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Vikram (2022)
In recent years, the big hero movies in Kollywood have disappointed me. Other than a few exceptions, sequels turn out to be lazy works of the makers. So, I had low expectations for Kamal Hasaan‘s Vikram (2022), a thin sequel to Vikram (1986) and in the same universe as Kaithi (2019). Using a textbook story of a good cop(s) vs drug mafia, but delivering it through high energy and brisk screenplay, Director Lokesh Kanagaraj has surprised me with an entertainer. Mangoidiots rates the film a raw, yet you may want to watch it. The first half of the film was dominated by two brilliant actors, Fahadh Faasil and Vijay Sethupathi…
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Pushpa: The Rise (2021)
Allu Arjun starring Pushpa: The Rise (2021) had received a lot of coverage in the last few months, the two songs featuring Rashmika Mandanna and Samantha Ruth were the talk of social media for weeks. Reading the one-liner that it was about Red-Sandalwood smuggling I thought it will be yet another mass hero, masala film which shows the ruthless hero to be a saint even though everything he does is illegal – it was exactly that, but surprisingly the predictable screenplay was highly engaging and I liked it. Award-worthy performance by Allu Arjun. The film available on Amazon Prime Video gets my Ripe rating. Even though he comes only at…
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The top twenty movies of 2021 that I enjoyed
For the last few years, I report here the number of movies I watched the previous year. In the years 2019 and 2020, I had watched about a hundred movies each year. When 2021 started, I set up a challenge for myself to watch a hundred movies in the first hundred days of the year and I accomplished it. Unhappily, I couldn’t keep up the same rate through the next nine months of the year. In total during the year 2021, I had watched 162 movies, my all-time record. Top 20 of 2021 Below are the top twenty movies of 2021 (based on their OTT release date) that I enjoyed…
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Joji (2021)
Film after film, Fahadh Faasil impresses us more with his performances. In his latest film Joji (2021) available on Amazon Prime Video, he has transformed into the youngest son of a wealthy estate owner who is authoritarian and iron fists any money to his children. Reading the byline that ends with “Will he (Joji) succeed in achieving his dreams?” and the introduction of the character, I was expecting a comedy/success story. Instead, it was a semi-dark and crime film. The film by Dileesh Pothan gets a mangoidiots rating of ‘Ripe’ for delivering a brilliant screenplay, with apt casting, and wonderful acting by everyone. Joji (Fahadh) is the third son of…
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Trance (2020)
Trance (2020) is a Malayalam drama starring Fahadh Faasil, a struggling motivational speaker named Viju who gets recruited as a religious preacher by a big scam group. I liked the first half of the film where Viju struggles with his emotional baggage from tragedies in his family while not losing hope about becoming successful. The second half was dull and needlessly lengthy and becomes the usual hero vs bad guys story. Gets a Mangoidiots rating of ‘Raw’. Is available on Amazon Prime Video. The way ordinary Viju Prasad is transformed to Pastor Joshua Carlton (JC as in Jesus Christ!) was enjoyable. If Director Anwar Rasheed had maintained the flow this…
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C U Soon (2020)
C U Soon (2020) is a Malayalam mystery film that has been made during the pandemic, by following social distancing and entirely with a smartphone. For that reason, I am rating the film one notch higher at “Ripe” on my MangoIdiots scale than I would’ve otherwise. The movie is available on Amazon Prime Video. The film reminded of Searching (2018), as both of them were about what’s on a phone and a computer, but unlike the South Korean hit, the Malayalam film fails to keep you in a suspense till the end. The story is about Jimmy, a bank executive working in UAE, meeting a girl Anu through a dating…
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Kumbalangi Nights (2019)
Kumbalangi Nights (2019) is an offbeat rom-com by director Madhu C. Narayanan, an unbelievable debut film for him. Even for a Malayalam cinema, the first-half goes extremely slow, expending a lot of time in setting the mood, but after that, the film shifts to a higher gear and was rewarding watch. It is about four (half) brothers who lead a slothful life, fighting with each other all the time, they are as far away from being a family. Living in a half-completed house on the sides of a mucky lake, they don’t even get up to do the work they know well-fishing. In this context, one of the brothers “Bobby”…
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Super Deluxe (2019)
WOW! What a film this was! I will begin by giving you two reasons why should go to a theatre near you and see Super Deluxe (சூப்பர் டிலக்ஸ்) right away – To enjoy the exceptional dialogues which were the real hero, and they keep lingering in your mind long after the scene was over; To appreciate the Director Thiagarajan Kumararaja for handling four taboo subjects that almost no one will discuss openly, including societal discrimination of a transgender, extramarital affair, pornography and about cult faiths. A few reviews have said the film and dialogues to be raw – to me, they felt too realistic to give me goosebumps. <spoiler alert>…
