S. R. Praveen

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.

All that two people who were eons ago the world to each other get, when they meet years later, is just a little while (’Ithiri Neram’) to spend together. Each word uttered between them carries with it the weight of their past and the mystery of each other’s present and the paths their lives have taken in the intervening years. In Prasanth Vijay’s third film Ithiri Neram, much has changed in the lives of Anjana (Zarin Shihab) and Anish (Roshan Mathew) from the last time they talked, yet when they meet, it is as if they never stopped talking.

Horror really hits home when it is evoked in the mundane. Only when one encounters it in the unlikeliest of forms would the chill seep slowly, imperceptibly down our spine. In Dies Irae, Rahul Sadasivan mines horror out of even a gentle breeze caressing a person’s hair, so much so that after the movie, the feeling of wind in the hair somewhat ceases to be exhilarating as it used to be. There is more…fear, passed on to us through something as commonplace as a ray of light or the click sound of a hair clip.