Guild Reviews by Film Page 108 of 112
Brinda
Crime, Mystery (Telugu)
Young, socially awkward yet morally grounded SI cadet Brinda stumbles upon a brutal murder with a chilling modus operandi. As the killer slips through her grasp, she faces personal and bureaucratic turmoil, but the hardest challenge is the moral reckoning that could define her career and conscience. Will Brinda uphold justice, or lose herself in the chaos closer to home?
Cast:
Trisha Krishnan, Indrajith Sukumaran, Ravindra Vijay, Jayaprakash, Aamani, Anand Sami, Rakendu Mouli, Anish Kuruvilla, Yashna Chowdary, Allu Ramesh
Director:
Surya Manoj Vangala
Fri, August 2 2024
Director Surya Manoj Vangala's Telugu web series 'Brinda', starring Trisha, Ravindra Vijay and Indrajith Sukumaran, tackles people's blind faith and superstitious. The show is streaming on SonyLIV.
‘South Queen’ Trisha Krishnan forayed into OTT with the Telugu web series, ‘Brinda’, directed by Surya Manoj Vangala. While the web series started premiering on SonyLIV on August 2, there have been low-key promotions for whatever reason. At a time when there are many web series on multiple platforms, ‘Brinda’ stands apart. This is truly one of the web shows that deserves more promotion. Brinda (Trisha Krishnan) is a newly appointed sub-inspector, who is moody and hardly gets treated as equals at the police station. She goes to work, struggles to sleep and is quite smart. When her superiors, including Sarathi (Ravindra Vijay), want to close a murder case as suicide, she smartly points out that it’s a murder. This smart work lands her in trouble as her boss always tries to put her in place because she’s a woman. But Brinda is someone who will not take it with a pinch of salt. She teaches him a lesson.
The Test S03
Drama, Documentary (English)
A docuseries following the Australian Men’s Cricket Team, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how one of the world’s best cricket teams fell from grace and was forced to reclaim their title and integrity.
Cast:
Justin Langer, Tim Paine, Nathan Lyon, Pat Cummins, Usman Khawaja, Frank Dimasi
Mon, July 29 2024
IPL 2024 is over, but here’s a chance for you to watch how the Australian cricket team went about tackling the WTC final against India and The Ashes against England
Around halfway of the second episode of the latest season of The Test, drama erupts. English batter Jonny Bairstow ducks a bouncer, the ball goes to the keeper and the batter walks out of the crease. Pretty much a normal thing that happens during a Test match, you’d think. But there’s tense music in the background, almost like you know something is going to happen.
Raayan
Action, Drama, Thriller (Tamil)
Raayan, a simpleton patriarch has to protect his family when they inadvertently get muddled in a violent world with whirlpool of murder, debauchery, feud, politics and power, a quagmire that he has repeatedly warned them not to get pulled into.
Cast:
Dhanush, Dushara Vijayan, Sundeep Kishan, Kalidas Jayaram, S. J. Suryah, Selvaraghavan, Aparna Balamurali, Prakash Raj, Saravanan, Varalaxmi Sarathkumar
Director:
Dhanush
Writer:
Dhanush
Fri, July 26 2024
Dhanush donned the hat of director, actor and writer for his 50th film. The revenge thriller is riveting, but not without flaws.
‘Raayan’ is a special milestone in Dhanush’s career. It marks his 50th film as an actor and his second film as a director (after ‘Pa Paandi’). For his 50th film, he donned the hat of a director, actor and writer. Has he exceeded the second time as a filmmaker with ‘Raayan’? Let’s find out! Kathavarayan aka Raayan is forced to take care of his two brothers and toddler sister after their parents vanish for two days. This marks the beginning of Raayan’s struggle. His motto is to survive in this cruel world. He fears no one, not even death. Raayan, along with his siblings, escape grave danger from their village and land in North Madras, where they find a home.
Gharat Ganpati
Drama, Family (Marathi)
Set against the picturesque landscape of Konkan, Gharat Ganpati offers an endearing glimpse into the lives of the Gharat family.
Cast:
Nikita Dutta, Bhushan Pradhan, Ajinkya Deo, Ashwini Bhave, Sanjay Mone, Shubhangi Latkar, Shubhangi Gokhale, Sushama Deshpande, Sharad Bhutadiya, Ashish Pathode
Director:
Navjyot Bandiwadekar
Writer:
Navjyot Bandiwadekar
Fri, July 26 2024
The bond of love unfolds through the Gharat family’s Ganeshotsav celebrations in Konkan as they are joined by a surprise visitor this time.
Where there’s a family there are bound to be differences of opinion. Some get resolved right away, others take time. But the bond of a family reigns supreme. If Gharat Ganpati was to be explained in brief, this would largely be what the film is about. However, this film is much more than a family drama. It’s like a chocolate croissant – layered, buttery, salty, with just the perfect hit of sweet chocolate. The story revolves around the Gharat family and their Ganeshotsav celebrations. The seven-day celebrations bring all family members together at their ancestral house in Konkan. It’s a full house with Mai and Appa (Sushama Deshpande and Dr Sharad Bhutadia), the matriarch and patriarch of the family, their two sons Bhau and Sharad (Sanjay Mone and Ajinkkya Deo), daughter Kusum (Shubhangi Gokhale), daughter-in-laws Ahilya and Sunanda (Ashvini Bhave and Shubhangi Latkar), Ahilya and Sharad’s son and daughter Ketan and Neha (Bhushan Pradhan and Rajasi Bhave) Sunanda and Bhau’s son and daughter Jeetu and Deepali (Ashish Pathode and Pari Telang), Deepali’s husband Ashok (Sameer Khandekar) and Kusum’s son Ninaad (Rupesh Bane). And joining this big family for the Ganeshotsav is a surprise visitor, Ketan’s girlfriend Kriti (Nikita Dutta). Now the family doesn’t know that Kriti is Ketan’s girlfriend but suspect it. Does the couple’s plan succeed? What about Ketan’s mother – will she accept this relation? And what about the family’s internal differences? Do they come forth and get resolved? Each question presents in due time through the film’s plot.
Indian 2
Drama, Action, Thriller (Tamil)
As corruption becomes rampant in the country, a group of idealistic youngsters attract attention of freedom fighter-turned-vigilante Senapathy through social media, who returns to his homeland to finish what he started.
Cast:
Kamal Haasan, Siddharth, Priya Bhavani Shankar, Jagan, Rishikanth, Bobby Simha, Vivek, Nedumudi Venu, Rakul Preet Singh, Samuthirakani
Director:
Shankar
Wed, July 24 2024
Director Shankar's sequel to the 1996 hit film is an uninteresting commentary on worldly issues that are addressed in countless other films. Underneath the mess lies a promising idea, which is barely explored.
28 years ago, director Shankar and Kamal Haasan gifted ‘Indian’ to the Tamil audience, who still celebrate it like it’s their own. Almost three decades later, the film (read: corruption) still remains relevant. But, Kamal Haasan and Shankar wanted to bring back Indian thatha (grandfather) aka Senapathy to brush up on all the corrupt activities that we’ve seen so far in umpteen movies, not just in Tamil cinema but across other languages. Chitra Aravindan (Siddharth) and his three friends run a YouTube channel called ‘Barking Dogs,’ which focuses on parodies and political satire. They end their calls with ‘Let’s bark!’ (If you think this is absurd, hold your horses). After realising that their videos, despite receiving lakhs of views, had little impact on the audience, the team starts a campaign called ‘Come Back Indian.’ According to them, only Indian Thatha, aka Senapathy, could put an end to corruption.
Sat, July 13 2024
आदरणीय हिन्दुस्तानी जी, 1996 की मई में जब आप पहली बार सिनेमा के पर्दे पर तमिल में ‘इंडियन’ और हिन्दी में ‘हिन्दुस्तानी’ बन कर आए थे तो हम दर्शकों ने आपका तहेदिल से स्वागत किया था। उस फिल्म में आप नेता जी की सेना में सिपाही थे लेकिन जब आपने आज़ाद भारत में भ्रष्टाचार का बोलबाला देखा तो आप खुद भ्रष्टाचारियों को सज़ा देने में जुट गए। आपके तरीके गैरकानूनी थे लेकिन हम लोग आपके पक्ष में थे क्योंकि आप वह काम कर रहे थे जो दरअसल सरकार को करना चाहिए था। ‘अपरिचित’ तब तक आई नहीं थी और ‘प्रहार’ के मेजर चव्हाण हमें बता गए थे कि सिपाही का काम है लड़ना, लड़ाई के मैदान भले ही बदल जाएं। उस फिल्म के अंत में अपने भ्रष्ट बेटे को मार कर आप हिन्दुस्तान से गायब होकर सिंगापुर चले गए थे। आखिरी सीन में आप हमें उम्मीद दे गए थे कि आप जल्द लौटेंगे और एक बार फिर से भ्रष्टाचारियों का विनाश करेंगे। लेकिन आपने लौटने में 28 बरस लगा दिए, क्यों…?
Time Bandits
Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Action & Adventure, Comedy (English)
Eleven-year-old Kevin's passion for history is put to the test when he joins a ragtag group of time-traveling thieves on a high-stakes and hilarious adventure.
Cast:
Lisa Kudrow, Kal-El Tuck, Tadhg Murphy, Roger Jean Nsengiyumva, Rune Temte, Charlyne Yi, Rachel House, Kiera Thompson
Wed, July 24 2024
Taika Waititi co-created Apple TV+ series gets off to a great start, before rapidly descending into a padded mess.
In early 2019, when Apple signed Taika Waititi as creator, writer, and director on its television series adaptation of the beloved eighties kids’ movie Time Bandits, his star was on the rise. The Kiwi filmmaker had successfully transitioned from a tiny indie comedy-drama set in New Zealand to a mega-budget superhero romp part of a massive, shared world. Better yet, Waititi had reinvigorated the God of Thunder’s forgettable trilogy with Thor: Ragnarok. All the gates of Hollywood were swinging open for the writer-director. But since then, Waititi has struggled. The Hitler satire Jojo Rabbit lacked bite and was showered with more praise than it deserved. Thor: Love and Thunder and Next Goal Wins were both disasters of epic proportions.
Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper
Drama, Comedy, Crime (Hindi)
A banking crisis forces CA topper Tribhuvan Mishra to take up sex work. Will this dual existence alleviate his troubles — or create entirely new ones?
Cast:
Manav Kaul, Tillotama Shome, Subhrajyoti Barat, Shweta Basu Prasad, Naina Sareen, Sumit Gulati, Faisal Malik, Shrikant Verma, Yamini Das, Jitin Gulati
Director:
Amrit Raj Gupta, Puneet Krishna
Writer:
Karan Vyas, Puneet Krishna, Arati Raval, Sumit Purohit
Wed, July 24 2024
Puneet Krishna’s series boasts of an inventive premise and standout performances but fails to make the grade, succumbing to verbose narratives and a lack of stylistic commitment
If there was an award for turning inventive premises into a drag-fest, I’m certain Indian storytellers would be contending for it. In the last decade of Indian streaming, there has been nothing more frustrating than witnessing filmmakers self-sabotage projects that could have otherwise become definitive storytelling. It’s worse than having to sit through shows that resemble a template and underwhelm in their lack of ambition and finesse. Such shows are easy to churn and easier to forget, their existence devoid of any purpose beyond existing for the sake of populating a catalogue.
Bad Newz
Comedy, Romance, Drama (Hindi)
After a whirlwind marriage with social media influencer Akhil Chadha that ends in divorce, chef Saloni Bagga meets hotelier Gurbir Pannu. One night with Gurbir – and then also with Akhil – leads to Saloni getting pregnant. But who's the father? By a one-in-a-billion twist of fate, Saloni is carrying twins – and not just any twins, each child has a different father!
Cast:
Vicky Kaushal, Triptii Dimri, Ammy Virk, Neha Dhupia, Sheeba Chaddha, Faisal Rashid, Ananya Panday, Neha Sharma, Khayali Ram, Guneet Singh Sodhi
Director:
Anand Tiwari
Writer:
Tarun Dudeja, Ishita Moitra
Fri, July 19 2024
Fri, July 19 2024
एक लड़की है सयानी-सी। एक दिन एक लड़के से वो मिलती है-बिस्तर में। कुछ देर बाद उसका एक्स-पति आता है। वह उससे भी मिल लेती है-बिस्तर में। अगले महीने आती है यह बैड न्यूज़ कि वह मां बनने वाली है और बच्चे का बाप उन दोनों में से कोई एक नहीं बल्कि दोनों ही हैं। मेडिकल साईंस का यह करिश्मा करोड़ों में एक बार होता है, लेकिन असंभव नहीं है। अब दोनों बापों में ठन जाती है कि बच्चा असल में किसके पास रहेगा। इस ठनाठनी में दोनों बार-बार भिड़ते हैं और उनकी हरकतें देख कर दर्शक हंसते हैं। इस फिल्म की लगभग पूरी कहानी इसके ट्रेलर में खोली जा चुकी है। वैसे भी यह कोई सस्पैंस फिल्म तो है नहीं। सो, ऐसी फिल्मों में कहानी से ज़्यादा कहानी का ट्रीटमैंट देखा जाता है। और चूंकि यह एक अलग किस्म का सब्जैक्ट है-थोड़ा टैबू सा, थोड़ा हटके वाला, तो हमारे फिल्मकार अक्सर ऐसे विषयों पर कॉमेडी का आवरण चढ़ा कर उन्हें परोसते हैं। फिर चाहे वह ‘बधाई हो’ जैसी फिल्म हो या फिर लगभग ऐसी ही ‘गुड न्यूज़’ जिसमें दिखाया गया था कि कृत्रिम गर्भाधान कराने पहुंचे दो जोड़ों में से क्लिनिक वालों की गलती से एक के स्पर्म दूसरे की बीवी को और दूसरे के स्पर्म पहले की बीवी को दे दिए जाते हैं। वह फिल्म हंसते-गुदगुदाते और अंत में इमोशनल करते हुए अपनी बात कह रही थी और इस फिल्म में भी वही तरीका इस्तेमाल किया गया है।
Pill
Drama (Hindi)
Pill unravels the deep-set rot in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Prakash along with three whistle-blowers face a powerful pharma giant Forever Cure to expose the corrupt nexus of pharma, middlemen, and doctors through which a pill reaches the common man. Will the good be able to overcome the evil?
Cast:
Ritesh Deshmukh, Pavan Malhotra, Anshul Chauhan, Akshat Chauhan, Baharul Islam, Nikhil Khurana, Kunj Anand
Director:
Raj Kumar Gupta, Jaideep Yadav
Sun, July 14 2024
The latest series by Rajkumar Gupta of ‘No One Killed Jessica’ fame, starring Riteish Deshmukh, seems more intent on exaggerating an underdog story than developing an intelligent thriller
In this post-Covid world, the timing of Pill – an eight-episode examination of the malpractices of Big Indian Pharma that end up endangering human lives — could not be more timely. Just a few months ago, AstraZeneca, the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, admitted that Covishield, its Covid vaccine, can cause side-effects such as blood clots, low platelet counts, and neurological deficits. If that’s not worrying enough, AstraZeneca is already facing a class action lawsuit in the UK that accuses its vaccine of causing deaths. So far, 51 cases have been filed against the multinational giant. That is to say, for a country that has survived the pandemic and come out on the other side only to discover the long-term side-effects of the vaccines on our bodies, such a show exists as cinematic retribution.
Manikbabur Megh
Drama (Bengali)
Manik is a lonely middle-aged man who lives with his father, but with whom he has no contact. Instead, his life consists of taking care of his plants and ants, plus a spider and a lizard. But then a change happens in the man’s dull life – he notices a cloud in the sky that seems to follow him all the time. Life takes on a new, previously unknown value for him. Is it friendship or perhaps love?
Cast:
Chandan Sen, Debesh Roy Chowdhury, Arun Guha Tharkurta, Bratya Basu, Nimai Ghosh, Taranga Sarkar, Anirban Bhattacharyya, Arya Mallick, Mohua Sarkar, Supriti Bhadra
Director:
Abhinandan Banerjee
Writer:
Abhinandan Banerjee
Fri, July 12 2024
Chandan Sen’s Manikbabur Megh is clearly a disruption in the current space of the Bengali cinema. It is nothing that one wants to watch and yet it is everything that we cherish on the screen.
Manikbabu (Chandan Sen) lives a lonely life. He is first chased and then romanced by a whiff of cloud that only he can see. What do we see when we look at the sky? Manikbabu sees a whiff of cloud that refuses to leave him. He decides to embrace that celestial piece of cloud in his life. This lonely man and his quirky environment – his noisy ceiling fan, his rooftop greenhouse, the hanging lizard in the bathroom, the pile of files on his office table, and so on – tell a lot of hitherto bottled-up stories. The film is a collage of those chronicles.
Sarfira
Drama (Hindi)
A young man from a remote village dreams of launching his own airline service. However, he must overcome several obstacles and challenges in order to be successful in his quest.
Cast:
Akshay Kumar, Radhikka Madan, Paresh Rawal, R. Sarathkumar, Seema Biswas, Rahul Vohra, Krishnakumar Balasubramanian, Anil Charanjeett, Ravi Khanvilkar, Suriya
Director:
Sudha Kongara Prasad
Thu, July 11 2024
Wild Wild Punjab
Comedy, Adventure (Hindi)
Four friends road-trip across Punjab to help one of them get over an ex-girlfriend, but are quickly caught in a fiasco like no other.
Cast:
Varun Sharma, Sunny Singh, Jassie Gill, Manjot Singh, Ishita Raj Sharma, Patralekhaa, Gopal Datt, Rajesh Sharma, Anjum Batra, Samuel John
Director:
Simarpreet Singh
Writer:
Harman Wadala, Sandeep Jain
Wed, July 10 2024
Inspired by The Hangover, the new Indian Netflix movie fails its title and attempted genre.
Early into Wild Wild Punjab—the new Indian Netflix original movie—a line of dialogue lays bare the film’s inspiration: The Hangover trilogy. It’s not implied, mind you. One of the film’s four lead characters namechecks the high-grossing franchise as a comedic reference. Except Wild Wild Punjab doesn’t stop at acknowledging its existence. It liberally borrows several subplots from The Hangover, including stealing a police vehicle, being chased by gangsters, and drunkenly marrying a random woman. But Wild Wild Punjab—directed by feature debutant Simarpreet Singh and written by Harman Wadala and Sandeep Jain—displays zero understanding of good comedic filmmaking.
Thu, July 4 2024
The Netflix film starring Varun Sharma, Sunny Singh and others is a blur of ham-fisted hi-jinks and inane humour
It was evident, even before Varun Sharma clambered onto the roof of a car, unfastened his fly and shot out a tall projectile of piss, that Wild Wild Punjab was not a serious film. But is it even that wild? The aforementioned scene is probably the looniest thing that happens — a nod, perhaps, to Fukrey 3, which had an entire pee-based plotline dedicated to Sharma. The rest of Simarpreet Singh’s film is oddly strained and docile, a blur of ham-fisted hi-jinks and inane one-liners. “Respect, dude,” someone tells Sharma’s character, a compliment I cannot extend to the film.