annavetticadgoes2themovies

PARVATHY OR ANNA? UYIRIL THODUM OR JAATHIKKATHOTTAM? MAMMOOTTY OR…? A PICK OF THE YEAR’S BEST WORK

2019 has been one of the greatest years in recent memory for Mollywood, the Kerala-based film industry that makes films largely in Malayalam. It has, therefore, been tough to arrive at lists of the year’s most memorable films. Still, as a follow-up to my Best Mollywood Films 2019 compilation, here is my selection of the best actors, directors, songs and technicians – nominees and winners – in categories generally recognised at most film awards worldwide, what I like to call my personal Mollywood Awards 2019.

(Note: I am appending to this article a footnote* on my use of the word “Mollywood”, which I initially wrote for my piece on the best Mollywood films of the year.)

This list contains only films released in 2019 and in mainstream theatres, not at festivals alone nor, for practical reasons, direct-to-online releases, although in coming years I will extend the scope to the latter too.

2019 has given the Mollywood gazer a lot to celebrate. I have covered 19 films in the nominations here and ended up leaving out many more than I would have liked to because, unfortunately, no list can be unlimited. There are anywhere from five to seven nominees in each category, all arranged in alphabetical order. If even one reader seeks out a film included here that they missed in the past year in theatres, my job is done.

BEST FILM

Nominees: (All nominee lists are in alphabetical order)

1. Jallikattu

2. Kumbalangi Nights

3. Thanneermathan Dinangal

4. Unda

5. Virus

And the award goes to…

Kumbalangi Nights

BEST DIRECTOR

Nominees:

Aashiq Abu (Virus)

Girish A.D. (Thanneermathan Dinangal)

Khalidh Rahman (Unda)

Lijo Jose Pellissery (Jallikattu)

Madhu C. Narayanan (Kumbalangi Nights)

And the award goes to…

Madhu C. Narayanan (Kumbalangi Nights) and Aashiq Abu(Virus)

BEST WRITING

Nominees:

Girish A.D., Dinoy Paulose(Thanneermathan Dinangal)

Khalidh Rahman, Harshad (Unda)

Muhsin Parari, Sharafu, Suhas (Virus)

R. Jayakumar, S. Hareesh (Jallikattu)

Syam Pushkaran (Kumbalangi Nights)

And the award goes to…

Syam Pushkaran (Kumbalangi Nights)

BEST ACTOR (FEMALE)

Nominees:

Aishwarya Lekshmi (Vijay Superum Pournamiyum)

Anaswara Rajan (Thanneermathan Dinangal)

Anna Ben (Helen)

Anna Ben (Kumbalangi Nights)

Parvathy (Uyare)

Rajisha Vijayan (Finals)

Veena Nandhakumar (Kettiyollaanu Ente Maalakha)

And the award goes to…

Parvathy (Uyare)

BEST ACTOR (MALE)

Nominees:

Asif Ali (Kettiyollaanu Ente Maalakha)

Mammootty (Unda)

Prithviraj Sukumaran (Driving Licence)

Soubin Shahir (Kumbalangi Nights)

Sreenath Bhasi (Kumbalangi Nights)

Tovino Thomas (And The Oskar Goes To)

Vinay Forrt (Thamaasha)

And the award goes to…

Vinay Forrt (Thamaasha)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (FEMALE)

Nominees:

Anna Ben (Kumbalangi Nights)

Chinnu Chandni (Thamaasha)

Dhanya Ananya (Nalpathiyonnu)

Grace Antony (Kumbalangi Nights)

Manohari Joy (Kettiyollaanu Ente Maalakha)

Rima Kallingal (Virus)

Santhy Balachandran (Jallikattu)

And the award goes to…

Manohari Joy (Kettiyollaanu Ente Maalakha)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (MALE)

Nominees:

Aju Varghese (Helen)

Asif Ali(Uyare)

Fahadh Faasil (Kumbalangi Nights)

Lukman (Unda)

Roshan Mathew (Moothon)

Saran Jith (Nalpathiyonnu)

Sreenath Bhasi (Virus)

And the award goes to…

Asif Ali(Uyare)

BEST CAST

Nominees:

Android KunjappanVersion 5.25:

Soubin Shahir, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Kendy Zirdo, Saiju Kurup, Parvathi T, Megha Mathew, Rajesh Madhavan, Sivadas Kannur, Unni Raja and others

Kettiyollaanu Ente Maalakha:

Asif Ali, Veena Nandhakumar, Manohari Joy, Basil Joseph, Jaffer Idukki, Raveendran and others

Kumbalangi Nights:

Soubin Shahir, Sreenath Bhasi, Shane Nigam, Mathew Thomas,Fahadh Faasil, Anna Ben, Grace Antony, Jasmine Mètivier, Sooraj Pops, Ramesh Thilak and others

Unda:

Mammootty, Shine Tom Chacko, Arjun Ashokan, Lukman, Omkar Das Manikpuri, Ranjith Balakrishnan, Bhagwan Tiwari, Jacob Gregory, Dileesh Pothan, Chien Ho Liao, Easwari Rao and others, Cameos by Asif Ali and Vinay Forrt

Uyare:

Parvathy, Asif Ali, Tovino Thomas, Siddique, Anarkali Marikar, Prem Prakash, Pratap K. Pothen, Samyuktha Menon and others

Virus:

Parvathy, Kunchacko Boban, Tovino Thomas, Rima Kallingal, Sreenath Bhasi, Revathy, Joju George, Indrajith Sukumaran, Asif Ali, Indrans, Sharafudheen, Soubin Shahir, Dileesh Pothan, Rahman, Madonna Sebastian, Sajitha Madathil, Leona Lishoy, Darshana Rajendran, Remya Nambeesan

And the award goes to…

Virus:

BEST MUSIC

Nominees:

Justin Varghese (Thanneermathan Dinangal)

Prashant Pillai (Jallikattu)

Sushin Shyam (Kumbalangi Nights)

Sushin Shyam (Virus)

Vishnu Vijay (Ambili)

And the award goes to…

Sushin Shyam (Kumbalangi Nights)

BEST SONG

Nominees:

Aradhike(fromAmbili):

Composition: Vishnu Vijay

Lyrics: Vinayak Sasikumar

Singing: Sooraj Santhosh, Madhuvanthi Narayan

Enna Undra(fromKettiyollaanu Ente Maalakha):

Composition: William Francis

Lyrics:B.K. Harinarayanan

Singing: William Francis

Jaathikkathottam (from Thanneermathan Dinangal):

Composition: Justin Varghese

Lyrics: Suhail Koya

Singing: Soumya Ramakrishnan, Devadutt Bijibal

Nee Mazhavillu Polen (fromFinals):

Composition: Kailas Menon

Lyrics: Sreerekha Bhaskaran

Singing: Naresh Iyer, Priya Prakash Varrier

Parakkaam Parakkaam (fromFinals):

Composition: Kailas Menon

Lyrics: M.D. Rajendran

Singing: Latha Krishna, Yazin Nizar

Silent Cat(from Kumbalangi Nights):

Composition: Sushin Shyam

Lyrics: Nezer Ahemed

Singing: K. Zia

Uyiril Thodum (from Kumbalangi Nights):

Composition: Sushin Shyam

Lyrics: Anwar Ali

Singing: Anne Amie, Sooraj Santhosh

And the award goes to…

Uyiril Thodum (from Kumbalangi Nights):

Composition: Sushin Shyam

Lyrics: Anwar Ali

Singing: Anne Amie, Sooraj Santhosh

BEST EDITING

Nominees:

Deepu Joseph (Jallikattu)

Ratheesh Raj (Driving Licence)

Saiju Sreedharan (Kumbalangi Nights)

Saiju Sreedharan (Virus)

Shameer Muhammad (Helen)

Shameer Muhammed (Thanneermathan Dinangal)

And the award goes to…

Deepu Joseph (Jallikattu)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Nominees:

Ajith Aacharya (Chola)

Gireesh Gangadharan (Jallikattu)

Jomon T. John, Vinod Illampally (Thanneermathan Dinangal)

Mukesh Muraleedharan (Uyare)

Rajeev Ravi, Shyju Khalid (Virus)

Sameer Thahir (Thamaasha)

Shyju Khalid (Kumbalangi Nights)

And the award goes to…

Shyju Khalid (Kumbalangi Nights)

BEST SOUND DESIGN

Nominees:

Ajayan Adat (Virus)

Jayadevan Chakkadath (Kumbalangi Nights)

Renganaath Ravee (Jallikattu)

Sync Cinema (Helen)

Vishnu Govind, Sreeshankar (Unda)

And the award goes to…

Renganaath Ravee (Jallikattu)

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Nominees:

Helen

Jallikattu

Kumbalangi Nights

Luca

Unda

Uyare

Virus

And the award goes to…

Jallikattu

MOST INTERESTING DEBUTANT IN A LEAD OR SUPPORTING ROLE

Nominees:

Anna Ben (Kumbalangi Nights)

Dhanya Ananya (Nalpathiyonnu)

KendyZirdo (Android Kunjappan Version 5.25)

Mathew Thomas (Kumbalangi Nights)

Saran Jith (Nalpathiyonnu)

And the award goes to…

Anna Ben (Kumbalangi Nights)

*FOOTNOTE ABOUT THE TERM MOLLYWOOD:

Over the years, some readers have urged me to not use the word Mollywood for the Kerala-based primarily Malayalam language industry. I would like to discuss why I persist with it.

To those who say Mollywood is a derivative term subordinating the Malayalam film industry to Bollywood, I must point out that Mollywood is not derived from Bollywood. All the nicknames used by the press and public for India’s film industries – Mollywood, Bollywood, Kollywood, Tollywood, Sandalwood and so on – are drawn from Hollywood. A reader once told me she has no problem with “Bollywood” but objects to “Mollywood”. This I cannot understand. Either you object to all these derivative labels or none at all. If you object to all, I completely get where you are coming from, but do note my reasons for continuing to use them at least for now.

First, “Bollywood” has served as great national and international branding for the Indian film industry headquartered in Mumbai that makes films mostly in Hindi, with very very occasional forays into Haryanvi, English and other languages. Whenever I speak to my counterparts in the foreign press, I find a majority of them are not even aware that India makes films other than the ones coming from Shah Rukh Khan’s city. While this is primarily due to the extreme pro-Hindi, pro-Bollywood bias of India’s own supposedly ‘national’ newspapers and TV channels based in Delhi and Mumbai that amplify Bollywood’s works while largely ignoring India’s other film industries, another factor is branding. The term “Bollywood” is catchy. As long as the ‘national’ media’s bias remains, my personal choice is to do everything in my power as an individual to give high visibility to films from India’s other industries, because like most cinephiles, I am keen that the films I love get as wide a national and global audience as possible.

Second, as Indian cinema evolves, these terms have become useful in another way. Unlike Bollywood cinema whose characters almost invariably speak Hindi and at a stretch, English but no other Indian language irrespective of which part of India or the world they are situated in, Mollywood has been adventurous with language. Increasingly, I am afraid, a certain section of Mollywood has also been treating Hindi as a signifier of coolth and using it even where it is not necessary or relevant – in the way English was once viewed by Bollywood – but that is a separate discussion. Back to the subject at hand, the 2017 film Tiyaan, which revolved around a community of Malayalis living in Uttar Pradesh, was – as it would be in real life – equal parts Malayalam and Hindi with even some Sanskrit dialogues included in the mix. In this year’s lovely Mammootty-starrer Unda, when a posse from the Kerala Police travelled on election duty to Hindi belt states, what we were given was a natural mix of Malayalam, Hindi and a few other tongues. To describe either of these as “Malayalam films” would be inaccurate. Mollywood therefore is also an expedient term. (This applies to Bollywood too on the rare occasions when the quest for authenticity has spurred a director to favour a language other than Hindi.)

With no disrespect then to those who disagree, I intend to use “Mollywood” as long as there is a far bigger worry than a derivative term, that worry being the ‘national’ media barely acknowledging this industry. But the day Mohanlal and Manju Warrier, Parvathy and Fahadh Faasil become household names across India the way the Khans, Kapoors, Kaifs and Chopras of Bollywood are, I plan to invest time and energy in coining an alternative term. I promise.

ALSO READ:

The Kumbalangi Nights Phenomenon: One small step for Mollywood, a giant leap for Indian cinema

Best Mollywood Films 2019: Kumbalangi Nights, Virus, Unda and more in perhaps the best year ever for God’s Own Cinema

Best Bollywood Films 2019: Article 15, Gully Boy and a handful that shone in an otherwise annus horribilis

Bollywood Awards 2019: Rani or Kangana? Rap or Niyam ho? Ayushmann or Ranveer? A pick of the year’s best work

Best Indian Films 2019: Poetry and courage across languages, from Assamese to Hindi, Khasi, Malayalam and more

Aadukalam, Andhadhun, Sairat, Kammatipaadam, Mahanati, Village Rockstars: 100 great Indian films of the 2010s

A VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE IS ALSO ON FIRSTPOST:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/mollywood-awards-2019-parvathy-or-anna-uyiril-thodum-or-jaathikkathottam-a-pick-of-the-years-best-7850441.html

Photographs courtesy:

Kumbalangi Nightsposters: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8413338/

Virus posters: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8941440/

Jallikattu poster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallikattu_(2019_film)

Uyare posters: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9271408/

Thamaasha poster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thamaasha

Kettiyollaanu Ente Maalakha poster: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10452480/

Poetry and courage across languages, from Assamese to Hindi, Khasi, Malayalam and more

2019 was a year in which small films in the Assamese and Khasi languages drew eyeballs beyond their traditional audiences, the Kerala-based film industry a.k.a. Mollywood outdid itself, and its counterparts in Bollywood under-performed.In this year that no seer could have predicted, here is a list of my favourite Indian films, with the top spot going to one that enjoyed an unprecedented months-long run in theatres across India, from Thiruvananthapuram to Chennai and the National Capital Region.

1: Kumbalangi Nights / Malayalam

Madhu C. Narayanan’s Kumbalangi Nights feels like what you might get if you were to sit by your window in a house in Kumbalangi – a tourist village on the outskirts of Kochi – and gaze at life as it passes by. Realism has never been as enjoyable, educational and romantic as it is in this delicately woven saga of a dysfunctional family.A couple frolicking in the bioluminescence in the waters outside their home, an angry woman telling her boyfriend her biopic could be titled “The Girl Who Fell For An Idiot” and a generally light-hearted veneer partner this film’s grave concerns ranging from patriarchy to mental health.At once hilarious and thoughtful, Kumbalangi Nights is a sublime experience.

(For more on the significance of Kumbalangi Nights, click here)

2: Aamis / Assamese

Bhaskar Hazarika’s Aamis revolves around the attraction between a married doctor and a PhD student in Assam. A love of meat here becomes a metaphor for carnal longings, but gets a whole new layer in this story’s setting, since India’s North East is othered by the rest of the country for, among other reasons, its differing food choices. Only a deliciously wacko mind could zero in on this everyday reality and mould it into the surrealism of Aamis. If you have seen Kothanodi, you already know Hazarika has just such a mind.

Aamis is about sexual desire in a repressive society and the definition of “normal”. It is scrumptiously twisted and an electric shock to India’s cinematic conventions.

3: Iewduh / Khasi

Iewduhis set in an iconic marketplace in Shillong, which serves as a microcosm of Indian society. While the film’s characters go about their daily grind, the hustle and bustle of the bazaar absorbs a constant and lethal churning. Pradip Kurbah’s naturalistic storytelling is perfect for this slice-of-life film in which a community seems largely unmoved by a battered wife’s cries that are now a background score to their lives, but kindness too rears its head amidst apathy and despair. Iewduh is a beautiful film, and Kurbah one of the most significant voices to emerge from Indian cinema this decade.

4: Virus / Malayalam

How Keralites joined hands in 2018 to contain a deadly Nipahoutbreak forms the story of Aashiq Abu’s Virus.The film’s clinical tone mirrors what must have been the business-like persistence of the politicians, bureaucrats, healthcare professionals and average citizens involved in this real-life emergency. Virus’ massive ensemble cast featuring some of Malayalam cinema’s most respected names inbig, small and even tiny roles serves to underline the importance of every available individual in a crisis, including those who have no clue that they served a role. The film is a stirring ode to human compassion and a reminder of the best that we can be in trying times.

(For the full review of Virus, click here)

5: Asuran / Tamil

In Asuran,writer-director Vetri Maaran gives his hero a larger-than-life persona and all the trappings usually reserved for upper-caste male leads in masala films. The protagonist journeys from defiance to pacifism then all-out aggression through his life-long battles with the caste system and class. Within a mainstream format, in a space most unexpected, Asuran demands that we step out of our privileged existence and confront the demonic force of caste in our midst.

(For the full review of Asuran, click here)

6: Jallikattu / Malayalam

When a buffalo goes wild in a Kerala village in Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Jallikattu, the men pursuing it go wilder. Their chase soon becomes an outlet for their true selves, a camouflage for personal battles and ultimately, the most imaginative deconstruction of the self-destructive nature of patriarchy seen on the Indian screen.

(For the full review of Jallikattu, click here)

7: Super Deluxe / Tamil

Some of the biggest stars from Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam cinema come together in Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s gut-wrenching Super Deluxe, which tells the stories in parallel of an unhappily married couple trying to dispose of a corpse, teenagers surreptitiously watching pornography, a trans woman returning to the wife and son she abandoned in an earlier life and a porn actor seeking hospital treatment for her child.The fine balance it strikes between its sense of humour and its sensitivity is one of Super Deluxe’s many achievements.

(For the full review of Super Deluxe, click here)

8. Article 15 / Hindi

In Anubhav Sinha’s Article 15, an upper-caste policeman is dragged out of his privileged cocoon when two Dalit girls are raped and murdered in an Uttar Pradesh village where he is posted. Through the Dalit activists Gaura and Nishad, he is forced to confront the very real dangers faced by India’s most oppressed community.This line spoken by a policeman in Article 15, “Aap se nivedan hai Sir, santulan mat bigaadiye (I beg you Sir, don’t disrupt the balance),” must rank among the starkest samples of status quoism ever showcased in a Hindi film.

(For the full review of Article 15, click here)

9. Hellaro / Gujarati

A group of women discover dance and with it the courage in their veins in Abhishek Shah’s Hellaro. The story is situated in an isolated Gujarat village where women have accepted domestic violence including rape as a way of life, even as some of them in turn target the less fortunate in their midst. Swept up in an outburst, a hellaro, a gust of energy and optimism when they chance upon dance, they learn the power of solidarity and find in it a reason to live.

10. Gully Boy / Hindi

In the richly rewarding Gully Boy, Zoya Akhtar places a poor Muslim slumdweller in Mumbai’s underground rap scene. Gully Boy’s gripping story is bolstered by the addictive rhythms of the hero’s compositions and his infectious rebelliousness, which are the handiwork of a host of Indian rappers including Naezy and Divine whose lives Akhtar acknowledges as the inspiration for her film.

(For the full review of Gully Boy, click here)

A VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE IS ALSO ON FIRSTPOST:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/best-indian-films-2019-poetry-and-courage-across-languages-from-assamese-to-hindi-khasi-malayalam-and-more-7855491.html

ALSO READ:

The Kumbalangi Nights Phenomenon: One small step for Mollywood, a giant leap for Indian cinema

Best Bollywood Films 2019: Article 15, Gully Boy and a handful that shone in an otherwise annus horribilis

Best Mollywood Films 2019: Kumbalangi Nights, Virus, Unda and more in perhaps the best year ever for God’s Own Cinema

Bollywood Awards 2019: Rani or Kangana? Rap or Niyam ho? Ayushmann or Ranveer? A pick of the year’s best work

Mollywood Awards 2019: Parvathy or Anna? Uyiril Thodum or Jaathikkathottam? Mammootty or…? A pick of the year’s best work

Aadukalam, Andhadhun, Sairat, Kammatipaadam, Mahanati, Village Rockstars: 100 great Indian films of the 2010s

Photographs courtesy:

Kumbalangi Nightsposter: https://www.facebook.com/KumbalangiNights/

Aamis poster: https://www.facebook.com/AamisTheFilm/

Iewduh poster: https://www.facebook.com/iewduhthefilm/

Asuran poster: https://www.facebook.com/DhanushKRaja/

Super Deluxeposter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Deluxe_(film)

Hellaro poster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellaro

Aadukalam, Andhadhun, Sairat, Kammatipaadam, Mahanati, Village Rockstars: 100 great Indian films of the 2010s

Technically, as a friend pointed out to me, this week, 2020 is not the start of a new decade, it is the final year of the decade that began in 2011. Still, it feels like a milestone and when the mind wants to look back, it will. So, here is a list of some great films that India produced in the 2010s. I say “great” and not “the greatest” simply to acknowledge the fact that India is the country that produces the largest number of films in the world and no critic, not even the most avid viewer, can possibly watch every single film released across our multiple film industries, so this is a list of my favourite films from among all the ones I watched and loved from 2010 to 2019.

With a few exceptions, the list consists of films that got mainstream theatrical releases, and barring three, they are all fiction features. A majority are now available online, so if you missed them in the year they were released, you can still catch up. Here they are in alphabetical order.

1. Aadukalam / Tamil / 2011

Director: Vetri Maaran

2. Aamis / Assamese / 2019

Director: Bhaskar Hazarika

3. Aaranya Kaandam / Tamil / 2011

Director: Thiagarajan Kumararaja

4. Anaarkali of Aarah / Hindi / 2017

Director: Avinash Das

5. Andhadhun/ Hindi / 2018

Director: Sriram Raghavan

6. Angamaly Diaries / Malayalam / 2017

Director: Lijo Jose Pellissery

7. Article 15 / Hindi / 2019

Director: Anubhav Sinha

8. Asuran/ Tamil / 2019

Director: Vetri Maaran

9. Band Baaja Baaraat / Hindi / 2010

Director: Maneesh Sharma

10. Bulbul Can Sing / Assamese / 2019

Director: Rima Das

11. Chauthi Koot / Punjabi / 2016

Director: Gurvinder Singh

12. Court/ Marathi / 2015

Director: Chaitanya Tamhane

13. Dekh Tamasha Dekh / Hindi / 2014

Director: Feroz Abbas Khan

14. Drishyam / Malayalam / 2013

Director: Jeethu Joseph

15. DumLaga Ke Haisha / Hindi / 2015

Director: Sharat Katariya

16. Eeda / Malayalam / 2018

Director: B. Ajithkumar

17. Eega / Telugu / 2012

Director: S.S. Rajamouli

18. Ee.Ma.Yau / Malayalam / 2018

Director: Lijo Jose Pellissery

19. Elizabeth Ekadashi / Marathi / 2014

Director: Paresh Mokashi

20. Fandry/ Marathi / 2014

Director: Nagraj Manjule

21. Filmistaan / Hindi / 2014

Director: Nitin Kakkar

22. G Kutta Se / Haryanvi, Hindi / 2017

Director: Rahul Dahiya

23. Goynar Baksho / Bengali / 2013

Director: Aparna Sen

24. Gully Boy / Hindi / 2019

Director: Zoya Akhtar

25. Haider / Hindi / 2014

Director: Vishal Bhardwaj

26. Hellaro / Gujarati / 2019

Director: Abhishek Shah

27.I Am / Hindi, English, Kashmiri / 2011

Director: Onir

28. Iewduh/ Khasi / 2019

Director: Pradip Kurbah

29. Irudhi Suttru / Tamil / 2016

Director: Sudha Kongara

30. Jallikattu/ Malayalam / 2019

Director: Lijo Jose Pellissery

31. Jigarthanda / Tamil / 2014

Director: Kathik Subbaraj

32. Joker / Tamil / 2016

Director: Raju Murugan

33. Kaadu Pookunna Neram / Malayalam / 2017

Director: Dr Biju

34. Kaaka Muttai / Tamil / 2015

Director: M. Manikandan

35. Kaala / Tamil / 2018

Director: Pa. Ranjith

36. Kahaani / Hindi / 2012

Director: Sujoy Ghosh

37. Kai Po Che / Hindi / 2013

Director: Abhishek Kapoor

38. Kaithi / Tamil / 2019

Director: Lokesh Kanakaraj

39. Kali / Malayalam / 2016

Director: Sameer Thahir

40. Kammatipaadam/ Malayalam / 2016

Director: Rajeev Ravi

41. Kapoor & Sons (Since 1921) / Hindi / 2016

Director: Shakun Batra

42. Kothanodi / Assamese / 2016

Director: Bhaskar Hazarika

43. Kumbalangi Nights / Malayalam / 2019

Director: Madhu C. Narayanan

44. Kutrame Thandanai / Tamil / 2016

Director: M. Manikandan

45. Lessons In Forgetting / English / 2013

Director: Unni Vijayan

46. Lucia/ Kannada / 2013

Director: Pawan Kumar

47. Mahanati / Telugu / 2018

Director: Nag Ashwin

48. Maheshinte Prathikaaram / Malayalam / 2016

Director: Dileesh Pothan

49. Manhole / Malayalam / 2016

Director: Vidhu Vincent

50. Manjadikuru/ Malayalam / 2012

Director: Anjali Menon

51. Mayaanadhi / Malayalam / 2017

Director: Aashiq Abu

52. Mukti Bhawan / Hindi / 2017

Director: Subhashish Bhutiani

53. Munnariyippu / Malayalam / 2014

Director: Venu

54. My Name Is Khan / Hindi / 2010

Director: Karan Johar

55. Naanu Avanalla...Avalu / Kannada / 2015

Director: B.S. Lingadevaru

56. Natasamrat / Marathi / 2016

Director: Mahesh Manjrekar

57. Neerja / Hindi / 2016

Director: Ram Madhvani

58. Newton/ Hindi with Gondi / 2017

Director: Amit V. Masurkar

59. Nil Battey Sannata / Hindi / 2016

Director: Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari

60. Njan Prakashan / Malayalam / 2018

Director: Sathyan Anthikad

61. Noukadubi / Bengali / 2011

Director: Rituparno Ghosh

62. Onaatah / Khasi / 2016

Director: Pradip Kurbah

63. Ottaal/ Malayalam / 2015

Director: Jayaraj

64. Ottamuri Velicham / Malayalam / 2018

Director: Rahul Riji Nair

65. Ozhivudivasathe Kali / Malayalam / 2016

Director: Sanal Kumar Sashidharan

66. Papanasam/ Tamil / 2015

Director: Jeethu Joseph

67. Papilio Buddha / Malayalam / 2013

Director: Jayan K. Cherian

68. Pathemari / Malayalam / 2015

Director: Salim Ahamed

69. Peranbu / Tamil / 2019

Director: Ram

70. Phobia / Hindi / 2016

Director: Pavan Kirpalani

71. Pizza / Tamil / 2012

Director: Karthik Subbaraj

72. Placebo / English / 2015

Director: Abhay Kumar

73. Queen / Hindi / 2014

Director: Vikas Bahl

74. Raazi / Hindi / 2018

Director: Meghna Gulzar

75. Raman Raghav 2.0 / Hindi / 2016

Director: Anurag Kashyap

76. Ribbon/ Hindi / 2017

Director: Rakhee Sandilya

77. Sairat/ Marathi / 2016

Director: Nagraj Manjule

78. Salt N’ Pepper / Malayalam / 2011

Director: Aashiq Abu

79. Sexy Durga / Malayalam / 2018

Director: Sanal Kumar Sashidharan

80. Ship of Theseus / Hindi / 2013

Director: Anand Gandhi

81. Shor In The City / Hindi with English / 2011

Director: Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK

82. Soodhu Kavvum / Tamil / 2013

Director: Nalan Kumaraswamy

83. Super Deluxe / Tamil / 2019

Director: Thiagarajan Kumararaja

84. Supermen of Malegaon / Hindi / 2012

Director: Faiza Ahmad Khan

85. Take Off / Malayalam / 2017

Director: Mahesh Narayanan

86. Talvar/ Hindi / 2015

Director: Meghna Gulzar

87. Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru / Tamil / 2017

Director: H. Vinoth

88. The Lunchbox / Hindi / 2013

Director: Ritesh Batra

89. The World Before Her / English, Hindi / 2014

Director: Nisha Pahuja

90. Thithi/ Kannada / 2016

Director: Raam Reddy

91. Udaharanam Sujatha / Malayalam / 2017

Director: Phantom Praveen

92. Unda / Malayalam / 2019

Director: Khalidh Rahman

93. Unmadiyude Maranam / Malayalam

Director: Sanal Kumar Sashidharan

94. Usthad Hotel / Malayalam / 2012

Director: Anwar Rasheed

95. U Turn / Kannada / 2016

Director: Pawan Kumar

96. Village Rockstars / Assamese / 2018

Director: Rima Das

97. Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa / Tamil / 2010

Director: Gautam Menon

98. Virus/ Malayalam / 2019

Director: Aashiq Abu

99. Visaranai / Tamil / 2016

Director: Vetri Maaran

100. Walking With The Wind / Ladakhi / 2017

Director: Prakash Morchhale

A VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE IS ALSO ON FIRSTPOST:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/aadukalam-andhadhun-sairat-kammatipaadam-mahanati-village-rockstars-100-great-indian-films-of-the-2010s-7863081.html

ALSO READ:

Best Bollywood Films 2019: Article 15, Gully Boy and a handful that shone in an otherwise annus horribilis

Best MollywoodFilms 2019: Kumbalangi Nights, Virus, Unda and more in perhaps the best year ever for God’s Own Cinema

Bollywood Awards 2019: Rani orKangana? Rap or Niyam ho? Ayushmann or Ranveer? A pick of the year’s best work

Mollywood Awards2019: Parvathy or Anna? Uyiril Thodum or Jaathikkathottam? Mammootty or…? A pick of the year’s best work

Best Indian Films 2019: Poetry and courage across languages, from Assamese to Hindi, Khasi, Malayalam and more

Photographs courtesy: IMDB

Release date:	January10, 2020
Director:	Meghna Gulzar
Cast:	Deepika Padukone, Vikrant Massey, Madhurjeet Sarghi, Payal Nair, Chitranjan Tripathy, Geeta Agarwal, Manohar Teli, Vishal Dahiya, Ankit Bisht, Vaibhav Upadhyay, Delzad Hivale, Sharvari Deshpande, Ipshita Chakraborty
Language:	Hindi

Despite the standard disclaimer that appears at the start of pretty much every film these days (“any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental” etc), Chhapaak – as is evident from its promotions – is based on the true story of acid-attack survivor and activist Laxmi Agarwal. In the film she becomes Malti (played by Deepika Padukone) whose life changes forever one day when acid is thrown on her face. Malti is 19 at the time and Basheer Khan a.k.a. Babbu, a family friend, is 30. His motive: she had ignored his romantic overtures and was clearly involved with a boy in a neighbouring school.

Director Meghna Gulzar’s film, which she has co-written with Atika Chohan, is far from being a conventional high-pitched melodrama. Chhapaak’s narrative style is largely documentary-like, leaving the horror of Malti’s reality to do its work on viewer emotions. Besides, when we are first introduced to the protagonist, it is with her damaged face, and only in the climactic moments of the film do we get to see her for what she once was. Through most of the running time then, it is impossible not to compare the corroded skin on screen with the beauty we know Padukone to be. The mere thought that one human being could do this to another, that scores of men continue to do this to women in India, is obviously shocking (and yes, dear offended MRAs, stats do show that the perpetrators are mostly men). Unfortunately, the film’s bid to be understated is stretched too far.

Chhapaak means well, no doubt, but the screenplay is surprisingly thin – surprising because of Meghna’s brilliance with Raaziand Talvar. Combine that with plotline weaknesses, an excessive effort to stay low key and the unexpected shot at being a conformist fairytale in the end, and the result is a film that seems curiously detached from its heroine, despite the devastating true story that inspired it.

When Chhapaak (meaning: Splash) opens, we are in 2012 and Delhi is out on the streets protesting against a brutal gangrape on a bus. At this point, Malti has chosen to disappear from the public eye despite having earlier filed a high-profile PIL demanding a ban on the sale of acid in India. She soon starts working with an NGO for acid-attack survivors run by journalist-turned-activist Amol (Vikrant Massey). Thus begins her journey as the most visible face of this horrific crime in the country.

Chhapaak’s narrative structure, which involves some back and forth in time, is slightly confusing. When did Malti stop being desperate for a job? When did rights-consciousness overcome her despair? What might have been a natural progression in a linear storyline comes across as swings in the state of mind of both the central figure and a couple of those around her because of the jagged timeline of events.

This though is not the primary issue with Chhapaak. The primary issue is that while trying to avoid being high-decibel masala, it ends up seeming oddly uninvolved.

Perhaps I have been spoilt for Chhapaakbecause just last year I watched – and loved and rewatched – the Mollywood film Uyare starring the wonderful Parvathy Thiruvothu as a woman whose controlling boyfriend throws acid on her face. That Malayalam film directed by Manu Ashokan managed to be subtle yet emotionally stirring, optimistic yet heart-rending. Chhapaak tries but fails to attain that fine balance.

The film does have its positives. Such as its unobtrusive background score by Shankar Ehsaan Loy and Tubby, and a gentle title track by SEL. Or that amusing, heart-warming conversation between two survivors about the kind of face that they want post-surgery. Or the solid courtroom arguments between two lawyers who are neither wolf-whistle-worthy in the Sunny “dhai kilo ka haath” Deol league nor the twerps we usually see in commercial Bollywood. Their intelligent exchanges are real, low-volume yet gripping.

The winner among all the episodes in Chhapaakis the one where Malti in a celebratory mood has a face-off with Amol. The writing and acting in this scene are flawless.

The treatment of the villains’ Muslim identity too is interesting. The man behind the attack on the real-life Laxmi was Muslim, so too are the antagonist in Chhapaakand his accomplice, but they are portrayed factually in the film, not as ugly Muslim stereotypes of the sort that have pervaded Hindi cinema in the past couple of years. In the current political atmosphere in India, this was perhaps the trickiest part of the story and Meghna acquits herself well here. Not so smoothly done is a fleeting scene involving Malti’s brother and a member of Basheer Khan’s family.

(Alert: minor spoilers in the next four paragraphs)

Considering that Meghna’s handling of gender is usually faultless, it is surprising to see her go down a conventional path in Chhapaak’s finale. The last we see of Malti in her present-day avatar is of a man she loves acknowledging his own feelings for her. Read: the standard happily-ever-after of formulaic fairytales. A woman getting a man is the socially accepted definition of a happy ending because getting a man was and still is widely assumed to be every woman’s primary goal and ultimate achievement. In a changing world, where Hollywood has tossed convention out of the window in films like Frozen and Maleficent, and our very own Uyare refused to go down that well-worn road, it needs to be asked why Chhapaakalters Laxmi’s truth to fit this old straitjacket.

For a film that aims at realism, this and one other element are particularly jarring. You see, the real Laxmi did indeed fall in love with the founder of the NGO she worked with, they did enter into a relationship and even have a child together. The inconvenient ‘after’ to this ‘happily-ever-after’ that the film avoids though is that they soon broke up, and according to media reports, as of now she is a financially struggling single mother.

Everything else in Chhapaak is perhaps debatable, what is not is its portrayal of Malti being recruited as an anchor by Aaj Tak. Considering this media group’s reputation for wanting its female anchors to look like Fox-News-style models, this part of Chhapaak is almost laughable. It is unclear why the writers could not have thought up a fictional TV channel or, better still, come up with a more believable profession for Malti.

This passage in Chhapaak defies believability in another way. While Malti is giving an interview in Aaj Tak’s studio, a producer watching from the control room says “she is good”, and seconds later she has a job offer. Actually, Malti is particularly ineffective while answering questions in that scene. The writing and acting here are at their feeblest.

(Spoiler alert ends)

The fulcrum of Chhapaak is Padukone. The superstar, who also debuts as a producer with this film, has the benefit here of sensitive camerawork by Malay Prakash and prosthetic makeup that somewhat mirrors the real-life Laxmi’s appearance. This is a talented actor who managed to make a mark even in the horribly Islamophobic, misogynistic and clichéd Padmaavatin 2018. In Chhapaak, however, she is inconsistent. She does a good job of her present-day scenes, especially her hesitant flirtation with Amol. In the passage where she is shown as a teenaged school-goer though, she is decidedly awkward.

The supporting cast is fair enough. The one actor who truly stands out in Chhapaak is Massey playing Amol. Hindi TV’s Darling Young Man, the sturdy Dev from Lootera(2013) and the loveable, troubled Shutu from A Death In The Gunj (2017) is all grown up and a really sexy man in Chhapaak. He is so hot, and his performance so nuanced, that it becomes easy to see why Malti would fall in love with the irritable Amol.

The blend Massey achieves is what Chhapaakneeded as a whole. Without that, what we are left with are good intentions, a heart in the right place, a major star taking a huge risk with an unorthodox role and a bunch of pluses that somehow do not come together to deliver an immersive experience.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.5

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	123 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/chhapaak-movie-review-deepika-padukones-acid-attack-saga-has-its-moments-but-not-enough-7881341.html

Poster courtesy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chhapaak

Release date:	Kerala: December 20, 2019 Delhi: January 3, 2020
Director:	Rosshan Andrrews
Cast: Language:	Manju Warrier, Rosshan Andrrews, Anusree, Alencier Ley Lopez, Saiju Kurup Malayalam

As a woman, it is hard to watch this film and not have a flashback to the humiliating sexual assaults you have endured. In private and public spaces, millions of men continue to grab, grope, stalk, flash their genitals at women, masturbate on them or in their presence, sneer, leer, pass lewd comments, verbally abuse, prod and crush breasts, pinch bottoms, fondle midriffs and in numerous other ways molest, harass and dehumanise the other half of the human species.

So yes, I understand Madhuri’s rage in Prathi Poovankozhi and I share it.

It is precisely because the female experience of such male behaviour is so routine though that I also don’t understand Prathi Poovankozhi. In the film, Manju Warrier plays Madhuri, a salesperson in a Kottayam sari shop who is so enraged when a man squeezes her bottom on a bus one day, that she makes it her mission to slap him at least once. She gets a range of reactions to her intent, the sort we have all witnessed and/or personally faced in reality – supportive women, women recounting their own repulsive encounters with perverts, a woman fuming at that man, another fuming at Madhuri for not moving on, yet another blaming her for the perv’s actions. One comment by an ally bothered me though. This friend explains kindly that assaults are not unusual and if Madhuri is unable to get over this one it is because such a thing is happening to her for the first time.

Hold on.

Wait.

Did I hear that right? This woman who has inhabited the earth for what I assume must be about three decades, who stays alone with her elderly mother, who works in a crowded space, who takes public transport and walks down teeming streets to her workplace each day, who attends social gatherings, this woman has...never...been...molested...before? Ever? Not by a relative, a colleague, an acquaintance, a neighbour, or even a stranger?

Never?

It is at this point I wished that writer Unni R. had hired women consultants for this screenplay. Because it takes a man to not know the frequency with which women get molested. It takes a man to not know that most women suffer harassment and molestation on multiple occasions in their lives. This is why, when as a woman you highlight an episode or two on a public platform, men friends think they are helping by badgering you to alert the authorities. Women allies, on the other hand, tend to just lend a listening ear, because they know that if a woman were to go to the police every single time she is harassed, she would have time for nothing else. That is how often it happens.

It takes a well-meaning but partially informed man to write a heroine who is molested for the first time in her life when she is in her 20s/30s/thereabouts.

Most women who file official complaints do so when a particular attack drives them over the edge either because of its severity or for some other specific reason. Madhuri has no tipping point because she has never before been similarly targeted.

It is a measure of Warrier’s arresting screen presence and acting, and the genuine concern Unni and director Rosshan Andrrews evidently have for women, that with all its flaws, Prathi Poovankozhi remains an engaging film.

The title literally translates to “The Accused Rooster”, a play on words and the gender of most harassers since “kozhi” is Malayalam slang for a womaniser, a man of questionable morality and so on.

Prathi Poovankozhi has been adapted for the big screen by Unni from his own short story Sankadam. It reunites Andrrews and Warrier after the former directed the superstar in 2014’s How Old Are You?, her comeback film following her post-marriage hiatus.

This new film is both relatable and unrelatable, heartening and exasperating at the same time. It does not have the intellectual depth of director Sanal Kumar Sashidharan’s Ozhivudivasathe Kali (An Off-Day Game), which was based on another of Unni’s stories. That one showed an astonishing grasp of caste and gender politics. It also did not feature a single excessive moment, word, shot or scene.

Prathi Poovankozhi is weighed down by a string of superfluities. The background score, for instance, shoots through the rooftop every time the villainous Antappan comes on screen, as if to beat into our skulls the point that he is the bad guy here. Madhuri has a mother with whom she is inexplicably perennially impatient. Alencier Ley Lopez plays a close family friend with whom she shares an entire playful song right at the start, which seems to indicate that he will later play a crucial role, but he contributes not a milli-inch of a difference to the plot.

Grace Antony from Kumbalangi Nightsplays a sweeper who looks important and says ominous-sounding things, which suggest that at some point we will get to know more about her or her association with Antappan. Ultimately, she too adds up to nought.

More troubling is the satellite character played by Anusree – Madhuri’s best friend and colleague at the sari store, whose flirtations and relationships with several men seem, on the surface, to have been written into the script merely for their comedy value. A later conversation in which her deception involves a child-like innocent man seems to indicate though that she has been placed there to also assert that while the accused in this film may be a poovankozhi, the piddakozhi (hen) in our society ain’t no saint either.

This seems like Messrs Unni and Andrrews pre-empting the wrath of men who claim victimhood and float the hashtag #NotAllMen each time women speak up about discrimination. C’mon!

The only satellite character whose presence makes a legitimate point is the policeman played by Saiju Kurup. Through him we are reminded that sexual predators are everywhere, which of course contradicts the point earlier made when portraying the assault on the bus as unprecedented for Madhuri.

That said, theusually dependable Kurup’s acting here is semi-comical and confusing. Competent artistes like Anusree and Antony are wasted in this film. In Anusree’s case this is a pity because she does manage to be funny while enacting her character’s shenanigans.

Warrier, however, is well utilised and delivers an immersive performance as Madhuri. Watching her, you can almost see her rage physically and mentally consuming her.

Andrrews has done well to step into the part of the creepy Antappan. Just seeing his expression when he mauls Madhuri sent a chill down my spine. He should, however, be held to account for roping Lopez into this project. When a man with grievous allegations of sexual wrongdoing against him is cast as a considerate friend of a woman battling sexual violence in a film, it is ironic, distracting and self-defeating.

Cinematically and ideologically then, Prathi Poovankozhi is wracked with problems. Yet, whatever the criticisms of the film may be, it is also true that it is convincing and moving in part because Madhuri’s anger does not come from the same “avenging angel” cliché that birthed 22 Female Kottayam and Puthiya Niyamamin which unreal women survivors hatch elaborate schemes for vengeance. Madhuri’s actions in the final scene are realistic because they stem from a spontaneous anger that causes her to explode momentarily as a woman might, as women have been known to on occasion, in real life.

The see-saw of emotions she runs through in the closing minutes of Prathi Poovankozhi– a sudden confusion in a darkened, decrepit house followed by a calm before an internal churn and finally, an eruption – are handled perfectly, barring the loud music. Madhuri’s brilliantly beautiful, credible rage lifts Prathi Poovankozhi above its own failings.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.5

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	102 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/prathi-poovankozhi-movie-review-manju-warrier-and-a-brilliantly-beautiful-rage-make-up-for-scanty-confused-writing-7899481.html

Poster courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prathi_Poovankozhi

Release date:	January 16, 2020
Director:	Siddique
Cast: Language:	Mohanlal, Sarjano Khalid, Mirnaa Menon, Arbaaz Khan, Gaadha, Honey Rose, Siddique, Anoop Menon, Vishnu Unnikrishnan, Asif Basra, Irshad, Tini Tom, Devan Malayalam

When a man has spent 24 years of his life behind bars, adjusting to the world outside would obviously be a challenge. Mohanlal plays one such chap, 40-something-year-old Sachidanandan who was convicted for murder as a teenager and two dozen years later is now set for life outside a prison cell.

You heard that right: Lalettan, who turns 60 this summer, plays a character who has barely crossed 40 in Big Brother. That should have been the first warning sign that this film would turn out to be yet another embarrassing misadventure in the superstar’s filmography that has for at least a decade now been dominated by repetitive, unimaginative works desperately trying to convince audiences that he is forever young and forever attractive to women young enough to be his granddaughters.

Towards the latter end, Big Brother stars a baby-faced girl called Mirnaa Menon who falls for Sachidanandan and looks moony-eyed at him throughout a stereotypically shot song sequence in which she is dressed in flowy, frothy chiffon attire. You know the type of number that has been featured in formulaic commercial Indian cinema across language industries for about two decades? (Possibly to pre-empt all lampooning, the kid admirer’s feelings are described by one character as an instance of Stockholm Syndrome because of the circumstances in which she gets acquainted withSachidanandan.)

Cliché is piled upon cliché, one dull turn of events is piled upon another in this film written and directed by Siddique.

Big Brother is about how Sachidanandan’s efforts to adjust to freedom are eclipsed by a faceless, omniscient drug kingpin called Edwin Moses. Why Moses is after him is a question the uninteresting answer to which comes in the climax. Through the inexorable 2 hours and 45 minutes that pass between the beginning and the end of this torturous film, we meet Sachidanandan’s brothers Vishnu (Anoop Menon) and Manu (Sarjano Khalid), Vishnu’swife Vandana (Honey Rose), other family members with whom he is living and Manu’s girlfriend Gemini (Gaadha) in addition to three flunkeys played by Irshad, Tini Tom and Vishnu Unnikrishnan. The script gives none of these people anything to remember them by apart from the well-known stars playing some of them. And yes, I repeat in case you did not notice, little Sarjano Khalid from June has been cast as Sachidanandan’s brother in Big Brother, no doubt to further convince us of Lalettan’s eternal youth.

(Pause)

(Further pause)

Oops, Big Brother was such a sleeping pill that I dozed off while writing that last paragraph.

So where were we? Ah yes, Manu was instrumental in securing his elder sibling’s release from jail. When he and Gemini are attacked for unknown reasons by a violent gang, Sachidanandan is forced to circumvent the law to rescue the boy.

Another purportedly significant character in Big Brother is a north Indian cop played by Arbaaz Khan who has just been posted in southern India to hunt down Edwin Moses. This is the Bollywood actor’s Mollywood debut. Why Mollywood sought him out is a mystery. Khan brings nothing to this role except expressionlessness and gets nothing out of it except the challenge of delivering poorly written dialogues that awkwardly mix Hindi and English with Malayalam. Veteran actor Siddique too is cast in a pointless role in this pointless enterprise.

One of the few positives I could find in Big Brother is that stray Hindi dialogues are accompanied by Malayalam subtitles embedded in the print.

One of the few innovations I can recall from this film is the villain sending explosives-laden toy cars to chase the hero and his sidekicks in a godown. But that high lasts justfor a few seconds. There is also a reference early on to an unusual natural ability Sachidanandan possesses. That too, after a while, plays little to no part in the proceedings. A rather sensational example of systemic police corruption revealed in the beginning again comes to nought.

For a film that is supposed to be a thriller, Big Brother offers zero excitement after the initial fleeting suspense over how the hero once used his extraordinary gift for an extraordinary purpose.

There is absolutely nothing by which to recommend Siddique’s Big Brother. Even Mohanlal’s acting here is meh, and considering how stiff-limbed he is, it is amusing to the point of being sadto see scenes in which he has to, among other things, single-handedly overpower a supervillain, fly through the air and send men flying with his fists.

Feel the “Lalhood” – thatwas the tagline flashed at the end of Big Brother’s trailer. Maybe “Lalhood” is a new word for the world’s most boring film.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 0.25

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	165 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/big-brother-movie-review-mohanlal-kicks-off-2020-with-the-worlds-most-boring-film-7915791.html

Posters courtesy:https://www.facebook.com/BigBrotherMovieOfficial/

Release date:	January17, 2020
Director:	Navjot Gulati
Cast:	Sunny Singh, Sonnalli Seygall, Supriya Pathak Kapoor, Poonam Dhillon, Alok Nath
Language:	Hindi

If you are a fan of director Luv Ranjan’s brand of visceral misogyny in Pyaar Ka Punchnama 1and2 and Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety, and that is what you are hoping to get in Jai Mummy Di, then you will be disappointed. This new film, despite being co-produced by Ranjan, displays a surprising lack of animosity towards women.

If you saw the trailer of Jai Mummy Di, were intrigued by the hint of a long-buried lesbian romance and were hoping to see a film on this still taboo subject, then too you will be disappointed.

If the pace and sense of humour you spotted in the trailer left you expecting a couple of hours of light-hearted fun, again, disappointment awaits you.

That is the thing about director Navjot Gulati’s Jai Mummy Di. It is not regressive, not progressive, not anything.

Jai Mummy Di is the story of Pinky Bhalla (Poonam Dhillon) and Laali Khanna (Supriya Pathak Kapoor) who have been sworn enemies for decades. They are neighbours in a north Delhi locality and their mutual antagonism is so strong, that their children – Saanjh Bhalla (Sonnalli Seygall) and Puneet Khanna (Sunny Singh) – dare not reveal to the families that they have been in love since school. When the youngsters realise they cannot live without each other, they set out to find the root cause of the mothers’ hatred which,they are told, dates back to their college days. Back then, their common friend reveals, the two were so thick that they were even rumoured to be girlfriends.

The first half of Jai Mummy Di is certainly mildly funny, but the comedy and the film as a whole fizzle out as it gradually becomes clear that Gulati does not know where to take it. This was also the problem with that earlier film he wrote, 2017’s Running Shaadistarring Taapsee Pannu and Amit Sadh – there was the seed of a good idea there, but it got lost on a road to nowhere.

Once Jai Mummy Di starts going round and round in circles, it becomes limp and purposeless. Dialogues are left hanging, extra seconds hang loose and it begins to feel like an amateur stage production where the actors don’t understand poor timing.

Veterans Pathak Kapoor and Dhillon get to shout and grimace a lot, but for a film that is supposedly centred around their characters, Jai Mummy Di has precious little about them and gives them hardly any screen time in the second half. Sunny Singh and Sonnalli Seygall, both of whom are recognisable from Ranjan’s most famous films, look dapper and deliver competent even if not sparkling performances. Singh needs to work on his dialogue delivery though. In several places in the film I found myself straining my ears to figure out what he had just said because of his tendency to swallow words or shoot them out too fast.

Possibly because the Pyaar Ka Punchnamas gained notoriety for theirmisogyny, this screenplay tries to compensate with occasional moments of overt feminism. Saanjh demands to know why a woman must follow her husband wherever he goes after marriage, and Puneet does not disagree. When they hear of the possibility that their mothers were onceromanticallyinvolved with each other, they respond with a complete lack of judgement. But these instances of pointed liberalism add up to nothing when actor Alok Nath surfaces intermittently in the narrative as a hanger on, and it appears that although the man has no particular role to play in this film, he has been placed there as an act of defiance against those who asked why he was cast in Ranjan’s last production De De Pyaar De despite the allegations of rape and harassmentthat surfaced against him during the Me Too movement in 2018, allegations he responded towith the most bizarre, apathetic non-denial.

His presence is just a distracting irritant. What really kills this film is the supposed big reveal in the end about Laali and Pinky’s intense enmity. It is so poorly conceived and so so ordinary, that you have to wonder why this plain film was ever made. Seriously, why?

Rating (out of 5 stars): 0.5

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	106 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/jai-mummy-di-movie-review-pyaar-ka-punchnamas-team-returns-with-a-not-regressive-not-progressive-not-anything-film-7918781.html

Poster courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jai_Mummy_Di

Charming Disney-style storytelling with stunning jungle visuals mark this rare documentary to reach theatres

A group of jungle cats is enjoying some liesurely family time when danger slithers towards their rocky hangout. As if on cue, a particularly curious kitten appears from behind a large boulder, its saucer-shaped eyes gazing at the reptile. “One bite from a spectacled cobra is usually fatal,” a familiar voice in the background tells us. “They’re one of India’s most dangerous snakes.” Tension hangs thick in the air. The baby seems mesmerised by that raised hood. Will the cobra get near enough to strike? Just as you think it’s all over, the little one decides to back off, the tension dissipates and the predator glides away.

It is this level of skilful storytelling – brimming with suspense, romance, tales of love, lust, self-preservation instincts and, if you look close enough, the meaning of consent in sexual relations – that makes Wild Karnatakathe pleasurable experience it is. The 54-minute-long documentary directed by Bangalore-based conservationists Amoghavarsha J.S. and Kalyan Varma, presented by the Karnataka Forest Department, and narrated by the legendary British broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough, this week becomes one of those rare documentaries to make it to mainstream theatres across India.

If your diet consists of Nat Geo Wild and Animal Planet, you perhaps know this already: that watching beasts in their natural habitat can be no less amusing than seeing a live-action masala-filled Kollywood/Bollywood/Tollywood fiction feature about humans or a Disney animation flick on pandas, lions and wildebeest. In Wild Karnataka, as a leopard stealthily stakes out a pack of langurs, a pride of preening peacocks compete for the attention of peahens, a she-lizard rejects the overtures of a he-lizard, a cannibalistic mother abandons her children for their own sake, a dragon flies and a group of otters bully a tiger, it is impossible not to be drawn to – and into – the humour, poignance and grandeur on display.

Such exciting visuals and storyboards are possible only when the crew involved has immense patience, a deep knowledge of nature and empathy for their surroundings. Not surprisingly, Wild Karnataka’s makers let on that they shot 400-plus hours of footage over 4 years. The time spent in prep and waiting is obviously immeasurable.

Wild Karnataka is an English film that serves as a sort of Beginner’s Guide To Nature Documentaries combined with an Introduction to Karnataka. The makers are planning a Kannada version fronted by a major celebrity from the state. The film is intentionally not esoteric, targeted as it is at an audience of non-experts. The stunning visuals by a large team of camerapersons and Grammy-winning Bangalore-based composer Ricky Kej’s background score that is sedate, mischievous and witty by turns, combined with the sometimes funny, sometimes frightening, at all times fascinating narrative is an excellent blend for this purpose, barring one important concern.

The gap in Wild Karnataka is the absolute absence of any reference to environmental degradation. The filmmakers have opted instead for a fairtytale-like account of the state’s wealth of flora and fauna. In an interview shortly after the Delhi première, Amoghavarsha describes this choice as strategic.

“I need to know the contents of my house before I care enough to protect it,” he says, citing this quote from the Senegalese conservationist Baba Dioum: “In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.” The filmmaker explains that the goal, with Wild Karnataka, is to usher in a “consciousness change” by building awareness. “We wanted to leave a beautiful moment of joy and pride in the audience, which they could take home,” he says, “and I promise you, all these people will do whatever they can in their own ways because they would have been moved by the film.” Sounds logical enough.

Amoghavarsha proceeds to elaborate on how the world chides India for its poor conservation efforts while, despite India’s massive human population, “we still have elephants and tigers left” whereas “big animals have been wiped out in the West. So my question is, if everyone says things are not so good, and I agree, but how do we still have these animals? Because we as a culture are tolerant towards animals. Now unless we celebrate that, people will not notice why it has worked.”

He then adds: “If the patriotic and religious people of India have to care for the country’s biodiversity, we have to take the path of patriotism and national pride. It is basically what works for different audiences. We can’t say everyone has to understand climatic conditions, because it is too heavy for everyone to understand. We have to use the right tools for the right kind of messaging.”

This is a slippery slope, considering how patriotism has been distorted to a destructive nationalism in today’s India and religion has been weaponised for centuries. But he speaks with conviction and I decide to leave this discussion for another day. Because today is a day for Wild Karnataka, and despite the questions weighing on my mind, there is no doubt that this is a delightfully entertaining and educational encounter with the beasts and landscapes of southern India’s largest state, rich in ways that are little known to the rest of India and even among its own people.

In a film filled with revelations, one of Wild Karnataka’s numerous sit-up-and-take-notice moments comes when Attenborough’s voice tells us in its opening seconds, “One quarter of India’s plant and animal species are found here”, and later when he says, “Karnataka is home to more tigers than any other place in the world. The 400 individuals that live here make up 10% of the global tiger population.” Amoghavarsha confirms that these figures – startling to say the least – have been verified with multiple sources from government reports to independent research papers, adding a caveat that tiger numbers may have marginally changed since the documentary was readied.

Even if a representative of Wild Karnatakadid not say so, it becomes evident while watching the film that its determinedly light-hearted tone is aimed at making it accessible to the masses, to inspire wonderment in the viewer in addition to affection and admiration for the creatures whose stories it tells. Like those industrious sand bubbler crabs who deliver a quick lesson in physics as they build individual shelters for themselves on a wet beach before the tide comes in. Or the simian silhouetted against the sky as it bounds across giant rock formations in one of the world’s most picturesque locations. Or a male frog performing a hilarious mating dance that Prabhu Deva’s imagination could not have choreographed.

Wild Karnataka is also a reminder of why, despite a proliferation of online streaming platforms and an increasing use of cellphones as film-viewing media, theatres will never die: because some films are born to be watched on a mega screen in a darkened hall filled with strangers as awe-struck as you are.

“The baseline we always kept is that kids should have fun with this film,” says Amoghavarsha. Children will speak for themselves, but let the record show that this article is written by an adult who is completely floored.

This article was published on Firstpost on January 21, 2020:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/wild-karnataka-documentary-with-charming-disney-style-storytelling-with-stunning-jungle-visuals-gets-a-theatrical-release-7932361.html

Photographs courtesy: Team Wild Karnataka

Release date:	January24, 2020
Director:	Ashwiny Iyer Tiwary
Cast:	Kangana Ranaut, Yagya Bhasin, Jassie Gill, Neena Gupta, Megha Burman, Smita Dwivedi, Rajesh Tailang, Richa Chadha
Language:	Hindi

She was the captain of the Indian kabaddi team with an international career awaiting her before the birth of a premature baby prompted her to turn her back on the game she loves. Jaya Nigam did not have in-laws pressuring her or a husband bullying her: she simply did what she did because it did not occur to her that there was an option and, as her son later points out, it did not occur to her husband to share her load.

Seven years later, which is when we first meet her, Jaya is running a ticket counter for the Indian Railways in Bhopal, micromanaging her child’s life and constantly stressed out. She adores her family and they adore her right back, but a dissatisfaction gnaws at her that she finally confronts during a minor quarrel at home. So begins her journey to return to the country’s kabaddi scene.

Kangana Ranaut plays Jaya, a woman like a million others whose professional dreams remain unfulfilled because she did not treat them as a priority. The film does not judge her nor does it particularly advocate the choice she makes: it is what it is and we are simply being told that this is what she did. This non-judgemental but non-idolising view of Jaya is the selling point of Panga.

In Ashwiny Iyer Tiwary’s directorial debut, the sleeper hit Nil Battey Sannata, a poor mother goes back to school to spark ambition in her daughter who, till then, had a “well, a housemaid’s daughter will obviously grow up to be a housemaid” approach to life. Chanda in that lovely film had to cross several external hurdles and handle her troubled relationship with her child. In Panga, Iyer Tiwary has Jaya battling almost entirely with herself. We are surrounded by women like her: women who are so entrenched in home management that they are convinced their families are incapable of handling the job and their families therefore never give it a shot. Again, Panga neither judges Jaya’s attitude nor idolises it – it is what it is and she is who sheis.

The first half of Panga is thoroughly engaging as it portrays Jaya’s blissful domestic existence and quietly simmering discontent in a charming, understated fashion. It is only in the second half that it gradually becomes evident that, heartwarming though the film’s positivity is, it also ends up giving us a sanitised view of middle-class India and women’s struggles.

Apart from her own choices, there is almost nil conflict in Jaya’s life. Her husband is loving and angelic to the point of being near perfect. Her mother is near perfect. Her son may say a couple of hurtful things to his parents but he too is a darling. Her neighbour is ever willing to chip in. Her friend, a professional coach played by Richa Chadha, drops everything at the drop of a hat to move to another city for her. Her colleagues are fond of her. If her boss is hard on her, it is because she is late to work. And she encounters no gender prejudice from men in the personal or professional sphere. None. In fact, so intent is the film on reminding us that family did not stand in Jaya’s way, that having made the point convincingly through the narrative in the first half, it gets her to say so in so many words to a TV journalist in the second half, as if in a bid to ensure that conservative audiences got the point.

In fact, the ONLY opposition she faces while working towards her career goals comes from women: her mother’s mild admonition is overshadowed by the mean female team captain, and a fleeting glimpse of mothers at her son’s school indicates that they are a nasty lot. Men – her coach when she was younger, her husband, the coaches she encounters during her second innings, the son whose goading is responsible for getting her back in sports – are all unequivocally supportive. The thing is, individually each of these characters is believable. Collectively viewed though, the overall niceness scrubs out the reality of women’s struggles in middle-class India steeped as it is in misogyny, sexism and discrimination. And the unstated point that women are the only ones who stand in the way of other women is offensive (though saleable to the masses of course) because it is far removed from the truth – no doubt plenty of women play along with patriarchy, but men helm and benefit from it, so why are we pretending otherwise?

The film’s play-it-safe nature is seen in other ways. Like in Sultan before it, when an ambitious woman gets pregnant, the A-word is not even mentioned. I am not suggesting that all ambitious women would consider abortion in such circumstances, but that it is unrealistic to portray a scenario in which not a single person brings up the possibility.

Elsewhere, although Pangamakes an appearance of beingcool around Chadha’s character, the normalisation of Jaya’s casual dismissiveness towards her at one point because she is unmarried is problematic and the ending suggests that the team of this film – like Chhapaak before it – just cannot fathom being single as a possible ‘happy ending’ for a woman. In this matter it reveals the innate conservatism closeted even in most liberals.

To be honest, it hurts to make these points about Panga, because Iyer Tiwari gives her film a pleasant tone at all times, the rhythm of the narrative never lets up, the ending is gripping and it is a film I liked at many levels. The charismatic Ranaut’s sedate performance anchors the narrative and she never wavers even when her character’s stress reaches fever pitch. Jassie Gill is wonderful in the role of her husband, making him an Everyman in whom every woman might find an ally. The supporting cast is dotted with likeable actors. And the very confident Yagya Bhasin as the lead couple’s son never allows his character’s maturity to cross a line into precocious acting.

Panga is charming and in the first half very credible, but its charm also camouflages the warts in the world women face every day.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.75

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	129 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/panga-movie-review-kanganas-sedate-turn-anchors-a-heartening-but-sanitised-take-on-middle-class-india-7950101.html

Poster courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panga_(film)

Release date:	Kerala: January 23, 2020 Kerala: January 24, 2020
Director:	Ajai Vasudev
Cast: Language:	Mammootty, Siddique, Kalabhavan Shajohn, Rajkiran, Meena, Baiju Santhosh, Hareesh Kanaran, Hareesh Peradi, Bibin George, Arthana, John Kaippallil Malayalam with Tamil

He is known simply as Boss or Shylock to the film industry. He has held producers in a vice-like grip since 2016. This nameless moneylender (hence the nickname, in a mindless nod to Shakespeare) is played by Mammootty, whose sole goal through the insufferable Shylock seems to be to emphasise his conviction that his stature remains intact and that he is a pan-generational star.

No really, I am not talking about subliminal messaging – he literally says so here.

Actually, scratch out that paragraph. Because “subliminal” is a word that should not even be whispered in the vicinity of this film directed by Ajai Vasudev who earlier made the Mammootty-starrers Rajadhiraja and Masterpiece. Every point here is stressed ad nauseam, the background score is loud enough to make a hole in the ozone layer and Mammootty’s character actually says in the closing minutes, “This is a game that will be a massive hit of the year,” in response to Villain No. 1 telling him that his game is up. This exchange is followed by the same bad guy (the Ernakulam Police Commissioner Felix John, played by Siddique) telling Shylock that the era of heroes like him is over, we have entered the age of villains and so he needs to look for secondary roles. To this, Shylock – who does not pretend to be anything but Mammukka’s alter ego – replies after bashing up a bunch of men: across generations, Boss is still the hero.

Okay okaaaay okaaaayyyy, got it: Mammootty rules.

This conversation in the middle of the bloody climactic fight follows about two hours of a singer screeching out a signature refrain for Mammootty every time he, in his avatar as Shylock, wallops a villain or spouts a grandiloquent line.

The music of Shylock is so painful and the narrative so clichéd, that if this were an Easter week release, Jesus might have raced back into his tomb begging never to be resurrected. And don’t get my imagination started on paavam William Shakespeare’s reaction to the appropriation of one of his most famous characters for this story’s protagonist.

About that ‘story’... So Shylock is a guy with a swagger, fancy-schmancy sunglasses, shoes that the camera loves, expensive cars and a misplaced sense of humour that he employs to lighten the mood in the bloodiest of scenes. The only few seconds of fun in Shylock come in its opening minutes, but are soon lost to repetitiveness. The first half of the film sets up a clash between the hero, along with his non-descript sidekicks played by Baiju Santhosh and Hareesh Kanaran, and the slimy film producer Prathapa Varma (Kalabhavan Shajohn) whose partner in crime is Felix John.

When one of Shylock’s flunkeys questions him about his uncharacteristic brutality towards Team Varma, our man launches into a loooong generic flashback brimming with generic sunshine and song, generic flowers, generic family, generic friendship, two generic pretty women and generic romance that all add up to two generic enmities, generic tears and ultimately, a generic quest for vendetta. Tamil actor Rajkiran plays Ayyanar, the generic motivation for Shylock seeking generic revenge against Varma, John and their generic murderous gang. In this portion, Shylock has little curls and is known as Vaal (meaning: tail), a nickname explained by some pseudo-philosophising about a serpent. Never mind what.

Ho hum.

To compensate perhaps for the absolute lack of novelty in the script, camerawork and all else here, multiple references are made to other films and their Tamil superstars, human beings are killed by the dozen and we are treated to numerous close-ups of various types of knives slashing various parts of various bodies. Since a certain kind of formulaic Malayalam film can only be explained by comparison, here are a whole bunch to help you fully understand this one: Shylock is as boring as the Mohanlal starrer Big Brother released last week, the violence in this blood-spattered film is of a lesser degree than Kalki, women are microscopic sidelights in the plot but it is not misogynistic in the manner of Kasabaand Ittymaani: Made In China, and though Mammootty struts about here too, his preening is not offensive as it was in The Great Father.

Here is the saddest comparison of all though: Shylock is a reminder that Mammootty’s soul-searching performances in brilliant films like Peranbuand Undaare an exception to his current norm that is exemplified by Shylock.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 0.25

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	131 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/shylock-movie-review-mammootty-uses-this-insufferable-film-to-announce-that-hes-still-the-boss-7952101.html

Posters courtesy:https://www.facebook.com/Mammootty/

Release date:	Kerala: January 10, 2020 Delhi: January 24, 2020
Director:	Midhun Manuel Thomas
Cast: Language:	Kunchacko Boban, Sreenath Bhasi, Unnimaya Prasad, Jinu Joseph, Indrans, Remya Nambeesan, Jaffer Idukki, Sharaf U Dheen, Nikhila Vimal, Mathew Thomas, Nandhana Varma, Divya Gopinath Malayalam with Tamil

When the Kochi Police becomes the target of a shadowy serial killer, DCP Catherine Maria (Unnimaya Prasad) goes all guns blazing into the investigation. ACP Anil Madhavan (Jinu Joseph) persuades her to rope in the psychologist Anwar Hussain (Kunchacko Boban) who is pursuing a PhD on criminal minds. Anwar in turn bullies a young hacker called Andrew (Sreenath Bhasi) to help the team. Together they set off on the trail of a criminal with a modus operandi they have never before encountered.

The murders in Anjaam Pathiraa(The Fifth Midnight) are intriguing. I found myself on the edge of my seat throughout, scared on behalf of every Kochi police person I spotted wandering down a lonely street or into a darkened room on screen. Writer-director Midhun Manuel Thomas (may I call you MMT, please?) keeps the twists constantly flowing, and even when weaknesses in the writing of the investigation rear their head, the consistent tone and tempo ensure that the narrative remains engaging.

Those weaknesses cannot be ignored, of course. Certain details are left unexplained or under-explained (I had to struggle to recall the reason why – no spoilers here – Anwar connected that toy to the serial killings), the title sounds nice but in retrospect feels contrived, some of the discussions among the police are banal, the English lines are often drab and at least one leap of the imagination is made during the probe with no logic to back it.

Some of the Kochi Police’s screw-ups in this film are highly believable, a reflection of the poor training, pathetic infrastructure, inefficiency and inherent apathy of police forces across India in real life (and are pointed out as such during conversations in the film). One mistake though seems to have gone unnoticed by the writer himself. Imagine tracking a serial killer and not immediately looking for a link between the victims. DCP Catherine and her colleagues do not, and no eyebrows are raised about it.

Frankly, Catherine seems to have been inserted into the script merely to pre-empt any criticism that Anjaam Pathiraa is an all-male scenario. She is there, and she is the boss, but she is pretty useless, spending much of her time helplessly asking the men around her what is going on. On the only occasion when she comes up with a plan, it is stupid on the face of it and not surprisingly leads to disaster. Another policewoman (played by Divya Gopinath) has been thrown in for good measure as a bit-part player, which would have been fine if Catherine had been better written. C’mon MMT, give us convincing, well-fleshed-out policewomen next time rather than tokenism.

Mostly what Catherine does by way of action is stand around issuing brisk instructions that make her seem busy and in charge, while Anwar and Andrew get the job done, serving as yet another reminder that even Mollywood’s otherwise-admirable parallel cinema movement is more comfortable telling stories of men. This is particularly ironic because the larger plot of Anjaam Pathiraa is driven by gender sensitivity.

It is a measure of MMT’s directorial skills that he succeeds in sustaining interest even through these uneven stretches. Besides, in other areas there is some smart writing on display here, including with the red herrings strewn around but not forgotten in the end. All complaints recede into the background anyway when the startling, heart-rending back story to the crimes is revealed.

It is frustrating that to avoid spoilers I cannot tell you exactly why this film is gutsy. Suffice it to say that MMT takes on an organisation that is powerful in Kerala and is justifiably shamed in Anjaam Pathiraa for its actions and inaction in response to alleged crimes by its functionaries.

Courage combined with MMT’s storytelling and a crew to match make Anjaam Pathiraa a winner. Cinematographer Shyju Khalid here does not employ a single one of the clichés that are staples in formulaic Indian thrillers: no jerks, no sudden movements around corners, no overt manipulation of the audience. His camerawork for this film, his low-lit frames and dreary gray-black-white palette with red and yellow appearing as ominous intrusions create an atmosphere of foreboding and ultimately, great sorrow. Khalid’s choices are a perfect fit for MMT’s own non-sensationalist, non-voyeuristic approach to the tragedies and extreme violence featured in the written material.

Sushin Shyam’s affecting music is put to good use by the director – it is there only when necessary, and then too not over-used. Considering that Anjaam Pathiraa comes to Delhi in the same week as the Mammootty starrer Shylock, it has soothed my troubled ears just recovering from that film’s deafening background score. Gratitude to Mr Shyam. Also to sound designers Vishnu Govind and Sree Shankar.

The ensemble cast is a reliable lot. Kunchacko Boban as Anwar brings his trademark sincerity to the role of an unhero-like hero who must keep his head on his shoulders during his first full-fledged murder investigation and grapple with his emotions on discovering unnerving truths. Sreenath Bhasi as an unscrupulous nerd lends just the right touch of youthful mischief to his character. Unnimaya Prasad is saddled with the one badly written role in the script, but saves Catherine from the brink with her earnestness.

Remya Nambeesan and Divya Gopinath are the only actors who are completely wasted in Anjaam Pathiraa. The casting director’s triumph lies in the careful selection of known and brilliant artistes for significant roles in the second half that give them barely a few seconds or minutes of screen time but must (and do) remain memorable all the same.

MMT’s filmography so far has been marked by light-hearted entertainers with a point to make. There is nothing light-hearted about Anjaam Pathiraa. Nothing conventional either. In fact, the first half seems intentionally designed to lull viewers into assuming that it is just a suspenseful whodunnit, its wacko antagonist teasing the police with a signature – clever but done before in different ways. It left me completely unprepared for that second half, drenched in a beautiful sadness, brave and deeply disturbing.

Anjaam Pathiraa may not be perfect, but oh my goodness, it is special.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 3.5

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	144 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/anjaam-pathiraa-movie-review-a-brave-sensitive-thriller-with-a-startling-heart-rending-back-story-7960611.html

Posters courtesy:https://www.facebook.com/MidhunManuelThomas/

Here are the films and artistes that I believe deserve to win in their respective categories this year. Repeat: these are my favourites, NOT my predictions.

BEST PICTURE

Nominees:

Ford v Ferrari

The Irishman

Jojo Rabbit

Joker

Little Women

Marriage Story

1917

Once upon a Time...in Hollywood

Parasite

Deserves to win: Parasite

(Sadly, Parasite may well be edged out of the race by 1917 or even Once upon a Time...in Hollywood, while the Academy plays it safe and gives it the Best Foreign Language Film trophy. Be that as it may, Parasitedeserves to win the top prize by many miles.)

BEST DIRECTOR

Nominees:

The Irishman

Joker

1917

Once upon a Time...in Hollywood

Parasite

Deserves to win: Parasite

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Nominees:

Knives Out

Marriage Story

1917

Once upon a Time...in Hollywood

Parasite

Deserves to win: Parasite (OR Knives Out)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Nominees:

The Irishman

Jojo Rabbit

Joker

Little Women

The Two Popes

Deserves to win: Jojo Rabbit

BEST ACTOR (FEMALE)

Nominees:

Cynthia Erivo, Harriet

Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story

Saoirse Ronan, Little Women

Charlize Theron, Bombshell

Renée Zellweger, Judy

Deserves to win: Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story

(though they are ALL brilliant)

BEST ACTOR (MALE)

Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory

Leonardo DiCaprio, Once upon a Time...in Hollywood

Adam Driver, Marriage Story

Joaquin Phoenix, Joker

Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes

Deserves to win: Adam Driver, Marriage Story

(if not him then please let it be Antonio Banderas orJoaquin Phoenix)

Photographs courtesy: Wikipedia

Release date:	February 21, 2020
Director:	Bhanu Pratap Singh
Cast:	Vicky Kaushal, Akash Dhar, Ashutosh Rana, Meher Vij, Bhumi Pednekar
Language:	Hindi

I can’t quite figure out why Bhoot Part One: The Haunted Ship allowed itself to waste away. It borrows part of its name from one of Ram Gopal Varma’s better post-2000 films, but squanders a promising start and fails to do justice to that supernatural thriller’s legacy.

This Bhoot stars Vicky Kaushal as a member of a government shipping department involved in clearing out an abandoned ship called Sea Bird that gets stuck on Mumbai’s Juhu beach. As it happens, the vessel is haunted. So is Kaushal’s character Prithvi – unable to let go of a tragedy involving his wife and child a while earlier. His unhappy past appears to have turned him into a man who will go to any lengths and risk his everything to help others, especially young women.

The first half of Bhoot Part Oneis actually very good, starting with a neat rejigging of the familiar Dharma Productions logo. Director Bhanu Pratap Singh manages to build up a spooky atmosphere on screen, and the initial sightings of the film’s spirit are terrifying. It all comes to nought though with the dwindling quality of the narration, loopholes and unaddressed questions gradually rearing their head, and in the second half, with a half-baked back story to the paranormal presence on that ship.

Among the familiar faces who show up in brief roles are Ashutosh Rana as a clichéd professor who studies the supernatural, Meher Vij from Secret Superstar who is part of the backgrounder and Bhumi Pednekar whose talent deserves better than two back-to-back ineffectual cameos in one weekend – in addition to this film, she is also in Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (SMZS). To be fair to Bhoot Part One, at least Pednekar’s character here has some significance – she is irrelevant in SMZS.

The visual effects in Bhoot Part One are fair enough, but their worth is diminished by the emptiness of the script in the second half.

Sometimes though, from the most unexpected quarters comes a point that needs to be desperately made in the disturbing times we live in. Prithvi’s best friend in Bhoot Part One is a man called Riyaz (played by Akash Dhar, the brightest spark in this cast). While names are not concrete proof of an individual’s religious identity, they do serve as indicators. Riyaz could well be Hindu or Christian, but it is a name you will usually find on Muslims or Parsis. That a vital character in a film belongs to a minority community without a shindig being thrown about their religion, without any of the stereotypical community markers that most Bollywood films consider mandatory, without them being demonised in the way one particular minority group is increasingly being demonised by post-2014 Bollywood, yet without their presence being used to deliver a speech on secularism, is a crucial statement on representation.

This positive is hardly enough to salvage the wreckage of Bhoot Part One though.

As if it is not bad enough that they made an entire film without compelling the writing team to improve the script, it turns out the producers are planning a Bhoot Part Two. Oh dear.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 1.5

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	117 minutes

Poster courtesy:IMDB

Release date:	February14, 2020
Director:	Imtiaz Ali
Cast:	Sara Ali Khan, Kartik Aaryan, Randeep Hooda, Arushi Sharma, Simone Singh, Siddharth Kak
Language:	Hindi

Great film romances have the power to make a cynical viewer believe and become so invested in the characters on screen as to yearn for their union. Imtiaz Ali’s Love Aaj Kal redux had the opposite effect on me: it drove me to turn my back on my Gandhian principles and long to smack its ensemble of leads – Zoe, Veer, Raghu and Leena – across the face, then yank them off screen, thus to end the agony of watching this mind-numbing film.

Imtiaz Ali must be suffering a peculiar bankruptcy of ideas that he chose to remake his own 2009 hit Love Aaj Kal with nothing worthwhile to add to what he said 11 years back. That one – the story of differing journeys to the same emotion in the past and present told in parallel – had the collective charisma of Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone and Rishi Kapoor, a cute newcomer called Giselle Monteiro, a narrative structure unusual for Bollywood, the charm of the old-world Khan-Monteiro saga and a darling finale surprise going for it. It was not earth-shatteringly great cinema, but it was nice.

This Love Aaj Kal is what is known as a “spiritual successor” or “spiritual sequel”, except that it is so godawfully boring, contrived and wannabe that it provoked some very unspiritual, unholy feelings in me. Drowning as it is in stereotypes of millennial women and youth at large, Kartik Aaryan’s awkwardness, some surprisingly hammy acting by the usually solid Randeep Hooda and tedium, the new film tragically marks a further decline in the qualitative graph of a writer-director who debuted with the sweet Socha Na Tha in 2005, crackled and popped with the Kareena Kapoor-starrer Jab We Met (2007) and has only shone intermittently since.

Before we get to know Leena (ArushiSharma) and Zoe (Sara Ali Khan) of Love Aaj Kal 2020, we see them yelling at two men played by Kartik Aaryan. That in itself is a warning bell: Aaryan barely has the skill to pull off even one character who does not look and sound entirely like Aaryan, so imagine the error of stretching him to play two men within the same film. Leena is screaming at Raghu (Aaryan) for stalking her, then she screams at him some more for promising to stop. “Did I tell you to stop?” she hollers. That is the second warning bell: here comes yet another Hindi film peddling the dangerous trope that women intentionally send men confusing signals, that a woman’s “no” usually means “yes” or “maybe”.

As the film progresses, in the present day in the National Capital Region we meet Zoe and Veer (Aaryan). She appears to be Ali’s notion of what a millennial city-dwelling Indian female human is: she wears chhote-chhote shorts, wants men for sex but not love, says the word “career” a zillion times and uses “whatever” as an exclamation point. All these characteristics serve as superficial markers and nothing else. Veer pursues her with a loyal doggy expression on his face, and we are given to understand that he wants more than sex from her.

As Zoe begins to fall for him, she turns to an older man played by Hooda for advice and is dragged into flashbacks to his 1980s-90s romance with Leena in Udaipur and Delhi. You see, Hooda is the older version of Raghu who we first saw in his younger days played by Aaryan. Same guy who was being rebuked by Leena for stalking her and then further rebuked for agreeing not to do so. Confused? Just you wait, Henry Higgins, Love Aaj Kal has only begun.

In the Leena-Raghu plot from kal(yesterday), she may send mixed messages to him at first, but she has absolute clarity in her mind about what she wants. He does not. In the aaj(today) of the narrative, Zoe is muddled in the head, and views her professional dreams and personal feelings as mutually exclusive although Veer has at no point pressured her to choose between the two. The paavam fellow, on the other hand, is smitten and stricken and completely committed to her, but aiyyo she chews up his brain with her indecisiveness, while she and the older Raghu chew up our souls with all their philosophical mumbo-jumbo about pyaar, the burden placed on us by the mistakes of earlier generations, fidelity, human instincts and so on.

Gawd, how much do Zoe and Veer talk. They talk and they talk and they talk, and they go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in their messed-up, mixed-up minds, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until I wanted to beg them to hook up.

Ms Khan has pizzazz and gives it her best shot, but even her striking screen presence cannot redeem this film. Mr Aaryan, on the other hand, is even worse than this script. Perhaps realising his acting limitations late in the day, at one point Ali gives Raghu a beard planted very carefully and precisely on the rim of his jaw and prosthetics to chubby up his face, hence distinguishing him from the scruffy, thin-looking Veer.

Post-interval, a stand-up comedian pops up to pontificate about how monogamous relationships have been imposed by society on men, who are naturally wired to wander and to keep their youknowwhats hanging out instead of confining them to their pants. Ah okay, so this is the point the film wishes to make? But wait, no, is it not Veer who is singularly focused on Zoe while SHE is shopping around? Whatever.

Love Aaj Kal is pretentious, verbose and thoroughly insufferable. Among its many contrivances is the use of Hooda’s voice playing in the background as the end credits roll, whispering sentences that are perhaps meant to be wise and impressive. I managed to catch the very last line as the very last word disappeared from the screen. “Romantic hai na kahaani?” I think I heard him ask. (The story is romantic, is it not?) The answer – if you have any doubts after reading this review so far– is an absolute, vehement, resounding no. That truth hurts though, because once upon a time jab Imtiaz Ali and Kareena Kapoor met, they did create screen magic.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 0.01

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	141 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/love-aaj-kal-movie-review-sara-ali-khan-is-saddled-with-kartik-aaryan-and-imtiaz-alis-mind-numbing-script-8040601.html

Poster courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Aaj_Kal_(2020_film)

Release date:	Kerala: February 7, 2020 Delhi: February 14, 2020
Director:	Sachy
Cast: Language:	Prithviraj Sukumaran, Biju Menon, Ranjith, Gowri Nandha, Anna Reshma Rajan, Anil Nedumangad, Anu Mohan, Dhanya Ananya, Sabumon Abdusamad, Ramesh Kottayam Malayalam

Ayyappanum Koshiyum (Ayyappan and Koshy) is Driving Licence with caste inequity added to class differences. Starring Prithviraj Sukumaran and Suraj Venjaramoodu, Driving Licence was released just weeks back and turned out to be an unusual, thoughtful, entertaining commentary on star trappings and star arrogance clashing with bureaucratic power play sparked off by a situation not of either adversary’s making. Writer-director Sachy ropes in Prithviraj and Biju Menon for Ayyappanum Koshiyum, a film about a haughty yet not all-out evil, well-connected, financially well-off former havildar of the Indian Army sparring unrelentingly with a committed even if hot-headed policeman from less privileged circumstances.

Prithviraj’s Koshy Kurian is drunk when his car is stopped by the police late one night in a no-alcohol zone in Kerala’s mountainous countryside. Ayyappan Nair (Biju Menon) is the local SI steering the team on the spot. Following some bombast from one party and roughing up by the other, Koshy is detained and vows to teach Ayyappan a lesson. He makes good on his promise, but soon begins to regret his decision upon realising that his disproportionate response to a slight might destroy the other man’s life. It is too late by then though as Koshy’s arrogant father Kurian John (played by Ranjith) and Ayyappan’s wild temper have already come into play.

The story of Ayyappanum Koshiyum is a fine illustration of how small acts of hauteur – in this case fuelled by social conditioning and systemic corruption – when combined with bursts of temper can lead to genuine grievances and misunderstandings that could cause any battle to spiral out of the control of those who are foolish enough to think they hold the reins of the cosmos. In Sachy’s script, both male leads have character flaws, and each one wants at different points in the narrative to withdraw from the duel, but the small fire that was lit that first night on an isolated road has acquired a life of its own and keeps pulling them back in like a moth drawn to a flame that it knows is likely to destroy it.

The smartness of this film lies in the shades of gray it gives Ayyappan and Koshy, and the believability of the manner in which their war gets stretched on and on. The relationship between Koshy and his father is particularly convincing, as is the facade of bluster Koshy maintains to camouflage his insecurities and fears. In the moments when he lets the mask drop – before the audience and his loyal driver Kumaran – Prithviraj is brilliantly restrained.

Menon too is spot-on as Ayyappan, a role in which he thankfully sheds the (endearing yet kind of repetitive) BijuMenonness that has long been a hallmark of his comedic screen outings, to become this intense policeman brimming with a rage he has reined in for nearly three decades.

In terms of screen presence and acting strength, the two actors are perfect fencing partners.

But Sachy’s film has significant flaws. In the first hour, the testosterone-ridden conversations between the central trio – Ayyappan, Koshy and Kurian – are fun, but I suspect a shorter Ayyappanum Koshiyum might have been a better Ayyappanum Koshiyum because as it stretches from one-and-a-half to two hours and onward to nearly three hours, I began increasingly finding the dialogues somewhat tiring. When these men are together in the second half, Ayyappanum Koshiyum rarely allows us to forget that they are characters in a film delivering filmic lines in carefully modulated, deep masculine voices. The few seconds here and there post-interval when Ayyappan and Koshy do let their guard down with each other come as such a pleasant reprieve that I wish there had been more of those.

Ayyappanum Koshiyum’s other weakness is the portrayal of its women characters. Jessy, the junior policewoman played by Dhanya Ananya, despite being a marginal player has more heft than Koshy’s wife Ruby (Angamaly Diaries’ Anna Reshma Rajan) and Ayyappan’s wife Kannamma (Gowri Nandha) though the latter two get more screen time. Both wives seem to have been written self-consciously (driven perhaps by a desire to be lauded for featuring strong women in the script?) rather than having flowed naturally from pen to paper. Kannamma, for instance, gets one fiery scene of verbal confrontation with Koshy but for the rest is simply a powerful image of maternal strength and the defiance of the marginalised – an adivasi mother with her baby in her arms as she takes on the establishment – instead of a well-written, well-rounded character. She glares at all times, and may as well have been pasted on a poster in the background with the words “strong woman” written across her forehead, because that is what she is for the most part: an impressive visual.

Ruby, on the other hand, is a victim of confused writing. In her introductory scene, she is presented as a frivolous, domesticated woman with shallow emotions – she is visiting her husband in jail and is less concerned about his welfare than whether she will get back the utensils in which she brought him food. Nothing she does thereafter justifies the initial description. (Spoiler alert)Worse, in a scene in which this scared woman comes into her own and finds her voice, Koshy slaps her and the tone of that scene is not critical of his actions at all. I do not doubt for a second that a spoilt fellow like him would be patriarchal and might be violent with his wife, the issue lies with the design of that brief passage – his slap is offered as praise for words she just spoke and, I repeat, the tone of the scene is not critical of his actions. (Spoiler alert ends) The normalisation, even humourisation, of domestic violence is a chronic problem in Malayali society and in Mollywood films, and here is yet another instance of this malaise.

This is truly sad, because the presence of both women is essential to the film. For one, it becomes clear in a late scene that could have turned bloody, that Ruby is aware of and has faith in her husband’s innate decency and sobriety in comparison with her father-in-law’s incorrigible nature. And Kannamma, one-note wonder though she is, adds a layer to the caste equations in an already churning imbroglio. This is important even though a scene showing a group of adivasis meeting Ayyappan is overtly emotionally manipulative and turns the folksy, poignantly earthy music score by Jakes Bejoy into an instrument of its manipulations.

Other satellite characters are given more depth and nuance. The most memorable of them are Ayyappan’s supportive but exasperated immediate boss (Anil Nedumangad), the rebellious young policeman at their station (Anu Mohan) and the driver (Ramesh Kottayam) who seems to know Koshy much better than Kurian.

Sudeep Elamon’s camerawork in Ayyappanum Koshiyum is striking and intelligent. He highlights not just the great beauty of the film’s locales but also, on occasion, their eerie, intimidating vastness. Equally important, he shoots the physical fights such that they appear more natural than the melodramatic stunts we are used to in commercial Mollywood.

Malayalam cinema of the past decade has operated in parallel extremes: the loud formulaic cinema favoured by the two giant M’s and the quiet, gentle variety that has found favour among cinephiles across India. Ayyappanum Koshiyum inhabits a middle ground between these tracks. Its faults are undeniable, but Sachy’s film is unconventional and by and large, both thoughtful and enjoyable.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.75

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	177 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/ayyappanum-koshiyum-movie-review-prithviraj-and-biju-menon-are-made-for-each-other-sparring-partners-8047181.html

Poster courtesy:https://www.facebook.com/PrithvirajSukumaran/

Release date:	Kerala: February 7, 2020 Delhi: February 14, 2020
Director:	Anoop Sathyan
Cast: Language:	Shobana, Dulquer Salmaan, Suresh Gopi, Kalyani Priyadarshan, K.P.A.C. Lalitha, Urvashi, Johnny Antony Malayalam with Tamil

Gawd, she is gorgeous!

In a decade that has been crying out for more films with Shobana, debutant director Anoop Sathyan – son of the legendary Sathyan Anthikad – has pulled off a coup. First, he convinced the stunning actor-dancer to star in Varane Avashyamundu (Groom Wanted). Then, in an era where major male stars in their 50s and 60s insist on playing comparative youngsters romancing women played by female actors of their children’s generation, he cast veteran stalwart Suresh Gopi in the role of her beau. As if that were not impressive enough, Anoop has Dulquer Salmaan – one of contemporary Mollywood’s most powerful young stars, debuting as a producer here – happily hanging out in the background playing one of several charming characters in this ensemble film, instead of using his clout to increase his screen time.

A hat tip to Dulquer for willingly subordinating himself to the requirements of the script. A hat tip and a salaam to Anoop for envisioning a primary role for an older woman star in an industry that marginalises women of all ages, more so those past 30/35.

Varane Avashyamundu is set in an apartment complex in Chennai, home to a disparate group of people. Shobana plays Neena, a French teacher and single mother whose daughter Nikitha (Kalyani Priyadarshan) is obsessed with arranging a marriage for herself. Dulquer plays a chap nicknamed Fraud, sharing a home with his much younger brother and a lady he calls Akashavani (K.P.A.C. Lalitha). This sociable gang are a sharp contrast to their diffident, hot-tempered, lonely neighbour, the retired Major Unnikrishnan (Suresh Gopi).

From the moment we are introduced to these characters, it is not hard to guess where they will end up. Despite that predictability and the incompleteness of a couple of the relationship graphs, the overall pleasantness of the narrative, the progressiveness that goes beyond just the casting and the collective charisma of the actors combine to elevate the film to another level altogether.

So yes, I would certainly have liked to better understand Nikitha’s long-standing resentment towards her loving mother. It would have been nice to better explore Fraud’s equation with his little sibling. And names like Fraud and Akashavani sound more than a bit pretentious. But in other areas, Anoop’s script proves unexpectedly satisfying.

For one, the romance between Neena and the Major develops smoothly without caricaturing either of the individuals involved or mocking their age. Second, the warmth between Nikitha and the parent of one of the potential grooms she finds online is heartwarming. Varane Avashyamundu has an easy sense of humour, and like his father, Anoop has an easy storytelling style. He also reveals himself to be a thinking writer when he features older people who turn out to be more forward thinking than their children, contrary to prevalent ageist assumptions that equate liberalism with youth. And most important, in an industry that has for decades now displayed a casual approach to domestic abuse, it is a relief to see a Malayalam film in which a husband’s violence towards his wife is considered condemnable.

The cast is uniformly likeable and the statuesque Shobana’s presence made me yearn for more of her in future (though I wish we were listening to her voice rather than Bhagyalakshmi dubbing for her here). Anoop elicits a relatively controlled performance from Gopi, during which just once does he allow the actor’s trademark mannered style to surface in a scene in which the Major asks a troublemaker menacingly, “Ormayundo ee mukham?” (Do you remember this face). That’s another thing – the film’s referencing of popular Malayalam cinema needed to be better written, and it could have done without that running joke about how Neena resembles Shobana.

But she is hotness and dignity personified, her co-stars are all easy on the eye and the storyline is sweet even if not extraordinary, making Varane Avashyamundu a happy overall experience.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.75

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	145 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/varane-avashyamundu-movie-review-shobana-dulquer-a-sedate-suresh-gopi-and-a-sweet-story-whats-not-to-like-8051061.html

Posters courtesy:https://www.facebook.com/DQSalmaan/

Release date:	February21, 2020
Director:	Hitesh Kewalya
Cast:	Ayushmann Khurrana, Jitendra Kumar, Neena Gupta, Gajraj Rao, Sunita Rajwar, Manu Rishi Chadha, Maanvi Gagroo, Cameo: Bhumi Pednekar
Language:	Hindi

It has been a long time coming.

From the pre-2000 decades when LGBT+ persons were almost always (almost, but not always) written purely as objects of either derision or comedy by Bollywood scriptwriters, to this week’s Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (SMZS); from an earlier era when comparatively sensitive Hindi filmmakers packed their works with subliminal messaging about same-sex love, to the post-2000 era’s intermittent open declarations; from the days when the homosexual relationships in My Brother Nikhil (2005) and I Am (2011) were assumed to be of niche interest by producers, distributors and exhibitors, to the present day when glamorous mainstream stars have been cast as same-sex lovers in films bearing all the trappings of mainstream commercial Bollywood such as Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (2019) and SMZS, it has been a long long time coming.

Bollywood in 2020 is far from being a jannat, orthodox masses still seem to need comedy as a package for a sensitive reality, and at a couple of places, Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (Be Extra Wary of Marriage) does make apologetic noises to traditionalists. Still, from a time when audiences were conditioned to assume that songs like Yeh dosti hum nahin thodenge (We will not break this friendship) were about platonic male buddies, to today when SMZS is questioning those assumptions, Bollywood has come a long way, baby.

Ayushmann Khurrana stars in writer-director Hitesh Kewalya’s Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan as Kartik, a young man living in Delhi and in a committed relationship with Aman (Jitendra Kumar, listedfor some reason as Jeetu in the closing credits here). The two are not out to their families. When they travel to Aman’s hometown, Allahabad, for a wedding, relatives go berserk on accidentally discovering that they are a couple in love. SMZS is devoted to how Kartik and Aman come to terms with this rejection and how the family comes to terms with their truth.

Kewalya’s film is an intelligently handled affair. It is hilarious, but it never mocks the two gay men at the centre of the story. Its laughter is reserved entirely for the prejudice they encounter and the straitjacketed existence of those around them who are determined to preserve their notion of “normal”, even if that “normal” has sucked the joy out of their own lives. SMZS’s sense of humour does occasionally slip up for other reasons (example: that really flat joke about Neil Nitin Mukesh), but at no point does its comedy turn homophobic.

With a word here and and a touch there, through long conversations and fleeting references, Kewalya invites us into his questioning mind and shows a deeper understanding of human relations, gender, Hindu mythology and popular culture than most mainstream Hindi filmmakers. In 2014, when I was working on a feature about the history of LGBT+ portrayals in Bollywood, Ruth Vanita, co-editor with Salim Kidwai of the book Same-Sex Love In India, had told me that when she showed Hindi films featuring the old-style intense yaari-dosti between male leads to her students at the University of Montana, “all of them commented on the fact that the men are singing romantic songs to each other like Diye jalte hai (from Namak Haram) and the songs from Dosti. If you played those songs without knowing that a man is singing to a man, it sounds like a man is singing to a woman...” (For more on that, click here.)

Like Vanita, Kewalya repeatedly asks us to step outside ourselves and consider the possibility of messaging, including coded messaging, featured in art works and mythological motifs we have long loved but seen with different eyes in the past.

SMZS’s intelligence extends to its acting. Khurrana and Kumar are not bound by any of the traits formulaic Bollywood has so far compulsorily assigned to gay men. Khurrana does tweak his body language to play Kartik, but those changes are barely discernable and in no way stereotypical or caricaturish in keeping with Bollywood conventions.

Aman’s relatives, played by the phenomenal Neena Gupta, Gajraj Rao, Sunita Rajwar, Manu Rishi Chadha and Maanvi Gagroo, perfectly capture various shades of bias and acceptance to be found in families that are weighed down by social conditioning and ignorance, not hate.

In the midst of this carefully chosen cast, Bhumi Pednekar appears incongruous, not for any fault of hers but because of what her brief appearance in the narrative signifies. The lovely Ms Pednekar was the heroine of the 2017 Bollywood hit Shubh Mangal Saavdhan(with screenplay and dialogues by Kewalya) in which she had a solid role alongside Khurrana. Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan has no plot connection to the previous film, the title merely cashes in on that one’s recall value. It is telling then that the producers felt comfortable revisiting the name while dispensing with the leading lady, instead of establishing a new brand. As it happens, this is customary in the world of Bollywood franchises and sequels. Obviously Pednekar’s cameo here is a bow to the success of Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, but her role is written almost like a spare tyre lying unused, it is embarrassingly insignificant (a cameo need not be) and forgettable, and it is an unfortunate reminder of the continuing dispensability of women stars in this male-star-obsessed industry.

Repeat: Bollywood is far from being a jannat of progressiveness. It is up to viewers to decide whether to see the glass as half full or half empty. There is a third option: we could celebrate forward movement and yet draw attention to missteps and steps yet to be taken.

SMZSfalters during a scene in which Aman’s mother laments her husband’s unwillingness to fight for her son, but simultaneously criticises her son for – so she says – expecting his family to evolve overnight. This monologue is designed as an expression of empathy, so it has to be placed on the record that marginalised social groups do not owe it to dominant groups to break them in gently. Individuals may CHOOSE to do so for strategic reasons or out of love and affection, but no one has a right to demand it.

Whether this scene is a mark of the writer’s own sub-conscious conservatism or a safety net spread out with commercial compulsions in mind is hard to tell. It is troubling though, as is the odd emphasis on how homosexual relations ought to be private during a TV news announcement about the Supreme Court’s ruling on Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that earlier criminalised same-sex relations. This moment in the film would perhaps pacify conservatives who seem to have this bizarre expectation that anyone who is not heterosexual wants nothing more than to have sex in public. Perhaps that is why it is there.

Hopefully these aberrations will find mention among the many conversations SMZS will spark off. That it will spark off conversations is a given. This is, after all, no ordinary film raising ordinary questions, as is evident early on when two characters dwell on how a father’s sole contribution to creating a child is his sperm. One of them adds that a child spends an entire lifetime repaying the debt of that single sperm. So you see, SMZS’scourage lies not just in its condemnation of homophobia, but also in its questioning of the very foundation of the Indian patriarchal family structure which rests on the belief that children owe parents a debt of gratitude for having made them/us.

SMZS is funny, brave, smart and thoughtful, and Kewalya is a voice worth listening to.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 3.5

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	119 minutes 37 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/shubh-mangal-zyada-saavdhan-movie-review-ayushmann-khurrana-starrer-crosses-a-new-frontier-for-lgbt-portrayals-by-bollywood-8070971.html

Poster courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shubh_Mangal_Zyada_Saavdhan

Release date:	February28, 2020
Director:	Anubhav Sinha
Cast:	Taapsee Pannu, Pavail Gulati, Dia Mirza, Maya Sarao, Kumud Mishra, Ratna Pathak Shah, Tanvi Azmi, Geetika Vidya, Ram Kapoor, Manav Kaul, Naila Grewal, Ankur Rathee, Santanu Ghatak
Language:	Hindi

“This is life, after all.”

“Take it in your stride.”

“This is a woman’s fate.”

“You have made your point, now drop it.”

Women who object to violence from their husbands get to hear these lines repeatedly, even when the man is a serial offender. If the protest is against infrequent physical abuse or a solitary episode, the volume of these degrading clichés rises manifold. In Thappad, Taapsee Pannu’s character elicits variations of these responses from almost everyone around her. What makes this film what it is is the protagonist’s – and the writers’ – unwavering conviction that in the matter of spousal assault, once is once too many.

Writer-director Anubhav Sinha’s Thappad (Slap), which he co-wrote with Mrunmayee Lagoo Waikul, features Pannu as a stay-at-home wife whose feelings for her husband turn from devotion to indifference when he strikes her one day. They have been a traditional couple until then. He has a busy career, she makes his dreams her own. While he labours over office assignments, she labours over his every need, serving him meals, chasing him up to the car with his wallet and a beverage while feeding him his unfinished breakfast, caring for his elderly mother, maintaining the house, entertaining guests.

They seem to be happy. So when she switches off after a single slap, most people cannot understand. As he himself puts it, “Shit happens. It happens. People move on.”

Thappad is not a saga of multiple twists and turns, unlike Sinha’s earlier two politically charged films, Mulk and Article 15. This one has just one big twist – that slap – which is already in the trailer, but what follows is a heroine’s dramatic inner journey and a gripping chronicle of how it impacts and/or exposes every single person in her life.

Pannu submits herself fully to the role of Amrita a.k.a. Amu. She is so immersed in her character that I almost failed to notice how exquisite she looks in the film – there is that too. She makes Amu’s smooth transition from smiling self-subordination within a marriage to shock to self-awareness completely believable.

The wonderful Ratna Pathak Shah as Amu’s conflicted mother who evolves during the course of the story, Kumud Mishra as her evolved yet evolving father and Tanvi Azmi as her silently suffering saasform the backbone of Thappad’s large and talented supporting cast. Geetika Vidya shows up as a housemaid who refuses to allow her miserable domestic life to dull her sunny disposition, and is as convincing here as she was playing a combustible policewoman in the acclaimed Netflix original Soni. Ankur Rathee as Amu’s brother is the only weak link in the chain.

The pleasant surprise of the cast for me was Dia Mirza. For years I have noticed her solely for her delicate looks, but director Sinha manages to tap the artiste in her in a way others have not. She makes Amu’s supportive neighbour special and sweet.

As the problematic husband Vikram, Pavail Gulati has perhaps the trickiest job in Thappad since he has to convey arrogance yet also help us understand why Amu might have loved him yet not command empathy. He is a guy who is kind to the household help, but thinks nothing of ordering his wife around like a junior at work. He does not have horns on his head, he is just another entitled jerk who is blinded by his male privilege. A fine actor, Gulati is up to the task.

Thappadbeautifully spotlights various shades of men, from the haughty hero to another far more likeable person who is astonished to discover that he – like so many men around us – is a feminist for his daughter but unconsciously patriarchal with his wife.

The script particularly shines in the characterisation of Vikram. Instead of lazily demonising him, Sinha and Waikul write him as precisely the sort of chap about whom family and onlookers tend to say indulgently in real life, “C’mon, he’s not such a bad guy. People make mistakes. Shit happens.”

Thappad, unlike its many characters, makes no excuses for its leading man. It stands out not merely for taking a stand against domestic violence, but because of its call for zero tolerance. And while the audience may expend energy on wondering whether Vikram will apologise for his actions, the screenplay does not make that Amu’s priority: because the assault startles her out of a stupor after which, far from being bothered about how he will now behave, she is off on an inner journey all her own.

For all this and more, Thappadis a potent and engrossing film.

It does stumble occasionally though. The background score, for one, needed toning down in the first half. Amu’s lawyer (Maya Sarao) has a relationship with a man that feels somewhat contrived for coolth.The narrative could have also done without giving each primary character a redeeming moment in the end – not everyone grows, let us accept that. The final exchange between Amrita’s brother and his girlfriend felt more than a little stretched, and the possibility the ending holds out for Vikram made me uncomfortable.

These are lesser issues than the manner in which Thappad’s dialogues pointedly blame mothers for the way daughters are conditioned to accept mistreatment from spouses and deprioritise themselves, with a mention of a father almost as an afterthought. Brief though this is, it is a surprisingly conservative stand from an otherwise liberal film. Of course women are often enablers of patriarchy, but it is one thing to state that – as Thappad does so well throughout – and quite another to have characters playing along with prevalent notions about maternal-versus-paternal responsibility, thus consciously playing down the accountability of the actual beneficiaries of patriarchy: men.

Whether to play to the gallery or due to a limited understanding of why financial settlements are granted to wives upon divorce, Thappad gets simplistic in a debate on this matter in the film. The least that Sinha and Waikul could have done was address the point that, among other things, such settlements are an acknowledgement of the unpaid work women do in home management, child rearing and elder care, leaving men free to earn.

These are incongruities in a film that otherwise marks an important moment in the history of Hindi cinema.

Thappad is earnest and succeeds in being engaging throughout, despite its challenging theme. Its awareness of gender goes beyond the obvious. It is significant, for instance, that the leading lady whose stance on intimate partner violence ends up educating and inspiring others is a stay-at-home wife and not a high-profile professional, thus reminding us that both conformism and rebellion could come from any quarters. It is significant too that she is placed in an educated, well-off family in a city rather than a poor or illiterate household in rural India, which would have allowed sections of the audience to pat itself on the back and pretend that such things do not happen among “people like us”.

Precisely because of its chosen setting, Thappad is designed to make us uncomfortable about our milieu and compel us to introspect about our own complicity in patriarchy. It also shines a light on patriarchy and gender-based violence across class divides.

Sinha and Waikul’s contemplative writing is exemplified by the tangential points they make without seeming to make them at all. Such as the recognition of a fact rarely recognised by a society obsessed with marriage and coupledom: that it is okay to be on your own. Or, at a time when Islamophobia and community representation are top of the mind for liberal Bollywood watchers,the casual presence of an important Christian character – a good person at that – in a film from an industry that has virtually erased the community from its stories for decades, once it dispensed with the stereotype of Christians as Westernised, quasi-alien drunkards, gangsters and sexually promiscuous gangsters’ molls.

And my goodness, the way that slap is presented! Like a bucket of ice being hurled on a sleeping human, or thunder that could end any reverie. Very much like the film itself.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 3.5

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	142 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/thappad-movie-review-taapsee-pannus-most-potent-film-yet-is-a-resounding-slap-in-the-face-of-misogyny-8096321.html

Poster courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thappad

Release date:	Kerala: February 20, 2020 Delhi: February 28, 2020
Director:	Anwar Rasheed
Cast: Language:	Fahadh Faasil, Sreenath Bhasi, Soubin Shahir, Nazriya Nazim Fahadh, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Chemban Vinod Jose, Dileesh Pothan, Vinayakan, Arjun Ashokan Malayalam with some Tamil and English

How can a film descend so dramatically from being profound, poignant and quirky pre-interval to shallow, stretched, sterile and repetitive thereafter?

Director Anwar Rasheed’s Trance takes off brilliantly. Fahadh Faasil plays Viju Prasad, an aspiring motivational speaker talent-spotted by a large corporation and transformed into a religious preacher. The early scenes of Viju in Kanyakumari trying to establish himself in his profession even while struggling to financially and emotionally support his mentally unwell brother are moving. They are also an uncommon blend of quiet yet wacko.

Fahadh dazzles throughout the film, but in the first half he gets to sink his ravenous actor’s teeth into a meaty script. Those manic eyes camouflaged from the world reveal themselves only when he is alone. In his avatar as a pastor, he explodes on stage with a matching manic energy. Those scenes in front of a mirror teeter on the edge of resembling his character Shammi’s signature scene in Kumbalangi Nights, but Fahadh has a distinctive touch that turns them into a tribute and a nod to that iconic 2019 film instead of a copy.

The first half of Trance is also enriched by the presence of Sreenath Bhasi in a brief role as Viju’s troubled sibling Kunjan. Bhasi is less celebrated than Fahadh in Mollywood but he is, without question, one of this industry’s most gifted actors. In the little time he gets on screen, he makes Kunjan an understated mix of fearful and fearsome, fond of Viju yet possibly resentful towards him because he is conscious – without ever having been taunted – of being a burden on his protective, devoted elder brother. What lies beneath that boyish facade one cannot quite tell, and Bhasi makes the character intriguing.

It is heartening that for a second year in a row, Malayalam cinema has made the effort to dwell on mental health, a theme that Indian cinema at large neglects.

The time spent on Viju and Kunjan’s relationship is the best written, best directed part of Trance.

The other is the electric interaction between Viju and a journalist called Mathews (Soubin Shahir) in a TV studio. The latter is in top form as a man pretending to be what he is not, quite like Viju.

Vincent Vadakkan’s screenplay excels too in its initial depictions of the machinations and manipulations at play when a wolf in preacher’s clothing stands on a stage working a frenzied mob of the faithful. Those passages are enthralling and oftentimes hilarious. After the interval though, similar scenes are repeatedly rolled out with little that is new being added to what has already been shown and said. By then the downhill slide is well and truly underway.

This is when it becomes noticeable that apart from Viju and Kunjan, there is absolutely no detailing in the writing of the rest of the players in Trance. Among others, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Chemban Vinod Jose and Dileesh Pothan are victims of one-note characterisation. The first two are evil representatives of a corporate giant, the latter is their amoral lackey – that is it, there is nothing more to them.

The low point of Trance though is the token female presence provided by Nazriya Nazim Fahadh.

(Some readers may deem certain parts of this paragraph spoilers) Nazriya’s decidedly marginal character, Esther Lopez, is brought in by the villains to be Viju a.k.a. Pastor Joshua Carlton’s secretary, to get close to him and unearth certain information about him. Obviously a regular professional would not serve their purpose. The recruiter is asked to shed light on Esther’s murky background, and she offers this cryptic explanation: “the usual – boyfriend scene.” OMG, she had a – you do not want your children hearing this – b.o.y.f.r.i.e.n.d.? When the lady explains herself, we learn that by “boyfriend scene” she meant that Esther fell in love, was ditched, took to alcohol and drugs, and perhaps has a child. (Spoiler alert ends)

The film is straining at this point to appear cool, but unwittingly betrays the writer’s biases – biases, it must be said, that are not unknown to commercial Malayalam cinema. This is a world in which sweet, young, innocent-looking women look sad immediately after sex. Because to a conservative mind, sorrow is a woman’s natural reaction to sex, even when consensual? Insert eye-roll emoji here. There is nothing to indicate that Esther Lopez is an assumed name, so it must also be asked why she could not have been a Marykutty Jose, Parvathy Rajendran or Shazia Mohammed. Was this a sub-conscious choice? What point was being conveyed by writing this alcohol-swilling drug addict as a woman with a decidedly Anglo-Indian sounding name who lives in Mumbai and has a Hindi line from a song playing in the background in her introductory scene?

Boss, all the slickness in the world – production design: Ajayan Chalissery, music: Sushin Shyam and Jackson Vijayan, camerawork: Amal Neerad – cannot camouflage your innate prejudice and traditionalism or the fact that in the second half you have allowed style to trump depth.

There is so much promise in the first half of Trance in its depiction of religion as an opioid. The second half though, completely fails to take that substantial beginning forward. A sub-plot involving Vinayakan has potential but its soul is overshadowed by production polish.

More important, if the goal was to probe corruption in religion and the exploitation of gullible devotees, then by zeroing in on a niche Christian group rather than mainstream Christianity or for that matter Hinduism or Islam, Rasheed and Vadakkan have taken a comparatively less risky path. As far as the writing challenge goes, ridiculing an overtly madcap religious sect that flails its arms about while screaming “Hallelujah” and “Praise the Lord” is relatively easy. Investigating such a group, since it is off-mainstream, is also politically safer than delving into the mind games, questionable finances and regressiveness of a more widely recognised sect from any one of the major world religions with a presence in Kerala.

Even within the space occupied by smaller, corporatised churches, Trance ends up being superficial. For a more insightful take on such organisations, check out the admittedly soapish but nevertheless insightful American series Greenleaf on Netflix.

In the end, in any case Trance seems less pre-occupied with depth and more concerned about impressing the audience with its cool camera angles. When a man kills another, I was too distracted by the blood drops falling in slow motion into a transparent drink to be disturbed by his motivations. And the film’s epilogue-like closing in which a gallant dude rescues a woman who was making no effort to rescue herself (because what else can a paavam girl do but wait around for Lochinvar on his white horse?) seems to have been thrown in only as an excuse to take the story to foreign lands.

I cannot believe that Trance was made by the director of one of my all-time favourite Malayalam films, Ustad Hotel. Next time cook that script some more, please.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.5

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	170 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/trance-movie-review-fahadh-faasils-manic-energy-lends-an-edge-to-an-initially-promising-ultimately-undeserving-script-8100991.html

Posters courtesy:https://www.facebook.com/trancemovie/

Release date:	February 28, 2020
Director:	Akhil Paul, Anas Khan
Cast: Language:	Tovino Thomas, Mamtha Mohandas, Reba Monica John, Saiju Kurup, Renji Panicker, Prathap Pothen, Rony David Malayalam

Rithika Xavier (Mamtha Mohandas) is heading a police team investigating a child’s murder in Thiruvananthapuram when she realises she has a serial killer on her hands. Samuel John Kattukkaran (Tovino Thomas), the forensic scientist assigned to her, is a genius with a reputation for overreach. He has an old personal connection with Rithika.

From the moment Sam enters the picture, from the treatment and presentation of the character in his very first minutes on screen, we know it is he who will crack the case. Scenes are set up with the obvious intent of giving him an opportunity to prove his smartness. At first he patronises his junior colleague and throughout outshines the senior to whom he reports – both of them women, marking the token female presence so common in Malayalam cop sagas while men go about actually solving the crime/s at hand.

Perhaps the only thing left was for Sam to wear a headband saying: “designated hero of the film.” Subtlety, you see, is not the forte of this crime thriller directed by Akhil Paul and Anas Khan. If you are willing to forgive Forensic its many venial sins on this front – since they are silly but never offensive in the way a certain kind of loud, misogynistic, male-star-driven Mollywood cinema is – you might enjoy this harmless crime drama up to a point, as I did.

Until the last half hour or so when the killer is unveiled and motivations revealed, Forensic’s deductions are impressive enough and related in an easy enough fashion to make the film an entertaining ride. Sure, the background score should have been played down. Sure, several scenes are awkwardly constructed to pointlessly over-emphasise a point, but well, no one is saying Forensicishighart. Sure, an arrest made by Rithika in an old case recounted in the present was senseless, but that can be put down to standard police inefficiency, even if it seems inconsistent with the portrayal of Rithika. Sure, little thought has gone into two scenes of arrests when the police bring their suspects out in public with faces uncovered knowing that crowds are present outside. Sure, it is hard to believe that so many little girls were lured away by a charmless criminal. Sure all the above are true, but until that last half hour, Sam’s work sustains the film.

I am not certain any Indian state police department has the facilities that Sam and his associate Shikha (Reba Monica John) have at their disposal – maybe they do, maybe they don’t, I am just wondering based on news reports and conversations with actual personnel that reveal how cripplingly ill-equipped police forces are in India. However, drawing on those very discussions, it does seem possible that a single Indian investigator might indeed have to be a Jack of all specialities within forensics, as Sam is shown to be in this film, due to a lack of available trained humanpower (far removed from the ultra-super-superspecialties I have been discovering through the addictive American real-life-crime series Forensic Files I have lately been binge-watching on Netflix). Either way, Sam is smart enough and his logic roughly convincing enough to a layperson for his investigation process to be engaging.

Then the perpetrator is revealed, the identity is indeed unexpected, but Forensic sinks itself in the person’s convoluted, complicated, uninspiring back story. What made the recent release Anjaam Pathiraa so unforgettable was the heartbreaking crime that motivated its serial killer’s spree, the plausibility of the murder plan, the performances of the charismatic actors in that tragic back story and those bringing it to its present-day conclusion, plus the film’s insight into Kerala politics and society. In contrast, the reasons for the commission of the horrible crimes in Forensic are drowning in contrivances. Layer upon layer seems to have been added with the sole purpose of throwing in more surprises, except that they are not particularly meaningful or interesting. And since the audience has not been given an opportunity to be emotionally invested in the killer – either to be sympathetic or repulsed – it all adds up to a damp squib.

The finale of this film is suicidal, trying too hard to be clever and ending up being too clever by half.

This was really unnecessary, because Forensic is passable entertainment till then and some of the earlier unfolding twists are not half bad. It also has Thomas and Mohandas’ likeable personalities going for it and the actors’ comfort with their characters’ professions, Renji Panicker in a nice turn as a retired police official, an occasional sense of humour in the screenplay, the fact that it does not take the male protagonist down a conventional path of romance in the way most commercial Malayalam films do, and the other fact that he is not obnoxiously macho as so many leading men are in formulaic Mollywood police sagas.

But what is a crime thriller if its central criminal is dull? The answer to that question is a summation of what Forensic has to offer.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.25

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	134 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/forensic-movie-review-tovino-thomas-mamtha-mohandas-starrer-is-clever-till-it-gets-too-clever-by-half-8103381.html

Posters courtesy: IMDB

THE annavetticadgoes2themovies MOLLYWOOD AWARDS 2019

THE ANNAVETTICADGOES2THEMOVIES AWARDS: BEST INDIAN FILMS 2019

100 GREAT INDIAN FILMS OF THE 2010s

REVIEW 760: CHHAPAAK

REVIEW 761: PRATHI POOVANKOZHI

REVIEW 762: BIG BROTHER

REVIEW 763: JAI MUMMY DI

FEATURE ON NATURE DOCU WILD KARNATAKA

REVIEW 764: PANGA

REVIEW 765: SHYLOCK

REVIEW 766: ANJAAM PATHIRAA

OSCARS 2020: FILMS THAT OUGHT TO WIN

REVIEW 767: BHOOT – PART ONE: THE HAUNTED SHIP

REVIEW 768: LOVE AAJ KAL (2020)

REVIEW 769: AYYAPPANUM KOSHIYUM

REVIEW 770: VARANE AVASHYAMUNDU

REVIEW 771: SHUBH MANGAL ZYADA SAAVDHAN

REVIEW 772: THAPPAD

REVIEW 773: TRANCE

REVIEW 774: FORENSIC