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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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

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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Mon, June 2 2025

For a series in its fourth season, the template of a courtroom drama mixed with police investigation could have fallen flat or felt repetitive. But to the makers' credit, the freshness remains, and so does the curiosity.

At the heart of Criminal Justice Season 4: A Family Matter is indeed a family matter, and that of the affluent Nagpal family. Raj Nagpal (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) and his estranged wife Anju Nagpal (Surveen Chawla) live in the same building, but in different apartments. They share a teenage daughter, Ira, who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. Then there’s Raj’s mother, Gurmeet, and his girlfriend Roshni Saluja (Asha Negi), who is also Ira’s nurse. It’s a modern family, and everyone seems to have come to terms with the arrangement. All seems well until one day, their shared househelp Kamala walks in to see a dead Roshni lying in a pool of blood in Raj’s arms. Her cry for help reaches Anju, who rushes from next door, and immediately calls up the police. Raj is now the prime suspect in the police investigation and Anju reaches out to lawyer Madhav Mishra (Pankaj Tripathi) for help. What follows is a taut murder investigation - with the angles of police interrogation, courtroom drama and a parallel media trial.

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Sat, May 31 2025

Raj Nagpal, a revered medico, finds himself on the brink of divorce. Despite their differences, Raj and his wife, Anju, are committed to co-parenting their daughter, Ira, who has Asperger’s syndrome. Amidst the domestic trouble, Raj falls for Roshni, a nurse at his hospital. While the trio initially maintains cordiality, their peace shatters with Roshni’s shocking murder. Raj is taken into police custody, and lawyer Madhav Mishra is out to secure his release. Pankaj Tripathi’s ability to bring grounded-ness and believability to his roles across genres has kept him in good standing for many years now. While the laid-back persona and subtle humour continue to remain the USPs of his performance in project after project, it’s surprising how the petrol in his tank never dries up. Criminal Justice Season 4 is another terrific proof of his talent.

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Sat, May 31 2025

Pankaj Tripathi’s everyman-ness is his most endearing trait, but it can also become a much of muchness.

There is comfort in watching characters we know go through a new story arc, a mix that allows for both familiarity and freshness. The fourth season of Criminal Justice re-unites us with the core team of Madhav Mishra, played by the affable Pankaj Tripathi, his perky wife Ratna (Khushboo Atre), her eager-beaver brother Deep (Aatm Prakash Mishra), and the immaculately-turned out Shivani Mathur (Barkha Singh), which is plunged into a roiling family affair featuring murder and mayhem. Only three episodes of the eight are streaming currently, in which we are introduced to the prime suspects of a murder most foul in a fancy Mumbai high-rise. A domestic help arrives in a flat in the morning and sees a woman, all bloodied, being cradled by a man, who appears to be distraught. Another woman is present, who has already called the cops.

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Mon, June 2 2025

The eight-episode series by Chandan Arora takes some interesting strands and instead of crafting a compelling psychological drama, dunks them in the excess of a thriller.

In Chandan Arora’s Kankhajura, an actor is pitted against the show. This isn’t the story, but the effect. Roshan Mathew plays the protagonist and delivers a performance that is at once suited to the presumed complexity of the series and at odds with the inert ambition of it. The bravura turn uplifts Arora’s work, prompting a reading of what it could have been had it strived harder, and underlines its failure to match up to the merit of its protagonist. Arora is Ashu, a timid young man who stutters when anxious. And, he is anxious all the time. His eyes are perpetually lowered, and his back is slouched like he is pinned against the wall. His defeatist body language suggests decades of bullying, and yet, he was imprisoned for killing someone. The only person who gets him going is his brother, Max (Mohit Raina), a flamboyant builder dissimilar to his sibling in every way. Max is ambitious and reassured, forceful and scheming.

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Sat, May 31 2025

Ashu is released from prison after 14 years for a murder in which he was possibly framed. He aims to exact revenge against his indifferent, wealthy brother Max and his pals Shardul and Pedro, the prime reasons behind his jail stint. He cunningly infiltrates Max’s life and real estate business, juggling police obligations with a personal vendetta. Who has the last laugh in this sibling rivalry? Roshan Mathew’s decision to chase greener pastures in Hindi cinema, apart from Malayalam, is yielding impressive results. He sinks his teeth into the portrayal of Ashu, a socially awkward younger brother whose trauma fuels his bitterness. Mohit Raina, pitted against Roshan’s Ashu, has a relatively straightforward character arc but lends the necessary snobbishness to his portrayal.

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Sat, May 31 2025

An official remake of the Israeli series Magpie, the psychological drama about two estranged brothers is most compelling when focused on the family.

While KanKhajura is an official remake of the Israeli series Magpie, certain updates done by the makers of the show feel more potent. The first being the title change, which fits Roshan Mathew’s Ashu much better. The actor plays Ashu, who reenters society after spending 14 years in jail as a teenager. Trying to reconnect with his older brother, Max (Mohit Raina), he ends up destroying his carefully crafted life instead. The Hindi remake is most effective at trying to get to the root of the siblings’ relationship. KanKhajura: PlotRelocated to Goa, the show examines Max and Ashu’s bond as adults. Max is about to embark on an important chapter in his life as he bids to redevelop an impoverished colony with luxury villas. As Max comes up against bureaucratic and other hurdles in his proposal, Ashu decides to help him out in his own way. Their methods show their different approaches and attitudes in life. The brothers’ eventual clash is oddly compelling to watch as they air all their grievances.

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