What I Watched – January 2026

Eko:This movie has created a lot of buzz and for the right reasons. While a mystery thriller story featuring guard-dogs is definitely unusual in Malayalam cinema, the WWII theatre in South East Asia being portrayed in the movie made it all the more unique. Got reminded of Twan Eng’s trilogy.

The Mastermind: Kelly Reichardt reimagines the heist movie blending absurd, detailed crime preparation and chaotic execution. I probably need to watch this once again to understand the politics that Reichhardt was attempting to showcase. The New Yorker carried a review covering a bit of this.

Drive to Survive (Seasons 1-7): After a long time, I binge watched all the seasons of a series and I’m still finding it hard to believe that I knocked off all seventy episodes. The production quality of this series that tracks seven annual seasons of the F1 was superlative. I was hooked. And I finally understand the global hype around F1 — a perfect blend of marketing, big money, cutting-edge engineering, larger-than-life personalities, iconic venues, glamour, history, and legacy, all wrapped into one spectacle.

Pharma: The Malayali’s cultural aversion to capitalism gets captured in a shoddy speech at the end of this lousy series – something about ‘we are coming for you dear capitalists’. The irony of selling this on a billionaire’s OTT network!

The Conformist: Bernardo Bertolucci’s celebrated movie was definitely a spectacle to behold. But I stick to my opinion that Moravia’s novels and his genius cant be accurately recreated on the big screen. None of the inner workings of the minds that Moravia effortlessly captures in his books get showcased on the screen.

Night Manager (Season 2): The series was stylishly shot in Colombia. But at this point, such stuff rarely registers with me. I’ve already forgotten the plot.

Haq: Before starting this, I wasn’t sure if this was part of the ‘propaganda’ genre that Bollywood is now efficiently churning out. Couldn’t sit through the whole stuff.

Train Dreams: Some excellent cinematography in this which is foregrounded by the railroad expansion across America and the changing socio-cultural landscape of America. I’ve been thinking of reading up more on the American West and might finally start with ‘Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee:’

RIP: I was expecting to unwind by watching a police and robber movie. This one turned out to be too cerebral for my liking.

Senna: I was moved watching this. Senna’s global appeal was something. While I’ve seen YouTube clips of his crash at Imola, I hadnt known that he was being pushed to the limits by one young Schumacher.

Schumacher: Another poignant watch. To think that he’s been in coma for the last 13 years 😦

Marty Supreme: Managed to catch this in the big screen. It wasn’t hard to understand how this has nine nominations for the Oscars. Timothée Chalamet was outstanding as the maniacal, high-energy Table Tennis fanatic willing to go to any extent to play in the World Championships. References to the Holocaust and wartime loss appear through the movie including one distressing scene of a concentration camp survivor encountering a beehive outside and smearing himself with honey so that for the other inmates could suck it off him for nourishment.

Mission: Impossible: I ended up re-watching the entire MI series with the kids. Even after three decades, this one is still so fresh and exciting. The Langley vault break-in remains the single most iconic scene of the series. I was in Class VII when the movie came out and this month I watched it with my daughter who’s in Class VII.

Mission: Impossible 2:  The lousiest of the series, plays out like a glossy Bollywood caper with every possible trope thrown in.

Mission: Impossible III: The best of the series for me. It’s tight, tense, and has a brilliantly staged Vatican abduction.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol: Still inventive and engaging. And ofcourse forever notable for Anil Kapoor’s role. The kids went berserk seeing him with Tom Cruise.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation: From here on the MI franchise becomes a delivery system for increasingly unbelievable action spectacles.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout: Bigger, louder, more punishing stunts—but by now the escalation feels mechanical rather than exciting.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning: By this time, I was focused only on the action. But on second thoughts, seeing the ‘Entity’ take control of the world’s nuclear arsenal in the same week that Moltbook is all over the news, didn’t seem all that far fetched.

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