Say it With Love, soup Dude chronicles suck

After a long hiatus from Tamil movie watching, I recently watched a few Tamil movies. A couple of them I even tried to watch back to back the same day - With Love , followed by Dude. One of them left me scratching my head wondering what Tamilians see in perpetually melancholic/sacrificial-lamb type of male leads, while the other reminded me even though all the love stories have already been told, we can still find a unique untold angle that makes a story engrossing.

With Love (2026)

Let's start with the disappointment that is Dude. Here's my gripe: why is Pradeep Ranganathan being packaged as yet another soup boy in the Dhanush mold? I don't understand Tamil cinema's obsession with heroes who look like they've been personally victimized by the universe since birth. What's worse is watching Mamitha Baiju's spunky, electric screen presence get absolutely wasted in service of this melancholic male fantasy. The woman has talent that crackles off the screen, but instead of letting her shine, she's relegated to propping up our brooding protagonist. It's like buying a Ferrari and using it only to go grocery shopping, technically functional, but criminally underutilized.

Now, With Love is a different beast altogether, and I mean that as the highest compliment. This is new-age filmmaking done right. Anaswara Rajan is basically playing herself here, and yet there's an authenticity to her performance that feels refreshing in an industry often drowning in artifice. My only complaint? Abhishan Jeevinth, in his 'lead'-acting debut lets his older version hide behind that beard. Come on, man, you have a jawline. Flaunt it! Youth is fleeting, beards are optional. Director Madhan, kudos for a simple yet entertaining debut movie.

What makes With Love work is that it doesn't pander or apologize. It's unapologetically a GenZ movie – the pacing, the emotional beats, the relationship dynamics all feel contemporary without trying too hard to be cool. There's a easy-going naturalness to it that Dude desperately lacks. While Dude is busy manufacturing angst and positioning its hero as some tortured, self-effacing type, With Love just lets its characters breathe and let them exist in their messy, relatable reality.

The contrast between these two films is stark. One treats its female lead like an accessory to male suffering, while the other gives its actress room to be a fully realized person. One feels calculated to hit tried-n-tested emotional notes and fails (IMHO,) while the other trusts its young audience to appreciate something genuine. I tried to give Dude the benefit of doubt and tried even watching it by fast forwarding, but I could not even get past the half way mark.

If you're picking between the two, skip the soup boy dude chronicles and go straight for With Love. Your time is precious, and Mamitha Baiju's wasted potential in Dude will only make you sad about what could have been.

Read More

Homebound (Netflix 2025) with Neeraj Ghaywan and Vishal Jethwa

Vishal Jethwa is my actor discovery of the year. I had no clue this guy existed until Netflix dropped Homebound into my weekend queue. What makes his story even more compelling is learning about his journey - a kid raised by a single mother, taking the scenic route that outsiders are forced to navigate in Bollywood, yet still managing to hold his own against the more pedigreed Ishan Khatter (Neelima Azeem's son and Bollywood actor Shahid Kapoor's brother).

Vishal Jethwa(l), Ishaan Khatter(r) - a scene from Homebound (2025)

The real kicker though is Homebound marks the triumphant return of Neeraj Ghaywan - my and probably India's rediscovery of the year. Ghaywan, the blogger-film critic ditched his corporate cubicle to chase his filmmaking dreams. His debut film - Masaan back in 2015 wasn't just groundbreaking because it launched Vicky Kaushal into Bollywood (tauba tauba..) it was revolutionary because Ghaywan tackled heavyweight themes like caste, class, and discrimination with the subtlety of a master craftsman and it made its all the way to Cannes and won a couple of awards.

Homebound took him back to Cannes again this year, above is the proof.

What sets Ghaywan apart is his authentic understanding of humiliation and institutional cruelty experienced by the downtrodden and lower caste/class people in India  – the kind that comes from lived experience, not research papers. Although Ghaywan grew up in urban in India of the 80s and 90s, going to prominent schools and almost never came out as 'Dalit' till he entered the film field later in his life. As a Dalit filmmaker, he brings a visceral understanding of what it means to navigate a world designed to keep you out. This is filmmaking from the trenches, created from blood, sweat, and tears rather than market research and focus groups. I have zero patience for fantasy fiction that exists in some make-believe bubble, but Homebound is cinema that matters.

Homebound continues the Ghaywan's unflinching style taking us along the life journey of two lifelong friends – young men from different discriminated backgrounds, one facing religious prejudice, the other caste discrimination. Jethwa and Khatter completely shed their Bollywood personas (though I'm not entirely sure Jethwa had one to shed in the first place) and deliver performances so grounded and vulnerable you forget you're watching actors.

The story unfolds before and during the pandemic, which hit me like a revelation about how differently COVID played out across the globe. All I experienced in my small-town America was minor 'conveniences' like working from home for a month and the great toilet paper shortage scare, India faced something entirely more devastating. The sudden shutdown didn't just pause life – it destroyed livelihoods overnight, forcing millions to walk thousands of miles back home when the entire transportation network collapsed. It was an unnecessary human catastrophe layered on top of an already devastating health crisis.

Throughout the film, B.R. Ambedkar's framed portrait appears like a gentle reminder - the Dalit statesman who studied at Columbia and LSE and architected India's Constitution. His presence in these frames speaks to unfinished promises and the persistent gap between constitutional ideals and street-level reality.

Homebound isn't just probably the best Hindi film of 2025 – it might just be the best, period. It's the kind of movie that reminds you why cinema exists in the first place: to show us ourselves, warts and all, and maybe help us figure out how to be a little more human in the process.

Read More

Ponman, featuring the "actor" Basil Joseph

Basil Joseph has been having an identity crisis for sometime now or maybe this was his endgame - to be an actor. Basil figured out that the best way to get the exact performance you want is to give it yourself. He hits an incredible home-run with the 2025 movie, Ponman, directed by Jotish Shanker. 

Following in the footsteps of Dileesh Pothan, who made the seamless transition from behind the camera to in front of it, Basil has delivered what might be his strongest acting performance yet in Ponman. It's funny how all these directors are suddenly discovering they can act better than half the people they've been directing.

Ponman arrives as one of 2025's better offerings, showcasing Basil's metamorphosis which has been happening since Jaya Jaya Jaya He (2022). Gone is the slightly awkward energy we've come to associate with his earlier acting attempts - here he's completely comfortable in his skin, delivering dialogue with the kind of natural rhythm that comes from understanding exactly what the scene needs. You can see the director's brain working behind the actor's eyes, but instead of feeling calculated, it feels precise. 

What makes Ponman particularly effective is how Jotish Shanker has positioned it in Kollam and captured the suffocating nuances of the dowry system. This is not just another family drama - it's a surgical examination of how gold becomes the measuring stick for a girl's worth. The entire narrative revolves around the crushing weight of expectation that families work their entire lives to accumulate enough gold ornaments for their daughter's wedding day. 

 The supporting cast, particularly Lijomol and Sajin Gopu, complement Basil's performance without getting overshadowed by his transformation. Lijomol especially brings a quiet dignity to her role. Sajin Gopu, as always, delivers with that effortless naturalism that makes you forget you're watching someone act. 

Jotish Shanker's direction keeps the focus tight on the family dynamics without getting preachy about the social commentary. The dowry system critique emerges organically from the characters' actions rather than through heavy-handed dialogue, which is probably why the movie works as well as it does. By the time the wedding sequences arrive, you're not just watching a celebration - you're watching the culmination of a system that has consumed everyone involved. 

Ponman might not revolutionize Malayalam cinema, but it does what good regional cinema should do, holds up a mirror to a specific community's practices while telling a universally relatable story about family expectations and the price we pay for tradition.

 

 

Read More

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)

The Man Who Haunted Himself is Roger Moore doing something totally different from James Bond. This 1970 psychological thriller shows Moore as Harold Pelham, a buttoned-up London businessman whose life gets turned upside down after a car accident. 

The thing that grabbed me right away was how this movie is basically a time capsule of 1970s London. Many people are wearing proper hats, speaking in that clipped British way that sounds almost old-timey now, and the whole city looks different from what you'd expect. The cars, the clothes, the office buildings - it's all very much of its era. You can practically smell the cigarette smoke and aftershave through the screen.

Moore himself is interesting to watch here. This is the first non-Bond movie of his I've ever seen, and he's playing it completely straight. No winking at the camera, no charm offensive, just a regular guy slowly losing his mind as his life gets hijacked by someone who looks exactly like him. The poor guy goes from boring businessman to paranoid mess, and Moore sells it pretty well. The plot gets pretty wild as Pelham discovers that his mysterious double is living it up - gambling, having affairs, making business deals he never agreed to. It's like someone took his life and turned up all the dials to eleven. The corporate intrigue stuff feels very 1970s & British too, mergers and hostile takeovers in wood-paneled boardrooms are very gentlemanly compared to the slimy dramas taking place in 21st century conference rooms. The movie definitely takes its time building the paranoia, and the ending is dark for what starts as a straightforward thriller. Worth watching if you want to see Moore stretch beyond his comfort zone, or if you're into that whole "what if your life wasn't really your life" thing. Plus, the 1970s London backdrop makes it feel like you're watching a lost episode of some old BBC series.

Read More

Baramulla : A movie by Aditya Jambhale (Netflix)

Baramulla, what could a film about Baramulla possibly be about? Other than being another film about the decades-long disputed-territory status of Kashmir. But I was happily surprised, and in the best possible way.

Before diving into the movie, here's some backdrop: Baramulla is this town up in Jammu and Kashmir, India's northernmost state that's still a bit of a hot mess. Kashmir has been like an open wound ever since India's independence, when the Hindu king of this Muslim-majority region decided to throw his lot in with India. Both Pakistan and India have been picking at this wound ever since, and one of the most brutal chapters was the displacement of Kashmiri Pandits - that's the majority Hindu group in Kashmir, back in the late eighties and nineties. Not exactly feel-good material for your average weekend movie night. Baramulla, the movie, comes from director Aditya Suhas Jambhale and stars Manav Kaul and Basha Sumbli as a Muslim couple. The husband's a cop, deputy superintendent of police, freshly posted to Baramulla to investigate some politician's kidnapped kid. The director and both lead actors are all from the displaced Kashmiri Pandit diaspora which adds a layer of authenticity. The family moves into this gorgeous, rambling old house that screams traditional Kashmir architecture. And man, does this house work overtime in the atmosphere department. It's pretty in that old-fashioned way that makes you want to book a vacation there, right up until the creepy stuff starts happening.

Now, I'm not sure if this counts as a Bollywood film. Sure, it's in Hindi and features Manav Kaul, who's done his share of Bollywood gigs, but it feels like something else entirely. We're seeing this whole new parallel cinema thing happening - movies produced by Netflix, Amazon Prime, and their streaming cousins, using local crews and native languages but breaking free from the tired old Bollywood formulas which have not been hitting the mark lately. I'll admit, I was dragging my feet about watching this one. The producer, Aditya Dhar, made his directorial debut with Uri: The Surgical Strike, which wasn't exactly my cup of tea, so much so that I never even watched it. But then I caught wind of some chatter about Baramulla being supernatural horror, not just political drama. And you know what? Sometimes the best surprises come when you're least expecting them. What we get here is a quality film that somehow manages to mash up history, politics, horror, drama, and actual ghosts without turning into an emotional train wreck or an over-the-top melodrama. For an Indian film to pull that off without the usual histrionics is genuinely refreshing. Shot entirely in Kashmir, with top-notch acting, editing, production design, and direction across the board. Jambhale has crafted one of the most creative supernatural films to come out of India in recent memory, and here's why it works: it's anchored firmly in reality, history, and the real suffering of real people. The genius move here is making us experience the horror through the eyes of a Muslim family - the same religion as those who perpetrated the Kashmiri Pandit exodus - and forcing us to realize that regardless of religion, we all feel the same outrage when faced with atrocity, no matter who's dishing it out.

The sequences where history bleeds into present-day attacks where the veil thins between the dead and the living are masterfully interwoven, creating a storytelling and editing exercise that's both haunting and enlightening. A well-made film that doesn't preach but provokes thought. Perfect for lovers of history and supernatural storytelling who aren't afraid of confronting uncomfortable truths.

 

Read More

Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein (2025) : A review

I had been meaning to watch Guillermo del Toro's 2025 adaptation of Frankenstein ever since it dropped on Netflix. As someone who has never actually read Mary Shelley's original novel (yeah, literary sacrilege!), I went in with zero expectations except knowing it was a del Toro film, which usually means visually stunning and emotionally complex storytelling. This is quintessential del Toro - all dark aqua blues, deep greens, and rich browns creating that Gothic atmosphere he's famous for. The production design is absolutely marvelous, every frame looking like a painting, if you were into that whole moody Victorian vibe art. This is definitely a movie that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible because of its sheer grandiloquence. Del Toro has this thing about redeeming his monsters, and this newest retelling of Frankenstein fits perfectly into that pattern. Oscar Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein and he's irresistibly handsome in that tortured genius way. Isaac's Victor is portrayed as a complete egotistical dickhead, which apparently has some book purists up in arms. I read in various forums that readers of Shelley's original have major issues with how this adaptation simplifies both Victor and the Creature's characterizations. The consensus seems to be that in the book, Victor is indeed a piece of work for abandoning his creation, but he was also just a naive young guy who couldn't fully grasp the magnitude of what he'd done. Similarly, while the Creature is tragic, he's also a stalker who intentionally murders innocents in his quest for revenge against Victor - far from the blameless victim we see in this movie version.

 

The script-writing deserves special mention here. There's this moment where the monster, still learning human speech, says something like "Perhaps this was the way of the world, the world would hunt you and kill you for the way you are." The philosophical poetry woven through the simple words of a creature learning to speak is just brilliant. There are several such dialogues that stay with you long after the credits roll.

The female lead had me scratching my head a bit. She's written as this very righteous, empathetic character – maybe that's how Mary Shelley, daughter of philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, intended it. Women are often more empathetic than men, sure, but this lady thinks she's wise when she's really just displaying the foolishness of her immature young age. She was literally the only character who could have made Victor see the truth and helped redeem his ways, if only she would get down off her high horse and actually engage with the complexity of the situation instead of just being judgmental.

She falls in love with the creature ridiculously quickly, professing something like eternal love after what feels like two meetings. And wasn't she flirting a bit with Victor, her fiancé's older brother? The whole love angle felt forced, maybe they were staying true to the book, I wouldn't know.

 But sometimes a good story doesn't need to be complicated. Del Toro delivered something gorgeous to look at, Isaac brought his brooding good looks and acting, and Jacob Elordi as the Creature got some genuinely moving dialogue. 

The Arctic scenes alone are worth the watch. There's something haunting about that ship stuck in the ice, with the Creature framed against a pale sun that looks more like a dying moon. "I am malicious because I am miserable," the monster tells his creator, and you feel every word of that misery in the frozen wasteland that mirrors his isolation. Not every adaptation has to be exactly as the book, sometimes it just needs to be good television.

Read More

Parichay (1972): A movie by Gulzar

All the stories that we could ever tell have already been told. Or we are at a point in human history with our hyper-connectivity that the stories that might have been viewed as fresh in the past are weak sauce now. All our sources have been exhausted or told and retold to death, and my attention span for long-form movies, like the rest of urban humanity, is fleeting-every-thirty-seconds if I'm being generous. When I'm watching these older films, there's usually nothing that rivets me to the couch, not that such a contraption is necessary. I'm usually glued there without any artificial means to achieve that state.

Gulzar's 1972 film Parichay is essentially The Sound of Music transplanted to an Indian setting, complete with a male live-in tutor tackling a bunch of unruly kids who happen to be the grandchildren of a wealthy zamindar. The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources, and back in 1972, The Sound of Music had probably only been seen by a handful of Indian elites who could travel abroad or lived in Bombay.

Jeetendra steps into the Julie Andrews role here, minus the singing on mountaintops but with plenty of his own charm - many times featuring his signature white on white outfit, white shirts and white pants. What makes Parichay stand out from your typical Bollywood fare of the early seventies is Jeetendra's character and his unusual narrative device. Our hero has what he calls his "second track", a mental monologue that surfaces as intermittent voice-overs throughout the film. This internal commentary feels surprisingly fresh and modern for a movie that's over fifty years old. The film follows the familiar template: stern patriarch, rebellious grandchildren who've turned the household upside down, and the arrival of a tutor who's supposed to whip them into shape. But Gulzar, being Gulzar, adds layers of nuance that elevate it beyond a simple adaptation. The kids aren't just mischievous for the sake of plot convenience; their rebellion stems from genuine grief and abandonment issues following their parents' deaths. Jaya Bhaduri plays Jeetendra's love interest, though calling her one of the "unruly kids" feels like a stretch considering she's clearly a legal adult who's completed her high school education. The romance subplot unfolds predictably but with enough genuine emotion to keep you invested. The supporting cast reads like a who's who of veteran Hindi cinema - Pran as the stern zamindar, Asrani as the loyal family servant, A.K. Hangal as Jeetendra's uncle, and Leela Mishra as his aunt. Sanjeev Kumar and Vinod Khanna make guest appearances, which speaks to the film's pedigree.  

Parichay might be a retelling of a familiar story, but sometimes the comfort of the familiar is exactly what you need. Gulzar takes the bones of The Sound of Music and gives it an Indian soul, complete with the emotional complexity that comes with joint family dynamics. For a film that could have easily been a lazy adaptation, it manages to find its own voice through that clever narrative device and solid performances from its ensemble cast. 

Read More

A Cursed Man: A documentary by Liam Le Guillou

Liam Le Guillou's documentary "A Cursed Man", available on Kanopy (thanks public library streaming services), follows the documentary filmmaker on his quest to get cursed by practitioners of dark arts. While most sane people actively try to avoid hexes, jinxes, and supernatural misfortune, Le Guillou travels around asking witches, shamans, and voodoo priests to put the whammy on him.

The premise is fascinating in that train-wreck sort of way. Le Guillou genuinely needs to be convinced that magic exists, and apparently the only way his skeptical mind will accept supernatural phenomena is if something genuinely awful happens to him via a curse put on him. He travels the globe looking for a shaman or a witch who would put a curse on him. Many sincere practitioners try to dissuade him, but that is not stopping Le Guillou.

As Voodoo priest Divine Prince Ty Emmecca astutely observes, “The norm is to be cursed. And so [what you’re doing] sounds, without being disrespectful, almost entitled," It's a fair point – here's this guy demanding bad mojo when most people are just trying to get by without additional (evil) cosmic interference.

What saves the documentary from becoming a complete vanity project is the quality of the conversations Le Guillou has with his subjects. The practitioners he meets are invested, honest, and well-intentioned people who take their craft seriously. Their insights into belief systems, spirituality, and the nature of reality make for genuinely thought-provoking viewing. These aren't carnival fortune tellers or charlatans – they're people with deep convictions about forces beyond our current scientific understanding.

Still, there's something oddly self-indulgent about the whole enterprise. Le Guillou reminds me of a male Elizabeth Gilbert, though thankfully without the insufferable privilege tourism of Eat-Pray-Love. Like Gilbert, he's a white person with enough time and resources to go soul-searching across continents, but at least his journey involves potential supernatural consequences rather than just some trite self indulgent and shallow observations we could have come up with, without leaving the confines of our couches. The most puzzling aspect is Le Guillou's insistence on curses rather than blessings. Multiple practitioners suggest that positive magic might be equally convincing proof of supernatural forces, but he's adamant that only bad things will make him a believer. It's an oddly masochistic approach to spiritual exploration. Despite its self-centered premise, *A Cursed Man* succeeds as an exploration of belief, faith, and the human need for meaning beyond the material world. Le Guillou puts his own well-being on the line for his documentary, which takes a certain kind of commitment. The result is an intriguing look at what lies beyond conventional understanding, even if the journey feels unnecessarily focused on inviting trouble.

 

 

Read More

Pakeezah (1972), Meena Kumari and Trains

Meena Kumari's character Sahibjaan in Pakeezah has an obsession with trains, just like me. Although the root cause of our obsessions are vastly different. She almost met (she was sleeping, so she didn't get a chance to meet in the conventional sense) a handsome stranger on an overnight train journey, who left a note of appreciation about her soft feet in Urdu. Even expletives sound like poems in Urdu, so can't blame the lady if she fell head over heels reading a poetic note about her heels. 

Ethereal Meena Kumari, staring out of the window of the train, right after she has read the mysterious note

My fascination with trains could've started in my childhood filled with multi-day, overnight train journeys that took our family to places known & cherished or unknown & magical. If you lived in India in the 20th century and loved/had to travel, there was no escaping the trains. That was probably why  connecting the story-dots in director Kamal Amrohi's story is the omnipresent Indian Railways.

Pakeezah, Meena Kumari's magnum opus created for her by her husband (later ex) Kamal Amrohi is a grand visual poem which took almost fifteen years in the making. The majority of the work happening during the years 1964 to 1971 and the movie was released a couple of months before Meena Kumari's death at 38 in March 1972.

Meena Kumari designed all her wonderfully pirouette-able and elegantly colorful dance costumes for the movie. The music and the songs which can single-handedly make or break a Bollywood musical was composed by Ghulam Muhammad and the lyrics were penned by some of the best Urdu poets of the era like Kaifi Azmi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Kamal Amrohi and Kaifi Bhopali. The cinematography and the production design must have cost a pretty penny.

It is a Muslim-social about a tawaif (a Muslim courtesan or dancing girl) who falls in love with a gentleman in a history-repeats type of situation where the same kind of doomed love affair happens to a mother and her daughter, with two different gentlemen, of course. Both the mother and the daughter are played by Meena Kumari, but there in no need for these characters to share screen time as mother dies after childbirth and the daughter is only shown after she is in her late teens as she takes on the role of the dancer-courtesan. Ashok Kumar plays the love interest in the first affair and Raj Kumar's impeccable Hindustani diction won him the role of the younger Meena Kumari's lover.

The tumultuous life of Meena Kumari, the actor, is evident on her face that ages a decade during the making and completion of the movie. Meena Kumari, while she does not look like she is 17, is convincingly young as the younger (daughter) courtesan when the film starts out. But the film which seems to have been shot chronologically shows a beaten, puffy actor ravaged by depression and ill-health, as it progresses past the half way mark.

The lovers - Raj Kumar and Meena Kumari, accidentally meet again, during a train journey towards the end of the movie

Pakeezah is a window into a bygone era and world where tawaifs and nawabs used to exist along with teak-paneled Indian railway coaches and horse-drawn tangas. Much of the actions of the characters cannot be explained or justified in the current context nor is the century old societal framework comprehensible while I am typing and gazing at the neighbor's Tesla parked on their driveway. It is a splendid period piece, elegantly crafted, a fitting final tribute to one of the greatest actors of Indian cinema - Meena Kumari, and totally woman-'owned'. 

Read More

Neelavelicham the movie, Bhargavi Nilayam & a question for Aashiq Abu

Neelavelicham (literal translation: 'blue light', poetically liberal translation adopted by the filmmaker, 'blue radiance') is a famous short story by Malayalam literary giant and a renaissance man of simple tastes, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer. It has been made into a movie half a century ago, at the time the director A. Vincent had titled it "Bhargavi Nilayam", the name of the fictional abode of the ghost lady in the short story. Bhargavi Nilayam has long since become synonymous in the Malayalam culture and lexicon as any building that has been taken over by ghostly presence(s) overstaying their visa status on the earth. About a decade ago I wrote a one paragraph review of the movie in this blog, when what I really wanted to talk about was that movie's hero - Madhu.

Not sure what Aashiq Abu, the director of this new take on the short story wanted to talk about by taking on the enormous risk of remaking an old blockbuster movie and a much-read short story of a beloved author. Everyone is going to have opinions and any fault is going to be magnified manifold and scrutinized to death. Maybe the man just loves taking risks in pursuit of honing his craft. This is what I like to conclude because I have always looked forward to Aashiq Abu's directorial outings and love to watch the technical improvement happening with each new release. Neelavelicham is no different in the technical department - production design, cinematography, casting, script are all excellent.

Tovino Thomas as Vaikom Muhammad Basheer has been styled and executed better than the suave Madhu who when you think about it reflected none of the life experience as a hotel manager, shepherd, sports goods agent, activist, watchman, fruit seller (to name a few) multi-faceted background of the real author. Roshan Matthews and Rima Kallingal's characters as the lead romantic pair is on par with Prem Nazir and Vijaya Nirmala's characters from the 1964 film and have been scripted to be digested by a contemporary audience. 

The production design recreating the era of the newly independent India where the story is set is probably one of the best I have seen recently in any Indian movie and is a welcome relief compared to the staged sets of the 1964 version. Not to blame any of these on the 1964 movie which was made at an age and a time when actors lived and emoted in a different plane than ordinary people and that sort of disconnect and staging was the norm. It is most evident nowhere else than the villain character Nanukuttan essayed in the 1964 movie by the stalwart actor P.J. Antony in blackface makeup. In the 2023 version it is Shine Tom Chacko, without any black paint on his face, but with the essential villainy captured through his acting and the script. The director has taken the same care to make necessary changes to make it a suitable for a contemporary audience, trimming down the length and dialogs.

The only question I have for Aashiq Abu is, if this was your take of Basheer's story Neelavelicham why did you take on the role of an editor or a quality analyst instead of being the ingenious director I have credited you to be? Neelavelicham (2023) is a scene by scene, quality improved copy of the 1964 Bhargavi Nilayam. You, Aashiq Abu, who has always given a relatable perspective on life through movies (especially to Millennial and Gen Z audience) whether it be Salt n Pepper or 22 F Kottayam or Da Thadiya or Idukki Gold or Mayanadhi, what stopped you doing from giving us a fresh take on Neelavelicham, instead of making a low-effort photocopy, albeit technically brilliant?

 

Read More

Pakalkkinavu

Tales of philandering playboys and gullible girls 'destroyed' by these men have provided fodder to many an Indian movie. Pakalkkinavu, (def:daydream)  is a 1966 Malayalam film penned by M. T.  Vasudevan Nair and directed by S.S.Rajan based on this general theme.

Nellikode Bhaskaran & Sathyan in Sathyan's mid-century modern apartment

Other than M.T's characteristic protagonist, a young man from a tharavad in Valluvanadu, the story, the setting and the dialog are very modern compared to other Malayalam films from the sixties. This is the earliest Malayalam movie that I have seen/heard the word "cool" being used by the lead actor in the way we use it now, as a slang term meaning awesome.

Even the young man, played by a young looking 54 year old Sathyan is not the typical hero you see in M.T's stories. In fact both male characters in the movie, Sathyan's Babu and Nellikode Bhaskaran's Chandran are atypical of the roles each actor used to play during their usual outings. Nellikode Bhaskaran has a meaty role in the movie, a far cry from the side roles I am used to seeing him in.

Sathyan on his motorcycle, Sharada and Bhaskaran looks on

The movie starts with a motorcycle ride through the city of Bangalore where Babu is seen establishing his character as the rich scion who matches women on his pillion with his outfit of the day. It was an eye-opener for me that even back in the sixties, Bangalore was Keralites' idealized city where girls went to go wild and men were all dashing and debonair. In this city of daydreams, Babu is seen living in a hotel suite decorated with tasteful pieces of mid-century modern furniture. He drinks beer for water and plays savior to jobless youth like Chandran when he feels like it, with only one condition - no one is supposed to give him life advice. Keeping your mouth shut vs homelessness, that is an easy choice for Chandran.

A very young Sharada as Malathi makes appearance as Chandran's acquaintance. But the audience and Babu knows, try all he might Chandran is not going to get the girl. The girls usually have a incomprehensible fondness for dudes on motorcycles and Malathi turns out no different in the end.

Sharada & Sathyan - 30+ years age difference separates the stars often paired togehter

The second half of the movie shifts back to Kerala from Bangalore and in Malathi's place we have Vasanthi as Shaari, Malathi's younger sister. While it is melodramatic at some places as was the trend of the times, the treatment of the movie, including the ending is contemporary.

 

Read More

We Didn't Start the Fire in 2022

We didn't start the fire in 2022 either, but a few winds of change blew into my life. Adjusting my sails to the changing patterns of currents and events kept me away from updating this blog. The thoughts and reviews I would have otherwise gathered were thrown to the wind in favor of my efforts in keeping the bow straight on the boat of life. Here are some titles of movies, shows, books, events and places I crossed paths in 2022 captured using the timeless template provided by the master fire marshal, Billy Joel. See you in 2023.

Sky Castle, Hail Caesar, Forrest Gump, Candy Jar
Delhi Crime Season Three, Devil in Ohio,
Twenty Five Twenty One, Oceans Eleven n Twelve
The Lincoln Lawyer, Rush Hour 1, 2 & 3

Surviving Death, Russian Doll, ‘83, Moxie
Borrego, Shards of Her, and Ozark Season Four
Inventing Anna, The Seven Lives of Lea
The Tinder Swindler, and Archive 81

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it 

 

Prime Video, here comes Disconnect and Rushmore

Outer Range, Patriot, Reacher Season One

Gehraiyaan, Marrowbone, Jo & Jo, The Joneses

The House of Gucci, The Virgin Suicides

Tesla, Prometheus, Modern Love Hyderabad
The Wolf of Wall Street, Dead Again, Richland
Stanford, TriCities, Goliath, Three Pines
Paper Girls, Thirteen Lives, Leaving Las Vegas

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it

Lionel Messi, World Cup, Stand By Me, Startup
Bad Vegan, Katla, and Minnal Murali
Manifest Season Four, Never Have I Ever
Young Wallander, Anatomy of a Scandal

Hasan Minhaj, Trevor Noah, FIFA got Uncovered
The Man from Toronto, Boeing is in Downfall
Darlings, Take your Pills and The Vanishing
I am Mother, Requiem, and The Fame Game

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Read away Hoffman, calls to Steal this Book
How To Raise a Feminist Son
Rage Against the Minivan, once again Walden
Stranger Things Season Four, Pieces of Her

Hold Tight, How to Change Your Mind
1899, blown away, what else do I have to say?

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

 

Read More

83 : A movie review, reliving Prudential Cup almost 40 years later

1983 Prudential Cup is my cup of frisson on demand. I just have to glance at the pictures of a grinning Kapil Dev holding the '83 world cricket cup or people overrunning the stadium at Lords to get auto-response goosebumps. As a grade schooler, I had my own scrapbook filled with newspaper cuttings of India's first ever win of a world cup of any sort.

Whether India likes it or not, English and Cricket are the two lasting colonial legacies the British left the Indians with, in return for Kohinoor and centuries of continuous looting of India's resources and treasures. Both English (the language) and cricket have stood India in good stead, have been important catalysts helping to grow the Indian economy and establishing India on the global scene. The British East India company is the reason why this blog is in English. My love for cricket is the reason for this post.

Living  deep in no-Indian (East Indian, not native American) country, I was waiting for a streaming service to release 83, Kabir Khan's retelling of India's 1983 Prudential Cup journey. Finally it aired on Netflix last week. The best part about 83 is the effort the director and his team have put in getting the details right. The players, their playing styles and mannerisms, the events and situations they find themselves in have all been depicted as close to reality as possible. I know, because they are in my newspaper clippings scrapbook :-)

Another redeeming point for the director is he succeeded in capturing the swagger and the intimidating presence that was the West Indies team of the late 70s and 80s. 

Considering the kind of attention to detail given to the style and stance of the individual Indian players and the cool West Indians, I have tried to overlook the cringe inducing jingoistic or sentimental elements that a Bollywood movie cannot do without, which 83 couldn't get rid off completely either. A fictional ceasefire at the farthest outpost in the Himalayas on the day of the finals! I am just glad that we narrowly escaped suffering a patriotic song sung by soldiers in sub-zero temperatures. It didn't do well at the box office despite critics (and I) loving it. Maybe the current audience, mainly millennials and younger, could not relate to it? 

The actors, including Pankaj Tripathi as the team's manager have given great performances. Kapil's Devils as the Indian team was called back then, are represented in the movie by Saqib Saleem playing Mohinder Amarnath , Tahir Raj Bhasin as Sunil Gavaskar, Jatin Sarna as Yashpal Sharma,  K. Srikant  played by Jiiva, Sandip Patil played by his own son Chirag Patil, Nishant Dahiya as Roger Binny and others. The greatest discovery for me though, is Ranveer Singh, who essays the role of the captain Kapil Dev Nikhanj.

Ranveer Singh, with his penchant for outrageous outfits, has the persona befitting an offspring of a peacock and an eccentric fashion designer if such a coupling could have happened.  I had never really given him much thought as an actor. In fact when they announced casting Ranveer Singh as Kapil Dev, instead of say someone like Randeep Hooda who is from the same area in India as Kapil Dev and is a sportsman in addition to being an actor, as a fan of Kapil Dev I was disappointed. 

Ranveer Singh as Kapil Dev

Then I saw Ranveer Singh in 83 as Kapil Dev.  The entire production team and the actor himself have gone into so much detail getting into the skin of real Kapil Dev, that the audience is unable to see Ranveer Singh anymore. That's when I realized that Ranveer Singh has been proving me wrong with his every recent outing - whether it is Gully Boy or Padmavat or 83, the guy can act. At this point I would rate him as one of the best amongst the current bunch of younger Bollywood actors. 

83 is not Chak De India, which is probably the best Bollywood sports movie in my book. But it is history. Kabir Khan's 83, while it could have been better, has done a decent job depicting a momentous turning point in India's cultural history.

Read More

Munich: The Edge of War

Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity is  about the meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.  The reason I bring up synchronicity is I believe I had a light brush with it through the movie Munich: The Edge of War. A couple of days after watching the movie, we are in a history-repeats-itself situation with Ukraine, just as it had happened in the movie and history in 1938.

Netflix released Munich: The Edge of War on Jan 21, 2022. Maybe it was a far-sighted move on Netflix's part where their geopolitical team was scouring current events to find subject material for new movies. The team identified Munich 1938 as a plausible candidate to make a movie that people can relate to in the current times, when we have Hitler-lite dictating over Russia and looming like a menacing cloud over Europe. Congratulations earthlings, you were almost wrung out to dry by a global pandemic, how about World War III now? This is the roaring twenties, all over again, the excitement never stops.

A sucker for war movies, I had to put Munich: TEoW in my watchlist soon after it was released. It sat there languishing like the rest of the movies in My List, awaiting for my scroll button to pause on it and click Play. The click Play happened near Valentine's Day, a season I keep aside for watching war movies. But with my movie watching ADD at its peak, the bureaucratic nature of the movie felt a bit too slow for me and I left it there, after watching for about ten minutes. Then I picked it up again last week and finished it off soon after.  

Going into the movie I had no idea about the Munich Accord of 1938 or Hitler's invasion of Sudetenland (former Czechoslovakia,  current whatever) , which was the precursor of WWII. I am familiar with most of the famous battles of WWII thanks to WWII in Color (Netflix), but I am mostly clueless about the events leading up to the war, except having a general idea that Hitler's megalomaniacal territorial ambitions and the program of ethnic cleansing for racial purity eventually resulted in the war. 

Munich: TEoW plays out during the days before and during the signing of the Munich Accord in 1938. It blends history with fiction, where the fictional lead characters are two young government officials who went to school at Oxford together and are now on the opposing sides of the geo-political divide. Both are seen trying to prevent a war, within their extremely limited spheres of influence.

 

Based on Robert Harris's best seller and directed by Christian Schwochow, George Mackay who according to me is the most German looking English man, plays the English civil servant Hugh Legat and Jannis Niewöhner is his college-mate who is now a German diplomat. Then British PM, Neville Chamberlain has been given a makeover or a whitewash and is portrayed in the movie by the indomitable Jeremy Irons. The movie says that Chamberlain's much critiqued move was him deliberately allowing to tarnish his image in history for the sake buying time for the the rest of the Europe (or Allies as they will be called later) by sacrificing Sudetenland.

1938 in the movie feels like a time just like we are in now. Europe is poised at the edge of war, triggered by the actions of a madcap dictator who looks and acts like a man who must have had his black belt in judo revoked recently. Instead of Sudetenland we have Ukraine, a democratic nation whose President - the (multi) Talented Mr. Zelensky, is fighting on the front lines with his troops defending their capital city - Kyiv. But unlike 1938, it is not just European nations who are joining hands to fight the aggressor - here is a sample of one of the Allied partnerships* of 2022. 

*pornhub part was fake news

Yes, here we are. Showing a significant reversal from their post WWII stance, Germany has invested 100 billion Euros for its military expansion. Poland is praying that German forces will march into their country and save their back side if/when the need arises. Switzerland has stopped signing its emails with the pronoun - 'neutral' which was specifically invented for them right after Napoleon's reign and has announced sanctions against Russia, causing Russian oligarchs scrambling to buy piggy banks. 

In case we are still not convinced that this stuff is serious, Sweden and Finland who are the lesser known step-cousins of Switzerland and have never picked any sides just like their more well known cousin, have also picked a side, joining the Pope, Poland and Anonymous. It is not Munich which is at the edge of war in 2022, all of Europe is at the edge of unity. 

Read More