Sun, September 7 2025

An irreverent love story about two misfits, this Telugu film benefits from strong performances of its leads

Cinema, a melange of art and commerce, is no exception to the rule of demand and supply. As fascination with hyper-masculine angry men, larger-than-life missions, and the love for grey shades is on the wane, there emerges a need for cinema that is more relatable and inhabited by characters who don’t hesitate to poke fun at their own flaws and vulnerabilities. A few Telugu films this year — Sankranthiki Vasthunnam, Mad Square, Single, Subham, Sarangapani Jathakam — highlight this gradual shift, which is reiterated by this week’s release, Little Hearts, directed by Sai Marthand. It exemplifies an often-quoted perception among cinephiles on social media — a film aware of its own silliness is indeed intelligent. Little Hearts is a love story about two misfits (as deemed by their families). Unable to clear his engineering entrances, Akhil (Mouli Tanuj) is compelled to undertake long-term coaching due to his father’s (Rajeev Kanakala) insistence. Khatyayini (Shivani Nagaram), daughter of a medico, is no different — except she is attempting MBBS for the fourth time. The scenario is ripe for love to blossom.

Continue reading …

Sun, September 7 2025

The Bengal Files weaponizes memory and history, turning past wounds into present propaganda, amplifying outrage while masquerading as truth and patriotism in cinematic disguise.

The Bengal Files directed by Vivek Agnihotri continues his polarising Files Trilogy after The Tashkent Files and The Kashmir Files. With a cast featuring Darshan Kumar, Saswata Chatterjee, Pallavi Joshi, Mithun Chakravarthy, and Anupam Kher, this 205-minute political drama revisits the 1946 Great Calcutta Killings and the Noakhali riots. Framed as historical revelation, the film blends propaganda, performative outrage, and distorted memory into a cinematic spectacle. Positioned conveniently before the 2026 Bengal elections, The Bengal Files raises questions about political cinema in India, propaganda-driven storytelling, and the weaponization of Partition-era trauma. Political cinema in India has long mastered the art of selective amnesia—where history is less a chronicle of facts and more a buffet of “patriotic” fiction, seasoned heavily with rage bait. Most of these films claim to “speak truth to power” while actually whispering sweet nothings into the ears of a very specific, very angry demographic. The result? Predictably controversial, conveniently banned (wink wink), and almost always marketed as “the film THEY didn’t want you to see.”

Continue reading …

Sat, September 6 2025

‘प्रहार’ में मेजर चव्हाण बने नाना पाटेकर कोर्ट से पूछते हैं-‘देश का मतलब क्या है? सड़कें, इमारतें, खेत-खलिहान, नदियां, पहाड़, बस इतना ही? और लोग, लोग कहां हैं?’ सच तो यह है कि देश की बात करते समय हुकूमतों ने कभी लोगों के बारे में सोचा ही नहीं। विवेक रंजन अग्निहोत्री की यह फिल्म ‘द बंगाल फाइल्स’ उन्हीं लोगों, हम लोगों, ‘वी द पीपल ऑफ भारत’ की बात कहने आई है, सुनाने आई है। पर क्या सचमुच कोई ‘वी द पीपल’ की बात सुनना भी चाहता है? समझना चाहता है? आज के पश्चिम बंगाल के मुर्शिदाबाद में एक दलित लड़की के गायब होने के मामले की तफ्तीश करने के लिए दिल्ली से सी.बी.आई. अफसर शिवा पंडित को भेजा जाता है। शक स्थानीय विधायक सरदार हुसैनी पर है। शिवा पर वहां हमला होता है क्योंकि उस इलाके में पुलिस की नहीं सरदार हुसैनी की चलती है। वही सरदार हुसैनी जो सीमा पार से अवैध लोगों को वहां लाकर बसा रहा है, उन्हें यहां का नागरिक बना कर उस इलाके की डेमोग्राफी बदल रहा है, हर चीज़ को हिन्दू-मुसलमान बना रहा है ताकि उसकी हुकूमत चलती रहे। तफ्तीश के दौरान शिवा को भारती बैनर्जी मिलती है जिसने आज़ादी की लड़ाई लड़ी थी, अगस्त 1946 का बंगाल का वह ‘डायरेक्ट एक्शन डे’ देखा था जिसमें हज़ारों लोग मारे गए थे, नोआखाली के दंगे देखे थे और जो आज भी बात-बात पर बीते दिनों की उन भयानक यादों में खो जाती है। शिवा पंडित पाता है कि हालात आज भी कमोबेश वैसे ही हैं। हुकूमत में बैठे लोग आज भी अपने स्वार्थ के लिए ‘वी द पीपल’ को इस्तेमाल ही कर रहे हैं।

Continue reading …

Sat, September 6 2025

Marked by compelling performances and inflammatory storytelling, unbridled propaganda of ‘The Bengal Files’ is designed to incite majoritarian anger

During the pandemic, a booster dose of the vaccine became a common term. It was intended to boost the immune system’s response to the virus. This week, Vivek Agnihotri injects a booster dose of cinematic virus that he unleashed with The Kashmir Files lest people develop immunity against communal politics. Once again, blending a discriminating version of the past with a myopic vision of the present, The Bengal Files not only scratches the wounds of the Partition but also punctures them to manipulate emotions. Soaked in blood and hate against one community and religion, the film uses cinema as a tool to divide. Juxtaposing the present State of affairs in West Bengal with the Calcutta riots of August 1946 in the wake of the Muslim League’s call for Direct Action Day, followed by the Noakhali riots, the film says that Partition is an unfinished business, instigating majoritarian fear about demographic change and illegal migration.

Continue reading …

Sat, September 6 2025

What happened to Sohum Shah, the actor who left such an impact in The Ship Of Theseus and played the lead so assuredly in Tumbaad? Here his character, who gets major screen time, is just plain embarrassing.

A film scored by A R Rahman, no less, cannot, in all honesty, be called a silent film. It can also be a big reason for drawing us into a film labelled a silent comedy, because music is key to telling us what words cannot. But looks can be deceptive. Let me warn you, this is two hours of drivel. How on God’s good earth did Rahman get inveigled into a project so vacuous? That’s a mystery which is destined to go unsolved; meanwhile, let me inflict upon you the misery I had to undergo.

Continue reading …

Fri, September 5 2025

It’s hard to imagine a more misguided Hindi movie idea than that of a 116-minute comedy without any dialogue

If not for movies like Ufff Yeh Siyapaa, I’d be in denial about my age. Denial is not an option when I try to pull out my hair only to be met with a receding hairline. Thanks to the constant face-palming, I also realise that my skin has wrinkles. Thanks to the involuntary sighing and eye-rolling, I realise that yoga might be good for my stamina. Thanks to the inability to keep my eyes on the screen, I realise that my mind needs glasses too. And thanks to the resolute awfulness of a 116-minute silent comedy in 2025, I realise that my life is truly too short.

Continue reading …

Sat, September 6 2025

Netflix's new true crime film narrates a story so bizarre that they could’ve made 15 different versions of it and have still had story left over.

Every so often, Netflix releases a true crime documentary so algorithmically rigorous, so obnoxiously constructed, and so casually exploitative that its success is almost a foregone conclusion. It would, in fact, be a miracle if the film didn’t break through the clutter. Unknown Number: The High School Catfish follows in the undignified tradition of films such as The Tinder Swindler and The Social Dilemma, narrating a story so bizarre that they could’ve made 15 different versions of it and still had material left over. The version presented to us, although undeniably engaging, is perhaps the least responsible way that the filmmakers could’ve approached this scandalous tale. The crime that it revisits wasn’t entirely victimless. And while Unknown Number understands the tragedy at its core — the final 15 minutes contain enough evidence to support this theory — the way it chooses to present its findings is rather odd. The film revolves around… nobody. While it could’ve chosen to approach it from the perspective of at least three different people, it decides to make the story itself the protagonist. Actively ignoring all the different human interest angles on the table is unusual for any documentarian — one could argue that it is their job to uncover human arcs by sifting through hours and hours of raw footage — but that is what director Skye Borgman does here.

Continue reading …

Sat, September 6 2025

A cautionary tale about greed that occasionally resembles a personal hit-piece, Eddie Huang's documentary recalls the rise and fall of Vice Media.

Directed by and featuring Eddie Huang, Vice is Broke plays out like the most venomous exit interview of all time. Huang served as a key contributor to the punk magazine Vice during its heyday in the 2010s. He’d made a name for himself as a chef, and appeared to have just the sort of personality that Vice would seek out back then. This was when the magazine was expanding its online footprint with immersive video reportage and outstanding documentaries. They were filing dispatches from war-torn Afghanistan and the hermit kingdom of North Korea. Vice reporters were doing drugs in the Amazon and interviewing high-ranking Taliban officials. On a weekly basis, they were hurling Molotov cocktails of rage, righteousness, and rebellion in the face of legacy media. All of it, according to one person, was done with the aim of making ‘the rich feel cool and the cool feel rich’.

Continue reading …

Sat, September 6 2025

Reuniting with the great Spike Lee, Denzel Washington delivers one of the most dazzling central performances of his career.

Reuniting for the first time in nearly two decades, director Spike Lee and star Denzel Washington are gazing inwards in Highest 2 Lowest. The crime-thriller premiered at Cannes earlier this year — as an official selection; not like something Anupam Kher might claim to have taken to the festival — and received a token theatrical release before dropping on Apple TV+. The wait was worth it. Over the last few decades, Washington and Lee have established themselves as perhaps the most vital voices in Black cinema. It is a position that the protagonist of Highest 2 Lowest finds himself in as well. David King doesn’t work in the movie business, but he is described as a kingmaker in the world of music. In many ways, he is a stand-in for both the filmmaker and his favourite star.

Continue reading …

Fri, September 5 2025

Filmmaker Lee's interpretation of Akira Kurosawa's High and Low (1963) is an invigorating crime thriller.

Presented by Apple and A24, Spike Lee’s newest, Highest 2 Lowest, is a heart-pounding thriller set in the Big Apple. Like the title, Lee goes from a high-rise penthouse to a downtown apartment as a music mogul tries to figure out who threatened and stole from him. The American filmmaker reimagines legendary Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) and sets it in his hometown, New York, while tackling the perils of fame and questioning what it means to be a good man. The result is an exhilarating performance from longtime collaborator Denzel Washington in a film that keeps the viewer on their toes. Washington plays David King, a music mogul who is said to have the “best ears in the business.” On the verge of buying back his stake in his label, Stackin’ Hits Records, King receives a ransom call for $17.5 million saying his son has been kidnapped. King moves into action, getting the police involved. Later, it is discovered that it’s not Trey (Aubrey Joseph) but his friend Kyle who has been taken instead. Suddenly, King doesn’t want to pay the ransom. But when he tries to do the right thing, everything goes upside down.

Continue reading …

Sat, September 6 2025

Sat, September 6 2025

After a string of forgettable outings, AR Murugadoss stages a return to form with a high-concept thriller where Sivakarthikeyan’s trauma-fuelled action hero meets kickass set-pieces, layered politics, and a dash of old-school mass cinema charm

After a series of underwhelming misfires, Madharaasi brings back glimpses of a forgotten AR Murugadoss that had made him our top commercial movie director. This isn’t just because he still has it in him to stage elaborately choreographed, neatly cut action blocks. This isn’t because he knows how to pander to a star’s fan base and still make a film relatively entertaining to the star-agnostic. The reason Murugadoss remains a brand is because he continues to have the ability to sell you a far-fetched high concept that sounds outlandish, but without allowing you to think of just how impossible all of it is. In Madharaasi, this includes a setup that tells you that six containers filled with the latest guns are just one toll gate away from entering Tamil Nadu. Fifteen minutes later, he sells you another concept, this time about Raghu (Sivakarthikeyan), a man who suffers from delusions after he witnessed his entire family getting charred to death as a child. But instead of using this just as his backstory, the PTSD has given Raghu superpowers, the sort that let him take on a tiny army when triggered.

Continue reading …

Fri, September 5 2025

Director AR Murugadoss's 'Madharaasi' starring Sivakarthikeyan, Rukmini Vasanth and Vidyut Jammwal, is a commercial actioner on gun culture. While the performances and action sequences win you over, the film's logical loopholes keep it a mediocre entertainer.

Sivakarthikeyan, despite being one of the celebrated mainstream heroes in the Tamil film industry, continues to surprise everyone with his script choices. His last few films, while fitting into the commercial tropes, have also stood out for their storytelling. Will ‘Madharaasi’, his latest collaboration with director AR Murugadoss, add to his success streak? Let’s find out! Raghuram (Sivakarthikeyan) is an orphan with a traumatic past. While battling delusion syndrome, love strikes him. As Malathi (Rukmini Vasanth) enters his life, he changes for good. Meanwhile, NIA officer Prem (Biju Menon) and his team are on a mission to stop a notorious North Indian gang involved in a weapon smuggling syndicate. Virat (Vidyut Jammwal) and Chirag (Shabbir Kallarkal) are leading the syndicate’s plan to smuggle arms into Tamil Nadu. Prem’s failed mission and Raghu’s unsuccessful suicide attempt bring them together. Prem hatches a plan to stop the arms from entering the state. Raghuram gets entangled in this mission. Will he be helpful to Prem? Will Raghuram and Malathi end up together? What happens to Virat and Chirag’s mission? All these and more are answered over the course of two hours and 48 minutes.

Continue reading …

Fri, September 5 2025

Director Krish Jagarlamudi's 'Ghaati', starring Anushka Shetty, Vikram Prabhu and others, is a strictly average tale on exploitation and oppression. The film relies on familiar tropes with very little to look forward to.

Much before Nayanthara, who is now called Lady Superstar, it was Anushka Shetty who first earned the title. She headlined female-led films and created a market for such stories. But, after ‘Baahubali’, Anushka Shetty has been struggling with her film choices. As the end credits suggest, The Queen – Anushka Shetty is back with another offering with ‘Ghaati’. But does the Krish Jagarlamudi directorial gift her the much-needed comeback? Sheelavathi (Anushka Shetty) is a bus conductor in Koraput, while her childhood sweetheart Desi Raju (Vikram Prabhu), works as a lab technician. The couple live a simple life, but their past isn’t as simple as they look. Meanwhile, two cannabis business tycoons, Kundala Naidu (Chaitanya Rao) and Kaastala Naidu (Ravindra Vijay), discovert a new form of liquid-based cannabis being smuggled and are determined to secure it. This leads them to the Ghaatis, a community inhabiting the Ghats, who act as local porters helping smuggle cannabis across the mountains. Sheelavathi and Desi Raju’s past is intertwined with Kundala and Kaastala’s dream. This sets the stage for a face-off, a tale of exploitation, oppression and revenge.

Continue reading …

Fri, September 5 2025

Krish Jagarlamudi and Anushka Shetty’s reunion in ‘Ghaati’ leans on tropes over storytelling

As the end credits of Ghaati rolled, the words “The Queen – Anushka Shetty” appeared on screen. It felt apt. Anushka carries a regal presence and has proven across her 20-year career that she can embody powerful characters. Directed by Krish Jagarlamudi, this Telugu film is an action-heavy spectacle, with Anushka playing a woman seeking revenge and striving to lift her community out of an endless cycle of exploitation. Yet, the film struggles to fully realise its potential as a gripping action drama, leaning more on familiar tropes and sheer force than on nuance. The story’s broad contours will feel familiar. Those without a voice toil while business heads profit from their labour, ensuring that people cannot take matters into their own hands. When the oppressed are pushed to the brink, rebellion becomes inevitable, and every rebellion, of course, needs a leader.

Continue reading …

Fri, September 5 2025

An exquisite piece of cinema that blurs the line between the dreamily meditative and the tangible to explore the boundaries of female desire.

Secret of a Mountain Serpent by writer-director Nidhi Saxena is a poetic exploration of female desire set against the backdrop of the Kargil conflict. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival, the film weaves folklore, symbolism, and haunting performances by Trimala Adhikari and Adil Hussain into a tapestry of longing, liberation, and cinematic beauty. With its blend of myth and reality, evocative sound design, and visual mastery, it is an unforgettable contribution to Indian independent cinema. Between Dream and Reality Writer-director Nidhi Saxena’s second film, Secret of a Mountain Serpent, is an exquisite piece of cinema. It blurs the line between the dreamily meditative and the wholly tangible to explore the boundaries of female desire when it is set free from the suffocating constraints of societal stipulations. ‘

Continue reading …

Fri, August 29 2025

Nobody challenges the form of Indian storytelling quite like Nidhi Saxena, whose second film is playing at the Venice International Film Festival

Most film-makers use craft to tell stories. But some use stories to craft unfilmable feelings. Nidhi Saxena did it in her feature-length debut, Sad Letters of an Imaginary Woman, which had its world premiere at Busan last year. The life of a middle-aged caregiver and her ailing mother in a crumbling ancestral home became a medium to explore the transience of memories, trauma, loneliness and everything in between. The montage of a character recording whispers and past sounds from the walls of her house with a boom mic can seem strange — pretentious, even (the house in ‘arthouse’). But it encouraged us to renegotiate their relationship with the act of watching a movie. The orthodox need to interpret fiction made way for a sensory experience of understanding life itself. Imagine the screen speaking to the viewer in a different language: where expression comes disguised as an aesthetic.

Continue reading …

Fri, September 5 2025

After a near-death experience, Jenna Ortega's Wednesday Addams returns to catch the Hyde and save her friend Enid but runs into other unforeseen troubles.

The second season of Wednesday was split into two by Netflix, and the remaining four episodes have too much action and narrative packed in. Created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, with Tim Burton as executive producer and director, Wednesday has a lot going for it, but the story in the latter half of Season 2 is underwhelming despite each twist it throws at you. The makers are determined to involve every single character in its overstuffed plotline, leaving a very exhausted viewer at the end. The fallout from episode four leaves two dangerous fugitives from Willow Hill psychiatric hospital, the Hyde Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan) and Slurp (Owen Painter), the zombie that Wednesday’s (Jenna Ortega) brother Pugsley (Isaac Cordonez) befriends. Both Addams siblings set out to find them, and it leaves everyone converging towards a wild battle. At Nevermore, Enid (Emma Sinclair) discovers some distressing information about herself, while Principal Dort (Steve Buscemi) is insistent on having a grand gala for the school with possible donor Hester Frump (Joanna Lumley), Wednesday’s grandmother.

Continue reading …

Sat, August 9 2025

Not the most satisfying watch, especially because the belated comeback feels like a cash-grabbing dash to reproduce more rather than course-correcting a greedy formula.

Wednesday Season 2 (Part 1: the first four episodes) arrives nearly three years after the goth-deadpan teenager and her morbid adventures became the most watched Netflix show of all time. Immortalised (not a term these characters are fond of) by actress Jenna Ortega, a death-coded Wednesday Addams saved her unmerry school of outcasts, the Nevermore Academy, by cracking a murder mystery and discovering that the boy she liked is a serial-killing monster puppeted by a psychopathic botany teacher. Season 2 takes an interesting route, more or less writing the new-age popularity of the series into its storyline. It opens with a Sixth-Sense-weds-Unbreakable tribute — extra marks for that — to show that Wednesday has learnt to control her psychic powers. She returns to Nevermore for the Fall semester. Except now she’s famous — and it annoys the hell out of her. Everyone knows her, and as an aspiring writer, it gets on her numbed nerves.

Continue reading …

Wed, August 6 2025

The sardonic teenager Wednesday Addams is back for another year at Nevermore Academy, where strange things continue to plague her.

The quirky and mysterious Addams family is back in Netflix’s top show Wednesday for Season 2. In the first half of season two, Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) happily returns to Nevermore Academy, where new mysteries await her. Created by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar, the show also focuses on the rest of the Addams clan, with mother-daughter conflicts and younger sibling woes. After the massive success of its first season, the pressure is on for this next round. The dark comedy manages to tick all the boxes that made it a success the first time around. Rooming with her werewolf bestie, Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers), again, Wednesday is actually pleased to return to school. However, she became a celebrity after saving the school last year and Wednesday doesn’t like the attention. The teen doesn’t have much time to waste, receiving a premonition of Enid’s death and another set of strange murders to solve. This time, she deals with a persistent stalker, some old enemies, and a stubborn mother, Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who wants a progress report on her psychic abilities.

Continue reading …

Fri, September 5 2025

Overloaded with ambition, the uneven pacing may not rob its tension, but it makes the experience more exhausting than terrifying.

Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) are enjoying retirement, until a chilling case in a remote Pennsylvania home draws them back into the darkness. The haunting isn’t just another possession… it has a terrifying link to their daughter, Judy (Mia Tomlinson). The fourth movie in the Conjuring universe, also touted as the finale, is a slowburn horror that burns a bit too slow. It stays loyal to the Conjuring template— big family in a haunted house, creepy attic, and eerie musical toys delivering solid jump scares—but it takes far too long to get to the point. Overloaded with ambition, the uneven pacing may not rob its tension, but it makes the experience more exhausting than terrifying. At 2 hours and 15 minutes, the final instalment feels bogged down by its heavy-handed emotional drama. Overstuffed, this time around the demonic spirits haunt not just one home but two – the Warrens and the Smurl family. The story shuttles between these two parallel tracks until they converge in an extended climax. The fear element persists but it gets overshadowed by the family drama.

Continue reading …

Thu, September 4 2025

Songs of Paradise is like a 1950s movie that has time-traveled to the present day. We discuss the film’s old-fashioned narrative and undemanding themes, the chasm of quality between Saba Azad and Sheeba Chaddha’s performances, and the limited ambition of writer-director Danish Renzu. Songs of Paradise could’ve worked as a metaphor for post-Independence Kashmir, but instead, it’s like a bedtime story for five-year-olds.

Mon, September 1 2025

Songs of Paradise traces the life of Kashmir’s first female playback singer Raj Begum, albeit through a fictionalised tale.

Biopics are volatile beasts. Too deferential, and they end up mummifying their subjects in sepia-toned sainthood. Too irreverent, and they trivialise a life that originally clawed tooth and nail for attention. Songs of Paradise, Prime Video’s ode to Kashmir’s first female playback singer Raj Begum (fictionalised here as Zeba/Noor Begum), navigates this tightrope with unexpected ease. Let’s dive into Songs of Paradise story and ending, which are both explained here. What starts as the aspiration of a young Kashmiri girl in the 1950s (with the courage to sing when women were instructed to keep silent) in this Danish Renzu movie is, by the end, a generational echo. The flames which engulfed her recordings become the flames that illuminate the way for her granddaughter. The past is not lost as long as someone is still humming its melody.

Continue reading …

Sun, August 31 2025

Saba Azad shines in this plain sailing story inspired by Raj Begum, the Nightingale of Kashmir

A musical drama loosely inspired by the life of Padma Shri Raj Begum, Songs of Paradise puts into focus the rich poetic culture of Kashmir that often gets buried under the “Files” of jaundiced perceptions. It is the side of Kashmir that we have hardly seen in Bollywood. Set in a time and space when the idea of a woman singing in public was taboo, it follows the struggle of Zeba Akhtar (Saba Azad/ Soni Razdan), who emerges as the voice of freedom because of her talent and tenacity. With the support of her tailor father (Bashir Lone is outstanding), Zeba stitches her musical dreams under the tutelage of Masterji (Shishir Sharma), who urges her to participate in a singing competition organised by Radio Kashmir. She wins the contest, but the social stigma attached to music forces her to assume a pseudonym, Noor Bano.

Continue reading …