26 July,2026 07:34 AM IST | Mumbai | Team SMD
A still from Wake Up Sid!. PIC/PINTEREST
We all know the gloom that sets in when you have to cancel your plans to stay indoors in monsoon. Especially with Mumbai's unrelenting rain, it's fun to flip through movies you have already seen. You know the plots, the dialogues, the music, and yet you are drawn to them each year.
PIC/PINTEREST@TeaItIs18
Perhaps it's the love confessions, it's Mr Darcy, or it's the misty rain-covered English countryside, but this movie is perfection when there's a slight breeze or a great thunderstorm at your window. Unlike most comfort films, this one slows you down. The rain isn't just simply moments in a film but helps progress the plot forward, filling scenes with emotions of restraint, hope, longing, and release. The film feels "damp" in the best possible way.
Hearing the lyrics, "When the thorn bush turns white," is exactly how I prepare myself for the rains. Somehow, Twilight has become my ultimate monsoon comfort movie, and I find myself returning to it every rainy season without fail.
PIC/INSTAGRAM@TWILIGHT
Maybe it's because the film already feels drenched. The endless grey skies, mist-covered forests, towering pine trees, and blue-green tint of Forks create the kind of atmosphere that mirrors rainy days perfectly. Twilight carries a certain nostalgia that is difficult to explain.
The awkward conversations, the lingering glances, the dramatic soundtrack, and the almost dreamlike pacing transport me back to a simpler time. It's wonderfully earnest and unlike popular belief, completely entertaining in its own world.
The music and cinematography does a lot for the film. This peak late 2000s and early 2010s era of films has always had a chokehold on me. It may not be everyone's favourite film, and I know all its flaws, but that's part of its charm. Every rewatch feels like coming home.
"Tum, main, aur do cup chai [You, me, and two cups of chai]" is the only thing I look forward to during the monsoons every year. The monsoon is to Wake Up Sid!, what vada pav is to Mumbai, a defining feature without which the city feels incomplete. It is the movie I watched on the first night after moving to Mumbai four years ago, when the rain poured outside my windows like there will be no tomorrow.
Over the years, I've watched the film many times over, especially during the monsoons, because it is just such a classic. The best part of the film is that it is infinitely rewatchable, which is a common theme in director Ayan Mukherjee's work (except maybe BrahmÃÂstra [2022]).
Pic/Instagram @ghibliusa
One of the things I love most about Spirited Away - apart from the tender story and gorgeous animation by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, of course - is how cosy the visuals and sound design are in this film.
Miyazaki is famed for the slow, intentional pace of his films - the silence of the grove broken only by buzzing and chirping insects as the main character, Chihiro, walks through it; the lingering pause while she waits for the train⦠Miyazaki called this pause "Ma", which translates to "space in between".
It forces my brain to slow down too, and take a beat. The sound design, too, feels very intentional and soothing, especially the rain sounds - you can clearly differentiate between a light pitter-patter, and the whooshing wind and fat raindrops falling in a thunderstorm. It's the perfect magical monsoon movie.
Filled with philosophical conversations about life and death, blending dark humour, Karwaan ensures you have a fantastic time; the rainy visuals from Kochi and a road trip that the characters embark on are like a treat to your eyes. The rainy visuals add to the sombre cinematic aesthetics of the film.
The trip is more than just about finding a lost coffin that was sent to the wrong address; it is about rekindling old friendships, and immersing oneself in something they haven't experienced before. Karwaan is a film that explores human emotions and the connections that humans build to find meaning in life.
