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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Sat, August 9 2025

Sitaare Zameen Par asks its audience to get behind a particularly nasty man before preaching to them about things that, truth be told, they should already know. Sure, many might not, but it's probably going to take more than an Aamir Khan to convert them.

While watching any film, it is important to understand who the target audience is, especially Hindi movies, which are often slotted into rigid categories. It’s theoretically possible for a 65-year-old ‘tirth yatri’ from Rithala to enjoy the fourth Twilight movie on a bus to Amarnath, but, you’d agree that they probably wouldn’t care much for shiny vampires and their politics. The Twilight movies are aimed at teenage girls, just as Aamir Khan’s Sitaare Zameen Par is targeted at the sort of folks for whom kindness doesn’t come naturally. Khan plays their surrogate in the film, directed by RS Prasanna and based on the Spanish-language hit Campeones. It’s the star’s second remake in a row, after the poorly received Laal Singh Chaddha from a couple of years ago.

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Wed, August 6 2025

Marketed as the spiritual sequel to Aamir Khan’s 2007 hit Taare Zameen Par—is a shoddily made, preachy, borderline insensitive film with a noble mission. However, just because it aims to raise awareness about an admirable cause doesn’t excuse its cringeworthy tone, Khan and Genelia Deshmukh’s subpar performances, and its casual othering of the neurodivergent community. We discuss the film’s many problems before finally finding one aspect worthy of praise.

Mon, June 23 2025

The film packs in some strong messaging and feel-good moments, but leaves one thinking—a little less education, a little more story please?

An Aamir Khan film is a bit of an anomaly in the current landscape of Hindi cinema. Here’s an actor whose superstar credentials have come not courtesy testosterone-heavy action spectacles but by championing narratives that espouse for a better society and celebrate the inherent goodness of mankind. Good intent, though, doesn’t always translate into an equally good film. Sitaare Zameen Par is that feel-good film that tries so hard to be likeable that it begins to feel cloying and underwhelming. Few jokes fly, many forced. But by the end, it’s pushing for tears. Khan has played this script before, and it’s worked wonders at the box-office. There’s the Rajkumar Hirani-directed 3 Idiots and PK and the Khan banner’s Taare Zameen Par (TZP) and Secret Superstar. Sitaare Zameen Par is cut from the same social-moral fabric. It has even been billed as a spiritual sequel to TZP, only that it feels laborious in execution.

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Thu, August 7 2025

It's an unusual comparison to make, but Shazia Iqbal's Dhadak 2 has more in common with Joaquin Phoenix's billion-dollar-grossing Joker movie than you'd imagine.

Something that Quentin Tarantino said recently rings true for director Shazia Iqbal’s Dhadak 2. In an interview, he explained why he admires the controversial blockbuster film Joker, despite the divisive reactions that it opened to. Tarantino said that the movie pulled off ‘subversion on a massive level’, when it got audiences across the globe to root for a madman to shoot a celebrity in the face on live TV. These were all civilised people, Tarantino said. And yet, for around 10 minutes, they were hungry for blood. It’s an unusual comparison to make, but Dhadak 2 has more in common with a billion-dollar-grossing Hollywood movie than you’d imagine. In an alternate universe, Siddhant Chaturvedi’s character in the film, a Dalit man named Neelesh, could have very easily turned into a vengeful anarchist.

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Sun, August 3 2025

The film might look like a romance. But it’s actually mainstream Hindi cinema’s most clear-eyed reckoning.

This is how star-crossed romances usually go: boy meets girl, hearts collide, the world relents, and they ride into forever. But not in Dhadak 2, the Hindi remake of Mari Selvaraj’s searing Tamil film Pariyerum Perumal (2018). Here, love doesn’t float above the ground but sinks deep into the soil of caste identity. The film’s lovers, Neelesh (a standout Siddhant Chaturvedi) and Vidisha (Triptii Dimri), are young and idealistic. But society sees their surname before it sees their hearts. He is Neelesh Ahirwar, a first-generation Dalit student who lives in a slum. She is Vidisha Bharadwaj, an upper-caste classmate who falls for him. In debutante director Shazia Iqbal’s hands, Dhadak 2 proves that, in India, love isn’t blind — it sees caste in sharp, unforgiving focus.

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Sun, August 3 2025

If Pariyerum Perumal (2018) was a burning manifesto against caste oppression, Dhadak 2 is the government-issued pamphlet version—neatly formatted, slightly sanitized, and laminated for upper-caste convenience. A Hindi remake of Mari Selvaraj’s Tamil classic, Dhadak 2 attempts a daring high-wire act: to tackle India’s caste realities without disturbing the comfort zones of mainstream Bollywood viewers. It’s also branded as a spiritual sequel to 2018’s Dhadak, a film so committed to looking away from caste, it practically made erasure an aesthetic. In that sense, Dhadak 2 is a kind of karmic correction—only this time, the characters do mention caste out loud. Occasionally. Set in a vague “Hindi heartland” (geography was apparently too casteist to be named), Dhadak 2 follows Neelesh (Siddhant Chaturvedi), a Dalit law student with dreams of justice and—poor thing—romance. He secures a spot in the prestigious National University of Law through reservation, and while most Bollywood heroes fight corrupt politicians or dance on Swiss hills, Neelesh battles that deadliest of foes: everyday systemic discrimination.

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Wed, August 6 2025

Although Netflix's new romantic drama is presented through a female perspective, the male entitlement occasionally seeps through.

What begins like an In the Heights-style story about upward mobility and female ambition turns into what can only be described as a Mohit Suri movie. Saiyaara won’t leave you alone no matter how hard you try. The sappy tone of Suri’s films, borrowed from the cinema of more countries than the average Indian will ever visit in their lifetime, has swung all the way back around and influenced the likes of My Oxford Year. It’s perhaps the most algorithmic film that Netflix has released in recent memory. Starring two of the streamer’s newest alums — Sofia Carson from The Life List and Corey Mylchreest from Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story — the film makes you wonder if it was produced only because the filmmakers gained no-holds-barred access to the University of Oxford.

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Tue, August 5 2025

A young stay-at-home woman’s tedious maternal routine takes a surreal turn when she finds herself finding a sense of freedom in her newly-developed feral tendencies. Simply and bluntly put, the appropriately-named Nightbitch has its protagonist — who remains unnamed — develop into a dog every night and run amuck through the neighbourhood, after a day of intense drudgery and monotony. Sounds crazy? It sure is. Based on the 2021 novel of the same name by Rachel Yoder and directed by Marielle Heller, whose last outing was the critically-acclaimed 2019 film A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, Nightbitch stars six-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams in the lead. Adams is more than a few pounds overweight, dressed dowdy throughout the film and perpetually exhausted in the way a lot of us can relate with. What we can’t, of course, is the extreme spiral the character undergoes under the load of stress and mental anguish. With ‘Husband’ away on office work on weekdays, ‘Mother’, which is what Adams is referred to in the description of the film, functions on a daily basis as a single mother. That includes taking care of her infant ‘Son’ with not a minutes’ rest, even as she ruminates on what could have been if she had not paused her career as an artist to take care of her baby full time.

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Fri, August 1 2025

In her harebrained horror comedy, the six-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams plays a pre-menopausal woman who transforms into a literal dog.

Despite being a six-time Oscar nominee, Amy Adams’ career in the last decade or so resembles that of someone who has lost the ability to say no. Her latest film is Nightbitch, a dark comedy about the horrors of motherhood, in which she plays a nameless woman who finds herself transforming into a dog. Literally. The movie is directed by Marielle Heller, whose last feature was A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood. Nightbitch is, in many ways, the cynical sister to that stubbornly saccharine film. It’s also a fantastical reality check for anybody contemplating parenthood. In addition to repelling audiences with its weirdness, however, Nightbitch could possibly cause Suniel Shetty to reconsider his views on gender roles.

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