Movie Review: Kuttey (2023)

0.5 Star (out of 4)

The joyless, immature heist film Kuttey (“Dogs“) is an inauspicious feature debut for writer-director Aasmaan Bhardwaj (son of filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj, who co-wrote and produced Kuttey).

Kuttey opens in 2003 in a remote police outpost in western Maharashtra. Officer Paaji (Kumud Mishra) listens as jailed Maoist fighter Lakshmi (Konkona Sen Sharma) explains that he’ll never find freedom as a lackey in an oppressive system. She’s proven right when Paaji’s superior officer slaps him for treating Lakshmi compassionately, then rapes Lakshmi in front of him.

Thirteen years later, Paaji is still a cop, but he’s earning money on the side doing jobs for the drug dealer Khobre (Naseeruddin Shah) with fellow cop, Gopal (Arjun Kapoor). Khobre instructs the pair to murder a rival dealer, which they do, along with killing dozens of people at a pool party.

Actually, the rival dealer survives the assassination attempt, albeit in a coma. Paaji’s and Gopal’s boss bribes them to keep their involvement quiet in exchange for a hefty payout. They turn to another sketchy cop named Pammi (Tabu) for advice and learn from her pal Harry (Ashish Vidyarthi) about the route Harry’s armored truck takes on its nightly rounds to refill ATMs with cash. Paaji and Gopal both decide to rob the truck, though not together. Other people get wind of the plan, and chaos ensues.

Kuttey is an extremely violent movie, with a body count in the dozens. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Films full of pointless violence can still make a point themselves. But Kuttey doesn’t. It is violent in an attempt at edginess that just comes across as cruel. Couple that with the passionless sex scenes and foul language, and the film feels like the product of a particularly sheltered middle schooler who finds swearing, sex, and gore in movies endlessly thrilling because they are new to him.

The characters are so poorly defined that there’s no reason to care about any of them. We don’t know enough about these people or or their circumstances to get invested. It also strips all the deaths of meaning since there’s no sense of who is or isn’t deserving of grisly murder or what kind of void they’ll leave behind when they are gone. The goal seems to be the highest body count possible, achieved by any means.

With such hollow characters to work with, the performances in Kuttey are nothing special. That goes for Tabu as well, whose assignment is to cuss and chew scenery. Pammi spends an agonizingly long time telling the parable of the scorpion and the frog, even though everyone already knows it because so many other movies have used it. The whole film moves way too slowly despite having a runtime under two hours.

There’s also an issue with how violence is administered in Kuttey. Virtually every character is subjected to violence. But only women are done so in a punitive way, and not just because they are an obstacle in someone’s pursuit of a greater goal. Besides Lakshmi’s rape, the scene at the pool party thrown by the rival drug dealer is especially problematic. As Paaji and Gopal walk towards the rival dealer to shoot him and his “Nigerian” counterparts (one of whom has an American accent), some unaware bikini-clad white women push the cops into the pool as a joke. Gopal can’t swim, and the women laugh at him as he’s rescued by the American guy. When Gopal recovers enough to pick up his gun, he shoots the laughing women first.

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Movie Review: Gulmohar (2023)

3 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Gulmohar on Hulu

As the members of the tight-knit Batra family prepare to go their separate ways, secrets threaten to create an irreparable rift. Strong performances and sensitive writing make Gulmohar a touching family drama.

Gulmohar is the name of the family’s Delhi estate built 34 years ago by Prabhakar Batra, the deceased head of the family. His widow Kusum (Sharmila Tagore) is selling the house and announces at a farewell party her intention to move to Pondicherry by herself. Her son Arun (Manoj Bajpayee) and his wife Indu (Simran) bought a large, new penthouse apartment assuming the whole family would continue to live together, but their son Adi (Suraj Sharma) and his wife Divya (Kaveri Seth) are looking for their own place, too.

Arun is not coping well with these changes. His father built their house as a symbol of family togetherness, and Arun idolized his dad. Arun’s discovery that not everyone had the same future plans as he did rattles him.

There are more secrets simmering under the surface of the Batra clan, none more shocking than the contents of a will dictated by Prabhakar that Kusum had kept hidden. But the root of the family’s problems is a tendency not to talk to one another, not just about troubles but about positive feelings as well. For example, Adi is convinced that he’s a disappointment to his father, and everyone tells him that’s not true — except for Arun.

Though the drama comes from all of the things that are going wrong for the Batra family, the movie is really about all of the things that they do right. Kusum’s belief in personal freedom and open-mindedness instills in all of the Batras a desire to chase unconventional dreams and love freely, safe in the knowledge that their family will always be there to support them. The family dynamic enables writer-director Rahul V. Chittella to weave LGBTQ subplots into the story.

Chittella’s screenplay is well-constructed. I re-watched the first five minutes of the film, and it’s impressive how many of the seeds of future conflicts are planted in that short span of time and how subtly it’s done. The opening scene is a large family party that introduces the major characters, and information is dispensed through snippets of conversations and even via the way people move throughout the house. It feels very natural, and only upon revisiting it did I realize how much work the scene was doing.

The whole cast is terrific, and all of the actors play off each other beautifully. Bajpayee and Simran are especially delightful as a married couple. The soundtrack is wonderful, with “Woh Ghar” being the standout track.

If there’s any complaint about Gulmohar, it’s that it could have looked more polished. The edges of shots are often blurry, giving frames a distracting, almost fish-eye effect. Still, that’s a minor knock against a movie that does a nice job of being what it wants to be: nice.

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Streaming Video News: March 10, 2023

I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with today’s debut of the new series Rana Naidu: an adaptation of Ray Donovan starring Rana Daggubati and Venkatesh Daggubati. Yesterday, Netflix added the 2023 Malayalam film Rekha to streaming and announced the new Original sports documentary Caught Out: Crime. Corruption. Cricket., which debuts March 17:

Bollywood Hungama revealed the news that the Netflix Original series Delhi Crime, The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives, Kota Factory, Mismatched, and She have all been renewed for a third season along with Class, which returns for a second season.

I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Amazon Prime with the additions of the Kannada movie Love Birds, the Malayalam film Christopher, and the debut of the Original Hindi series Happy Family, Conditions Apply.

Finally, I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Hulu with the debut of the Hotstar Specials Telugu series Anger Tales (also available in Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, and Tamil) and the 2023 Tamil film Run Baby Run (also available in Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, and Telugu).

[Disclaimer: my Amazon links include an affiliate tag, and I may earn a commission on purchases made via those links. Thanks for helping to support this website!]

Movie Review: Operation Fryday (2023)

Zero Stars (out of 4)

Watch Operation Fryday on Zee5

It took more than a decade for Operation Fryday (also known as “Shooter“) to get a release, premiering with little fanfare on the streaming service Zee5. A decade wasn’t long enough.

Certainly, many of the film’s problems stem from this long time on the shelf. Actors moved on and were unavailable for re-shoots or overdubs, meaning the story had to be cobbled together from whatever footage was already shot. But I’m not sure Operation Fryday could ever have been a good movie.

I’ll give a broad overview of the story, because the details are incomprehensible. Ghulam (Randeep Hooda) works as an informant for a reckless cop named Sada Nair (Suniel Shetty), but he also kills people on behalf of a couple of warring mafia dons. When Ghulam’s brother is murdered as a result of Ghulam’s double dealing, Ghulam turns off his humanity becomes a merciless gun for hire.

One of Ghulam’s employers, Firaz (Zakir Hussain), decides that the mercenary is expendable and tries to blow him up. Ghulam’s buddy dies along with hundreds of innocent people. Overwhelmed with guilt, Ghulam slinks back to Sada Nair and offers to undertake a patriotic suicide revenge mission to find Firaz in his terrorist hideout in Pakistan.

My plot summary makes way more sense than how the story is presented. There are a bunch of random goons who shout a lot, and hundreds of people die meaningless deaths. By his own count, Ghulam kills at least 180 people — and that’s before he tosses grenades into a room full of women, children, and old folks.

As disjointed and morally hollow as the plot is, the rest of the movie isn’t any better. The whole thing looks like garbage. There are no transitions between scenes. The color palette is washed-out. Actors are back-lit or in shadows, and that’s when there aren’t objects obscuring their faces. Shaky handheld camera shots don’t look naturalistic, only unprofessional, especially since the camera is shoved in too close on the performers even in expansive outdoor shots.

Operation Fryday looks like a Ram Gopal Varma film shot on a Birdemic budget. So, it comes as no surprise that writer-director Vishram Sawant’s first movie, D, was written and produced by RGV. As an homage to his mentor, Sawant even shoots his actors from a camera positioned under a glass coffee table in one scene.

Without question, the most jarring thing about Operation Fryday is that Randeep Hooda’s voice is dubbed by an actor with a much higher-pitched voice (I think Zakir Hussain is dubbed, too). Hooda’s real voice can be heard in a couple of recorded voiceovers, but when he’s onscreen, it’s someone else speaking. Not just speaking, but making drawn out exhalations, groans, and even a “pit-TOO” sound like a cartoon cowboy spitting.

It’s kind of a shame, since Hooda fully commits to his performance. I don’t know that hearing his actual voice could have saved the movie, but it would’ve made thing less weird — and less weird would go a long way in a movie as totally (and unintentionally) weird as this.

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Worst Bollywood Movies of 2022

While plenty of the Hindi films that I reviewed in 2022 could be described as bland but inoffensive, there were still enough stinkers to warrant making a list of the biggest duds. Without further ado, here are my eight Worst Bollywood Movies of 2022.

Ram Setu makes the cut as an example of what happens to a potentially good film when you target it for the lowest common denominator. There’s lots of evidence that writer-director Abhishek Sharma knows what a better version of his Akshay Kumar adventure flick would have looked like, but Sharma takes the easy way out to avoid hassle.

Plan A Plan B and Cobalt Blue both suffer from awkward dialogue delivered poorly. The juvenile sex jokes of Plan A Plan B sound like they were from the screenplay’s first draft, while Cobalt Blue‘s characters speak as though they are reading lines from the novel from which the film was adapted.

I’m a little conflicted about putting Heropanti 2 on this list because it is 100% the most fun Hindi film of last year, but it’s also a complete mess. The plot makes no sense and neither do the characters, yet it’s a raucous and silly good time. I’ve re-watched the scene where Tara Sutaria shatters a mostly full bottle of Champagne by tossing it onto the ground rather than setting it on a table like a normal person god knows how many times.

Govinda Naam Mera is what happens when twists and attempts at audience misdirection go out of control, resulting in a muddled story populated by inscrutable characters.

The dingy thriller Cuttputlli winds up on the list for fetishizing violence against women and for being hypocritical about police brutality, which is only bad until the hero of the story wants revenge on a suspect. Then it’s okay. Also, 54-year-old Akshay Kumar plays a character who’s supposed to be 36.

Double XL is easily the biggest disappointment on the list (no pun intended). I had high hopes for this comedy starring Huma Qureshi and Sonakshi Sinha as a pair of women who overcome weight prejudice to pursue their dreams, but the screenplay feels like a rough draft that offers little insight about an important subject.

By the time the credits rolled on the final film on this list, I knew it was going to be my worst movie of the year. I had trouble imagining any other film that could come from such a morally corrupt place, and thankfully I was correct. My Worst Bollywood Movie of 2022 is Hurdang.

Hurdang stars Sunny Kaushal as a violent, privileged cheater whom the film positions as a poster-child victim of an affirmative action policy that seeks to redress caste discrimination. The movie contends that because some students might have to alter their paths to stable, desirable middle-class government jobs, it’s better to perpetuate a discriminatory system. In Hurdang, there’s no contradiction between the meritocracy that the film contends exists and a hero who steals exam answers. It’s a garbage movie that’s truly the worst of the worst of 2022.

Kathy’s Worst Bollywood Movies of 2022

  1. Hurdang – stream on Netflix
  2. Double XL – stream on Netflix
  3. Cuttputlli – stream on Hulu
  4. Govinda Naam Mera – stream on Hulu
  5. Heropanti 2 – stream on Amazon Prime
  6. Cobalt Blue – stream on Netflix
  7. Plan A Plan B – stream on Netflix
  8. Ram Setu – stream on Amazon Prime

Previous Worst Movies Lists

[Disclaimer: my Amazon links include an affiliate tag, and I may earn a commission on purchases made via those links. Thanks for helping to support this website!]

Best Bollywood Movies of 2022

While I didn’t give any of the Hindi films from 2022 a perfect 4-star rating, there were a lot of great titles to choose from. (I did rate RRR 4-stars, but I’ve decided to limit this year’s Best list to just Hindi movies. I know, I named Baahubali 2: The Conclusion my best film of 2017. Chalk it up to website owner’s prerogative.) So, here are my ten Best Bollywood Movies of 2022!

Let’s start with a possibly controversial pick. I liked the growth of the socially deviant main characters in Ek Villain Returns, which is much more morally consistent than the original Ek Villain. There’s some interesting stuff happening with Disha Patani’s character that I enjoyed, though I don’t want to spoil it by going into detail. Ek Villain Returns knows what kind of movie it wants to be and executes its vision.

Qala and Brahmāstra Part One – Shiva both earn their spots for being visually stunning — Qala via its lush period sets and costumes and Brahmāstra via its thrilling special effects.

The family drama Maja Ma treats a very complicated subject with the care it deserves and considers it from all angles, reminding the audience that it’s not possible to distill a person down to a single adjective.

Thar shook things up as the rare Hindi neo-noir western, shot in an evocative landscape and with nuanced performances that suit the harsh environment.

2022 has two very fun comedies about characters who’ve gotten by as the big fish in their small ponds who painfully realize just how much they have to learn about the world. Dasvi takes a family-friendly approach to a clever story about a disgraced politician whose position is usurped by his wife. Tamannaah Bhatia plays my favorite character of the year in Babli Bouncer, a delightful fish-out-of-water tale about lovable tomboy who needs to grow up.

I’ve been anticipating director Vasan Bala’s feature followup to Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (which topped my Best of 2019 list), and Monica, O My Darling did not disappoint. Bala builds an eye-catching, offbeat world for his characters, and the dynamite cast takes advantage of the opportunities he gives them

Alia Bhatt gives the standout performance of the year as Gangubai Kathiawadi. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali brings his trademark flair and visual style to the picture (resulting in the year’s best song picturizations), but Bhatt carries the film, playing a character who is complicated and conflicted but always self-possessed.

Like Ek Villain Returns, my top film of the year is another sequel that improves upon its predecessor. My Best Bollywood Movie of 2022 is the action drama Khuda Haafiz: Chapter 2 — Agni Pariksha.

Khuda Haafiz: Chapter 2 isn’t just better than the original Khuda Haafiz. It builds on the first story, providing its characters with growth arcs that span two films. Shivaleeka Oberoi didn’t have much to do in the original picture, but she carries the first part of the sequel as a rape survivor trying to reintegrate into society and her marriage. Martial arts master Vidyut Jammwal changes his fighting style throughout the film as blind rage transforms into targeted revenge. And Sheeba Chaddha plays my favorite villain of the year. Filmmaker Faruk Kabir takes his characters and their struggles seriously, resulting in an action movie with real substance. Khuda Haafiz: Chapter 2 is a winner.

Kathy’s Best Bollywood Movies of 2022

  1. Khuda Haafiz: Chapter 2 – buy at Amazon/stream on Zee5
  2. Gangubai Kathiawadi – stream on Netflix
  3. Monica, O My Darling – stream on Netflix
  4. Babli Bouncer – stream on Hulu
  5. Dasvi – stream on Netflix
  6. Thar – stream on Netflix
  7. Maja Ma – stream on Amazon Prime
  8. Brahmāstra Part One – Shiva – stream on Hulu
  9. Qala – stream on Netflix
  10. Ek Villain Returns – stream on Netflix

Previous Best Movies Lists

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Streaming Video News: February 21, 2023

It’s last call for a bunch of Dharma Productions titles on Amazon Prime and Netflix, which will also lose a ton of Balaji Motion Pictures films this week as well. Here’s what’s leaving when, and why this may not be cause for panic.

First of all, thanks to CinemaRare on Twitter for listing the movies on the way out. One thing to notice immediately is that some of the titles on CinemaRare’s list are currently available in India but not the United States. This is because streaming rights are negotiated on a regional — and sometimes country-specific — basis between the company that owns the film’s rights and the streaming service interested in licensing them. These contracts cover a specified time period, after which the rights holder can renegotiate a new contract or shop their content elsewhere.

That’s likely what’s happening with Dharma and Balaji now. There’s every chance that they will simply sign a new contract with the same streaming companies for another few years. Balaji did that in late 2020 with Netflix. If that’s the case, then the titles may only be unavailable for a short window. I’m going to wait a week or two before removing the links to the expiring titles from my Netflix list and my Amazon Prime list just in case the films are renewed.

However, there is a chance that the Dharma Productions titles may not return to Netflix. Karan Johar and Dharma have a deal with Amazon Prime to bring their newest theatrical releases to Prime and to create new streaming content for the service. I won’t be shocked if they want to make the back catalog exclusive to Prime as well. If you subscribe to Netflix but not Prime, you may want to prioritize watching the expiring Dharma titles listed below this week.

Here are all of the Dharma Productions and Balaji Motion Pictures titles expiring from Netflix and Amazon Prime in the next week (note that the last day to watch is the day before the expiration date):

Expiring from Netflix February 27 (Balaji Motion Pictures titles)

Expiring from Netflix February 28 (Dharma Productions titles)

Expiring from Netflix March 1

Expiring from Amazon Prime February 27 (Dharma Productions titles)*

*The Amazon Prime Dharma list looks small by comparison to the Netflix list because some of the films are available on Eros Now instead of Prime, while others have already expired from Prime. Keeping track of all this stuff is no joke!

[Disclaimer: my Amazon links include an affiliate tag, and I may earn a commission on purchases made via those links. Thanks for helping to support this website!]

Movie Review: Lost (2023)

1.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Lost on Zee5

Lost is a fitting title for Yami Gautam’s latest drama, because that’s how I felt when the movie was over.

Gautam plays Vidhi, an investigative journalist in Kolkata who stumbles onto a story when she meets Namita (Honey Jain) at a police station. Namita’s brother Ishan (Tushar Pandey) — a street performer who produces plays about Dalit rights — has been missing for two weeks. His disappearance came during a rough patch with his girlfriend Ankita (Piaa Bajpai), a news anchor who recently accepted a job and an apartment from politician Ranjan Varman (Rahul Khanna). But Ankita never reported Ishan missing.

Before Vidhi can dig in to the disappearance, a story is leaked that Ishan is involved with a Maoist group accused of terrorism. With Ankita refusing to answer her phone calls, Vidhi figures she might as well seek out the Maoist leader to confirm or deny Ishan’s involvement.

Lost is a very busy film. It speed-runs a plot that is dense with details but light on character motivation and devoid of atmosphere. Calling it a thriller is being extremely generous, since it lacks any tension whatsoever.

The only scenes that are allowed to breathe are between Vidhi and her grandfather Nanu (Pankaj Kapur), with whom she lives. She bounces ideas about the case off of him and he tries to pretend that he’s not worried about her safety, despite noticing two creeps taking photos of their house. The two actors have an easy rapport that helps regulate the story’s pace.

One way to improve Lost would have been to have Kapur play Vidhi’s father, and to eliminate her parents from the story entirely. Their absence could’ve freed up time for plot development elsewhere. Besides, Kapur is only thirty-four years older than Gautam, and the actors cast to play her parents are styled to look just as old as Kapur anyway.

There’s also an under-cooked subplot with Vidhi and her long-distance boyfriend Jeet (Neil Bhoopalam), who is coming to realize that relocating to be with a woman who’s addicted to her job might not be a great idea. The only good thing to come from his involvement in the story is an early scene in a restaurant where they discuss Ishan’s case. A song plays with on-the-nose lyrics like, “The road is dark and dangerous. You might get killed.” Vidhi hears this upbeat ditty and decides it’s time to dance. For a movie that lacks subtext, this feels appropriate.

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Movie Review: Khuda Haafiz – Chapter 2 (2022)

3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Buy Khuda Haafiz: Chapter 2 on DVD at Amazon

2020’s Khuda Haafiz presented action star Vidyut Jammwal in a different light, playing an ordinary man on a mission to rescue his kidnapped wife. The sequel Khuda Haafiz: Chapter 2 — Agni Pariksha shows the devastating consequences that the events of the first film have on both characters, propelling them to change in whole new ways.

The sequel picks up in 2008, one year after Jammwal’s Sameer rescued his wife Nargis (Shivaleeka Oberoi) from sex traffickers in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Noman. Getting her home safely wasn’t the end of their troubles as Sameer had hoped. Nargis is depressed and anxious, tired of the constant whispers about her ordeal by neighbors and coworkers. Sameer walks on eggshells, cautious not to upset Nargis but not sure how to fix her or their relationship.

In a well-meaning but misguided attempt to help Nargis open up emotionally, Sameer offers to look after his friend’s newly orphaned niece, 5-year-old Nandini (cute Riddhi Sharma). The girl’s presence initially has the opposite effect that Sameer wanted, reminding Nargis of the dreams that were taken from her in Noman. But when Nandini suffers a medical emergency, Nargis’s protective side takes over, and soon the three are living together as a happy family.

That joy doesn’t last. While heading home from school with a teenage neighbor named Seema (Anushka Marchande), the girls are kidnapped by three boys who’ve been stalking Seema. Their ringleader is Bacchu (Bodhisattva Sharma), grandson of a powerful family lead by matriarch Sheela Thakur (Sheeba Chaddha). The local police are either in cahoots with, or in fear of, Sheela. So, it becomes clear that Sameer will have to take matters into his own hands once again.

The public wants justice for the girls, thanks to sympathetic news coverage by reporter Ravi Kumar (Rajesh Tailang). Filmmaker Faruk Kabir — who wrote and directed both Khuda Haafiz movies — demonstrates how to properly include news reports in a film. Ravi is shown out in the field with his camera crew or recording in a studio. There are no annoying “man on the street” interviews or shots to make the audience feel as though they are watching a TV news report.

While the first film was based on a true story, the plot of the second is entirely Kabir’s own creation. This allows him to focus on character growth and the consequences of their actions. The result is a story that is exciting but grounded in reality. Unlike some Hollywood movies where superheroes destroy entire cities and get to go about their merry way, choices produce results that the characters in Khuda Haafiz – Chapter 2 have to deal with, good or bad.

Nargis was primarily acted upon in the first film, but here Oberoi gets to display real emotional range, carrying most of the story in the early stages. Nargis’s struggles are centered, as they should be. Only after Nandini is taken does she turn the reins over to Sameer.

As befits Jammwal’s martial arts background, Sameer’s character evolution is demonstrated through his fighting styles. In his first fight, he beats a callous police official in a blind rage, all fury and no finesse. This lands him in jail, where he is attacked by a gang that works for Sheela. He fights to survive in a manner that is still desperate but more calculating. When he’s released from prison, he’s a predator on the hunt, powerful and merciless.

The jail fight scene is particularly chilling because the prisoners’ improvised weapons — half of a pair of short scissors or a small piece of metal — require them to get very close to one another when attacking, stabbing in small bursts rather than taking long swipes from a distance. The sequence’s intimacy makes it especially terrifying.

Chaddha’s icy demeanor as Sheela is just as scary. At one point, she visits Nargis at her parents’ home, requesting a glass of milk from Nargis’s mother. After threatening Nargis and being met with defiance, Sheela drains the glass of milk in one go, sending the unambiguous message that she could make Nargis disappear just as easily. One would hardly imagine that drinking milk could be a menacing act, but Chaddha does it with aplomb.

Khuda Haafiz – Chapter 2 deals with a grim subject in a respectful way. While not taken from a single news story, Kabir distills the Indian public’s frustrated desire for justice in response to similar crimes into a fictional plot that feels cathartic but not pandering. Kabir treats his characters and the topic of crimes against women and girls with respect, and he trusts his audience to do the same.

Links

Streaming Video News: February 9, 2023

I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Amazon Prime with today’s premiere of Raj & DK’s brand new series Farzi (“Fakes“), starring Shahid Kapoor in his streaming debut.

While weeding inactive links from my Amazon Prime list, I noticed that a handful of Dharma Productions movies are not currently available (at least not in the United States), including Kapoor & Sons, Gori Tere Pyaar Mein, Shaandaar, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. I’m assuming their absence just temporary, but we’ll have to wait and see.

I also updated my list of Bollywood movies on Hulu with the 2022 Telugu film Raajahyogam and the premiere of the Telugu series Hansika’s Love Shaadi Drama, which is also available in English, Hindi, and Tamil.

Earlier in the week, I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with the 2023 Tamil film Thunivu, which is also available in Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, and Telugu (as “Tegimpu“). It sounds like we’ll be getting a new trailer for the Netflix Original series Rana Naidu next week, and hopefully a release date.

[Disclaimer: my Amazon links include an affiliate tag, and I may earn a commission on purchases made via those links. Thanks for helping to support this website!]