Avinash Ramachandran

Five villages — each having its own behaviour, its own problems, professions, and pursuits. It might sound like Black Panther, but we’ll get there later. There is a foreign invasion that threatens to disturb the status quo of the system. There is a hero who wants to do good by his land and his people, and there are external forces that won’t let him do this simple thing that heroes have been doing from time immemorial. There is a Game of Thrones-esque setting, in not just for claiming the top spot, but also in the overall look and feel. There is a timeline jump of almost 1000 years, and the way these two timelines come together is straight out of the SS Rajamouli playbook. Amidst all these familiar tropes lies Siva’s Kanguva that revels in its familiarity, impresses in its visuals, but leaves a lot to be desired in the execution of it all.

A young boy comes to a new city. The city is unkind to him and his mother. He makes a promise that the city will know of his name… soon. A few years later, he goes on to make such a big name that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is forced to intervene. Then, the antagonists and the system decide to take on the one man who wanted to rule it all. This is the story of KGF. Incidentally, this is also the story of Varun Tej’s latest film, Matka.

It isn’t easy being a film star in India. There is no sense of privacy for a public figure — Everything is criticised, scrutinised, commented upon, and dissected. In a world where your every move has to be carefully calculated, can you actually find a moment of honesty? Can you actually find your own cosy corner that allows you to be what you really want to be? After watching the 80-odd minutes of Netflix’s Nayanthara – Beyond the Fairytale, it is clear that the ‘Lady Superstar’ found her cosy corner at the centre of her world in Vignesh Shivan, and everything in this documentary leads to that moment… That moment where Nayanthara can look into the camera and say, “I feel like I don’t need anything else anymore.”

The first one hour of Nirangal Moondru sets the stage for an epic showdown. The lives of three and a half men meet at a crucial juncture — One needs an answer, one needs a resolution, one needs a reason, and one needs a rational explanation. It is wonderful how every single person’s needs seems to be intertwined with the actions of the others. There is a wonderful build-up to the phenomenon of cause and effect. Even if it all unravels pretty soon, the first hour is fascinating.

There has been a legitimate paucity of quality comedy films this year in Tamil cinema. So, when Sakthi Chidambaram, a veteran of this genre, even if his recent films were just a shadow of his form in the mid 2000s, closes the year with Jolly O Gymkhana, a comedy, it is okay to have your hopes up. But the filmmaker starts off by introducing Yogi Babu as Father Martin Luther King, and makes him walk out of the toilet and say lines like “Unakku life problem, enakku piles problem.” You think that is bad? It gets worse with him telling Madonna Sebastian’s Bhavani that he can’t help her sleeping problem because he is suffering from a sitting problem. You think that is worse? Bhavani, who narrates her backstory, says, “Kadhaiyoda moolathulerndhu kelunga (Listen to the story from the core)” and of course, Yogi Babu replies, “Already moolam dhaan ma prachana (My you-know-what is already sore).” And we are just five minutes into Jolly O Gymkhana.

What is it with Telugu cinema and banking fraud? Within the past three weeks, we’ve had Lucky Baskhar, Matka, and now Zebra, which deals with banks, scams, heists, boyish charm, ticking clocks, tension-filled banks, middle class aspirations, and of course, references to Harshad Mehta. But, in a very weird way, all three films are as different as chalk and cheese thanks to the era the films are set in, the stars headlining the films, and the unique treatment. Zebra differs from both these movies despite having banking and scams at the centre of it because director Eashvar Karthic designs a protagonist who does what he does for others and not for individual gains, and most importantly, the adversary isn’t the system, but an individual.

Prison films are tough to crack, but the allure of this genre is understandable. It is essentially a chamber drama where every character is unpredictable, and the audience is tuned to expect them to get violent at any time. These characters are ticking time bombs, and the setting allows the writers to explore the human psyche and deliver a solid character-driven drama. With this base in place, one can add the required flavours like romance, sentiment, revenge, and even comedy, and a prison film will have the space for it all. What really matters is the proportion of each, and for the longest time in Sorgavaasal, debutant director Sidharth Vishwanath, along with his co-writers Tamizh Prabha and Ashwin Ravichandran, get it right. However, despite perfectly building a Virumaandi meets Vada Chennai narrative to a crescendo, they falter at the end. But the characters, and its effective portrayal, ensure Sorgavaasal escapes without crashing and burning.

In the 1980s and 90s, we had a steady stream of films about an outsider coming to a broken home, and uniting everyone. Visu almost perfected this template. We saw it happen in the 90s and 2000s too where the setting of the home was extended to a college, a workplace, a village, etc… Basically, Indian cinema loves its feel-good family entertainer space where there are clashes of ego, but all’s well that ends well. There was a time when M Rajesh could effectively milk these situations, and effortlessly conjure hilarious scenes with his oddball protagonists. There was a time when he soared past the generic nature of the central plot, and neatly wrapped it all up with his brand of comedy. Unfortunately, hardly any of this happens in his latest film Brother.