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Maanaadu (2021)
Director Venkat Prabhu deserves a big applause for succeeding in making the not-easy-to-understand idea of time loops entertaining for the regular moviegoer who may not care about science-fiction. The success of the film, Maanadu (மாநாடு) was earned by the excellent acting of Silambarasan and S J Suryah, an apt theme that resonates with the Tamil audience, and a fast-paced screenplay that had little slack. Available on Sony Liv, the film gets my Ripe rating, don’t miss it. It all starts with an NRI, Abdul Khaliq (Silambarasan) sitting next to a young lady Seetha (Kalyani Priyadarshan) on a flight to Coimbatore. On landing, he leaves with his friends to Ooty to…
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Squid Game (TV Series)
Squid Game, the South Korean TV Series has been one of the most widely watched shows worldwide, earning more than a billion dollars for Netflix. The nine-episode series is a fictitious tale about hundreds of players, most of them debt-ridden and desperate being invited to play survival games with lucrative rewards and bloody consequences. The series by Hwang Dong-hyuk can serve as a great study for film-making students on how to write a gripping screenplay – it has a hero(es) who we can identify with, identifiable bad guys, hundreds of characters we care little about providing the ambience, a dysfunctional society that we all suffer from, clear win or lose…
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Doctor (2021)
Doctor (2021) is a thriller starring Sivakarthikeyan. It is about an Army doctor turning to become an amateur detective and trickster to save a young girl from the jaws of a ruthless human trafficker. The movie is brisk at the same time too long, it is funny at the same time sad, it is gory at the same time comic – this identity crisis spoils the film to the point of being stupid. The film is available on Netflix and gets a “Raw” rating. Varun (Sivakarthikeyan) is a talented doctor with the military – the job is used in the film to show that the character knows how to administer…
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The Courier (2020)
Spy movies need not be action thrillers like James Bond, in recent years there have been films that were inspired by true incidents and told subtly like A Call to Spy (2019), which featured women protagonists during the Nazi occupation of France and Red Sparrow (2018) which had a female lead but from the other side of the iron curtain. The Courier (2020) follows this style and talks of a British salesman who played a key role in bringing vital documents from Moscow that prevented the Cuban missile crisis from going nuclear. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch (famous as Doctor Strange), The Courier (2020) was engaging and crisp. Available on Amazon Prime…
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Thittam Irandu (2021)
Director Vignesh Karthick and Aishwarya Rajesh have to be appreciated for handling a taboo subject that has been rarely seen in Tamil cinema. That unique climax topic makes Thittam Irandu (திட்டம் இரண்டு) worth watching. Unfortunately, the screenplay was not engaging for a murder thriller, it had too many logic gaps and after the first hour loses steam. As a result, it gets only a ‘Raw’ on Mangoidiots score. The film is available on the Sony Liv platform. Athira (Aishwarya Rajesh) is an inspector in Chennai, during a bus journey she meets a young man named Arjun (Subash Selvam) who gives his berth away for her – this act and their…
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Super Over (2021)
Super Over (2021), the Telugu film by Praveen Varma released on Aha has an intriguing premise. It was about the huge sums of money and the crime network operating in illegal cricket betting in India. I guess it was inspired by the IPL betting scam that was uncovered a few years ago. The film starts well, unfortunately, the plot loses strength in the middle and we couldn’t wait for the whole thing to get over. Because of this, what should’ve got a ‘Ripe’ in our mangoidiots score gets only a ‘Raw’. Naveen Chandra as Kaasi comes as a youngster with a huge family debt to take care of. He is…
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Anveshanam (2020)
Anveshanam (2020) is a Malayalam thriller that I accidentally found being available on Amazon Prime Video. The movie is about a young boy brought in critical condition to a hospital by his mother and their neighbour, a doctor. What happened to him, who caused the accident was the mystery that has been told with an engaging screenplay. I liked the film, check it out. The entire story happens over the night in the hospital and it gets developed layer by layer, one piece being revealed at a time. By itself, the story is a very simple one, but the way the characters gets developed, the good casting, and the order…
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The Priest (2021)
The Priest (2021) is a Malayalam paranormal thriller starring Mammooty. It got released today on Amazon Prime Video. Reading the description of “A priest and a police officer are trying to solve a set of mysterious suicides”, I expected an engaging detective, instead, it was a run-of-the-mill ghost revenge film with an identity crisis. It gets a Mangoidiots rating of ‘Raw’ because of Mammooty. The film starts with a young lady bringing to the attention of Fr. Carmen Benedict (Mammooty) the series of mysterious suicides that happen in a millionaire family. He joins with the local Deputy Superintendent to solve the crime. It was a good detective film till this…
