Sat, February 1 2025

Although ‘Sivarapalli’ is an easy weekend watch, it remains content to be a mere replica of ‘Panchayat’

While remakes are commonplace in feature films, the concept of targeting hyper-local markets using already successful material is gaining traction in the OTT space as well. The digital medium has thrived on the idea of ‘overcoming the two-inch barrier’ (subtitles), allowing stories to transcend language barriers. Yet, platforms continue to commission near frame-by-frame adaptations to attract a new set of viewers Over the years, villages have served as backdrops for various genres, ranging from political sagas to dramas, comedies, thrillers, action-packed entertainers, and romances. Amazon Prime Video’s eight-episode series Sivarapalli, a remake of TVF’s hit show Panchayat, takes a middle path, exploring the familiar terrain of rural drama through the perspective of an urban youngster.

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Sat, February 1 2025

Dominic and the Ladies’ Purse is an unlikely Gautham Menon film in a positive sense, from the way it’s visualised, shot and edited. The leisurely yet consistently engaging investigation thriller is built on a juicy premise centred around a lost ladies purse that leads a former cop-turned-detective to a missing couple, a mystery that only gets murkier with time. Even while catering to the star in Mammootty, the film doesn’t lose its way and culminates with a pulpy, edge-of-the-seat finale. Sushmitha Bhatt is a surprise find, with Gokul Suresh, Viji Venkatesh and Vineeth chipping in with impressive performances.

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Sat, January 25 2025

Director Gautham Menon's Dominic and The Ladies' Purse, starring Mammootty, Gokul Suresh and Lena, is a slow-burning investigative drama. The film has great potential but doesn't translate fully.

Malayalam superstar Mammootty and his film choices in the last couple of years have been incredible and eye-opening. From doing a Kaathal to Bramayugam, the actor is all in for experimental films and giving his all to every choice he makes. And when he chooses to join hands with Tamil filmmaker Gautham Menon, it certainly excites every film buff who has followed their career paths. Has Dominic and The Ladies’ Purse lived up to expectations? Let’s find out! Dominic (Mammootty) is a former police officer who now runs a detective agency. He is a laid-back guy with a quirky sense of humour. As he undergoes some financial issues, his landlady gives him a task to find the owner of a purse she found. In return, she will waive the rent. Dominic and his aide (Gokul Suresh) go on a mission to find the owner of the purse.

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Fri, January 24 2025

Gautham Menon, in his first Malayalam outing, appears to be in a bit of a dilemma as to how to treat the star at the centre of his film, delivering an average detective movie

Private eye Dominic, like all wannabe Sherlocks, has a habit of making quick deductions about other people just from their appearances. But, unlike in most other films, the protagonist of Gautham Vasudev Menon’s Dominic And The Ladies’ Purse gets it wrong in the opening sequence when he makes assumptions about a person aspiring to be his assistant. It is a delightful subversion of the overused detective trope, which fills one with hope for what is to follow. Unfortunately, the film does not always live up to this early promise except in a few interesting patches. Gautam Menon, in his first Malayalam outing, appears to be in a bit of a dilemma as to how to treat the star at the centre of his film. While there are a few scenes lampooning the pompous private detective Dominic (Mammootty), there are an equal number of scenes of his assistant (Gokul Suresh) being amazed by his investigative abilities.

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Sat, February 1 2025

Paradise… is that even a place in this world? As the series by the same name takes you into its labyrinths, you actually realise it isn’t the same earth we are living in right now. Yet, it opens like a regular murder mystery. US President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) has been brutally killed in his own house. Like us, you could end up wondering; why isn’t he living in the White House? Well, well, the mystery begins to deepen at many levels. As Special Agent Xavier Collins discovers his body in the sprawling mansion, things begin to unpeel like layers of onion.

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Tue, January 28 2025

Created by Dan Fogelman, the futuristic drama centres around a Secret Service agent trying to solve a mystery that engulfs him too.

Sterling K Brown reunites with This is Us creator Dan Fogelman on a new series, Paradise, that follows a Secret Service agent looking into the murder of someone he was assigned to protect. But like Fogelman’s previous works, the narrative is more layered than it seems. Paradise mixes a few genres to give viewers a thriller with an intriguing twist. Xavier Collins (Brown) is one of President Cal Bradford’s (James Marsden) lead agents. So when the unthinkable occurs, the level-headed man approaches with a clear focus as someone who would always do the right thing. Amidst high-level government officials and a few billionaires lies a conspiracy that continues to astonish the deeper we fall into it. The eight-episode series has a massive reveal at the end of the first episode, forcing viewers to rethink everything about what has been shown to them so far. That is usually the modus operandi of Fogelman and his usual collaborators, directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. In Paradise, the show slowly unveils each character and scenario in a leisurely manner.

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Sat, February 1 2025

The film is about a regressive, homophobic, sexist, and fat shaming 38-year-old virgin, who struggles to find the love of his life, naturally

In a sense, Oru Jaathi Jathakam is a bold attempt as the director M Mohanan, writers Rakesh Mantodi and Sharesh Malayankandy didn’t shy away from making a comedy-drama, which for pedantic and caviller eyes might strike as problematic. In reality, the intentions of the film seem to be the opposite. Oru Jaathi Jathakam is about a problematic 38-year-old virgin named Jayesh (Vineeth Srinivasan), who is struggling to find a match due to his regressive ideas about gender, queer community, and women in general. Throughout the film, we travel with this caricature of a sexist, and the film satirises their worldview, their take on women, and things that are beyond the grasp of their regressive thought. Jayesh, a writer with a magazine, has numerous conditions and demands for his future bride. He wants her to be fair-skinned, stay-at-home wife/mother, heed to gender roles, and above all, her horoscope should match his. When we meet Jayesh, he is in a hurry to find a girl since his horoscope claims that his father would die if he isn’t married before 38. Nevertheless, Jayesh isn’t the compromising type. With equally-regressive family and friends around, he doesn’t budge despite his age, looks, and attitude. Oru Jaathi Jathakam is essentially his journey of meeting and rejecting women.

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Fri, January 31 2025

Created by Alexi Hawley, the spy series is back to its globetrotting ways with a new mystery and intriguing supporting player.

Noah Centineo returns as the bumbling but charming CIA lawyer Owen Hendricks in the new season of The Recruit. We left him in Season 1, kidnapped in the Czech Republic, and miraculously, Owen survives. Although he lands himself in an entirely new scrap that could have international implications. Alexi Hawley’s series is two episodes shorter than the first, but the South Korea-set story remains entertaining in round two. Initially benched, Owen can’t sit still and do nothing at the CIA, so he finds himself pulled into a new threat that takes him to Seoul, where he meets NIS agent Jang Kyun (Teo Yoo). Jang blackmails him to get something personal of his in return. Battling past demons with his late father’s memory and his own time in Seoul as a child, Owen must use his quick-thinking skills to get what Jang wants. Additionally, Owen is also laying low against an internal investigation that could have him disbarred. Hawley makes good use of the baby-faced but earnest Noah as the protagonist Owen in The Recruit. This season, with new and old characters, the series has a good mix of the pending storyline and a new mystery to take the story further. The show continues to lean into the lawyer jokes, and there were several scenes that made me laugh out loud more than once.

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Fri, January 31 2025

At a time when the Hindutva ideology has seen a spike, director Rajkumar Santoshi denies Godse the pleasure of martyrdom and allows him to evolve. At the same time, he attempts to humanise and critique Gandhi in his parallel universe

At a time when history is being fictionalised, director Rajkumar Santoshi uses creative licence to bust the canards that have been allowed to fester over the years to delegitimise Mahatma Gandhi in public conscience. From being called a pawn of the Empire to faking fasts, a notion has been created that Gandhi forced the first government of independent India to release Rs 55 crore to Pakistan. The film suggests that it triggered Nathuram Godse to kill Gandhi on January 30, 1948. Santoshi revisits the events leading up to Gandhi’s assassination and then takes a leap into an imaginary space where Gandhi survives the three bullets that Godse pumped into his chest and seeks a dialogue with him.

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Fri, January 31 2025

Premiering at Sundance, 2025, this is a road movie with a difference, of a small family running towards an unforeseen future.

“Where are we going?” six-year-old Charlie (Wyatt Solis) asks his father (John Magaro). Charlie, his elder sister Ella (Molly Belle Wright) are seated inside a car with their father within the first five minutes of the film. The kids have no idea where they’re headed. Cole Webley’s directorial debut is the kind of film where exposition comes at a premium. Information trickles down through stray scenes – the sheriff putting an eviction notice on their house right around the time they’re leaving tells us about the family’s dire financial situation. Ella tells Charlie she was taught to fly a kite by their mother before “she got sick” – explaining who the father talks to, grieving his partner, almost praying to her for forgiveness. When they’re at a store, and the father wishes to spoil his kids with a kite and a meal of their choice, the clerk informs him he has only $20 left on his food stamps.

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Wed, January 29 2025

The office comedy situated in a video gaming company returns with more zaniness and outlandish situations designed to entertain.

Created by Charlie Day, Megan Ganz, and Rob McElhenney, Mythic Quest returns after a long gap. Its last season premiered in November 2022. But for all intents and purposes, the show has never wavered. The executives and creatives working at Mythic Quest Studios have their own quests to overcome this season. Creatives Ian Grimm (Rob McElhenney) and Poppy Li (Charlotte Nicdao) work on an expansion to their game that just might drive them apart, while the rest of the gang faces some professional setbacks as well. Studio boss David Brittlesbee (David Hornsby) tries to push the company towards more profits, while the creative gang of Ian, Poppy, and Dana (Imani Hakim) face a breaking point of their own in their careers. This fourth season explores the dynamics of the employee versus company, with each side facing some wins and losses. Creative and personal partnerships also go through a change as Poppy and Ian find themselves unable to work with each other and girlfriends Dana and Rachel (Ashly Burch) learn boundaries. The best thing about Mythic Quest is the actors are also creatively involved behind the scenes, which adds to the collaborative effect of the series. Hornsby and Burch have worked on the scripts, while Nicdao, Hakim, Danny Pudi, and Burch again have sat in the director’s chair this season. The fourth episode directed by creator Ganz is the standout as it cleverly employs each character in a murder mystery party scenario while moving the story forward. Another plotline where Ian and Poppy use AI models of themselves to argue with one another was hilarious.

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Sat, January 25 2025

Directed by Rajeshwar Kalisamy, starring Manikandan, Guru Somasundaram and Saanve Megghana, Kudumbasthan is a delightful family drama with heaps of relatable comedy. It also gives you lessons on family relationships and money.

Actor Manikandan is steadily becoming a bankable actor in Tamil cinema. His last two films, Good Night and Lover, turned out to be crowd favourites. In both films, he played a relatable ‘guy next door’ dealing with financial and emotional problems. Director Rajeshwar Kalisamy’s Kudmbasthan is yet another film that features Manikandan in the role of a breadwinner in a lower-middle-class family man. Naveen (Manikandan) and Vennila (Saanve Megghana) get married at a registrar’s office, with their families cursing them for not getting their permission. After a brief hiatus, Naveen and Vennila live with his parents. Vennila, an IAS aspirant, is a cool-headed, understanding and pregnant wife, who supports Naveen and turns a blind eye to the insults of her mother-in-law.

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Sat, January 25 2025

The sketches in this Manikandan-starrer are laugh-out-loud funny mostly, but the film suffers from the sum of the parts not being greater than the whole.

Remember TVF breaking into the Hindi web series space during the OTT boom? While not on the similar scale, Nakkalites managed to do that in the Tamil space with their native, relatable, and well-performed sketches that boasted of decent production value, and strong content. Since all rivers in this part of the world have to flow into cinema, many actors from this setup managed to eke out a name for themselves on the big screen too. Now, its director Rajeshwar Kalisamy has come with Kudumbasthan, a film that reflects the ethos of Nakkalites, features actors from Nakkalites, has the same irreverent vibe of Nakkalites, and for what its worth, makes quite an impression.

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Sat, January 25 2025

Kudumbasthan’s premise taps into an evergreen theme in Tamil cinema, which is the struggles of a middle-class protagonist trying to make ends meet. The film’s title itself evokes memories of classics from filmmakers like Bhagyaraj, Visu, and actor Saravanan, who have explored similar themes in their comedy dramas across generations. The story revolves around Naveen (Manikandan), a typical middle-class youngster from a small town in Coimbatore, who is newly married to Vennila (Saanve Megghana). Naveen works as a designer at a local marketing company, earning just enough to sustain their modest life. Meanwhile, Vennila prepares for the UPSC exams while managing household responsibilities and battling caste-based discrimination from her mother-in-law. Their lives take a turn when Naveen, in a moment of self-respect, slaps a client and loses his job. What follows is a downward spiral of financial struggles, debt, and deception, with no apparent way out.

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Sat, January 25 2025

Think music composers of yesteryear and chances are that the name Roshan wouldn’t figure on the top of your mind. For the present generation and even a generation before that, the surname Roshan is but obviously a byword for superstar Hrithik Roshan and, at best, his father-filmmaker Rakesh Roshan. But, as the Netflix documentary ‘The Roshans’ delves into the lives of four men of the Roshan family, all of them of exceptional talent, you learn more than a thing or two about who the original Roshan was. The first episode dedicated to the family patriarch, the late Roshan Lal Nagrath, is a revelation. Not because it unfurls any hidden family secrets, but reminds you how those lilting melodies — ‘Mann re tu kahe na dheer dhare’, ‘Rahein na rahein hum, mehka karenge’, ‘Yeh ishq ishq hai’, ‘Zindagi bhar nahi bhoolegi woh barsaat ki raat’ — you have often hummed came from his musical prowess. There are so many OMG moments. ‘Nigahein milane ko jee chahta hai’, ‘Dil jo na keh saka’… — he composed these, too! The list is endless. As we get over the overwhelming feeling of admiration, also stemming out of our ignorance of not knowing enough about his music, the very first episode turns out to be extremely satisfying.

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Sat, January 18 2025

As this is like an authorised biography, you will find only fulsome praise of Roshans. You wonder what the show -- brimming with talking heads and snippets -- would have been like if other points of view were included

One of the chief things that emerges from this four-part mini-series on the Roshans, is that, despite being part of so many memorable films via music, direction, production and performance, their contribution to Hindi cinema was not celebrated enough. Part of the pleasure of watching this kind of show is the straight-up access: apart from the Roshans themselves — Rajesh, Rakesh, Hrithik and close family — everyone from Shatrughan Sinha, Shah Rukh Khan, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Karan Johar, the Akhtars, Javed, Farhan and Zoya, Abhishek Bachchan, singers Asha Bhosle, Suman Kalyanpuri, Sudha Malhotra, Usha Mangeshkar, Kumar Sanu, Sonu Nigam, and several others are all here, speaking about their relationship, professional and personal, with the Roshans.

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Sat, January 18 2025

The Netflix docu-series on the Roshan family is equal parts hollow and comforting.

You’ve heard of “Prestige TV”: the term for quality long-form film-making, cinematic production values, A-list acting and complex screenwriting. But in the Netflix non-fiction universe, Prestige TV is a far more literal term. It stands for self-produced and self-congratulatory celebrity documentaries with infinite access that explore the sanitised prestige of fame. The symptoms: prestigious movie and music legacies, prestigious anecdotes, prestigious lives, prestigious prestige. You get the gist. Or maybe you didn’t. Think of the line from Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (2006): “Making something disappear isn’t enough, you have to bring it back”. This hagiographic genre is all about bringing things back. Some call it the magic of movies, others call it a nostalgia grab.

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Fri, January 24 2025

This touching story about generational trauma and guilt is elevated by Kieran Culkin’s performance

“This will be a tour about pain,” cautions James, the earnest British guide shepherding a group of American Jews on a tour of Poland. The small group includes David and Benji, two cousins from New York on a visit to Poland to honour their recently deceased grandmother Dori, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust. Best known for this starring role as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg writes, directs and stars in this holocaust comedy playing David, who like Eisenberg, suffers from OCD and anxiety disorder. David has a regular job, a wife and child and uses pills to deal with his anxiety. He’s socially awkward and envies Benji’s ease and charm. Benji road-rolls his cousin and trivialises his life choices.

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Tue, January 21 2025

Kieran Culkin, who became a phenomenon on HBO’s Succession as the foul-mouthed Roman Roy, shows similar traits as the fast-talking Benji, saying the darndest things.

The first time we meet Benji (Kieran Culkin), he’s aimlessly floating around in an airport. Seated in the waiting area with his ear pods plugged in, one can immediately spot the melancholy in his eyes. He appears to be curious about people – observing them closely. There’s a good chance that if someone around him was in need, Benji would be one of the first persons to help. But he’s also a wildcard, who wouldn’t respond to his cousin David’s (Jesse Eisenberg) voicemails, and that too on the day they’re supposed to travel to Poland together. Has he woken up? Has he left? Is he on time? Where is he? Does he remember they have a flight? No response.

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Sat, January 18 2025

Jesse Eisenberg’s film, featuring a great Kieran Culkin performance, lives in the nuances of depression.

A Real Pain, starring Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as cousins, is exactly the kind of film you imagine if Eisenberg and Culkin played cousins. It’s funny, awkward, edgy, poignant, light, chatty, alert, minor-key and Sundancey (an adjective for the brand of tragicomic American quirk that the snowy festival loves to showcase). There are echoes of the uptight mom and no-filter teen from the actor’s directorial debut, When You Finish Saving The World, in the uptight David (Eisenberg) and the free-spirited-but-troubled Benji (Culkin). Family man David and drifter Benji head to Poland to process their Jewish heritage through a guided Holocaust tour and, more importantly, visit their late camp-survivor grandmother’s childhood home. As in most movies, it’s the interiority of the oddball journey that matters.

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Fri, January 24 2025

Despite the predictability, what really holds this film together is the strong performances by Guru Somasundaram, Sanchana Natarajan, and John Vijay.

The title of director Dhinakaran Sivalingam’s debut film Bottle Radha makes its intentions clear. It is about alcohol addiction, and it is about Radhamani, who is an alcoholic. While there is no doubt that the movie trains all its focus firmly on Radhamani and his seemingly never-ending tryst with the bottle, some of the best moments of the film comes in the scenes involving his wife Anjalam. This is also due to the fact that Bottle Radha feels like being an anonymous fly during one of the many meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it is the portions involving Anjalam gives the movie a refreshing change of pace. The opening shot of Bottle Radha is a drone shot that captures the expanse of the Chennai city that is not often shown in our films. We see Radhamani creating a ruckus over being admonished for coming drunk to work. Interestingly, the entire opening stretch wonderfully introduces the world of Radhamani, and how despite being around near and dear, the allure of the bottle takes him to unsavoury places. Again, the places he goes to might not seem really dire, but the look on Anjalam’s face when he comes home drunk says a lot more than what pages of dialogues could do. She feels insulted. She feels violated. She feels neglected. She feels distraught. And all that she can do is stand resolutely with tears streaming down her face. But Radhamani doesn’t see any of this because he is blinded by the booze, and when one things leads to another, and he finds himself arrested by the police, Bottle Radha decides to take a different route to tackle the issue of addiction.

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