Sun, March 9 2025

Mithya explores layers of grief in a young boy’s life, but it also reflects a growing desire within the Kannada film industry to tell stories that offer real value to audiences.

Mithya is an intimate story of a young boy struggling to make sense of his life, which has been shattered into countless pieces after his parents pass away. It marks director Sumanth Bhat’s feature film debut. Previously, he helmed the Kannada web series Ekam, also co-produced by Rakshit Shetty. Mithya sheds light on the internal turmoil of an 11-year-old boy, Mithun. Taken in by his aunt’s family after his mother dies by suicide — leaving him and his younger sister orphaned — he is uprooted from Mumbai, where he was born and raised, and placed in the slow, quiet countryside of Udupi. He prefers to be called Mithya, but adjusting to his new reality is far from easy.

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Sat, March 8 2025

Starring a wonderful Athish Shetty, filmmaker Sumanth Bhat's drama is about a boy in transit — not just physically but also emotionally.

How much does a young boy have to go through to be allowed the freedom to have an emotional breakdown? When we first meet Mithya (Athish Shetty), what we see is his back turned towards us as he travels on a train from somewhere to somewhere else. We later learn that he’s not travelling out of choice. He’s being displaced from his home in Mumbai to Udipi in Southern Karnataka where he will live with his uncle, aunt and their two daughters. Like Mithya, the film about him too has its back turned towards us. It’s not a film that grants you the solace of having empathised with its broken protagonist. Instead, it reveals these broken pieces so sparsely that we feel as lost and helpless as he does.

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Fri, March 7 2025

Sumanth Bhat’s debut feature Mithya is an aching look at an orphaned child and his relationship with the world.

Many a time in Sumanth Bhat’s Mithya, conditioned by today’s happenings and a generally unsafe world, the stomach knots up with uncertainty, wondering what would befall a child that seems to trust adults. You heave a sigh of relief, only to realise that the child can still be injured through other means — what he hears and how he’s treated — especially when he’s too young to remember it all, but also too old to forgetfully. Snatches of these conversations linger and play on in his head like scabs being yanked off.

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Thu, March 6 2025

सोनी लिव पर आई नौ एपिसोड की इस वेब-सीरिज़ के पांचवें एपिसोड के अंत में जब नायक ऋषभ नायिक सुरभि से कहता है-‘मुझ से शादी कर लो प्लीज़’ तो उसकी आंखें नम होती हैं। यह सुनते हुए सुरभि की भी आंखें नम होती हैं। इस सीन को यहीं पॉज़ कर दीजिएगा और गौर कीजिएगा कि एक हल्की-सी नमी आपकी आंखों में भी होगी। अब याद कीजिएगा कि आपकी आंखें इससे पहले के एपिसोड्स में भी कुछ जगह पनियाई होंगी और ध्यान रखिएगा, अभी आगे भी आपकी आंखों में कई बार नमी आएगी। बल्कि कुछ एक बार तो यह नमी झरने का रूप भी लेना चाहेगी। जी हां, यह इस कहानी की ताकत है, उस सिनेमा की ताकत है जो ऐसी कहानी को आपके सामने इस तरह से लाता है कि आप, आप नहीं रहते बल्कि इस कहानी के किरदार हो जाते हैं, कभी मुंबई, कभी उज्जैन तो कभी रतलाम हो जाते हैं।

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Sat, February 8 2025

It’s the 90s world of Rajshri. A mansion. A joint family. A starchy patriarch/matriarch whose word is writ, everybody else shivers, cowers before the family dictator. Karan Johar put Amitabh Bachchan in that stern position in K3G and reversed the gender to give Jaya Bachchan the same unbending top place in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. Step into the sprawling mansion of the Rathi parivar in Ratlam where Taoji (Kanwaljit Singh) is the stiff principled head of a large joint family. Like Karan Johar’s joint family in RARKPK, the Rathis too are renowned for their famous mithai. But Taoji’s rules are anything but meetha. More than four decades ago, there was a film called Ek Hi Bhool (1981). Those same 80s sentiments and ambience may be transplanted into the Rathi mansion and labelled, Ek Hi Jhooth. Taoji can never forgive a lie. His sister (Anjana Sukhani) is still paying the price for having fallen in love with someone outside their community. ‘It wasn’t about the community, it was her lying about it that Taoji cannot forgive,’ is underlined a couple of times. And in that claustrophobically tradition-bound ambience, the family is eternally grateful to Fufaji (Rajesh Tailang) who did them all a big favour for saving their reputation and marrying the tainted sister, now referred to as “Bua”.

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Fri, February 7 2025

Rajshri Productions and filmmaker Sooraj Barjatya venture into the world of streaming with this promising but muddled love story.

We don’t usually see love stories on film or OTT much these days, so our eyes were peeled for Rajshri Production’s Bada Naam Karenge. The ambitious SonyLIV series unfolds like a feature film rather than a series. It’s easy to get invested in the romance between Surbhi (Ayesha Kaduskar) and Rishabh (Ritik Ghanshani) in a story set in Madhya Pradesh. But once we get to the heart of the matter, Bada Naam Karenge becomes jumbled under the weight of so many characters and remains a bit dated. The romance features two families: the wealthy Rathis of Ratlam and the middle-class Guptas of Ujjain. A possible rishta is floated between Rishabh Rathi and Surbhi Gupta. As the families explore their union through an arranged marriage, the audience learns about a hidden secret between the two. Will Rishabh and Surbhi get together, or will the expectations of their families get in the way? The story and screenplay of Bada Naam Karenge has been penned by S Manasvi. Vidit Tripathi has also helped out with the screenplay and co-written the dialogues. Moving to the past and returning to the present, the initial batch of episodes holds promise as the young couple’s story goes from enemies to lovers. Once the large cast of supporting players gets involved, it feels too behind the times. The main conflict between the two families also gets dragged out over the last few episodes, only to be quickly resolved over a big emotional scene.

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Thu, March 6 2025

The film examines Dylan’s emergence at a time of great political and social ferment in America.

The first time we meet Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet) in A Complete Unknown, he’s uncomplainingly laying in the back of a wagon amongst a pile of luggage. He’s just hitched a ride to New York City to see his hero, folk musician Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), who has been hospitalised after being diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. Dylan overhears an impassioned discussion trying to determine if Guthrie is a folk or a country musician. “There’s no need to box him,” one of them says. It’s 1961 and a particularly tense period in America, as the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) is summoning people for their alleged communist ties. The celebrities of Hollywood are understandably first in line, just like the musicians of the time like Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), who was critical of the American government. Social justice is becoming a street-side topic among many, as America is sinking deeper into the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement is picking up steam. Two years later, a president will be assassinated during a motorcade, fuelling the paranoia of the public and future governments alike.

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Mon, March 3 2025

Sundeep Kishan, Rao Ramesh, and Ritu Varma shine, but weak writing lets it down

Reviewing a film often involves stating the obvious: an interesting or amusing idea does not always translate into an engaging cinematic experience. Yet, after watching director Trinadha Rao Nakkina’s Telugu comedy Mazaka, written by Prasanna Kumar Bezawada, it feels necessary to reiterate this point. The writer-director duo take a premise with potential for outrageous humour but dilute it with predictable tropes, making the film tedious. The saving grace is the performances of Sundeep Kishan, Rao Ramesh, and Ritu Varma, though even they can only do so much to redeem the narrative. The film opens with a morning walker discovering a trail of red leading to two men washed up on Visakhapatnam beach. Alarmed, he alerts the police, only for the inspector (Ajay) to find that the men — Krishna (Sundeep Kishan) and his father Ramana (Rao Ramesh) — are not injured but simply hungover. The red stain, in fact, comes from a packet of avakaya (mango pickle) in their shirt pockets. The inspector, who is struggling with writer’s block while working on a novel, takes an interest in their story. The absurdity of the situation sets the tone for mindless fun and signals to the audience not to take anything too seriously — or ask too many questions.

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Mon, March 3 2025

Brady Corbet's ‘The Brutalist’ is a complicated spectacle, offering startling images and unresolved questions

In a short epilogue, The Brutalist finally shows us László Toth’s buildings. Brady Corbet’s film presents as a given that Toth is a genius architect of the Bauhaus school, but we are only shown one of his creations—a library—in full right up till the final 10 minutes. The format in which they’re presented is strange: a showreel for a biennale that looks like it’s shot on cheap video, with cheesy transitions. A film with startling pristine images spends its last moments looking like DTV. It’s a strange end to the film – and that’s without even getting into the whole Israel of it all. The Brutalist hits you several times with shots of roads and rail tracks zipping by, as seen from the front of a car or train. If the intention is to have the viewer recall the opening of Lawrence of Arabia, it worked on me. Corbet’s film has that David Lean sprawl, certainly in terms of runtime (202 minutes), but also in the ambition and density of its storytelling.

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Sun, March 2 2025

For those untouched by the war’s direct traumas, these brutalist buildings might feel cold and uninviting, even ugly. But for those who have endured the dehumanising horrors of war, they represent something deeply intimate.

If you saw the poster for The Brutalist, featuring Adrien Brody squinting his eyes, staring straight at you in a low-angle shot, cigarette in mouth, with streaks of fire flying across, you might take him for an Italian-American gangster. Especially since The Brutalist sounds like the perfect title for a gangster flick, set in late 1950s America, adding to its vibe as the ultimate land of freedom and wild wealth. But The Brutalist isn’t that. It’s about architecture — big, heavy, concrete-and-steel stuff. These imposing structures mirror the post-World War II psyche. For those untouched by the war’s direct traumas, these brutalist buildings might feel cold and uninviting, even ugly. But for those who have endured the dehumanising horrors of war, they represent something deeply intimate.

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Sun, March 2 2025

Ever since ‘Aashram’ dropped in 2020, both the director, Prakash Jha, and Bobby Deol, who plays the devious Baba Nirala, captured our imagination. Indeed, the perils of a successful show are that it often gets extended into many seasons, elongated and stretched way beyond the story actually calls for or deserves. Thus, the powerful and impactful show about the nexus between fake gurus, politics and power did get diluted in between as it offered more of the same in the intervening seasons. But, as ‘Season 3 Part Two’ drops, our worst fears that it will continue to go round in circles are given a slight reprieve. Sure enough, his victim, Pammi (Aaditi Pohankar), who is on the run, manages to nail the Baba. But before you can even heave a sigh of relief, he and Bhupa (Chandan Roy Sanyal), his irascible deputy, once again outwit her and have her jailed instead.

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Sat, March 1 2025

Jiiva’s Aghathiyaa, which marks the debut of lyricist Pa Vijay as director, neither is clear about its genre nor about the ideology it wants to purport.

Abrodolph Lincoler is one of the outrageously funny characters in the American animated series Rick And Morty’s hit episode Ricksy Business. He is a genetically engineered clone with the DNAs of Adolf Hitler and Abraham Lincoln. He is an experiment gone wrong. The idea was to create a more neutral ideological leader, but in reality, he ended up becoming a person with disoriented ideas. Sample one of his lines: “Prepared to be emancipated from your own inferior genes." He is a diabolical cocktail of ideas. Watching Aghathiyaa reminded me of this character as the film’s ideology is as confusing as Lincoler. On one hand, the film, directed by lyricist Pa Vijay, has Dravidian newspapers Kudiyarasu and Viduthalai as some product placements throughout, and at the same time, it is a propaganda film about Siddha medicine that would make Periyar turn in his grave.

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Sat, March 1 2025

Suzhal S2 amps up the intrigue with a gripping crime, a tighter plot, and compelling leads. But its tendency to over-explain and sidestep political sharpness holds it back from true excellence.

At least two Tamil films that released in 1988 get a namedrop in the second season of Suzhal: The Vortex. They are Senthoora Poove and Agni Natchathiram. One is about a dying man who makes it his mission to save two young star-crossed lovers, which is a throwback to season one of Suzhal that unfolds around the death of one such pair. The second film is about parents and children, warts and all, which points to a theme in Suzhal’s second season— about father and mother figures, and their adopted sons and daughters. At the centre is the father, pointedly named Chellappa (Lal), a criminal lawyer known for his righteousness and sincerity, a darling of victims and survivors. There is also a mother with a fleeting appearance but otherworldly deeds and influence. It is a curious thing, those namedrops—one vaguely referring to a dance troupe named Senthoora Poove and the other directly invoking Mani Ratnam’s Agni Natchathiram and its unforgettable climax of strobe lights waltz. Later, the series invokes another 1988 Tamil film title.

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Fri, February 28 2025

Lacks the snap and brilliance of the first season, created by Pushkar-Gayathri, but it still manages to be a decent watch.

Pushakar-Gayathri’s Suzhal: The Vortex Season 1 continues to be one of the very few Tamil web series that’s on par with the global standard of such long-form thrillers. It has set a high benchmark that even the second season of Suzhal: The Vortex also fails to reach. Yet, the new season, streaming on Amazon Prime Video still warrants a watch as it has a lot going on for it. While the problem with season 2, directed by Bramma G and Sarjun KM, is largely due to its predictability and convenient writing, it still holds your attention due to a few good streaks of brilliant writing.

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Fri, February 28 2025

Created by Pushkar and Gayatri, Suzhal - The Vortex 2 is a crime drama that suffers from overstuffed ideas. The show has interesting ideas, but it gets lost in the overstretched screenplay.

Director duo Pushkar and Gayatri were pioneers in making the Tamil web series space a flourishing one. Cashing in on the success of Suzhal - The Vortex, the makers created a sequel to it, which is currently streaming on Prime Video. Suzhal - The Vortex is one of the most celebrated web shows in Tamil. Has Suzhal - The Vortex 2 lived up to expectations? Let’s find out! Nandhini (Aishwarya Rajesh) is sentenced to jail after killing her abuser, while SI Chakravarthi aka Sakkarai (Karthir) is helping her from outside. He is also closely working with activist and lawyer Chellappa (Lal) to fight in court for Nandhini. However, Chellappa is found dead at his cottage with a gunshot to his forehead.

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Fri, February 28 2025

Boban Samuel’s Machante Malakha portrays male characters as victims and perpetuates regressive gender stereotypes, making it a dated and uncomfortable watch.

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.

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Fri, February 28 2025

Tillotama Shome's towering performance holds the film together – especially one that luxuriates in what is left unsaid.

In another life, Maya (Tillotama Shome) would have lived a different, more comfortable life. A college graduate in Barrackpore, she was set for an ordinary middle-class life like the many girls around her. However, all her parents’ dreams crash and burn when Maya tells them about Sundar (Chandan Bisht) – a pahadi man stationed in the nearby army cantonment. By the time Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi’s Baksho Bondi (English title: Shadowbox) begins – it’s been a few years since Sundar has been dishonourably discharged from the army because of what appears to be a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The rebellion of young love has made way for the caution and weariness of middle age. Both presumably in their late 30s by now, the onus of providing for Sundar now falls on Maya.

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Sun, February 23 2025

In a literal world, ‘Baksho Bondi’ — Bengali words carrying set meanings — need not exist together. When translated to English, ‘baksho’ means ‘box’ and ‘bondi’ is ‘captive’; both denoting the idea of being boxed up. But then again, in a literal world the verbatim translation of ‘Baksho Bondi’ would be a phrase: captive in a box. Yet first-time directors Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi forsake precision in favour of interpretation, choosing Shadowbox (Baksho Bondi, 2025), meaning to fight with an imaginary adversary, as the English title, and in doing so, shrink the subjectivity of a person to the objectivity of an experience. The result is a film that unfolds as an interplay of both titles —imbued with the angst of confinement and the spirit of resistance— while mirroring the ambiguity that comes with it. Maya (Tillotama Shome) lives with her husband and son in Barrackpore, a neighbourhood located at the fringes of Kolkata, a densely populated Indian city. She works constantly although the specificity of her labour takes shape later. She irons clothes and ferries them from door to door on a cycle, and does domestic work for a family. In between, she outlines her husband’s routine and instructs their teenage son Debu to help him with it.

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Fri, February 28 2025

Aadhi and Arivazhagan’s best work remains to be Eeram despite giving their all to Sabdham, which lacks the clarity and simplicity of their first collaboration.

A problem with magnum opuses is the weight of the expectations it creates for future projects from the filmmaker. Eeram continues to be a victory director Arivazhagan is unable to emulate. Sabdham is the second collaboration with Aadhi, which has brought the hit duo back again, but not the quality it had produced with Eeram. Though Sabdham is an unabashed attempt at creating a horror film of a similar pedigree, Arivazhagan falls short due to the lack of simplicity that Eeram wore as a crown. Eeram, his debut, was a straightforward story about the ghost of a virtuous woman haunting everyone who wronged her, using water as her medium. When the protagonist investigates the case, it takes an organic route to move from being a crime thriller to a horror. Everything about the film was lucid and engaging as the film doesn’t take too much on its shoulders. On the other hand, Sabdham (meaning sound) is confusing as it tries to marry science with the supernatural.

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Thu, February 27 2025

The limited series follows the long battle of families in the British town of Corby who fight to hold those accountable after their children are born with disabilities.

Toxic Town is the true story about an English steel town’s toxic waste that led to birth defects amongst the children. But more than that, the series is about the legal fight to get acknowledgement and justice for the pain and suffering they’ve been through. While the four-part series takes place over many years and tracks the arduous legal battle, Toxic Town is noteworthy for the stellar performances from its British cast led by Doctor Who and Broadchurch’s Jodie Whittaker. The limited series revolves around the working-class town of Corby, where the closing of a steel mill leads to other construction opportunities. However, as the site is developed into something different by negligent crews, under the lax leadership of the city council, the toxins seep into the town, affecting future generations. Mothers Susan (Jodie Whitaker), Tracey (Aimee Lou Wood), and Maggie (Claudia Jessie) all suffer different kinds of trauma as they watch their children suffer and, in Tracey’s case, watch them die. It takes much time, nearly 15 years, before any kind of resolution is reached.

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