Sun, September 20 2026

Daayra poses an interesting question concerning the relationship between law and morality: if culprits are likely to get away with murder, is it acceptable to take the law into one’s own hands and deliver justice? And who gets to decide the quantum of punishment, assuming the accused are indeed guilty of a heinous crime? Are extrajudicial killings justified in such circumstances? Meghna Gulzar’s film raises several thorny questions. That is essentially the point of the story, though the film becomes somewhat heavy-handed in making it.

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Sun, September 20 2026

Sun, September 20 2026

Kareena Kapoor Khan and Prithviraj Sukumaran star in Meghna Gulzar's film about cops doling out their own justice

Daayra opens with a city in celebration. It looks like a festival—the streets are teeming, sweets are distributed, fireworks set off. Eventually, the hero of the hour arrives: DCP Raman Kumar (Prithviraj Sukumaran), who led the team that shot and killed four men accused of rape. Officially, it was in self-defense, but no one, not the cops or the revelers, pretends it’s anything but an encounter killing. Meghna Gulzar’s film is loosely based on the 2019 Hyderabad rape case, in which the accused were killed in police custody and the cops widely praised afterwards. It offers the illusion of balance, but its heart is with the celebrating public. A week after the deaths, DCP Ajooni Kohli (Kareena Kapoor Khan) of the Special Investigative Team is tasked with looking into the case after human rights activists raise concerns. In contrast to Raman’s heroic introduction, we first meet Ajooni conducting a comic sting operation on an avocado-desiring inmate—a small clue to how the film sees their respective roles.

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Sun, September 20 2026

Lust Stories 3 is the third instalment of the popular Netflix franchise, exploring various dimensions of human desire through four shorts helmed by Kiran Rao, Vikramaditya Motwane, Vishal Bhardwaj and Shakun Batra. Konkona Sen, Radhika Apte, Ali Fazal, Vijay Varma, Sana Thampi, Siddharth, Gurfateh Pirzada, Aditi Rao Hydari and others essay key roles. Desire comes in many shapes and sizes, something that Lust Stories on Netflix has addressed with the sensitivity it merits, removing the ‘shame’ angle from the discussion. Roping in big names, both actors and directors, has given the franchise a widespread reach across both seasons, making it a conversation starter.

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Sat, September 19 2026

A mirror to modern relationships, the franchise’s third instalment sheds its past shock value for the disturbing terrain of emotional isolation

If the birth of Lust Stories was a shout for liberation, a tearing down of the velvet curtains that long hid Indian intimacy, then the third iteration is the echo. Helmed by a new set of original voices — Shakun Batra, Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, and Vishal Bhardwaj — and bolstered by an ensemble of actors who translate subtext through the vocabulary of body language, it does not seek to shock, nor does it carry the heavy burden of breaking taboos. It treats desire not as a provocative statement, but as a messy mirror. The four-part anthology shows how physical proximity often masks isolation in modern relationships. It shows how lust is weaponised, bargained with, or surrendered to. In the earlier films of the franchise, the stories followed a clear arc of liberation, a character realising their worth or claiming their pleasure. Here, within the recognisable OTT beats, the liberation is rarely external. In three segments, intimacy is readily available, but real emotional safety is scarce.

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Sat, September 19 2026

Lust Stories 3 sticks to the format of the previous films in the franchise, keeping female desire at the core of all the films. The anthology film has four distinctive stories which are propelled by great performances.

Lust Stories, right from the beginning, when the first part was released in 2020, raised eyebrows. Since then, several other similar films and series have come up on OTT- all exploring female sexual desires- some landed, some did not, but the charm of Lust Stories and subsequently of Lust Stories 2 has had a different effect on the audience. How many mainstream filmmakers have attempted to explore what women want and ultimately got it right? In Lust Stories 3, filmmakers Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, Shakun Batra and Vishal Bhardwaj speak of Lust, an emotion that often brings out the best and worst in any human being.

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Sun, September 20 2026

With an animatedly ever-complaining father, a “modern” son, a pacifying mother, and a house that tells this story in Vijay Raaz’s voiceover, this could very well be an Ayushmann Khurrana middle-India comedy

Child might be the father of man but the Indian father is often a manchild. Raised under the patriarchal system which limits men to their hunter-gatherer history, the Indian dad provides for his family more out of a sense of duty than love. This man, whose idea of strength is curbing emotional release, lives his middle-age as a disciplinarian, commanding his family, his tribe, with an iron hand. But when the kids grow up and the wife discovers her calling, the dad, now retired, witnesses his grip loosening over the family. Then comes the annoyance, the mean comments, the thumping around the house like a wrecking ball.

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Sun, September 20 2026

Fri, September 11 2026

PS Mithran's sequel to 'Sardar' loses momentum in the second half, sinking into generic territory with its overblown plotline

The first half of Sardar 2 may seem familiar, but at least it commits to the kind of spy thriller it wants to be. There’s a lofty idea in there about a Japanese-made bioweapon that’s being kept secret by the Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), and there’s a thrilling flashback that gives you the origins of how this weapon got to India in the first place. Set predominantly in the 1980s, the film sees Bose (Karthi), or Sardar, navigating the complexities of this international mission, and we also get a series of Mission: Impossible-style action set pieces that cover everything from the back of an airplane to the front of a Japanese bullet train.

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Fri, September 11 2026

Director PS Mithran's Sardar 2, starring Karthi, SJ Suryah and Malavika Mohanan, is a predictable sequel that is engaging in parts. However, the overstretched climax drags down the film.

Sardar, directed by PS Mithran, gave Tamil cinema a rooted spy character in 2022, well before Dhurandhar made the genre fashionable. Four years later, Sardar (Karthi) — who swears by the line, “Once a spy, always a spy” — returns with a shot at correcting a mistake that cost thousands of lives. The first film ended with Bose, aka Sardar, accepting his fate as a branded terrorist despite never committing espionage. His son Viji, inducted into RAW, has since been sidelined into a dummy unit handling no cases of consequence. Sardar 2 hands him a chance to prove himself — just as a bigger threat surfaces. What brings Sardar out of exile? Can father and son join forces against Black Dagger, a mercenary outfit endangering 140 crore people? The film spends a patient three hours answering these questions.

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Sun, September 20 2026

Sat, September 19 2026

TIFF 2026 | In 1960s Nagaland, a Konyak chief and his son grapple with the advent of Christianity.

Modernity arrives in several garbs all at once. It shifts between assimilation, a promise of progress and a threat of complete cultural loss. Development can wholly wash over a sharp sense of identity that once existed, chipping away at it one by one. Premiering in Platform competition at the Toronto International Film Festival 2026, Theja Rio’s brilliantly immersive debut, Angh, understands every shade of this complex negotiation. Rio, born in Nagaland’s Kohima, brings alive the state’s churning historical moment as Christianity burst in the 1960s. At the centre of the quiet, reflective drama is a tribal chief, Anghba (Anghlong Konyak). He’s a mournful witness to his community’s transformation under the sway of an American missionary (Douglas James Henshall). There’s a gentle ache in Angh that seeps under your skin, without a hint of rush.

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Wed, September 16 2026

Theja Rio‘s film, set in 1960s Nagaland, patiently archives the feeling of dislocation without putting forth resolved arguments

Aiming for a boar on the other side of the river, the Anghbha (Anghlong Konyak), or tribal chief, sights a “white ghost” floating by—a flesh and blood American missionary (Douglas James Henshall) on a boat, with his jeep and some Nagas who have converted. The music is ominous. The ghost waves at him—does the Angbha understand this gesture? The ghost takes out a camera and captures him in film—does the Angbha understand this technology? All we see is his face, shaped by doom. He is hunting the boar with a gun, and not bow and arrows, nor spears, so technology has seeped even into his cloistered world from beyond. What else has slipped through the cracks? What has he resisted?

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Fri, September 18 2026

TIFF 2026 | The Oscar-nominated All That Breathes director mines the creeping loneliness of a termite exterminator in Old Delhi.

Once again, the alleys of Delhi hum their ache, regrets and yearnings in Shaunak Sen’s debut fiction outing, Termite. It’s a short film as if Sen is testing the ground before hoisting his flag on it. Like his Oscar-nominated 2022 breakout doc, All That Breathes, the fiction short is also alive and porous to an ecological world, the fellow non-inhuman inhabitants we share our lives with, marginality and the deep curl of thoughts and fears you swat away in recesses.

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Sat, September 12 2026

In competition at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Oscar-nominated documentarian’s short returns to the bylanes of old Delhi.

Termite, a 30-minute short, is documentary maker Shaunak Sen’s first fiction film. But it’s hard to tell the difference. He treats life as the introverted ally of storytelling; his nonfiction often designs the truth of an invisibilised India. It finds a controlled language to present what already exists. While Cities of Sleep traced the gloomy lyricism of Delhi’s insurgent sleeper communities, the Oscar-nominated All That Breathes shadowed two Muslim brothers who run a bird clinic in old Delhi. The camera — steady, studied, often static — reframes the people as characters, spaces as settings, and ecological relationships as cultural metaphors. Termite looks like it’s ‘following’ two men in the capital, too. A Tamil migrant, Ajith (Valavane Koumarane), shares a rooftop room with his Muslim friend, Saud (Faisal Malik); they spend tired evenings drinking tea and passively watching television.

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Fri, September 18 2026

Directed by Abhiramm Naidu, this European road trip Telugu film means well but struggles to shake off its old-fashioned undertones

The prospect of a bright, colourful Telugu film about women across age groups and walks of life bonding over a European holiday is like music to the ears. The sheer rarity of such a narrative in an industry that often functions like an all-boys club can make some of us root for it instantly. After all, an all-woman road film offers abundant room to unpack how these characters view the world while indulging in some mischief. Director Abhiramm Naidu’s film is packed with contrasting characters wanting to set themselves free and forget the voids in their lives, albeit temporarily.

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Fri, September 18 2026

The best part remains the sibling jousting between Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, with Bullock again showing how underused she remains as a performer with great comic timing.

You can’t pull a rabbit out of a hat every time. Sometimes, all you can do is pull out hair. In 1998, Sandra Bullock was still awash in the success of the Speed films and gathering up more, while Nicole Kidman was already a big star. Besides, their joint film Practical Magic wasn’t even much of a critical or commercial hit – though it has had a better afterlife. However, clearly a lot of people, the two actors now lying on either side of 60 included, thought there was some power left in the old spell to rustle up a Part 2.

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Fri, September 18 2026

In 'Modha Rathri', there is an excitement for the form of cinema—and what it is capable of saying, doing, and undoing — but there is such a chasm between the design and the delivery

I can understand why people warmed up to Modha Rathri (now out on Netflix). In a landscape ransacked by Anirudh’s BGM shoring up reluctant films and heroes whose heroism is leaning more towards parody than piety, here is a film and filmmaker—debutante Raja Karuppasamy—who dared to tell an intimate, many-splendoured story set over the course of a day. Based on events that director Karuppasamy has himself witnessed and endured, casting family members, there is a warmth here that filters through even the most devious observations of its heady, nauseating cast of characters, and a desire to tell a story that means something, where reformed characters are, in fact, part of the arc—but Karuppasamy does this without flat finger-wagging. A clutter-breaking miracle.

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Fri, August 21 2026

Fri, September 18 2026

An intriguing premise about a man with extraordinary hearing ability lends It's A Medical Miracle a distinctive edge, before it gradually loses its way

It’s A Medical Miracle is a ‘concept film’ about a protagonist with extraordinary hearing. Ruben has been declared brain-dead for over two years, with his family even contemplating the idea of euthanasia when a freak accident wakes him up rather dramatically. Once awake, the young man is all ears. Quite literally. He can now hear every little sound around him with unusual clarity. It extends from something as minute as a fly’s flapping wings to the arrival of raindrops to a lying person’s pounding heartbeat. It’s something like a superpower, and with superpowers you are more often than not dealing with a lot of trouble.

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Fri, September 18 2026

Sugam Mishra is a newly married railway cop who has just joined duty, juggling pressures at home and at work. He finds a mentor and a father figure in his senior. Afroz Hamza, a hacking enthusiast nursing a heartbreak in college, takes to crime for a living – joining hands with his uncle to do the dirty backend work for travel agents. While most films try to milk Divyendu Sharma’s Mirzapur image, a show like Waiting Hai actually showcases his range. As an earnest, newly-married man in his 20s starting a new job, he mirrors the character’s rebellion and idealism with honesty. Bhuvan Arora is decent as the invisible hacker wronged by the system. One of the more moving portrayals comes from Kumud Mishra as Sugam’s senior on the verge of retirement. The supporting cast – Vijay Maurya, Harshita Gaur, Sunita Rajwar and Dayashankar Pandey – deliver the goods.

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