Cinema, Culture & More
With the New Year cheers having barely faded out, we head out to the theatre to watch Omar Lulu’s ‘Dhamaka’, a dire sex comedy that has infinitesimally low doses of both its mandatory requisites. Running for a couple of hours, it starts off with its leading actor’s voice expressing his expectations regarding the film in a radio interview, which however are dashed in no time, when the film gets off to a not-so-dhamakedaar start!
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‘Ittymani: Made in China’ lives up to its title in that it strikes you as a disastrous duplicate, and a trite one at that. Preposterous and preachy to the core, this is a film that does no justice to the talented thespians that it has on board.
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‘And the Oscar goes to’ does not rise to the stature of Salim Ahmed’s former films, and while it would be unjust to indulge in a comparison as such, it is also inevitable. While it does suggest that there is nothing more magical than what could be conveyed by the medium of cinema, it delivers the said magic, but only in very brief spurts.
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The humour is intermittently effective, and at times all over the place; there is so much happening on one side, and so little on the other. The context is as unreal as it gets, plenty of opportunities are missed, and grace is far from sight.
Continue reading “Oru Yamandan Premakatha (2019) Malayalam Movie Review – Veeyen”
Mass, double mass, and triple mass; all said and done, the final scene of ‘Madhura Raja’ is all suggestive – that ‘Minister Raja’ will follow. So much has happened and the next time, I tell an exhausted self – you should probably think of taking down notes.
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‘An International Local Story’ is a sparsely funny attempt that will not have connoisseurs of comedies laughing their hearts away in merriment. Notwithstanding the efforts of its director, it hardly has anything on offer except a harmless chuckle or two that you might encounter on the way.
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Bilahari’s ‘Allu Ramendran’ is a scaled down ‘Maheshinte Prathikaram’ that talks of how individual enmity and personal vendetta could rule and ruin human lives, when it turns obsessive and fanatical. What it lacks are the emotional nuances and that the fine sensibilities latter film had in abundance.
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There is a final sewing up of the loose pieces that is expected to do the film good, but you are hardly concerned by then. The boat has already been missed, and the dock has been long closed.
Continue reading “Panchavarnathatha (2018) Malayalam Movie Review – Veeyen”
‘Kuttanadan Marpappa’ tries to make do with the done-to-death romantic tropes and ends up a much less assured version that it originally must have set out to be. The leaden comic touches do not much help either, and it isn’t a wonder that it ends up in the water, quite like many of its characters who literally do in the film.
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Dijo Jose Antony’s ‘Queen’ is a flamboyant celebration of the campus, with all the colours, vigour and liveliness intact. However, beneath all this panache and flair lurks a theme that constantly shifts tone, that is imbalanced in tenor, and which carries a faint sense of familiarity all through.
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‘Daivame Kai Thozham K.Kumar Akanam’ looks, sounds and seems a haphazardly joined piece that hardly manages to hold itself together. A laugh here or another one there is all that it has to offer, and for a film that runs for one hundred and fifty minutes, that is a pretty much hefty price to pay.
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