Avinash Ramachandran

Why doesn’t John Wick die? Why doesn’t Ethan Hunt die? Why doesn’t any bullet even graze the shoulders of our heroes when they have insane precision with their shots? How do the henchmen die with a couple of slashes by a machete but the hero survives a thousand blows? Of course, there is no point asking these questions simply because we know the answer. He is the hero, and at the end of the day, he has to walk into the sunset with a girl in tow even if he is a bloodied mess. Director Sailesh Kolanu’s third installment in the popular HIT franchise, follows this template right from the word go, and converts our ‘beloved-boy-next-door’ Nani into a ‘kick-the-door open and innovatively kill and maim 100 people’ Nani.

How does one know their purpose in life? Who tells them? What makes them realise? Does everyone realise their purpose? And why are some happier being the conduit in someone else’s story rather than being the hero of their own? But isn’t that purpose even bigger than the purpose of the ‘hero’? Retro is director Karthik Subbaraj talking about a political issue that is closest to his heart. Armed with immense filmmaking knowledge, supported by a strong technical team that understands the assignment, Karthik asks himself an important question through the actions of his protagonist, Paarivel Kannan, played by a terrific Suriya.

Our world is very cynical. Everything around us screams cynicism, especially in the social media era where everyone is judged, and everything is scrutinised. Probably why our minds love to forget all of that and watch good things happen to good people on the big screen. Even if it might seem ‘cringe’ or ‘boomer-ish’, these films still put a smile on our faces simply because for those couple of hours, we want to feel everything is right and good in this world. It is on this belief that filmmakers like Rajkumar Hirani and Radha Mohan plied their wares over the past two decades. Now, in director Abishan Jeevinth’s debut film, Tourist Family, we find enough evidence to believe that he is a worthy addition to this list of optimists who make the world go round when the cynics believe the world has stopped.

Sundar C is a rather enigmatic filmmaker who understands the kind of nuanced conversations around cinema on social media, and still makes a film that would invariably be contentious in such a space. In fact, in a recent interview, Sundar C said that his films don’t have a lot of bloodshed, voyeuristic camera angles, double-meaning dialogues, and glamour for the sake of it. But then, Gangers is like an antithesis to his belief system as the film has bloodshed, voyeuristic camera angles, double-meaning dialogues, glamour for the sake of it, and… oodles of humour that salvages the film whenever it dips into unsavoury territories.

The first time you meet Yoshinori Tashiro in Shiva’s latest film, Sumo, he is wearing a mawashi, the outfit worn by Sumo wrestlers. Apparently, he washed up the shores of Chennai, and has the mental makeup of a 1.5-year-old child. And somehow, that means, the wrestler’s only focus is to satiate his tremendous appetite. He finds an immediate connection with Shiva (Shiva) because… well, you need a reason for the movie to move on, and they didn’t find anything else to do. Willing suspension of disbelief, anyone? After this point, we are asked to willingly suspend our disbelief on multiple occasions, and we would have done exactly that if the film didn’t abruptly shift tones in every second scene to thrust a sense of reality in the world of absurdity.

Serial killer films are mosty about unmasking the killer and unravelling the reason behind the killings. And then there are films where you know the killer’s identity right from the first scene, and it is all about how they are brought to justice. And then there is Sivaprasad’s Maranamass which tells us about the killer, his modus operandi, and his targets. There is no ‘surprise’ in what happens in the life of this serial killer who has a method to his madness of stuffing a banana in the mouth of his victims. Of course, the identity of the serial killer, played to perfection by Rajesh Madhavan, is known to the audience, and yet… we are invested in what happens. Why? Because the makers of Maranamass fill the narrative with eclectic characters who have individual arcs, and quirks.

Agnyathavasi is the last film where you’d expect an objectifying number finding itself in the narrative. This is a slow-burn drama set in the idyllic Malnad region. This is set in the late 90s, and features an ageing inspector, a much-older retired postmaster, a lot of conversations about parenting and farming, and a murder. So it doesn’t make sense that Agnyathavasi features a song that objectifies, literally. And the object in question is a computer… the first one to arrive at the village. The way the camera caresses the curvature of the monitor, the first time it is switched on, the first time the keyboard is used… there is so much focus on the computer, which is going to change the fate of a few people. But they don’t know it yet. And the best part? We don’t either.

At one point in Good Bad Ugly, Ajith Kumar breaks the fourth wall to directly interact with director Adhik Ravichandran behind the camera. There is no precedence for such a style of filmmaking before and after this scene, and it is a random outlier in a film that revels in its nonchalance and throwing caution to the wind. This scene might not necessarily fit into the story about a gangster-in-exile returning to his old ways to save his son. However, Adhik treats Good Bad Ugly with so much irreverence that this is the least of the outlandish aspects of the film. There is a cameo and a throwback that comes out of nowhere. But we’ll get there in a while.