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Every lamp and ladylike cocktail dress, every convertible and clink of a martini glass is a perfect reflection of retro chic in Olivia Wilde ’s “Don’t Worry Darling.”

Who wouldn’t want to live in the suburban Shangri-la of Victory, with its minimalist, mid-century modern homes and bawdy, booze-soaked dinner parties? Young, attractive families find their every want and need fulfilled under the idyllic shimmer of the Southern California sun.

But something’s not quite right here. That much is clear to us early on, and that nagging suspicion increasingly gnaws at Florence Pugh ’s perky party girl, Alice. Sure, shopping all afternoon with her fellow housewives is fun, as is having her handsome husband, Jack, come home from a long day at work and service her on the dining room table before he’s even taken a bite of the roast and mashed potatoes. (We’ll come back to Harry Styles , and his many talents and challenges, in a bit.)

The revelation of what that something is, though, results in such a shrug of annoyance and disappointment that it very nearly ruins the entire experience in retrospect. I may have groaned audibly, “Ugh, really? That’s it?” at a recent press screening. Discovering what’s actually going on raises more questions than it answers, and it shines a harsh light on the half-baked notions in the script from Katie Silberman . She also wrote Wilde’s directorial debut, the delightfully raunchy comedy “ Booksmart ,” which had a focus and an emotional authenticity that are lacking in this thriller.

“Don’t Worry Darling” aims to explore the tyranny of the patriarchy, disguised as domestic bliss. This is not a new idea, but then again, there aren’t many new ideas here. You can see the various pieces being pulled together from better source material—a bit of “The Stepford Wives,” a whole lot of “Mad Men,” and a bunch of movies that would serve as spoilers to list them. Watching Pugh once again function as the clear-eyed voice of reason—and watching her get gaslit when she tries to warn everyone about the sinister undercurrents within a joyful setting—also brings to mind her visceral work in “ Midsommar ,” one of the key performances that signaled to the world she’s one of the finest young actresses of her generation. When will people finally learn to listen to Florence Pugh???

She is indeed a powerhouse, which makes it that much more glaringly obvious that Styles was not yet ready for this assignment. As an actor, he’s a terrific pop star. Granted, his character is meant to be empty and pretty, and he definitely looks the part with his slim suits and sleek, angular features. The camera loves him. But when it comes time for him to summon the emotional depth he needs for his more intense scenes opposite Pugh, he’s distractingly outmatched. (Interestingly, Shia LaBeouf was first cast in the role, but it’s hard to imagine him here as the earnest, young company man on the rise. His presence is too forceful, too unsettling.)

Styles’ appeal at least fits the premise of “Don’t Worry Darling,” in which a select group of forward-thinking families has moved to a planned Palm Springs community to create their own society in the mid-1950s. “It’s a different way. A better way,” Gemma Chan ’s glamorous Shelley assures her guests at one of the movie’s many soirees. Her husband is the town’s founder, Frank, and he’s played with the devious purr of a self-satisfied cult leader by Chris Pine .

Every day is the same, and that’s meant to be the allure. The men leave for work in the morning, lunchboxes in hand, on the way to top-secret jobs at the Victory Project, which they can’t discuss with their wives. The wives, meanwhile, send them off with a kiss before embarking on a day of vacuuming and bathtub scrubbing, then perhaps a dance class, and definitely some day drinking. Wilde herself plays Alice’s next-door neighbor and best friend, Bunny, with cat-eye makeup and a conspiratorial grin. She brings some enjoyable swagger and humor to this increasingly creepy world.

But little by little, Alice begins to question her reality. Her anxiety evolves from jittery paranoia to legitimate terror the more she discovers about this place, and Pugh makes it all palpable. Images come to her in impressionistic wisps and nightmares that startle her awake in the dark. In time, Wilde relies too heavily on these visuals: black-and-white clips of Busby Berkeley-style dancers, or close-ups of eyeballs. They grow repetitive and wearying rather than disturbing. The heavy-handed score from John Powell becomes more insistent and plodding, telling us how to feel at every turn. Whatever you’re thinking might be at play here, it’s probably more imaginative than what it turns out to be.

Once Alice finds the courage to confront Frank about her suspicions, though, it results in the film’s most powerful scene. Pugh and Pine verbally circle and jab at each other. Their chemistry crackles. Each is the other’s equal in terms of precision and technique. Finally, there’s real tension. More of this, please.

What’s ironic is that Frank and Shelley’s mantra for their worshipful citizens is one of control: the importance of keeping chaos at bay, of maintaining symmetry and unity, of living and working as one. But as “Don’t Worry Darling” reaches its climactic and unintentionally hilarious conclusion, Wilde loses her grasp on the material. The pacing is a little erratic throughout, but she rushes to uncover the ultimate mystery with a massive exposition dump that’s both dizzying and perplexing.

The craft on display is impeccable, though, from the gleaming cinematography from Matthew Libatique ( Darren Aronofsky ’s usual collaborator) to the flawless production design from Katie Byron to the to-die-for costumes from Arianne Phillips . The excellent work of all those behind-the-scenes folks and others at least makes “Don’t Worry Darling” consistently watchable, all the way up to its non-ending of an ending. Let’s just say you’ll have questions afterward, and those post-movie conversations will probably be more thoughtful and stimulating than the movie itself.

Now playing in theaters.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Don't Worry Darling (2022)

Rated R for sexuality, violent content and language.

123 minutes

Florence Pugh as Alice Chambers

Harry Styles as Jack Chambers

Chris Pine as Frank

Olivia Wilde as Bunny

Gemma Chan as Shelley

KiKi Layne as Margaret

Nick Kroll as Dean

Kate Berlant as Peg

Douglas Smith as Bill

Asif Ali as Peter

Olivia Wilde
Katie Silberman
Carey Van Dyke
Shane Van Dyke

Cinematographer

Matthew Libatique
Affonso Gonçalves
John Powell

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Darlings’ on Netflix, A Dark Hindi-Language Marital Dramedy

Where to stream:.

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A Netflix India original film, Darlings stars Bollywood superstar Alia Bhatt in a lead role for the streamer. Produced by Shah Rukh Khan’s production company Red Chillies Entertainment, the film is the latest in the established relationship between the company and the streamer. After a string of subpar Netflix India original films, does Darlings break through?

DARLINGS : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Badru (Alia Bhatt) and Hamza (Vijay Varma) are a lower-class married couple in India, whose love marriage was initially opposed by her mother (Shefali Shah). Three years into the marriage, Badru endures constant physical and emotional abuse from an alcoholic Hamza, but she stays in the marriage thinking that having a child would change him. But after she sees that he’ll never change, Badru and her mom concoct a plan to get rid of him forever.

What Will It Remind You Of?: The films end in very different places, but Badru’s plotting against her abusive husband is reminiscent of the central plot of 2017’s Til Death Do Us Part .

Performance Worth Watching: Vijay Varma’s performance as Badru’s abusive husband Hamza is equal parts entrancing and frightening. Starring opposite heavy hitters like Shefali Shan and Alia Bhatt, Varma holds his own and is menacing through and through.

Memorable Dialogue: When someone suggests that Badru divorce Hamza, her mother retaliates, citing that traditional Indian society has not yet come around on accepting women who choose divorce (a true statement, based on recent events). “The world has changed for the people on Twitter, not for people like us,” she says.

Sex and Skin: Nothing explicit to be found here.

Our Take: Darlings is a film that will make you laugh and cry in the same scene, by design. Following a woman stuck in an abusive marriage with the belief that she can change her husband, the film relies heavily on its three leads to carry the film’s message, and all three rise and deliver. Bhatt and Shah as a mother-daughter duo caught in a cycle of abuse are the lifeblood of the film — celebrating when they make personal gains and scheming up diabolical plans when their backs are against the wall. Varma holds his own against the two powerhouses as the central antagonist who always seems one step ahead of them.

But the film doesn’t really show Badru and Hamza’s relationship before things got bad, making it hard to understand why she loved him and put up with his behavior. The lack of character development hinders the film’s ability to convince audiences to sympathize with Badru, as we only ever see Hamza’s abuse and none of his love (outside of some occasional sweet talk). Darlings also has some pacing issues and could have been quite a bit shorter.

The Netflix film leans into comedy even when addressing a serious and topical subject, and most of the time it pulls off the balance. The result is a pretty engrossing film that will have you on the edge of your seat for most of its runtime.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite some flaws, the film is enthralling and the performances are strong.

Radhika Menon ( @menonrad ) is a TV-obsessed writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Vulture, Teen Vogue, Paste Magazine, and more. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.

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‘don’t worry darling’ review: florence pugh and harry styles can’t redeem olivia wilde’s stale reality-warp nightmare.

Chris Pine also stars in this mind-bending psycho-thriller (screening out of competition in Venice) set in an idyllic experimental community where Eisenhower-era values hide something sinister underneath.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Harry Styles and Florence Pugh in 'Don't Worry Darling'

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‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Review: Burning Down the Dollhouse

Florence Pugh plays a seemingly happy housewife whose world starts to crack apart in Olivia Wilde’s wobbly feminist gothic.

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By Manohla Dargis

Soon into the candy-colored feminist gothic “Don’t Worry Darling,” the director Olivia Wilde tips her hand. The movie takes place in a desert town, Victory, where everything looks nice and pretty, including the midcentury homes at the end of a cul-de-sac. It’s a friendly neighborhood and, given that the story is set in the 1950s, more diverse than you’d expect. But Wilde lets you know straightaway that there’s something off here: Everything is too tidy, too uniform and too, too perfect, including the women’s smiles.

Shy, bold, coquettish or mocking, a woman’s smile is richly signifying, something that Wilde, an actress turned director, certainly knows. It can be a mystery, an invitation, a deflection; sometimes it’s a reward, although one that comes with a cost. “It is the Sleeping Beauty’s smile that crowns the efforts of Prince Charming,” as Simone de Beauvoir writes in “ The Second Sex ,” the captive princess’ gratitude validating the prince’s heroism. The men in the movie aren’t charming or heroic, yet the women smile constantly, stretching their lipsticked mouths so wide, it’s a wonder their faces don’t crack.

One does, though it takes an interminably long time for the fissures to become seismic. Something starts troubling Alice (Florence Pugh) soon after the movie opens. She lives on the cul-de-sac, and like the other wives, she waves goodbye to her husband, Jack (Harry Styles), as he drives off to work. At night, cocktail in hand, Alice greets him, an impeccably coifed and dressed present that he eagerly unwraps. Much of the rest of the time, she cleans their house, polishing and vacuuming and washing — the cinematography is suitably bright and crisp — to the sound of a mystery man’s droning voice.

It’s a good, intriguing setup. Everything has been buffed to gleam, including Wilde, who plays Bunny, one of Alice’s neighbors. But you quickly notice the lack of mess, and especially the relative absence of those agents of chaos, a.k.a. children. There’s a touch of Stepford to this happy, shiny place, and a dash of comedy in its excesses. But it’s obvious and blunt, and early on when the wives wave bye, all following similar choreography, I flashed on the evil planet in Madeleine L’Engle’s novel “A Wrinkle in Time,” where everything — houses, adults and kids bouncing balls — looks eerily near-identical.

Alice has clearly tumbled down a weird rabbit hole. But one problem with “Don’t Worry Darling” is that Wilde is so taken with the world that she’s meticulously created — with its colorful veneer, martini glasses and James Bond poster — that she can’t let it go. So, as Alice floats through her dream-life, Wilde shows off this dollhouse, taking the character to a country club, onto a trolley and to visit Jack’s charismatic boss, Frank (a silkily menacing Chris Pine), whose home looks like a bachelor’s pad out of an antique issue of Playboy, except that this one comes with a wife, Shelley (Gemma Chan).

Frank and his male employees’ extreme deference to him suggest there’s more to this world than its glossy exterior, as do some period-inappropriate details, like the topless woman walking poolside in public and Alice wearing only a man’s dress shirt outside her front door. But even as the dissonance builds and Alice grasps that something is amiss, the movie stalls. Alice becomes lost in thought, looks puzzled, hallucinates, looks less puzzled and so on as Wilde embraces a visual motif — the circle — that, after the second, third, fourth time she deploys it, loses its punch and usefulness, becoming an unintended metaphor for a movie that keeps returning to the same point.

Wilde does some fine work here, despite hammering the same notes early and often. (The screenplay is by Katie Silberman, one of the writers of “ Booksmart ,” Wilde’s more successful feature directing debut.) But she isn’t a strong enough filmmaker at this point to navigate around the story’s weaknesses, much less transcend them. That’s especially tough on the actors, who — with the exception of Pine — deliver one-dimensional performances that never hint at what might be churning inside their attractive heads. For her part, Pugh is too vibrant, too alive and just too vigorously full-bodied from the get-go for a role that calls for a slow-dawning awakening.

If Pugh’s performance never gets beneath the shiny, satirical surface, it’s because there’s no place for it or her to go. The movie’s take on gender roles is stinging, but its targets are amorphous (yes, agreed, sexism is bad) and carefully nonpartisan, and its take on the prison-house of the traditional feminine role — what Betty Friedan called the “happy housewife heroine” in her 1963 classic “ The Feminine Mystique ” — is shallow. Many cycles of feminist progress and sexist backlash have happened since that book hit, but, fairly or not, the current political climate and assaults on women’s rights demand more than a clever mash-up between “Mad Men” and “Get Out.”

Don’t Worry Darling Rated R for sex, language and violence. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. In theaters.

Manohla Dargis has been the co-chief film critic of The Times since 2004. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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'Don't Worry Darling' Review: Olivia Wilde's Thriller Girlbosses When It Should've Sucker-Punched

Don't worry chronically online darlings, 'Don't Worry Darling' is just fine.

This review was originally a part of our Venice 2022 coverage .

Let’s pretend you’re not terminally online. Now let’s also add a setting that you only care about “Oscar movies” after the nominations have already been announced and have no preconception of film festival rollouts or campaigning for six months to win a trophy. Okay, now we can proceed with talking accurately (and not hysterically) about Olivia Wilde ’s Don’t Worry Darling , a new thriller starring Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, and Chris Pine .

Pugh plays Alice, a housewife in an idyllic Palm Springs-looking suburb where everyone drinks all night, and Alice and Jack (Styles) are perpetual honeymooners, always in the throes of passion. The cars and attire are straight from the 1950s and so are the gender roles and etiquette. In this community of 72 residents (and expanding!) the men work top secret jobs in the desert, all driving to work at the same time—straight into the desert on unpaved roads to a landing atop a hill. And if their wife asks what they do, a simple “you wouldn’t understand” or immediate oral sex—after walking in the front door after a hard day of who-knows-what—would suffice as an answer.

Pine is the architect of the community. He also hosts a one-hour radio show that’s broadcast into every home, specifically aimed at the wives who reside in Victory. The women do the housecleaning, cooking, and shop with ease. They simply shout “I’ll take it!” when presented with an object in a showing room, and it gets charged to a company account.

RELATED: Explaining the 'Don't Worry Darling' Drama to Your (Irish) Boomer Parents

Wilde, herself, plays Pugh’s best friend in Victory, whose husband ( Nick Kroll ) just got a promotion that came with a pinky ring blessed by Pine. And Gemma Chan appears as Pine’s supportive wife and dance instructor to the housewives, she teaches them not just to dance but a refrain about staying in line. Of course, nothing is as it seems. Once Alice sees (or maybe hallucinates) a plane crash in the mountains, followed by a suicide atop one of the beautiful homes, she starts to ask questions. And Pine’s personality essentially steps in to say, “debate me.”

Any more info than that will give away too much. Though Don’t Worry Darling isn’t so much a twisty movie as it is a withholding movie. Which is somewhat fair because whatever is happening comes via obvious gaslighting. But it’s also a bit of a cop-out. The third act reveal might have actually better served the movie to come earlier in the second act to explain more of the ins and outs between Alice and Jack. And it would also clear up certain bad faith readings on the film you might find if you Google an explanation.

Pause. Let’s move back to where the audience of this is not terminally online. While most of the interesting discussion of Don’t Worry Darling will concern the reveal of what’s really going on, without spoiling that, let me get to what I think works and doesn’t work. First, none of Darling works at all without such a committed performance from Pugh. She brings it her all like she’s in an old-fashioned Hitchcockian thriller (except with orgasms instead of innuendo!). She’s alluring, panicked, frightened, disillusioned, and yassified. Whether or not you think that the movie works or doesn’t, there’s no world in which this works better without her and any carbon copy movie with another actress probably fares worse. Pine, too, understands the assignment, though he has less to play with. There’s a better version of Darling that includes more backstory for him that really drives home the “Whose time is it? Our time!” refrain he has with Styles. Continuing some wins, the costumes and production design are a mid-century catalog that you’d want to yell “I’d take it!” on cloud credit, too. And Matthew Libatique mixes different types of photography to great effect—from Busby Berkeley legs, to vanity mirrors, to desert-dust kickups.

Simply put, it’s a fun movie to look at and Wilde, Pugh, and Pine are all able to significantly string intrigue. But it is lacking in a complete experience because it holds its cards a little too long, while treading some familiar territory in the lead-up. This is a softer Black Mirror update of The Stepford Wives , but what does make it modern could use a little earlier attention, especially in regards to the men in Victory. For all the press quotes that are out there to help us along, Darling is actually too gun-shy at looking directly at modern toxic masculinity. It’s more comfortable in the 50s mold. Perhaps this is to spare Styles' heartthrob status, but you can tell that Pine would be willing to go anywhere that is required in this world. And it’s too bad he doesn’t get to go deeper. Perhaps this is because the 50s style is so intoxicating, the desire to actually peer into the ugliness was more muted than it should be.

Don’t Worry Darling is best as a surface-level matinée thriller with a few follow-up ahas. But it doesn’t sting like it should in the end. Darling chooses to girlboss when it could’ve sucker punched. But it’s still way more watchable than many terminally online people already believe it to be.

Don't Worry Darling is in theaters now.

Cast & crew
User reviews

Shefali Shah, Alia Bhatt, Vijay Varma, and Roshan Mathew in Darlings (2022)

It follows the lives of two women as they find courage and love in exceptional circumstances. It follows the lives of two women as they find courage and love in exceptional circumstances. It follows the lives of two women as they find courage and love in exceptional circumstances.

Jasmeet K Reen
Parveez Sheikh
Vijay Maurya
Shefali Shah
Vijay Varma
304 User reviews
35 Critic reviews
22 wins & 50 nominations

Badrunissa Sheikh

Shamshunissa

Hamza Sheikh

Police Inspector Raja Ram Tawde

Police Officer Jadhav

(as Pooja Swaroop)
Childhood Badru
(as Inayah Chowdhary)

(as Lovekush Kundu)
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The butcher
(uncredited)
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Trivia Alia Bhatt's first production from her own production house, Eternal Sunshines.

User reviews 304

KeithGopinath
Aug 6, 2022
How long is Darlings? Powered by Alexa
August 5, 2022 (United States)
Official Netflix
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Eternal Sunshine Productions
Red Chillies Entertainment
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₹248,000,000 (estimated)

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Runtime 2 hours 13 minutes
Dolby Digital

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Darlings Review : A satirical portrayal of love and abuse in a marriage

In-depth analysis.

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Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive . Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.

Somnath Chakravarty 11 511 days ago

The reviewer should have mentioned Vijay Verma's sublime performance as well.

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A Well Made Satirical and Thought Provoking Dark Comedy.

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Enjoyed the movie, new concept, small actors, good direction

Hope 3203 627 days ago

Nice movie.. A serious issue of domestic violence is dealt with real scenarios, dilemmas and dollops of humor.. All the actors have played their role very well making it a movie worth watching..

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Alia 0 Shefali 5 Movie 0

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Don't Worry Darling review: Florence Pugh and Harry Styles get lost in Shangri-La

Olivia Wilde's psychological thriller prizes midcentury style over sense.

Behold the plight of the new desperate housewife: She is trapped in something — a sitcom ( Kevin Can F**k Himself ), a metaverse ( WandaVision ), or like Florence Pugh 's Alice in Don't Worry Darling , a sun-baked suburban idyll so dreamy, it's surely too good to be true. Unfortunately, she's also preceded by innumerable other films that have explored this black-mirror territory before: The Stepford Wives , Pleasantville , The Truman Show . That familiarity drains much of the tension and mystery from Darling , a movie high on snazzy midcentury style but considerably less bothered by the mechanics of cohesive storytelling.

In a world that looks like a glossy palm-tree-dotted cross between Norman Rockwell and Mad Men , Alice and Jack (the impish, dimpled pop star Harry Styles ) are the envy of their friends, the kind of couple who can barely make it through a cocktail party or even breakfast without tearing each other's clothes off. They're well-off financially too, though the signifiers of their wealth — the impeccable wardrobe, the showcase home, the finned sedan gleaming in the driveway — match their neighbors' almost exactly; everyone's a winner here. That's because they're all part of some grand experiment called the Victory Project, helmed by a self-styled guru named Frank ( Chris Pine , a wolf in Rat Pack clothing) and predicated on some vague principle few residents seem willing to explain or even examine too closely, except that it involves the "development of progressive materials."

In this retrograde Shangri-La, it's every husband's duty to head off to Victory headquarters in those shiny cars and do whatever is they do, and the wives to be waiting at home when they're done with a highball and a smile. Nobody is allowed to venture outside town limits, but who has time for wandering when there's already so much to do? Prep the pot roast, scrub the bathtub spotless, take remedial ballet lessons or lay by the communal pool. Some, like Olivia Wilde 's imperious Bunny and Frank's glacial, gorgeous wife ( Eternals ' Gemma Chan ) are born for this gilded cage; others — particularly one increasingly desperate outlier ( If Beale Street Could Talk 's KiKi Layne) — can't seem to stop asking questions that no one, except maybe Alice, wants the answers to.

Wilde is also the director, and Darling is her darling: a polished candy-apple take on cracked utopia, encased in blinding Southern California sunlight and bright vintage pop ditties. At least some credit for the movie's distinctive look is due to veteran cinematographer Matthew Libatique ( Black Swan , A Star Is Born ), a frequent collaborator of Darren Aronofsky and Spike Lee who gives the film its fever-dream desert sheen. And spare some blame for the wobbling script, on which three writers share story credit; unlike Wilde's charmingly ramshackle 2019 debut Booksmart , the machinations here are more ambitiously outlined and story-driven, and as Darling goes along, the Edsel wheels, as it were, begin to come off.

The red flags in Victory surface early and often, like voles on a country-club lawn: not just Frank's purring low-grade malevolence or the prop plane that seems to fall out of a clear blue sky, but the jarring, jittery visions that surface like unwelcome late-night transmissions in Alice's mind. Pugh, the 26-year-old British actress whose fierce emotional intelligence belies her doll-like prettiness in films like Midsommar and Little Women (for which she received her first Oscar nod), gives Alice as much inner life as the skittering screenplay allows, and Styles, at least, looks fantastic in a suit. But the movie, whatever its pile of ideas about love, gender constructs, and modern living, never really transcends Stepford mood-board pastiche. It's all nefarious and gorgeous, Darling, and strictly nonsense in the end. Grade: B–

Darlings review – an interesting exploration of female agency in an abusive relationship

This review of the Netflix film Darlings does not contain spoilers

Life has a way of coming full circle for everyone. Most of the time, parents find themselves in similar situations vicariously through their children. Their past finds a way to the present and creates an even worse situation. Director Jasmeet K. Reen raises the bar for dark comedies with Darlings . Considering that this is her directorial debut, the story is a bit heavy, but the entire cast does an exceptional job in telling this story. The subject of emotional and physical abuse from a partner has become more mainstream in media because there is a need to share these stories. No matter how painful they may be, these stories help other victims share theirs. This film follows Badru (Alia Bhatt) and her abusive, alcoholic husband Hamza (Vijay Varma) as they navigate their destructive marriage.

The honeymoon phase at the beginning is quickly shown to show the power dynamic between the two. Badru was more forthright and hotheaded, while Hamza was sweet and understanding. It quickly cuts to three years later, and we see that their dynamic has drastically changed. Their apartment is darkly lit, and there is this unease within the room. The roles have changed because of the conditioning through marriage. He is supposed to be the man of the house, the supporter, the strength that carries the family, and he projects those insecurities on Badru. When Hamza goes to work, it’s not his ideal position and he is demeaned in the workplace. So, naturally, he goes home to Badru to assert his dominance and have some control in his life. He blames the alcohol to justify his actions and so does Badru, which is incredibly heartbreaking to watch.

Badru truly loves Hamza, and that is why it’s so hard for her to leave him. Any victim will tell you that it is incredibly difficult to leave the person you love even though they are abusing you. We see the pain and the hurt that Badru endures, but she continuously goes back to him, because she also blames the alcohol. Until it’s not the alcohol. Everyone around her tries to help her get through this with Hamza, and halfway through is where the drama turns into a very dark comedy. People can approach situations in different ways and that is what Badru does in this movie. It truly does depend on your sense of humour or how you feel about the subject matter in order to appreciate the angle of this movie.

Darlings is a strong directorial debut from Reen and will surprise many people. It is a bit hard to watch at times, but it’s necessary. There are different perspectives shown on domestic violence and it helps viewers process all situations. The cast all work together quite well to deliver this story as authentically as possible for viewers to understand how difficult living with an abuser can be. There were some choices made by Reen that surprised me but made the movie interesting to watch in the second half. It’s impressive because of how much care went into telling this story uniquely and honestly in a way that everyone can resonate with. Reen makes the viewers connect with these characters and that’s the important part of telling this story.

What do you think of the Netflix film Darlings? Comment below.

You can watch this film with a subscription to Netflix.

Article by Amanda Guarragi

Amanda Guarragi joined Ready Steady Cut as an Entertainment Writer in June 2022. She is a Toronto-based film critic who has covered TIFF, Sundance Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, and HorrorFest International. Amanda is also a growing YouTuber, with her channel Candid Cinema growing in popularity.

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Darlings Review: Alia Bhatt Netflix Movie Doesn’t Understand What ‘Dark Comedy’ Is

More a comedy of errors than the black comedy revenge thriller it desires to be..

Photo Credit: Netflix

Alia Bhatt and Shefali Shah in Darlings

Darlings is released August 5 at 12:30pm IST on Netflix in India
Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma, Roshan Mathew lead Darlings cast
Darlings produced by SRK’s Red Chillies, Bhatt’s Eternal Sunshine

Darlings — the new Alia Bhatt movie, out Friday on Netflix — purports to be a black comedy revenge thriller. In it, a young woman (Bhatt) stuck in an abusive marriage seeks vengeance for the years of violence afflicted on her by her alcoholic husband (Vijay Varma). When it comes to time spent though, the movie is weirdly split evenly between the torture Bhatt's character goes through, and the plans she concocts after she's pushed past her breaking point. But not only does it make you wait too long for the kicker — it takes half of the movie's 134-minute runtime — Darlings doesn't really know how to raise the stakes and which direction to head in even after that pivotal moment. It ambles on as previously, with the narrative momentum never really picking up.

On one level, that's because Darlings — directed by feature debutante Jasmeet K. Reen, off a screenplay she co-wrote with Parveez Sheikh (Queen, BellBottom ) — is more a comedy of errors than a dark comedy honestly. At times, it's more like a Hrishikesh Mukherjee movie, say Gol Maal , than a proper black comedy revenge thriller in its vein, à la Promising Young Woman . Leading up to release, the cast and crew of Darlings attempted to “educate” audiences on what the phrase dark comedy means. But as the Netflix film shows, they themselves do not understand it either. This results in a tonal imbalance, with Darlings unnecessarily shifting between various genres. If you're making a dark comedy as you purport, everything needs to follow in that direction from minute 1.

Darlings' inability to pick a lane proves that Bollywood is ultimately too afraid to actually get dark. But at times, it's not even about big changes — but rather, the order of mixing the ingredients. Take for instance, a character who hides their trauma behind dialogues that come across as jokey. Except we only learn this towards the end when the Netflix movie reveals said character's past. Darlings would have been better off if it gave us this reveal early on. Because then, this character's words all movie would be taken as comedic by other characters, but they would take a much darker meaning for the audience. By doing the opposite, the lines are comedic for us too. It's failures like these that ultimately keep Darlings from being what it desires to be.

Everything You Need to Know About Darlings

Three years out of the honeymoon phase and settled in a chawl in Southeast Mumbai's Byculla neighbourhood, Badrunissa “Badru” Shaikh, née Ansari ( Bhatt ) is regularly beat upon by her abusive husband, Hamza Shaikh ( Varma ). To the point that those who live around them have gotten used to the sounds emanating from their household each night. Badru believes Hamza's alcohol consumption — his day begins with a shot — is part of the problem. And it's implied that his government job, where he works as a ticket collector for the Railways, but is also made to clean his boss's toilet, contributes to his frustrations, which he then takes out on his wife. Make no mistake though: Hamza is the villain on Darlings, as he manipulates Badru's emotions and spins facts to suit himself.

While her mother Shamshunissa “Shamshu” Ansari ( Shefali Shah ) has been telling Badru she needs to get away from Hamza from day one, Badru believes she can fix him. Darlings never really clarifies if it's because she loves him in a weird sort of way, or whether if it's because she's devoted to her big-picture plan. Badru has years of her life planned out: first kid in 2020, a big house in 2021, a second baby in 2022, and a car in 2024. It's why she keeps pushing Hamza to sign on the dotted line for a builder's proposed redevelopment plan (that would no doubt gentrify the place and push them out, though the Netflix movie never really addresses that). That only serves to anger Hamza more though, and Badru realises she must come up with a plan to fix him for good.

But no matter what she tries, Hamza shows no inclination to do better except for empty promises. And when his anger goes too far one night, Badru accepts that it's impossible to change her husband. Well, for 10 minutes anyway. Darlings has that peculiar problem where its protagonist keeps swinging back and forth between Hamza-has-gone-too-far and I-still-care-for-Hamza. While Badru feels too passive for the first hour, she's too aimless for the second one, even as the character supposedly comes into her own. But the character's transformation — from a naive and innocent young woman to powerful, motivated, and in control — is repeatedly undermined by the Netflix movie's desire to craft comedic bits, many of which feature a police officer (Vijay Maurya).

Darlings, Morbius , The Sandman, and More on Netflix in August

Mild plot spoilers follow.

And it's how Darlings turns into a comedy of errors. Early into the second act, as Badru contemplates how to fix her husband, her mother says that she should just kill him. When Shamshu gets a call from the police a minute later, the mother-daughter duo goes into a panic, thinking the police somehow overheard them. 🤦‍♀️ The scene that follows belongs more in Hera Pheri . Later, after Badru has decided to teach Hamza a lesson, Hamza's boss — the same guy who makes him clean toilets — begins inquiring about him. The scene that follows also belongs more in Hera Pheri. Even later, as Badru wonders what to do with Hamza (who's sitting tied to a chair in their flat), the mother and daughter decide to file a missing person's complaint. Why bring that kind of spotlight onto yourself?

The only thing that saves them from being caught red-handed is a naive decision by Zulfi ( Roshan Mathew ), a young man who hovers around the Shaikhs and Ansaris, much like he hovers over the Netflix film. Mathew doesn't need to exist in this story, as his presence is more or less tertiary to Darlings. Zulfi is important to the plot and its machinations, but he doesn't have much to do.

Beyond the comedic misapplication, what dooms Darlings is its misunderstanding of narrative approach and character continuity. After Hamza falsely promises to rectify his ways, a following scene is framed in a lovey-dovey way, replete with a musical montage. It's understandable that Badru might be deluding herself, but why is the movie deluded too? Elsewhere, while the Netflix movie never explores the trauma some characters carry, with most others, it's left at the doorstep. They don't carry their trauma — as they rightly would — from scene to scene. This is crucial for the movie as it allows to do its fluffy comedic bits, but it creates a dissonance in the mind of the audience.

Like the execution of the movie's ideas, the ending too is muddled. On one hand, it indicates that Darlings is a moral universe. But in its search for an empowering ending — we get a full screen PSA, inside a movie — the Netflix movie essentially turns Badru into Alia Bhatt. At least Darlings ends at the cinemas. Something the film was once designed for — you can sense the “interval” that was timed to Badru's “transformation” — before it got moved to streaming. It's interesting that Netflix ended up being the destination, because Shah Rukh Khan-owned Red Chillies is a producer here.

Darlings to Laal Singh Chaddha , the 7 Biggest Movies in August

Alia Bhatt and Vijay Varma in Darlings Photo Credit: Netflix

In late 2017, Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings personally flew down to court Shah Rukh Khan , getting his banner Red Chillies to produce films and series for its platform. I imagine that was in the hopes that such a deal might one day lead to a Netflix film with India's darling. That dream never materialised, with the deal dying a slow death as Red Chillies produced bottom of the barrel content for Netflix — remember the Emraan Hashmi-led Bard of Blood , the zombie horror miniseries Betaal , or the Bobby Deol-led crime thriller Class of ‘83 ? — over the years.

While Darlings might seem like a return to those days, it (most likely) isn't. Red Chillies hasn't produced an original for Netflix since 2020. And more importantly on Darlings, it's a co-producer alongside Eternal Sunshine, the new banner of first-time producer Bhatt. Darlings is the start of its Alia Bhatt business — and Netflix is no doubt praying that this collaboration turns out to be more fruitful than the last one.

Darlings is released Friday, August 5 at 12:30pm IST on Netflix worldwide.

Release Date 5 August 2022
Language Hindi
Genre Comedy, Drama, Thriller
Cast Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma, Roshan Mathew, Rajesh Sharma, Vijay Maurya, Kiran Karmarkar, Pooja Swaroop, Santosh Juvekar
Director Jasmeet K. Reen
Producer Gauri Khan, Alia Bhatt, Gaurav Verma

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'Darlings' movie review: Alia Bhatt lights up this dark comedy

A still from the trailer. (Photo | Netflix @ Twitter)

Darlings have a cast to kill for. Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma and Roshan Mathew headline this seductive black comedy set in Mumbai. But that’s just the start. Equally fascinating, at least to me, are the supporting players who populate the world of this film. Vijay Maurya, Rajesh Sharma, Puja Swarup, Kiran Karmarkar and Ajit Kelkar turn up in minor parts and make them memorable. Even in unimportant scenes, your eye is never bored. Darlings is a reminder that, though Hindi cinema may be having a generally drab year, it’s not for a lack of human resources.

The film opens with a short, smart prologue. Badrunissa (Alia Bhatt) rushes to a movie date with her boyfriend, Hamza (Vijay Varma). She waits and waits, missing the show. He turns up late, bearing a teddy bear and apologizing. “Government job leke aya (I found a government job),” he tells her. “Let’s get married.” Badru brightens up, hugging him. The couple looks happy though we already know what’s coming. It’s also notable, I think, that the scene unfolds outside a famous multiplex in Mumbai. Having missed a film, Badru’s life proceeds to get decidedly un-filmy.

My first film as a producer!!! So excited nervous thrilled emotional to share it with you!!!! DARLINGS TRAILER OUT NOW! https://t.co/EqBIAYNAh7 — Alia Bhatt (@aliaa08) July 25, 2022

When we meet her next, Badru is three years into an abusive marriage. Hamza, a jerk and an alcoholic, routinely hits his wife, triggered by anything from slips in her cooking to a genuine concern for his well-being. He’s an inept ticket examiner by profession, projecting—it is suggested—his anger and frustration from work on his quietly suffering wife. Badru tries everything to get him to change: de-addiction pills, titillation, even a child. One day, pushed beyond all fathomable limits, she takes her husband hostage.

Darlings (Photo | Alia Bhatt @ Instagram)

Going by the trailer of Darlings, you’d expect this twist to come much earlier on in the film. Crime comedies, after all, are all about the payoff. But director Jasmeet K Reen is loath to jump the gun. Teaming with co-writer Parveez Sheikh, she takes time delineating the patterns of abuse. The first hour is a gripping yet excruciating loop of Hamza’s violations of his wife. He’s a baiter and a master manipulator, frighteningly aware of his wife’s hopes and dreams and emotional weak points and using them to his advantage. Delicately, without ever really blaming her, the film shows how far Badru has internalized his behaviour. Shamsu (Shefali Shah), Badru’s acerbic, hard-bitten mother, repeatedly tells her to leave him. But she can’t. Class no doubt plays a part in it. “Things have changed for folks on Twitter,” Shamsu tells a cop at one point. “Not for us.”

Alia is brilliant as Badrunissa. As in Gully Boy (2019) and Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022), her Bombaiyaa accent is spot-on (with an eccentric ‘S’ added to the ends of English words). While her characters in the aforementioned films were defined by their assertiveness, Badru is a bit of a muddle. Even after she has restrained, drugged up and tortured Hamza, she remains weirdly open to his machinations and appeals (or gives a good impression of it). Shefali is entertaining as Shamsu, “Badappan gaya kan khujane,” she shoots—though the winner, clearly, is Vijay Varma. There are more layers to his Hamza than all one-note abusive husbands from Hindi films combined. He’s a creature of pauses and tics. His menace comes in bursts. Nana Patekar would be proud.

Badrunissa (Alia Bhatt) from the movie Darling

Cinematographer Anil Mehta works masterfully within limited spaces and settings. Notice how, in the early stages of the film, he retains his angles inside Hamza and Badru’s home, and changes them up only after the dynamics of this cramped household have shifted. The intricacies of Chawl's life are emphasised; you get a sense of a hundred small hustles running parallelly. The songs, too, are a banger, especially the wild and swooning ‘Pleaj!’ by Mika Singh.

ALSO READ | Shah Rukh Khan sang Darlings song ‘La Ilaaj’ on phone, wanted it for himself: Vishal

The second half loses some of its edgy focus. Having pushed its characters to a corner, the film struggles to bail them out. Jasmeet appears to be searching for a clean finish, despite the obvious messiness of what’s unfolding onscreen. Certain indulgences, like portraying the cop characters in strictly comic terms, could’ve been avoided. On the whole, though, Darlings entices and thrills, even if I wish the film had gone all out. I wish it had killed its darlings.

Director: Jasmeet K Reen Cast: Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma, Vijay Maurya, Rajesh Sharma, Puja Swarup Streaming on: Netflix Rating: 3.5

(This review originally appeared on cinemaexpress.com )

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Darlings [2022] Review – A dark comedy about a woman finding her own agency

Dark comedy can be a tricky genre. While it permits a filmmaker the creative freedom needed for their ideas to flourish, it also allows them to play with character motivations, leading their dark and/or grey nature to weave into the tapestry that they have created. With Darlings (2022), director Jasmeet K Reen and co-writer Parveez Sheikh turn a Mumbai chawl into a place that entirely operates within our realities but is heightened by a sense of extremities.

It has been three years since Badru (Alia Bhatt) and Humza (Vijay Varma) have been married and from the looks of it, not everything is happy in paradise. A drunk Humza beats her for a trivial mistake, but, because there is love involved, she forgives him and feeds him her ‘world’s best omelet’ the very next day.

Now Badru feels like a fairly reasonable woman who wouldn’t take anyone’s shit, but when it comes to having her own agency in front of her star-crossed lover, she doesn’t seem to have one. Unlike her mother (Shefali Shah) – the single woman who lives just a gaze away from Badru’s window, constantly plodding her daughter to either leave the man, kill him, and/or move in with her, Badru constantly finds reasons for Humza behaving a certain way.

Basically, she blames the alcohol for him being abusive, and since she is someone who likes to plan everything out in life, on her mother’s insistence she plots to mix a healthy dose of anti-abuse in his food. As expected, things don’t go according to plan and she is beaten again. However, the cycle of forgiving him also continues. So, this time, she plans to conceive a child believing that he will leave alcohol for good when the baby comes into their life – unaware that the man only has selfish motives behind that too.

Darlings really picks up when a first police complaint against Humza is lodged. Zulfi (Roshan Matthew) – an aspiring writer who hangs around Badru’s mother’s house helping her out with things, couldn’t take the abuse anymore. While he is there to help the strong, single woman start a cooking service with the help of her daughter, he is a relatively reasonable man who understands what’s wrong.

This complaint opens the film’s conflict for more intriguing narrative turns. However, the film constantly feels like it is taking 2 steps backward for every step forward. The delicious and biting progression is wasted on badly edited sequences that fail to capitalize on its extremely pulpy dark comedic aspects. It also doesn’t help that the film only feels truly alive for a short period of time in the second half; housebound with Badru, who, for the first time in her life – doesn’t have a plan.

Sure there are aspects that work – a story about a woman in love, dejected and constantly manipulated into believing a man’s word, failing to have her own say in things is ripe for the black comedy treatment. Writer Parveez Sheikh and director Jasmeet K Reen seem to have the right elements to tell this story, but their over-resilience in exposition – note that the story of the Scorpio and the Frog is repeated twice, doesn’t help their cause.

I personally think that black comedies work if they know when and how to change their tone. For instance, a movie like Parasite moves from comedic to thriller mode with ease. However, a film like Darlings constantly oscillates in between. When shit hits the fan, Reen is unable to weave her comedic bits with the more chaotic ones. This leads to the narrative losing its tension quite easily. I also did not like that an interaction in the film about ‘horror-comedies’ and ‘mixing tones’ in a story is inserted just to critic-proof it.

Darlings leads towards a climax that feels fairly predictable, making the use of a heightened sense of realism, feel like a sort of distraction and a detour, rather than taking an original approach to a dark and complex underpinning. It also doesn’t help that in a story about women, the most memorable turn comes from Vijay Varma. Playing the abusive, alcoholic husband, Varma changes gears from being an absolute sweetheart to a manipulative asshole within seconds, making us believe that Badru not being able to stand on her own is not something she does deliberately.

However, not much works for the movie otherwise. Alia and Shefali have great chemistry together, but it’s the actors who give the character more gravitas and not the writing itself. Nitin Baid’s editing is also one of the culprits here as you can clearly see the repetition that ends up being more of a flack than an element that moves the story forward.

Overall, Darlings is an ambitious production that puts the right question and the right ways to deal with men who feel like the ‘good people’ on the surface but are demons in plain sight. However, I am not sure if it has the right tools to get there.

Also, Read – Shamshera (2022) Review: An Outdated & Exhausting Film Without Salvation

Darlings trailer.

Darlings (2022) Movie Links – IMDb , Wikipedia Darlings (2022) Movie Cast – Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma, Roshan Matthew

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One of my favorite feel-good movies just crashed the Netflix top 10 — and it’s 95% on Rotten Tomatoes

‘The Peanut Butter Falcon’ is guaranteed to improve your mood

(L-R) Zack Gottsagen as Zak, Dakota Johnson as Eleanor and Shia LaBeouf as Tyler in

Sometimes the right movie comes along at the right time, and that was definitely the case for me with “The Peanut Butter Falcon." This delightful comedy-drama appeared at a period in my life when I needed a little boost, and it provided just that.

The movie celebrates its 5th anniversary later this year and has recently arrived on Netflix U.S. where it’s making quite an impression. As of Thursday, May 9, “The Peanut Butter Falcon” is ranked No.6 in the Netflix most-watched list ahead of high-profile favorites like “Blended” and “The Equalizer” as well as pacing ahead of the terrible blockbuster “The Great Wall” (seriously, why is that in the streamer's top 10?)

“The Peanut Butter Falcon” flew a little under the radar upon release in 2019, so I’m delighted it’s getting a richly deserved warm reception on Netflix. But if you want to know more before adding it to your watchlist, here’s why you need to watch this feel-good movie…

What is ‘The Peanut Butter Falcon’ about?

“The Peanut Butter Falcon” focuses on the unlikely friendship between a trio of likable characters. The heart of the movie is Zak (Zack Gottsagen), a young man with Down syndrome, who runs away from his state-run care facility to chase an outlandish dream of becoming a professional wrestler under the guidance of his hero, The Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church).

On the road, Zak meets Tyler (Shia LaBeouf), a small-time crook on the run from the law, and the two become fast friends. Tyler teaches Zak various life skills and takes up a role as his coach. Meanwhile, in pursuit of Zak is Eleanor (Dakota Johnson), a kind nursing home employee, who is convinced to join the pair on their journey.

Alongside its three leads, “The Peanut Butter Falcon” also features John Hawkes, Bruce Dern, Jon Bernthal and even rapper Yelawolf. It’s an eccentric cast, and the range of talent involved suits the movie’s "band of misfits coming together" vibe.

‘The Peanut Butter Falcon’ reviews — here’s why critics love it

“The Peanut Butter Falcon” was warmly embraced by critics. It holds an impressive 95% rating on the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes , and its audience score is even higher at 96%. Those are the highest scores of any movie currently in the Netflix top 10, which is a real testament to the quality of this comedy-drama.

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Critics were particularly impressed with the performance of Shia LaBeouf. “This is LaBeouf at his best, stripped down to his bare elements and bookended by two luminous performances from Gottsagen and Johnson,” said Beth Webb of E mpire Magazine .

The Wrap ’s Yolanda Machado called it “A beautiful story about human connection, heroes, and finding the joy of simply living your truth” and Peter Debruge of Variety labeled it “A feel-good niche indie with its priorities in the right place.”

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle was a little more mixed, but overall fell on the positive side of the scale: “‘The Peanut Butter Falcon’ is a nice little movie that barely goes anywhere, but audiences, in a certain mood, might be willing to drift along with it.”

Should you stream ‘The Peanut Butter Falcon’ on Netflix?

The short answer is yes, you should 100% stream “The Peanut Butter Falcon” on Netflix.

It’s the perfect pick when you’ve had a less-than-stellar day and want a movie that will put a big smile on your face. Granted, its slow(ish) pacing might not appeal to viewers demanding a twist-every-minute thrill ride, but give it a chance and the movie’s engaging characters brought to life by wonderful performances will stay with you long after the credits roll. So long as you’re in the mood for something a little low-stakes, it’s hard to believe you won’t also come to love this charming flick.

“The Peanut Butter Falcon” isn’t the only critical darling that has arrived on Netflix this month. Check out our roundup of all the new to Netflix movies with high RT scores for even more top movies on the world's most popular streaming service .

More from Tom's Guide

Disney Plus, Max and Hulu are joining forces for a mega streaming bundle
Netflix top 10 movies — here’s the 3 worth watching right now
5 new to Max movies with 90% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes

Rory is an Entertainment Editor at Tom’s Guide based in the UK. He covers a wide range of topics but with a particular focus on gaming and streaming. When he’s not reviewing the latest games, searching for hidden gems on Netflix, or writing hot takes on new gaming hardware, TV shows and movies, he can be found attending music festivals and getting far too emotionally invested in his favorite football team.

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30 Best Movies On Netflix Right Now (May 2024)

10 best bollywood movies of 2023, 15 best hindi movies on amazon prime right now.

Bollywood movies on Netflix include diverse genres beyond musicals, like dramas and thrillers.
Bollywood movies refer to Hindi-language films, not all Indian films, with colorful costumes and music.
Hits like RRR showcase Telugu cinema on Netflix, differentiating from Bollywood but still worth exploring.

There are a lot of great Bollywood movies on Netflix . It is important to distinguish between Bollywood movies and other similar India-based movies because they are two very different things. While Bollywood movies are made in India, not all movies there are Bollywood. An example is RRR , the massive 2023 hit that is not a Bollywood movie, but is a Telugu-language movie made in India, and is known as Tollywood. However, while there is a difference, there are a lot of great Bollywood movies on the streaming service.

Bollywood movies are mostly used to describe Hindi-language movies. The word combines Bombay, where many of the movies are made, with Hollywood. This gives them the name Bollywood, and the movies are a lot more varied than some people might expect. Bollywood movies are often characterized by bright-colored costumes and musical numbers, but there are also several dramas, horror movies, and thrillers under the banner.

From Marriage Story to Glass and They Cloned Tyrone, here are our picks for the best movies on Netflix for everyone to enjoy this month.

15 Laapataa Ladies (2024)

A comedy drama by director kiran rao, laapataa ladies (2024).

Four spirited women from a small Indian village embark on an adventurous road trip to Goa to attend a famous music festival, inadvertently leaving their worries behind. As they navigate unexpected detours and new experiences, they discover freedom, friendship, and the courage to confront their personal and societal challenges.

WATCH NOW ON NETFLIX

Laapataa Ladies is a Hindi-language comedy-drama that combines humor with drama, using a twisting narrative about a newly married husband who accidentally loses his veiled wife on a crowded train. This leads to what one might expect, with a case of mistaken identity leading to comedy moments. He ends up accidentally bringing home a different veiled bride, which leads to humor, heartache, and the search for identity as the lost bride seeks to find her way back while the mistaken bride wants to escape from her past.

This Bollywood comedy-drama was a hit among critics, and it ended up with a perfect 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes . Audiences loved it just as much, giving it a very high 96% average rating as well. This is even more impressive since it was only Kiran Rao's second directed movie (following Dhobi Ghat ). It premiered at the 48th Toronto International Film Festival in 2023 and hit theaters in March 2024. It has since been added to streaming services, and remains one of the highest-rated Bollywood movies on Netflix.

14 PK (2014)

A science fiction comedy by director rajkumar hirani.

PK is the follow-up Bollywood film from Rajkumar Hirani and Abhijat Joshi, the team who created the successful 3 Idiots in 2009. The movie kicks off when a nude male alien humanoid lands on Earth in India on a research mission. However, he loses his remote to summon his spaceship and ends up stranded on the planet. Jaggu, a heartbroken woman, sets out to become a journalist and starts investigating the rumored alien when she finds him handing out pamphlets about a missing God.

The movie is named after the alien, who is nicknamed PK, meaning drunk.

The movie is named after the alien, who is nicknamed PK, meaning drunk, because people mistake his quirky personality for intoxication. The movie was so successful that it even resulted in Disney's India business creating a mobile game based on the film. The movie received positive reviews from critics and most praised Aamir Khan's performance as PK. PK ranks as the seventh highest-grossing Bollywood movie of all time (via Bollywood Hungama ) and it won two Filmfare Awards (Best Screenplay, Best Dialogue).

13 Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998)

A musical romance by director karan johar, kuch kuch hota hai (1998).

*Availability in US

Not available

Fans of Shah Rakh Khan have a great option because one of the best Bollywood movies on Netflix is his musical from 1998, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai . The film is a musical romance that combines two love triangles set years apart. The first story is about friends on a college campus and the second is about a widower's young daughter who wants to reunite her dead and his old friend. Jatin-Lalit composed the movie's music, and it ended up as the year's best-selling Bollywood soundtrack (via Box Office India ).

With Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol in the cast, the movie was a huge box office success as expected. It was also a huge success when it was released worldwide and displays the musical excitement of Bollywood cinema. On top of that, it matched the commercial success by also being a massive award winner at the end of the year. The movie won eight awards at the Filmfare Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, Best, Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor (for Salman Khan), and Best Supporting Actress.

12 Dunki (2023)

A comedy drama by director rajkumar hirani.

Dunki is a comedy-drama film directed by Rajkumar Hirani that was released in 2023. A group of friends living in a rural town in India dream of traveling to England, but a lack of resources leaves them trapped at home - until a soldier offers them an opportunity to travel abroad.

Dunki is another of the best Bollywood movies on Netflix with Shah Rukh Khan in the lead role. This is a newer movie release, hitting in 2023, where SRK plays Hardy, a man who gets a phone call from a UK immigration lawyer who asks for help in transporting an elderly woman named Manu (who is also his ex-lover) back to India through the Dunki route, which will sneak her over the border without an Indian visa . The movie then flips back to 1995 to tell Manu and Hardy's story.

Dunki is Khan's third-highest-grossing movie of all time.

The movie has a deft mix of drama and comedy, and it was a huge success, as SRK continues to be a massive draw. Dunki made over $55 million worldwide in theaters, which is Khan's third-highest-grossing movie of all time. While the movie was a huge box office success, its reviews were mostly average, although it was a crowd-pleasing film. It went on to win Vicky Kaushal a Best Supporting Actor Award at the Filmfare Awards with eight other nominations.

11 Jawan (2023)

An action thriller by director atlee, jawan (2023).

Shah Rukh Khan proved with Juwan that he could still be the lead in a big-budget action movie in 2023. Khan plays both a father and son in this movie . Juwan follows Azad, a man who wants to fix all that is wrong with society, while also driven by a vendetta. Not only does SRK play Azan, but he also plays Vikram, who was framed as a national traitor. Azan is going by the name Vikram Rathore as he works with six convicts from a women's prison to avenge his dad.

The movie was a giant success, making $140 million worldwide as the fifth highest-grossing Indian film of all time globally. On top of the box office success, critics also loved the movie, with it sitting at 89% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, while the audience agreed, rating it at an average of 85% positive. It earned 15 Filmfare Awards nominations, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor, but it only won two — one for Best Action and the other for Best Special Effects.

10 Chopsticks (2019)

A comedy drama by director sachin yardi.

Chopsticks is a Bollywood movie that tells the story of a woman whose car was stolen by a con man. She goes to a chef, who moonlights as a safecracker, for help recovering her car, without costing her any money. Released on Netflix in 2019, it is the first original Indian film Netflix commissioned rather than one the network picked up after the fact. The movie has a great cast, with Abhay Deol ( Dev.D ) and Mithila Palkar ( Little Things ) starring as the hapless victim and safecracker respectively.

The movie was bashed by critics with a 17% Rotten Tomatoes score, but the audience score (73%) showed it was appreciated much more by those who watched it on the streaming service. The movie didn't win any major awards but has remained popular with fans who want to enjoy a Bollywood movie with a great cast and a lot of heart.

9 Rajma Chawal (2018)

A comedy drama by director leena yadav.

The Bollywood movie Rajima Chawal follows a father and son as they grow into their relationship despite the generation gap forcing them apart for years . When Raj's wife dies, he moves back to his old home, and his son, a guitarist, resents him for the move, taking him away from his friends, band, and his life. However, when his father steals the identity of a girl on Facebook and connects with his son while posing as her, they learn more about each other, but the deception could ruin their relationship once and for all.

While the movie didn't win any awards, it was a popular festival hit , premiering at the BFI London Film Festival in 2018 before moving over to Netflix. The film also has a great musical score by Bollywood regular, Irshad Kamil, and is performed by Hitesh Sonik.

8 Haseen Dillruba (2021)

A romantic thriller by director vinil mathew, haseen dillruba (2021).

Haseen Dillruba is a Hindi-language mystery thriller film that revolves around Rani Kashyap, a small-town woman whose life takes a dark turn after her husband's mysterious death. As the investigation unfolds, dark secrets and lies are revealed, leading to a complex web of relationships and deceit.

Haseen Dillruba is a different Bollywood movie, a romantic thriller with a violent edge to it. The movie starts with a woman named Rani, a housewife, who is outside feeding her dogs when her home explodes behind her. The police arrive and find her husband dead, his body charred beyond recognition, but a severed hand that Rani identifies as belonging to him. The film then flips between flashbacks and the police investigation and they begin to believe she had something to do with the explosion.

Haseen Dillruba was the most-watched Hindi movie on Netflix in 2021.

Haseen Dillruba received mixed reviews upon its release, but it was hugely popular with Netflix viewers. It ended up as the most-watched Hindi film on Netflix in 2021 and was in the top 10 in 22 different countries (via Hindustan Times ). The movie also earned eight nominations at the 67th Filmfare Awards , including Best Actress and Best Actor, although it didn't win any of the awards.

7 Monica, O My Darling (2022)

A new-noir dark comedy crime thriller by director vasan bala.

Monica, O My Darling is a Bollywood crime thriller that hit Netflix in 2022 and was an immediate success for the streaming service. The movie is adapted from a 1989 Japanese novel by Keigo Higashino. When a man is engaged to the daughter of the CEO of a major company, he starts an affair with a secretary named Monica . Monica attempts to blackmail the man, along with the CFO of the company and the son of the managing director. They decide to murder Monica, but it backfires when Monica kills one of them first.

This leads to twists and turns and the movie earned positive reviews from critics. In what is clearly a Quentin Tarantino-inspired thriller , it was the most-watched Indian film on Netflix in 2022 (via True Scoop ). It was also loved by critics and audiences, with an 81% critical score and an 88% rating from the audience on Rotten Tomatoes.

6 Tribhanga: Tedhi Medhi Crazy (2021)

A bollywood family drama from director renuka shahane.

Tribhanga: Tedhi Medhi Crazy is a trilingual family drama on Netflix from 2021. The movie follows a dysfunctional family of three generations of women after the eldest falls into a coma . While she is in a coma, her daughter and granddaughter agree to help work on her biography. What results is a movie that shows how the three women all ended up estranged because of their generational differences, but when they discuss their past, they realize they are a lot more alike than different.

The movie received great reviews, sitting at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes , although the audience score is lower at 55%. It also saw recognition during awards season, picking up three nominations at the 2021 Filmfare OTT Awards, including nods for all three actresses, with Kajol nominated for Best Actor (Female) and both Mithila Paikar and Tanvi Azmi for Best Supporting Actor (Female).

5 Badla (2019)

A mystery thriller movie by director sujoy ghosh.

Badla is a mystery thriller that focuses on a murder and a woman who claims she is innocent. Naina is a young, successful business executive who ends up arrested when her secret lover is murdered . When she hires a high-profile defense attorney, he explains there is a witness who will incriminate her in the murder. However, she claims she was blackmailed, and she was called to the hotel where her lover's dead body was. However, the attorney knows she is lying about something and sets out to find the truth.

The movie was a huge success, released in theaters where it made $17 million worldwide on a $4.6 million budget (via Bollywood Hungama ). It was also in the mix for awards, picking up four nominations at the Filmfare Awards. Taapsee Pannu also won Best Actress at the 2020 Zee Cine Awards for her performance.

Throughout 2023, Bollywood has put out a wide range of great films in different genres with new stories to tell, making it a compelling year for film.

4 Darlings (2022)

A dark comedy movie by director jasmeel k. reen, darlings (2022).

Darlings is a dark comedy film directed by Jasmeet K. Reen. The film stars Alia Bhatt as Badru, a strong-willed mother, and Shefali Shah as her mother-in-law, who form an unlikely bond to take revenge against Badru's abusive husband.

Darlings is a dark comedy released on Netflix in 2022 and was one of the most successful Bollywood movies upon its release on the streaming service. The movie is about domestic abuse and a woman who finally stands up to her tormentor in the most horrific way possible. Alia Bhatt plays Badru, a woman whose husband Hamza (Vijay Varma) has gotten drunk and beaten her for years. When he goes too far and beats her while she is pregnant, causing a miscarriage, Badru and her mother plot their revenge.

Originally set to be a theatrical release, Netflix instead picked it up and made it a streaming exclusive. It ended up with more than 10 million hours streamed on its opening weekend (via BBC ). Reviews were mostly positive, and Darlings ended up a massive success in the awards season. It won five awards from 11 nominations at the Filmfare OTT Awards , as well as the Best Feature Film Award at the Bollywood Hungama India Entertainment Awards.

3 Dev.D (2009)

A romance bollywood movie by director anurag kashyap.

Dev.D is an interesting Bollywood movie on Netflix, as it is a romance film that is split into three parts. Each section is based on one of the characters involved in the story - Paro is a young woman whose childhood sweetheart is Dev, Chandra is a student who is involved in a sex scandal, and Dev is Paro's ex who believes untrue rumors about Paro, which ends their relationship. The movie is based on the classic character of Chandramukhi from the 1917 Bengali novel Devdas .

The movie was a critical success, with the dividing of chapters similar to the films of Quentin Tarantino . It was also a success at the end of the year, winning the 2009 National Film Awards honor for Best Music Direction. At the 55th Filmfare Awards, it won six awards with nine nominations, including Best Actress for Mahie Gill and Best Supporting Actress for Kalki Koechlin.

2 Pagglait (2021)

A comedy drama bollywood movie by director umesh bist.

Pagglait is a black comedy drama that was a Netflix exclusive in 2021. The movie stars Sanya Malhotra as Sandhya, a young widow who is struggling to deal with her lack of feelings after the death of her husband just five months after they got married. The movie finds dark comedy in her predicament thanks to her quirky relatives and a shocking discovery she makes about her late husband. Though criticized by some for finding humor in death, the film's heart is in the right place.

The movie received positive reviews, but its real success came with its awards. Pagglait got three nominations from the Filmfare OTT Awards, winning for Best Supporting Actor. However, its biggest success came at the FOI Online Awards. It earned 12 nominations there and won five awards , including Best Supporting Actor, Best Dialogues, Best Original Song, and Best Lyricist.

1 Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011)

A coming-of-age movie by director zoya akhtar.

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara , also known as ZNMD , is a 2011 Hindi-language Bollywood movie that stars an ensemble cast in a coming-of-age story. Three childhood friends reunite for a road trip to Spain . Each friend has a different reason for their trip and during the trip, each of them chooses a dangerous sport for them to take part in. The movie was a huge success for both critics (88%) and audiences (86%) on Rotten Tomatoes .

While the movie had great reviews and was popular with the viewers, it was even bigger when it came to accolades. Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara picked up 74 nominations across the world and won 35 total awards. This included 12 Filmfare nominations with six wins, including Best Film and Best Director. The Bollywood movie on Netflix also picked up 13 nominations at the International Indian Film Academy Awards, winning nine of them.

Prime Video has a wealth of Bollywood movies which range from syrupy romances and historical biopics to feel-good family dramas. Here's what to watch.

Review: Richard Linklater's 'Hit Man' is the sexy summer thriller we need right now

F rom its blunt title promising violence to its late May release date, audiences could be forgiven for thinking that "Hit Man" is just another guns-blazing thriller for the summer action crowd. You know, something that might star Liam Neeson or Chris Hemsworth chasing assorted crime kingpins and cronies through the winding, narrow streets of picturesque European or Middle Eastern capitals. And there would be explosions. Lots of explosions.

But "Hit Man," opening theatrically Friday and then landing June 7 on Netflix, is not that.

Instead, it's a smartly written, sublimely comedic and sexy human-scale relationship story with a touch of just enough suspense and hints of criminality to prove that its title is not a complete misnomer. As this is the latest project from Houston-born director Richard Linklater (“Boyhood," "Dazed and Confused," the "Before Sunrise" trilogy), whose films are all about people and not effects, this shouldn't come as a shock. But even those familiar with Linklater's work may still be surprised at just how warmly engaging "Hit Man" turns out to be, considering its subject matter.

RICHARD LINKLATER FETED : The director was shown a lot of love Saturday at a Houston screening of 'Hit Man' at Star Cinema Grill and a hard-hat tour of the River Oaks Theatre.

The roots of "Hit Man" actually begin in Houston. That was the setting for writer Skip Hollandsworth's Texas Monthly article about Gary Johnson , a college professor by day who moonlighted for the Houston police department as a bit of a tech guru. From there, he moved into the world of undercover work, setting up stings to lure people looking to have someone killed. He became a hit man in name, though not in deed.

Linklater, who penned the script with star Glen Powell, took that basic framework, moved it to New Orleans ( because the tax incentives for film production are better in Louisiana ), added many elements that were not part of Johnson's story and came up with a film that rings emotionally true, even if much of the story sprang from Linklater and Powell's overactive imaginations instead of real life.

Powell is pitch-perfect as both Gary, the straight-arrow philosophy teacher at the University of New Orleans who drives a Honda Civic, and his alter ego Ron, the mysterious, charismatic guy who easily slips into the character of whatever the client expects him to be. Neither Gary nor Ron gets emotionally involved or particularly attached to these clients, whom the police arrest as soon as the money is paid.

That is until he meets Madison (Adria Arjona, "Andor"), a young woman who wants to hire him to kill her domineering and abusive husband, Ray (Evan Masters). There is an immediate spark and Gary/Ron violates the faux hit man code by talking her out of having her husband taken out.

Her change of heart comes as a surprise to Gary's cop co-workers, especially Jasper (Austin Amelio), the previous guy who impersonated hit men but was pulled from duty after not following the rules. As the secret relationship between Gary/Ron and Madison deepens, Jasper becomes determined to get to the bottom of what's going on.

Now, this all could have been played for straight-up comedy, as a "meet cute" with murder. But Linklater and Powell go for something more difficult, dancing on the line between comedy and drama, riotous and romantic, without doing a disservice to either. There's real chemistry between Powell and Arjona, which is especially on display in a scene with the two of them and a cellphone that is one of the film's high points. Both come out of "Hit Man" seeming like genuine movie stars, not an easy feat in this day and age.

Linklater and Powell also play with the idea of identity and, as elements of Ron's swaggering personality seep into Gary's vanilla world, the question becomes was this really Gary all along? Was he just cosplaying a lonely dude with two cats, one ex-wife and zero social skills all these years?

Ultimately, "Hit Man" whets the appetite for more Texas-inspired stories from the Texas Monthly catalog. After all, the magazine has been in the process of monetizing its old stories by having them turned into films, so this won't be the last one.

Let's just hope that, next time, they keep the story in Texas.

In the meantime, there's "Hit Man," wearing its heart on its well-stitched sleeve, and no explosions in sight.

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Challengers, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Madame Web on Netflix, and every new movie to watch at home this weekend

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Teenage tennis champion Tashi (Zendaya) leans back on a hotel bed and stares lustily up at the camera in Challengers

Greetings, Polygon readers! Each week, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.

This week, Challengers , Luca Guadagnino’s erotic sports drama starring Zendaya ( Dune: Part Two ), arrives on VOD follow its theatrical premiere last month. If watching a feuding throuple fight and flirt with one another to one of the best scores ever composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross doesn’t sound like your idea of a good time, not to worry: There’s plenty of other new releases to watch this weekend. We’ve got the serial killer crime drama He Went That Way on Hulu, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire on VOD, and Madame Web on Netflix, if you’re into that!

Here’s everything new that’s available to watch this weekend!

New on Netflix

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) stands in front of a spider web (get it?) in Madame Web

Genre: Superhero action Run time: 1h 54m Director: S.J. Clarkson Cast: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced

Sony’s latest entry in its Spidey-less Spidey Universe stars Dakota Johnson as Cassie Webb, a paramedic living in Manhattan who gains the ability to see visions of the future after a near-death experience. When a mysterious superpowered stranger (who was with Cassie’s mom when she was in the Amazon researching spiders right before she died ) begins hunting a trio of young girls, Cassie takes it upon herself to protect them.

From our review :

Madame Web might be the most shameless superhero movie of all time. Far from just the cash-in that it seemed like a few years ago when this movie headlined by an F-tier superhero was first announced, Sony’s latest Marvel offshoot is a two-hour post-credits scene, made only intermittently tolerable by Dakota Johnson’s underappreciated knack for comedy .

Thelma the Unicorn

A pink pony flanked by a donkey, a llama, and an elderly black woman with a white afro standing next to a cart full of suitcases and instruments in Thelma the Unicorn.

Genre: Musical comedy Run time: 1h 33m Directors: Jared Hess, Lynn Wang Cast: Brittany Howard, Will Forte, Jemaine Clement

This animated musical comedy follows Thelma (Brittany Howard), a small-time pony that experiences an unexpected makeover into a pink and purple unicorn. Determined to chase her dream of musical stardom, Thelma convinces the entire world that she’s a unicorn, but a jealous narwhal named Nikki (Ally Dixon) becomes bent on stealing back the spotlight.

New on Hulu

He went that way.

Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu

Genre: Crime drama Run time: 1h 35m Director: Jeffrey Darling Cast: Zachary Quinto, Jacob Elordi, Patrick J. Adams

Jacob Elordi ( Saltburn ) and Zachary Quinto ( Star Trek ) star in this crime thriller about Bobby Falls, a serial killer who hitches a ride with Jim Goodwin, an animal trainer in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The trailer hints at the film’s ultimate conclusion, as well as a tense series of events including murder, robbery, and fine dinner food.

The Sweet East

Genre: Road film Run time: 1h 44m Director: Sean Price Williams Cast: Talia Ryder, Earl Cave, Simon Rex

After being separated from her classmates during a school trip, a high school senior named Lillian (Talia Ryder) embarks on an impromptu road journey where she crosses paths with anarchists, skinheads, movie producer, and other eccentric strangers.

New on Starz

The hunger games: ballad of songbirds & snakes.

Where to watch: Available to stream on Starz

Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) leers over Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.

Genre: Dystopian action Run time: 2h 37m Director: Francis Lawrence Cast: Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage

Francis Lawrence returns to the world of The Hunger Games to tell the story of the early years of Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), who would go on to become the president of Panem and the nemesis of Katniss Everdeen.

Set 60 years before the events of the first film, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes recalls the fateful meeting between Coriolanus and Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), a tribute from District 12 who would leave a profound impact on his life and worldview.

From our review ,

Collins’ book and Lawrence’s movie don’t redo the action of the Hunger Games events; they dissect them, then force us to sit on the Capitol side of the equation. They demand to know why we were even drawn to the love triangle, the pretty dresses , and the themed arenas in the first place. We’ve always been the spectators, after all, watching Katniss’ story from a safe distance. The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes shows us what happens if we get too carried away by propaganda, luxury, and the promise of safety. In that way, it’s a fitting end to the franchise — and a fitting end to the way the genre evolved into a beast of its own.

New on Shudder

Nightwatch: demons are forever.

Where to watch: Available to stream on Shudder

Genre: Horror Run time: 1h 50m Director: Ole Bornedal Cast: Fanny Leander Bornedal, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Alex Høgh Andersen

Years after her parents were almost killed by a police inspector-turned-serial killer, Emma (Fanny Leander Bornedal) accepts a night watch job at the same forensic department where they once worked. Upon confronting her parent’s tormentor, Emma inadvertently reawakens his bloodlust, unleashing a terrible evil that threatens to destroy both her and anyone who gets in the way.

New to rent

Challengers.

Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple , and Vudu

Teenage Tashi (Zendaya, in a vivid red jumper) sits on a hotel bed, eyes closed, chin up, hands at her sides, as Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) sit on either side of her, each passionately kissing her neck, in Challengers

Genre: Sports drama Run time: 2h 11m Director: Luca Guadagnino Cast: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist

Luca Guadagnino’s sensual sports drama, about a love triangle in professional tennis, has set certain circles of the world on fire since its release in late April and is one of the best movies of the year . Now, you can enjoy it at home.

That script is a terrific three-course meal for Faist and O’Connor. They get to trade off face and heel roles from scene to scene and era to era, as Art and Patrick help and hurt each other in equal measure. But it’s an absolute smorgasbord for Zendaya, who even in starring roles has never been given this much room to stretch. Tashi is a gratifyingly rich character, both righteously angry over the thwarting of her ambitions and cruelly angry at all the men who have the nerve to keep on playing the game that was taken away from her. She’s hungry for affection and withholding it at the same time, by turns sensually curious and coldly dispassionate, ambitious and exhausted, conflicted and confident. She’s the kind of character that media master’s theses are made of, and unpicking Tashi’s conflicting motives and how she integrates them is likely to become a pop culture obsession in the months to come.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Where to watch: available to rent on amazon , apple , and vudu.

Genre: Monster action Run time: 1h 55m Director: Adam Wingard Cast: Godzilla, Kong, Rebecca Hall

The boys are back in town — the boys being Godzilla and Kong, of course. Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard returns for this team-up movie, where the big lads must work together to stop an invasion from Hollow Earth.

Godzilla x Kong (yes, it’s styled like that, like a streetwear collab) is beyond “good” or “bad” or “movies.” It’s an arena show, a pro wrestler shouting in the squared circle, thumping their chest and raising the jumbotron hype meter before doing their signature move. Through brutally efficient pacing that minimizes what the script doesn’t care about (people, mostly) and maximizes what it does (giant monsters doing wrestling moves), it constantly eschews connection in favor of escalation. It’s an achievement in absurd spectacle, a comically silly way to spend $135 million. I hope Warner Bros. keeps burning money this way.

Sasquatch Sunset

Three sasquatch creatures staring in astonishment at something off-screen.

Genre: Fantasy Run time: 1h 30m Directors: Nathan Zellner, David Zellner Cast: Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Christophe Zajac-Denek

An irreverent comedy from the Zellner brothers ( Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter ), Sasquatch Sunset follows a group of four sasquatch as they try and make it in Northern California forest. Along the way, they have to deal with poisonous mushrooms, mountain lions, and relentless sasquatch horniness.

Genre: Horror Run time: 1h 32m Director: Kiah Roache-Turner Cast: Alyla Browne, Penelope Mitchell, Ryan Corr

Alyla Browne (who plays a young Furiosa in Greg Miller’s upcoming apocalyptic action film ), stars in this horror-thriller as a rebellious 12-year-old who adopts a small spider after discovering it in her apartment. Simple, right? Well it would be, that is if the spider were just a regular ’ol terrestrial one and not an extraterrestrial arachnid with a penchant for eating birds, small children, and grown adults. Grab the Raid can!

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An Adepta Sororitas in red and black livery wearing a jump back and wielding a power sword.

It was a big weekend for fans of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, 40K, and Necromunda

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A Complete Guide to Netflix’s 2024 Holiday Movie Lineup: Lacey Chabert, Lindsay Lohan and More

Summer may just be kicking off, but temperatures are already dropping at Netflix.

As rom-coms continue to rule the holiday season, the streaming service has begun to rival staple networks like Hallmark and Lifetime in its seasonal content. For 2024, fans can expect a star-studded cast across a handful of films all guaranteed to put them in the mood for cocoa, caroling and romance.

Earlier this year, Netflix revealed its first three movies; Hot Frosty , starring Hallmark darling Lacey Chabert , Lindsay Lohan’s upcoming Our Little Secret and the Christmas musical Meet Me Next Christmas with Pentatonix and Christina Milian . In May 2024, it added The Merry Gentleman to its slate, which will feature Britt Robertson as a former big-city dancer who tries to save her parents' small-town shop.

“My character Ashley has been a successful Broadway dancer for her entire adult career, she returns to her hometown and is faced with figuring out what she wants for her future, while also reinventing her parents’ local business,” Robertson told Netflix’s Tudum about her role. “I love being able to surround myself with friends and family, decorate a Christmas tree, cook fresh baked goods and celebrate our lives together,” she says.” Being able to bring my favorite people together to watch a holiday movie helps me to appreciate the most important things in life.”

The Best Holiday Movies to Snuggle Up With: ‘White Christmas,’ ‘The Holiday’ and More

The film also stars Chad Michael Murray as Lucas, Ashley’s love interest, and one of the men in Ashley’s Christmas-themed revue. (This marks the fourth time Murray has portrayed a character named Lucas since shooting to stardom as Lucas Scott on One Tree Hill .)

“Luke is kind, confident and slightly sarcastic,” Murray shared of his character. “He works as a contractor helping out the family who owns a bar named the Rhythm Room. He’s thrust into an unfamiliar situation and is pushed to the limits of comfortability.”

As for why Murray took on the role, he told the streaming giant, “Holiday movies bring so many of us the peace and calm we love to enjoy over the holidays. These films bring us together and give us adventures to enjoy as a family.”

Keep scrolling for a complete guide to Netflix’s holiday movie lineup:

‘Hot Frosty’

Release Date: TBD 2024

Starring: Lacey Chabert, Dustin Milligan, Craig Robinson, Joe Lo Truglio, Katy Mixon, Lauren Holly, Chrishell Stause

Synopsis: Two years after losing her husband, Cathy (Chabert) magically brings a handsome snowman to life! Through his naivete, the snowman helps Cathy to laugh, feel and love again, as the two fall for each other just in time for the holidays...and before he melts.

‘Our Little Secret’

Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Kristin Chenoweth, Ian Harding, Jon Rudnitsky, Tim Meadows,

Synopsis: Two resentful exes (Lohan and Harding) are forced to spend Christmas under the same roof after discovering that their current partners are siblings.

‘Meet Me Next Christmas’

Starring: Christina Milian, Kofi Siriboe, Kalen Allen and the cast of Pentatonix

Synopsis: Directed by Rusty Cundieff, Meet Me Next Christmas follows the yuletide journey of Layla (Milian), a woman whose pursuit of a fairy-tale romance with the man of her dreams leads her on a race against time to secure tickets to New York City’s hottest gig: the sold-out Pentatonix Christmas Eve Concert.

‘Tis the Season! All the Christmas Movies Starring ‘One Tree Hill’ Alumni: A Complete Guide

‘The Merry Gentlemen’

Starring: Chad Michael Murray, Britt Robertson, Marla Sokoloff, Beth Broderick, Michael Gross, Maxwell Caulfield, Hector David Jr, Colt Prattes, Marc Anthony Samuel

Synopsis: To save her parents’ small-town performing venue, Ashley (Robertson), a former big-city dancer, decides to stage an all-male, Christmas-themed revue.

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‘Bird’ Review: Andrea Arnold Taps the Star Power of Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski but Returns to Her Bleak British Roots in a Coming-of-Age Fairy Tale

Nykiya Adams plays a 12-year-old mired in kitchen-sink miserablism. Rogowski is the eccentric stranger who's even stranger than she thought.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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Popular on Variety

Barry Keoghan , who now carries himself differently as an actor (he gives off the awareness that he’s a star), plays Bug, a single father of two who lives in a squatter’s flat in Kent and spends exactly no time looking after his kids. What Bug has devoted too much time to is getting tattoos. His pale upper body is a menagerie of inked creatures: a fly, a spider, and — starting on the right side of his face — a huge intricate centipede that snakes down and around his neck. But Bug’s children just bug him.

Bailey’s head is topped with braids, but early on, in a fit of annoyance, she lops them off, which makes her look that much more stoic and forlorn. I should add that her half-brother, Hunter (Jason Buda), belongs to a shambles of a vigilante youth gang who like to put on creepy masks and terrorize locals who have bad reputations. The punishments meted out by this junior “Clockwork Orange” brigade (“Slice him!” says one of the gang) are arguably worse than the crimes.

There’s a place in the world, and sometimes a vital one, for a movie like “Bird,” which recalls the spirit of early Arnold films like “Fish Tank.” But it’s my feeling that Arnold, at this point, isn’t just making a coming-of-age drama of lost lives — she’s mainlining neorealist glumness. Keoghan’s performance is a bit of a showboat stunt (he’s supposed to be a terrible father but doesn’t seem like a father at all). And though Bug, it turns out, is about to marry his flame of three months (he will finance the wedding by selling a toad’s slime for its hallucinogenic properties), Bailey’s defiant hostility to this plan feels overstated. She’s 12, but she won’t even agree to put on a purple catsuit and be a bridesmaid. That’s “independence” taken to an unreal degree of precosity.

Wandering in a field, Bailey runs into a strange man who is wearing a skirt and a look of damaged sensitivity. His name is Bird, and he’s played by Franz Rogowski , the German actor whose performance as the prima donna filmmaker in Ira Sachs’ “Passages” made him into such a sociopath that he threw the movie out of whack. As a character, Bird hails from the opposite end of the emotional spectrum. He’s sweet and kind, he looks like a crushed-velvet version of Joaquin Phoenix crossed with Klaus Kinski, and everything about him is delicate. Bailey and Bird become friends, not because of any magical overlap in temperament, but because that’s the film’s high-concept premise. Bailey helps Bird to locate his biological father (who wants nothing to do with him). And he helps her by…well, let’s just say that he lives up to his name.

A gritty story of emotional poverty crossed with a fantasy-pal fairy tale? “Bird” will please Andrea Arnold obsessives, but apart from that I’m not sure there’s much of an audience for it. The film is Arnold trying to have the integrity of her severity and eat it too. “Bird” is a feel-bad movie that turns into a feel-good movie. What it never feels like is a totally authentic movie.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (in competition), May 16, 2024. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 119 MIN.

Production: A BBC Film, Pinky Promise, Access Entertainment production. Producers: Tessa Ross, Juliette Howell, Lee Groombridge. Executive producers: Claude Amadeo, Mollye Asher, Len Blavatnik, Jessamine Burgum, Danny Cohen, Michael D’Alto, Kara Durrett, Randall Sandler, Chris Triana, Eva Yates.
Crew: Director, screenplay: Andrea Arnold. Camera: Robbie Ryan, Editor: Joe Bini.
With: Nykiya Adams, Franz Rogowski, Barry Keoghan. Jason Buda, James Nelson Joyce, Jasmine Jobson, Frankie Box.

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IMAGES

Darling Movie Poster
Darling Movie Review (Netflix Arthouse Horror!)
Netflix unveils release date for 'Darling'
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Darlings Review: Alia Bhatt Movie Doesn’t Understand What ‘Dark Comedy
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Rajkumar Rao's Mimicry of Shah Rukh Khan, Anurag Kashyap & Zakir Khan
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Oh My Darling Movie Review Telugu
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The Reviews Are OUT! Watch Monica, O My Darling Now!

COMMENTS

Don't Worry Darling movie review (2022)
But as "Don't Worry Darling" reaches its climactic and unintentionally hilarious conclusion, Wilde loses her grasp on the material. The pacing is a little erratic throughout, but she rushes to uncover the ultimate mystery with a massive exposition dump that's both dizzying and perplexing. Advertisement. The craft on display is ...
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Don't Worry Darling: Directed by Olivia Wilde. With Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde. While her husband leaves home everyday to work in a top secret facility, a young 1950s housewife begins to question her life when she notices strange behavior from the other wives in the neighborhood.
Don't Worry Darling
Catherine T Excellent twist at the end! Great movie! Rated 4/5 Stars • Rated 4 out of 5 stars 11/11/22 Full Review Sierra Unexpected ending and such a good cast Rated 5/5 Stars • Rated 5 out ...
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Darlings (2022)
Watch Darlings with a subscription on Netflix. Badru hopes her volatile husband will reform if he stops drinking. But when his rage goes too far, she and her mom boldly, albeit clumsily, seek revenge.
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Venue: Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition) Release date: Friday, Sept. 23. Cast: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Olivia Wilde, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, Nick Kroll, Chris Pine. Director: Olivia ...
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Directed by Olivia Wilde. Drama, Mystery, Thriller. R. 2h 2m. Find Tickets. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. Soon ...
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This review was originally a part of our Venice 2022 coverage.. Let's pretend you're not terminally online. Now let's also add a setting that you only care about "Oscar movies" after the ...
Don't Worry Darling
Don't Worry Darling is a 2022 American psychological thriller film directed by Olivia Wilde from a screenplay by Katie Silberman, based on a spec script by Silberman, Carey Van Dyke, and Shane Van Dyke.The film stars Harry Styles, Florence Pugh, Wilde, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, Nick Kroll, and Chris Pine.The film follows a housewife living in an idyllic company town who begins to suspect a ...
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Darlings: Directed by Jasmeet K Reen. With Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma, Roshan Mathew. It follows the lives of two women as they find courage and love in exceptional circumstances.
Darlings (film)
Darlings is a 2022 Indian Hindi-language black comedy film co-written and directed by Jasmeet K. Reen, in her directorial debut, from a screenplay by Parveez Sheikh, and produced by Alia Bhatt (in her debut production), Gauri Khan and Gaurav Verma under the banners Red Chillies Entertainment and Eternal Sunshine Productions. The film stars Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma and Roshan Mathew in ...
Darlings Movie Review: Alia Bhatt raises the bar
Darlings review: Alia Bhatt raises the bar for movies with meaning. Darlings movie review: Alia Bhatt, Vijay Varma, Shefali Shah and Roshan Mathew deliver excellent performances in a film that is aware of what it is. A few forced comic touches spoil the effect though. Darlings Review: Netflix's dark comedy is Alia Bhatt's debut as a producer.
Darlings Review: A satirical portrayal of love and abuse in a marriage
Contrary to the trailer, Darlings isn't quite a dark comedy or a twisted suspenseful thriller. Told in a linear, simplistic fashion, the film is about an abuser exploiting his partner over a man ...
Don't Worry Darling review: Florence Pugh and Harry Styles get lost
The 25 best drama movies on Netflix Florence Pugh wraps her entire head in plastic wrap in sinister new Don't Worry Darling trailer 'Eileen' review: Anne Hathaway is electric in a wild ...
Darlings Release Date and Time, Cast, Trailer, Budget, Review, and More
Darlings release date and time in India. Darlings releases this Friday, August 5 at 12:00am PT / 12:30pm IST exclusively on Netflix worldwide. Those interested will be required to have a subscription plan, starting at Rs. 149 for mobile and Rs. 199 for the basic plan, which lets you stream on a TV or laptop but only in SD resolution.
Watch Darlings
Badru hopes her volatile husband will reform if he stops drinking. But when his rage goes too far, she and her mom boldly, albeit clumsily, seek revenge. Watch trailers & learn more.
Darlings review
3.5. Summary. It is a strong directorial debut from Reen and will surprise many people. It is a bit hard to watch at times, but it's necessary. There are different perspectives shown on domestic violence, and it helps viewers process all situations. This review of the Netflix film Darlings does not contain spoilers.
Darlings Review: Alia Bhatt Netflix Movie Doesn't Understand What 'Dark
Darlings movie review: stuck in an abusive marriage, Badru (Alia Bhatt) concocts a hare-brained scheme to get out of it, one that results in more comedy of errors than black comedy. Darlings release date and time is August 5 at 12:30pm IST on Netflix. Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma also part of Darlings cast.
Darlings (2022) Movie Review
Darlings (2022) Movie Review - Netflix's dark comedy is high on ambition, low on ideas. 25 August 2022 24 August 2022 by Arnav Srivastava. ... The menacing intensity is reminiscent of Fahadh Faasil in Kumbalingi Nights (another splendid movie you should check out). In those violent moments, he truly owns the screen and holds you like glue. ...
'Darlings' movie review: Alia Bhatt lights up this dark comedy
Even in unimportant scenes, your eye is never bored. Darlings is a reminder that, though Hindi cinema may be having a generally drab year, it's not for a lack of human resources. The film opens ...
Review: Darlings (2022), on Netflix
With Darlings (2022), director Jasmeet K Reen and co-writer Parveez Sheikh turn a Mumbai chawl into a place that entirely operates within our realities but is heightened by a sense of extremities. It has been three years since Badru (Alia Bhatt) and Humza (Vijay Varma) have been married and from the looks of it, not everything is happy in paradise.
'Darlings' On Netflix Movie Review: Alia Bhatt, Vijay Varma, Shefali
Alia Bhatt's debut production venture, 'Darlings', takes quite a different take on the age-old topic of domestic violence. Co-starring Vijay Varma, Shefali Shah and Roshan Mathew, is this ...
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Monica, O My Darling is a Bollywood crime thriller that hit Netflix in 2022 and was an immediate success for the streaming service. The movie is adapted from a 1989 Japanese novel by Keigo Higashino. When a man is engaged to the daughter of the CEO of a major company, he starts an affair with a secretary named Monica.
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Release Date: TBD 2024. Starring: Lacey Chabert, Dustin Milligan, Craig Robinson, Joe Lo Truglio, Katy Mixon, Lauren Holly, Chrishell Stause. Synopsis: Two years after losing her husband, Cathy ...
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