Fri, March 21 2025

Mon, March 17 2025

जंगल में एक अधेड़ शख्स वीडियो बना कर खुद को गोली मार लेता है। वीडियो में वह बताता है कि 1985 में उसने अपने दो साथियों के साथ मिल कर इसी जगह पर एक लड़की को गाड़ा था। खुदाई में पुलिस को वहां एक लाश मिलती है। पता चलता है कि यह किसी रेखा नाम की लड़की की लाश है। मारने वालों को भी पुलिस पहचान लेती है। धीरे-धीरे पुलिस को यह भी पता चल जाता है कि रेखा को क्यों मारा गया। लेकिन एक रहस्य अंत तक बना रहता है कि रेखा आखिर थी कौन? कहां से आई थी रेखा? और क्या वह लाश सचमुच रेखा की ही थी? हिन्दी वाले जो अक्सर छाती पीटते हैं न कि उनके पास अच्छी कहानियां नहीं होतीं, उन्हें साऊथ की ऐसी फिल्में देखनी चाहिएं और गौर करना चाहिए कि क्यों साऊथ वाले उनसे कंटेंट के स्तर पर चार कदम आगे खड़े होते हैं। सीखना चाहिए उनसे कि जब कोई थ्रिलर बनाओ तो उसमें थ्रिल पर फोकस करो, सस्पैंस रखो तो ऐसा रखो कि देखने वाला सिर के बाल नोच ले लेकिन उसे क्लू न मिले। यह नहीं कि पुलिस वाले हीरो की डिस्टर्ब लव-लाइफ दिखा दो, हीरो है तो मारधाड़ दिखा दो, बेमतलब का नाच-गाना दिखा दो, पर्दे पर हीरोइन आई नहीं कि उससे कोई ‘ऐसा-वैसा’ सीन करवा लो, जबरन कोई कॉमेडियन घुसेड़ दो। मतलब यह कि जब तक हिन्दी वाले अच्छी-भली कहानी के ऊपर बिना ज़रूरत के मसाले बुरकते रहेंगे, उनकी फिल्मों का रंग भले चोखा निकले, स्वाद बिगड़ा हुआ ही निकलेगा।

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Fri, March 14 2025

In Rekhachithram, director Jofin T Chacko observes the doctrines of police procedurals, pays due respect to them, and then sends the movie down an altogether unexpected path in the final 30 minutes.

Malayalam filmmakers aren’t just pushing the boundaries of genre cinema in India, they’ve evolved to a stage where they can confidently toy with tropes. In Aattam, director Anand Ekarshi created magic within the framework of murder mysteries by unraveling the expectations that they come attached with. Ekarshi performed a deft act of cinematic misdirection, revealing that Aattam wasn’t a mystery at all, but a sharp satire of patriarchy. In Rekhachithram, director Jofin T Chacko observes the doctrines of police procedurals, pays due respect to them, and then sends the movie down an altogether unexpected path in the final 30 minutes.

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Fri, March 21 2025

The crime thriller stars Vivek Prasanna, Poornima Ravi, Chandini Tamilarasan, Prathosh in the lead roles.

Sexual crimes have become the go-to place for filmmakers to find easy conflicts. It has become a license for all the on-screen violence of the protagonist and the viewer is expected to get a cathartic release seeing such revenge stories. In the end, the victim or the sexual violence itself is just reduced to nothing more than a conflict or a reason for the story. Trauma is yet another addition to the list of such Tamil films, which are on the rise now. However, director Thambithurai Mariyappan should be lauded as he at least doesn’t capture such violence with an exploitative gaze, which has become the norm. Such maturity is shockingly absent in other aspects of Trauma, which comes across as the work of a novice short-filmmaker. As far as the story goes, Trauma follows three narratives because it wants to be a hyperlink film, which is in vogue now (thanks to Lokesh Kanagaraj). We have two petty thieves who go about stealing cars. They are straight out of Tamil black-and-white comedy dramas because they seem to not even know how much a second-hand car would sell for. They wonder whether an SUV would sell for twenty thousand rupees, and that’s supposed to be funny.

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Fri, March 21 2025

There was a time, a little before Covid, when all filmmakers were making anthologies. These films were usually about common subjects like love and loss. Last week, I watched an unusual anthology titled My Melbourne. Four directors come together to tell you real stories. Shot in Melbourne and featuring women, the stories address gender, sexuality, nationality and disability. The film opens with Nandini directed by Onir and introduces you to Indraneel/ Arks Das and Chris/Jackson Gallagher who live in Australi. Indraneel’s father is visiting them from India because Indraneel and he have to collectively immerse the ashes of Nandini, Indraneel’s mother. It is a difficult time for the father and son but they make an effort to let bygones be bygone.

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Mon, March 17 2025

Directed by Onir, Imtiaz Ali, Rima Das, and Kabir Khan, the anthology weaves together four tales recognising the inclusive culture that the Salad Bowl of Australia promises to uphold

Celebrating the cultural ethos of a city through an anthology is not a new cinematic concept. Over the years, we have watched films etching the spirit of Paris, Tokyo, and Mumbai on celluloid. This week, we have some distinguished names from the Indian film industry collaborating with Australian talent to mark the cultural diversity of Melbourne. Known for their distinct idiom, Onir, Imtiaz Ali, Rima Das, and Kabir Khan map the themes of sexuality, disability, gender, and race, gently emphasising the inclusive nature of the city. Based on real-life stories, the protagonists’ truth touches the emotional buttons without necessarily triggering a wave of reaction. Perhaps the format limits the creative souls from taking leaps of faith and deepening the conflict as in the short form, sometimes the goal becomes more important than the means. The denouement starts knocking at the door before the journey is fully realised.

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Thu, March 20 2025

Sometimes a certain space defines your identity and you don’t know it until that space is taken away from you. Indrani directed Bengali film Chhaad tells you about a school teacher, a dormant artist Mitra/ Paoli Dam, who loves to spend her evenings on her building terrace. It is here she befriends her niece and a few kids who come up to fly kites. She attends school in the morning post her daily chores as a daughter-in-law of a joint family, Mitra looks forward to watering the plants on the terrace of their dilapidated building.

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Thu, March 20 2025

Two Malayalam films that world premiered at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala in December 2024 share DNA despite employing different milieu and techniques. Fasil Muhammed’s Feminichi Fathima (also screened at the 14th Indian Film Festival of Bhubaneswar) is about the eponymous Muslim housewife in Ponnani in Malappuram and possesses a day-in-the-life narrative. Sivaranjini’s Victoria designs a single day as a series of single takes in the life of Victoria, a beautician at a parlor in Angamaly who is juggling a characteristically busy day at the office and a tenuous period in her personal life. The two films have little in common in terms of setting and visual grammar, but they share philosophies and wrestle with the politics of survival and existence. They focus on women’s labor, the physical strain on their bodies, and the casually developing solidarity with the women around them.

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Tue, December 17 2024

Sivaranjini J’s debut film, screened at the Malayalam Cinema Today section at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala on Saturday, is set almost entirely inside a beauty parlour

The spark that initiates a work of art can come from anywhere. For Sivaranjini J., it came from the unusual sight of a rooster sitting inside a beauty parlour near her home in Angamaly. Victoria, her debut film which was screened at the Malayalam Cinema Today section at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala on Saturday, is set almost entirely a beauty parlour.

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Tue, March 18 2025

The United Nations should probably intervene and impose sanctions on streamers for wasting over $300 million on movies like The Electric State. Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo—the guys behind Avengers: Endgame and Infinity War—the film somehow lowers the bar for them even further, after the one-two punch of The Gray Man and Citadel.

Sat, March 15 2025

In the grand tradition of Hollywood throwing mountains of cash at sci-fi epics, The Electric State arrives with a budget so colossal it could fund a small nation — or at least a few more seasons of Stranger Things. Directed by the dynamic duo of Anthony and Joe Russo, the film is based (loosely, because of course it is) on Simon Stålenhag’s hauntingly beautiful 2018 illustrated novel of the same name. It has a cast packed with well-regarded names. But does the star power mean the movie works? Let’s dive into everything we know about The Electric State, including its plot, ending, cast, trailer, and a brief movie review. We mentioned Stranger Things above because this film stars Millie Bobby Brown in the lead. If you are waiting eagerly for the fifth and final (sob) season, this might serve as an amuse-bouche if you are a fan.

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Fri, March 14 2025

Starring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown, the Russo brothers' new Netflix tent pole is the kind of movie that seems to get longer while you're watching it.

Someone on social media the other day posted that each of the last 15 Best Picture winners at the Oscars could’ve been funded for the amount that Netflix spent on The Electric State, the astronomically expensive new movie from directors Joe and Anthony Russo. We’re talking about films like Oppenheimer, which itself would’ve taken up $100 million of this cash pool, leaving the remaining $220 million to be spent on landmark films such as Parasite, 12 Years a Slave, and this year’s Anora. Starring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown, The Electric State is the kind of movie that seems to get longer while you’re watching it. No matter how deep into it you are — it could be the end of the first act or the second — it always feels like there’s an hour still left. On the face of it, The Electric State isn’t a particularly long movie. It taps out at around 120 minutes, which is positively merciful of the Russos, whose first gig after the global success of the three-hour-long Avengers: Endgame was Cherry, a 141-minute drama about a drug addict who robs banks to fund his habit.

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Mon, March 17 2025

Two Malayalam films that world premiered at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala in December 2024 share DNA despite employing different milieu and techniques. Fasil Muhammed’s Feminichi Fathima (also screened at the 14th Indian Film Festival of Bhubaneswar) is about the eponymous Muslim housewife in Ponnani in Malappuram and possesses a day-in-the-life narrative. Sivaranjini’s Victoria designs a single day as a series of single takes in the life of Victoria, a beautician at a parlor in Angamaly who is juggling a characteristically busy day at the office and a tenuous period in her personal life.

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Sat, March 15 2025

Sat, February 22 2025

Director Ashwath Marimuthu's Dragon, starring Pradeep Ranganathan, Anupama Parameswaran and Mysskin, is a fun film that stresses the importance of education and second chances in life. The film hits the right notes, mostly.

What happens when a mistake you commit uproots the life of an already struggling person? How do you overcome this? Does it make you realise your mistake or does it push you into the depths of depression? Director Ashwath Marimuthu’s ‘Dragon’ is a film that provides definite answers to these questions. D Ragavan (Pradeep Ranganathan), a archetypal ‘good boy’, is a gold medallist in school. He confesses his love to a girl after he gets awarded the gold medal. However, she rejects him, stating that she sometimes prefers ‘bad boys’, who are unruly and roam around the school with gethu (swag). Cut to his college days, D Ragavan becomes Dragon because of the rejection and has 48 standing arrears. What he earned in college was the love of Keerthi (Anupama Parameswaran).

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Sat, February 22 2025

Dragon is shouldered by a delectable performance of Mysskin.

Dragon has a protagonist who is insufferable for most of its runtime, which, more often than not, doesn’t work in the favour of movies. Pradeep Ranganathan as D Raghavan aka Dragon is one of those bullies in the engineering colleges, who believes being macho makes him a hero. He is an instantly off-putting personality. His college attendance is 2 per cent. He is notorious for his on-campus violence. He has several ‘cases’ against him in college. You get the drift. On top of it all, he has 48 backlogs, nearly all of the subjects in the course. He was not always like this. In school, he was the naive D Raghavan with a glorious progress report. He becomes Dragon when his school crush tells him that bad boys are the thing. Once Dragon gets out of his den, which is his college, he ends up becoming a nuisance to his friends, a failure to his girlfriend, and a fraud to his parents. When the girl breaks up with him, he takes a shortcut to become a successful person, but his mistake comes back biting when everything looks up.

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Sat, March 15 2025

धारा नाम की एक बच्ची ऊटी में अपने पापा और नाना के साथ रहती है। कमाल का डांस करती है सो ‘इंडियाज़ सुपरस्टार डांसर’ नामक शो में भाग लेने के लिए मुंबई जाना चाहती है। पापा मना करते हैं तो डांस-टीचर उन्हें समझाती है कि पेरेंट्स दो तरह के होते हैं-एक वो जिनके बच्चे उनके ड्रीम्स जीते हैं और दूसरे वो जो अपने बच्चों के ड्रीम्स जीते हैं। बात पापा को लग जाती है और ये लोग पहुंच जाते हैं मुंबई। लेकिन यहां कुछ ऐसा होता है कि सारे ड्रीम्स एक तरफ हो जाते हैं। तब पापा कहता है कि मैंने धारा को कभी गिरने नहीं दिया है, आज भी गिरने नहीं दूंगा। कहानी बढ़िया है। एक बच्ची, उसका ड्रीम, कभी आड़े आया पिता जो आज उसके साथ है। यह धुकधुकी कि अब उसका सपना सच होगा या नहीं…! लेकिन यह कहानी एक पैराग्राफ में ही बढ़िया लगती है क्योंकि फिल्म कहानी पर नहीं, उस पर फैलाई गई स्क्रिप्ट पर बनती है और इस फिल्म की स्क्रिप्ट न सिर्फ ढीली व कमज़ोर है बल्कि इसमें से वह भावनाओं और संवेदनाओं की खुशबू भी लापता है जो इस किस्म की फिल्मों की जान होती है। वह खुशबू, जो दर्शकों के नथुनों से भीतर जाकर उसके ज़ेहन में जगह बनाती है, उसे उद्वेलित करती है और अंत में भावुक करते हुए उसे भिगो जाती है। इस फिल्म में यह खुशबू बस कहने भर को है जो एक-आध दफा महसूस होती है और फिर हवा हो जाती है।

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Sat, March 15 2025

By emphasizing drama over dance in his new film, director Remo D’Souza neglects his greatest skill

After playing the chronically ill father of a young girl in I Want to Talk, Abhishek Bachchan plays a different kind of dad in Be Happy. In this dance-drama, streaming on Amazon Prime, the actor plays a widower raising a daughter who has an unshakable passion and talent for dance. Helmed by choreographer-director Remo D’Souza, Be Happy, written by D’Souza, Kanishka Singh Deo, Chirag Garg and Tushar Hirandanani, is built on the foundations of a father-daughter relationship and dance.

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Sat, March 15 2025

Directed by Remo D'Souza, the simplistic family drama emphasises the special bond between a single father and his young daughter.

Remo D’Souza’s latest dance film Be Happy revolves around the relationship between a straitlaced single father and his imaginative daughter. Together, through the medium of dance, they learn to live life to its fullest. While much of the Hindi film is focused on young Dhara wanting to achieve her dream of appearing on the dance reality show India’s Superstar Dancer, Be Happy is much stronger when it rests on the father-daughter bond. The dance portions of the film are unnecessarily stretched. Dhara (Inayat Varma) lives with her father Shiv Rastogi (Abhishek Bachchan) and grandfather Mr Nandar (Nasser) in Ooty. But her real dream is to join Maggie Teacher’s (Nora Fatehi) top dance academy in Mumbai and appear on India’s Superstar Dancer. The musical drama follows how she manages to fulfill her wishes against all odds. Along the way, Shiv also learns to be a little less rigid and protective as a single father after the death of his wife Rohin (Harleen Sethi).

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Sat, March 15 2025

Kiran Abbavaram’s film, directed by first-timer Viswa Karun, squanders a decent idea and ends up glorifying a problematic protagonist

Dilruba, the romance-action drama starring Kiran Abbavaram, Rukshar Dhillon and Kathryn Davison, has a fairly intriguing premise. To make amends for a misstep from the past, an ex returns to her former boyfriend’s turf and helps him reconcile with a current lover. Yet, debut director Viswa Karun’s film struggles to develop this idea into a cohesive narrative and stuffs it with subplots that feel unnecessary, across genres. The film opens with a pompous quote that valourises the protagonist Siddu’s (Kiran Abbavaram) character — ‘strong men have a character, never an attitude’. Siddu is an archetypal good-for-nothing hero one would find in a Telugu film. Having been dumped by his childhood sweetheart Meghana (Kathryn Davison) over a misunderstanding, he gives up on his graduation midway. Upon his mother’s insistence, he resumes the course, only to be chased by another girl, Anjali (Rukshar Dhillon).

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Sat, March 15 2025

‘Perusu’, with its simple but effective premise, works despite its limitations thanks to a brilliant screenplay and wonderful performances

A bit of googling tells how terminal erection or death erection is an actual condition that’s very much as shocking as it sounds. It is also the core idea behind director Ilango Ram’s Perusu, the remake of the director’s Sinhala-language comedy-drama Tentigo, which bagged multiple accolades. In Perusu, Halasyam, a much-revered elderly person, dies unexpectedly. But his sons Samikannu (Sunil) and Duraikannu (Vaibhav) barely have the time or space to mourn as their father’s corpse, instead of developing rigor mortis where the muscles stiffen, gets a rigor erectus, causing the dead person to have an erection — or priapism as it’s technically called in which a penis remains erect for hours. As the family — which includes the heirs’ wives Shanthi (Niharika) and Nila (Chandini Tamilarasan), Halasyam’s wife (Nakkalites Dhanam) and her sister (Deepa Shankar) — believes this to be a travesty that the villagers and relatives cannot get a whiff of, they try everything in their power to um… bring things under control.

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Fri, March 14 2025

Perusu attempts to be a rare Tamil adult comedy with a wacky premise but struggles under the weight of repetitive phallic humor.

In a sense, Perusu is one of the rare Tamil films that fit the adult comedy genre, as the premise of the story, directed by Ilango Ram, is as wacky as it can get. Halasayam, a respected man from a rural town, is fondly known as Perusu, a term used for an elder or a patriarch of a family or a village. He is one of those notable people of any town who have a say in its affairs. When we meet Perusu, he lands a slap on a youngster for allegedly peeping at women taking a bath in the community pond. Along with his elderly friends, Perusu orders the young chap to behave. Before leaving the place, he doesn’t miss to grin at the ladies himself. The lad resolves to have his revenge, but Perusu doesn’t give him any chance as he dies after returning home from watching TV. But the catch is that Perusu dies with an erect penis, which lands the whole family in trouble. His two sons–Saamikannu (Sunil Kumar) and Durai (Vaibhav)–try their best to ‘de-escalate’ the problem but it won’t die down. If you frown upon my double entendres, then imagine watching a film with such incessant phallic dialogues and words.

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Fri, March 14 2025

Does it really count as meaningful representation of minorities when the minorities in question are being represented with a mocking tone

College kids of a certain age would be familiar with the practice of filtering assignments through a very rudimentary anti-plagiarism software, mainly to avoid being caught cheating by professors. So worthless were the results of this scam that a kid might even be shamed into putting in the actual effort and writing their assignment themselves. Not only were they submitting something unoriginal, it was also impossible to read. Essentially the same route is now being taken by filmmakers. This week’s new romantic comedy, Picture This, isn’t merely a remake; it’s a remake that is happy to be released in the same week as the Oscars and actively aim for a 2/5.

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Fri, March 7 2025

Bridgerton's Simone Ashley plays an independent young woman who is set up on blind dates by her family during her sister's wedding.

Picture This, led by Simone Ashley, is a remake of the Australian rom-com Five Blind Dates from star Shuang Hu. Relocated to London, director Prarthana Mohan’s film takes the same elements but places it within a dysfunctional but loving British Asian family. Amidst wedding planning, blind dating, and reconnecting with an old love, Ashley’s Pia finds herself again in this funny and enjoyable romantic comedy. The Amazon Prime Video feature is fast-paced and colourful, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Ashley is Pia Jaswani, a talented photographer who owns her own photography studio, The Ninth Mandala, and runs it with her best friend Jay (Luke Fetherston). Her younger sister Sonal (Anoushka Chadha) announces she’s getting married with a month-long series of events. Their mother Laxmi (Sindhu Vee) calls an astrologer (Kulwinder Dhir) to check the groom and bride’s janampatris (birthcharts), when he suddenly predicts Pia will meet her soulmate after going on five dates. Her meddling family gets to work with unsuitable suitors, while her first love Charlie (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) walks back in her life.

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