincerity. At one point, an incident involving a suicide attempt is even played for humour. This imbalance between comedy and emotional depth makes it difficult to fully invest in the love story.

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Fri, September 4 2026

छोटे पर्दे पर धूम मचाने वाली महाप्रभु जगन्नाथ की भक्तिमय कहानी तमाम कानूनी लड़ाइयां जीतने के बाद अब बड़े पर्दे पर पहुंच चुकी है। प्रभु जगन्नाथ की महिमा का गुणगान करती यह ऐनिमेटेड फिल्म बुराई पर अच्छाई की जीत की एक सरल-सहज पौराणिक गाथा है, जो बच्चों को पसंद आएगी।

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Fri, September 4 2026

‘अर्जुन का तीर था, उड़ती शमशीर था। देवों में सूर्य था, वायु रणवीर था। सेना का जोश था, बादल मदहोश था। सीमा के पार जो जाता था तीर सा, दुश्मन काे मारकर आता था वीर सा।’ डॉक्यूमेंट्री ‘द लास्ट सैल्यूट: अ लव लेटर टू मिग-21’ की ये शुरुआती पंक्तियां ही ये साबित कर देती हैं कि कुछ मशीनें सिर्फ मशीनें नहीं होतीं। वे इतिहास का हिस्सा बन जाती हैं, पीढ़ियों की यादों में बस जाती हैं और उनसे जुड़े लोगों के लिए एक भावनात्मक रिश्ता बना लेती हैं। भारतीय वायुसेना के साथ मिग-21 का रिश्ता भी कुछ ऐसा ही है, जिसे डॉक्यूमेंट्री ‘द लास्ट सैल्यूट: अ लव लेटर टू मिग-21’गर्व, रोमांच और भावुकता के साथ दिखाती है। खुद पूर्व वायुसेना सदस्य रह चुके डायरेक्टर कुशल श्रीवास्तव की यह डॉक्यूमेंट्री भारतीय वायुसेना संग 62 साल लंबे रिश्ते के बाद अलविदा कहने वाले मिग 21 को सलामी है। कहानी उन 23 स्क्वॉड्रन से शुरू होती है, जो मिग 21 को ऑपरेशनल भूमिका में उड़ाने वाली आखिरी स्क्वॉड्रन थी। फिर 26 सितंबर 2025 को चंडीगढ़ में हुए मिग-21 के विदाई समारोह को भावुक अंदाज में दिखाती है। दिलचस्प बात यह है कि 1963 में इसी चंडीगढ़ एयर स्टेशन पर मिग-21 को भारतीय वायुसेना का हिस्सा बना था। यानी जहां से इसकी यात्रा शुरू हुई, वहीं उसका अंतिम अध्याय भी पूरा हुआ।

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Mon, August 31 2026

The Last Salute celebrates the MiG-21's immense power while honouring the pilots who flew it

The heady roar of the legendary supersonic fighter jet that served the Indian Air Force (IAF) for 62 years is muffled by nostalgia-dripping voices, an emotionally redolent background score, and a mind seeking to absorb loads of information. The “kick” inherent in the MiG-21 story is, however, given full rein in this engaging Netflix documentary conceived and executed as a companion piece to the hit web series Operation Safed Sagar. “Kick” is the word that several retired and serving pilots interviewed on camera use in describing what they felt when they sat in the cockpit of the now-retired-from-active-service MiG-21 and revved up the engine for take-off. The documentary transmits much of that to the audience.

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Mon, August 31 2026

From the creator of ‘Operation Safed Sagar,’ this neat little documentary features the final hurrah of the Indian Air Force’s prized possession, the MiG-21 fighter jet

There’s something innately sincere about The Last Salute, a documentary about the 62-year-old marriage between the MiG-21 and the Indian Air Force (IAF). It revolves around the retirement of the iconic Soviet fighter jet in 2025, leading up to its farewell ceremony while telling its story through the lens of the chosen few who were qualified to fly them. “A Love letter to MiG-21” is part of the title, so it’s more of a personal ode than a formal chronicling; its reputation as “a flying coffin” is hastily dismissed and neatly glided over. It’s just like watching one partner say goodbye to another after a long and eventful relationship, choosing to remember them fondly despite all the flaws and illnesses. Given that it’s from the creator of the recent Kargil series, Operation Safed Sagar, perhaps this apolitical and isolated wistfulness isn’t surprising.

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Mon, August 31 2026

Nayanthara and Kavin are great when it’s all fun and games in director Vishnu Edavan's 'Hi,' but they’re not able to navigate the film through the more serious portions

There’s a forgotten brand of humour that works really well for the most part in Vishnu Edavan’s Hi. Reminding one of the loud, but likeable comedies from the ’90s made by directors like Ezhil and Sundar C, the intentional old-schoolness of Hi has a way of surprising you with its silliness. It doesn’t even attempt to play it safe or try the logical approach. If there’s a joke to be milked, the film will do anything, even if means hitting someone on the head with a pole. It’s desperate and immatur, but oftentimes also feels oddly sincere.

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Mon, August 31 2026

The journey of Hi is made even more beautiful by the easy charm exuded by Nayanthara and Kavin, who ensure the romance doesn’t overshadow the comedy, and the comedy doesn’t overpower the romance

Desire. Almost every relationship is based on a desire of some sort. It can be a desire for companionship, touch, love, family, respect, and of course, lust. But at the base of it all is a desire to feel desired. Wanting someone to want you for who you are is a high that many go through life without ever feeling. It is in pursuit of this uns that people give their all. Vishnu Edavan’s Hi is about one such guy, Mayilsamy (A wonderfully understated Kavin), who has everything but love of the romantic kind. He meets a down-in-the-dumps woman, Devayani (A superb Nayanthara), who has nothing but the belief that love is destined for the more fortunate ones. No prizes for guessing where the movie goes from here, and the best part? Vishnu isn’t interested in making you play the guessing game, and just wants you to sit back and enjoy a simple, cheery romcom that hits you right at the feels.

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Sun, August 30 2026

Director Vishnu Edavan's Hi, starring Nayanthara and Kavin, is a harmless romantic comedy that has some delightful stretches. The film aims for low-stakes and achieves them too.

Rom-coms have a timeless charm. They make you smile, tug at your heartstrings and, at their best, leave you walking out of the theatre with a little more hope than you walked in with. But very few films manage to get that emotional balance right these days. Last week, the Malayalam film Bethlehem Kudumba Unit did it effortlessly. This week, Tamil film Hi attempts to recreate that magic with a story rooted in romance, family and second chances. But does it work? Let’s find out.

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