Shape of Momo
Drama, Family (Nepali)
Bishnu returns to her Himalayan village after quitting her job, only to face mounting family pressures and societal expectations. As tensions rise with her pregnant sister's arrival and a budding relationship with a "suitable" boy from her community, Bishnu must (more…)
Drishyam 3
Crime, Drama, Thriller (Malayalam)
To protect his family and their dark secret, Georgekutty faces an organized new threat. As walls close in and cracks widen, how much more is he willing to sacrifice ? (more…)
Chand Mera Dil
Romance, Drama (Hindi)
Aarav and Chandni's passionate college romance is struck by adulthood far too soon, forcing the two young lovers to balance their ambitions with responsibility and realize the evolved meaning of love. (more…)
Guild Reviews
Shape of Momo
Drama, Family (Nepali)
Bishnu returns to her Himalayan village after quitting her job, only to face mounting family pressures and societal expectations. As tensions rise with her pregnant sister's arrival and a budding relationship with a "suitable" boy from her community, Bishnu must choose between conforming to tradition or claiming her independence.
Cast:
Gaumaya Gurung, Pashupati Rai, Shyama Shree Sherpa, Rahul Nawach Mukhia, Janaki Kadayat, Sonam Bomzon, Bhanu Maya Rai
Director:
Tribeny Rai
Writer:
Kislay Kislay, Tribeny Rai
Fri, May 29 2026
Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation, scoffs Virginia Woolf in her fiercely feminist 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own. Her sarcasm over patriarchy’s need to confine women in roles decided by men carves 32-year-old Bishnu’s (Gaumaya Gurung) rebellion in director Tribeny Rai’s superbly sublime Shape of Momo. A frame of Woolf’s essay, flanked by a picture of poets Rabindranath Tagore and Bishnu Kumari Waiba aka Parijat – the Nepali writer she shares her name with – adorning the walls of Bishnu’s childhood bedroom in her Sikkim home are telling of the liberal literature she fed on before escaping to Delhi in search of greener pastures.
Fri, May 29 2026
Most homecoming stories have a narrative pattern. Especially the feel-good ones. The central character returns to their village from the big city. But the perspective is new. Suddenly everything feels regressive. There are problems and prejudices. The locals sound smaller, and the enlightened protagonist operates from a higher moral ground. Social change is inevitable; the hero simply knows better. Either they leave as the bigger person or stay to fix it all. It’s the urban-saviour syndrome refitted into a back-to-roots template.
Fri, May 29 2026
There is a certain kind of homecoming story Indian cinema has told so many times that it has become its own grammar. Someone leaves their village for greener pastures. They survive the city and then return changed, sharper, more knowing. The village is the past; they are the future. Tribeny Rai’s stirring Nepali-language debut feature, Shape of Momo, begins as if it is that story and then methodically dismantles it. The film, set to release in theatres on May 29, opens with Bishnu (Gaumaya Gurung), freshly back in her village in rural Sikkim after quitting her job in Delhi, reading out a piece of advertisement copy she has written to a room full of relatives and elders. And then, in the same breath, the conversation turns to which of the few men still living in the village might make a suitable husband for her. Her face simply shuts. That small moment is the film’s thesis: that no amount of distance, education or financial independence fully immunises a woman from the place she comes from, because the place is not just geography. It is an expectation handed down for so long that it has started to look like inheritance.
The Great Grand Superhero: Aliens Ka Aagaman
Comedy, Family, Drama (Hindi)
Cast:
Jackie Shroff, Prateik Smita Patil, Bhagyashree, Mihir Godbole, Durgesh Kumar, Saharsh Kumar Shukla, Kumar Saurabh, Sharat Saxena, Tiger Shroff, Upendra Limaye
Director:
Manish Saini
Writer:
Manish Saini
All FCG reviews of The Great Grand Superhero: Aliens Ka Aagaman
Fri, May 29 2026
There’s a scene in The Great Grand Superhero: Aliens Ka Aagman where Jagdish alias Dadaji (Jackie Shroff) narrates what must be a superhero origin story. Dipu (Mihir Godbole), his grandson, is visibly appalled that the tale, however preposterous it may sound, contains no bombs, explosions, or gunfire. Of all things, it has orange candy. How ridiculous is that, asks the sharp kid, staring at his grandfather like a man completely out of touch with the times. The moment is amusing, but it also defines the spirit of Manish Saini’s film. In an era where children’s cinema has almost disappeared from theatres, replaced either by loud spectacle or violent and jingoistic content, The Great Grand Superhero arrives like a relic from another time. And yet, to call it “small” would be inaccurate.
Fri, May 29 2026
The Great Grand Superhero has one of the most charming setups in recent memory. The first half is funny, poignant, satirical and very inventive. It also has the best child actors since Stanley Ka Dabba, a film it shares an editor (Deepa Bhatia) and narrative spirit with. There’s a new mid-term admission in a small-town school; his name is Deepu (a pitch-perfect Mihir Godbole). Deepu is a clever student; he knows all the answers to all the teachers’ toughest questions. The other kids envy him and find him strange. He confesses to one of them that he’s “different” because his grandfather (Jackie Shroff) is — suspenseful drum beat — a superhero. It’s a secret, he says, that only kids below the age of 18 can know, otherwise the grand old man will lose his superpowers.
Fri, May 29 2026
एक छोटे-से शहर के स्कूल की छठी क्लास में नया आया दीपू अपनी धमक बनाने के लिए गप्प उड़ा देता है कि उसके दादा सुपर हीरो हैं और एलियन्स के साथ उनका मिलना-भिड़ना चलता रहता है। अधिकांश बच्चे उसकी बात मान लेते हैं तो कुछ बच्चे सत्य की खोज में सवाल भी उठाते हैं कि सुपर हीरो हैं तो पॉवर दिखाएं। दीपू सभी को यह कह कर बरगलाता है कि जब एलियन्स आएंगे तो दादा में पॉवर आएगी। और एक दिन ‘एलियन्स’ सचमुच आ जाते हैं और फिर…! अभी तक चार गुजराती फीचर फिल्में और एक हिन्दी शॉर्ट फिल्म बना कर तीन राष्ट्रीय पुरस्कार पा चुके फिल्मकार मनीष सैनी की इस पहली हिन्दी फीचर फिल्म ‘द ग्रेट ग्रैंड सुपर हीरो-एलियन्स का आगमन’ (The Great Grand Superhero: Aliens Ka Aagman) की कहानी का पूरा प्लॉट ही दिलचस्प है। एक संवाद देखिए-‘जब रात को एलियन बच्चे सोते नहीं हैं न, तो उनकी मां उनसे कहती है कि बेटा सो जा, नहीं तो ग्रेट ग्रैंड सुपर हीरो आ जाएगा।’
Spider Noir
Action & Adventure, Crime, Mystery (English)
Ben Reilly, an aging and down on his luck private investigator in 1930s New York, is forced to grapple with his past life as the city's one and only superhero.
Cast:
Nicolas Cage, Lamorne Morris, Li Jun Li, Karen Rodriguez, Abraham Popoola, Jack Huston, Brendan Gleeson
Wed, May 27 2026
After voicing Spider-Man Noir in the Sony animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), Nicolas Cage brings a version of the character to the small screen with Amazon Prime Video’s Spider-Noir. The Marvel and Sony co-production is part superhero saga and part classic noir. Interestingly, Spider Noir gives viewers the chance to see the show both in colour and black and white, which can also change perspective on the story. Developed by Oren Uziel, Spider Noir is a character portrait of a broken-down man named Ben Reilly who rises to the occasion when really required. The ongoing mystery woven in the narrative also keeps audiences engaged.
Drishyam 3
Crime, Drama, Thriller (Malayalam)
To protect his family and their dark secret, Georgekutty faces an organized new threat. As walls close in and cracks widen, how much more is he willing to sacrifice ?
Cast:
Mohanlal, Meena, Siddique, Asha Sarath, Murali Gopy, Ansiba Hassan, Esther Anil, Veena Nandakumar, K. B. Ganesh Kumar, Santhi Mayadevi
Director:
Jeethu Joseph
Mon, May 25 2026
“Everything is planned…” When Ajnabee had Bobby Deol exposing Akshay Kumar in a corny yet wildly entertaining climax, we watched with amusement while tapping our feet to an infectious Anu Malik tune. It was never meant to feel intelligent. The same planning by a sharp-minded person made the Malayalam film Drishyam a national sensation. Georgekutty (Mohanlal) put Malayalam cinema on the national movie map, perhaps for the first time in history. Shockingly enough, Drishyam 3, the sequel to Drishyam 2, finds its tension in spontaneity and unpredictability, not foolproof planning. The question is: are we ready for this version of Georgekutty?
Fri, May 22 2026
Fri, May 22 2026
System
Thriller (Hindi)
When Neha Rajvansh, a privileged public prosecutor, meets Sarika Rawat, a courtroom stenographer from a humble background, their lives are thrown into upheaval where power defines truth, blurring the system and raising a question of what justice truly means to them.
Cast:
Sonakshi Sinha, Jyothika, Ashutosh Gowariker, Adinath Kothare, Aashriya Mishra, Gaurav Pandey, Sayandeep Gupta, Preeti Agarwal Mehta, Vijayant Kohli, Diwanshu Gambhir
Director:
Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari
Writer:
Arun Sukumar, Harman Baweja, Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, Tasneem Lokhandwala
Sat, May 23 2026
I was trying to keep an open mind about Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s System when Neha (Sonakshi Sinha) says, “Uski vibe hamesha off thhi par woh murderer type kabhi nahi laga.” And that was that. I don’t expect every lawyer to speak in iambic pentameter or quote Thomas Cromwell. I do, however, feel it’s not unreasonable to have a protagonist in a legal drama—one who’s trying hard to prove she’s not a lightweight—speak like a professional and not some millennial at brunch. Neha is a public prosecutor, though she’d rather not be. She doesn’t like the sweaty courts, the desperate cases, the grind, her boss. She’s also not particularly competent. The first time we see her in court, the judge explains that she needs to prove the accused actually committed the crime, not that he might have—and she looks shocked. So when her famous lawyer father, Ravi Rajvansh (Ashutosh Gowariker), makes her a deal—win 10 cases in a row and join my practice—it feels like a little exercise in humility, or humiliation.
Sat, May 23 2026
Director Ashwini Iyer Tiwari has been making films for over a decade. And yet, nothing gives away her lack of assurance more than her choice of background score. Iyer Tiwari’s style is what I like to describe as having soap-opera coherence (my mother is a huge fan of these films, which are technically proficient, but ideologically axiomatic). If the choice was ever between thought-provoking and manipulating tears, she overwhelmingly leans towards the latter. Having made films with noble (sometimes, even sweet) through lines, like a mother re (Nil Battey Sannata), or a woman making a comeback to professional sports after a prolonged sabbatical (Panga) – Iyer Tiwari’s films often find its underdogs in women. But there’s also a lack of rigour in her ideas curdling the simple into gratingly simplistic.
Sat, May 23 2026
Another week, another commentary on uncomfortable societal truths packaged in the form of a mystery where solid performances and subtext are marred by predictable beats. At first glance, Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s System masquerades as a legal thriller, but beneath its polished exterior, it promises to lay bare the facade of institutional neutrality. It positions the courtroom not as a temple of justice, but as a theatre of social stratification where truth is a manufactured commodity. The narrative (penned by Arun Sukumar, Harman Baweja, and Akshat Ghildial) forces a meta-textual collision. Neha Rajvansh (Sonakshi Sinha), a public prosecutor fighting the suffocating shadow of her iconic legal patriarch (Ashutosh Gowarikar), is subtly challenged from the margins by Sarika (Jyotika), a humble yet resilient stenographer who weaponises the very bureaucratic machinery designed to keep her invisible.
Chand Mera Dil
Romance, Drama (Hindi)
Aarav and Chandni's passionate college romance is struck by adulthood far too soon, forcing the two young lovers to balance their ambitions with responsibility and realize the evolved meaning of love.
Cast:
Ananya Panday, Lakshya Lalwani, Aastha Singh, Elvis Jose, Paresh Pahuja, Manish Chaudhary, Iravati Harshe, Charu Shankar, Atul Kumar, Akhil Kaimal
Director:
Vivek Soni
Sat, May 23 2026
Aarav (Lakshya) and his wife, Chandni (Ananya Panday), are cracking under the strain of caring for a newborn. Their frustrations boil over into an ugly yelling match. Aarav grabs her face. He’s motionless for a few seconds, then backs away, mortified. She runs into the other room and balls up in a corner, shaking in shock as he begs her to open the door. The moment when Aarav grabs Chandni is in the film’s trailer. I think it’s there because Dharma doesn’t mind giving the impression that this will be an ‘intense’ love story in the key of Sandeep Vanga or the Anand L Rai/Dhanush collaborations. Yet, Chand Mera Dil is nothing like those films, treating the brief physical contact with utter seriousness. Aarav is immediately contrite, but it doesn’t matter. The entire story turns on this moment. PSA films like Thappad are lauded for presenting characters who won’t stand for any kind of abuse, but Chand Mera Dil is equally steadfast without resorting to moral grandstanding.
Sat, May 23 2026
When the end is obvious with a title that gives away where the hero is headed, writer-director Vivek Soni’s screenplay should’ve been dramatically different, offering an unseen experience at every major turn. Let’s check how he goes about it. It’s one long predictable flashback to Hyderabad where Chandni (Ananya Panday) and Aarav (Lakshya) are engineering students, both brilliant. There’s a fresh touch to the attraction where they twin every day, wearing the same colour, without a word exchanged between them. Until Chandni takes the first step. So far, rather nice. The good is that there is definite chemistry between Chandni and Aarav, leading to relatable intimacy.
Sat, May 23 2026
“The course of true love never did run smooth,” said William Shakespeare. And in an average Hindi film, it often is too tortuous, if not torturous. ‘Chand Mera Dil’, the title, promises a film high on the gossamer shades of romance. Only, as the film opens, for a long time, the only shades you see are the matching colours of our hero and heroine’s outfits. Love-struck Aarav (Lakshya Lalwani) starts twinning with Chandni (Ananya Panday). Obviously, his outfit shade card — ranging from neon and fluorescent yellow to pinks — not only matches her clothes but catches her attention too.
The Man I Love
Drama, Romance (English)
In late 1980s New York, a theater artist living with AIDS takes on one possibly last great role.
Cast:
Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge, Luther Ford, Rebecca Hall, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Maisy Stella, Sasha Lane
Director:
Ira Sachs
Writer:
Ira Sachs, Mauricio Zacharias
Fri, May 22 2026
he 80s in NYC was a scene, man. If you’re of a certain vintage, you may have actually heard this line — from the know-it-all seniors when you arrived in any liberal arts college in Delhi University as a newbie, those exalted beings who smoked Charminars and wore drainpipe jeans and floppy hair and big Beatles glasses who were, in hindsight, probably spouting received wisdom. There are no such gaps between perception and knowing in Ira Sachs’ marvellous re-creation of that very specific Reagan era in ‘The Man I Love’, which brings alive the sights and sounds of the city with the kind of pulsating energy that can come only from someone who has lived through it.
Fjord
Drama (Romanian)
After the deaths of Mihai’s parents, Mihai and Lisbeth Gheorghiu leave everything behind and move with their children to a remote village in Norway, hoping to rebuild their lives near Lisbeth’s family. There, they grow close to their neighbors, the Halbergs, whose warmth offers the promise of a fresh start. But the fragile peace begins to unravel when the Gheorghius’ young daughter, Elia, arrives at school covered in bruises.
Cast:
Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, Lisa Carlehed, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Henrikke Lund Olsen, Vanessa Ceban, Giulia Nahmany, Ingvild Lien, Turid Vatne
Director:
Cristian Mungiu
Fri, May 22 2026
When a bunch of kids are greeted by a school principal saying jovially, no Draculas here, you are meant to surmise a few things. That the children have a connection with Romania, and that this remote Norwegian town with a fjord on one side and mountains on the other, is a new experience for them. Turns out that The Gheorghiu family, with a Romanian father and Norwegian mother, and their five children — two teenagers, two younger ones, and the fifth, a babe in arms, have relocated from Romania and come to live in Norway. Mihai (Sebastian Stan) is an IT expert, and Lisbet (Renate Reinsve) who works in medicine are here for fresh prospects and fresh air, both of which seems to be in ample supply in this snowy, windy place, which turns out to be not as welcoming, leaving the new entrants facing an uncertain future.
All of a Sudden
Drama (Japanese)
Marie-Lou Fontaine, director of a nursing home in the Paris suburbs, defies convention by adopting the 'Humanitude' method despite her team’s resistance. Her encounter with Mari Morisaki, a terminally ill Japanese playwright, transforms her life. Together, they turn the facility into a symbol of resistance and humanity against the system’s limits.
Cast:
Virginie Efira, Tao Okamoto, Gabriel Dahmani, Kyōzō Nagatsuka, Kodai Kurosaki, Jean-Charles Clichet, Marie Bunel, Jean-Louis Garçon, Evelyne Istria, Lazare Gousseau
Director:
Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Fri, May 22 2026
To say that Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s ‘All Of A Sudden’ (Cannes competition) is a long film – it weighs in at a solid 3.15 hours – is stating the obvious. The Japanese auteur doesn’t do sudden – the title is a nice little touch of unintentional irony; a leisurely unfolding of events is much more his thing. In fact, he doesn’t do events either; capturing moments like no one’s looking is more like it. Here, his deeply observant style suits the central thrust of the film, which is mainly set in a home for the elderly, where the big themes accompanying end-of-life scenarios are a natural outcome.
Sheep in the Box
Drama, Science Fiction (Japanese)
Set in the near future, Otone Komoto works as an architect. She is married to Kensuke Komoto, who runs a construction company. The married couple decide to welcome a humanoid robot into their home as their son.
Cast:
Haruka Ayase, Daigo Yamamoto, Kuwaki Rimu, Nana Seino, Kanichiro, Hinata Hiiragi, Akihiro Kakuta, Kayo Noro, Mari Hoshino, Ayumu Nakajima
Director:
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Fri, May 22 2026
There cannot be anything more timely than the premise of Hirokazu Koreeda’s Cannes Competition entry, ‘Sheep In The Box’, which deals with the evolving nature of grief in the age of AI: a couple who’ve lost their young son bring home a humanoid android, who looks and sounds exactly like their boy. It is when Kakeru ( Rimu Kuwaki) begins to show signs of thinking like their son that Otone ( Ayase Haruka) and Kensuke ( Daigo Yamamoto) start wondering about the larger implications of their actions. The question- does a machine have a soul– has been at the heart of such discussions for a long time.
Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War
Action, Thriller (English)
Jack Ryan is reluctantly pulled back into espionage when an international covert mission unravels a deadly conspiracy. Racing against time, he joins CIA allies Mike November & James Greer and sharp MI6 officer Emma Marlowe to battle a rogue black-ops unit in a high-stakes, deeply personal fight.
Cast:
John Krasinski, Sienna Miller, Wendell Pierce, Michael Kelly, Max Beesley, JJ Feild, Douglas Hodge, Betty Gabriel, Alex Brockdorff, Mckenna Bridger
Director:
Andrew Bernstein
Fri, May 22 2026
Three years after the Amazon Prime Video series on Jack Ryan ended, the character and actor John Krasinski are back by this time with a condensed version where the former CIA analyst slips briefly into civilian life. He’s pulled back into the spy world again with an adventure that takes him from Dubai to London, England. Of course the stakes are too high for Jack Ryan to walk away once more; Krasinski has co-written a thriller that feels familiar but doesn’t attempt anything radical. Directed by Andrew Bernstein, the spy drama Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War has a heart-pounding car chase in the middle of London that brings the thrills.
Karuppu
Crime, Action, Fantasy, Drama (Tamil)
In a world where justice falters, a powerful guardian awakens. A superhuman rises in a rotten world to set things right in this high-octane fantasy entertainer.
Cast:
Suriya, Trisha Krishnan, RJ Balaji, Swasika, Natarajan Subramaniam, Sshivada, Indrans, Yogi Babu, Supreet, Anagha Maya Ravi
Director:
RJ Balaji
Writer:
RJ Balaji, Ashwin Ravichandran, Rahul Raj, T. S. Gopi Krishnan, Karan Aravind Kumar
Sun, May 17 2026
The opening sequence of RJ Balaji’s Karuppu is all sparks and embers in a bichrome backdrop of red and black. It’s a nightmare in which a man gets assaulted by unknown assailants and a majestic rageful God descends to save him. The man, played by Indrans, jolts up in a train and looks at his daughter Binu (Anagha Ravi). The Malayali father and daughter are in Chennai for Binu’s surgery and are soon mugged on the road and stripped of their mode of payment for her treatment—jewelry. After this clear establishment of geography, Karuppu eschews all locational specifics to build a world where folk mythology clashes with a land of comical lawlessness. Only we aren’t sure if the exaggeration is intentional or otherwise.
Sat, May 16 2026
Something about Karuppu tells me that something changed within RJ Balaji when he watched the first 20 minutes of Atlee’s Jawan. It’s the larger-than-life portion of the film in which a bandaged, mummified SRK emerges out of flames to reveal himself as God, nonetheless to a village that’s in desperate need of a saviour. GV Vishnu, who shot Jawan and Karuppu, has worked overtime to see if he can extend this vision through a full-length feature movie. Along with RJ Balaji and his team of writers, they’ve cracked open an idea that must have begun with this question: what if we transplant the mythical powers of a folk deity onto a modern-day superhero and see where it goes?
Sat, May 16 2026