Mari Selvaraj demonstrates a clear vision in his films, championing equality through his protagonists. However, it is the unique vantage point from which they wage their battles that sets each of his movies apart. Pariyan, an innocent do-gooder fights for his rights from the bottom up. Karnan, a more cognizant individual fights with a violent determination. And Maamannan, someone who seemingly has achieved “equality”, continues to fight for it by embracing new approaches, inspired by his son. Sprinkled with Mari’s quintessential metaphors, Maamannan carries the torch of his previous two movies.
Nelson also probably had the same question when he had to make this movie. Without finding much answers, he stuck with the usual formula that everyone thinks vijay’s fans enjoy for some reason? Action-Sentiment-Comedy-Romance. He ticked all these boxes in the first 10 mins of the movie, starting with Vijay helping a child out and then accidentally killing it, single handedly defeating all of the terrorists in a foreign territory, sexist and inappropriate jokes about women, psychiatry and PTSD, and then followed by the tomboy girl acting cool with the hero and hero wanting to hold the girl’s iduppu. The movie had everything and every single thing was made in the worst possible way.
I always try to not have any expectations from a director based on his previous movies but I couldn’t help it with Santha Kumar. Mounaguru took all of us in such an unexpected ride and Magamuni gives us a very similar experience, if not better. With just his second film, Santha Kumar has created his own genre of films with a hero who is an outcast in the society, always stuck in unfortunate situations and the unexpected ways by which he brings himself out of it. In Magamuni, making it even more interesting, there are 2 heroes, who look the same, who get mixed up in each other’s twisted lives.
The thing with Kumararaja’s films is that they are spectacularly entertaining, aestheticallly pleasing and intellectually thought provoking all at once. Striking gold in even one of these is a high bar, but we all know that Kumararaja is on a league of his own, don’t we? Starting with a guy dying while having sex and ending with a guy explaining how sex is the beginning of life, Super deluxe takes you on a ride that you never would have imagined even in your wildest of dreams.
‘Keladi Kanmani’ and ‘Rhythm’ remain sole traces that demonstrate how to make warm and fun grown-up romances.
Vasanth is probably not making as many films anymore (I hear his latest ‘Sivaranjaniyum Sila Pengalum’ is magnificent). But I can’t think of another filmmaker who is a master in depicting urban relationships — of mothers and daughters (Srividya and Gauthami in ‘Nee Paathi Naan Paathi’), of fathers and sons (Nagesh and Arjun in ‘Rhythm’) and most importantly, between two grown up adults of the opposite sex. The latter is the focus of this piece and I would like to talk about two relationships (each in a different movie) that move me considerably even today.
Karthik Subbaraj joins hands with Rajinikanth in this all-important film of his career and one would expect Sa-Na to be his default pick for the score. I believe he wanted every crew member in this film to have a first experience with Rajini in Petta. Let me now talk about Anirudh’s work in the album.
Vetrimaran continues his exploration into the worlds of Shakespeare and gangsters. Only this time, he is a far superior filmmaker.
Spoilers Ahead..
“Vada Chennai” is divided into chapters and each one is part of a larger jigsaw puzzle that can perhaps never be solved. The best one is titled “Anbu, Rajan and the Hood”. It tells the story of Rajan (Ameer), his brother Thambi (Daniel Balaji) and underlings Guna (Samuthirakani), Senthil (Kishore), Velu (Pawan) and Pazhani (Boxer Dheena). They are smugglers, working for the powerful politician Muthu (Radha Ravi). In a sudden turn of events, Rajan takes a stand for his people, irking Muthu, who plots his fall using Senthil.
Murugadoss seems to have kept track of all the “issues” happening in Tamil Nadu in the recent past and has tried to write a story with one of those. As the issues keep piling up, he couldn’t decide which one would have the most punch in the gut feel so he decided to mix them all up to write a story. Who needs proper story boarding, script discussion, screenplay drafts and all that nonsense when you have issues+vijay in a movie? So he just went with it and wrote the scenes and dialogues on the flow and the end product is what you get to see on screen. Everybody in the cast and crew seems to believe solely on that aspect for the movie to get off and have put their lowest effort possible to get the whole thing together. Even I’m lazy to an extent but this is just taking it to another level.
Mani Ratnam seems to be tired of people calling his films too mani ratnam-esque so he went out and made Chekka Chivantha Vaanam trying to be as least mani ratnam-esque as possible but he just couldn’t help but have his signature all over the film. Be it associating characters with colours (tones of red all over, monochromatic dresses for single tone and straight forward characters like Varadan, Chitra, Senapati, but more flamboyant for Ethi and Thyagu), the way people talk and respond to questions (as soon as Senapathi wakes up, Chitra tells about Lakshmi in a Kanden Seethaiyai way), power play of characters shown by where they are standing when talking with each other, the list keeps going. And when I have all these things on screen to keep me entertained, I can’t help but be impressed with a film even if the overall story is meh. But in case of CCV, even the story ties all these things together really well.
I had a gut feeling that this would be a great film. The trailers and promos were on a style of their own. With a premise that was not that common in Tamil cinema. I was betting on how good this would be. It did turn out to be great but for reasons I did not think of. With Nayanthara killing it with her solo streak in Tamil cinema, Kolamavu Kokila is that kind of film that has something to offer for all kinds of audiences.
