: Vijay Sethupathi, Yogi Babu, Rukmini Vasanth, Divya Pillai, Babloo Prithiveeraj

is a film one could call “ironically nostalgic”. It’s neither intentionally aspiring to appeal to one’s nostalgia by trying to recreate a beloved time period, nor is it a film that’s set in the 80s or 90s. 

 is set very much in 2025, and it’s a film that wants to be the sort of cool movie from back when Orkut was considered fashionable. This isn’t just because it borrows elements from decade-defining films such as the 

 (2001). It also feels like a movie that’s stuck in that same period without realising that a film needs to do a lot more to be considered funny today.

feel they’ve done enough just by creating a bunch of wacky characters to get us to look past scene after scene of impossibly convoluted sequences. It is partly a bank heist comedy that shuffles between a long-winded chase movie and a melodramatic love story between a hero who has nothing to lose, and a girl confined to her complex circumstances. Tying up the many disconnected strands of the film is Yogi Babu’s Arivu, a character so loud and underwritten that he simply shouts a joke or two in his attempt to save a dry scene.

'Ace' Movie Review: Vijay Sethupathi Couldn’t Care Less in This Royal Bluff of a Comedy

 made it socially acceptable for a film to be termed a “fanboy sambhavam”, we as the audience were aware that this sub-genre would eventually spread to all languages, catering to almost every fanbase. Dhananjay Shankar’s 

is among Malayalam cinema’s most desperate attempts at cashing in on this cow and the film tries to do this by milking the fanbases of two of its major stars—Dileep (obviously) and Mohanlal. 

For Dileep, the film underlines its intentions by introducing us to his nameless character by making him appear in a range of vehicles made popular by the actor’s yesteryear hits such as 

 dialled up the sentimental meter to underline how Dileep was once a darling among family audiences, it’s obvious that 

 is meant to appeal to the kids who grew up watching his slapstick comedies. The film even makes a case for this by opening with a caption which may very well be interpreted as a caveat—“no logic, only madness.”

Once you read this, maybe the idea is to not expect narrative cohesiveness or an organic flow of events. Instead, what the film aspires to achieve is a set of over-the-top comedy scenes that work independently as Instagram Reels which you’re likely to see when clips from the film land up there. This isn’t limited to scenes involving Dileep or Mohanlal either. Even the film’s smaller stars get the same treatment as the fourth wall is demolished, just so they can crack a lazy joke. This could be Vineeth Sreenivasan’s character introduction as the man who will only arrive from Chennai, owing to the man’s undying love for the city. This could also be Dhyan Sreenivasan being introduced as the Interview Star, just because of how popular he has become on YouTube. But the irritation doesn’t arise from the film taking a couple of lines for these wisecracks. Entire scenes are built around this Vineeth versus Dhyan clash, but the only joke is that it's around the same fourth-wall-breaking pop cultural reference the film cracks several times before this.   

This creates an added level of exhaustion when you have to see the same ideas play out with references to older films of both Dileep and Mohanlal. For Dileep, the film inserts the crassest of double-meaning jokes, the sort that deliberately confuses a cow for a woman, just so it can make a joke about “milking”. Toilet jokes abound too, including the film beginning with a Chief Minister who needs to desperately run to a toilet as he’s seen wearing diapers. But the film appears most clueless when it tries to make the most of what it can with Mohanlal’s call sheet. Some of these, including a slo-mo shot of Mohanlal tying his 

as he twirls his moustache is too cringe and too basic, even for his most diehard fan. The references that follow are just as lazy, trying to match what you see on Reels with what you can do when the star has agreed to say yes to anything. 

The problem isn’t with the madcap nonsense the film’s trying to achieve. In fact, if you’ve decided to take that plunge, why do you even try to plant this film in some sort of emotional logic? Why does Dileep’s character require the plainest, most cliched flashback when we’re already willing to accept his madness? Why give him such a lofty motivation for a revenge plot when nothing else in the film has even tried to make sense of itself? As the film moves from one annoying setup to another, we grapple with the inanity of the ideas and just how little the makers feel is enough to deliver on a 'theatre moment' that won't even last until you reach the gates of the theatre. In an effort to create a film that tries to be wild, we’re left feeling like we’re watching gibberish on screen, the sort that insults your intelligence, and takes pride in this act of insulting you.

Note: Dileep faced criminal charges and a Kerala court acquitted him of those charges in December 2025

Mohanlal cannot cameo-proof this crass action hero

Bha Bha Ba

'Bha Bha Ba' Movie Review: Dileep’s Mass Action Comeback Is Absolute Gibberish

saga has always moved with the confidence of a creation myth, repeating itself because myths, by nature, do. Still, repetition has a way of turning revelation into ritual.

, the third instalment in Cameron’s ever-expanding Pandora cosmology, finds itself caught between those two impulses: the desire to deepen a world already painstakingly imagined, and the nagging sense that we have, by now, walked these paths before.

, repetition finally begins to feel less like ritual and more like inertia. The film is not short on conviction or craft. What it lacks is surprise.

Human “Sky People” continue to invade Pandora, still intoxicated by extraction and entitlement. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), once a Marine and now fully Na’vi, remains their most unforgivable defector. His nemesis, Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), dead and resurrected as a Na’vi avatar, still pursues revenge with the dedication of a man who has nothing else left. The original sin of 

— imperial greed disguised as progress — has not been absolved. Cameron has never been subtle about colonial allegory, nor should he be. The problem is that the argument has stopped evolving.

Jake, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and their family are now settled among the ocean-dwelling Metkayina clan, led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and the steel-spined Ronal (Kate Winslet). But the saltwater refuge offers little balm for wounds that have not healed. The death of the Sullys’ firstborn son Neteyam still haunts the family, most acutely his younger brother Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), whose impulsiveness is sharpened by survivor’s guilt. His siblings — tween Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) and the adopted Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the mysterious offspring of Grace Augustine’s avatar — grapple with their own coming-of-age dilemmas. Kiri, in particular, possesses an unsettlingly intimate connection to Eywa, Pandora’s all-mother deity, but her connection feels like a burden she cannot yet command.

Spider (Jack Champion), Quaritch’s human son, complicates matters further. Raised alongside the Sully children, he has rejected his father and thrown his lot in with the Na’vi. When a group of traders known as the Wind Traders arrive in their bulbous flying ships, Jake makes the decision to send Spider back with them to a human science facility. Kiri is devastated. Neytiri, whose grief has curdled into hatred for humanity, insists the boy never truly belonged among them. The fractured lines between ideology, family, and survival are drawn (once again) and then, inevitably, set ablaze.

introduces its most nihilistic faction yet: the Mangkwan clan, also known as the Ash People. Led by Varang (Oona Chaplin), a ferocious, almost operatic presence, they inhabit a volcanic wasteland and have turned their backs on Eywa after a cataclysm reduced their homeland to cinders. “A weak mother for weak children,” Varang declares, rejecting spiritual communion in favour of domination and annihilation. Quaritch, recognising a kindred brutality, arms her with human weapons, forging an alliance rooted in mutual hatred and lust — there’s a very strange post-coital scene, but we mustn’t digress.

 wrestles earnestly with grief, survivor’s guilt, and moral compromise. It argues, with increasing bluntness, that survival may demand the use of the enemy’s own language. Metal poisons the heart and weapons corrupt the soul. And yet, when faced with extinction, pacifism becomes a luxury. Even the Tulkun, those majestic, sentient sea beings, are pushed toward retaliation. Kiri’s bond with Eywa grows more fraught. Spider’s biology becomes a resource to be protected from exploitation. Neytiri’s rage threatens to calcify before it bends, almost reluctantly, toward mercy.

These are serious ideas and Cameron remains a sincere, even obsessive, world-builder, attentive to emotional detail as much as spectacle. Saldaña’s performance is full of small, piercing moments: Neytiri’s eyes flooding as she confesses her discomfort with her children’s human hands. Ronal carries Winslet’s familiar facial mole, rendered with loving precision. Fire crackles with menace. Water moves with uncanny grace. The camera lingers on suffering when it counts, especially when the Tulkun are hunted. Cameron understands emotional leverage as well as he ever has.

And yet. For all its thematic weight and visual splendour, 

cannot escape the feeling of déjà vu. So much of it looks, moves, and resolves like the films that came before. The narrative beats land where you expect them to. The moral arguments circle familiar ground. By its third hour, the film begins to feel like a reiteration. You know this story. You know how it argues. You know how it mourns and how it rallies. 

felt radical because it asked audiences to look at their own world sideways, through alien eyes. Now it mostly asks us to remember how that felt. The message about conservation, resistance, and humility before nature remains urgent. But urgency alone cannot substitute for invention.

 is spectacular, sincere, and increasingly self-referential. It dazzles the eye while treading water, then ignites the screen but only manages to scatter the same old embers. Pandora still burns beautifully. The trouble is, we already know how this fire spreads.

Avatar: Fire and Ash

 ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Movie Review: James Cameron’s Beautiful Return to a World That No Longer Surprises

. You wouldn't admit it, but you've also watched 

. Now you want to fold the year in peace. How about a silly 

 and went in expecting more of the same: a tumescent comedy about a man with many wives, with no wars or social unrest to worry about, no particular politics to propagate. The first film, released in 2015, was some form of a hit. Surely the sequel will abide? 

Yes and no. Anukalp Goswami's film is as silly, juvenile and devoid of comic good sense as you'd think. Yet it is also a fairly open-hearted film—and a surprisingly committed skewering of bigoted and hyper-religious India. Our hero, Mohan (Kapil Sharma), is a Bhopal restaurateur who wants to marry his teenage sweetheart. The girl is Muslim, neither family is of the accepting ilk, and there is considerable danger to their lives. When no doors shall open, the couple decide to elope to Goa and marry as Christians. A series of twists too absurd to summarise finds the chivalrous Mohan married to a Christian, a Hindu and a Muslim — none of them, unfortunately, the woman he loves.

Manjot Singh takes over sidekick duties from Varun Sharma (In this way, the entire 

 cast is assured of some employment). Mohan, much like the protagonist of the first film, is a well-heeled descendant of Anil Kapoor and Govinda from the 90s, the hapless Indian male juggling multiple lives and wives — an involuntary non-celebate, if you will. The descriptor 'bechara', though, is an odd fit for Kapil, whom everyone in the film finds endlessly, unquestioningly attractive, and who can wriggle out of unfathomable comic spots with the flimsiest of excuses. 

Goswami worked as a writer for many years on 

. Everything from the costuming to the knee-jerk location changes speaks to that pedigree. Goswami’s humour works best when satirising the world that is driving Mohan crazy. The film finds something risible in our nation's over-obsession with religion and matrimony. "Repeat 'I do'," a priest instructs Mohan at his Church wedding, to which he chirrups, "I have to do." There are anti-Romeo squads milling around, prying hungrily into private lives, and Mohan's father (played by Akhilendra Mishra) wears the disgruntled affect of a right-wing prude. The film spares no demography: late actor Asrani turns up as a polyglot padre singing a moralist tune. 

 will surprise its own (conservative, middle-aged) fan base. For one, the film takes a commendably progressive view of consensual religious conversions: "It's about accepting, not changing," Mohan says. Now and then, characters will air simple Manmohan Desai truisms that were utterly commonplace a decade ago yet feel brave in the current context. Near the climax, Mohan practically weaponises secularism to justify his lies. It infuriated me. It made me nostalgic. It made me want to cry. For in this one respect, the film is pure fantasy.

Works as a skewering of conservative India 

Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon 2

'Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon 2' Movie Review: Kapil Sharma Versus The World

There’s no room for subtlety in Prakash Veer’s 

. When a character is described as a “deadly combination of a tsunami and a tornado," we know exactly who to expect. Dhanush (played by

) loves to call himself the Devil, but he isn’t referring to a sweet talker or a devilish mastermind. He shoots a man for clicking his photo without consent, assaults women he finds attractive and burns a petrol bunk in London, well, just because he can, why else would anyone ever indulge in arson? The horns and hooves are missing, but one gets the gist. Similarly, when his antithesis, Krishna, is written with all the kindness in the world, we get shots of the man cooking for poor children, sponsoring a teen’s education, and running a soup kitchen. Where does this leave a film like 

? Years back, trapped in a relic of time where the writing is primitive, and tropes are nauseatingly degrading.

Who isn’t a fan of body double films? A genre that’s as intrinsic to Indian cinema as wings are to flight, we’ve seen this play out through stories of long-lost twins, rogue fathers and sons, and lookalike Robin Hoods. 

 begins as an homage to these films, introducing Darshan as a character on the far ends of the abominable and admirable spectrums. Veer doesn’t go into their lineage, and neither does he connect their families. All we know is Krishna (Darshan), a harmless mess owner and aspiring actor, has the misfortune of sharing his countenance with the tawdry 

, who happens to be the future Chief Minister candidate in Karnataka. Mahesh Manjrekar is obviously cast as the evil leader of the state, who wants to pawn off his post to his son Dhanush, despite being familiar with his degeneracy. 

Krishna is instantly likeable—an oasis of sanity in the vast, unbearable desert that is this film. His reverence for Kannada cinema legends such as Ambareesh and his unlikely romance with Rukmini (Rachana Rai), his financier, make the journey bearable, and almost make us believe the film is going somewhere. But this is when we’re harshly reminded that the film’s desires lie not in the realistic interpersonal human drama space, but in a manipulative political action drama. 

Dhanush is quite literally the devil, and we’re told this through many accounts. The film uses his depravity to make sense of lewd depictions of sexual assault with a predatory gaze. Rachana Rai and Achyuth Kumar are in most of the film, but their characters are reduced to being mere spectators of Dhanush’s chaos. The primary mandate of Achyuth Kumar’s Nambiar, for instance, is to be outwardly flabbergasted by the clownery in front of him — much of which provides some unintentional laughs. Rai, on the other hand, is stripped of the little autonomy she was given at the start, and pushed to play a damsel in distress — scenes that are straight out of a 70s villain torture book begin to unfold.

Along the way, it’s as though the film loses interest in the path it initially laid out. Is it still the political drama it set out to be? Or a love triangle tacked on as an unfortunate afterthought? With a film like 

The Devil

'The Devil' Movie Review: Darshan's Film Is Devilishly Dated

Since deception is the language of a spy thriller, let’s pretend that movies exist entirely in isolation — like an introvert on a Saturday night. Let’s pretend that 

(2019), has absolutely nothing to do with the world around us. (One could argue that it doesn’t, but that’s a mob attack for another day). Let’s also pretend that film criticism is about seeing a movie for what it is, regardless of its moral character or ideology. It’s only fair, given that we all admire great serial killers for being awesome at what they do, legendary dictators for being no-nonsense leaders, wars for being the epitome of courage and technology, and plane crashes for doing tragedy so well.  

is not a great film. The title refers to the name of a mission featuring a badass spy who infiltrates the enemy nation so totally that one wonders if the film itself knows where its loyalties lie by the end. The mafia, underworld-politician nexus, gang and turf wars, the fetishized chaos — our lion-maned hero goes so undercover that the very fiber of the genre disappears. It’s almost a gangster biopic that forgets it’s a nationalistic espionage drama. In other words, it gets carried away with its own ruse. Imagine the Trojan Horse being rolled into the city of Troy, except the Greeks get too comfortable inside the horse and begin to enjoy the noise outside; this analogy applies even if Troy is the unsuspecting viewer and the horse is the elaborately constructed film. 

is also unacceptably long (214 minutes, and this is only Part 1), narratively crowded (despite the 

-like chapters), occasionally stylish, and overdoes the musicality-of-violence template (where banger techno-laced tracks accompany set pieces) to the point where it stops looking cool. I’m fine with the gore and torture porn, but if the idea is to show that brutality and barbarism are normal in this part of the globe, then even the provocations feel repetitive. And there’s the fundamental mistake of having a spy whose backstory we will only learn of in the second film, which means he’s just a brooding hoodlum in this one. Knowing nothing about him is one thing; knowing less than nothing is another. 

from its context. Leave the pretending to the film and its protagonist. If anything, this context makes it easier to engage with. It opens in 1999 during the Kandahar hijack, where pensive IB chief Ajay Sanyal (

) — the latest entry in Hindi cinema’s NSA Ajit Doval multiverse — negotiates the release of the hostages, but is disappointed with the top brass caving into the demands of the terrorists. (I’ll be careful with the references, because the term “fictional film inspired by real events” means that historical authenticity will be cited if the film-making is questioned, and fiction will be cited if the historical authenticity is questioned). Sanyal yells “Bharat Mata Ki” but does not hear a “Jai” from the frightened passengers because a gun is pointed at them by an evil man who mocks Hindus. Not long after, the 2001 Parliament attack happens; another gruesome death of an Indian appears as a reminder, a nudge to kickstart the revenge. Sanyal proposes Operation Dhurandhar, a long-term infiltration mission aimed to dismantle the core of Pakistan’s terrorism network. It’s method acting taken too far.  

Enter Hamza Ali (Ranveer Singh), the stoic Indian agent who sets his sights on Karachi’s Lyari and its mafia network. Over a two-hour-wide first half, Hamza pretends to be a Baloch fighter and penetrates the gang of Rahman Dakait (

), a local king-maker with so much main-character energy that he not once suspects that Hamza is a handsome puppeteer. Hamza counts on the egos of the Pakistani gangsters and politicians, thriving in the shadows while they turn on each other like a pack of wolves. Mr. Sanyal insists that they play the long game and keep collecting intel so that “some day it will be useful to a leader who actually cares for the country”. Hamza even honey-traps the 19-year-old daughter of a minister. If you find this creepy, remember that Hamza’s excuse is his loyalty towards his country. All is fair in love and patriotism; he’d do anything — including becoming a predator (the lion’s mane makes sense) and an 

-coded hero — for the sake of India. The tension of Hamza being exposed as a mole makes Rahman Dakait the Jack Nicholson character in 

— a comparison that nearly befits Khanna’s pulpy and fun face-acting as yet another Muslim baddie, putting into perspective just how much the prosthetics in 

 This film makes a few interesting creative choices. For instance, everyone but the low-key Hamza gets a Tarantino-style intro sequence. All the Pakistani characters have slow-mo entry shots or at least name plates, a nod to Hamza’s anonymity and the others’ high-profile presence in a story where they think they’re the string-pullers and starboys. It brings to mind 

 (2019), in the background, as one of the two ‘friends’ to a character who behaves like he’s the one who owns a rags-to-riches story; both movies are based in a Muslim-majority setting, yet the message could not be more different. The framework of 

is also full of possibilities. Singh plays a role within a role within a role at times, because his subterfuge as an Indian spy gets buried in his subterfuge as a Pakistani henchman who keeps switching sides. Even when he invites suspicion, it’s about which faction he’s working for, not which country he comes from.  

, of course, is that its single-minded worldview flattens the storytelling. The spy-action genre is rooted in the vulnerability and the toll of the job — the conflict between an inherent humanity and hard-nosed professionalism. Agents struggle to foster any kind of lives or identities of their own in pursuit of guile. Movies like 

, though, leave no room for any kind of self-doubt and existentialism; there is no place for a moral tug of war. The only humanity that Hamza is allowed to feel is nationalism at any cost; emotions flicker on his face only when he thinks of the suffering in his country. He gets flashbacks of not people but calamities (like the 26/11 Mumbai bombings), almost as if those like him are hardwired to exhibit only one brand of trauma. As a result, he barely feels like a flesh-and-blood hero even when he bleeds. Singh plays many roles within each other, but it’s the one he plays too hard — that of pretending to not be a complex, loaded character — that defines the performance. Every time the film threatens to enter 

territory — where a young female spy struggles to be treacherous in a culture that isn’t as sinister as her training led her to believe — you can tell that it pulls back. Hamza does not hesitate, and the only failure that registers is the failure to destroy the enemy.

Similarly, when he infiltrates the Rahman gang, the film keeps itself from portraying them as regular crooks. You can tell that they’re colourful personalities, and they’re fond of Hamza too, but when the betrayal does happen, the writing refuses to mine Hamza’s guilt or show them as casualties in a bigger mission; it’s always that they deserve it by virtue of who they are. The desire to paint every Pakistani as a sinner and a fool is at odds with the film’s decision to give them so much screen time; it’s often torn between playing them up (Khanna has more entry shots than single-screen superstars) and cutting them down to size. It’s not a new stance, but 

is so obsessive with it that the film-making tries to offset its agenda and lack of nuance with a slick action aesthetic. Since it cannot explore character traits and human emotions, it resorts to hyperstylized violence and inventive chases; many of them are craftily staged, but it’s obvious that they are the fillers meant to amplify the film’s rage. The script has a field day with this rhetoric. At one point, the fourth wall is shattered; it’s just a red screen with white transcripts of taped calls between the 26/11 handlers and the shooters; at another point, there are hints of a conspiracy that led to demonetisation; it even appropriates age-old movements and communal strife to show that nothing is holy. Fortunately, it stops inches short of blaming Pakistan for the meteor strike that wiped out dinosaurs, or for being the serpent that persuaded Eve into eating the forbidden fruit. It has boundaries.  

What this does is also blunt the grand-standing dialogue designed to be catchphrases. None of them (“the no. 1 enemy of Indians is India; Pakistan is no. 2”) have the noxious ring of 

s “ghar mein ghus ke maarenge,” a line that eventually makes a comeback to rescue Hamza’s journey to nowhere. There are so many swipes at 2000s Indian policy-making that the film often loses track of its own stakes. 214 minutes are a lot under most circumstances, not least when everyone and everything else — except India — lives rent-free in its head. In terms of invading geopolitical fortresses under the cover of darkness, movies like 

review with a Tour de France metaphor about how, if everyone is doping in a sport, is anyone really doping? It becomes about who does it the best, and who the most flamboyant and convincing cheater is. In that sense, 

isn’t exactly the Lance Armstrong of its ilk. It gets sidetracked by its own trickery. Forget realism and tainted triumphs, even the entertainment feels like a red herring. In isolation, after all, it’s just a wooden horse parked inside the gates of another land.

Dhurandhar

'Dhurandhar' Movie Review:  No Love Lost or Found In Ranveer Singh's Spy Thriller 

’s first hour which could easily be termed the most elegant stretch of cinema in all of Malayalam this year. One is unsure if one can call it a sequence or a montage, but in no recent movie has the lines between a screenplay and editing felt this invisible. It’s a sequence that traces the modus operandi of a brutal serial killer; a habitual offender whose list of victims exceed the population of a small village. But as we switch from one victim to another, all playing out within the timeline of Stanley’s (

) murdering process, his aliases are tossed around like clothes, churches dissolve to become temples, and the story of one hapless woman becomes interchangeable with another.

The film may repurpose beat sheets from classics within the serial killer sub-genre, but the seamlessness with which scenes flow into the next and the control with which the director Jithin K Jose holds us with a death grip, makes 

 a genre-definer for Malayalam cinema. This includes something as precise as how the film chooses to cut away from and then cut back to a phone call with a forensic officer. It’s the sequence in which Stanley learns a new method to trap his victims, and as we switch between timelines and victims to understand what he’s been doing, we fail to realise how many different elements of cinema had to merge for us to feel the full grasp of that one moment.

It works so well only because the film takes its time to plant seeds early on in its screenplay. This could be something expected like the tune of an old Tamil movie song playing at the most sinister moments. This includes the way even cigarettes get a character arc; the kind heroines do not get in our films. And this is also why smoke rings create more impact in this film than superstar cameos do in other movies.

Another reason why the film feels this intricate is because it works just as well as a character study as it does when you think of it a cat-and-mouse game between two highly intelligent people. In a striking similarity, we’re led to believe that the obsessive officer capable of capturing someone as wicked as Stanley, needs to be a variation of the same personality type. So when metaphors like that of a python capturing a rat or that of an owl waiting for its prey for several nights gets tossed around, the intention is not to simply create mystique for these complex characters. They also push us into a deeper understanding of people like Stanley and Jayakrishnan (Vinayakan), and how they are not too unlike each other.

Their exchanges work even better because the investigation itself is set between the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border. As they crisscross between state boundaries to capture their victims, both characters show signs of possessing a complex dual personality. With one glance, we see the toxic urge of a serial killer, taking over the mind of a mild-mannered married man and in the next second, we see the man take control of his urges, only so he can plan his next move.

 is also a film that does not work overtime to justify the mindset of the serial killer. Unlike films like 

 in Tamil, the film isn’t desperate to make you sympathise with the killer and give you a logical reason from his childhood to explain why he is or who he is. Instead, as Jayakrishan narrates an episode from 

childhood, we glance through Stanley’s childhood home and the photos from his youth that defined the killer he is today.

The music by Mujeeb Majeed, and the cinematography by Faisal Ali is simply pitch perfect, as seedy lodges and the interiors of a car take the shape and form of a labyrinth that’s impossible to escape. The sound design, featuring the eerie sound of burning paper, often leads to multiple interpretations and feelings as with every new victim in the film. The symbiosis between art-forms is so streamlined that even the sight of the vintage maroon-coloured Honda Accord gets under your skin.

Vinayakan is surely the film’s driving force, holding together the many strains of a film that could easily have become too complex to grasp. And yet, after a lifetime of watching his movies, it is Mammootty who shows us a side to him we haven’t yet witnessed before. In a striking scene, curiosity transforms into a sick smile when he learns about a new weapon and how he can source it. He is a brutal beast in this film, the kind that does come with the liberty of approaching it with a heightened mannerism. He is real as a serial killer can be, embodying as much as a debonair as villainy as a murderer. Whoever thought it was possible for us to make us love him even more, by playing a character that deserves all the hate in the world.

Kalamkaval

'Kalamkaval' Movie Review: Mammootty Like Never Before In This Genre-Defining Thriller

What’s in a blouse, you might ask. A lot more than you can imagine, according to Vipin Radhakrishnan’s moving Tamil film 

. But most of all, a mother grieving the lost innocence of her sons. A mother-in-law rueing her own incapacity to show empathy for the wife of her son. A friend who struggles to see her friend pass, even in their old age. And a woman bent on protecting her freedom to live life the way she sees fit. 

 headlines this beautifully rich portrait of a woman who lets a sari blouse come between her and her son.

Angammal (Kailasam) is a tough cookie — she never forgets to slip in a cuss or two, even in between words of love and assurance. It’s right to say that she lives the remainder of her husband-free (she lost her husband as a young mother of two) life by her own rules. And we don’t mean this in the clichéd, you only live once attitude that prompts people to live vicariously. Angammal doesn’t know any other way but this. A milk farmer herself, she educates young mothers about breastfeeding without hesitation, gives villagers unsolicited but 

 advice, and sometimes even helps do away with the cruel husband of a dear friend. All while ditching the sari blouse at the expense of lewd and revolting chatter. Based on acclaimed Tamil author Perumal Murugan’s short story ‘Kodithuni’, the film chooses to pause on the latter point.

When Pavalam (Saran Sakthi), her youngest son, a doctor 

 Angammal dotes over, comes home with news of wanting to marry a woman from a wealthier family, he starts looking at his mother differently. All of a sudden, the mother who struggled for 30 years to give him a better life and education slowly disappears, and all he can see is a woman who bears her breast. Embarrassment fills Pavalam up, eating away at his love and respect for her. Things get delightfully complicated when he enlists his sister-in-law (Thendral Raghunathan) to help cover her up. We see these scenes unfold in the middle of a busy kitchen, with the two men left listening to these persuasions from outside.

While the film largely deals with Pavalam and Angammal, the film takes this opportunity to subtly mount a gentle portrait of a single mother. As the film progresses, the differences between Pavalam and his elder brother Sudalai (Bharani) become clear, reminding us to gently reflect on our own lived experiences with siblings and mothers. Angammal isn’t flawless. While she encourages her friends to walk out of problematic 

 and on violent partners, her kindness isn’t extended to her own daughter-in-law, Sharadha, who often struggles to maintain autonomy in the house. Angammal teaches her granddaughter the power of individualism, but doesn’t lend the same kindness to her mother. 

In the middle of all this seriousness, the film still finds ways to inject mirth. Like when Sudalai and Pavalam begrudgingly get the perpetually shirtless village head to talk some sense into their mother. “This man himself doesn’t wear a shirt, now how will he convince Angammal?” someone says. While this makes us chuckle, it also makes us realise his shirtlessness isn’t quite as appalling as Angammal’s choice. 

Why is it socially acceptable for a man to bare his chest, but a woman’s body—at any age—is subjected to scrutiny?

dissects these questions. But it also urges us to keep things simple. Would Angammal have put on her blouse if she were asked directly? There’s no way to know, but the film keeps us guessing.

Angammal

‘Angammal’ Movie Review: A Sari Blouse Becomes the Thread for a Stunning Portrait of Motherhood

There was a time in Tamil cinema when films like 

 may have been considered “cool”. This must have been around the early 2010s, when the first generation of Tamil filmmakers graduated from the Broadband Downloads School of Modern Cinema. Of course, they all cultivated their tastes with modern classics, but somewhere down the line, films of Tarantino and Guy Ritchie became the most important names in their taste-making. 

, in all fairness, appears to be a film that was found in one of the old Seagate hard disks of that era.

It comes with all the attempts at trying to make everything look cool and quirky. This includes a lot of low-hanging fruit, like that of a small-time gangster, who appears wearing the same t-shirt throughout the film. The phrase, “Love And Love Only”, is what’s written on it, in an obvious reference to Fazil’s Vijay romance 

(1997). The film tries to do something clever with this, but by the time it gets there, the punchline needed to be epic for it to have mattered. The film often forgets that we’ve seen hundreds of similar movies by now that a lazy pop-cultural reference is enough to make us laugh. This applies to almost all the earlier portions of 

, which is fundamentally a Tarantino-styled twist on the basic plot of 

 (Rita) and Radhika Sarathkumar, who plays Rita's mother. But even the writing around their eccentricities does not get any support because the plot itself is forced and chaotic. Which means that even the clever-on-paper idea to make Rita a real baddie only comes alive when she spells it out in as many words. We’re meant to be thrilled at her cunning machinations and how she manipulates her way out of trouble, and yet these ideas appear too silly and add nothing to the film.

Actors such as Redin Kingsley, Sunil and Ajay Ghosh play iterations of characters they’ve all done several times before, and by the time the film arrives at a joke at their expense, we’ve already gotten there minutes ago. What’s left is a desperate attempt at making a certain 

 of movie, with the assumption that it would appeal to a certain audience that cannot differentiate between funny and forced.

A gratingly desperate attempt at being quirky 


Revolver Rita

'Revolver Rita' Movie Review: A Lazy Comedy That Comes 15 Years Too Late

’s Rishu walk into a bar. There is no punchline here, because they are no joke. They participate in a victimhood-measuring contest. Rannvijay declares he had to sleep with a female agent knowing who she was and cheated on his wife to make his dad proud; it was very difficult. Kabir claims he slapped a girl to make her love his alpha masculinity; it was very hard. Jordan says he quotes Rumi and chose to meet his dead soulmate in a field beyond; it wasn’t easy. Ved claims his girlfriend fixed him by rejecting his alter-ego; it was terrible. Rishu declares he chopped off his hand to be with his bad-boy-craving wife; it’s been a sacrifice. In walks 

’s Shankar, who lights a cigarette and scoffs at them all.

Shankar says — and he speaks painfully slowly — that he has taken revenge for 

’s Kundan, his infamous brother from another mother who died for being a romantic stalker. Shankar claims that this time, the girl also pays the price for refusing to reciprocate, for trying to change his DNA, and for ‘leading him on’ under the pretext of an educational experiment. He is a true martyr to the cause. The others cheer and clink glasses. 

’s Vikramaditya enters the bar and screams that he won over his hater by guilting her with his suffering and generosity, but nobody pays heed. They barely recognise him. 

’s Krish enters but everyone mocks him for being a soft-boi rockstar who devotes himself to the girl’s story instead. It is after all Shankar’s world — and we’re just cringing in it.

 and writer Himanshu Sharma’s ideas about the transformative powers of love are hit-or-miss arrows in the dark — provocative, unhinged, wild, conceptually shameless even, but never uninteresting. A mentally ill girl’s imaginary ex is actually her father? Sure. A dwarf flies to Mars as atonement? Why not. Hate it or be perplexed by it, you cannot ignore it. But 

 is the kind of movie that needs a restraining order. Even its restraining order needs a restraining order. Its one-sided love is an aesthetic; violence is an aesthetic; male entitlement is an aesthetic; female agency is an aesthetic; madness is an aesthetic; patriotism is an aesthetic; spirituality is an aesthetic; smoking is an aesthetic; death is an aesthetic; you are an aesthetic. I admit that, as a man who romanticises pain as an expression of love, I have inherent blind spots. I can get swayed, despite the film-critic brain warning me not to. But the film is such a non-surgical strike on wokeness, feminism and counterculture that not even my gender identity can fool me anymore. 

The story does everything to normalise cuckoo. Shankar (

) is a Tamil student in Delhi with anger issues. His superpower is that he gets arrested but nobody files an FIR against him; this isn’t a movie where FIRs are filed, even if he later burns down the lawns of the Joint Secretary himself. Mukti (

) — meaning ‘salvation’ — is a Ph.D. student whose 2200-page thesis explores male rage and violence as something like an appendix that can be removed from a body. This is the saner part, mind you. When she sees Shankar on campus, she decides to use him as her guinea pig. The stakes: if she successfully “cures” his rage and turns him from animal to human, she will get her degree. Animal agrees, but what she pretends to be oblivious to is the fact that our man chooses to follow Gandhi’s path (during a riot, he lets a driver slap him back — cue thesis signed) because he falls for her. He changes for love. The implication is that she is exploiting his poor, middle-class manhood.  

At some point, she takes him to a hotel, strips and agrees to have sex with him as compensation — he refuses like a good animal, of course, because his line “You’re ready to shed your t-shirt for work, but I cannot shed my shirt for love” is meant to elicit claps from a testosterone-filled cinema hall. (Is it ever lust if it disregards consent and still manages to be ‘sanskari’?). I did hear some happy sighs behind me. It could have been the sound of my soul leaving my body, but I can’t tell. Manic-pixie Mukti is made to string along a madman for a thesis that’s not half the potshot at the criticisms of Bollywood masculinity that it thinks it is. This is just the first half.  

 mode after that, when humble Shankar decides to prove that he’s worthy of marrying the rich girl. There’s a random UPSC-exam montage that might give 

 an existential crisis. When he doesn’t get what he wants, the screenplay insists that it isn’t his fault. Nothing is. The logic being: why would you let a beast taste blood and expect him to alter his primal instincts? The hell he causes then is shown to be his genetic birthright, never mind the bizarrely tone-deaf scene of Shankar crashing her wedding and pouring holy water on her face from an acid bottle. Subversive is not the word. Religion suddenly enters the chatroom, as does national pride; there’s a parallel present-day track of best Indian Air Force pilot Shankar needing counselling from a heavily pregnant Mukti in a twist of fate. It’s all on her, again, because if she doesn’t sign his release form, she is denying the country their best pilot in an escalating war against not one but two enemies. India needs her to succumb. There’s a cameo in Varanasi, too, that unfolds in a 

 multiverse nobody asked for. That controversial AI-generated climax letting Kundan live has nothing on the entirety of 

, which seems to have been conceived to teach everyone that nobody can love like violent and weepy incels. 

 is that it’s not even fundamentally sound. It is detached from the (civilised) world we live in as well as the grammar of storytelling. At some point, when Shankar is carrying a bleeding Mukti to the army hospital, a colleague casually tells him to get her to sign the counselling form because they need him; never mind that she’s almost comatose in his arms. I won’t even get into the security detail at her bureaucratic father’s South Delhi bungalow; Shankar waltzes in and out so often during the film that it’s natural to assume that her dad has a humiliation kink. Such strange staging and detailing count on the viewer to suspend disbelief and submit, but it urges us to suspend sense and comply instead.  

Whatever the role, Dhanush rarely delivers a dull and misguided performance; that streak breaks today. His Shankar is so busy milking every ounce of sympathy in a misogyny-wired setting that the character does not register as human. Now you’ll say Shankar was supposed to be an ‘animal’ anyway; if that’s the literal case, where are the whiskers? Why is every growl so stilted? Is love his cage or his tetanus shot? Kriti Sanon’s Mukti brings to mind a Kanika Dhillon-written character. She smokes and drinks a lot so she must be capable of betrayal and self-punishment. There’s a stretch of film where she’s pregnant, drinking, married, sick and regretful enough to ask Shankar to father her baby? I didn't mean to end that sentence with a question mark. It just happened.  

If you wonder how Shankar became a pilot after passing his UPSC prelims, keep wondering. The 169-minute film may or may not have an answer. A.R. Rahman’s music tries to go the Mohit Suri-soundtrack way, but you can tell it’s working overtime to sell the deranged premise. “I hope you realise that those who die for love are also somebody’s sons” is not quite the big-screen flex in an incel-infested landscape. The narratives of young men (and women) having to prove their loyalty by bleeding are designed to evoke the doctrines of faith and mythology. The gods must be crazy, though, if a quirky song compares the hardships of passing a government exam to the hardships of “getting a girl”. Sometimes there is no redemption, especially when a film burns itself to a crisp and asks us to worship the funeral pyre. Ironically, I’m struggling to stay calm about a protagonist whose anger issues are never cured. Taking deep breaths right now would be great in theory, but tell that to the AQI — the air today is almost as poisonous as the air-conditioned halls we seek refuge in.

Tere Ishk Mein

‘Tere Ishk Mein’ Movie Review: When ‘Raanjhanaa’ and ‘Animal’ Enter A Toxic Relationship

 goes for broke. The 95-minute independent film, written and directed by Ananyabrata Chakravorty, wears the cloak of yet another small-town whodunnit. There’s a death in misty Kalimpong; sullen cop Uttam (Sukant Goel) and his boss, Tamang (Chittaranjan Giri), are flummoxed by the details: a religious girl poisoned by a holy sweet? The theatrical Bondo (Rajit Kapur, always) is summoned from Kolkata by the powers that be; the senior sleuth has a direct line to “Didi,” and behaves like he’s an amalgamation of Byomkesh Bakshi and Feluda in his head. Meanwhile, Uttam’s home situation is complicated — he resents his widowed mother (Sadhana Singh) for various reasons, not least because she constantly recalls their past life and late husband. The mother-son bond is strained, she aches for his attention, so it’s amusing when Tamang and team unofficially recruit her to be part of the investigation because of her passion for Bengali detective novels. Uttam’s colleagues confide in her like sons in their downtime; it’s a quirky touch without the energy of a quirky touch.

In theory, the film is bound by themes of social identity, grief, belonging, societal tensions and the inherent biases of the male gaze. Not to mention the distinctly Bengali relationship with culture and literature, which is often mined for humour in Hindi cinema. It has a lot on its mind, particularly in terms of parental dysfunctionality and the burden of emotional estrangement. But 

 falters where most indies do — the limited resources limit the vision and staging of the story. Characters speak to each other like they’re explaining the backstory to us; the makers struggle to convey information through organic conversations and scenes; a ‘revelation’ has the killer on the brink of breaking the fourth wall; the longer shots seem to exist because there’s not enough time to do multiple ones; there are no real transitions or rhythm between moods and locations; the sparse score feels like less of a creative decision and more of financial one.

It’s basically first-draft film-making, where the narrative counts too much on our perception of the atmosphere-heavy template to get across its little subversions and red herrings. The grand reveal isn’t as much of a twist as the film hopes it is; a small interaction between two cops — where one is talking like he’s directly urging the audience to understand the mother-son dynamic — gives it all away in a heartbeat. I like the idea of the twist, but it also makes 

look like more of a short film that fumbles its feature-length padding; it doesn’t know what to do with itself beyond the gimmick. 

Apart from an intense Sukant Goel as Uttam, the performances do not supply the conceit of the film. When actors play characters whose motives are supposed to be ambiguous, these characters should not appear as if they’re reverse-engineering their tics because they already know the ending. It’s obvious here, similar to that age-old habit of killers suddenly sounding creepy once the story — and not the world within — disclose their identity. Except it’s not sudden in movies like 

; they’re behaving strangely all along, to such an extent that they force the plot to justify their ‘off’ overtones. The performer is too aware of the climax. There is some merit in the film’s desire to make more of the human environment. The fabric is there; I like that Uttam’s boss, Tamang, for instance, isn’t entirely reduced to a comic device or an incompetent stooge. He has an arc, too. I also like that the film isn’t coy about its connections to everyday life; the political resentments and Kolkata-based Bondo’s patronising treatment of the town hide in broad daylight. It’s not normal for modern Hindi-language films to depict any sort of link between the state and its players. 

 unfolds like it’s stretching time and flirting with depth, trying to be a film at the intersection of fiction and life. It is just not naturally a film. It’s a striking one-liner that invokes every suspense master from Hitchcock to Ray, yet the execution lacks the nuance and technical control necessary for the genre. You want to be kinder to crowd-funded movies in this age of streaming deals and industry clans. But you hope the movies are first kinder to themselves. In short, 

 can start a conversation at a dinner table, but can’t sustain it beyond the second (easter) egg. 

Kaisi Yeh Paheli

‘Kaisi Ye Paheli’ Movie Review: Technical Glitches Mar A Good One-Liner 

, the most striking moment has more to do with a sound, rather than visuals. It feels like just another day at Victoria’s (

) beauty salon when we hear this, as she waxes the arms of a customer. Until then, we see Victoria maintaining a happy face through it all, as she tries to manage the crowd at the salon with the worries of having to elope with her non-committal boyfriend. But each time Victoria tugs at a waxing strip in her hurry to remove them, the sound we hear is that of slaps falling on Victoria, along with the voice of a man shouting. Until that moment, we see bruises on her face, but the film doesn’t quite explain their origin. And with the sound of each waxing strip getting pulled, we listen in on the taunts being hurled at Victoria for her decision to marry outside of her religion. For women like her, the salon 

It’s a peculiar point during this very peculiar movie. We meet Victoria as she tries to manage what’s extremely personal with what’s professional. A board which hangs outside her salon reads, 'No Entry For Men'. This board is what gives the salon the mood of a sanctuary for several women like Victoria. So, when Victoria is asked to look after her friend’s rooster, it’s perhaps the only male that has been allowed into the salon in years. 

Apparently, the 'No Entry For Men' sign at the door isn’t limited to the salon either. It’s how Sivaranjini has chosen to make her film, too, without the visual presence of any man. Not that their presence is not felt.  We get to see these men in the form of shadows, as the display image on a video call, and through the many stories that are being narrated by these women. For one of them, this salon is her escape from her dying father-in-law, stuck in the ICU at the hospital next door. As for Victoria, she appears to be pleasant and calm as she speaks to her customers, but each time she steals a moment for herself as she runs to the toilet, her facade is broken and she breaks down in what appears to be the only space she believes is her own.

Yet this very notion of privacy is what Sivaranjini aims to break with her film. Through the compassion of her film, she asks Victoria why she needs to hide her tears from the sisterhood of the salon. It underlines the need for these everyday bonds and a friendship that makes life a little bit easier. And the choice to narrate this story by setting it at a salon isn’t by accident either. If men have their barber shops to discuss matters of international importance and politics, 

 urges us to look at such women-only spaces as a refuge for their hearts, just like the barber shop becomes a place for the head.

We feel this sincerity is just how quickly strangers turn into friends at this place. In one moment, we see a lady walking to a salon for the first time in her life, as she prepares to leave the country for the first time. In the very next moment, we listen to Victoria coach this lady about the inconvenience of the saree and the practical ease of switching to a salwar. Victoria even goes a step further by not only administering this advice, but also offering to take her to a shop to make this maiden purchase. It’s just that simple to find a buddy, and that’s what Victoria tries to tell us too.

So, the feeling is that of catharsis more than joy when an old friend visits Victoria after decades. Their affection is obvious in the way they both eat off of the same tiffin box, even if their reunion appears formal and distant until then. And when the salon clears itself out, leaving Victoria alone with her friend, she feels comfortable enough to break down 

 with her. She doesn’t feel the need to run to her washroom, at least not anymore. And when Victoria lets her old friend back into her life, after what feels like eternity, the 'No Men Allowed' signboard reappears in our thoughts, asking women like Victoria if they, too, should subscribe to the same philosophy.

It’s a moving drama, peppered with humour in a way that feels so organic to their space. More than the sleaze of locker room talks, we get the tenderness of teenage love as another customer narrates the story of an old, handsome neighbour and the occasions in which she would run with her younger sister to ogle at her pre-pubescent crush. In terms of a reference, I was reminded of certain passages from the 2007 Lebanese comedy 

 (Sukkar banat) about a similar sisterhood that blooms in a space reserved for women alone. 

Held together by Meenakshi Jayan’s rock-solid performance — including a dimly lit breakdown between her and the man on her phone — we’re let in expertly into a secret passageway through which feminism becomes a caressing whisper, rather than a loud wail.

A soft-spoken drama about life's harder everyday troubles 

Victoria 

'Victoria' Movie Review: Meenakshi Jayan's Rock-Solid Performance Anchors This Moving Sisterhood Drama 

The test of an effective Hindi film these days is the post-screening afterglow. If it’s a loud historical, the chaotic traffic and fumes outside feel like a relief. If it’s a button-pushing social thriller, some walk out with big chests and a renewed passion to blame someone. If it’s a patriotic biopic, there might be wet eyes and a desire to be very Indian. If it’s a love story, men stride out with an inflated sense of self-worth, corny grins and cloud-nine-sized delusions. At different points in life, I’ve been guilty of doing all of the above. Add 

 to the list, a period drama about poets and lovers that’s so immersive and committed to its setting that I was overcome by an urge to speak in chaste Urdu and rhyme idioms with emotions. The cab driver did not appreciate my use of “qaatil” to describe the waiting time. He sped away the second I started waxing lyrical about English being a flight and Urdu being the nest we come home to.

 isn’t the kind of film that usually gets it right. It has an old-world charm that most productions often stage as glib romanticisation and vanity. You can tell that director Vibhu Puri descends from the 

 School of Storytelling: the orchestrated lighting, the museum-like aesthetic, the casually precise visuals, the music as a set-piece of sentiments and gestures, the conviction in moments, even the narrative threads. The premise is 

-coded. It’s 1998 in Old Delhi, and a young man named Nawabuddin Saifuddin Rahman Rizvi (

) needs a miracle to save the family business—the last Urdu printing press in the city. So he travels to Punjab under the guise of being mentored by a famous but retired shaayar, Aziz Baig (

An aspiring poet himself, Nawab pretends to be a student of the old genius; what he really wants, though, is to publish Aziz’s lifework, earn a fortune and save his press. In the process, he falls for Aziz’s reticent daughter, Mannat (

), the only one aware of his intent. I also thought of the Punjab portion of 

: imagine Raj arriving in the misty mustard fields of Punjab, actually wanting to start that beer factory, pretending to flatter Chaudhry Baldev Singh for his land and then falling for Simran on the side. The conflict in 

 is its own, though, where the self-destructive idealism of art is softened by the designed atonements of masculinity. 

 is that it is many genres at once. It’s a tense sibling drama: Nawab is the emotion-driven romantic who believes in the purism of poetry, while his ruthless younger brother wants to publish erotic fiction to save their press; they do not see eye to eye or ear to ear. It’s a nice mentor-protege dramedy: Aziz warms up to Nawab despite his doubts, and the old man is perceptive enough to encourage Nawab’s blossoming romance with his daughter. It’s obviously a love story: Nawab persuades a once-bitten-twice-shy Mannat to give his humanity a chance, despite her knowing that he has ulterior motives. It’s a father-daughter tale: Mannat aches to see Aziz recognised for his past life, which is why she welcomes the idea of a ‘fan’ being tutored by him. It’s a flawed-artist drama as well: Aziz Baig has the kind of backstory that typically invites the casting of Naseeruddin Shah, who has humanised the gifted-but-guilty patriarch like nobody else over the years. It’s also a neat meta touch to have Shah’s character resist mainstream fame and compromise, while Varma’s character aims to find a balance between artistic integrity and commercial gains. It’s always bittersweet to see Shah channel his age and experience — the sheer toll of living and creating beyond his contemporaries — into old men who say things like “don’t leave without warning, friend”. Movies like these use the mortality of greats as more of a coping mechanism than a weapon. His scenes with Varma are steeped in the subtext of proverbial baton-passing; it’s hard not to be moved. 

Most of all, the film is a survival drama. It’s about the survival of a time, a fabric, an identity and a sound against all the odds. It excavates the relationship between the modern audience and the diversity of art, but also between Indian culture and the resilience of language. It says something that the plot connects the erasure of Urdu to the diminishing roles of storytelling and love. We’re so used to hearing Hindi being either bastardised or exoticised on screen that the vintage mix of Gulzar’s lyrics and Vishal Bhardwaj’s compositions (especially the haunting guitar riffs in ‘Aap Is Dhoop Mein’) supply the flowery dialogue and expressions. The songs, for once, make you want to stay in them; the exchanges keep us waiting for the next turn of phrase and verbal joust. The Muslim characters are such an organic part of the environment that it never feels like they’re performing Urdu as an aesthetic. At no point are they limited to labels, fetishised figures or the film’s ingrained commentary.

In an age where historical erasure and political narratives go hand in hand, the tagline of 

 — “Kuch pehla jaisa” (something like before) — holds more significance. It’s far from perfect, but it trusts in a world of choreographed autonomy. Nawab’s mission starts as a self-serving one, though the screenplay never makes a big deal about his deceptions. There is often room for forgiveness, just as there is for poetry. The film does have a stereotypical opinion about loose-hearted men and their refuge in verse. Mannat’s persona, too, is reduced to ‘the woman who waits’ while the males wrestle with lofty ideas of salvation and redemption. The film resorts to a bit of needless theatricality in the final act, but its gaze remains reasonable and hopeful. There’s a musicality about its flaws, too, which is more than what one can say of movies about words in worlds and worlds in words. It’s not the most convincing climax, but by then it’s like watching a talented batsman stumble in the dying seconds of a match after scoring an audacious (or ‘gustaakhi’) century. As a viewer, you either choose to savour the romance of almost winning or get sidetracked by the reality of losing. I know which one I chose. My brief tryst with language nearly cost me a ride home — or a flight back to my nest.

Gustaakh Ishq

‘Gustaakh Ishq’ Movie Review: Let There Be Poetry

The sun and sea might look like they’re deceivingly close, but can one meet the other? This is a question that the hero of 

has to navigate quite early in the film. The analogy isn’t just a metaphorical reference to a “star” and his humble disciple who stays miles beneath him, but also a direct nod to their names: Surya (

), the Telugu film star who is worshipped by Sagar (Ram Pothineni), a young man who is besotted by his love for his on-screen idol. How far can a fan go to show his love for his star, without ever setting eyes on the actor? Like the sea, a spectator that gently waits 

 the sun to rise and set in glory every day, a fan’s fate isn’t too dissimilar from the former. He waits and waits to see his star at the movies one more day. 

about your love for your star, even feel embarrassed 

 the unrequited nature of this love, or maybe even remind you of a crazed fan you’ve seen whistling at the cinemas. But it’s primarily designed to make you feel good. This is the story of Sagar, a fan who is so in awe of his star that when Surya gets a rough reality check which reminds him of the fragility of his stardom, he hatches a plan to live another day to see his star. But instead of focusing on the muscular nature of this obsession, the film tunes us into the emotion behind this madness. The film, edited ingeniously by Sreekar Prasad, takes us back and forth between pivotal moments in a young and younger Sagar’s life, etched and shaped into place by Surya. 

The film’s writing deems it important enough to tell us why Sagar adores Surya in the first place, an important detail that distinguishes

 from many others of its ilk. It also weaves a beautiful story around Sagar’s village, where it takes boats that brave the tempestuous waters of the Godavari to reach Godapali Lanka, a reclusive island with no electricity. It is a village where kids run around with bells in place of amulets to stay noticeable, and neighbours walk in and out of each other’s houses to borrow condiments. And true to its name, the village also gets an arc befitting a Ramayana comparison. 

 wants to tell the story of a star, and its chosen language of depiction is beautifully visual. We see that in the adorable subplot of the sweet bananas that reach Surya, who remains unknowing of the blood, sweat and tears that went behind it. We see it in the way a fan recognises his star, not directly, but by just a reflection of his gait on the projector. And we also see it in how sand, a marker of poverty in the eyes of one, is an identity of power for another. Cinematographer Siddhartha Nuni’s images lend depth to this storytelling. 

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