Train Dreams
Drama (English)
A logger leads a life of quiet grace as he experiences love and loss during an era of monumental change in early 20th-century America. (more…)
Chatha Pacha
Action, Drama (Malayalam)
In the heart of Fort Kochi, three brothers and their crew of unlikely misfits stumble into the wild world of WWE-style costumed wrestling. What begins as a scrappy hustle soon explodes into a riot of masks, egos, and full-blown madness, (more…)
Guild Reviews by Film Page 38 of 113
The History of Sound
Drama, Romance, Music (English)
In 1917, two young music students attending the Boston Conservatory bond over a mutual love of folk music. They reconnect a few years later, embarking on a song-collecting trip in the backwaters of Maine.
Cast:
Paul Mescal, Josh O'Connor, Molly Price, Alison Bartlett, Michael Schantz, Chris Cooper, Raphael Sbarge, Hadley Robinson, Peter Mark Kendall, Emma Canning
Director:
Oliver Hermanus
Tue, January 27 2026
Oliver Hermanus' film is a deeply restrained love story that allows intimacy to exist in glances, harmonies and silences
The History of Sound is a quiet, deliberately paced film about missed chances and unresolved lives. Directed by Oliver Hermanus and adapted by Ben Shattuck from his short stories The History of Sound and Origin Stories, the film traces one man’s journey through music, memory and emotional restraint. The story opens in rural Kentucky in 1910, where Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal) grows up on a farm dutifully following in his family’s commitment to physical labour, finding release through song. “It never occurred to me that music was only sound,” Lionel reflects, a line that establishes music as something far larger than art. It is also a means of survival, a repository of memory, and conduit for connection. When a local teacher recognises his singing ability and helps him secure a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, the opportunity briefly lifts Lionel out of a dead-end life.
The Last First: Winter K2
Documentary (English)
The race to grab the last great prize in mountaineering, K2 in winter, left five dead. It exposed deep fault lines in alpinism today: pressures from commercialization, toxic effects of social media, and long-brewing tensions between those who’ve been marginalized and those who’ve always basked in the sport’s glory.
Director:
Amir Bar-Lev
Tue, January 27 2026
It reminds us that history’s greatest feats are often built on quieter, irreversible losses
Sometime in December 2020, Icelandic mountaineer John Snorri was on the cusp of making history. He was getting ready to scale the second highest mountain peak, the K2, in the winter. Around then the temperatures go down to -60 degrees celsius near the peak. Compounded with the steep incline of the K2 (part of the Karakoram range) with winds blowing up to 150 mph, even experienced mountaineers dubbed it as a tricky climb. Every other record in the mountaineering world had been achieved. Having arrived in Northern Pakistan a good two months in advance, to help himself acclimatise to the conditions, Snorri – with his Pakistani counterparts, Ali Sadpara and his son Sajid – looked set to take on arguably the most gruelling climb ever attempted.
Khalid Ka Shivaji
Drama, History (Marathi)
Khalid, a 5th standard student is teased by his classmates because of his religion after a chapter on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj was being studied. "Why do the children tease me by the name of Afzal Khan? Just because I am a Muslim? Was every Muslim an enemy of Shivaji Maharaj like Afzal Khan?" Khalid's curiousity and fascination with Shivaji Maharaj sends him and his family on a life-altering journey.
Cast:
Krish Raj More, Priyadarshan Jadhav, Bharat Ganeshpure, Sushama Deshpande, Kailash Waghmare, Snehalata Tagde
Director:
Raj Pritam More
Writer:
Kailash Waghmare
Tue, January 27 2026
Khalid Ka Shivaji (Marathi movie with a good amount of Hindi) tells the story of Khalid (Krish Raj More), a fourth standard student. He stays with his father Hayad (Priyadarshan Jadhav), mother Ruksana (Snehalata Tagde) and grandmother (Sushama Deshpande) in a small village in Maharashtra. His family is struggling to make ends meet. Khalid and his rest of the class is taught the story of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj eliminating Afzal Khan. Khalid’s classmate Ganya (Ankur Wadhave) is highly arrogant since his father (Khemraj Bhoyar) is the village Sarpanch. After learning the aforementioned story in the class, Ganya mocks Khalid as ‘Afzal Khan’ since the latter is a Muslim. Ganya is joined by a number of other students.
Wonder Man
Comedy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy (English)
Simon and Trevor, two actors at opposite ends of their careers, chase life-changing roles.
Cast:
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, X Mayo, Zlatko Burić, Arian Moayed, Olivia Thirlby, Byron Bowers, Ben Kingsley, Hadi Ali
Mon, January 26 2026
The newest Marvel series, co-created by Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest, has little action but contains all heart with its grounded superhuman story.
Marvel’s Wonder Man is a different kind of superhero series with fewer characters and an engaging story about an actor trying to break into Hollywood, while hiding a terrifying secret. The eight-episode series is co-created by Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest and features Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Simon Williams, a struggling actor looking for the role that will change his life. Enter the perfect project with Wonder Man and an old familiar face with Iron Man 3’s Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley). The superhero series veers away from the usual Marvel tropes and instead creates a refreshingly honest and emotional story of two friends who connect over shared passions.
Train Dreams
Drama (English)
A logger leads a life of quiet grace as he experiences love and loss during an era of monumental change in early 20th-century America.
Cast:
Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Nathaniel Arcand, Clifton Collins Jr., John Diehl, Paul Schneider, Kerry Condon, William H. Macy, Will Patton, Alfred Hsing
Director:
Clint Bentley
Sun, January 25 2026
Clint Bentley’s Oscar-nominated ‘Train Dreams’, starring Joel Edgerton, is a thoughtful and mysterious era-spanning story
There’s a scene I often return to in Apur Sansar (1959), the third in Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy, that’s an eloquent defence of ordinariness. Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) is being gently pulled up by a friend for his lack of ambition. He ventures that he’s writing a novel, and starts narrating the story: a boy grows up in the village, moves to the city, studies hard. “We feel he has in him seeds of greatness, but…” “He doesn’t succeed?” the friend guesses. “He doesn’t,” Apu replies. “But to him this isn’t a tragedy. He realises one must face reality. One must live!” Robert Grainier wouldn’t be able to articulate this, but he’d agree. He’s a young orphan at the start of Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams, in a tiny town in rural Idaho. “He quit attending school in his early teens, and the next two decades passed without much direction or purpose,” the voiceover says. He becomes a logger, and though he works a few other jobs, that’s the only real profession he has. He’s in his 80s when the film closes, and has lived most of his life in the same small town.
Fri, December 5 2025
Train Dreams reclaims the importance of feeling like someone, not just anyone. Of knowing that no emotion is futile, no sadness is small, no memory is hollow, and no life is pointless.
In Train Dreams, life is but an accruement of endings. Based on Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella, Clint Bentley’s tender fever-dream of a film is rooted in the anonymity of time: an anti-Forrest Gump of sorts. It’s about the kind of man that history is wired to forget: a humble woodlogger and railroad construction worker, a normal husband and father, a survivor and soliloquy, a grafter and griever. A voice-over introduces Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) as an orphan in his childhood; it closes with him at 80, having lived and loved and lost and lived in the shadow of loss. He is a reluctant protagonist masquerading as just another person. It’s almost as if the story keeps leaving him behind in the hope that he will catch up.
Mon, December 1 2025
Adapted from a 2011 novella written by Denis Johnson, Bentley’s film chronicles the tenderness and awe in Robert’s seemingly ‘ordinary’ life, most of which isn’t immediately apparent to him.
It takes a special kind of film to be aware of its surroundings. It is one thing to fetishise nature and invite comparison to the sweeping scale of a Terrence Mallick film but Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams does something interesting with the vessel of a meandering Mallick film. It cuts and splices the essential bits of a man’s journey fuelled by cosmic wonder: the meaning of it all. And it does that using a specific means: a voiceover (by Will Patton).
Cheekatilo
Thriller (Telugu)
When crime anchor Sandhya’s best friend is found dead under suspicious circumstances, she embarks on a dangerous investigation that collides with a dark past. As secrets unravel, Sandhya must face her trauma and rise as a fearless voice for the silenced.
Cast:
Sobhita Dhulipala, Vishwadev Rachakonda, Chaitanya Visalakshmi, Isha Chawla, Jhansi, Aamani, Vadlamani Srinivas, Ravindra Vijay
Director:
Sharan Koppisetty
Writer:
Chandra Pemmaraju, Sharan Koppisetty
Sun, January 25 2026
Directed by Sharan Koppisetty, Cheekatilo is a murder mystery headlined by Sobhita Dhulipala. With valid lessons on patriarchy, the film bites into cliches of an investigative thriller.
Murder mysteries and investigation dramas always rely on thrills, suspense and high-stakes drama. Most whodunnit thrillers have a male hero leading the investigation from the front. The Telugu film, Cheekatilo, has the feisty Sobhita Dhulipala leading a murder mystery, thereby standing out from a crowd of films of the same genre. Did Cheekatilo manage to crack the formula? Let’s find out!
Fri, January 23 2026
Sharan Kopishetty’s Telugu film works more as a compelling social commentary than an edge-of-the-seat whodunnit
There are two strands to Cheekatilo (In the Darkness), the Prime Video original Telugu film directed by Sharan Kopishetty. On the surface, it is a crime drama that attempts to build an edge-of-the-seat whodunnit. At its core, however, it is a social commentary that urges silenced voices to speak, heal and find closure to long-buried wounds. In a film led by Sobhita Dhulipala, this second strand proves far more compelling.
Baby Girl
Drama, Thriller (Malayalam)
It was a special day in hospital attendant Sanal’s life: his wife, who had been working abroad for many years was finally coming home to be with him and their child, who she had missed dearly. Now their little family would be complete.
Cast:
Nivin Pauly, Lijomol Jose, Sangeeth Prathap, Abhimanyu Thilakan, Azees Nedumangad, Aswath Lal, Aditi Ravi, Nisha Sarangh, Nandhu, Ranjini George
Director:
Arun Raj Varma
Writer:
Bobby, Sanjay
Sun, January 25 2026
Baby Girl, directed by Arun Varma and starring Nivin Pauly, Lijomil Jose, Sangeeth Prathap, and Abhimanyu Shammi Thilakan, is an emotional thriller about the kidnapping of a three-day-old baby. The film struggles to balance drama and thriller elements, ultimately failing to do justice to either genre.
A few minutes into Nivin Pauly’s Baby Girl, we are taken into a hospital where the doctors have called Code Pink. Those who are familiar with medical dramas like Dr House or Grey’s Anatomy would be instantly hooked, as Code Pink means a baby is missing. In director Arun Varma’s Baby Girl, a three-day-old baby girl goes missing. Sanal Mathews (Nivin Pauly) is an attender who is in the thick of things here. At its core, Baby Girl shows immense promise to be an emotional thriller. But, Baby Girl takes a different route and struggles to find a balance between being a drama and a thriller.
Sat, January 24 2026
With the story of a newborn’s disappearance from a hospital losing momentum by the halfway mark, the rest of the film plods along with the aid of the emotional drama and a few convenient contrivance.
Fifteen years ago, Malayalam cinema was not in the pink of health when the screenwriting duo of Bobby-Sanjay came up with Traffic, which would give a new sense of direction for the industry. In 2026, when the same duo returns with Baby Girl, after a mix of memorable and forgettable films in the intervening years, they borrow some of the elements from their most successful film yet. But then, times have changed and the tastes of the audience too have evolved, and things that worked back in the day might not work now, which is what unfortunately happens with Baby Girl’
Border 2
Action, Drama, War (Hindi)
During the events of the 1971 Indo-Pak war, a new generation of young Indian warriors were getting ready to defend the nation from an even bigger threat to the Indian motherland.
Cast:
Sunny Deol, Varun Dhawan, Diljit Dosanjh, Ahan Shetty, Mona Singh, Sonam Bajwa, Anya Singh, Medha Rana, Paramvir Singh Cheema, Guneet Sandhu
Director:
Anurag Singh
Sun, January 25 2026
Border 2, like its predecessor Border (1997), throws light on the Indian defense forces’ bravery during the 1971 India-Pakistan war. But unlike the 1997 film, this one focusses on different characters who took part in the war. Major Hoshiar Singh Dahiya (Varun Dhawan) of the Indian Army, Flight Officer Nirmal Jit Singh Sekhon (Diljit Dosanjh) of the Indian Air Force and Lieutenant Commander Mahendra S Rawat (Ahan Shetty) of the Indian Navy become thick friends during their training days at the National War Academy. They share a respectful relation with their trainer Lieutenant Colonel Fateh Singh Kaler (Sunny Deol).
Sun, January 25 2026
Patriotism, in its truest form, is an unexplainable emotion. If you are patriotic, you know it is largely a one-sided relationship, almost like one’s belief in God. You either feel it, or you do not. I remember discussing Laal Singh Chaddha with someone, where the titular character saves a slain Pakistani soldier purely out of humanity. The idea that brotherhood should be placed above national pride was something my head understood, not my heart. As I sat down to watch Border 2, I wished it could evoke that unadulterated feeling, which is second only to our love for kith and kin.
Sun, January 25 2026
Steal
Drama, Crime, Mystery (English)
A typical day at Lochmill Capital is upended when armed thieves burst in and force Zara and her best friend Luke to execute their demands. In the aftermath, conflicted detective Rhys races against time to find out who stole £4 billion pounds of people's pensions and why.
Cast:
Sophie Turner, Archie Madekwe, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Andrew Howard, Jonathan Slinger, Ellie James, Sarah Belcher, Thomas Larkin, Tara Summers
Director:
Hettie Macdonald
Writer:
Sotiris Nikias, Poppy Cogan, Shyam Popat
Sun, January 25 2026
The six-part series, led by Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner, engages viewers with the suspense of the heist mastermind till the end
Sophie Turner stars in the London heist thriller Steal, which escalates the drama with each episode. Creator and writer Sotiris Nikias takes viewers into the largest armed robbery in British history as a pension-fund investment company is looted right in their own offices. The twisty drama follows Turner’s Zara, who finds herself at the heart of the mystery and police investigation as she tries to save herself. With a small cast of characters that are hard to read, the Amazon Prime Video series Steal is a bingeable watch for the weekend.
Primate
Horror, Thriller (English)
Lucy, a college student, along with her friends, spend their vacation at her family's home in Hawaii, which includes her pet chimpanzee, Ben. However, when Ben contracts rabies after being bitten by a rabid animal, the group must fight for their lives in order to avoid the now-violent chimp.
Cast:
Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander, Troy Kotsur, Victoria Wyant, Gia Hunter, Benjamin Cheng, Charlie Mann, Tienne Simon, Miguel Hernando Torres Umba, Amina Abdi
Director:
Johannes Roberts
Writer:
Johannes Roberts, Ernest Riera
Sun, January 25 2026
The Pact
Drama (Hindi)
Returning to sell his late father's home, a successful man uncovers the small, unseen ways his father showed love, forcing him to confront the emotional distance between fathers and sons.
Cast:
Parambrata Chatterjee, Kalyanee Mulay, Jayraj Nair, Vedant Sinha, Ramesh Nair, Roshan Rajesh Chouhan, Renuka Shahane
Director:
Lakshmi R. Iyer
Writer:
Apurva Asrani
Sat, January 24 2026
राघव पुणे पहुंचा है उस फ्लैट का सौदा करने जिसमें उसका बचपन बीता था। दीवार पर उसके माता-पिता की तस्वीरें टंगी हैं। यहां उसे वे पल याद आने लगते हैं जो उसने यहां बिताए थे। खासतौर से अपने पिता के साथ अपने रिश्ते और यादों को वह सहेजता है। वह उस पैक्ट यानी इकरारनामे को भी याद करता है जो उसके और उसके पिता के बीच हुआ था। क्या था वह इकरारनामा…? फीचर फिल्मों और वेब-सीरिज़ की भीड़भाड़ में अच्छी शॉर्ट-फिल्में अक्सर छुप जाती हैं। एक वजह तो यही रहती है कि ज़्यादातर शॉर्ट-फिल्में किसी कायदे के प्लेटफॉर्म पर रिलीज़ ही नहीं हो पातीं हैं। दूसरी वजह यह कि ज़्यादातर दर्शक भी इनके प्रति उदासीन रहते हैं जबकि सच यह है कि यदि अच्छे से बुनी-बनाई कहानी हो तो वह कुछ मिनटों में भी गहरी बात कह जाती है, जैसे यह फिल्म ‘द पैक्ट’ कह रही है।
Chatha Pacha
Action, Drama (Malayalam)
In the heart of Fort Kochi, three brothers and their crew of unlikely misfits stumble into the wild world of WWE-style costumed wrestling. What begins as a scrappy hustle soon explodes into a riot of masks, egos, and full-blown madness, all set against the backdrop of a city that never plays by the rules. But can their brotherhood survive when the real fight begins outside the ropes?
Cast:
Arjun Ashokan, Roshan Mathew, Vishak Nair, Ishan Shoukath, Carmen S Mathew, Khalid Al Ameri, Lakshmi Menon, Muthumani Somasundaran, Thezni Khan, Mammootty
Director:
Adhvaith Nayar
Writer:
Sanoop Thykoodam
Sat, January 24 2026
Debutant director Adhvaith Nayar’s ‘Chatha Pacha’, starring Arjun Ashokan and Roshan Mathew, nails the high-octane moves of WWE, but stumbles with a weak storyline
Every minute aspect about World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) wrestlers, ranging from their signature moves to their individual body dimensions, is imprinted in the memories of a generation that grew up in the 1990s. Debutant filmmaker Adhvaith Nayar’s Chatha Pacha attempts to tap into this enduring nostalgia of the WWE trump card-playing generation. On the surface, it appears the makers got a lot of it right, from replicating the signature moves of Undertaker and Rey Mysterio to recreating the mood of the wrestling ring with a local touch. Some of the fights in the ring have an unmistakable rhythm to them, which is further elevated by a few standout performers. But, scratch a little, and there emerges the shaky foundation, which could fall with even a weak kick, let alone a chokeslam.
Sat, January 24 2026
Sat, January 24 2026
May not be a Stone Cold stunner, but works as a great tribute to a group of boys, who dared to try it at home... just like we all did
As an audience, perhaps we underestimate the power of nostalgia done right. In what was being marketed as India’s first WWE-style wrestling movie, the makers of Chatha Pacha could easily have begun their movie as a story about a group of twenty-somethings, who start their local wrestling league just as a business idea. But the writers of the film, which includes director Advaith Nayar, decide to begin the film with a flashback of three little boys, taking on each other in their life’s first wrestling ring… their parents’ double cot.