Guild Reviews
Chhaava
History, Action, Drama (Hindi)
Shivaji's death sparks the Maratha-Mughal conflict. His son Sambhaji leads resistance against Aurangzeb's forces. Amid battles and intrigue, both sides face challenges in a struggle for power.
Cast:
Vicky Kaushal, Rashmika Mandanna, Akshaye Khanna, Ashutosh Rana, Divya Dutta
Director:
Laxman Utekar
Writer:
Kaustubh J. Savarkar
Vicky Kaushal’s worrisome streak hits an all-time low; who’ll take responsibility for inciting violence?
Sat, April 19 2025
One of Javed Akhtar’s favourite stories to tell is about fishing. Regardless of the venue — it could be an international seminar or one of those ‘naastik parishad’ meetings that he enjoys attending — he regales the audience with a carefully constructed bit about why fishing is considered a relaxing recreational activity while hunting is mostly outlawed across the world. The only reason for this, he declares in his punchline, is because fish don’t have vocal chords. They can’t shriek in agony when they’re pierced by a hook, scaled alive, and left to suffocate. Fishing has great PR, as do the folks behind the blockbuster film Chhaava, even though it incited a riot.
Film that launched a thousand protests
Fri, March 28 2025
For nearly two hours, Chhaava runs like a mishmash of the testosterone-heavy Marvel and DC universe action spectacles. Here, it leads to one battle after another, as Maratha king Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj (played by Vicky Kaushal) duels against a lion (cue Russell Crowe in Gladiator), excels in aerial fights and takes on the Mughal army, often single-handedly. Accompanied by a bombastic background score by A.R. Rahman, the historical extravaganza comes alive in the last half hour, when the punches are not literal, but verbal. With the protagonist captured and chained, audiences finally get to see the daring hero and his enemy, a haggard Aurangzeb (Akshaye Khanna), in one frame. “Mughalon ki taraf aa jaaao. Zindagi badal jaayegi. Bas tumhein apna dharm badalna hoga (Join hands with the Mughals. Your life will change. All you have to do is convert to Islam),” says Khanna’s Aurangzeb in a final offer of freedom to the brutalised Chhaava. The Maratha king, his spirit untethered, retorts, “Humse haath mila lozindagi badal jaayegi aur dharm bhi badalna nahin padega (Join hands with Marathas. Your life will change and you won’t even have to change your faith).”
Sun, February 16 2025
The Pitt
Drama (English)
The staff of Pittsburgh's Trauma Medical Center work around the clock to save lives in an overcrowded and underfunded emergency department.
Cast:
Noah Wyle, Tracy Ifeachor, Patrick Ball, Katherine LaNasa, Supriya Ganesh
Thrilling, trailblazing; the next best show of 2025 is already here, mere weeks after Netflix’s Adolescence
Sat, April 19 2025
Tears are just grief leaving our body, says Dr Michael Robinavitch in The Pitt. It’s one of the many pearls of wisdom that he drops through the 15-episode first season of the medical drama, which is streaming in its entirety on Jio Hotstar. Known as ‘Dr Robby’ to everyone around him, and those who will never see him again, he is the ‘chief attending’ at a Pittsburgh hospital’s emergency department. His job is to run the day shift as smoothly as he can, despite all the difficulties that the modern healthcare system throws at him. He must do his best with an under-staffed and under-funded team; he must deal with belligerent patients, and, towards the end of the season, an unprecedented tragedy that will require him and his fellow doctors to go above and beyond the call of duty.
Logout
Thriller (Hindi)
Pratyush, a social media influencer who is about to reach his biggest milestone in terms of followers to land a deal with a brand, loses his phone to a fan obsessed with him. Trapped in his own house without his phone, Pratyush must find a way to reclaim his identity and his career.
Cast:
Babil Khan, Nimisha Nair, Rasika Dugal, Gandharv Dewan
Director:
Amit Golani
Writer:
Biswapati Sarkar
(Writing for M9 News)
Decent Cyber Thriller
Sat, April 19 2025
After distancing himself from his family and having just broken up with his girlfriend Smriti, Instagram influencer Pratyush lives alone in his apartment. He’s under pressure to reach the 10 million mark on the platform while competing with a rival. However, his plans go kaput one night when he loses his phone, only to realise that an obsessed female fan stole it. Babil Khan may not be getting the opportunities he deserves, but he is definitely making his presence felt in the digital space with his consistency, representing realities that mainstream cinema often tends to ignore. Logout is no different and is a story apt for his age, driven by a strong screenplay and eliciting a good performance out of him.
Log in to ‘Logout’
Sat, April 19 2025
We all are prisoners of our mobile phones. So, when the very first line of ‘Logout’ reminds you of it as well as drives home precisely why it’s called a cell phone, you can only nod in unison. The same can be said about the entire runtime of the two-hour film. Much of what unfolds is relatable, much has already been documented, maybe with greater precision and depth. But the Amit Golani directorial focuses on the life of an influencer and serves the tale as a psychological thriller; murder in the very first scene. You might be on a familiar path; after all, reams have been penned on the perils of social media, invasion of privacy and cyber frauds. But the way Golani weaves a world where ‘phone hamare liye distraction nahin puri duniya hai’, you are neither distracted by the subject nor its treatment. Rather, you are fully clued in on the fate of this young celebrity.
The fallout of digital dependence
Sat, April 19 2025
There are two sides to digital media influencer connections. The first is the connection created by these influencers—designed, manufactured, marketed, finessed, and posted on their socials. These are aimed at gaining likes, shares, and follows, all to increase the creator’s relevance and brand value. On the other side of the mobile device screen, someone else is consuming this content—often obsessively, even addictively. Writer Biswapati Sarkar’s script for Logout (Zee5) is a cautionary tale that examines how an alarming number of subscribers are entrapped by their ‘cell’ phones.
Kesari: Chapter 2
Drama, History (Hindi)
A dramatization of the life story of C. Sankaran Nair, the lawyer who fought for the truth behind the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
Cast:
Akshay Kumar, R. Madhavan, Ananya Panday, Mark Bennington, Sammy Jonas Heaney
Director:
Karan Singh Tyagi
Writer:
Karan Singh Tyagi
(Writing for M9 News)
Patriotism Packed in a Courtroom Drama
Sat, April 19 2025
Advocate Sankaran Nair, a key member of the Viceroy’s Council, remains staunchly loyal to the British Crown in his professional tenure—until the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre changes everything. Branded as terrorists, thousands of innocent civilians are slaughtered in cold blood, shaking Nair to his core. As the truth unfolds, he joins forces with a young advocate, Dilreet Gill, determined to hold the British accountable for what they believe to be an act of genocide. Akshay Kumar has always been a perfect foil for plot-driven sagas that have no space for flabby distractions. In the shoes of Sankaran Nair, the seasoned actor delivers a classy performance – his subtle humour, ease with dialogue delivery help him immensely. Ananya Panday, without doubt, is steadily finding her rhythm as a performer, and her portrayal of Dilreet is a firm indicator of her evolution.
‘F***ing’ hard-hitting courtroom drama with lots of creative liberties
Sat, April 19 2025
Just last month, filmmaker Ram Madhvani came up with his Sony LIV web series The Waking of a Nation. It was based on the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and how General Dyer was dragged to the court for the same. Although it was inspired from C Sankaran Nair’s case that shook the British Empire after the massacre, it was a fictionalized version with a fictitious protagonist. Filmmaker Karan Tyagi’s Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Truth Of Jallianwala Bagh sees C Sankaran Nair himself fighting the case against the British Empire where he accuses the latter of a planned conspiracy in the form of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that killed more than a thousand Indians gathered at the site for a peaceful protest. Although Tyagi’s film also uses a lot of fiction, it is more impactful than The Waking of a Nation.
Akshay Kumar hammers history in this lopsided period piece
Sat, April 19 2025
Bollywood is going through a ‘sorry’ phase. Last week, in Jaat, Sunny Deol sought an apology from a Sri Lankan extremist. This week, it is the turn of Akshay Kumar to demand an apology from the British government for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. While the former was an outright piece of fiction, director and co-writer Karan Singh Tyagi takes excessive creative liberty with history to manufacture nationalist sentiment and a hero. It seems that after playing with ancient history, the big boys of Bollywood are meddling with modern history. While the dastardly act of the Empire needs to be exposed, the film, produced by Dharma Productions, milks the sacrifice of martyrs in Jallianwala Bagh to create a trumped-up narrative around the tragic episode.
Arjun S/O Vyjayanthi
Action, Crime, Thriller (Telugu)
In order to protect the people of his village, a man becomes a ruthless vigilante against his police officer mother’s wishes.
Cast:
Kalyan Ram, Vijayashanti, Saiee Manjrekar, Sohail Khan, Srikanth
Director:
Pradeep Chilukuri
Vijayashanthi, Kalyan Ram’s film withers under the weight of a dated tale
Sat, April 19 2025
A scene in the final portions of the Telugu action drama Arjun S/O Vyjayanthi offers a moment of shock, establishing how far the protagonist would go to protect a loved one. Barring that moment, the film is an outdated relationship drama of a mother and son who find themselves at opposite ends of a flawed system. Had the makers approached the story with a new narrative style, perhaps the story’s emotional crux would have had the necessary impact. Instead, the film squanders the potential with its formulaic approach and gets tiresome with each passing action sequence. Vijayashanthi’s formidable presence and Kalyan Ram’s earnestness are in vain. The film unravels with a series of introduction sequences. Vijayashanthi’s introduction sequence doffs its hat to her iconic, tough-as-nails police officer characters in the 1990s. It establishes how she does not buckle under pressure, putting her own safety at risk. As the action sequence unravels, the film, written and directed by Pradeep Chilukuri, is aware that audience will not question how her young son reaches her in the forest even before the rescue team.
Odela 2
(Telugu)
In a remote village, steeped in rich cultural heritage and age-old traditions, its true saviour Odela Mallanna Swamy always protects his village from evil forces.
Cast:
Tamannaah Bhatia, Hebah Patel, Vasishta N. Simha, Naga Mahesh
Director:
Ashok Teja
Writer:
Sampath Nandi
(Writing for The Hindu)
Tamannaah cannot salvage this outdated sequel
Fri, April 18 2025
The 2022 film Odela Railway Station, directed by Ashok Teja and featuring Vasishta Simha and Hebah Patel, was a rural thriller focusing on sexual crimes in a quiet Telangana village. The narrative followed a woman’s chilling revenge after discovering that her husband was the perpetrator. With its use of graphic visuals and a voyeuristic lens on violence, the film, despite its disturbing tone, garnered significant viewership on OTT (Aha Telugu). Ashok Teja and writer Sampath Nandi reunite for its sequel, Odela 2, led by Tamanaah Bhatia, reimagining the story as a supernatural thriller. After meeting with a horrific end at the hands of his wife, Tirupathi (Vasishta N Simha) returns as a vengeful spirit, undeterred and more dangerous. His spirit manipulates a new set of men, reigniting a similar pattern of crimes in the village. As chaos escalates, the stage is set for the arrival of Bhairavi (Tamannaah), a mythical force destined to restore order. A conventional good-versus-evil showdown ensues.
Black Mirror S07
Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Drama, Mystery (English)
Twisted tales run wild in this mind-bending anthology series that reveals humanity's worst traits, greatest innovations and more.
Fri, April 18 2025
Government Cheese
Drama, Comedy (English)
When Hampton is released from prison, his long-awaited family reunion doesn't quite go as he hoped. In his absence, Hampton's wife and sons formed an unconventional family unit, and his return spins their world into chaos.
Cast:
David Oyelowo, Simone Missick, Jahi Di'Allo Winston, Evan Ellison, Bokeem Woodbine
David Oyelowo Starrer Struggles To Maintain Narrative And Tone
Wed, April 16 2025
The new Apple TV+ series Government Cheese is billed as a family comedy but veers into deep drama at times as well. Set in 1960s California, the surreal comedy never seems too sure about its initial premise and veers all over the place. David Oyelowo is the cheerful protagonist and former felon who is ready to do everything to get things back to where they were with his family. However, his criminal past can never quite escape him. The meandering dramedy pushes off strong but loses itself as more characters are introduced. Oyelowo is Hampton Chambers, a check forger sentenced to the Chino State Prison, who is let out early with certain conditions. His family, wife Astoria (Simone Missick), and sons, Einstein (Evan Ellison) and Harrison (Jahi Di’Allo Winston), have all moved on in his absence, and Hampton struggles to form their bond again. Working to launch his new handyman invention and pay off the local crime family to whom he owes a debt, Hampton falls deeper into chaos.
Warfare
War, Action (English)
A platoon of American Navy SEALs in the home of an Iraqi family overwatches the movement of US forces through insurgent territory.
Cast:
D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Cosmo Jarvis, Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Joseph Quinn
Director:
Alex Garland
Writer:
Ray Mendoza
Feels Like a Sobering Admission of America’s Futile, Bloody Invasion of Iraq
Tue, April 15 2025
t’s curious how all the prestige around Hollywood war films – lucrative, quasi-recruitment videos and vanity projects for young actors – was punctured by one joke. More than a decade ago, comedian Frankie Boyle said in a set – “Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people – but what’s worse is, 20 years later, they’ll make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers very sad.” It’s a stinging line that rightfully sullied the stock character of the haunted American war veteran. Especially, when such films didn’t show similar sensitivity towards the broad-stroked, faceless ‘jihadis’ and innocent civilians, whose lives are boiled down to just being ‘collateral damage’ before the eventual triumph of the American military. What was once a sure shot for an Oscar nomination – through films like Saving Private Ryan (1998), Black Hawk Down (2002), The Hurt Locker (2007) – has now become a relatively more introspective and self-reflective genre, with even filmmakers like Michael Bay making an effort to assess the problematic presence of America in a foreign land, without glorifying their soldiers.
Deeply unnerving and immersive, warfare is filmmaking at its finest
Sat, April 12 2025
After Adolescence’s single take technical brilliance, Warfare’s impeccable sound design, intense storytelling, cinematography and atmospherics will leave you shaken. There is no music, the enemies are barely shown and the entire film is shot at one location. This no-frills innovative approach creates a film so immersive, terrifying and gripping that you want to be evacuated, let alone have popcorn or coffee! Alex Garland’s spectacular war movie can be classified as horror for its edge of the seat, relentless and raw onslaught of terror. He leaves you no room to relax or catch a breath. It strips off the glamour and chest-thumping heroism of war films to give you the real picture. There’s also brotherhood and empathy, surfacing when there’s no expectation. Warfare is a technical masterpiece that never overlooks human emotion and horrors of war. This one’s bound to blow your mind.
The Last of Us S02
Drama (English)
Twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed, Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse the United States and depend on each other for survival.
Cast:
Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Gabriel Luna, Isabela Merced, Young Mazino
Tue, April 15 2025
The post-apocalyptic drama The Last of Us instantly became a global hit after its release in 2023 on HBO. Based on the enormously popular game, which sees players take on character perspectives, the series returns with a darker tone and new conflicts. The first episode reintroduces viewers to the story while taking the story down a dangerous path that could expose several characters. Co-created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, The Last of Us Season 2 wastes no time in getting hooked in again. Returning with a five-year jump, the show picks up with an estranged Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) adjusting to life in Jackson, Wyoming, and integrating within the community there. Within the safe haven, there are lots of little conflicts while other threats seem to be on the horizon. The premiere episode is set around New Year’s Eve 2029, which should indicate promise but instead holds foreboding for the residents of the tight-knit community seeking a peaceful life away from the pandemic and the zombie clickers infecting the rest of the world.
Alappuzha Gymkhana
Action, Drama, Comedy (Malayalam)
A group of youngsters, after failing their plus two exams, aims to join a common college through the sports quota. They choose boxing as their sport. By luck, they manage to survive the district-level competitions. But what will happen at the higher levels?
Cast:
Naslen, Lukman Avaran, Ganapathi S Poduval, Sandeep Pradeep, Anagha Maya Ravi
Director:
Khalid Rahman
Writer:
Sreeni Saseendran
Why Alappuzha Gymkhana's best punches are its jokes
Tue, April 15 2025
The heroes of Malayalam sports comedy Alappuzha Gymkhana are more laughing punching bags than lean and mean fighting machines. In the adept hands of co-writer-director Khalid Rahman, it’s what makes them worth rooting for. Never has following failure been this much fun and worth reflecting on. Jojo Johnson (Naslen Gafoor), Cheruth (Franco Francis), DJ aka David John (Habish Rahman), Shanu (Shiva Hariharan) and more are a bunch of good-for-nothing fellows struggling to clear school grade 12. Failure, though, doesn’t dent their confidence. Jojo comes with a bright idea of taking up boxing to get into college through sports quota. Little do the boys know what they have signed up for. So begins a film where Rahman lands more punches of the humorous kind as he follows guys big on ambition and short on experience, and in a few cases boxing talent, struggle in the ring.
The most fun you’ll have at the cinema this year
Sun, April 13 2025
Five skinny dudes turn up at the Alappuzha gym and announce that they want to learn boxing. The man at the desk says, that’ll be a thousand in advance, plus monthly fees. The boys murmur about not being able to afford it. Fine, the official says, how about 300? There’s a chorus of assent, but one of them hopefully asks, EMI? They say you shouldn’t put a hat on a hat, place a joke on top of another. Khalid Rahman’s Malayalam film Alappuzha Gymkhana is the exception to this rule. There are jokes within jokes, jokes appended to jokes, jokes hanging off other jokes like the last commuter on a packed bus. And it all works. This is a slacker comedy that’s works hard, a babbling stream of slapstick, non sequiturs, sight gags and general silliness. Along the way, it also manages to be a damn good boxing film.
An Enjoyable Sports Drama That’s Less sports And More Drama
Sat, April 12 2025
Alappuzha Gymkhana is about a bunch of small-town boys trying to become boxers. But the brilliance of director Khalid Rahman’s writing lies in the fact that the film is not actually about boxing. Jojo Johnson (Naslen), Shifas Ahammed (Sandeep Pradeep), Shifas Ali (Franco Francis), and David John (Habish Rahman) are teens from Alappuzha Gymkhana who have just discovered they haven’t cleared their board exams. This doesn’t come as a surprise to them—they seem to know their limitations. Jojo, the driving force of the group, convinces his friends that becoming boxers might help them gain college admissions, given that academics clearly aren’t their strength. But the real motivator seems to be their bruised egos. What begins as an impulsive decision gradually turns into something life-changing when the group enters a state-level tournament.
Maranamass
Comedy, Drama (Malayalam)
Maranamass is the story of a serial killer similar to Ripper Chandran, who is terrorizing a city. But unexpectedly, the killer, the target, a girl, her lover and others end up in a night bus and dramatic events unfold leading to the unique climax with many surprises
Cast:
Basil Joseph, Siju Sunny, Rajesh Madhavan, Suresh Krishna, Babu Antony
Director:
Sivaprasad
Writer:
Sivaprasad
A few doses of ingenuity and a mix of idiosyncratic characters drive this film
Sun, April 13 2025
Cinema has for long provided an endless supply of content for social media memes, but the flow appears to have reversed in recent years. First came the influencers with their massive online reach, bagging noticeable roles. Now, viral online content has begun seeping into screenplays, to elicit easy applause. For instance, in debutant Sivaprasad’s Maranamass, co-written with Siju Sunny, Suresh Krishna’s recent online image as the “convincing star” is used to the hilt in one of the many humorous passages in the film. This “memeification” of screenplays is not necessarily a bad thing, especially in cases where it works like a charm. Incidentally, at the centre of Maranamass is Luke (Basil Joseph), a popular YouTuber and a self-proclaimed ‘sigma male,’ who has become a headache to the people in his neighbourhood owing to his public-spirited actions, like sticking wall posters of the panchayat president’s Internet search history or putting the local police station on sale to convey a point to the idle police officers. So it is not a surprise that when a series of killings of senior citizens takes place, the needle of suspicion points towards him.
Basil Joseph leads an effective ensemble in this dark comedy with both hits and misses
Sat, April 12 2025
Serial killer films are mosty about unmasking the killer and unravelling the reason behind the killings. And then there are films where you know the killer’s identity right from the first scene, and it is all about how they are brought to justice. And then there is Sivaprasad’s Maranamass which tells us about the killer, his modus operandi, and his targets. There is no ‘surprise’ in what happens in the life of this serial killer who has a method to his madness of stuffing a banana in the mouth of his victims. Of course, the identity of the serial killer, played to perfection by Rajesh Madhavan, is known to the audience, and yet… we are invested in what happens. Why? Because the makers of Maranamass fill the narrative with eclectic characters who have individual arcs, and quirks.
Basil Joseph's film is a treasure trove of absurd comedy
Fri, April 11 2025
Dark comedy is a tricky genre that could yield results both ways. The film can turn out insanely funny, or it can fall flat on its face. Of late, there are a lot of dark comedies coming from South. Director Sivaprasad’s ‘Maranamass’ is an addition to the dark comedy genre with Basil Joseph at its core. Basil, who is on a golden run with multiple hits to his credit, picks up Maranamass, elevates it and proves why he is the one to watch out for. A serial killer, known as the banana killer because of his signature move, has murdered three elderly men in a village in Kerala. The police are naturally inclined to suspect Luke PP (Basil Joseph) as the one, courtesy his off-beat character. From burning a school staff room to leaking the search history of a politician, he is the ‘destructive’ force in the village. Luke is in love with Jessie (Anishma Anikumar). But, Jessie is unimpressed with him and has broken up with him.