A still from ‘Picture This’
| Photo Credit: Prime Video

Ninth Mandala is a portraiture studio in Hackney run by Pia Jaswani (Simone Ashley) and her gay best friend, Jay (Luke Fetherston), who share a strict distaste for passport photographs. They want to capture light and play with it through the lenses but in a world that prioritises instant sharing, their analogue studio seems to be heading for bankruptcy. With no romantic prospects in sight and a looming 30th birthday, Pia feels confused and lost but is relieved to have Jay’s shoulder to cry on. Though sarcastic and painfully straightforward, he is arguably the strongest pillar in her life.

As preparations for Pia’s younger sister Sonal’s (Anoushka Chadha) month-long wedding festivities kickstart, the photographers are roped into a maze of traditions guarded by hypocritical morals and caricaturish pandits. One such pandit predits that Pia is set to find her soulmate in five dates. 

As we tag along we meet Sid (Asim Chaudhry), a ‘loaded nepo-baby’ who is allergic to human touch, thinks bollywood is tacky and is determined to not let anyone take a dump in his house. Naturally, Pia floods his bathroom. The next couple of dates end in similar mishaps — though funny on paper, they do not seem to elicit laughter when played out on the screen. Their rigidity in trying to stick to some popular tropes and fulfilling some other pop-culture prophecies makes them contrived and slightly exhausting to get through.

We are put out of misery when her high-school boyfriend and the only person she has been in love with Charlie (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) runs the mill as the best man at her sister’s wedding — their awkward conversations and tense eye-contact enliven a glimmer of hope for a layered romantic journey. However, our hopes are quickly dashed and the director provides a comfortable solution to her troubled professional life. With what seems to be the blueprint in romantic-comedies and coming of age films lately, social media is used to resurrect her business and though she seems to have resolved her questions, the audience is left looking for closure.

While Simone Ashley and Hero Fiennes Tiffin are convincing in their roles, they do not enjoy enough room to stretch their acting muscles.

Ever since Harry professed his love to Sally on New Year’s Eve, in about 137 words to be precise, monologues in the third act of a romantic-comedy have become a staple for fans of the genre. However, Picture This fails to placate the audience with this convenience — Pia’s monologue is interrupted by Charlie, who is busy on his phone, and like a rom-com for the social media ages, it morphs into a bland conversation that feels plagiarised out of an average Joe’s texts to their online friend. We do not know how long he takes to order a sandwich or whether she finds his bushy brows amusing; by the end of 101 minutes, we know as much about Pia and Charlie as we did in the beginning. The movie does not attempt to sweep you off your feet or evoke a yearning for love, it is merely interested in hitting the right notes of relatability so that you do not rush to pick up your phone and mindlessly scroll through social media or play Subway Surfers.

Picture This is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video

There’s much concern in Black Bag about a missing cyber-worm device called Severus, capable of destabilizing a nuclear facility. But you can file that malware gadget alongside the Codex in the Superman universe and the unfortunately named Mother Boxes in Justice League. No matter how closely you pay attention, the precise functions of these power tools will be at best vaguely clear, not that it matters. In Steven Soderbergh’s sleek spy drama, a classy crew of actors keeps bringing up Severus in the direst of tones. But all that’s far less intriguing than the shifting allegiances and double-crosses among an elite group of Brit intelligence agents.

Following the taut, Hitchcock-meets-De Palma suspense of the tech thriller Kimi and the masterfully shivery ghost story Presence, this third consecutive collaboration between Soderbergh and ace screenwriter David Koepp is a mild disappointment. It’s witty, stylishly crafted and boasts a stellar ensemble, led by especially toothsome work from Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender. It keeps you glued, even if the movie ultimately feels evanescent, a slick diversion you forget soon after the end credits have rolled.

Still, there’s a lot to be said for being in capable hands, and even if the plot often has more complications than propulsion, Soderbergh and his actors give it a consistently pleasurable buoyancy. At this point, three-and-a-half decades and 35 features into a career with way more peaks than valleys, it’s enjoyable just to sit back and savor the playful dexterity of the director’s storytelling and the seductive sheen of his elegant visuals.

The title refers to any highly classified intel too sensitive to be shared, even between married colleagues like Kathryn St. Jean (Blanchett) and George Woodhouse (Fassbender). It also provides convenient cover for infidelities, betrayals and underhand dealings for the circle of senior agents in their immediate orbit. “Where were you this afternoon?” “Black bag.”

When Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgard), a fellow agent at the National Cyber Security Centre, assigns George to sniff out the traitor within the organization who has let Severus fall into the wrong hands, he asks would George be comfortable neutralizing Kathryn should it turn out to be her. But even without invoking the proverbial black bag, George keeps his cards close to his vest. Others at NCSC view his loyalty to Kathryn as his weakness.

The couple organizes a dinner party at their swanky London home and invite four senior associates who also happen to be couples, suspecting that one of them is the mole.

The guests are Colonel James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), who reports directly to George; Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomi Harris), in-house NCSC shrink and Stokes’ lover; boozing, skirt-chasing Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), resentful about being recently passed over for a promotion; and his current girlfriend, cyber comms expert Clarissa (Marisa Abela), the newest NCSC recruit. All four consider themselves friends of George and Kathryn but know their hosts well enough to figure there’s a hidden agenda behind the last-minute invite.

They are right to be suspicious. George, who enjoys cooking and bass fishing with the same glacial calm he brings to every task, warns Kathryn to avoid the chana masala, which he has laced with drugs to loosen the guests’ tongues. But nothing conclusive is revealed beyond Freddie’s twice-weekly hotel trysts with a mystery woman, an inconvenient disclosure when Clarissa has a steak knife handy.

Koepp’s script plants subtle clues that Kathryn might be the dodgy one, her skilled evasiveness very much in evidence during one standout scene — a mandated therapy session with Zoe, who notes that an air of hostility always wafts into the office ahead of her patient. Kathryn also remains cagey about the details of a meeting in Zurich. Her “black bag” response prompts George to enlist Clarissa’s help, accessing a keyhole in satellite coverage that allows him to observe his wife’s Swiss rendezvous without being detected elsewhere at NCSC.

When Clarissa cocks an eyebrow about marital mistrust, George says of his wife, “I watch her, and she watches me. If she gets into trouble, I will do everything in my power to extricate her.” The screenplay teases out the ambiguity as to whether Kathryn would do the same for George, or even if she’s laying a trap for him.

The drama is densely plotted, to the point where details at times get hazy. But the central dynamic of George and Kathryn’s relationship is a well-oiled machine that keeps everything else humming.

Fassbender and Blanchett’s characterizations are both distinct and perfectly synched. He’s icy and robotic, almost a cross between the actor’s roles in Prometheus and The Killer. In one dryly amusing moment, George gets the tiniest spatter of curry sauce on the cuff of his crisp white shirt, and in his usual affectless delivery, says, “I need to go change.” When it emerges that George surveilled his own father, who preceded him in the espionage business, he simply offers, “I don’t like liars.”

Blanchett, by contrast, makes Kathryn sultry and enigmatic, an ineffably poised operator whose posh intonations and erudite conversation give her the air of someone entirely free from self-doubt, carefully assessing every situation and her position in it. Her effortless old-world glamor doesn’t hide her anxieties about money, another factor that feeds the suspicion around her.

Blanchett’s many scenes with Fassbender are what make the movie’s motor purr. George and Kathryn are both circumspect, as their profession demands, but bound together by a charged sexual and emotional connection that makes Black Bag as much a close study of a marriage as a spy tale. When she asks, “Would you kill for me, George?” it seems more like foreplay than a test of loyalty.

Blanchett’s one moment of explosive anger (“Don’t ever fuck with my marriage again!”) is a welcome jolt of fire in a movie that mostly sticks to room temperature — a precision drone strike on Russian operatives notwithstanding. The attention required to keep up isn’t always rewarded by the most scintillating developments in a plot that tends more often to simmer on a medium flame than come to a boil.

The other members of the cast all have moments and all slot smoothly into the film’s intricate puzzle structure. The standout of the core group is Abela, making good on her head-turning work in Back to Black and Industry with a performance indicating at every turn that despite being a relative newbie, she’s as savvy as the veterans. And Pierce Brosnan is a zesty addition in his few scenes as NCSC head Arthur Steiglitz, an exacting boss in impeccably tailored suits whose directives come with the undisguised menace of someone with no tolerance for failure and a ruthless instinct for self-protection. Having him sit down to a plate of illegal Ikizukuri is a delicious touch.

Serving as DP and editor under his customary pseudonyms, Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard, respectively, Soderbergh gives the film a lustrous look, with lots of sinuous tracking shots and slashes of lens flare. The jazzy rhythms are echoed by David Holmes’ moody, percussive score.

One sequence, cutting among a series of polygraph tests conducted by George, is Soderbergh at his snappiest, taking a cloak-and-dagger scenario and toying with our perceptions of truth and obfuscation. If Black Bag isn’t always at that level, it’s a tight hour-and-a-half of a type of sophisticated grownup entertainment that we don’t get enough of anymore.

Story: Twin brothers Hal and Bill Shelburn stumble upon an eerie, mechanical cymbal-banging monkey as children, only to discover that every time it plays, someone dies. Terrified, they dispose of the toy, hoping to leave its horrors behind. But years later, as adults, Hal finds that the sinister relic has resurfaced, bringing death in its wake once more.

Review: Osgood Perkins takes a unique approach to The Monkey, blending supernatural horror with a wicked streak of dark comedy. While the premise—a toy monkey that triggers violent deaths—could be pure nightmare fuel, Perkins leans into its absurdity, allowing for moments of bleak humour amidst the tension. The film often revels in the ridiculousness of its concept, crafting death scenes that are so exaggerated they almost become morbidly funny. This tonal balancing act between horror and satire is one of the film’s most intriguing elements, though it may not land for all audiences.

Theo James delivers a committed performance as both Hal and Bill, capturing their contrasting reactions to the trauma they endured as children. His portrayal of Hal, the more straight-laced of the two, plays well against Bill’s more jaded, almost detached demeanour, adding an extra layer to the film’s comedic undertones. In a supporting role, Elijah Wood brings an offbeat energy that further reinforces the film’s darkly humorous sensibilities, while Tatiana Maslany adds emotional weight to the story. Colin O’Brien, as Hal’s son Petey, serves as the innocent heart of the film, grounding the supernatural chaos in something real.

Visually, The Monkey is as much a horror film as it is a grim parody of the genre. Perkins and cinematographer Andrés Arochi craft an eerie yet playfully exaggerated aesthetic, using heavy shadows, surreal framing, and unsettlingly bright moments of colour to highlight the monkey’s presence. The sound design is particularly effective, with the monkey’s cymbals becoming an almost comedic punchline—an ominous sound cue that signals doom in the most absurd circumstances. Perkins is aware of the inherent ridiculousness of his premise and leans into it, allowing the film to have fun with itself rather than taking everything too seriously.

However, the film’s biggest gamble—its tonal shifts—may also be its most divisive element. The transitions between horror, tragedy, and black comedy aren’t always seamless, and some viewers may be unsure whether they should be terrified or laughing. Additionally, Perkins’ signature slow-burn storytelling occasionally clashes with the film’s more playful moments, resulting in pacing issues that could test the patience of some audiences. While the film delivers many eerie moments, its humour may not land for those expecting a more straightforward horror experience.