Tag Archives: Tashan

Streaming Video News: December 18, 2025

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I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Amazon Prime with today’s premiere of Season 4 of the Hindi series Four More Shots Please!. Earlier this week, the Maddock Horror Universe vampire flick Thamma started streaming on Prime.

I also updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with today’s debut of the Telugu film Premante. Here’s where we stand with all the Yash Raj Films titles added for the “Holiday Season” event that runs through December 27:

December 11: Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi (2002) & Mujhse Dosti Karoge! (2002)
December 12: Bewakoofiyaan (2014) & Mere Dad Ki Maruthi (2013)
December 13: Bank Chor (2017) & Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! (2015)
December 14: Kabul Express (2006) & Tashan (2008)
December 15: Jhoom Barabar Jhoom (2007) & Sui Dhaaga: Made in India (2018)
December 16: Daawat-e-Ishq (2014) & Mere Brother Ki Dulhan (2011)
December 17: Qaidi Band (2017) & Titli (2014)
December 18: Aurangzeb (2013) & Thugs of Hindostan (2018)

The Netflix Original movie sequel Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders premieres on Friday, followed by Season 4 of The Great Indian Kapil Show on Saturday, with first guest Priyanka Chopra Jonas.

My list of Bollywood movies on Hulu got an update today with two new series: Madhuri Dixit’s Hindi show Mrs. Deshpande (also in Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu) and the Malayalam series Pharma (also in Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu).

After posting a review of Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders on Friday, I’m going to take some time off for the holidays. I’ll try to update the three main streaming pages with new additions, but I’ll do so sporadically. Here’s a calendar of some of the films and shows coming to streaming over the next couple of weeks (including the few we know from the rest of the YRF Holiday Season event):

December 22: Aaha Kalyanam (Tamil) on Netflix
December 25: Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat on ZEE5
December 26: Ek Tha Tiger, Hichki, Sultan, & Tiger Zinda Hai on Netflix
January 1, 2026: LBW: Love Beyond Wicket, Season 1 (Tamil) on Hulu

If you want to know what’s coming even further out, please check out my GIANT preview of the new Indian Original movies and series coming to Netflix in 2026 (and beyond). I love putting this together for What’s on Netflix every year, and it’s full of a ton of great information.

Thanks as always for another wonderful year at Access Bollywood. Special thanks to those of you who contributed via PayPal and Venmo. Your support means so much and helps keep this site going strong. Best wishes for a healthy holiday season and a happy new year! — Kathy

[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: Chandni Chowk to China (2009)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Buy or rent the movie at iTunes
Buy the DVD at Amazon
Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

Akshay Kumar has found his niche: playing bumbling guys who fall in love with pretty girls while outsmarting villains. He’s played that type of character recently in Welcome, Tashan and Singh Is Kinng, and he does so again in Chandni Chowk to China. Kumar’s good in that kind of role, but I’m ready to see him branch out.

CC2C stars Kumar as unlucky vegetable cutter Sidhu, who gets tricked into leaving the Indian town of Chandni Chowk in order to save some Chinese villagers from a tyrant named Hojo (Gordon Liu). The story is predictable — Sidhu eventually figures out that he’s been duped but takes on the villagers’ problem as his own — but it’s told well.

For the most part, the film is successful. The story is accessible, the fight choreography is well-executed, and the Chinese actors in CC2C are better than non-Indian actors in Bollywood films typically are. Even the movie’s corny running gag (Sidhu’s convinced that the god Ganesh has taken corporeal form as a potato) is surprisingly funny.

But CC2C falls short in a number of ways. Deepika Padukone is underutilized, even though she plays two roles. Worse, every time she appears on screen as the thief Meow Meow, her arrival is marked by an annoying “meow” sound effect.

The sound mixing is the film’s biggest problem. There’s a lot of noise, with sounds of a yelling crowd layered on top of high-pitched music. In a theater, that kind of cacophony renders some of the dialogue unintelligible and is, at times, even painful to listen to. (The theater where I attended the movie usually has pretty good sound, so I suspect the fault lies with the movie’s creators.)

Chandni Chowk to China isn’t great, though it is amusing and certainly better than 2007 Bollywood-Hollywood collaboration Saawariya. But its uneven production and cookie-cutter story will probably keep it from becoming a mainstream hit in America, which is surely what distributor Warner Bros. was hoping for.

Chandni Chowk Photo

Movie Review: Tashan (2008)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Buy or rent the movie at iTunes
Buy the DVD at Amazon
Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

When a mobster (Anil Kapoor) hires call-center operator Jimmy Cliff (Saif Ali Khan) as an English tutor, Jimmy gets into trouble and winds up on a wacky road-trip with a beautiful thief (Kareena Kapoor) and a sneering thug. Akshay Kumar is hilarious as the thug who resents Jimmy, a man frequently praised for speaking “just like George Bush.” Tashan‘s jokes, many of which are in English, are funny and make up for the clumsy action sequences.

No Rating (violence, language); 148 minutes

This review originally appeared in The Naperville Sun on May 1, 2008