S. R. Praveen

A precise sense of rhythm courses through the best of Ratheesh Balakrishnan Poduval’s works. Like a raconteur in full flow, he packs the narrative with intriguing events and funny throwaway lines that hardly cause the attention to waver. Even when some of the jokes don’t land, we remain engrossed and go with the flow. Yet, when his rhythm falters, as it does in the last act of Oru Durooha Saahacharyathil, we sense it too. Then it is just a matter of waiting for the inevitable train wreck. One of the reasons perhaps for the film going off track is its shape-shifting narrative, with the sudden turn in character in the last act not fitting well with what had transpired. It almost feels like a copout rather than something that would evolve organically from the story.

A dead body in the house can be one of the most horrific situations or a source of mirth, depending on the tone and treatment that a movie adopts. Mohiniyattam, which gently spoofs Drishyam, turns the situation into a hilarious affair, with periodic reminders of the dead man’s deceitful nature, supposedly to make us laugh without any sense of guilt. Sequels often end up as pale imitations of the original. But in conceiving a sequel to the mildly funny Bharathanatyam (which incidentally was a spoof of Balettan), Krishnadas Murali reimagines the original’s basic theme, injecting it with loads of dark humour and turning it into a markedly better film, like Vaazha 2 last week.

A little while into Vaazha 2: Biopic of a Billion Bros, one gets the feeling of being taken from one neatly engineered event to the next. Rather than one overarching narrative, the anticipation and excitement are all concentrated into shorter bursts, with each such sequence having an inherent rhythm, with a slow buildup and then a crescendo, when either all hell breaks loose or emotions overflow in a torrent, as it happens in the latter half.

How can a cinematic idea, which has been milked to its limits, be stretched further without seeming like the filmmaker is flogging a dead goat, er, horse? Bring in multiple timelines, make the same characters do the same things but in different time periods and maybe let these characters from various eras collide. Well, that is exactly what writer and filmmaker Midhun Manuel Thomas does with Aadu 3: One Last Ride: Part 1, the third instalment of the spoofy satire Aadu Oru Bheekara Jeeviyaanu (2015).

Fifteen years ago, Malayalam cinema was not in the pink of health when the screenwriting duo of Bobby-Sanjay came up with Traffic, which would give a new sense of direction for the industry. In 2026, when the same duo returns with Baby Girl, after a mix of memorable and forgettable films in the intervening years, they borrow some of the elements from their most successful film yet. But then, times have changed and the tastes of the audience too have evolved, and things that worked back in the day might not work now, which is what unfortunately happens with Baby Girl’

Every minute aspect about World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) wrestlers, ranging from their signature moves to their individual body dimensions, is imprinted in the memories of a generation that grew up in the 1990s. Debutant filmmaker Adhvaith Nayar’s Chatha Pacha attempts to tap into this enduring nostalgia of the WWE trump card-playing generation. On the surface, it appears the makers got a lot of it right, from replicating the signature moves of Undertaker and Rey Mysterio to recreating the mood of the wrestling ring with a local touch. Some of the fights in the ring have an unmistakable rhythm to them, which is further elevated by a few standout performers. But, scratch a little, and there emerges the shaky foundation, which could fall with even a weak kick, let alone a chokeslam.

Grief does not always arrive as a torrent. Sometimes, it seeps in ever so slowly, evoked by things which used to be mundane till a few days ago. In Prasanth Vijay’s film Daayam (Inheritance), being screened in the Malayalam Cinema Today section of the 28th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), an old voice note from her deceased mother about some daily chores brings 17-year old Kalyani (Aathira Rajeev) to tears.

Pared down to its bare bones, Dinjith Ayyathan’sEko is a story of the search for a missing man, a colourful character about whom infinite chronicles and conflicting accounts are in circulation. To bite into these bare bones is not really the point. It is to savour the whole act of reaching it and revelling in that pleasure. Just like through a dense, deceptive forest with uncharted territory at every turn, the viewer is slowly drawn into this world where not a single character can be fully trusted.