S. R. Praveen

Evoking a time period is a challenge of a lesser order as opposed to effectively transporting the audience to that period. A few carefully chosen props might be enough to pull off the former, while the latter involves the arduous task of authentically capturing the zeitgeist of that time and hitting all the right notes to make it believable for those who might have lived through those times. In Moonwalk, debutant filmmaker Vinod A.K. makes a bold attempt for the latter and lands stylishly on his toes, evoking the iconic dance move of the early 1990s. The world that he recreates is the early 1990s in the coastal and rural belts of Thiruvananthapuram or rather more specifically, the emergence of a breakdancing subculture among groups of youths during that period. Of course, there are the grainy VHS tape visuals, Walkman, STD booths, disco-inspired costumes, frizzy long hair, Michael Jackson fanhood and every other nostalgia-evoking material from those times, but all of these are woven organically into a straight-forward, simple plot that holds an emotional pull.

At the core of Thamar KV‘s sophomore film, Sarkeet, is a sticky affair that pushes the limits of believability. But, it is to the credit of the makers and the actors involved that one goes along willingly with this rather unbelievable situation that propels the story forward. Thamar, going by the two movies he has made so far, appears to be adept at pulling off such uncommon occurrences in a light, engaging manner. For about half of its runtime, Sarkeet moves along two parallel tracks, one dealing with a couple who are struggling to manage their child with a severe case of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and another on the travails of a young Malayali who has landed up in a West Asian country in search of a job.

Like a beast taking its time in revealing its true nature, Thudarum almost lulls us into a comfortable space with everyday happenings and innocuous humour in its opening passages. When it shifts shape, it does it ever so slightly, over the course of ‘Benz’ Shanmugham (Mohanlal)‘s pursuit to get back his beloved old car, unfairly seized by the police, and during a night journey up the hills, as one feels the tension ramping up. The film then coasts along on this path, while throwing in Shanmugham’s emotional roots at regular intervals, with the car, with a former stunt master and with his family. With Operation Java and Saudi Vellakka, Tharun Moorthy proved himself as a filmmaker to look forward to, but there was always the apprehension of how he would adapt his approach to a big star. He gets the balance almost right, giving the fans stuff to cheer for without compromising much on what he wants to say, in the way he wants it to be said. Buoyed by a solid story by K.R.Sunil, Tharun gets the right pulse for a mainstream drama. Intelligently woven into the plot is a natural disaster, which turns out to be one of the key elements in a revelation.

Cinema has for long provided an endless supply of content for social media memes, but the flow appears to have reversed in recent years. First came the influencers with their massive online reach, bagging noticeable roles. Now, viral online content has begun seeping into screenplays, to elicit easy applause. For instance, in debutant Sivaprasad’s Maranamass, co-written with Siju Sunny, Suresh Krishna’s recent online image as the “convincing star” is used to the hilt in one of the many humorous passages in the film. This “memeification” of screenplays is not necessarily a bad thing, especially in cases where it works like a charm. Incidentally, at the centre of Maranamass is Luke (Basil Joseph), a popular YouTuber and a self-proclaimed ‘sigma male,’ who has become a headache to the people in his neighbourhood owing to his public-spirited actions, like sticking wall posters of the panchayat president’s Internet search history or putting the local police station on sale to convey a point to the idle police officers. So it is not a surprise that when a series of killings of senior citizens takes place, the needle of suspicion points towards him.

In Boxing, dodging a punch is probably as important as landing one. Filmmaker Khalid Rahman clearly knows a thing or two about this evasion technique, which he portrays so well in the elegantly staged boxing bouts in his fifth film, Alappuzha Gymkhana. Like a skilled boxer, he also gently evades the genre compulsions of making a sports movie, especially one that revolves around boxing. In doing so, he also breaks the expectations associated with him after the inventive Thallumaala. It is not surprising, though, for all his five films have hardly anything in common. The attempts to break cliches in a sports movie is an endeavour fraught with risks, for it also means not going along that easy path with an endless supply of emotional highs and cheap thrills. Alappuzha Gymkhana does not deliver much of the latter but makes up with a relatable tale that spares a thought for those not cut out to win. The film is written in such a way as to make us think that we wouldn’t want it any other way.

A few late flourishes can sometimes redeem a film even though it might be hurtling downhill till that point. But, in Deeno Dennis’s directorial debut Bazooka, that supposed redemption arc comes way beyond a point where most of us would have stopped caring for the characters or the plot. It comes almost like a dessert that arrives after a tasteless main course that made your stomach feel queasy. As for the dessert, beyond the dressing on top, it turns out to be the same old under it. In Bazooka, hardly a moment passes without a background score. In a film tailor-made for the superstar’s fans, a good part of this score is dedicated to accentuating his every random movement. It begins right from the moment we see John Caesar (Mammootty) at a bus stop, reading a self-help book and waiting for a bus — inside which a good part of the film takes place. But then, ACP Benjamin Joshua (Gautham Vasudev Menon) also gets the same treatment when we first see him getting out of his car to carry out a routine vehicle check. This is not surprising in a film which survives mostly on its cosmetics.

Symbolism in art is inherently indirect, but in Prithviraj Sukumaran’s Empuraan it is thrown at your face, one ‘L’ at a time, to remind us of the omnipotent anti-hero Lucifer. Part of a broken cross atop a rundown church falls down, landing in slow motion as an ‘L’. Later, a burning tree branch falls perfectly as an ‘L’. If the ‘L’eft bottom corner of the screen were ‘L’it up, one could have savoured an ‘L’ for the whole ‘L’ength of the film. Part of Empuraan’s many problems lies in this over-reliance on the internationally notorious, shadowy figure of Khureshi Ab’raam aka Lucifer while relegating his local avatar Stephen Nedumpally (Mohanlal), the central figure of the first part, to a mere guest appearance. Now, Lucifer (2019) was a flawed film which in its post-release afterlife was turned into the holy grail of Malayalam commercial filmmaking, although it pales in comparison with the best of commercial entertainers of the 1980s and 90s. Yet, it had something going for it. Empuraan has hardly anything going for it, except for the richness of its production design.

A certain machine-like uniformity marks the male and female characters in Boban Samuel’s Machante Malakha. While almost all the male characters are good-hearted and submissive, a majority of the female characters are scheming ones trying every trick in their book to make life difficult for the men around them. This unmissable pattern in the writing of the characters serves the purpose for which the film appears to have been made – to put into cinematic form the grievances of the men’s rights associations that have cropped up in recent times. Machante Malakha begins as a typical boy meets girl story, with Sajeevan (Soubin Shahir), a bus conductor, falling in love with Bijimol (Namitha Pramod), a regular passenger in the bus, after a series of fights. But the prologue to this love story, when a fellow bus conductor whom Sajeevan is in love with leaves him to get married to a rich man, signals the film’s intentions. Whether it be due to this underlying agenda of the film or plain bad writing, Bijimol is written with confusing character traits, changing her behaviour multiple times even within a single scene.