Mon, June 9 2025

Writer and director Rushikesh Gupte made his feature film debut with the Marathi film Dil Dimaag Aur Batti, which was a spoof of the formulaic commercial Hindi films of the yesteryears. But his next release titled Jarann (his second movie Hazaar Vela Sholay Pahilela Manus hasn’t released yet) falls in the diametrically opposite genre of a psychological cum supernatural thriller. Jarann revolves around Radha (Amruta Subhash), who stays with her daughter Saie (Avanee Joshi) in a bungalow in a city in Maharashtra. Her husband Shekhar (Vikram Gaikwad) is abroad for work since a year. Radha and Saie once visit the former’s family’s wada (ancestral house) in a village in the state. The house is about to be sold, so this is Radha’s last chance to visit it and enjoy a get together with her parents and relatives.

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Sat, June 7 2025

‘Aabhyanthara Kuttavaali’ falters when it generalises a few instances of women misusing Section 498A, while closing its eyes to the numerous cases of domestic abuse and dowry harassment and deaths of women which necessitated the framing of such a law

The way a filmmaker conceives a single sequence can sometimes reveal the entire thought process behind the film. This is especially true of single-agenda films like Aabhyanthara Kuttavaali, the debut directorial of Sethunath Padmakumar. Sahadevan (Asif Ali), the protagonist who is facing a case under Section 498A over dowry harassment and domestic abuse, is shown returning to his wife’s family the 100 sovereigns of gold that he got as a “gift”, a modern-day euphemism for dowry. A sentimental background score accompanies this sequence which is framed fully from the man’s perspective, although he was earlier shown to have denied his wife’s demand for a part of the gold to fund her higher education. Even this demand on her part appears unjust by the way the film looks at it.

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Sat, June 7 2025

From Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, the HBO movie follows four technocrats on a secluded weekend getaway while the world outside, including India, descends into chaos.

When Nikhil Kamath interviewed Ranbir Kapoor on his podcast, he admitted that he hasn’t quite figured out the art of detachment like Marcus Aurelius. “You like Marcus’ writing?” Kapoor asked. “Yes, I like a couple of his books,” Kamath said. This bizarre exchange deserves to be unpacked in a separate article, but, for the purposes of this one, let’s focus on two things. One, the Zerodha founder reads the work of a Roman emperor in his spare time, and two, the star of Jagga Jasoos probably thinks they were talking about someone who wrote a self-help bestseller. Several conversations of this nature unfold in Mountainhead, the new film from Jesse Armstrong, creator of HBO’s Succession. Marcus Aurelius is invoked as well; in fact, so are Mark Antony and other great historical figures. Streaming in India on JioHotstar, the movie follows four men — three billionaires and one millionaire — who get together in a snowy mountain retreat for a weekend getaway, while the ‘outside world’ descends into chaos. “No deals, no meals, no women in heels,” is the motto of the get-together, which seems like something of a tradition. Steve Carell plays a veteran named Randall, who has just received a disheartening cancer diagnosis. Corey Michael Smith, who was so good in May December and Saturday Night, plays Ven, the owner of a Twitter-like social media app. He’s the richest man in the room. Ramy Youssef plays Jeff, whose company is making waves in the field of artificial intelligence, and Jason Schwartzman plays Souper, who feels insecure about being the only person whose net worth hasn’t hit a billion yet.

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Sat, June 7 2025

A soap opera for boys, Tom Hardy's gangster drama is derivative but decidedly entertaining. While Hardy mumbles his way through the narrative, Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren chew more scenery than they can digest.

Wholly unoriginal yet embarrassingly addictive, MobLand can best be described as a soap opera for boys. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the gangster drama (briefly) unseated Taylor Sheridan’s blockbusters off the viewership charts — Sheridan has built a literal empire on the back of expensive sagas aimed at men, like Yellowstone. MobLand combines his signature brand of family drama with gruff machismo of a Bollywood potboiler; it’s an experience so Ajay Devgn-coded that Tom Hardy’s protagonist could have just as easily been introduced with a packet of Vimal in his hands, and we’d have been none the wiser. He may as well be chewing ‘elaichi’ in his scenes, going by his line delivery. Hardy can be magnificently theatrical when he wants — “let’s not stand on ceremony here!” — but he’s made a name for himself as one of the great mumblers of his generation. That’s exactly what he does as Harry Da Souza in MobLand. Harry is a fixer of sorts, torn between his two families — the real one, with wife Jan and teenage daughter Gina; and the one that he has been adopted into, the Harrigans. Like Tom Hagen from The Godfather, Harry is the brain and brawn behind the Harrigans’ criminal empire, led by the psychotic patriarch Conrad, played by Pierce Brosnan.

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Sun, March 30 2025

Created by Top Boy's Ronan Bennett, the slow-moving gangster saga puts Tom Hardy in the middle of an impending war between two crime families.

The new crime drama, MobLand, directed by Guy Ritchie, holds all the hallmarks of the filmmaker. And yet there is something distinctive missing from the gritty gangster saga as Tom Hardy plays Harry Da Souza, a fixer left to clean up the many messes of the Harrigan family. So far, the nine-episode London-set series is keeping a cliffhanger for each chapter in trying to raise the tension. Ronan Bennett’s series has had a slow-moving start, but it needs to amp things up to match the intensity of Ritchie’s other projects. Hardy’s Harry has been loyally serving Conrad Harrigan (Pierce Brosnan) for a long time now. The fixer saves the old crime lord and every member of his family whenever they get in a bind. But we join the story at a bit of a power struggle between the Harrigans and their rivals, the Stevensons, before erupting into an all out war. As Harry tries to smoothen things over, his family life suffers as well. Who will be left standing at the end when the lines are all drawn out against family loyalties?

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Sat, June 7 2025

Adarsh Gourav stars as a filmmaker caught in an ideological battle with censors in Varun Grover's 15-minute act of cinematic empathy.

Comedian-writer-lyricist Varun Grover’s directorial debut, Kiss, contains multitudes. The ideas that it is preoccupied by can be upsetting, even terrifying. But, made by someone who has clearly benefited from therapy, the movie is able to comprehend, contest, and communicate these preoccupations with a necessary calm. Kiss was finally released for public viewing on MUBI recently, a full three years after its festival run first began. It isn’t at all like Grover’s feature-length debut All India Rank, although both projects are marked by a decency that seems altogether absent from our culture these days. Fascinated by the idea of cinema as a therapeutic medium, the 15-minute short stars Adarsh Gourav as Sam, a young filmmaker who finds himself in a rather awkward ideological stand-off with a couple of men after the dreaded ‘censor board’ screening of his latest movie. The two men are played by Swanand Kirkire and Ashwath Bhatt; they’re meant to represent this unnamed censor board, but they may as well be the moral police that sends filmmakers to prison in Iran, the settlers who drive people out of their homes in Palestine, or the Romeo squads that torment young lovers in India. Kiss could be set in the distant future, for all we know. There is a certain dystopian quality to the movie.

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Sat, June 7 2025

Directed by Mani Ratnam, 'Thug Life', starring Kamal Haasan and Silambarasan, is a gangster drama with emotional beats. While the film had a great set-up pre-interval, it falls into a deep pit in the second half and there is no turning back – even for a legend like Mani Ratnam.

“You saved me from death. From now on, you and me are one,” says Kamal Haasan in one of the most strikingly shot scenes from Mani Ratnam’s ‘Thug Life’. The dialogue, albeit simple, has a profound touch to it. As the story progresses, you realise he meant what he said. Kamal Haasan’s Rangaraya Sakthivel and Silambarasan’s Amar are indeed one. But, what causes a rift between them in this world of thugs? Mani Ratnam’s ‘Thug Life’ aims to present a full-blown gangster drama rooted in this very question. Rangaraya Sakthivel (Kamal Haasan) is a gangster in New Delhi and has a bunch of trusted aides, all recruited and raised by Manikkam (Nasser). An encounter leads to the death of a local newspaper vendor. Sakthivel, who is deeply disturbed to see the newspaper vendor’s son, Amar, takes him and raises him as his own son (Silambarasan) along with his wife Jeeva (Abhirami).

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Sat, June 7 2025

In 1987, the collaboration between Mani Ratnam and Kamal Hassan resulted in Nayakan, which continues to be regarded as the benchmark for gangster films in India and has influenced numerous subsequent films in that genre.

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Sat, June 7 2025

Fri, June 6 2025

A near-faithful cinematic adaptation which aims at giving us the warm fuzzies-in-this-dark-and-dismal-world, and succeeds, more or less.

The Life Of Chuck movie review: Based on a slim Stephen King novella, ‘The Life Of Chuck’ is a near-faithful cinematic adaptation which aims at giving us the warm fuzzies-in-this-dark-and-dismal-world, and succeeds, more or less. Just like the story, the film starts backwards, where we see Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) reconnecting with his ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillan) even as the world is coming to an end.

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Fri, June 6 2025

Apocalyptic and fantastical, the film can seem abstract in its treatment, but the language is universal, and it hits just the right spot – live each moment without delaying your happiness.

A school teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his ex-wife (Karen Gillan), reunite under mysterious circumstances. The internet is down; cellular network, TV are about to crash… the world is about to end. Strangely, in their final moments of uncertainty, they stumble upon billboards celebrating an ordinary 39-year-old accountant called Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) aka chuck. Who is he, what is his story and why is he being hailed as a hero? The film then follows Chuck, his childhood, grief and growing up years. As an adult, dressed in a corporate suit at 39, he breaks into an impromptu dance in the middle of the road. It makes him happy and gets him to think. ‘Why do we wait for an opportunity to be happy? There’s no such thing as the right time. There’s time and what you do with it. You will veer towards art, dance and music in crisis but there’s art to Maths also. There’s beauty and joy in every little thing you do.

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Thu, June 5 2025

Sat, May 10 2025

Tourist Family, directed by debutant Abishan Jeevinth, is a moving and entertaining story about an illegal immigrant family from Sri Lanka struggling to find a home in Chennai.

Tourist Family is the kind of film that relies immensely on creating beautiful moments. There isn’t much in terms of the story in such dramas. With Tourist Family, the trailer pretty much revealed all of it, which is about a family of illegal immigrants from Sri Lanka trying to find a home in Chennai, while the police are on their tail to pin a small bomb blast on them. As a story, Tourist Family has a lot of potential for a misstep given the sensitivity of the subject of Sri Lankan civil conflicts. However, debutant Abishan Jeevinth carefully avoids the mines and lands on brilliant emotional notes. The volatility of the film’s subject is never felt as its tone and nature are too affable. We tend to forget the logistics, logic, and the plausibility of the events as the film and its characters are too heartwarming. Tourist Family appeals to the heart more than the brain, and it wins you over.

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Fri, May 2 2025

In a cinema dominated by loud guns and mushy romances, ‘Tourist Family’ comes as a breath of fresh air

A family is trying to flee Sri Lanka and lands up in Rameshwaram, only to get noticed by the cops. They are picked up in a police van. The mood is sombre. But what follows is a really funny five-minute sequence that sets the tone for the entire film. It can be argued that Dharmadas (Sasikumar) is this movie’s hero, but the script does not have a single protagonist; rather, it’s this entire family of four that forms the fulcrum of the script. Director Abishan Jeevinth’s Tourist Family is all about boundaries and ways to break them. A Sri Lankan family with fake documentation has arrived in a Chennai colony, which has, among other people, a grumpy man who rarely socialises, a drunkard who keeps getting yelled at, and a girl wanting to move abroad but changing her mind. That all these characters live together and are close-knit makes things interesting. Remember director Radha Mohan’s Mozhi? The first half of Tourist Family reminds one of that 2007 Tamil film, just in terms of feeling and flavour.

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Wed, June 4 2025

Aiming to be the next Ted Lasso, the Owen Wilson starrer is earnest to a fault.

It’s no Ted Lasso, but the new Apple TV+ comedy Stick is sentimental and sickly sweet in its redemption story about a former golfer finding his mojo again through mentoring a teen phenom. Owen Wilson’s earnest performance salvages the dramedy about found family, grief, and, of course, golf. Owen Wilson is Pryce Cahill, a former golf pro who now works in a store and gives lessons. Cahill, nicknamed Stick, has had a hard couple of years after the death of his four-year-old son. Divorced and directionless, he makes some cash on the side hustling unsuspecting patrons in bars along with his caddy, Mitts (Marc Maron). That all changes after he spots teenager Santiago Wheeler (Peter Dager) hitting on the green. It energises him, and he believes the young man has the potential to become the next Tiger Woods.

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Tue, June 3 2025

Six episodes are not enough

The latest British show has become one of the most talked about series in the recent weeks and rightfully so. Created and written by Paul Doolan, the show is led by infamous Timothy Spall and Gwyneth Keyworth. Following different cases each episode, the series explores the stories of a small town in Wales which unexpectedly holds home to one of the most iconic crime thriller actors of all time (in their universe). The series explores his relationship with a cop, while also delving deeper into the minds and world of the people in and around the town. The show begins with an introduction to Wales cop and detective Sergeant Janie Mallowan played by Gwyneth Keyworth. Her quirky personality is isn’t the thing that separates her from others as everyone in the station is eccentric in their own way. But her eagerness to do her job seems to the thing that sets her apart from others. Though different motivations are at play, her first case on the show puts her in touch with her cinematic hero and a national treasure, an actor who played the detective Cesar.

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Tue, June 3 2025

If there was a true-crime embodiment of the saying ‘so near yet so far’, it would be the case that shook America in the early 1980s and continues to intrigue, baffle and scare the world even today. Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders, Netflix’s potent examination of how seven people in Chicago dropped dead after popping pills of Extra Strength Tylenol — a seemingly innocuous pain-relief medication — is a jaw-dropping watch, which, even if you are familiar with the case, has an ace up its sleeve. The three-episode series is the only one, among scores of other programmes on the case through the decades, that manages to get prime suspect (and, in many ways, the only suspect) James Lewis on camera. Lewis, who died in 2023 shortly after (nonchalantly) telling his side of the story, was suspected of picking bottles of Tylenol off shelves, lacing some of the pills with potassium cyanide, resealing them and putting them back in the market.

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Mon, June 2 2025

In a creatively barren phase for Hindi cinema, Sister Midnight is a rare spark. Defying market norms and genre traps, it reaffirms the joy of watching films and reiterates the medium's potency.

Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight is a radical beast. It is provocative and outlandish, hilarious and macabre. It is intimately accessible and formidably alienating; it is a dark comedy where the depth of darkness constantly squirms with the possibility of humour. Kandhari’s directorial feature is as much a clutter-breaker as it is a freewheeling venture, making up its mind on the go about what to do with itself after having broken the clutter. Surreal and odd, Sister Midnight is a frighteningly original shape-shifting film that cautiously evades meaning to avoid making sense. One would be tempted to brand it as subversive, but Kandhari’s debut is more defiant in its energy, restive in spirit and endearing at its core. The filmmaker suffuses each frame with sprinting chaos where the refusal to conform takes over everything else, outlining in the process a distinct feminine existence in its absence of coherence.

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Mon, June 2 2025

Kiran Kandhari’s film has many pleasures though it loses its way in the second half

Even though it is widely known, I don’t think enough gets written about how much of a nightmare it is to watch a film in its ‘purest’ form in India. One can overlook the overzealous censors that infantilise the audience with humongous smoking warnings, even for films rated ‘A’, desecrating the work of any self-respecting filmmaker. Along with that, most ambitious films play in sparsely-populated theatres. The screening for Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight that I attended in Bengaluru had about a dozen audience members. I have a feeling I would’ve enjoyed the film more if I’d seen it in a packed theatre because it has many visual gags, and most of them are spot on. Also, muted cuss words can feel like sensory speed bumps even if one can decipher them by reading the lip movement. I wondered how the British-Indian director reacted to the alterations? But hey, at least the film released, unlike Sandhya Suri’s Santosh (2024).

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Sun, June 1 2025

Karan Kandhari’s radical film about a lonely housewife deconstructs the idea of feminism.

Sister Midnight is unlike anything I’ve seen before. I mean that in both a good way and bad way. It’s the kind of droll, deadpan, disorienting and daringly designed film where the camera is as socially awkward as the characters it films — like an anachronistic Wes Anderson video trapped by the audiovisual rhythms of Mumbai. People face the lens and speak like humanoids; absurd things happen in strikingly staged night-time incidents; the city behaves like a grainy and reluctant painting; everyone acts wild and unpredictable. It’s also the cinematic equivalent of an offbeat person who hides their vulnerability behind a barrage of provocative cues. If we question them for not staying with an emotion longer than a few seconds, they counter-question us for being so uptight. The joke is supposed to be those who find the film increasingly bizarre and difficult to watch. For better or worse, its relationship with the average viewer is part of its conceit.

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