Mon, March 31 2025

The film is a beginning game of possibilities, with all manner of permutations and combinations

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Sat, March 29 2025

In Soderbergh's London-set spy thriller, the very concept of espionage becomes a parable for the devaluation of trust in modern-day relationships.

Some of the sexiest thrillers aren’t about the plot. They invite the viewer to slice through a perfectly sculpted body—not murderously, of course—and try to find a tiny, beating heart within. The sleekness of the body matters. And perhaps no contemporary filmmaker encourages such surgical eroticism more than Steven Soderbergh. His movies are so wildly watchable — even when they’re not great — because the style itself is the substance. Black Bag is perhaps his most complete work in a decade; it’s a London-set spy thriller where the very concept of espionage becomes a parable for the devaluation of trust in modern-day relationships. Soderbergh and writer David Koepp don’t come at it from a nostalgic back-in-our-day space. If anything, they fetishise what it takes to keep a tradition alive in an institution that’s rigged against the anatomy of faith. The framework is clever. The film revolves around a cold-blooded British intelligence agent, George (Michael Fassbender), who must investigate a top-secret leak and find the traitor among his colleagues. The details are not important; let’s just say there’s the standard threat of a nuclear meltdown and dissolved governments. One of the five suspects, however, is Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), his wife and fellow intelligence agent. George and Kathryn are kind of an urban legend in the spy world — not because they’re excellent at what they do, but because they’re married and intensely committed to each other in a vocation that requires duplicity, roleplay and moral ambiguity. They’re a social anomaly, so much so that a dinner invite to their home feels like a “visit to our parents”. It’s a marriage so solid that when George goes up to Kathryn’s floor, everyone in her meeting (including her superior) automatically pauses — you can almost hear the mental eyerolls in the room. They’re used to it.

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Mon, March 31 2025

Over the last few years, we have been dished out quite a few films (except Tiger 3) that are made just to showcase Salman Khan’s herogiri through fight scenes, dialogue baazi, songs and dances and, above all, his noble on screen nature. This has now become a new genre of filmmaking called ‘Bhai films’. Filmmaker AR Murugadoss’ Sikandar is yet another film in this genre. The story starts off in Rajkot where Sanjay Rajkot (Salman) enjoys the life of an unofficial king of the city. He lives in a palatial bungalow. We don’t know whether he inherited it from his ancestors or earned money himself to build his empire. He has a wife Saisri (Rashmika Mandanna), who is much younger to him. She is married to him since quite a few years but is still unaware how he has so many nicknames. And it is after quite a few years of their marriage that she says she prefers to address him as only ‘Sanjay’. During a flight, Sanjay beats up Arjun (Prateik Smita Patil) who was trying to forcefully get physical with a woman on flight after blackmailing her just before take-off despite the presence of her little son. Arjun turns out to be the son of a powerful minister (Sathyaraj) from Maharashtra. The senior politician and his son, obviously, are seething with anger and eager to take revenge from Sanjay.

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Mon, March 31 2025

Mon, March 31 2025

Logic has never been the strength of Salman Khan’s ‘suspension of credulity’ variant of films. But at least massy entertainment high on actiona and drama with right tadka of comedy has been his and his kind of cinema’s forte. Alas, the superstar’s Eidi, Sikandar, falls flat on this front too. Some films look good on paper and are lost in execution. Only Sikandar that starts off with the usual bad guy getting bashed up by our superhero is probably a project that should have remained on paper. Till the first half, the Raja saheb aka Sanjay Rajkot (Salman Khan) and Rani sahiba’s (Rashmika Mandanna) cute love story in the backdrop of action is still bearable. By the second half, the narrative simply spirals out of context and control. Biting into innumerable concerns, from land grabbing to environmental pollution and even patriarchy, much of it is meant to be a bleeding heart’s cause celebre. Only the churn of events is yawn inducing with boredom writ all over it. Good news, unlike zillion Bollywood films, the villain is not gunning after the heroine and using her to get even with the hero. But even worse than bad news is, he goes after persons who have benefitted from her philanthropic act. Actually, momentarily our expectations rise what with the heroine portrayed as a saviour. She saves our superhero couple of times till she herself is caught in the crossfire. Her wish for organ donation is honoured by the grieving hero.

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Mon, March 31 2025

Lust and pleasure, pain and meditation, West and East… can all these inhabit the same space? Well, in Mike White’s third season of ‘The White Lotus’, they do. Those familiar with his award-winning franchise and template are well aware that ‘White Lotus’ is a chain of luxury resorts where the super rich vacay in their quest for the elusive happiness. In the third season, the setting is Thailand, perhaps the perfect place to train the camera on the beauteous and to ask some existential questions too. There are many strands in the story… a seemingly perfect family of five, three childhood friends reuniting, an ageing balding man with a young woman and yet another couple of a similar variant. What they are seeking in this mental wellness resort depends entirely on how you see them and how they see themselves. Rick Hatchett (Walton Goggins) is catching up with his unburied traumas of the past, young daughter Piper Ratliff (Sarah Catherine) of the seemingly perfect affluent Ratliff family is here to find purpose in Buddhism. Her sex-obsessed brother Saxon Ratliff (Patrick Schwarzenegger) is only looking for bodily fulfilment. Where this pursuit will take him is the most revelatory and shocking part of the series and is certainly meant to rattle.

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Sun, March 30 2025

As viewers, it’s never easy to hitch your loyalty to any one character in 'Ponman' in which all the great writing decisions are complemented with equally great performances

Ponman seems like a silly title for the film this turned out to be. The title translates to ‘kingfisher’, but it’s also a play on the phrase ‘pon’ meaning gold and man, because it’s about a man who deals in gold. By the end of the film, though, one might find other reasons to justify this title, but to begin with, you understand that it’s referring to the character played by Basil Joseph, a strange character named PP Ajesh. Going by the term the film uses, he runs what is called a “Madiyil Jewellery”, the kind of mobile jewellery in which the gold, literally, ends up on your lap. I’m not sure if this business is specific to Kollam, where the film is set in, but from my understanding of the trade, Ajesh is a broker who supplies gold to brides right before they get married, expecting to be repaid using the money they earn in the form of gifts during the wedding. It’s a peculiar practice, something many of us will discover as we watch Ponman. It is also ideal as a plot device in a film that talks about dowry, that too within the fascinating Latin Catholic community of the region. So, when we first meet PP Ajesh, he’s supplying 25 sovereigns of gold to a bride named Stefi Graf (Lijimol Jose), a night before she gets married to the “big, mountain-like” Mariyano (Sajin Gopu).

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Sat, March 29 2025

Sat, February 1 2025

The film, starring Basil Joseph, leaves a lot to ponder about resilience, will of the heart, and survival of the bravest, despite being modest in its story and execution.

If one has to go on a quest to find why the Malayalam film industry is consistent with churning out good cinema, the journey will end with the secret alchemy of finding stories from the people. Lijo Joseph’s Angamaly Diaries is about Angamaly. Maheshinte Prathikaram provides a gorgeous landscape of Idukki, and so does Idukki Gold. Manjummel Boys is, well, about the resilience of the boys from Manjummel. Malayalam writers don’t make stories but end up finding them around. Ponman, written by GR Indugopan and Justin Mathew, is yet another story about everyday people in the port city of Kollam. The story, the conflict, and the stake of Ponman are small. But the film leaves one pondering about big things of human resilience, grit, and ethics–typical of good Malayalam cinema. The film’s protagonist PP Ajeesh (Basil Joseph), has a rather unique and risky business called Madiyil Jewelry or Walking Gold. Ajeesh sells gold upfront to families who are struggling to come up with dowry themselves to marry off their daughters. After the wedding, the families pay him off with the gift money. The conflict in Ponman arises when Ajeesh lends 25 sovereign gold to the family of Steffi (Lijo Mol Josse), but her useless brother Bruno (Anandh Manmadhan) and hapless mother only make half the amount to pay back. With Steffi’s husband being a short-fused ruffian from a notorious area of Kollam, Ajeesh ends up in a do-or-die predicament to retrieve his gold.

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Sun, March 30 2025

Harshad Nalawade's film tracks the senseless way social media trolls operate, fuelled by the misguided notion that unquestionable obedience is their greatest calling. Follower is about followers.

An angry mob vandalises a public space. The premise is ransacked, chairs are upturned, and threats are issued: “Every action has a reaction”. They are seething over a remark made by a comedian about their political leader, standing in that place. Soon, social media is crammed with more threats and conspiracy theories, each linking the said comedian to extremists and sources of his funding to illegal sponsorship; he is tipped to be the unofficial spokesperson of the rival party. As days pass, speculations get rife; one party worker comes to a news channel and says he regrets nothing. “There should be a limit to humour”. Harshad Nalawade’s Follower is about that person. This might be technically misleading, but it is spiritually accurate. Nalawade’s astute and timely film is about the faceless trolls that appear to self-multiply and clog every pore of social media. His debut film tracks the senseless way they operate, fuelled by the misguided notion that unquestionable obedience is their greatest calling. Follower is about followers.

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Fri, March 21 2025

When the line between his professional and personal life starts blurring, Raghu, a radicalised journalist, is faced with some inconvenient truths. But he chooses to be in denial and acts impulsively.

The Maharashtra-Karnataka border dispute is largely centered around the city of Belagavi, aka Belgaum. While the city is in Karnataka, for years, allegations of suppression of the large Marathi-speaking population there have been doing the rounds. This issue forms one of the cruxes of Harshad Nalawade’s debut feature Follower. However, the larger part of the film, which premiered at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam in 2023, revolves around a disillusioned and disgruntled youngster, who joins a small media company that works to further a local politician’s agenda via social media. Raghavendra Pawar (Raghu Basarimarad), a well-educated Marathi-speaking resident of Belagavi, quits his job at a college after he’s allegedly sidelined by the Kannada-speaking authorities and denied a promotion. While searching for another job, he takes over his father’s gift shop after his father dies in an accident. Unemployed and constantly looked down upon by people around him, Raghavendra blames the socio-political scenario for his plight, villainising all Kannada-speaking people, including his friend Sachin (Harshad Nalawade), a YouTuber. He is eventually influenced by the local politician’s ‘fight’ for the Marathi-speaking community in the area and takes up a job that he believes he’s doing for the service of his community, thanks to the polarising words of the politician he idolises. But influenced and unthought decisions often have a way of rebounding, which is exactly what happens with Raghavendra. What, how and why are questions that Follower aims to address.

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Fri, March 21 2025

What makes Follower more interesting and intriguing is that it organically weaves a story of close friendship between three friends and perfectly joins the same with the political conflict. It also makes fine use of flashback. The story could have been narrated in a linear form and it still would have been likeable. But the back and forth narrative converts the film also into a mystery drama. The events that lead Raghu into becoming a staunch supporter of the star political leader is the biggest triumph of the film. The production value makes the film look more like a telefilm. The lack of proper resources is clearly visible. This, however, doesn’t turn out to be a major issue because of the strong content at hand. The film is also shot in a creative manner by cinematographer Saket Gyani. It is laced with a number of impressive long one-take shots. The one that takes the cake is between Raghu and Parveen when both are riding their respective two-wheelers while conversing. The background score is minimally used, which goes with the nature of the film.

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Sun, March 30 2025

Rathinam, a desperate smuggler, conceals a diamond in his slipper during a police raid, inadvertently swapping it with Thyagarajan’s. Thyagarajan, a mild-mannered auditor, and his son, Ilango, discover the swap after the funeral but promptly lose the slipper in a series of comical mishaps. The slipper passes through various eccentric characters, each adding their own chaotic element to the search. Singam Puli, the only familiar face in the show packed with newcomers, does what’s expected of him with his trademark dialogue delivery. There’s nothing new that he does with it, though; he easily sleepwalks through it. Vivek Rajgopal needs more time to develop a flair for comedy; he’s sillier than funny here. While Ira Aggarwal looks good, the role provides her hardly anything substantial.

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Sun, March 30 2025

Kisha joins Fair High to find her missing sister, Anara, discovering her connection to the secretive Heartbreak Club (THC). She navigates dangerous games and broken hearts, including her own growing feelings for Tavish. Over time, Kisha deals with THC’s chess-like hierarchy, facing threats and betrayals. She eventually unearths the identities of the King and the Queen, who hold the access to THC’s database. Where will Kisha’s quest to find Anara culminate? Anushka Sen is an apt fit to be the face of the show in terms of her age, appearance and portrayal, delivering a neat performance as a girl who goes all out to find her sister and loses her way. Prit Kamani continues to prove that he’s a talent worth watching out for, playing a college heartthrob and an insecure lover with restraint. In her brief screen time, Priyamvada Kant is equally convincing.

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Sun, March 30 2025

Writer-director Adam Brooks helms this overly sentimental saga about a woman, played by Sofia Carson, sent on a quest by her late mother.

Netflix’s The Life List is designed as a tearjerker but doesn’t really push any exceptional buttons while trying to reach viewers’ emotions. Sofia Carson plays Alex, a young woman either in her late 20s or early 30s who gets her kick in life from her dead mother. Alex supposedly becomes a grownup in the course of the feature; however, it feels as if the film is pushing too hard to make us feel without actually showing us why. The film opens with Alex at a crossroads in life without the job of her dreams, directionless and not serious about her future. After the death of her mother, Elizabeth (Connie Britton), Alex is shocked by the directives in her will. In a move that will remind Bollywood fans of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, her mother sends Alex her teenage bucket list to complete. Upon completion of each one, she receives a video message and moves one step closer towards her inheritance. Reluctantly, Alex agrees but not before arguing with everyone about it, including the handsome young lawyer Brad (Kyle Allen) assigned to handle her mother’s estate.

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Sun, March 30 2025

Created by Top Boy's Ronan Bennett, the slow-moving gangster saga puts Tom Hardy in the middle of an impending war between two crime families.

The new crime drama, MobLand, directed by Guy Ritchie, holds all the hallmarks of the filmmaker. And yet there is something distinctive missing from the gritty gangster saga as Tom Hardy plays Harry Da Souza, a fixer left to clean up the many messes of the Harrigan family. So far, the nine-episode London-set series is keeping a cliffhanger for each chapter in trying to raise the tension. Ronan Bennett’s series has had a slow-moving start, but it needs to amp things up to match the intensity of Ritchie’s other projects. Hardy’s Harry has been loyally serving Conrad Harrigan (Pierce Brosnan) for a long time now. The fixer saves the old crime lord and every member of his family whenever they get in a bind. But we join the story at a bit of a power struggle between the Harrigans and their rivals, the Stevensons, before erupting into an all out war. As Harry tries to smoothen things over, his family life suffers as well. Who will be left standing at the end when the lines are all drawn out against family loyalties?

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Sat, March 29 2025

Empuraan, the sequel to the 2019 Malayalam film Lucifer, is a high-budget, globe-trotting actioner reminiscent of productions from YRF or the Tamil and Telugu film industry. The success of its predecessor has elevated the scale and ambition of this installment. However, with such ambition often comes the risk of overlooking essential elements in favor of a grander vision. In this instance, the screenplay suffers due to an emphasis on extravagant action, where style frequently overshadows substance. At nearly three hours in length, the film initially packs in a great deal of content but later tends to meander. Prithviraj, who has transitioned from actor to director, possesses the vision necessary for a project of this magnitude, yet the foundational material must be robust. The film clearly aims to appeal to mass audiences, featuring slow-motion sequences and other stylistic choices. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, it occasionally aspires to get serious,, and the fusion of these elements does not always produce the desired effect. It is helpful to recall key details from Lucifer, which was released five years ago. The narrative reintroduces international crime syndicates and the underworld, with Khureshi (Mohanlal) returning to the fray. Regrettably, the local character Stephen Nedumpally, also portrayed by Mohanlal and central to the action in Lucifer, takes a back seat in this sequel.

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Sat, March 29 2025

It's buoyed primarily by the presence of Mohanlal as a brooding, identity-shifting dispenser of instant justice.

How much solemn politics is too much solemn politics in an out-and-out action movie that aspires to be much more than just a vehicle for three of Kerala’s top male stars? No matter what L2: Empuraan, toplined by a superstar who has ruled the roost for decades and helmed by another who pulls out the stops both as director and actor, packs into its three hours by way of larger commentary, the gap between intent and result not only refuses to go away, but also fluctuates wildly. There is, of course, no known limit to what degree, and sort, of topical relevance a thriller must attain in order to break free of its genre confines and assume elevating social significance. L2: Empuraan, a Malayalam tentpole production whose Hindi dub is in theatres nationwide, is anything but frugal with its barbs at the abuse of power and the pitfalls of personality cults. The second part of a planned trilogy that began with the 2019 hit Lucifer, this Prithviraj Sukumaran-directed potboiler mixes up its visceral chops, ultra-violent spirals into excess and visual pizzazz with all-out attempts to show up forces that are out to destabilise Kerala in a fictional world that intermittently mirrors the real one in which those in authority lay down the rules to suit their immediate agendas.

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Sat, March 29 2025

Sat, March 29 2025

The biggest problem with the Nithiin, Sreeleela-starrer is that it merely goes through its motions, and ends up as a rather tepid affair.

Robinhood movie review: Director Venky Kudumula loves making films that have a simple premise, a convincing lead, enjoyable songs, and a convoluted narrative seamlessly tied together with a lot of laughs. In his latest, Robinhood, all of these are in place, but with the laughs not enough, and the ambitious narrative not being supported by the writing, Venky’s dreamy house of cards crashes down. Remember Ravi Teja-Surender Reddy’s Kick? The film that was about a do-gooder thief who tries his best to outwit the system and a tough-as-nails cop, and serve the needy by robbing from the rich. The same film was remade in Tamil with Ravi Mohan, Kannada with Upendra, and Hindi with Salman Khan. Did you ever think what would happen if Nithiin starred in the rehash of the 2009 film? No, right? Neither did many others, but Venky had other plans, and he mixes elements of yet another Telugu film that Salman Khan remade in 2011 — Ready.

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Fri, March 28 2025

The Venky Kudumula directorial is a costly reminder of how scale and big names cannot salvage an underwhelming product

It is one thing to not take yourself too seriously when you are making a comedy and another when the irreverence serves as a mask to camouflage a lazily-written and a casually-executed film. To make up for a shallow plot and the limitations of its leads, the film is desperate to elicit laughs. Apart from Nithiin and Sreeleela, the presence of multiple comedians, actors from at least half a dozen film industries, an in-form composer and a cameo by Australian cricketer David Warner try to salvage a mess. The Telugu film Robinhood, much like its title, leaves little to your imagination. An orphaned protagonist, Ram (Nithiin), takes inspiration from a school pledge to claim that the entire country is his family. In his childhood, he uses this excuse to rob the rich and helps run orphanages that are starved of funds (which is reminiscent of the Ravi Teja-starrer Kick). It is amusing that it takes the cops over a decade to focus on this case and nab the culprit.

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Sat, March 29 2025

The screenplay fails

The mystery thriller is directed by Mimi Cave, who is best known for Flesh, a film focused on body horror. A glimpse of the same can be seen in Holland, but this is more focused on being a mystery thriller for its own characters. The trailer zeros in on the story, and the same narrative is explored during the almost two-hour-long film. Led by Nicole Kidman and Matthew Macfadyen, the film explores the dynamics of a family that looks perfect on the outside but something sinister is going on underneath. The film also stars a young actor Jude Hill and Gael García Bernal as the second love interest for Nicole. It begins with Nicole’s narration as Nancy Vandergroot, a teacher at the local high school where he kid also goes. She is respected around the town as the wife of Fred Vandergroot, a good church going man who is a life-saving doctor. Their kid, Harry, follows every word of his father, who ends up mediating their fights. Their life is perfect and good, but something remains off about Nancy as she gets obsessive and paranoid about little things. First, it is a missing earning which leads to her firing a babysitter and later, it is a receipt she finds in Fred’s pants.

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Fri, March 28 2025

Obtuse, poorly paced, and mildly incoherent, director Mimi Cave's psychological thriller has style to spare, but not enough meat on the bones.

After breaking out with the horror-thriller Fresh a few years ago — this was the movie in which Daisy Edgar-Jones played a young woman on a blind date with a man who turns out to be a cannibal — director Mimi Cave stays firmly in her comfort zone with her sophomore project, this week’s Holland. The cast is bigger, as is the budget and the scale. Fresh was mostly restricted to one large house, where the predatory male protagonist would lure his female prey and then, literally feast on them. An entire suburban town serves as Cave’s playground this time around; and at least one of its citizens is a killer of women. Nicole Kidman plays Nancy, a seemingly mild-mannered woman who works at the local school and dotes on her husband, Fred, played by Matthew Macfadyen. The one-time heartthrob — he played Mr Darcy in 2005’s Pride & Prejudice adaptation — seems to have been typecast as weaselly villains following his memorable performance as Tom Wambsgans in HBO’s Succession. Fred works as an optometrist; he’s the sort of guy that everybody seems to be friendly with, but crucially, not friends with. Nancy becomes suspicious when he starts going on weekly work trips, often using the flimsiest excuses.

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