Guild Reviews
The Test S03
Drama, Documentary (English)
A docuseries following the Australian Men’s Cricket Team, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how one of the world’s best cricket teams fell from grace and was forced to reclaim their title and integrity.
Cast:
Justin Langer, Tim Paine, Nathan Lyon, Pat Cummins, Usman Khawaja, Frank Dimasi
Short, engaging peek into cricketing drama
Mon, July 29 2024
Around halfway of the second episode of the latest season of The Test, drama erupts. English batter Jonny Bairstow ducks a bouncer, the ball goes to the keeper and the batter walks out of the crease. Pretty much a normal thing that happens during a Test match, you’d think. But there’s tense music in the background, almost like you know something is going to happen.
Raayan
Action, Drama, Thriller (Tamil)
Raayan, a simpleton patriarch has to protect his family when they inadvertently get muddled in a violent world with whirlpool of murder, debauchery, feud, politics and power, a quagmire that he has repeatedly warned them not to get pulled into.
Cast:
Dhanush, Dushara Vijayan, Sundeep Kishan, Kalidas Jayaram, S. J. Suryah, Selvaraghavan, Aparna Balamurali, Prakash Raj, Saravanan, Varalaxmi Sarathkumar
Director:
Dhanush
Writer:
Dhanush
Dhanush's 50th film is riveting. Well, almost
Fri, July 26 2024
‘Raayan’ is a special milestone in Dhanush’s career. It marks his 50th film as an actor and his second film as a director (after ‘Pa Paandi’). For his 50th film, he donned the hat of a director, actor and writer. Has he exceeded the second time as a filmmaker with ‘Raayan’? Let’s find out! Kathavarayan aka Raayan is forced to take care of his two brothers and toddler sister after their parents vanish for two days. This marks the beginning of Raayan’s struggle. His motto is to survive in this cruel world. He fears no one, not even death. Raayan, along with his siblings, escape grave danger from their village and land in North Madras, where they find a home.
Deadpool & Wolverine
Action, Comedy, Science Fiction (English)
A listless Wade Wilson toils away in civilian life with his days as the morally flexible mercenary, Deadpool, behind him. But when his homeworld faces an existential threat, Wade must reluctantly suit-up again with an even more reluctant Wolverine.
Cast:
Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen, Dafne Keen, Jon Favreau, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Jennifer Garner
Director:
Shawn Levy
Writer:
Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Ryan Reynolds, Shawn Levy, Zeb Wells
Too focused on the now
Thu, July 25 2024
In Deadpool & Wolverine—the new superhero movie that ushers both title characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe—Deadpool is obsessed with doing something worthwhile. He wants to matter and serve a higher purpose. And he does, for Marvel Studios has pinned all its 2024 hopes on a foul-mouthed wisecracking guy it had no hand in creating. In fact, this is the only MCU movie in a 15-month period. Talk about timing. Deadpool wasn’t part of Marvel’s gargantuan, all-consuming shared world until its parent company, Disney, forked over $70 billion a few years ago and ate up one of its Hollywood rivals, Fox. For a Deadpool concerned with his place, this is like being handed two gold-plated .50 calibre Desert Eagle pistols on a silver platter.
Indian 2
Drama, Action, Thriller (Tamil)
As corruption becomes rampant in the country, a group of idealistic youngsters attract attention of freedom fighter-turned-vigilante Senapathy through social media, who returns to his homeland to finish what he started.
Cast:
Kamal Haasan, Siddharth, Priya Bhavani Shankar, Jagan, Rishikanth, Bobby Simha, Vivek, Nedumudi Venu, Rakul Preet Singh, Samuthirakani
Director:
Shankar
Kamal Haasan-Shankar film is an emotionless social commentary
Wed, July 24 2024
28 years ago, director Shankar and Kamal Haasan gifted ‘Indian’ to the Tamil audience, who still celebrate it like it’s their own. Almost three decades later, the film (read: corruption) still remains relevant. But, Kamal Haasan and Shankar wanted to bring back Indian thatha (grandfather) aka Senapathy to brush up on all the corrupt activities that we’ve seen so far in umpteen movies, not just in Tamil cinema but across other languages. Chitra Aravindan (Siddharth) and his three friends run a YouTube channel called ‘Barking Dogs,’ which focuses on parodies and political satire. They end their calls with ‘Let’s bark!’ (If you think this is absurd, hold your horses). After realising that their videos, despite receiving lakhs of views, had little impact on the audience, the team starts a campaign called ‘Come Back Indian.’ According to them, only Indian Thatha, aka Senapathy, could put an end to corruption.
‘हिन्दुस्तानी’ वापस जाओ… गो बैक ‘इंडियन’…
Sat, July 13 2024
आदरणीय हिन्दुस्तानी जी, 1996 की मई में जब आप पहली बार सिनेमा के पर्दे पर तमिल में ‘इंडियन’ और हिन्दी में ‘हिन्दुस्तानी’ बन कर आए थे तो हम दर्शकों ने आपका तहेदिल से स्वागत किया था। उस फिल्म में आप नेता जी की सेना में सिपाही थे लेकिन जब आपने आज़ाद भारत में भ्रष्टाचार का बोलबाला देखा तो आप खुद भ्रष्टाचारियों को सज़ा देने में जुट गए। आपके तरीके गैरकानूनी थे लेकिन हम लोग आपके पक्ष में थे क्योंकि आप वह काम कर रहे थे जो दरअसल सरकार को करना चाहिए था। ‘अपरिचित’ तब तक आई नहीं थी और ‘प्रहार’ के मेजर चव्हाण हमें बता गए थे कि सिपाही का काम है लड़ना, लड़ाई के मैदान भले ही बदल जाएं। उस फिल्म के अंत में अपने भ्रष्ट बेटे को मार कर आप हिन्दुस्तान से गायब होकर सिंगापुर चले गए थे। आखिरी सीन में आप हमें उम्मीद दे गए थे कि आप जल्द लौटेंगे और एक बार फिर से भ्रष्टाचारियों का विनाश करेंगे। लेकिन आपने लौटने में 28 बरस लगा दिए, क्यों…?
Time Bandits
Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Action & Adventure, Comedy (English)
Eleven-year-old Kevin's passion for history is put to the test when he joins a ragtag group of time-traveling thieves on a high-stakes and hilarious adventure.
Cast:
Lisa Kudrow, Kal-El Tuck, Tadhg Murphy, Roger Jean Nsengiyumva, Rune Temte, Charlyne Yi, Rachel House, Kiera Thompson
Quickfire series loses steam
Wed, July 24 2024
In early 2019, when Apple signed Taika Waititi as creator, writer, and director on its television series adaptation of the beloved eighties kids’ movie Time Bandits, his star was on the rise. The Kiwi filmmaker had successfully transitioned from a tiny indie comedy-drama set in New Zealand to a mega-budget superhero romp part of a massive, shared world. Better yet, Waititi had reinvigorated the God of Thunder’s forgettable trilogy with Thor: Ragnarok. All the gates of Hollywood were swinging open for the writer-director. But since then, Waititi has struggled. The Hitler satire Jojo Rabbit lacked bite and was showered with more praise than it deserved. Thor: Love and Thunder and Next Goal Wins were both disasters of epic proportions.
Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper
Drama, Comedy, Crime (Hindi)
A banking crisis forces CA topper Tribhuvan Mishra to take up sex work. Will this dual existence alleviate his troubles — or create entirely new ones?
Cast:
Manav Kaul, Tillotama Shome, Subhrajyoti Barat, Shweta Basu Prasad, Naina Sareen, Sumit Gulati, Faisal Malik, Shrikant Verma, Yamini Das, Jitin Gulati
Director:
Amrit Raj Gupta, Puneet Krishna
Writer:
Karan Vyas, Puneet Krishna, Arati Raval, Sumit Purohit
A spin on underdog drama falls short of the mark
Wed, July 24 2024
If there was an award for turning inventive premises into a drag-fest, I’m certain Indian storytellers would be contending for it. In the last decade of Indian streaming, there has been nothing more frustrating than witnessing filmmakers self-sabotage projects that could have otherwise become definitive storytelling. It’s worse than having to sit through shows that resemble a template and underwhelm in their lack of ambition and finesse. Such shows are easy to churn and easier to forget, their existence devoid of any purpose beyond existing for the sake of populating a catalogue.
Bad Newz
Comedy, Romance, Drama (Hindi)
After a whirlwind marriage with social media influencer Akhil Chadha that ends in divorce, chef Saloni Bagga meets hotelier Gurbir Pannu. One night with Gurbir – and then also with Akhil – leads to Saloni getting pregnant. But who's the father? By a one-in-a-billion twist of fate, Saloni is carrying twins – and not just any twins, each child has a different father!
Cast:
Vicky Kaushal, Triptii Dimri, Ammy Virk, Neha Dhupia, Sheeba Chaddha, Faisal Rashid, Ananya Panday, Neha Sharma, Khayali Ram, Guneet Singh Sodhi
Director:
Anand Tiwari
Writer:
Tarun Dudeja, Ishita Moitra
Bad Newz Is Bad News
Fri, July 19 2024
चमकीली, चटकीली ‘बैड न्यूज़’
Fri, July 19 2024
एक लड़की है सयानी-सी। एक दिन एक लड़के से वो मिलती है-बिस्तर में। कुछ देर बाद उसका एक्स-पति आता है। वह उससे भी मिल लेती है-बिस्तर में। अगले महीने आती है यह बैड न्यूज़ कि वह मां बनने वाली है और बच्चे का बाप उन दोनों में से कोई एक नहीं बल्कि दोनों ही हैं। मेडिकल साईंस का यह करिश्मा करोड़ों में एक बार होता है, लेकिन असंभव नहीं है। अब दोनों बापों में ठन जाती है कि बच्चा असल में किसके पास रहेगा। इस ठनाठनी में दोनों बार-बार भिड़ते हैं और उनकी हरकतें देख कर दर्शक हंसते हैं। इस फिल्म की लगभग पूरी कहानी इसके ट्रेलर में खोली जा चुकी है। वैसे भी यह कोई सस्पैंस फिल्म तो है नहीं। सो, ऐसी फिल्मों में कहानी से ज़्यादा कहानी का ट्रीटमैंट देखा जाता है। और चूंकि यह एक अलग किस्म का सब्जैक्ट है-थोड़ा टैबू सा, थोड़ा हटके वाला, तो हमारे फिल्मकार अक्सर ऐसे विषयों पर कॉमेडी का आवरण चढ़ा कर उन्हें परोसते हैं। फिर चाहे वह ‘बधाई हो’ जैसी फिल्म हो या फिर लगभग ऐसी ही ‘गुड न्यूज़’ जिसमें दिखाया गया था कि कृत्रिम गर्भाधान कराने पहुंचे दो जोड़ों में से क्लिनिक वालों की गलती से एक के स्पर्म दूसरे की बीवी को और दूसरे के स्पर्म पहले की बीवी को दे दिए जाते हैं। वह फिल्म हंसते-गुदगुदाते और अंत में इमोशनल करते हुए अपनी बात कह रही थी और इस फिल्म में भी वही तरीका इस्तेमाल किया गया है।
Pill
Drama (Hindi)
Pill unravels the deep-set rot in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Prakash along with three whistle-blowers face a powerful pharma giant Forever Cure to expose the corrupt nexus of pharma, middlemen, and doctors through which a pill reaches the common man. Will the good be able to overcome the evil?
Cast:
Ritesh Deshmukh, Pavan Malhotra, Anshul Chauhan, Akshat Chauhan, Baharul Islam, Nikhil Khurana, Kunj Anand
Director:
Raj Kumar Gupta, Jaideep Yadav
Thriller about Big Indian Pharma corruption is dead on arrival
Sun, July 14 2024
In this post-Covid world, the timing of Pill – an eight-episode examination of the malpractices of Big Indian Pharma that end up endangering human lives — could not be more timely. Just a few months ago, AstraZeneca, the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, admitted that Covishield, its Covid vaccine, can cause side-effects such as blood clots, low platelet counts, and neurological deficits. If that’s not worrying enough, AstraZeneca is already facing a class action lawsuit in the UK that accuses its vaccine of causing deaths. So far, 51 cases have been filed against the multinational giant. That is to say, for a country that has survived the pandemic and come out on the other side only to discover the long-term side-effects of the vaccines on our bodies, such a show exists as cinematic retribution.
Manikbabur Megh
Drama (Bengali)
Manik is a lonely middle-aged man who lives with his father, but with whom he has no contact. Instead, his life consists of taking care of his plants and ants, plus a spider and a lizard. But then a change happens in the man’s dull life – he notices a cloud in the sky that seems to follow him all the time. Life takes on a new, previously unknown value for him. Is it friendship or perhaps love?
Cast:
Chandan Sen, Debesh Roy Chowdhury, Arun Guha Tharkurta, Bratya Basu, Nimai Ghosh, Taranga Sarkar, Anirban Bhattacharyya, Arya Mallick, Mohua Sarkar, Supriti Bhadra
Director:
Abhinandan Banerjee
Writer:
Abhinandan Banerjee
Abhinandan Banerjee and Chandan Sen present a magical love song through their cinema
Fri, July 12 2024
Manikbabu (Chandan Sen) lives a lonely life. He is first chased and then romanced by a whiff of cloud that only he can see. What do we see when we look at the sky? Manikbabu sees a whiff of cloud that refuses to leave him. He decides to embrace that celestial piece of cloud in his life. This lonely man and his quirky environment – his noisy ceiling fan, his rooftop greenhouse, the hanging lizard in the bathroom, the pile of files on his office table, and so on – tell a lot of hitherto bottled-up stories. The film is a collage of those chronicles.
Sarfira
Drama (Hindi)
A young man from a remote village dreams of launching his own airline service. However, he must overcome several obstacles and challenges in order to be successful in his quest.
Cast:
Akshay Kumar, Radhikka Madan, Paresh Rawal, R. Sarathkumar, Seema Biswas, Rahul Vohra, Krishnakumar Balasubramanian, Anil Charanjeett, Ravi Khanvilkar, Suriya
Director:
Sudha Kongara Prasad
Thu, July 11 2024
Wild Wild Punjab
Comedy, Adventure (Hindi)
Four friends road-trip across Punjab to help one of them get over an ex-girlfriend, but are quickly caught in a fiasco like no other.
Cast:
Varun Sharma, Sunny Singh, Jassie Gill, Manjot Singh, Ishita Raj Sharma, Patralekhaa, Gopal Datt, Rajesh Sharma, Anjum Batra, Samuel John
Director:
Simarpreet Singh
Writer:
Harman Wadala, Sandeep Jain
Deeply unfunny
Wed, July 10 2024
Early into Wild Wild Punjab—the new Indian Netflix original movie—a line of dialogue lays bare the film’s inspiration: The Hangover trilogy. It’s not implied, mind you. One of the film’s four lead characters namechecks the high-grossing franchise as a comedic reference. Except Wild Wild Punjab doesn’t stop at acknowledging its existence. It liberally borrows several subplots from The Hangover, including stealing a police vehicle, being chased by gangsters, and drunkenly marrying a random woman. But Wild Wild Punjab—directed by feature debutant Simarpreet Singh and written by Harman Wadala and Sandeep Jain—displays zero understanding of good comedic filmmaking.
Puerile buddy comedy is not wild enough
Thu, July 4 2024
It was evident, even before Varun Sharma clambered onto the roof of a car, unfastened his fly and shot out a tall projectile of piss, that Wild Wild Punjab was not a serious film. But is it even that wild? The aforementioned scene is probably the looniest thing that happens — a nod, perhaps, to Fukrey 3, which had an entire pee-based plotline dedicated to Sharma. The rest of Simarpreet Singh’s film is oddly strained and docile, a blur of ham-fisted hi-jinks and inane one-liners. “Respect, dude,” someone tells Sharma’s character, a compliment I cannot extend to the film.
Mirzapur S03
Crime, Action & Adventure, Drama (Hindi)
The iron-fisted Akhandanand Tripathi is a millionaire carpet exporter and the mafia don of Mirzapur. His son, Munna, is an unworthy, power-hungry heir who will stop at nothing to inherit his father's legacy. An incident at a wedding procession forces him to cross paths with Ramakant Pandit, an upstanding lawyer, and his sons, Guddu and Bablu. It snowballs into a game of ambition, power and greed that threatens the fabric of this lawless city.
Cast:
Ali Fazal, Pankaj Tripathi, Shweta Tripathi Sharma, Rasika Dugal, Harshita Gaur, Sheeba Chaddha, Rajesh Tailang, Anjum Sharma, Isha Talwar, Vijay Varma
Director:
Anand Iyer, Karan Anshuman, Gurmmeet Singh
Writer:
Avinash Singh Tomar, Vijay Narayan Verma, Apurva Dhar Badgaiyann
Overcrowded and overpowered
Fri, July 5 2024
In season 3, Mirzapur wishes to place an even bigger emphasis on the world outside of it. As a feud between two clans ratchets up, a meeting of all the gangsters of Purvanchal—the easternmost section of the state of Uttar Pradesh—is called more than once. They bicker, they whine, but they have no real voice, no real say in the matter. A mediator warns the two parties not to escalate violence and vows that larger powers will come down on them heavily. But it’s all talk. Mirzapur isn’t willing to follow through as it’s only the protagonists who matter. Everyone else is simply window dressing. They feel like plastic, as do those who work for the feuding clans. Its larger world is irrelevant. Mirzapur is a macro show that has no interest in the micro.