Sat, August 16 2025

From the legendary animator Genndy Tartakovsky, the man behind childhood classics such as Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack, comes a cartoon movie that could realistically be banned by the CBFC.

Animation hall-of-famer Genndy Tartakovsky latest film, Fixed, was originally set for a theatrical release, but was offloaded by Warner Bros. during a cost-cutting drive. While movies such as Coyote vs. Acme and Batgirl — both were dealt similar blows — remain sight unseen, it’s easy to imagine why the studio would’ve wanted to wash the scent of Fixed off of itself. A wiser move would’ve been to bury it in the backyard. Painfully unfunny, the train wreck of a movie feels interminable at even 80 minutes long; it’s crude, cringe, and filled with juvenile dialogue that makes you feel like you’re eavesdropping on a group of 12-year-old boys at the playground.

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Thu, August 14 2025

Co-written and directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, the adult comedy feature has some wild and crazy moments in the life of an about-to-be neutered dog.

Fixed is not a family film. It is far, far from that. Instead, the animated feature on Netflix focuses on a dog named Bull who is about to lose his ‘manhood’ by being neutered at the vet. Along with three of his besties, he has a wild 24 hours before he is tamed. Think of Fixed as an animated The Hangover featuring canine characters. Filmmaker Genndy Tartakovsky’s new animated feature goes hard and may not be for everyone. Bull (voice of Adam DeVine) is a mutt who is loved by his family but they are tired of him humping anything that moves, including the aged Nana. The solution is to send him to the vet to get neutered once and for all. Bull’s pack of besties, boxer Rocco (voice of Idris Elba), dachshund Fetch (voice of Fred Armisen) and beagle Lucky (voice of Bobby Moynihan), try to reassure him, but he runs off to the city. They eventually track him down, leading to a night of mayhem where Bull tries to admit his feelings for Honey (voice of Kathryn Hahn), an Afghan hound who is being presented at the dog show. The pack’s misadventures make up much of the story.

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Sat, August 16 2025

There is a grave idea at the core of Weapons: what is worse; the grief of losing a loved one to a tragedy, or the guilt of having to resume regular life after some time has passed?

Can a society that is terrified of confronting the evil at its core ever produce a single subversive piece of art? Certainly, Indian cinema is still taking baby steps when it comes to addressing our immorality; here, a movie about caste discrimination is a movie about caste discrimination, a movie about corporate greed is a movie about corporate greed, a movie about political corruption is a movie about political corruption. But it will be a while before our cinema is empowered to subvert. It will be a while before someone makes a gothic horror about crimes against women, or a creature feature about the Kashmir issue. It will be a while before we get a homegrown version of Barbarian director Zach Cregger’s brilliant new film, Weapons.

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Thu, August 14 2025

Zach Cregger's Weapons appeals to our inherent quest for answers — for an endgame — from a horror film, and delights in the journey rather than the destination.

Weapons opens and closes with a kid’s voiceover, but the anonymity of this narrator kind of ties into the film’s thematic fluidity. As viewers, we are simply wired to look for social cues, for hints and allegories. Weapons knows this and toys with our instincts. The meaning — or lack of it — lies in the eyes of the beholder. The horror in the film becomes anything we want it to be. For some, it could be a self-aware take on community trauma and urban isolation. For some, it could be a nifty riff on our biases about witchcraft and creepy relatives. For some, it could be a naughty satire on our perception of true-crime and supernatural stories. For some, it’s the wicked title, where the emotional ‘weaponisation’ of an entire town on edge prevents them from looking in the most obvious places. The twist — of a fragile outsider arriving to cast a voodoo over victims and turn them into literal weapons — is an entertaining rendition of this simple idea.

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Tue, August 12 2025

Unsettling, hynotic, wildly unhinged and chilling to the bone — this brilliantly written small-town mystery is madness wrapped in genius.

When 17 kids from the same class mysteriously disappear from their homes on the same night except for one student (Alex) and the teacher (Julia Garner as Justine), the bewildered town seeks answers. While both survivors face scrutiny, Justine becomes the prime suspect. How did the kids vanish into thin air! Who’s behind these bizarre disappearances? This gripping small town mystery is like nothing you have seen before. Shocking at every turn, it never gets predictable. Very rarely do you come across a horror film that’s smartly layered, deeply unsettling, dark and amusing, all at once. Weapons ticks all the boxes. Be it the isolated setting, camera work or performances, you feel as much a part of this eerie mystery as the characters.

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Sat, August 16 2025

Kathir and Hakim Shah's complex characters deserved a better film.

Hidden within the surface of Meesha (moustache) is an intense drama about lost friendships and betrayal. This friendship may be described simply as one between Anandhu (Hakim Shah) and Mithun (Kathir), but there are larger factors at play to keep them separate. From the outside, it looks like caste is what divides them most. Although they both appear to belong to the same financial class, Anandhu hails from privilege. He appears to stay in an agraharam, and when he struggles to find a job, we hear him complain about reservations and the surname that has kept him poor. On the other end is Mithun, a childhood buddy of Anandhu’s. But as they grow up together, they face societal hurdles that keep them apart. Mithun belongs to a community of fishermen, and he lives in a colony that becomes the hot topic of Meesha. A corporate textile factory is said to come up in this colony, promising jobs, homes, and money to each resident. It will likely lead to development in the future, but for now, it requires this group of 2000 to be relocated.

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Sat, August 16 2025

Kanaka Mahalakshmi a.k.a Kanakam, a feisty young woman, is deputed as a constable in Repalle in the 90s. While her male colleagues consistently undermine her capabilities, she finds an ally in a senior cop Sambasiva. Kanakam forges a strong bond with a folk artiste Chandrika, who goes missing. As the missing cases mount in the village, she goes all out to find answers. Varsha Bollamma effortlessly portrays the psychological evolution of Kanakam through the series, from an underdog staffer to an officer who’ll go to any length to seek the truth. She has an arresting screen presence, displaying an uncanny ability to hold a show on her shoulders. Srinivas Avasarala’s penchant for unconventional roles takes an interesting turn, and he responds well to it.

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Sat, August 16 2025

A young woman, Bani’s disappearance into a supernatural darkness leads a cop, Kalpana and a medical student, Jay, on a dangerous quest. They uncover a conspiracy by a pharma CEO, Madhu Uberai, who exploits human suffering. As they try to unravel the secrets behind the darkness, named Tama, they confront their traumas and an unstoppable evil in a final, epic battle to save reality. The show boasts of decent performances all around, though it’s designed to exhibit the vision of the creators more than anything else. Karanvir Malhotra delivers a neat performance as the troubled sibling, trying to make sense of his brother’s trauma. Prajakta Koli’s vibrant, easy-going presence helps her portrayal, and Priya Bapat lends a silent dignity to her sincere cop-act.

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Fri, August 15 2025

Andhera, starring Priya Bapat, Karanvir Malhotra, Prajakta Koli, Pravin Dabas, Surveen Chawla, among others, should come with a tagline: suspend all disbelief, all ye enter this supernatural-horror territory.

The hardest thing about this show is also the easiest. Once you accept the fact that heightened hokeyness is key to both the characters and the construct, you begin admiring the straight-faced seriousness with which everyone gets with the plan, with nary an eye roll or giggle in sight. Without giving too much away, and I suppose I couldn’t even if I wanted to, so outlandish is everything, the ‘andhera’ in the title turns out to be a malevolent entity which threatens to enslave human-kind. It has wriggly tentacles which probe and fasten, whisking victims away into a never-never land where they lie in suspension, neither dead nor alive, mere husks.

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Thu, August 14 2025

The 8-episode horror show trades mental health metaphors for paranormal inactivity.

Cold on the heels of Mandala Murders, Andhera (“darkness”) is yet another supernatural thriller that ends up becoming a cautionary tale on narrative ambition. This genre of horror is so shapeless that, if the theme isn’t as culturally focused as a Khauf or even an Asur, it tends to spiral into several directions without doing justice to any. It’s like a batsman who keeps swinging big — regardless of the match situation — under the pretext of “intent”. It doesn’t help that Andhera is one of the longest Hindi shows of the year. Or perhaps its 8 episodes feel longer because the world-building just never stops building; it’s not a good sign when a central character says “we were wrong all along” in the penultimate episode. It’s obvious that I’ve run out of patience because I usually don’t hit the ground running with criticism in the opening paragraph. I like some suspense and world-building too. But life is short and, if the title is anything to go by, I’m one typo away from reviewing the suburb I live in (Andheri).

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Fri, August 15 2025

'Mayasabha', also like most shows today, is written with an unexcited imagination, beginning with a high-stakes, livewire moment, only to recede into a long flashback.

I suppose the first thing you need to know about Mayasabha is that it is an incomplete show—like most shows these days, hungering for your attention to make you watch their second season, they forget to complete the first. So, before you strap on for this nine-episode saga, know there will be nine more. How has this become common practice among the streamers? Imagine being pushed out of a theatre post interval, and being told that this is all we get to see for now—come later, pay again, for more. They have collectively ruined storytelling as an art form, fracturing it into parts that can be sold cheaply at the marketplace for attention. Mayasabha, also like most shows today, is written with a lethargic hand and an unexcited imagination, beginning with a high-stakes, political, livewire moment, only to recede into a long, winding flashback. We will not return to that high-stakes moment in this season—that is for later.

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Sat, August 9 2025

Born to a humble farmer, Krishnama Naidu is a rebellious son with firm views on society and justice, nursing political ambitions. Rami Reddy, an MBBS student, is trying to outgrow the shadow of his father, a notorious goon. A national emergency is declared by the authoritarian PM Iravati Basu, and as Andhra Pradesh descends into chaos, a change in order seems imminent. Aadhi Pinisetty delivers a fabulous performance as KKN, showcasing his evolution as a tactful leader and as a man of many dimensions. He brings authority to Naidu’s persona while making the character relatable to the viewer. Playing Rami Reddy, an unlikely entrant in politics, Chaitanya Rao Madadi lends enthusiasm and agility to the portrayal.

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Sat, August 9 2025

Aadhi Pinisetty and Chaitanya Rao are impressive in this series closely modelled on real-life political powers in undivided Andhra Pradesh

Sony LIV’s new Telugu web series, Mayasabha, opens with a familiar disclaimer: any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental. Yet it does not take long to draw parallels between its characters and the political giants who shaped undivided Andhra Pradesh. Echoes of NT Rama Rao, the actor-turned-leader; YS Rajasekhara Reddy, the doctor-turned-politician; and the current chief minister, N Chandrababu Naidu, and several others ripple throughout the storyline. Titled Rise of the Titans, the show’s first season is a sharp and dramatic commentary on the socio-political fabric of the State. Ambitious in scope and often gripping in execution, the series draws viewers into a world of power struggles, shifting loyalties and behind-the-scenes drama.

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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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