Sat, February 28 2026

Sat, February 28 2026

Sat, February 28 2026

Sat, February 28 2026

Despite the initial promise of a layered and complex narrative, Anubhuti Kashyap's 'Accused' meanders off to hackneyed and easy conclusions

On paper, a woman as a sexual predator sounds rather exciting as a theme. And when that part of a woman accused of sexual transgression is being played by Konkona Sensharma, a gifted actor with chameleon-like malleability, the interest touches another level. In the first few scenes, her abilities as a skilled gynaecologist Dr Geetika are established and her acting chops are on ample display too. The focus shifts to her home where her married partner is a woman, Meera, also a doctor. The beautiful Pratibha Rannta of ‘Laapataa Ladies’ is back and stuns as much in this modern avatar. Yes, we know, same-sex marriages are not allowed in India. The setting here, by the way, is London, where this couple lives and works and is planning to adopt a child.

Continue reading …

Sat, February 28 2026

कुछ साल पहले वर्कप्लेस पर ताकतवर पदों पर बैठे लोगों द्वारा महिला कर्मियों के भयावह शोषण के खिलाफ शुरू हुए #MeToo मूवमेंट ने पूरी दुनिया को झकझोर दिया था। लेकिन हर सिक्के के दो पहलू होते हैं और #MeToo मूवमेंट के इन्हीं तमाम पहलुओं को एक रोचक अंदाज में दिखाती है, अनुभूति कश्यप के डायरेक्‍शन में बनी फिल्म ‘एक्यूज्ड’। OTT प्‍लेटफॉर्म Netflix पर रिलीज इस फिल्‍म में कोंकणा सेन शर्मा और प्रतिभा रांटा लीड रोल में हैं। मानना पड़ेगा कि दोनों की जुगलबंदी तारीफ के काबिल है। कहानी लंदन की एक बेहद काबिल और कामयाब सर्जन डॉ. गीतिका (कोंकणा सेन शर्मा) की है, जो अपनी पार्टनर डॉक्टर मीरा (प्रतिभा रांटा) के साथ खुशहाल जिंदगी जी रही है। महत्वाकांक्षी गीतिका अपने जॉब में भी कामयाबी की सीढ़ियां चढ़ रही है और जल्द ही अस्‍पताल की डीन बनने वाली है। लेकिन तभी उसके खिलाफ लगे यौन दुराचार के आरोप सामने आते हैं। यह आरोप उसकी निजी और कामकाजी, दोनों ही जिंदगी को तबाह कर देते हैं।

Continue reading …

Sat, February 28 2026

There’s nothing to write home about in 'The Bluff,' a middling 19th-century swashbuckler starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas as a former piratebluff-3

It takes a considerable amount of skill to make big-budget action movies — in this case, a period pirate swashbuckler — that are neither great nor terrible. How is it possible to be so safe when the scale is lavish and the stakes are high? How is it possible to be so deliberately sterile and precisely average when the resources are limitless? But one of the magic tricks of this decade has been the way streaming platforms have legitimised the middling-and-forgettable genre. Heck, it’s almost an art form. “Produced by the Russo brothers” is usually a tell, and The Bluff is another bullseye for ambient action (I vowed to get through this review without using the word “algorithmic”). The Bluff has some texture, a pinch of personality, bone-crunching violence and gore, a spirited lead even, yet I can’t remember a single moment right now. And it’s been only 8 minutes since the end credits rolled. I suppose that’s a win for the content ecosystem.

Continue reading …

Sat, February 28 2026

Priyanka Chopra Jonas stars in this revenge drama set that lacks the sweep of classic seafaring adventures

Set in 1846, at the ragged end of the pirate era in the Caribbean, The Bluff (Amazon Prime Video) pits a former pirate in hiding against a relentless hunter chasing stolen gold. Unlike most films in the genre, the action unfolds largely on dry land rather than on rolling decks and cannon-blasted ships. Piracy defines these characters’ past, but this story is about what happens when that past refuses to stay buried. On a quiet stretch of Cayman Brac, in a fishing community of white sands and shell-lined paths, the Bodden family awaits the return of Captain T.H. Bodden (Ismael Cruz Córdova). His wife, Ercell (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), keeps the household steady. Their young son Isaac (Vedanten Naidoo), physically disabled but resolute, counts the days of his father’s absence. Aunt Lizzy (Safia Oakley-Green) has her own reasons for keeping an eye on the horizon. Life in this small British colony moves at an unhurried pace—until it doesn’t, because Ercell has a past she has carefully tried to outrun.

Continue reading …

Wed, February 25 2026

Despite its thrilling sequences and Priyanka's compelling performance, the film lacks depth in emotional storytelling and thematic exploration.

Within the first few minutes of The Bluff, Priyanka Chopra Jonas slices and dices, swoops down and slashes a bunch of buccaneers in a relentless, action-packed, adrenaline-pumping sequence. Except that her character is no ordinary damsel in distress and neither is this a regular home invasion. The men who break in aren’t your streetside thugs either. They are, in fact, tied inextricably to Ercell Bodden’s past (Priyanka) and now stand to threaten her future. For Ercell wasn’t always Ercell. Known as “Bloody Mary”, she grew up sailing the seven seas as a pirate but gave up her swashbuckling, edgy ways for a domesticated life in Cayman Brac. The invasion — in which Priyanka plunges into the blood and gore with both physical solidity and psychological grit — is just the beginning of the high-stakes action that defines this Frank E. Flowers-directed film.

Continue reading …

Sat, February 28 2026

A grimy, formally anarchic Tamil indie that rejects coherence for sensory overload, R Gowtham’s film turns death into spectacle and fragmentation into method

If the film’s story is a skull, Members of the Problematic Family, set in Red Hills, a suburb in North-West Chennai, smashes that skull, and trying to glue it back together, revels in its failure to do so. It is simply one of the most distinctive if disjunctive films to come out of India, filled with a fractured irreverence and putrefying rot, where scenes have the inertia of a hiccup and the texture of filth—liquor breath, burning vomit, spit, blood, and that eternal sheen of sweat. There is a funeral. There is the spectacle around it—which last year, Rohan Kanawade in Sabar Bonda imbued with gentle irony, which debutante R Gowtham here, instead, dials up by sticking microscopically close to the action, the dead body being passed around, held aloft, undressed and dressed, oiled, soiled with ash, garlanded, paraded, the nostrils being pressed close by a child, and eventually, caked in cow dung and hay, and even a smattering of alcohol, burnt to ash.

Continue reading …

Wed, February 25 2026

R Gowtham's film, which premiered at the 2026 Berlinale, is a raw, unflinching portrait of a family rationing grief and despair

A new dissenting voice emerges in Tamil cinema. R Gowtham’s debut Tamil feature, Members of the Problematic Family, premiered at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival last week in the Forum section. Everything about this film is distinct yet unfamiliar, beginning with its title. The Tamil title, Sikkalana Kudumbathin Uruppinargal, a literal translation, rolls off the tongue. For decades we’ve had the word kudumbam (family) in Tamil film titles that have often alluded to the spotless, divine status accorded to the unit. But here is a film that makes no such promise. It invites you not to witness a few days in the life of irascible characters but just human beings who, as fate would have it, need to function as a society sanctioned order.

Continue reading …

Sat, February 28 2026

Twenty years after her parents’ love story began, Amrita faces a sudden family collapse. Following the tragic deaths of her mother, Vasudha, and her father, Neeraj, she must step up as the eldest sibling. Amidst overwhelming debt, legal crises and family grief, Amrita stops relying on her partner Aditya and takes over her father’s business to fight her battles alone.

Continue reading …

Sat, February 28 2026

Seventeen-year-old Roslin is haunted by recurring nightmares of a mysterious shadow. Reality blurs when Jerry, a charming but enigmatic paying guest, moves in, winning over her family despite Roslin’s growing dread. As Shobha uncovers unsettling truths, Jerry is forced to leave, briefly restoring peace. However, the terror is far from over, with Jerry returning for one final, dark confrontation.

Continue reading …

Sat, February 28 2026

Sivakumar Murugesan's directorial debut is as warm and wry as the village it inhabits, and it earns every laugh it gets

From Disney’s Snow White to our own Vidaathu Karuppu, the evil grandma stereotype shines, making an old woman the face of terror and crudeness. Indian TV and its serials have furthered this trope of this evil old matriarch harassing the hapless daughter-in-law. On the other hand, there’s another popular archetype of a benevolent old woman, who “melts like a candle” to produce light for those around them. Manormama has been the quintessential choice of Tamil filmmakers for this cardboard cutout. The scene from Shankar’s Gentleman, of her telling her son (Arjun Sarja), “Naan irukaen pa” (“I’m there for you”). She is the all-giving mother, and men are supposed to find her godly love and care in their potential mates.

Continue reading …

Fri, February 27 2026

It might seem like a poignant tale of parents and children, but it is also a film that makes you unabashedly laugh out loud

Money. In a world that is all about division, money holds the ultimate power to make you breach such hierarchies. Of course, it also results in the decimation of a few age-old structures, but that’s par for the course in a world that doesn’t wait for people to catch up. But is money really the ultimate thing? Does the presence or lack of it really determine your worth in the world? As a character in the debutant filmmaker Sivakumar Murugesan’s film says, “Has any parent refused to take care of their child because they didn’t have the financial resources?” One might think it is a poignant tale of parents and children, and how the world treats the geriatric. In a way, Thaai Kizhavi is definitely that kind of a film, but it is also a film that makes you unabashedly laugh out loud with a consistency that has been missing in Tamil cinema for quite a while.

Continue reading …

Fri, February 27 2026

Director Sivakumar Murugesan's film, starring Radikaa Sarathkumar, Singampuli, Aruldoss and Bala Saravanan, is a hilarious drama about women's agency and breaking generational chains without ever getting preachy or melodramatic.

Imagine a foul-mouthed matriarch who terrorises everyone with her mere presence, yet delivers the most valuable lesson on independence, agency and womanhood. If you operate on social media’s version of morality, your mind will immediately question this dichotomy. But Sivakumar Murugesan’s Thaai Kizhavi grounds you, drags you back to real life and makes you laugh while quietly asking the most important question of all — what does it mean to truly live, rather than merely exist in someone else’s shadow?

Continue reading …

Fri, February 27 2026

The spinoff series from the film Godzilla (2014) delves into Titan lore and follows troubled family dynamics for the Randa family.

After two and a half years, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters returns with an answer to the cliffhanger ending of Season 1. Will Colonel Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell) be rescued from Axis Mundi? Affirmative. Kurt and son Wyatt Rusell, who plays the younger version of Lee in the past, are back as the Monsterverse spinoff series adds yet another Titan to the mix and deals with the complicated Randa family relationships now that Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto) has returned from the dead. Developed by Chris Black and Matt Fraction, the second season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters tries its hand at family conflict again.

Continue reading …

Fri, February 27 2026

The wildly addictive Regency romance series returns after a month to wrap up the love story between Benedict (Luke Thompson) and Sophie (Baek).

In the first half of Bridgerton Season 4, viewers were introduced to a magical Cinderella tale between second brother Bendect Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) and Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha) as the mysterious Lady in Silver. And at the end of the fourth episode, Benedict proposed that Sophie become his mistress. The Netflix series returns to explore the fallout of the proposal, as Benedict must decide whether to defy society and his family for the sake of love. Furthermore, other younger Bridgertons have significant goings-on in their lives as the series sets up what’s next for seasons ahead.

Continue reading …

Fri, February 27 2026

Tanmaya Shekhar’s independent drama expands the Indian street-play aesthetic into a modest coming-of-age journey

t’s bittersweet when you learn of an independent film releasing against all odds. The more inspirational the journey is, the more complicated it gets for film critics who must approach it objectively. What if it’s not good, despite the sincerity and courage? What if the inventive process of making it is the best part of its legacy? What if the craft is consumed by underdog hype and passion? What if the behind-the-scenes story is more interesting than the film’s story? What sort of euphemisms might one have to use to be kinder to gutsy ‘outsider’ art? The anxiety is more heightened with a film like Tanmaya Shekhar’s Nukkad Naatak: a crowd-funded, self-promoted and self-distributed indie whose guerrilla marketing campaign features a recent cross-country road trip in a rented caravan. It wears its defiance on its sleeve. The premise is even designed to be curious and socially expressive — a sign that commentary might be used to offset a lack of depth.

Continue reading …

Wed, February 25 2026

It represents the ‘i’ in irony and the ‘OG’ in hagiography

Very little of Aashish Mall’s Shatak looks real. I’m not talking just historical authenticity here, or the conspicuous name-dropping of ‘leftist’ freedom fighters (all of them, obviously in awe of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or the RSS). Most of Mall’s film looks enhanced like the tacky green-screens on primetime news. Most characters wander around like AI slop, speaking with pauses – without showing the slightest bits of humanity. Walking out of Mall’s film, one of my thoughts was if the film was an exhibit for the India AI Impact Summit held in Delhi. If that was the case, what fresh hell it would mean for the nation already grappling with a dozen controversies brewing because of the event. Would Sam Altman have felt pressured to give it a standing ovation, seeing the Indian Prime Minister sitting adjacent to him, if the film screened there? Mall’s film feels like a 112-minute reel created using AI, chronicling the good/better/best anecdotes of the far-right organisation – without the slightest hint of curiosity. The aim is not to find out about how the RSS came into being, as much as kissing the feet of its founding fathers.

Continue reading …