Saare Jahan Se Accha
Drama (Hindi)
A resilient Indian spy must defeat his counterpart across the border in a battle of wits and tradecraft to sabotage a nuclear program. (more…)
Guild Reviews by Film
Sundarakanda
Romance, Comedy (Telugu)
A man born under the Mula Nakshatra faces misfortune and failed relationships, exploring his journey to win over his ideal match.
Cast:
Nara Rohith, Sridevi Vijayakumar, Virti Vaghani, Naresh, Vasuki Anand, Satya, Ajay, VTV Ganesh, Abhinav Gomatam, Viswant Duddumpudi
Director:
Venkatesh Nimmalapudi
Fri, August 29 2025
Director Venkatesh Nimmalapudi’s Telugu film has a quirky concept, good situational humour, but is too inconsistent to be engaging
In Sundarakanda, Siddharth (Nara Rohith) faces a quintessential problem common to most middle-aged protagonists in Telugu cinema’s romcoms. The parents are worried that their ageing son may never get married, while the typical man-child will not agree to a girl unless she matches his specific requirements. However, the Nara Rohith starrer gives this idea a cheeky little twist and playfully subverts it. The film’s title is a throwback to Venkatesh’s 1992 hit by the same name, and there is enough thematic similarity between the two to establish a clear connection. While the former featured an unconventional equation between a male teacher and a feisty student, the 2025 film is a tale of a man who turns a teacher to woo his lady love (creepy, yes), tackling ageism with tongue-in-cheek humour.
Half CA S02
Drama (Hindi)
Two CA Aspirants from two different ends of the spectrum of the course, Archie and Niraj embark on the journey of one of the toughest courses and face the obstacles it has to offer.
Cast:
Ahsaas Channa, Gyanendra Tripathi, Anmol Kajani, Prit Kamani, Rohan Joshi, Aishwarya Ojha
Director:
Pratish Mehta
Thu, August 28 2025
Niraj, Archie and Parth have cleared their CA Group 1 exams. Both Parth and Archie land articleships in different companies, juggling their time for exam preparation. Niraj bumps into his ex, Kavya, again, and the two give their relationship another chance. Tejas continues to support Archie through her highs and lows, while Vishal makes progress with his acting career. The performances generally fit the bill. Given the graph of the characters is limited in terms of complexity, there’s only so much that an actor can do to go beyond the established tropes. Ahsaas Channa is the pick of the lot among the cast; she’s barely tested but tries to bring some earnestness into her performance. Half CA is precisely Kota Factory for CA aspirants – a group of students from different parts of the country across age groups come together to pursue their dream, nearly give up, get distracted, but give it a good shot. Some make it, some don’t, there are heartbreaks, disappointments and time runs out. Through the journey, some victories are literal, others moral, but they gear them for life.
Bring Her Back
Horror (English)
Following the death of their father, a brother and sister are introduced to their new sibling by their foster mother, only to learn that she has a terrifying secret.
Cast:
Billy Barratt, Sally Hawkins, Mischa Heywood, Jonah Wren Phillips, Stephen Phillips, Sally-Anne Upton, Sora Wong, Kathryn Adams, Brian Godfrey, Brendan Bacon
Director:
Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou
Writer:
Danny Philippou, Bill Hinzman
Mon, August 25 2025
One of the incidental pleasures of recent indie-horror films from around the world is how they’ve doubled down on the power of gaslighting. It’s chilling to see the psychological warfare unleashed on a person, enough to make them question their critical faculties and/or sanity. Why fear the monster under the bed, when family members and ‘well-meaning’ acquaintances can make up for it? The power of perception can be vital – which most people are discovering in the age of social media. Imbuing human paranoia into a folk horror-tale is one of the best decisions made by director-duo Danny and Michael Philippou in Bring Her Back – their sophomore film, after their clutter-breaking debut in Talk To Me (2023). Having started as YouTubers in Adelaide, the Philippou brothers soon showcased their knowledge about horror tropes. And they also know the points when most horror films take a leap of faith – and how ludicrous it looks. So the duo mine it for laughs. It’s another miracle of recent that instead of being rigid, indie-spirited horror films operate without any fear of flirting with their own formlessness.
Mon, August 25 2025
Following the releases of Weapons and Together earlier this month, the series of top notch horror/thriller films persists. It is safe to say that Bring Her Back stands out as the most terrifying of them all, due to its staging and unfolding – complemented by an exceptional performance from the ever-dependable Sally Hawkins. You will find yourself reluctant to visit her home, even if she extends an invitation
Nobody 2
Action, Thriller (English)
Former assassin Hutch Mansell takes his family on a nostalgic vacation to a small-town theme park, only to be pulled back into violence when they clash with a corrupt operator, a crooked sheriff, and a ruthless crime boss.
Cast:
Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, Sharon Stone, John Ortiz, Colin Hanks, RZA, Christopher Lloyd, Gage Munroe, Paisley Cadorath, Colin Salmon
Director:
Timo Tjahjanto
Mon, August 25 2025
Similar to numerous Hollywood films, Nobody 2 was produced due to the success of Nobody (2021), which performed well at the box office. The concept was interesting – an unremarkable office worker is actually a skilled assassin and capable of taking on a horde of thugs and defeating them decisively. It was a light-hearted film filled with action.
Indra
Thriller (Tamil)
INDRA is a serial killer investigation film about an ex-cop who lost his eyesight and sets out to find the killer terrorizing the town. What follows is a gripping chase full of twists and turns — but what if the hunter ends up becoming the hunted?
Cast:
Vasanth Ravi, Mehreen Pirzada, Sunil Varma, Anikha Surendran, Kalyan Kumar
Director:
Sabarish Nanda
Writer:
Sabarish Nanda
Sat, August 23 2025
Directed by Sabarish Nanda, 'Indra' is a crime thriller starring Vasanth Ravi, Mehreen Pirzada, and Sumesh Moor. The film is too basic to make a significant impact, which a crime thriller demands.indra
A police officer on suspension. A serial killer is on the loose. A murder that hits home. A personal tragedy that blinds the police. All these plot points could set the foundation of a gripping crime thriller, if done well. Director Sabarish Nanda’s ‘Indra’ has all of it, yet the film only reaches for the low-hanging fruit, so much so that the makers seem content with the bare minimum. Indra (Vasanth Ravi) struggles with alcoholism. His addiction and rage get him suspended, and he even leads to the loss of his eyesight. He and his wife Kayal (Mehreen Pirzada) are facing marital troubles. However, the loss of eyesight brings them closer as they wait for a transplant. During this time, Kayal is murdered at home while Indra sleeps in another room. The pattern of the killing points to a serial killer.
Paradha
Drama (Telugu)
A veiled village woman's life changes when city visitors challenge her traditions. As she questions customs and investigates a curse, rumors of Sati emerge, leading her to confront societal norms.
Cast:
Anupama Parameswaran, Darshana Rajendran, Sangeetha Krish, Rag Mayur
Director:
Praveen Kandregula
Writer:
Prahaas Boppudi, Poojitha Sreekanti
Sat, August 23 2025
Director Praveen Kandregula's 'Paradha', starring Anupama Parameswaran, Darshana Rajendran and Sangeetha Krish, is a thoughtful film on patriarchy, women coming out of their shells and sisterhood.
Women-led films don’t always have to be about a woman being belittled by everyone around her, only to later rise as someone who rides bikes in the Himalayas. A women-led film can also be about learning and unlearning - discovering that the world beyond their cocoon presents opportunities. How to make use of this vast world of opportunities is up to each individual. But the important underlying message is that they have a choice. A choice that lets them spread their wings and fly, or simply feel the freedom of having options. That is what director Praveen Kandregula’s ‘Paradha’ is all about. Subbu (Anupama Parameswaran) belongs to the fictional village named Padathi, where women, who have hit puberty, have to wear a veil till they die. This superstitious belief is told to the villagers as the story and curse of the deity, Jwalamma. If the paradha (veil) is taken off, wilfully or unintentionally, the woman has to face death. Hold on! A ritual followed by death.
Sat, August 23 2025
Anupama Parameswaran, Darshana Rajendran and Sangitha Krish shine in director Praveen Kandregula’s Telugu film that celebrates gender sensitivity in myriad hues
Paradha is a refreshing breather in a largely machismo-driven Telugu cinema. Imagine three women, hailing from different backgrounds, on a road trip to find a solution to a crisis that one of them is caught up in. Director Praveen Kandregula’s film starring Anupama Parameswaran, Darshana Rajendran and Sangitha Krish, brims with warmth, joy, laughter, and tears. The journey gives these women a much-needed getaway from their daily grind. As they soak in the vastness of the landscapes, they question their own understanding of the world and gender equations. Despite the heavy folklore that acts as a fulcrum to the narrative, considerable portions are handled with a lightness that makes it enjoyable.
Tehran
Action, Thriller (Hindi)
On 13th February 2012, a magnetic bomb exploded, destroying an Israeli embassy vehicle in Delhi. ACP Rajiv Kumar, leading the investigation, suspects more than what meets the eye. Amid political pressure and suspicions of an Iranian connection, he embarks on a perilous journey to uncover the truth, facing formidable adversaries.
Cast:
John Abraham, Manushi Chhillar, Neeru Bajwa, Madhurima Tuli, Elnaaz Norouzi, Alyy Khan, Dinker Sharma, Hadi Khanjanpour
Director:
Arun Gopalan
Writer:
Ritesh Shah, Ashish Prakash Verma, Bindni Karia
Sat, August 23 2025
John Abraham has perfected the art of remaining apolitical, even when he's starring in geopolitical thrillers such as Tehran.
There is a scam in Punjab that Rajkumar Hirani would’ve heard about while researching Dunki. Shady travel agents are charging crores from desperate (and mostly uneducated) Indians with the promise of arranging safe passage to the American state of Georgia. The scam? These poor men are being sent to the country of Georgia instead. In most cases, they’ve sold off family land, quit their jobs, and exhausted their entire life savings; some of them even have wives and children with them. All to be sent to the land of khachapuri. To put it simply, there are a bunch of people from Bathinda knocking about in the Caucasus right now. Anyway, the folks who made the new John Abraham film Tehran are no smarter. The movie opens with a voiceover in which we are told about an operation carried out by Iran in 2012, where Israeli diplomats were targeted in Thailand, India, and Georgia. They meant the country. But the map that the movie shows instead is that of the US state.
Fri, August 22 2025
Tehran—the new John Abraham political action thriller—literally cannot identify the country of Georgia on the map. The movie also goes out of its way to make its protagonist an apolitical man who somehow annoys the governments of three nations, including his own. We discuss the film’s muddled messaging, its bizarre third act, and the arrogance with which it thinks it can get away with claiming Scotland is Iran.
Mon, August 18 2025
Arun Gopalan’s film keeps refusing to hang by the scaffolding, and although it doesn’t always land, it gives us plenty to hold on to.
TEHRAN is the latest John Abraham film, where the actor is out to avenge. For a while, it was the country (Parmanu, Satyameva Jayate); then it became more pointed (in both Vedaa and The Diplomat, he saves a girl). A less obvious, but more definite, shift has been his heroism, which has shapeshifted from a combative force to inner resilience. It has become less showy and more nuanced, more cerebral and less extraneous, much like the nationalism in his filmography. In that sense, Tehran is an able extension of this humanity that props up the ideas of protection without losing sight of the cost. In Delhi, 2012, an Israeli diplomat’s car was bombed. Similar blasts occurred in Georgia and Thailand. But the one which we see in the capital (designed in a sleek shot; Evgeniy Gubrenko and Andre Menezes are the cinematographers) results in an unwitting casualty. A young girl on the street, not much older than the daughter of ACP Rajeev Kumar (Abraham), suffers injury. This pulls him into the case even when he was hesitant initially.
Saare Jahan Se Accha
Drama (Hindi)
A resilient Indian spy must defeat his counterpart across the border in a battle of wits and tradecraft to sabotage a nuclear program.
Cast:
Pratik Gandhi, Tillotama Shome, Sunny Hinduja, Suhail Nayyar, Kritika Kamra, Rajat Kapoor, Anup Soni
Writer:
Shivam Shankar
Sat, August 23 2025
Netflix's new spy drama, Saare Jahan Se Accha, feels like it has been edited by Edward Scissorhands; it's tantamount to self-sabotage. Poor Tillotama Shome, Sunny Hinduja, and Suhail Nayyar are done particularly dirty.
The new Netflix series Saare Jahan Se Accha begins with Pratik Gandhi’s character being posted to the R&AW’s Islamabad station, and it ends with him foiling a major nuclear operation and blowing things up real good. All of this happens in six episodes of roughly 45 minutes each. In these six episodes, we are introduced to several characters — field agents, a journalist, the chief of the ISI; even Indira Gandhi drops by. Most of these characters, including the protagonist’s wife, is introduced with enough fanfare to suggest that they are going to be important to the plot. Some of them are, most aren’t. But you can never shake the feeling that Saare Jahan Se Accha was stripped to the bone after somebody interfered with either the scripts or the first assembly. Nearly everybody in the cast suffers, not to mention the show itself. But nobody is done quite so dirty as Tillotama Shome.
Fri, August 15 2025
Netflix's new show, Saare Jahaan Se Acch,a is created by Gaurav Shukla, directed by Sumit Purohit, and stars Pratik Gandhi. But it's Sunny Hinduja and Suhail Nayyar who walk away with the best moments.
It’s not the fault of this series that it comes exactly a week after the one which had the same theme. Well, almost. Salaakar is about scotching Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions with the help of canny footwork by Indian spies : this week’s new show on Netflix, Saare Jahaan Se Accha, created by Gaurav Shukla and directed by Sumit Purohit, is exactly about the same thing. The intent may be the same but the treatment, thankfully, is vastly different: the beyond-terrible Salakaar, with Naveen Kasturia leading the charge, reminds you of a comic-book with none of the fun of the genre; this Pratik Gandhi starrer, on the other hand, takes things seriously, and that’s a good thing, more or less.
Thu, August 14 2025
Deja Vu
Documentary (English)
Deja Vu (2025) is a documentary by Indian filmmaker Bedabrata Pain that draws parallels between the corporatization of the American farming industry in the 1980s and similar agricultural market reforms in India
Director:
Bedabrata Pain
Sat, August 23 2025
By giving the example of similar laws in the US, the documentary shows how large corporations prey on the agricultural sector.
The Indian farmers’ protest on Delhi’s borders in late 2020, was arguably the longest citizen-led protest in post-Independence India. Lasting a little over a year, weathering a bone-chilling winter and an equally oppressive summer, the farmers were labelled many things by the TV media: folks misunderstanding the government’s intentions to empower them, anti-social elements, even Khalistani terrorists. The protest sites invited the curiosity of documentarians: Nishtha Jain’s Farming The Revolution, Gurvinder Singh’s Trolley Times and Varrun Sukhraj’s Too Much Democracy were some of the films that chronicling the 13-month farmers’ agitation, interviewing them, getting experts to weigh in on initialisms (like MSP), and trying to understand the points of disagreement around the farm laws, which were hastily passed in the Parliament.
Hostage
Drama, Crime (English)
When the British prime minister's husband is kidnapped and the French president starts receiving threats, both leaders must face an impossible choice.
Cast:
Suranne Jones, Julie Delpy, Corey Mylchreest, Lucian Msamati, Ashley Thomas, James Cosmo, Jehnny Beth
Sat, August 23 2025
The five-episode series may not be a gripping affair, yet with fair momentum, it is fairly watchable
It is touted as a political thriller but unfolds like a potboiler. The very first scene and the dialogue, “I trust you will make the right choice”, is a precursor and portender that impossible choices will soon beset this happy family. The scene shifts to UK’s Parliament. Abigail Dalton (Suranne Jones) is the British Prime Minister facing a volley of barbs from the Opposition leader. As she prepares to meet her French counterpart, President Vivienne Toussaint (Julie Delpy), again an indomitable woman of substance, something sinister is brewing alongside. Abigail’s husband Alex Anderson (Ashley Thomas), a doctor, is abducted along with other medical professionals. The ransom demand is no less than her resignation.
The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox
Drama, Comedy (English)
Amanda Knox arrives in Italy for her study abroad only to be wrongfully imprisoned for murder weeks later. Follow Knox's relentless fight to prove her innocence and reclaim her freedom and examines why authorities and the world stood so firmly in judgment.
Cast:
Grace Van Patten, Sharon Horgan, Giuseppe De Domenico, John Hoogenakker, Roberta Mattei, Francesco Acquaroli
Sat, August 23 2025
Does the truth even exist if no one believes it?’ This line — loaded with, well, the truth of life in general and particularly with what transpires in this claustrophobic retelling of a horrific real-life story, sums up The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. Streaming on JioHotstar — the first two episodes of the eight-episode Hulu series are now available, with subsequent weekly drops — this is the dramatisation of what is undoubtedly one of the most keenly followed murder trials of the millennium. The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, in its telling, feels sensationalist, and even stagey in parts, but the case itself is compelling enough to want you to stay with it.
Cast:
Akashdeep Arora, Anushka Kaushik
Director:
Dheeraj Jindal
Writer:
Palak shah
Fri, August 22 2025
The 13-minute film revolves around a conversation between a young man and his dead best friend
Momo Deal opens with the voice of a dead girl at her funeral. Except it’s quirky. This young woman, Mahima (Anushka Kaushik), is reading out her own wishlist for the funeral — the way any manic-pixie hall of famer like Jab We Met’s Geet might (we learn that her favourite song is “Tumse hi”) to lighten the mood. One zoom-out of the camera reveals that none of Mahima’s wishes have been followed, especially the one that demands her best friend Naman (Akashdeep Arora) to weep loudly at the front. Naman is instead numb. His deadpan face suggests he’s an action hero who can’t act, but he’s something more common: an Indian man who can’t — or won’t — express himself. He refuses to cry. Dheeraj Jindal’s 13-minute short then features a late-night conversation between Naman and the ghost of his newly-deceased bestie. They walk the streets of their hometown, Jaipur, and exchange difficult emotions.