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...

  Etharkkum Thunindhavan Movie Review:  In Etharkkum Thunindhavan, Suriya plays Kannabiran, a lawyer who stands by the side of justice and protects the innocents. At home, he is the doting son to his parents Aadhirayar (Sathyaraj, whose presence lends more weight to the character than the writing) and Kosalai (Saranya Ponvannan, in a role that she can, by now, play in her sleep). And in the eyes of Aadhini (a fine Priyankaa Arul Mohan), his love interest, he is like Murugan. In short, he is more or less an avatar, and without straining too much, director Pandiraj establishes the myth of his protagonist. The plot takes this idea forward with Kannabiran trying to protect the dignity of women. The evil man who is doing the 'disrobing' here is Inba (Vinay Rai, taking off from where he left off in Doctor), a central minister's son. Inba and his gang exploit unsuspecting young women in the name of love and shoot videos of them in sexually compromising positions, and later use the...

  Hey Sinamika Synopsis:  A wife who feels suffocated by her husband's incessant attention hires a psychologist to make him fall in love with her so that she can separate from him. Hey Sinamika Review:  For at least the first half of Hey Sinamika, Yaazhan (Dulquer Salmaan), its protagonist, comes across as the answer to the loosu ponnu characters that populate our screens. He is a house husband to Mouna (Aditi Rao Hydari), who works in the construction industry. He dotes on her 24x7. He is the kind of guy who walks in when she's showering to force-feed her cake! Obviously, she feels suffocated by his 'love'. She even gets a transfer to Pondicherry so that she can have some me-time, but he lands up there as well as he doesn't want her to miss him. Enter Dr Malarvizhi (a miscast Kajal Aggarwal), a relationship counsellor, who thinks all men are cheats, and has facilitated the separation of many couples. Mouna approaches her as a final resort. The idea is to get Malarv...

  H Vinoth's Valimai begins with a series of chain-snatching incidents and smuggling committed by masked men on bikes in Chennai. The public is up in arms against the police force, who are clueless. In an internal monologue, the police chief (Selva) wishes for a super cop to prevent such crimes. The action then cuts to Madurai, where a temple procession is underway.then we are introduced to ACP Arjun (Ajith Kumar), the film’s protagonist, whose introduction is intercut with scenes from the procession. Like a God who is held up high, we see this character rising up from the depths. In short, a whistle-worthy hero-introduction scene. We expect that Vinoth has done away with the mandatory fan service given his star's stature and will get around to making the film he wanted to make. And it does seem so for a while when Arjun gets posted to Chennai and starts investigating a suicide case that seems connected to the chain-snatching and drug-smuggling cases from before. Like in his pr...

Oh Manapenne is a film written by Tharun Bhascker and directed by Kaarthikk Sundar. It has screenplay and dialogues by Deepak Sundarrajan, and is the official remake of the Telugu film Pelli Choopulu. Harish Kalyan and Priya Bhavani Shankar play the lead roles while Anbu Thasan and Abishek Kumar play crucial supporting roles. The film is streaming on Disney Plus Hotstar. Harish Kalyan plays the role of Karthik, a jobless engineering graduate who doesn't take anything serious in life. He is a good chef, but doesn't pursue it seriously. He goes to Shruthi's (Priya Bhavani Shankar) house along with his family seeking her alliance, but they realise it's the wrong house. Karthik's actual alliance wants him to succeed in a business. So he joins hands with Shruthi and starts a food truck business. The film deals with the dynamics of the relationship between the two, and also how the truck plays an important role in shaping their lives. One of the strongest elements in the ...

With the Aranmanai franchise, Sundar C seems to have built a safe zone for himself. These films are turning out to be a refuge for the director, projects that he can take up whenever his other films don't do well, and help him get his box-office mojo back. After the first Aranmanai, he had the much-trolled Aambala. And he did Aranmanai 2 right after it. Now, Aranmanai 3 comes right after the debacles that were Vandha Rajavathaan Varuven and Action. Given that these movies are more or less critic-proof - they are just about scary-enough and funny for kids, and offer momentary diversion for the adults, so what's there to complain? - Sundar C's decision only seems smart. This latest installment follows the template set by the first film just as faithfully as a ghost haunting its victim. We have a Palace, a ghost that haunts it, a bunch of eccentric characters (and there will always be a kid who will be the first one to spot the spirit), good-looking female leads, boyish-lookin...

Putham Pudhu Kaalai , an anthology of hope, presents a small but delightful slice of ordinary people's lives. Without the pressures of creating a grandiose narrative for a highly paid hero, that often accompanies mainstream cinema, the anthology focusses on human interaction — the intricacies of people's behaviours that are as personal as they are universal. The five films are not all equal, but they are different and thoughtful in interesting ways. I truly cannot choose between Sudha Kongara's  Ilamai Idho Idho  and Gautham Menon's  Avarum Naanum - Avalum Naanum . A rather subversive and multi-layered play on Tamil cinema's auspicious new year's song,  Ilamai Idho Idho  captures the pedestrianness of relationships. Jayaram, who plays Rajiv embodies child-like excitement, and starry-eyed romance. Urvashi, as Lakshmi, is delicately mischievous, convincing us that they could be a great couple, even if we have not seen much of them together at all. The telling of t...

  I have always maintained that calling something overrated is not a critique of the thing itself, but merely others’ opinion of it. By that standard,  Arjun Reddy  was grossly overrated. And passionately critiqued multiple times over across languages. The makers and the actors have been adequately interviewed and re-interviewed. With the bombing of  Adithya Varma  — the official remake of  Arjun Reddy  in Tamil — I was hoping the phenomenon was put to rest. Today, the ghost of  Arjun Reddy  rose from the ground in the form of  Varmaa , director Bala’s version of the film that the producers rejected entirely just a few months ago.  For the uninitiated, Varma (Dhruv Vikram), is a medical student and later a brilliant surgeon, with anger issues. He falls in love with Megha, a harmless Megha Chowdhury who has lesser to do in this film than Shalini Pandey did in the original; frankly, I didn’t think that was even possible. Anyway, Megha...

  How empathetic are our government bodies when it comes to solving the problem faced by an individual? Going by Ka Pae Ranasingam, you would say, 'Not much'. Ariyanachi (Aishwarya Rajesh), the film’s lead character, is faced with a unique problem. Her husband, Ranasingam (Vijay Sethupathi), has died in Dubai, where he had gone for work. But to bring his body back, she needs to prove that she is his wife. But the problem is that she has no legal document to prove that she is Ranasingam's wife. Theirs was a marriage arranged by their families, but it happened in extraordinary circumstances, in the presence of both the families, so there is no proof to show that it happened. And even as she is shunted between various government departments, she learns that Ranasingam's death did not happen according to the official version given to her by the government. This complicates the issue further because now, getting the body back involves diplomacy at the highest levels of the g...

  Silence Movie Review:  Anthony Gonsalves (Madhavan), a celebrated cellist, and his fiancée Sakshi (Anushka Shetty), a speech-and-hearing challenged artist, go to a house that is believed to be haunted — one where a young couple were mysteriously killed in 1972 (the film opens with a prologue involving their murders) — so that she can pick up a rare painting. But Anthony ends up being killed — in the same manner as the guy in 1972 — while an injured Sakshi, who has managed to flee the place, is hospitalised. Enters Seattle PD detective Maha (Anjali) and her superior Richard (Michael Madsen). As they investigate, they hit a wall as Anthony seems to have no foes. And then, Maha stumbles on a photo of the couple with Sonali (Shalini Pandey), Maha’s childhood friend, who has been missing even before Anthony’s murder. What’s the connection between her disappearance and this crime? Silence is meant to be a whodunit, but the moment you get the plot points, the film stops being one. ...

  Danny Movie Review:  Danny is what you might get when you have vague notions of what a murder mystery is but no clue of scriptwriting. The film is a masterclass in bad writing. Things happen in this film just because the director wills them to happen. There is no organic development of the scenes. Take the scene in which Kunthavai (Varalaxmi Sarathkumar), a newly promoted cop, is being thanked by the mother of a man who has been arrested on charges of murdered his young wife. The scene happens in Kunthavai’s house, in the day, and the camera pans inside to show us her sister Mathi proudly smiling. And the very next moment, we see the two sisters somewhere outside, at night, and a duo on a bike attacking them. This hop-skip-jump approach to scenes is not just disorienting (purely unintended, though), but also lays bare the paucity of imagination. What we get in Danny are plot points instead of storytelling. Scene 1: Introduce the dog. Scene 2: Introduce the dog handler. Scene...

  Story:  As romance blooms between two youngsters fighting cancer, Kizie and Manny, they live it up to the fullest, despite the inevitable tragedy looming over them. Review:  ‘Dil Bechara’ is the Hindi film adaptation of John Green’s popular 2012 novel, 'The Fault in Our Stars'. In fact, the book’s Hollywood adaptation with the same name in 2016 met with much critical acclaim. ‘Dil Bechara’ sets itself in Jamshedpur and introduces us to the Basu family. Kizie Basu (Sanjana Sanghi) suffers from thyroid cancer, which has now affected her lungs, requiring her to be on oxygen support almost all the time. With rock solid support from her parents, Kizie takes life as it comes, even taking the bleak, daily multiple hospital visits in her stride. But what she craves for, is a normal life like any girl her age – with regular problems like boyfriends, crushes et al. Instead what she ends up doing is attend funerals of people she doesn't know, to feel a connection of the inevitable...