Member Reviews

If you’ve wondered what happened to the Russos of Waverly Place, Disney’s latest series Wizards Beyond Waverly Place gives you an update on the family. The new sequel and spinoff rolled into one is more focused on Justin Russo (David Henrie), who returns to his old life in magic, thanks to a new student, a young wizard named Billie (Janice LeAnn Brown). Aimed at a young new generation, Wizards Beyond Waverly Place is a nostalgic watch that fans of the old series can now introduce to their own children.

Documentarian Sandhya Suri’s feature debut, Santosh, revolves around a widow who is trying to find her feet after her husband’s untimely death. The simple narrative evolves into a more complex police procedural that will leave you unsettled by the end of it. Starring Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar, Santosh had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival this year. It is also the UK’s official Oscar entry for Best International Feature for 2025.

Kanguva is a flaming mess. The “pan-India” bug is upon actor Suriya, the film’s producers and Siva, and they don’t have a clear strategy to achieve it. There are no ideas here, just loglines. There is no writing here, just random deaths and fight sequences. There is no story here, just events. This is taking “event film” much too literally. Even if you are ready to forgive all that, there is no actual filmmaking here; just a bunch of shots strung together with no coherence or cohesion. During the film’s promotions, much was made of the makers’ respect for SS Rajamouli. After all, he is the progenitor of this pan-India bug that spares none. But no one in the Kanguva camp stopped for a minute, sat down and thought hard about what makes Rajamouli. What makes his cinema, cinema. Kanguva is not cinema.

A Roman general, in a bid to expand his base, ventures out into the open sea with his army. Before you think you have inadvertently clicked the link to the review of Gladiator 2, fret not; this is how Kanguva begins. The fascinating story of director Siva’s Kanguva stretches from a legendary island’s hills to the sandy shores of Goa; it even transcends time as its proceedings occur in two different timelines. But whether they amalgamate to make for an intriguing watch is a different question altogether.

A portly white-haired man walks into the frame and, even before he’s sat, addresses the camera with some urgency. “Before he arrives, there are some things I just want to say. It’s about the nature of the structure of, and the destructure, and the non-structure of what we see." He lists the disparate thoughts running through his head: a green cake he once ate in Naples, the fish pie he must take out of the freezer, a line from Mayakovsky, digging in The Great Escape and as a young boy on the beach, a row of coffins for mass burial, the impending birth of his granddaughter

How does a business venture that does not require much investment work, a character wonders in director Karuna Kumar’s Telugu film Matka. We sell hope and buy people’s trust, explains the protagonist (Varun Tej as Vasu) whose character is inspired by gambler Ratan Khatri, also known as the ‘matka’ king. His statement and the scenes on a train that precede it, showing the potential for gambling and how it can turn ordinary citizens into addicts, perk up an otherwise predictable narrative.

The trick with a prequel is that you have to impress viewers who have watched the original film, and those who are new to its cinematic world. So, first, a round of congratulations to director Narthan, who charmed in 2017 with his debut Mufti, and now with its prequel Bhairathi Ranagal, starring Shiva Rajkumar, Rahul Bose, Rukmini Vasanth and Chhaya Singh, among others.

The story of Mumbai, India’s largest city, is linked inextricably with the story of the Kolis, the lower-caste, Indigenous fisherfolk community whose koliwadas (villages) dot the coastline. Until the 1800s, what we know as Mumbai today used to be an archipelago of seven islands, harmoniously inhabited by Koli communities. These islands turned into a city due to human intervention — a product of several land reclamation projects that also enabled the displacement of Mumbai’s original inhabitants.

What happens when you take one of the most irreverent filmmakers of our times, and force him to be sombre, sincere and melodramatic? The result is a film like Gladiator II. It’s not to say that the sequel doesn’t have the campy goodness of the original, especially in the turns by Denzel Washington playing Macrinus (a gladiator-turned-influential figure in Rome), Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger playing Emperor twins Geta and Caracalla (a more sadistic version of Romulus and Remus), but there’s something amiss.

After years of struggle, the idea of an independent India doesn’t seem a distant dream. The British looks ready to hand over the reins to the country by 1946, but at what cost? Nehru is at odds with Gandhi’s ideals and the interests of the Congress party, while Patel prefers to be the bad cop. A bitter and ailing Jinnah is desperate for the formation of Pakistan. Who has the last laugh?