Sat, February 21 2026

Anurag Kashyap returns to his raw, uncompromising ways with a ticking-time-bomb of a film that rewards patience

Before the curtain rises on Anurag Kashyap’s latest noirish adventure, William Wordsworth’s famous words, “We poets in our youth begin in gladness; but thereof come in the end despondency and madness”, flash on the screen. This struggle between resolution and independence holds for both Kashyap and Kennedy.

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Sat, February 21 2026

Vintage Kashyap surfaces in bursts of violent musicality and nocturnal mood in Kennedy. The plot, however, lingers a step behind the filmmaking. The result is a stylish revenge thriller that fails to meet its gaps.

About an hour into Kennedy, writer-director Anurag Kashyap springs a sequence so wickedly orchestrated that it alters the film’s grammar in an instant. In the scene, former cop Uday Shetty (Rahul Bhat) massacres a local politician and his family. The violence is merciless, yet staged with such choreographic precision — pauses, glances, the geometry of bodies collapsing across rooms — that it lands as shockingly comic as it is brutal.

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Fri, February 20 2026

‘हम कवि अपनी जवानी की शुरुआत खुशी से करते हैं, लेकिन आखिर में निराशा और पागलपन आ जाता है।’ इंगलिश कवि विलियम वर्ड्सवर्थ की इन पंक्तियों से शुरू होने वाली अनुराग कश्यप की फिल्म ‘कैनेडी’ बहुत जल्द इन पंक्तियों के अर्थ को बयान करने में लग जाती है। 2020-21 की कोरोना महामारी के समय में स्थित इस फिल्म ‘कैनेडी’ (Kennedy) का केंद्रीय पात्र कैनेडी कभी एक पुलिस वाला उदय शैट्टी हुआ करता था जो शहर के भ्रष्ट पुलिस कमिश्नर की टीम में था। अब भी वह कमिश्नर के कहने पर लोगों को मार रहा है, उनसे उगाही कर रहा है। लेकिन जिस काम को कभी वह खुशी से करता था अब उसी को निराशा और पागलपन से कर रहा है। सिर्फ कुछ रातों की इस कहानी की शुरुआत में ही उदय शैट्टी बता देता है कि पिछले छह सालों में उसने अनगिनत लोगों को मारा है। धीरे-धीरे आगे बढ़ते हुए यह फिल्म बीच-बीच में फ्लैश बैक में भी जाती है और तब समझ आता है कि जिस बहुत उलझे हुए कथानक के बीच हम फंसे पड़े हैं, उसके धागे असल में कहां तक फैले हुए हैं।

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Sat, February 21 2026

Siddhant Chaturvedi and Mrunal Thakur fail to rise above flimsy conflicts in this plodding romantic drama, devoid of passion

When the trailer of Ravi Udaywar’s romantic drama Do Deewane Seher Mein surfaced online, one was hooked to the tune of Gulzar’s melancholic Do Deewane (Gharaonda), searching for home and sustenance all over again. The haunting voice of Bhupinder Singh and the melody in Runa Laila’s timbre continue to capture the dreams, hope, and loneliness that lovebirds face in big cities. However, it turns out that old gold is being refashioned to win over a new audience, but the carat is compromised in the process.

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Sat, February 21 2026

Led by a fiercely committed ensemble, this moral interrogation of rape culture by filmmaker Anubhav Sinha dissects the anatomy of sexual violation and the perilous world we have built for our children

Javed Akhtar once famously said art and culture are the vocal cords of society. This week, writer-filmmaker Anubhav Sinha and co-writer Gaurav Solanki give a sarkari statistic on rape, a scarred face, an unflinching voice, and a social context. The outcome is deeply disquieting as the film investigates the pervasive rape culture, institutional complicity, and the gruelling aftermath for survivors. Sinha’s relentless expression of the state of helplessness and depravity makes one leave an impression of anguish on the seat’s armrest.

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Sat, February 21 2026

Watch it, not for you are a man or a woman, but as an integral member of a society which needs course-correction

How often have we read news reports of a woman being gangraped in a moving car and how often have we turned insular to reportage of such heinous incidents? In his latest film ‘Assi’, acclaimed director Anubhav Sinha not only gives a face, heart and soul to a rape survivor, but also stirs something deep within us. With horror, we watch a young woman, Parima (Kani Kusruti), being pulled into a car by a bunch of youngsters. Hereafter, what happens is meant to evoke repugnance and Anubhav succeeds in bringing out the reprehensibility of the crime in a no-holds-barred sequence. How can this crime against women, rather humanity, be fun for some? The thought is as unsettling as searing.

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Fri, February 20 2026

'Assi' raises critical questions about justice and societal attitudes towards sexual violence. The movie blends mainstream elements with a pressing social message.

Anubhav Sinha is a fine filmmaker. More importantly, he is a fine filmmaker with a conscience that refuses to be cowed down and a voice that resists being drowned out. After Islamophobia (Mulk), caste chasm (Article 15), marital violence (Thappad) and the pandemic-induced migrant crisis (Bheed), Sinha trains his lens on rape, with the title of his latest film Assi being derived from a terrifying statistic that slaps one in the face, hard and long, as soon as the film begins. As many as 80 women are raped in India every day, one happening every 27 minutes. Assi keeps reminding you of these numbers, in ways more direct than subtle, throughout its 143-minute runtime.

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Sat, February 21 2026

Based on the sequel from author Laura Dave, the mystery thriller ably expands on the story from Season 1 and picks up five years later.

Jennifer Garner is back as Hannah Hall in this family thriller, The Last Thing He Told Me. In the first season, Hannah watched as husband, Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), disappeared after his tech company faced financial issues. She and her stepdaughter, Bailey (Angourie Rice), learn to move on with their lives. The Apple TV series returns after a three-year gap with Owen back in their lives, opening up a whole can of worms. The mystery drama series leans heavily on its past with several Hollywood stars from David Morse, Rita Wilson, and Judy Greer, as the show travels to France to close out a traumatic chapter.

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Sat, February 21 2026

Based on the romance series by Rachel Reid, the buzzy Canadian show follows the decade-long romance between two rival players, Canada’s Shane Hollander and Russia’s Ilya Rozanov.

Created, written, and directed by Jacob Tierney, Crave’s Canadian series Heated Rivalry has taken the world by storm. On February 20, it lands in India on Lionsgate Play. The show adapts the books of author Rachel Reid, which focus on the unlikely love story between two top players, Canada’s Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Russia’s Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie). Tierney’s show elevates the material, getting to the heart of the matter as the two men meet when they are teenagers as rivals and end up as each other’s partners, away from the public eye. The low-budget series connects strongly due to its heartwarming screenplay and the refreshing performances from the cast.

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Sat, February 21 2026

Created by Shawn Ryan, the spy series churns out its best season yet as FBI operative Peter Sutherland digs deep to uncover a conspiracy.

Last season, Peter Sutherland made a deal with the devil, and this time, it comes back to haunt him again. The likeable and dependable Gabriel Basso is back to lead Netflix’s The Night Agent for its third season. Created by Shawn Ryan, the espionage drama loses a few key players from previous seasons, but gains intrigue with another White House mystery that leaves viewers on the edge throughout. The first season of The Night Agent is ranked tenth in Netflix’s most-watched shows of all time, and the drama has enough juice to power a few more seasons, going by the quality of this latest instalment.

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Tue, February 17 2026

Unlike other Bhardwaj films, which, almost always, hide yearning within pockets of brutality, O'Romeo unfolds as a love story suffused with blood, but the heart refuses to beat.

All Filmmakers plot legacy. For Vishal Bhardwaj, it filters to adaptations. The 60-year-old’s career — including 12 feature films in 24 years — is shaped, mostly, by taking literary texts and supplanting them in a world of his making. One can debate the merits, but there is something to be said about the tendency to assert his voice most intensely in borrowed words, thereby amplifying the collaborative spirit of creation. A chief collaborator, in this regard, has been Shakespeare, whose plays assume great malleability in the director’s hands. Bhardwaj’s latest, O’Romeo, is not drawn from one of the playwright’s works but still culminates as an ineffective Shakespeare adaptation — a first from the director.

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Sun, February 15 2026

Vishal Bhardwaj’s cinematic universes can be wildly imaginative. They are the kind where two warring sisters, desperate to escape each other’s sight, end up marrying two brothers by accident. Historically, however, the Indian film industry’s version of audacity usually involves a hero incinerating a factory and sauntering away in slow motion while digital fumes billow behind him. This “mass” template is now more common than a childbirth scene, or a Muslim protagonist shown as an ordinary office worker instead of a kohl-eyed gangster. Trying to join both aspects of their respective universes, O’Romeo uses Bhardwaj’s brand of weirdness and masala movie flamboyance to create a confused mixture with no emotion and limited punch.

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Sun, February 15 2026

Vishal Bhardwaj returns to the big screen after Patakha (2018), although his last outing, Khufiya (2023), was released on Netflix. O Romeo has ambition and style, but at nearly three hours, it lacks the substance required to sustain that runtime and offers little that feels new.

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Tue, February 17 2026

It’s impressive how first-time director Rajesh Madhavan—who also stars in the film—creates a multi-layered universe that feels distinctly original.

It’s very much a part of the design to start watching Pennum Porattum (The Girl And The Circus) from Suttu’s POV. Voiced by Tovino Thomas, Suttu is a white mongrel with black spots all over and the refugee the film talks about in its opening statement refers to those like Suttu. In his introductory voiceover, he’s letting us in on his daily routine and the number of times he’s been shifted in and out of his master’s house. He isn’t particularly happy there, nor is he comfortable in his tiny cage. And as we see stones being pelted at Suttu from outside, in a fit of rage, he shouts back and calls them “Manushyante makkale!”, which is something along the lines of “You sons of humans!”

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Mon, February 16 2026

May well craft its own legacy for the personality it gives crocodiles — as if a reptilian union finally demanded better roles, and Bejoy Nambiar obliged. It pays off.

Bejoy Nambiar’s Tu Yaa Main, a relationship drama in the garb of a creature film, redeems an animal and a profession. Both, unfortunately, were subjected to great disservice in Hindi films. Given that the animal has lasted longer, its ignominy is greater, and therefore, the absolution was both inevitable and overdue. Nambiar’s film proves to be largely effective in this regard as it takes crocodiles from the mouth of disrepute and posits them in a narrative where they are given space to lay eggs, chill a little, and nap.

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Mon, February 16 2026

Bejoy Nambiar's film, starring Adarsh Gourav and Shanaya Kapoor, combines creature feature with romantic drama and class commentary

Directed by Bejoy Nambiar and adapted by Himanshu Sharma from the 2018 Thai thriller The Pool, directed by Ping Lumpraploeng, Tu Yaa Main is a curious addition to Hindi cinema’s sporadic engagement with the creature feature. The original was a compact, high-concept survival drama built around the simple premise of a man trapped in a drained swimming pool with a crocodile, trying to find a way out. Nambiar retains the skeletal premise but sets aside that minimalism, expanding the thriller framework into a 145-minute romantic drama inserted with class commentary and influencer satire. The result is an ambitious film intermittently exhausting itself instead of tightening its grip.

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Sun, February 15 2026

Inspired by Ping Lumpraploeng’s Thai film The Pool (2018), Tu Yaa Main shifts between Mumbai and a 20-foot-deep swimming pool somewhere along the Goa–Mumbai highway. The story of a couple trapped in an empty pool with a crocodile for company offers a solid premise for a survival thriller.

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Sat, February 14 2026

Preet Bajwa is found dead on her family’s poultry farm. Cops Dhanwant Kaur and Amritpal Garundi soon discover the family has been hiding a dark secret for twenty years: they were keeping people as slaves. As the police get closer to the truth, the family takes desperate, violent steps to hide their crimes. The story shows how old secrets eventually catch up to people and destroy their lives.

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Sat, February 14 2026

An unflinching social lens, a haunting atmosphere, and strong lead performances make wading through Sudeep Sharma’s ‘Kohrra’ a lingering emotional experience all over again

There has always been a gap between the Punjab we watch on screen and the one we actually experience off-screen. Of late, there has been an attempt to look beyond the lavish weddings, bhangra beats, and bucolic humour. Carrying forward the Maachis that Gulzar lit in 1996 and Gurvinder Singh nurtured over the years, Sudeep Sharma’s Kohrra is one such significant attempt to pierce through the miasma that hangs over the mustard fields.

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Sat, February 14 2026

The show is a forceful knock on our head which splits the class divide wide open

When ‘Kohrra’ came in 2023, it was a breath of fresh air which not only put a majorly Punjabi language series on the world map of OTT, but showed a state dipped in shades of realism. Now, as its second season streams, the template is kind of… same. It’s still a police procedural with loads of human drama at the centre of it. ‘Kohrra 2’ starts on a similar note: murder of an NRI. But, hereafter, the series — again set in the hinterland of Punjab — takes a life of its own and envelops you as much in the mysterious air of whodunit as the lives of its protagonists. Investigation begins and we are all agog to know who has murdered this young lady Preet (Pooja Bhamrrah), a divorcee who loved to make reels and by no stretch of imagination was a pushover.

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Sat, February 14 2026

First-time director Ashwin Chandrasekar uses a breezy, slice-of-life exterior to capture the ebbs and flows of modern-day relationships

Until the early 90s, Chennai (then Madras) served as a common backdrop for Telugu films. However, the subsequent industry shift to Hyderabad gradually altered the geographical canvas of its stories. Despite Chennai remaining a preferred destination for the Telugu community in nearby regions of Andhra Pradesh for livelihood for years, modern-day filmmakers have seldom explored their enduring connection with the city through a contemporary lens.

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Sat, February 14 2026

Packed with meta jokes, the film unfolds like a Greatest Hits redux of memories that have come to make Jayaram feel special to us.

‘History repeats itself’ is the phrase that kept coming to mind while watching Jayaram’s delightfully old-school Ashakal Aayiram, co-starring his son Kalidas. Yet, when you think of a film reuniting this real-life father-son duo, you might first be tempted to recall Kochu Kochu Santhoshangal, the charming Sathyan Anthikad comedy that brought them together the first time. But if you observe closely, the soul of Ashakal Aayiram is closer in spirit to another Anthikad classic, the 1999 family drama Veendum Chila Veettukaryangal.

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