We recommend: The best new movies and TV series

Editor’s note: Not a chance to cry "cinema is dead" or "there's nothing to watch" this week. Revenge is a black hole, as argued in the terrific Iranian thriller It Was Just An Accident out on MUBI. There's a crisp but loving Marathi mother-daughter saga, Tighee, in select theatres. Don't miss Boong. Two new K-dramas, one sugary, the other spicy. Anil Kapoor is throwing punches again in Subedaar. Also in theatres are Christian Bale and Hamnet's Jessie Buckley as Mr and Mrs undead, painting the town red.

*****

New releases

It Was Just An Accident (Persian, Azerbaijani)

When Vahid kidnaps the man with a prosthetic leg and is attempting to bury him in the desert, he is yet to learn that vengeance needs more graves.

Vahid and his political dissident friends from the past believe this man is Eghbal, their former tormentor at an Iranian prison. They had never seen him during the torture sessions because they would be blindfolded. But they cannot get the sound of Eghbal’s prosthetic leg scratching the floor out of their heads. Meanwhile, the blindfolded man they have captured insists he is not Eghbal, that his leg was recently amputated. His pregnant wife and daughter are waiting elsewhere. The clock is ticking.

What to do with power once you have it? Is revenge worth it? What do you gain from vengeance? What are you positioned to lose once you make the first strike? These are some of the questions irrepressible Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi explores in the 100-minute thriller.

Panahi’s previous films critiquing the Iranian regime have rarely delved this deep into thriller and crime territory, despite mild excursions like Crimson Gold (2003). This film is indeed an angry and volatile outlier in his filmography—it won the Palme d’Or, the highest honour at Cannes 2025. 

Here’s film critic Peter Travers striking the film’s heart:

Panahi’s film shares its retribution theme with Death and the Maiden, the play and film written by Ariel Dorfman that evoked the tortures inflicted in Chile by the dictator Augusto Pinochet. Panafi leaves the ending to his film ambiguous. But is it really? 

 

Above all, Panahi is a humanist. The evidence is in his films and the way he lives his life. There’s a quote from Dorfman that “what we feel when we watch and whisper and ache with these faraway people could well be that strange trembling state of humanity we call recognition.”

 

It Was Just an Accident recognises our shared humanity in a way that makes Panahi the unique and unforgettable world-class film artist he is. He aches for justice for his traumatised characters, of which he is one, without serving as executioner. There’s nothing accidental about It Was Just an Accident. It’s a cry from Panahi’s bruised heart.

Where to watch: MUBI

Tighee (Marathi)

Tighee means “three women”—here, they are an ailing mother, the daughter who stayed back with her in Pune to take care of her, and the other daughter who left for Mumbai. Things come to a boil in a 100-minute screenplay, written by Nikhil Mahajan (Pune 52, Godavari), an expert in contemporary neo-noirs.

Critic Nandini Ramnath of Scroll loved it. 

It’s remarkable how much ground Tighee covers in just a hundred minutes. Jeejivisha Kale, making an assured directing debut, teases out the layers in Mahajan’s screenplay not just through the performances, but also through the staging.

 

Unlike many other films on the subject of dysfunctional families that resemble plays or television serials, Tighee relies on cinematic tools to make its points. [Cinematographer] Milind Jog’s framing is elegant, his palette suitably muted for a tale of unhealed wounds and lingering hurt. The editing by Nikhil Mahajan and Hrishikesh Petwe is always respectful to the narrative’s unhurried rhythms.

Where to watch: Theatres

Subedaar (Hindi)

Hindi cinema’s near-seputagenerian Peter Pan is an angry old man in director Suresh Triveni’s attempt at a slow-burn neo-Western. Anil Kapoor is a former armyman triggered to convert grief into retribution in a lawless small town. His daughter is played by Radhika Madan, who has her own monsters to slay. There’s silent swagger and some style.

Critic Uday Bhatia wrote for Mint Lounge: 

Suresh Triveni’s film is a curious beast. It reminded me at times of Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, another story of a tough, bitter veteran protecting a few vulnerable citizens from a local gang. Kapoor’s performance, too, is Eastwood-like, his face twisted into a hard mask, grinding out monosyllables as if each word were costing him hours on earth. But Subedaar also wants to be a swaggering senior citizen action film, the kind Denzel Washington or Liam Neeson might make. In the end, it does both to a serviceable degree, but always seems a few steps short of where it could be.

Where to watch: Prime Video

Boong (Manipuri)

Boong, meaning “little boy”, is the story of a little boy out on a perilous journey to find his absentee father. Lakshmipriya Devi’s debut feature recently won the prestigious BAFTA (British Academy Film Awards) in the Best Children’s & Family Film category. The film had been theatrically released earlier in September.

Racial tensions across Manipur and Myanmar are ironed out with the script’s twinkly-eyed humour, and charm offensive from lead actor Gugun Kipgen, currently 13 years old. Bala Hijam plays his mother with stern kindness. Boong’s best friend (Angom Sanamutum), and their common ache (Nemetia Ngangbam), are among the film’s many memorable characters.

Scroll’s Nandini Ramnath noted director Devi’s light touch in tackling heavy themes:

Although the story is set in 2015, long before the present-day tensions in Manipur, the state’s history of insurgency, the cultural divisions between various communities and the geographical as well as psychological distance from mainland India all snuggle into the warp and weft of Lakshmipriya Devi’s tapestry.

Where to watch: Theatres

Jab Khuli Kitaab (Hindi)

Pankaj Kapur wants a divorce from his spouse of 55 years, Dimple Kapadia, after he accidentally learns of her infidelity half a century back. Hilarity ensues, courtesy in large part to Aparshakti Khurana’s performance as the divorce lawyer. The writer-director is the always exciting old gun Saurabh Shukla, who has based the film on his play of the same name.

Critic Kartik Bhardwaj of The New Indian Express, calling the film “a light-hearted, afternoon watch”, praised the lead actors: “Kapur and Kapadia gel well as a bickering old couple. Kapur exhibits a signature, dismissive huff and effectively plays a difficult man, unable to break out of his rigid notions. Kapadia can sometimes get too melodramatic but still offers a solid presence as Anusuya”.

Where to watch: Zee5

The Bride! (English)

After resolving daddy issues with Victor Frankenstein, his monster is in search of a GF. Victor fixed him well because the blood is flowing to the right places. He (Christian Bale) finds a Her in one Ida (Jessie Buckley), and they are prowling the streets for mischief.

Here’s how critic Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian differentiated two new iterations of Frankenstein’s monster:

Bale’s monster is a very different creation from Jacob Elordi’s romantic hottie in Guillermo del Toro’s more intricately tasteful account. He has the Munster-ish stitches in his forehead; his face is battered and bruised like a punch-drunk old boxer; and there is something at first diffident and almost fatherly in his concern for Ida.

Where to watch: Theatres

DTF St. Louis (English)

Middle-age, stale marriage, repressed sexuality, and the real point of kinks—to help you get through another day—are among the themes creator, writer, and director Steven Conrad (writer, The Pursuit of Happyness) explores in the first season of this seven-episode series.

Suburban micro-celeberity Clark (Jason Bateman) wants to have an affair with Carol (Linda Caredellini), wife to his friend Floyd (David Harbour), who has Peyronie’s disease. Look that up. 

Clark introduces Floyd to a dating app called DTF to ensure his friend stays busy while he and Carol get down to frolic. A murder follows. Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday play the detective duo who get down to figure out what's up.

From a 4/5 review by The Guardian's Lucy Mangan,

DTF St Louis asks whether sex can solve anything. Is sexual dissatisfaction ever just that or is it always a proxy for a greater emotional need or harbinger of an existential crisis? And can exploring your every kink (and there are a mixture of sexy and hilarious intimate scenes across the seven episodes) with someone new at least take your mind off things for long enough to get you through another day? And isn’t it worth a try?

Where to watch: JioHotstar

Young Sherlock (English)

Oxford University's Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty are best buds at 19, out to solve a mystery. Co-creator and co-director Guy Ritchie previously made two Holmes feature-length films, starring Robert Downey Jr. He carries over those films’ go-for-broke bluster to this new series.

Sherlock (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) is raw and emotional in his formative years, while Moriarty (Dónal Finn), his to-be future nemesis, is already showing signs of being a baby Mr Evil. Critics have singled out Finn to be show-stealer. Calling the Gen Z Sherlock "spry and bold enough for our fast-paced 21st-century world", Aramide Tinubu of Variety wrote about the frenemies thus, 

...as the season presses on, their differing perspectives emerge, underlining their diverging moral codes and priorities. It’s fascinating to watch Finn take on the brilliant Oxford student who will transform into Sherlock’s greatest adversary. Though James is squarely on Sherlock’s side throughout the season, it becomes clear that he will always look out for his own interests first.

Where to watch: Prime Video

Boyfriend on Demand (Korean)

Ten-episode K-drama romcom series has the heroine looking for the PG-13 L-word in a subscription-based VR application, while she clashes offline with her aloof, rival male colleague. This can end only one way.

Where to watch: Netflix

Siren’s Kiss (Korean)

It's Basic Instinct all over again. An insurance-fraud investigator is trying to solve a murder, which leads her to an elegant and mysterious art auctioneer. Whichever man had been her lover mysteriously died, all linked to large insurance payouts. Our hero is begging for trouble.

Where to watch: Prime Video

Fresh off the big screen

Laalo: Krishna Sada Sahaayate (Gujarati)

A devotional drama from Gujarat has risen to the occasion. Having reportedly earned over Rs. 100 crores, director Ankit Sakhiya's debut feature is finally streaming. An autorickshaw driver, embittered and isolated, starts having visions of the god Krishna, who asks him to take a chill pill.

Sakhiya told The Hollywood Reporter India, "This is not just about showing [box-office] figures, this is about getting the message to people... Krishna doesn't belong to us alone. He belongs to the whole world."

Where to watch: SonyLIV