We recommend: The best new movies and TV series
Editor’s note: It’s the Tom and Zendaya show this week with the release of the new Spiderman in theatres. Watch Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway lock horns in the new The Devil Wears Prada, now streaming. There’s a tender meditation on lost childhoods out now, Balan: The Boy. Some heavy-hitters recreate a tragic plane crash in Pan Am 103, a new Netflix docu-drama. And Bhai Tera Star Hai, but not quite.
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New releases
Spider-Man: Brand New Day (English)
It is officially Tom Holland and Zendaya season. The actors were recently seen in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and now they are back on the big screen, resuming their beloved roles of Peter Parker aka Spider-Man and Michelle Jones-Watson or “MJ”. The latest Spiderman film starts four years after No Way Home (2021). Peter is learning to live his new life after saving the world. In order to keep his identity hidden, Doctor Strange erased memories from the civilians' minds, which wiped off his friendship with Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) and love with MJ. Peter, thus, is infinitely lonely.
Holland has been receiving praise for his performance even as the film battles Marvel fatigue. A review in the Los Angeles Times states:
Holland holds onto his buoyancy even as his character battles the blues. His Peter fends off despair by insisting that he’s fine. The bruises on his body disagree. So does the glowing inhibitor on his spine, which seems to ask if we’re too quick to prescribe medication for our problems.
Where to watch: Theatres
Bhai Tera Star Hai (Hindi)
After being inducted into the holy grail of pop culture last year (due to The Ba***ds of Bollywood), Raghav Juyal returns to the big screen with a leading role. Expectations were naturally high but Bhai Tera Star Hai has turned out to be a colossal waste of his talent. Vivek B Agrawal’s film is designed as a chaotic comedy dotted with loops of confusion. And while such a template worked in the ’90s, it feels too dated now. Juyal plays Ajay, a struggling actor, who has borrowed money from Fatty (Sanjay Kapoor). He cannot pay him back and the film is a long, winding exercise to prove that.
A review in Scroll says, “Even at a relatively crisp runtime of 105 minutes, Bhai Tera Star Hai strains patience levels. A series of gags has been strung together into a film that is entertaining only to its fictional characters.”
Where to watch: Theatres
In Adithyan Chandrashekar’s sci-fi film, Vicky (Neeraj Madhav) is a slacker who befriends an alien. This chance development convinces him that his life, filled with one bad business idea after another, will finally change for the better. The twist here is that the alien Pluto (Althaf Salim) turns out to be as directionless as him.
There aren’t many films in the Malayalam film industry that experiment with the sci-fi genre, and while that lends Pluto some ingenuity, it also fails to capitalise on it. “At just over two hours, Pluto is never outright tedious, even if much of it feels underwhelming. There are flashes of imagination and the occasional laugh, but they are never enough to make the film linger. Ironically, for a story about two people trying to prove they are more than failures, the film ends up leaving very little behind once it's over,” reads a review in Cinema Express.
Where to watch: Theatres
The Devil's Mouth (English)
Another week and another shark film. This Amazon Prime outing is set inThailand and revolves around a group of five friends who get stuck in a cave and in comes… a shark. While the outline feels familiar, Jeff Wadlow’s thriller uses it to unpack friendships when put in hot waters.
The film has largely garnered positive reviews. “...what most most enlivens the film is how the horror of the predicament exposes the cracks in the central friendship,” notes The Guardian. It adds, “the toxicity of their friendship isn’t quite sharp enough to give The Devil’s Mouth teeth exactly, but it adds more than just body parts to the water which, at this overly prolific time for the shark movie, counts for something.”
Where to watch: Prime Video
Final Project (Spanish)
This 20-episode series deals with pressing adolescent themes such as cyberbullying and puts a school, often hailed as a safe sanctuary for children, at the centre of the narrative. At her new school, Tamara, a teenager, finds herself being targeted online. Informed by the premise, the show unfolds with a keen-eyed understanding of internet culture, the addiction it enables, and the pointed nature of digital abuse.
Where to watch: Netflix
Duet (Hindi)
In 2018, Sheetal Menon made Siblings, a wrenching short film about caregiving that eked out the ugly undersides of sibling relationships. In her recent work, she returns to the format and explores similar themes. Duet is about a grieving musician Mihir (Sidhant Gupta) whose brother has passed away. Although they were estranged, he is consumed by the crippling loss and a nagging sense of guilt. The grief is only amplified because, set during lockdown, the short film allows Mihir to deal with the severed ties on his own.
Commending the film, a reviewer in The Hollywood Reporter notes, “It reminded me a bit of Andrew Haigh’s haunting All Of Us Strangers (2023), a film about a lonely screenwriter in a high-rise whose notions of fiction and reality blend into each other. Mihir, too, summons the trauma of a tough childhood — particularly his mother’s tragic death — to camouflage the urgent void of losing his sibling.”
Duet is the first short film to premiere globally on Spotify.
Where to watch: Spotify
Pan Am 103 (English)
The six-part docu-drama investigates the 1988 tragedy when the flight Pan Am 103 was bombed by terrorists and killed 270 people. The Boeing 747 was flying from London to New York City and exploded near the Scottish town of Lockerbie less than an hour after takeoff. The gruesome incident irrevocably altered air travel and the new series recreates it from multiple perspectives.
With a stellar cast comprising Merritt Wever, Patrick J Adams, Tony Curran, Connor Swindells, among others, the series punctuates the narrative with real-life footage, lending great urgency to the proceedings.
Where to watch: Netflix
Fresh off the big screen
Balan: The Boy (Malayalam)
Chidambaram S Poduval’s survival thriller is about a boy called Balan (Adhisheshan K R played the younger part and Muhammad Zinaan, the older) and his mother Indhu (Farzana) as they try outrunning the past. Balan was born in a prison and, since then, his and his mother’s lives have been about surviving each day without really looking forward to the next. Written by Jithu Madahavan, the film is an affecting exposition on growing up and lost childhoods. It also marks Chidambaram’s return to direction after the hugely acclaimed Manjummel Boys (2024).
Balan: The Boy received praise upon release and the performances were especially singled out. A review in The Hollywood Reporter states, “With the same big bulging eyes and with the same ability to conjure the imagery of the big bad world through them, we’re not only watching a film about the loss of innocence but also about the kind of children who are never even given a choice to remain innocent.”
Where to watch: Zee5
The Devil Wears Prada 2 (English)
In May, albeit briefly, the world seemed like a better place. Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) was rolling her eyes again, Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt) was panicking again, and Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway) was trying to keep things together… again. Devil Wears Prada was back! David Frankel’s 2006 classic returned with a sequel this year and the original cast, including Stanley Tucci, reprised their roles. The most gratifying thing about the film was that it did not exist merely as fan service but took cognizance of the changing times and made a commentary on that.
Miranda, the untouchable media honcho in the first part, was struggling to keep her job. Emily, her former assistant, branched out to a different profession (because times are tough), and Andrea, the newbie, was now a seasoned journalist. Except, she gets fired in the opening minutes. There is a lot to admire in The Devil Wears Prada 2 but mostly its commitment to critique the changing landscape of media that is increasingly becoming male billionaires’ playground.
Where to watch: JioHotsar
Chinna Chinna Aasai (Malayalam and Tamil)
Varsha Vasudev’s tender film is about an unlikely friendship between Leela (Madhoo), a widow from Thanjavur, and Madhavan Master (Indrans), a retired schoolteacher from Kerala. When Leela gets separated from her touring group and loses her handbag, it is Madhavan who steps up to help. This gesture forges a gentle bond between them as each unlocks a part in the other that they had long buried.
Upon release, Chinna Chinna Aasai received widespread praise for the sensitivity with which it depicted fragile relationships. “Written and directed by Varsha Vasudevan, Chinna Chinna Aasai is an extraordinary reflection on how it’s always the smallest of things that matter most when nothing else matters at all,” opines The Hollywood Reporter.
Where to watch: JioHotsar
Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai (Hindi)
The good thing about David Dhawan films is that most of them are timeless and funny. The bad thing about them is that in 2026, they no longer feel timely. His latest directorial work (a feat, really, given the filmmaker is 74 years) rehashes the one trope he has used extensively: a man torn between two women. Except, in this case the hapless man finds himself stuck between two pregnant women. A good detail to note here would be: both are his doing.
Starring Varun Dhawan, Mrunal Thakur, and Pooja Hegde, the film is short on laughs and logic. “Written by Yunus Sajawal, with dialogue by Farhad Samji, Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai is in a big hurry to get away from its mediocrity. Except for flashbacks to Jas’s various school teachers and a few patches of funny dialogue, the film has little going for it,” reads a review in Scroll.
Where to watch: Zee5
One more chapter
Colin from Accounts Season 3 (English)
This Australian dramedy, starring writer and actor-couple Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, is in its final season. The premise is deceptively simple: two people, Ashley and Gordon, connect and then… there is a dog called Colin. In the actors’ hands, the basic setting is elevated to a dialogue-rich, richly gratifying show. The third season opens with a three-year time jump; the two leads meet again, resetting the fundamental question: will they make it?
Praising the last season, The Guardian writes, “This season’s co-directors, Trent O’Donnell and Madeleine Dyer, continue the show’s seemingly effortless rhythms, buoyed by Dyer and Brammall’s writing, which maintains the high standard set by the previous two seasons.”
Where to watch: JioHotstar
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