June 7, 2018 by Ajay
I miss Ranjith, the filmmaker. I know it isn’t fair to compare someone’s previous works with their current one, but I really do miss the filmmaker who put more effort into story telling rather than using the medium to propagate his ideologies. Or maybe I’m not the right target audience for these kind of films. Kaala worked for me in parts but as a whole I felt it needed a little more effort into actually making a “film”.
Category English | Tags: dhanush,easwari rao,kaala,nana patekar,pa ranjith,rajini,rajinikanth,ranjith,samuthirakani,santhosh narayanan | No Comments
May 13, 2018 by Guest Author
This review is written after hearing the Kaala Jukebox that starts oddly with a Std Electricals ad.
Having broken the stereotypes of a typical Rajini album in his previous outing, SaNa (Santhosh Narayanan) gave us a musically pleasing Kabali. Will Kaala have ground breaking themes or genre defining tracks or a simple acoustic ballad? The answer is here. The album consists of SaNa’s typical singers, rappers and lyricists, and a new band (dopeadelicz) to create the local sound of Dharavi.
Category English | Tags: dopeadelicz,kaala,kaala music,music review,pa ranjith,pradeep kumar,rajnikanth,ranjith,santhosh narayanan,stop the paatu | No Comments
March 13, 2018 by Guest Author
‘Chithram’ is at surface the story of Purushothaman Kaimal (a superb Nedumudi Venu) hiring Vishnu (Mohanlal) to act as the husband of Kalyani (played by Ranjini), in order to please her father Ramachandra Menon (Poornam Viswanathan). Kalyani has recently had a heartbreak but doesn’t want her dad to know about it since he is on his last vacation. The result is a screwball comedy for most part, thanks to the antics of Vishnu, Kalyani’s cousin Bhaskaran Nambiar (Sreenivasan) and his sidekick. Towards the end, it becomes a gut-wrenching tragedy but the transformation is entirely convincing.
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February 21, 2018 by Ajay
Bala prepares us for the nasty journey that we are about to witness by filling the whole screen with garbage for the most part of the opening credits. This merges on to what seems to be agricultural land, which then merges on to apartments in Pallikaranai(?). We get a deja vu of a similar auteur’s film Taramani that released last year but this auteur is rawer. A sea of metaphors run in our mind on what this movie might be about but Bala surprises us with something that not many would have guessed.
Category English | Tags: bala,gv prakash,gv prakash kumar,Ilayaraja,jyothika,Naachiyaar | No Comments
January 1, 2018 by Ajay
Ajay: Sounds a little ironical that we want to do a conversation about a movie that is filled with just conversations right?
Sai: Well, yes. After Visu’s movies, this is probably the one with most dialogues I believe :). What is your overall feeling about it though?
A: I kind of liked it. It kept me entertained. But the filmmaking was lazy. He had a good story to tell but just didn’t tell it the right way, I felt. What about you?
S: I see. I thought even the story went haphazard which is quite surprising because Subha are credited as co-writers. I loved some directorial touches actually – especially the mirror scenes with Arivu (Sivakarthikeyan) and Adi (Fahaadh Faasil), where they explain their ideologies for their audience.
A: As BR said in his recent video, Mohan Raja has definitely evolved as a filmmaker. Or should I say, he gets his inspirations from the right place now?
Category English | Tags: anirudh,fahadh fassil,mohan raja,nayanthara,prakash raj,rj balaji,rohini,sivakarthikeyan,sneha,Velaikkaran | No Comments
December 29, 2017 by Ajay
Selvaraghavan once said in an interview promoting his new film that he was going to show us what real love was because, in his opinion, all other Tamil films deceive us with filmy love stories. Then he went on to release Irandam Ulagam.
Maybe for Selva, voyeurism is the real form of love and he feels every other form is deceptive. But his take on romance is what makes a Selva film unique. Tamil filmmakers have a weird habit of including romance in their films, regardless of necessity, for the sake of reaching out to a wider audience. Maybe a part of the audience comes to watch a film only if there is some version of love involved in the story. But apart from it being a business, is there any reason why there are so many versions of unwanted romance we see in our films?
Category English | Tags: alaipayuthey,dheeran,gautham menon,Mani Ratnam,OK Kanmani,polladhavan,remo,romance,tamil cinema,vettaiyadu veilayadu,vettrimaaran | No Comments
December 23, 2017 by Guest Author
A Tamil movie these days is often a template that writers/directors cling to for comfort. You expect a song to ‘introduce’ you to the hero. You wait for the leery introduction to the heroine (even in 2017), demand it even, and after that it is all fan service. So when a director comes up with art on a blank canvas, it is often refreshing.
Enter Aruvi, Arun Prabhu Purushothaman’s seemingly unfiltered debut take on society as a whole. I say seemingly because the director is awfully intent on upending all our expectations. This is not a movie with a message, but by the end of it, it opens our eyes not by touching our hearts as much as shining a bright, well-intentioned torch in our direction.
Category English | Tags: aditi balan,Arun Prabhu Purushottam,Aruvi,black comedy,satire,waterfalls | No Comments
November 13, 2017 by Ajay
I was glad this didn’t turn out to be another Thanneer Thanner or Kathi (apologies for mentioning both these films in the same sentence). I understand that movies are a mass medium and having political commentary and criticizing the people in power are important but the problem with cinema is that something is considered a cliche so soon. It’s the writers’ responsibility to put forth their message in as non-cliched manner as possible so that the target audience both get the message and are also able to enjoy the film. Very few films get this balance right. And Aram isn’t one of them.
Category English | Tags: Aram,Gopi Nayinar,kaaka muttai,kathi,message film,nayanthara,thanneer thanneer,water | No Comments
September 14, 2017 by Guest Author
The Lohitadas-Sibi Malayil-Mohanlal trio has given some of the finest movies for Malayalam cinema (‘Kireedom’, ‘Bharatham’, ‘Kamaladalam’ and many more) but even in their terrific resume, ‘Dasharatham’ stands out.
Category English | Tags: bharatham,Dasharatham,kireedom,lal,lohitadas,malayalam,malayil,Mohan lal,mohanlal,sibi | No Comments
August 11, 2017 by Ajay
It is unreasonable to expect every sequel to be a 22 jump street, especially given the quality of sequels in Tamil cinema till now. But after Power Pandi, I genuinely had hopes for Dhanush as a filmmaker but VIP 2 hits every check box that you would expect that could go wrong with any sequel. It even has actual scenes from the first film to remind us of some of the “jokes”. Even as a standalone film, without comparing it with VIP, this doesn’t work out. It has an almost similar story, jokes and buildup elements as the first one that even someone who liked the first one (not me) would find it hard to digest it all over once again.
Category English | Tags: amala paul,dhanush,sean roldan,sequel,Velaiilla Pattadhari,Velaiilla Pattadhari 2,Velaiyilla Pattathari,Velaiyilla Pattathari 2,vip,vip 2 | No Comments
