Movie Reviews

  Kuthiraivaal Movie Review:  Manoj Leonel Jahson and Shyam Sunder’s directorial debut Kuthiraivaal brims with colours and striking imagery. This is apparent as early as its first scene, where its protagonist Saravanan alias Freud squirms in his bed, suspecting a bad omen. As some light fills his aesthetic apartment wrapped with vintage wall colours, his discomfort finally makes sense—for he has woken up with a horse’s tail! The scene is set up incredibly, leaving us excited for what is to come. But is the film as magical as the spectacle it presents on screen? Kuthiraivaal revolves around Saravanan (played by a brilliant Kalaiyarasan) and his quest to find out why he suddenly wakes up with a horse’s tail, and on the way, his existence in life. Saravanan’s universe is filled with colourful characters, almost magical yet just real enough—be it his whimsical neighbour Babu (Chetan), who speaks about his love for his dog and loneliness in the same breath, or the corner-side cigar...

Even as early as about five minutes into Maaran, it’s hard to care. The craft seems to belong in a bad TV serial, and the dialogues and performances don't help either. During these opening minutes, you get journalist Sathyamoorthy (Ramki) rambling on about publishing the ‘truth’, while it gets established that his wife is pregnant and ready to deliver ANY SECOND. A pregnant wife on the cusp of delivery in our 'commercial' cinema means that the bad men with sickles are in the vicinity and ready to pounce. Sometimes, it almost feels like they wait around for women to get pregnant, so they can strike. When the expected happens—as it does throughout this cliché-ridden film—you feel no shock. The real shock is when you realise that the director credits belong to the filmmaker who gave us Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru, that the film stars Dhanush, from whom we have come to expect better, much better. Director: Karthick Naren Cast: Dhanush, Malavika Mohanan, Ameer, Samuthirakani Stre...

STORY:  A young boy Midi (Varun Buddhadev) is adamant to overcome the curveballs life throws at him while trying to restore his father's glory. REVIEW:  Inspired by true events, writer-director Mridul’s ‘Toolsidas Junior’ is a simple yet heart-warming story of a father-son bond and their collective life goals. For the most part of this 132-minutes-long film, one is completely immersed in Midi’s journey to become Toolsidas Junior. Unlike other sports dramas, there are no pushy parents driving his level of dedication; rather, it’s a young boy’s own desire to achieve what his father had once wished for. Set in Calcutta of 1994, Toolsidas (Rajiv Kapoor) is an ace snooker player who proudly declares that he ''only plays for his son''. In a tournament, he hopes to defeat five-time champion Jimmy Tandon (Dalip Tahhil). Toolsidas assures his adolescent son Midi that the trophy is coming home this time, but he loses the game. That devastates the duo's heart and Midi emba...

STORY: Former sports coach Vijay Barse invests his time and hard-earned money to train underprivileged kids in football, to keep them away from drugs and crimes seeded in Nagpur’s underbelly. REVIEW: There’s a pink-and-white wall, with iron fencing in most parts. It has a gate, which is locked and is being guarded to bar people from the adjacent slum to cross over to the other side where the educated and wealthy families dwell. That image, metaphorically, indicates the zone that this film is venturing into. It’s underlined further with the closing visual of the film, where an airplane is seen flying right above the hutments of Mumbai’s slum area. Nagraj Popatrao Manjule’s Jhund is not an outright sports biopic, even though it follows the usual beats of a good sports drama. The film is a commentary on what we as a society can do to help the have-nots identify their plus points and cross the boundary to leap onto the other, brighter side. Amitabh’s Vijay Borade (modelled on Vijay Barse, ...

  STORY:  Based on S. Hussain Zaidi and Jane Borges’ hard-hitting book ‘Mafia Queens of Mumbai,’ ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ chronicles Ganga’s rise to power and fame from a demure small-town girl in Gujarat, to the undisputed queen of kamathipura in Mumbai. REVIEW:  Women invitingly standing at the doorstep of a kotha (brothel) in the bustling bylanes of south Mumbai’s infamous red-light area Kamathipura, is a scene that is real, tragic and dramatic. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’, set entirely against this gritty backdrop of Mumbai tells the story of many a young women, who were sold off to brothels for a few hundreds, solely through the eyes of its protagonist Gangubai (Alia Bhatt). It’s sometime in the early 1950s or 1960s when a starry-eyed and naïve Ganga is conned by her own lover Ramnik (Varun Kapoor) to elope with a promise that he will pave the path for her to make it as a heroine in Bollywood. What turns out and the truth as we all know i...

  STORY:  The plot revolves around Dheeraj Thakur and Maya, who fall in love despite their families' long-standing animosity. REVIEW:  For it’s a little-over-two hour run time, Partho Ghosh’s ‘Pyaar Mein Thoda Twist’, seems way too long, drab and underwhelming. The film, as the title suggests, is a love story, with a supposed twist. Dheeraj (Mukesh J Bharti) and Maya (Richa Mukherjee) are born in a village in Uttar Pradesh that thrives on the tradition of running people down. And these kids belong to two of the richest men in the village, who are sworn enemies - no reason for their animosity in sight as such. Dheeraj and Maya fall in love more instantly than heat-and-eat food coming out of a microwave. Next: their fathers play on the ‘dahej pratha’. Sadly, the girl, instead of opposing the dowry culture prevalent even today, threatens to either set herself on fire or elope with the guy. Hell, she even convinces the father to agree to the marriage with the dowry condition ...

  STORY:  An origin story of Tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams (played by Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton), the film takes a long hard look at the wind beneath their wings — their ambitious and unapologetic father and former coach Richard Williams (played by Will Smith). REVIEW:  In his recent documentary, Tiger Woods described his conflicted relationship with his father and intensely monitored childhood. Greek sensation Tennis star Stefanos Tsitsipas is open about bearing the brunt of his father’s on-court coaching violations. At no point have these sportsmen denied their fathers’ unparalled role in their success and career but an undercurrent of friction has always been evident. The fathers have a single-minded approach to their child’s excellence and it comes at a price. King Richard follows the complex mind of a father, who stops at nothing to realise the dream he sees for his daughters. A middle-aged man with no professional tennis training, Richard Willi...

  Ambulance  Story : After a bank heist goes wrong, two brothers take an injured cop and an EMT hostage in an ambulance pursued by the law across Los Angeles. Ambulance  Review : William Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a war veteran who needs money for his wife’s medical bills, approaches his brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) to help him out. However, Danny is a bank thief on the verge of a big heist, and he convinces Will to help on the job, which will set them up for life. Will reluctantly agrees but gets more than he signed up for when the heist goes wrong after a beat cop gets shot. Surrounded by law enforcement officers, the brothers are forced to hijack an ambulance with an EMT, Cam Thompson (Eiza Gonzalez) and the severely injured cop. Besides trying to escape, the brothers now need to keep their hostages alive. ‘Speed’ meets ‘Bad Boys’ with a dash of ‘Heat’ in this character-driven, action-packed drama written by Chris Fedak. Based on the 2005 Danish film of the same...

  Story: Neyyattinkara Gopan, an influential 'goon' is stepping in to help Edathala Mathai do an illegal conversion of an 18-acre paddy. But is he really who he says he is? Review: B Unnikrishnan and writer Udaykrishna have got a couple of aspects of the mass entertainer right: Super star, super star speaking in a local dialect, fights and more fights, several important actors even in minor roles, mega song and dance sequences, an appearance by AR Rahman and lots of cinematic references, particularly Mohanlal’s, that will tickle audiences. But can’t a massy film also have a good, sensible story? Aaraattu suffers in this aspect. Mohanlal plays Neyyattinkara Gopan, an influential ‘goon’ who has been roped in to settle an illegal land issue for Edathala Mathai (Vijayaraghavan), a wealthy landowner in Muthalakota. He wants to level out an old 18-acre paddy field to - it’s anybody’s guess - build a township. But of course, the RDO (Shraddha Srinath) and the villagers resist it, beca...

  Story: Kallan D’Souza is a thief, but with a heart of gold. Things get sticky when he gets involved with the local CI in more ways than one. Review: Kallan D’Souza spins a new angle on the police-thief story, raising questions about who is the bad-guy. Kallan D’Souza (Soubin Shahir) and his friend, played by Harish Kanaran, get by in life committing petty thefts. CI Manoj (Dilesh Pothen) is a corrupt police officer who confiscates a huge amount of hawala money, and plans to pocket a big portion of it with his team, rather than turning it in. This is the main thread of the story. In the meantime, D’Souza once escapes from the police and ends up hiding in the house of Asha (Surabhi Lakshmi), who doesn’t turn him in to the police. They then keep accidentally bumping into each other in various places. Their frequent meetings develops into a warm bond, but as it turns out Asha is the wife of Manoj, who is also an abusive husband. It is in D’Souza’s company, that Asha and her hearing a...

  Story : After multiple marriage proposals flop due to a variety of reasons, Archana is happy that Middle-East-based Prasad is, finally, interested in marrying her. While the household celebrates the pre-wedding night, Archana grapples with an information that comes her way, out of the blue. How will she handle it? Review : We have already seen in many films how women, who get left at the altar, handle the situation and emerge a different version of themselves. Archana 31 Not Out, too, tells the tale of a rural Malayali woman, who tries to take matters into her hands as her wedding plans go awry. Archana (Aishwarya Lekshmi) is a teacher who holds a temporary job at a school in Palakkad. Alongside shouldering her family’s financial responsibilities, she also tries to find a partner via the traditional ‘arranged-marriage’ route, though it proves to be hardly easy for numerous reasons. When Prasad, who works abroad, expresses interest to marry her, Archana feels a glimmer of hope and...

  Story : Arun and Darshana are first-year engineering students and they fall in love soon after their college begins. And just as how things work generally in teenage, the road ahead isn't too easy for them. Life offers many twists and turns that they least expect. Review : At a time in which college students hardly get to experience their campus or form friendships, Hridayam offers its version of a fun campus life, and a chance for those who miss it, to reminisce about their youthful days. Arun (Pranav Mohanlal) and Darshana ( Darshana Rajendran) fall in love soon after they join college in the first year. They are crazy about each other, but not too wise to avoid the general pitfalls of campus romance. The friendship, love and connections go through various transformative phases, as the narrative progresses. The movie also goes on to show how Arun enters the next phase of life and handles its evolution into various stages. Hridayam tries to give a realistic, coming-of-age depict...

  Story: Mechanic Jayakrishnan gets into a big land deal, as a good business investment, but ends up faced with life-changing situations in making the deal happen Review: So Meppadiyan has given us a new star: Vishnu Mohan. The debut writer-director has managed to give us an immersive experience, with well-written situations and good characters. The story starts off a bit slow. In fact, you are thinking, ‘is this all there is to the story?’ But it is a sort of a slow burn situation. Jayakrishnan, played by Unni Mukundan, is a skilled mechanic and a loved and responsible young man, who like a typical youth is itching to take a risk and land a windfall. A chance lands at his feet when an acquaintance, who is a drunk layabout, persuades him to get into a land deal that looks like easy and good money. But once they make the commitment to buy the land from an ailing man, who hopes to use the funds for his daughter’s wedding, they find that they are not able to raise the funds to seal th...

Story:  Sebastian is a police constable suffering from night blindness. When a murder takes place on his watch, how will he solve the crime? Review:  The trailer of  Sebastian PC 524  promised something exciting. We’re told there’s a protagonist with a predicament, a murder mystery he must solve, basically the story of an underdog who must rise above his pitfalls. And after  SR Kalyanamandapam , when movie buffs saw that Kiran Abbavaram chose a script that’s part thriller, it definitely ups expectations. But the film manages to meet none of them. The film begins by introducing us to numerous characters as if every single one of them has a great bearing on the story. But as soon as Sebastian (Kiran Abbavaram) is brought into the fray, every single scene revolves around him and the story takes a back seat. He suffers from night blindness; his mother wants to keep it a secret. Director Sayyapu Reddy tries to use this issue for laughs but the joke feels overlong. So...