We recommend: The best new movies and TV series
Editor’s note: An exciting week: Alia Bhatt headlines the action-packed Alpha, while Huma Qureshi plays a deaf and mute assassin in Baby Do Die Do. Rajkumar Hirani makes his streaming debut with Pritam and Pedro, and the lovable Minions are back on the big screen. Sherlock’s sister is solving crime for the third time, while we have a long overdue Diljit Dosanjh film out with a new name.
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New releases
Alpha (Hindi)
Two years after Jigra (2024), Alia Bhatt returns to the big screen to throw punches in the air and save a sibling. Shiv Rawail’s Alpha is the long-awaited addition to the existing and expanding Yash Raj Spy Universe. It is also the first time that an outing from the franchise is being led solely by two female actors (Bhatt and Sharvari). But written by Uday Chopra, the film hardly inhabits its own personality and makes little to no impression despite a screenplay working overtime to hold the attention of the audience.
The Hollywood Reporter writes:
Alpha is so careful that it’s defensive and underconfident. It’s so afraid of losing that winning is no longer an option. In the spirit of the ongoing FIFA World Cup, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a team that forsakes its own ideology and playing formation on the basis of what’s working for other football teams…it’s neither here nor there; compromised identities lead to early exits.
Where to watch: Theatres
Satluj (Hindi, Punjabi)
Most films assume a life post their release, Honey Trehan's Satluj drops on streaming after having lived many lives. Initially titled Panjab 95, Trehan's film was ready by 2022, after which it went through an unending ordeal with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), with more than 120 cuts demanded for it to release.
Starring Diljit Dosanjh, Arjun Rampal, and Suvinder Vicky, Satluj is situated in ’80s and ’90s Punjab, and is based on the life of Jaswant Singh Khalra, the activist who had documented thousands of illegal killings by the Punjab police during that time. He was later abducted and allegedly killed by the cops.
Speaking on an Instagram Live session, Dosanjh confirmed that the version playing on streaming has no cuts. “Our film has finally been released on Zee5. Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep the original title Punjab 95 for certain reasons, so it is now called Satluj. But there are absolutely no cuts in the film. The version I watched in theatres two years ago is exactly the same one I watched at home last week. If even a single cut had been made, I would not have promoted the film,” he said.
Where to watch: Zee 5
Pritam and Pedro (Hindi)
The parallels are impossible to miss. An old-school director makes a show about a cop skeptical about technology. Pritam and Pedro is Rajkumar Hirani’s streaming debut. The transition was long-pending, and not just because several of his peers have made the leap. But also, Hirani is one of the most commercially successful filmmakers in the last two decades and the vitality of his storytelling awaited, if not demanded, a renewed update on the digital space. But Pritam and Pedro is not it.
Created by Hirani and directed by Avinash Arun, the six-episode series is a dated comedy that relies on Hirani’s familiar sweeping broad strokes, except in 2026, they no longer travel well. The ensemble starring his son, Vir Hirani, long-time collaborator Arshad Warsi, Boman Irani, and Vikrant Massey, comes close to salvaging the mess. A review on Scroll reiterates this. “Vir Hirani makes an assured and noteworthy acting debut, marred only by stilted dialogue delivery. Arshad Warsi is a reliable scene-stealer, playing befuddled inspector, harried husband to Stacey (Mona Singh) and reluctant ally to Pritam with deceptive ease. Warsi has mastered the art of leading from the front while pretending to bring up the rear – a skill that he shares with Pedro.”
Where to watch: JioHotstar
Baby Do Die Do (Hindi)
Nachiket Samant’s Baby Do Die Do is the second female assassin film this week. Starring Huma Qureshi, the slick actioner gains much of its novelty from a singular fact: the hitwoman at the center is deaf and mute. Her name, Baby Karmarkar, also lends the title of the film. But Samant, who had earlier collaborated with Qureshi in Single Salma (2025) goes beyond the usual cleverness to craft a genuinely plucky Mumbai film that consistently leans on ingenious audio and visual language.
The Hollywood Reporter writes, “....the reason Baby Do Die Do works is because it expands the personality of an assassin thriller. The style is not a front for the substance. Baby might be the medium, but it’s the city of Mumbai that becomes the protagonist of the film.”
Where to watch: Theatres
Minions and Monsters (English)
The year is 2026 and the odd, yellow creatures who began life in 2010’s Despicable Me are back. Pierre Coffin’s Minions and Monsters comes in the line of the Minions prequel series (Minions; 2015, Minions: The Rise of Gru; 2022) and unfolds as an origin story of the familiar agents of destruction. It’s a sweeping love letter to the very medium that enabled their existence: cinema. With his latest, Coffin reimagines a world where minions, still in search of a despicable boss, arrive at a studio in 1920s Los Angeles. Finding themselves in Hollywood’s silent era, the gibberish—Minionese—speaking minions break out as superstars only to quickly lose importance as technology evolves and makes way for talkies. How they choose to redeem themselves makes for a chaotic if familiar segue.
A review on The Guardian acknowledges the smart premise, while underlining the failure of the film to deliver on its potential, stating: “...aiming to both lead the Minions in a newer, smarter direction and appease the gibberish-fest expectations set by the franchise, Coffin bites off more than he can chew. As a result, Minions & Monsters disappointingly circles back to where it started.”
Even so, it is difficult not to be seduced by the clever narrative framing that doffs its hat to the greats like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, and pays homage to those who faded into oblivion as the film industry advanced. After all, it is human to forget but cinematic to be remembered.
Where to watch: Theatres
Twenty five years after Reese Witherspoon’s star turned all pink as the charming and fierce Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, we have a prequel for the small screen. Lexi Minetree assumes the fish-out-of-water countenance this time around, as a botched nosejob by her surgeon dad transforms a cushy high school life in Bel Air into an exile in the rainy and sludgy Seattle of the mid-’90s. She’s just turned 16, and must now reset and adapt to a new school and new haters. But, much like her predecessor from the original (or her future self), Elle is spirited, lively, and ready to face any challenges head on, with a delightful lack of self-awareness. The script is uneven, not quite capturing the magic of the original, but the performances—Minetree’s chief among them—ensure the series has “enough charm to get by”. Per The Guardian: “In a world that needs all the harmless escapism it can get, Elle gets the job done. But it could, given its pedigree and its writing at the peaks, have been so much more. It’s bend and SNAP, not give up halfway.”
Where to watch: Prime Video
Super Subbu (Telugu)
The made-up village Maakipur, with its curiously high birthrate that no one wants to acknowledge, forms the backdrop to Super Subbu, a new Telugu comedy series on Netflix that confronts the subject of sex education. Subramanyam Chillukuri Rao, or Subbu (played by Sundeep Kishen), has grown up in a strict home, and has a push-pull dynamic with his rigid and demanding father. Subbu is tasked here with the thankless job of turning things around in Maakipur, landing the not so plum posting of Sex Education Officer.
Painfully ill-equipped, Subbu erms and ahhs his way through the collective shame and embarrassment that sex, the eternal taboo, evokes in India. The show leans into these mannerisms to eke out the absurd humour of the situation, hoping to find some sort of solution. According to The Indian Express, the series “earns its warmth by suggesting that laughter is not necessarily the enemy. That if you lean into it, if you put genuine heart into the attempt rather than retreating at the first snigger, there is actually a chance of getting somewhere.”
Where to watch: Netflix
Nagabandham: The Secret Treasure (Telugu)
Another day, another pan-Indian film. Abhishek Nama’s Nagabandham: The Secret Treasure, mounted on a budget of over Rs. 100 crores, is a mythological drama and holds out the promise of walking the tired path with renewed ambition. Elevated by expensive worldbuilding and the filmmaker’s deep dive into Hindu folklore, the outing takes the temples and the myths, the Gods and the traditions, and proposes a high-stakes adventure that plays out as a battle between good and evil. Rishabh Sawhney, seen previously in Siddharth Anand’s Fighter (2024), makes his Telugu debut as the antagonist. The film releases in five languages (Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada).
It has, however, has garnered mixed reviews, with The Hindu terming it as disappointing. “For all the effort that has gone into Nagabandham’s larger-than-life visual appeal, its core is disappointing. Like several recent films across languages, it works as a clickbait film, conveniently milking a period of communal tension and cashing in on the country’s volatile political climate for easy returns.”
Where to watch: Theatres
Rao Bahadur (Telugu)
A lot depends on the storyteller. Venkatesh Maha had his break-out moment with C/o Kancharapalem (2018), a deeply rooted drama that contained multitudes within its simple premise of love stories. With Roy Bahadur, the filmmaker amps up the scale with instructive vision and ambition. Based on the life of an ageing aristocrat, the premise offers a likeliness with Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar (1958), but soon unravels into an inventive tale where spectacle melds with magic realism. This is Maha’s labour of love.
“For five years, I worked non-stop on the script for this film,” he said at a song launch event. Headlined by an unrecognisable Satyadev Kancharana, Rao Bahadur is presented by Mahesh Babu and Namrata Shirodkar.
Praising the effort, a review on Moneycontrol states, “Rao Bahadur is an ambitious film, not willing to follow the mainstream formulae and is refreshingly original. The film's slow start and long running time may test viewers' patience, but those willing to get involved with its unconventional story will be rewarded with a gripping second half and a memorable climax.”
Where to watch: Theatres
Muthassi (Malayalam)
In Muthassi, a lot is conveyed with little. Nandulal MS’s series is set in an isolated Tulu-speaking village situated along the Kerala-Karnataka border and combines the mysticism of the supernatural with the dynamics of a family drama. The story is centred on Leela (Akhila Bhargavan), whose life is upended when her husband goes back to their ancestral village. Atmospheric and eerie, Muthassi takes the trappings of folklore to design an exposition on filial secrets and generational grief.
Where to watch: Zee 5
Fresh off the big screen
Mollywood Times (Malayalam)
A film about filmmaking is hardly novel, but Abhinav Sunder Nayak’s Mollywood Times is disillusioned, unsparing and, as its tagline suggests, “a hate letter to cinema”. It revolves around Vineeth Madhavan (Naslen), a man consumed by the desire of being the greatest horror filmmaker in Malayalam cinema. But time keeps chipping away at his aspirations. Vineeth realises that there’s a lot still to do, with talent being important but not the most necessary pre-requisite. Bitterness filters in. It is tempting to make a meta-reading of Mollywood Times, but Nayak’s work does not limit interpretation as it weaponises the cynicism of its protagonist to craft a biting satire of the film industry.
The film generated mixed reactions. A review on Rediff stated that while “Mollywood Times is not everybody's cup of tea”, it has much to offer: “...if you enjoy dark comedies, have even a passing understanding of the film industry, or simply recognise the absurdities of the world around you, then Mollywood Times emerges as one of the sharpest and most compelling love-hate letters written to Malayalam cinema in recent years.”
Where to watch: JioHotstar
One more chapter
Enola Homes 3 (English)
The story of a surly male detective is as old as time but Enola Homes, the Netflix-backed franchise, investigates into the proximity of such genius. Based on the novels by Nancy Springer, the films are premised on Sherlock Holmes’ younger sister solving crimes. In its third edition, featuring the same creative team as Adolescence, the 2025 breakout show, with Jack Thorne continuing with scripting the screenplay and Philip Barantini joining in as the director, Millie Bobby Brown reprises the titular role. She’s in Malta, standing at the altar. Things, however, get derailed when Sherlock Holmes (a persistently sulking Henry Cavill) is kidnapped.
Much like its past iterations, the third season of Enola Holmes weaves its central preoccupation of detecting the truth with the urgency of political commentary, resulting in a film that is superfluous but expertly cast and rewardingly engaging. Expounding on this, a review from Scroll reads, “The 105-minute film is entertaining enough, carried along by its enthusiastic young leads and interestingly cast older actors. Millie Bobby Brown and Louis Partridge make a lovely pair, while Henry Cavill, possibly the studliest Sherlock, sportingly plays second fiddle.”
Where to watch: Netflix
Silo (Season 3)
Apple TV’s ambitious sci-fi drama returns for its third season, resolving the two big cliffhangers it ended on last time around. Did Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins) survive? And did Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) make it back to her people?
This season has a bit of a transitory vibe this time around, running across two separate timelines. The show, while still good—not quite at the level of the previous iterations—as per Rogerebert.com, seems to be busy setting the table for its concluding fourth season.
Season three of “Silo” ultimately feels like an extensive bit of table setting. Without spoiling, multiple arcs and characters intersect in a finale that sets up season four for a climactic battle that could be one of the best shows of whatever year it airs. If that happens, this transitional season might arguably have all been worth it. Only then will we know if “Silo” will rise again.
Where to watch: Apple TV
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