Filmy Illusions

Little Things- Season 2 "We are not extraordinary people, we have to work hard to make our everyday special." Their story was a mess still beautiful, complicated yet understandable, heart- warming but also hurting, just like any thing related to love. The sole reason why Little Things succeeded so much was due to the highly relatable content told in a very realistic manner, gladly devoid of anything that makes it larger than life. Dhruv and Mithila were characters we could all relate to in fact they were one among us. When I heard NETFLIX adopting the show, at first, I was excited, but I was equally sceptical of the prediction that this would impact the show in a positive way.  My fears came true, Little Things season 2 is grand, too much evident of the production support they received but moments reminiscent of season 1 are the only thread holding the plot together. Don’t get me wrong, LT Season 2 is equally watchable and keeps its audience engaged.  ...

96- Movie Review "Kadhal piriyum, Kadhavukal moodamal vazhiyanapungal, kaathiringal" (Never close your heart for love, even if it left you broken) Have you ever had a first, innocent yet intense love story during school or college days which ended abruptly? Life and you moved on or at least pretended to do so until one day the moment to face the same old love sent butterflies fluttering in your stomach? Until that insanely beating heart brutally reminded you that only life moved on, but the intensity of that old school love is still the same and is piercing a thousand cuts through your soul? How many times have a movie hit you as if it was completely or in parts was taken from your life? Watching 96 gave me goosebumps at points on how relatable it was.  True to the vintage and nostalgic title, 96 reaches far deep into those corners of your heart which you have pretended to have moved on from and makes you reach far into your own self. 96 is a...

Varathan – Movie Review ‘Extreme justice is extreme injustice’ but some people deserve just that. Statutory Warning: Skip this review if you have a fragile ego about the homeland Kerala which overpowers the reality. Varathan though after heavily promising a very raw slice of life in the first half,  disappoints at that end in the second half. The fact of interest is that even that change of plot is executed so well that someone who likes well-crafted plot scenes and action sequences will enjoy. Though at an emotional and perspective level I felt cheated, Varathan is indeed worth a watch. When I watched NH10 in 2015, the spectacular thriller by Anushka Sharma, it was a gut-wrenching experience. The second half made me feel a range of emotions, from pain to outright angst and revenge. The movie was indeed a reality check but was set in again a state which is known for its atrocities against women, Haryana. The beginning of the plot is somewhat similar for bo...

Ranam- Detroit Crossing- Movie Review “Second chances are sometimes too costly” A life trapped in endless crimes, a faraway mirage for a better life and the yearning for redemption, Ranam- The Detroit crossing, revolves around this plot.  Ranam is a movie which is technically rich with strong performances and personally to me, an improvement in the superstar/gangster genre movies in Malayalam. Upcoming directors can certainly learn a thing or two from Ranam, about how to make a decent dark gangster movie with brilliant cinematography (Jigme Tenzing is perfection in human form) along with the editing which makes Ranam, comparable to mafia dramas of the West. Ranam as a movie relies on the strong performances of the central characters played by Prithviraj as Aadhi, a runaway driver and member of an outsider gangster group in Detroit struggling to maintain their relevance, led by Damodar Ratnam played by Rahman.   It is a pleasure to watch the evolutio...

Manmarziyaan - Movie Review The eternal chaos called love, is what Manmarziyaan tries to encapsulate.  The confused state of mind when in love, the thin lines of right or wrong which frequently gets blurred, and the fragility of life decisions we often take, Anurag Kashyap has managed to portray the catastrophic events in lives of people in love, beautifully. After a while, Anurag managed to impress me within last two weeks, as an actor in the Tamil film, Imaikkaa Nodigal (check out the blog for Imaikkaa Nodigal’s review) with his effortless acting and now as a director with Manmarziyaan, by portraying the complexities of the feeling called love, successfully. When an about to be thirty me, wanted to dismiss the film as unrealistic, my 20 plus heart who went through catastrophic life events due to the same destructive, yet enriching feeling called love, vouched for the film as the justifiable portrayal of souls messed up in real life. Manmarziyaan is a mess ...

Imaikkaa Nodigal- Movie Review Love. Loss. Ego Every act in this world is a consequence of love, loss or ego, is what I could absorb from Imaikkaa Nodigal, which seems like quite a food for thought. What could have been a standard and shorter suspense thriller, Imaikkaa Nogidal is unfortunately dragged with a cliché and clearly irritating subplot. But before we dive into what went wrong, this film certainly deserves to be called a decent thriller with strong performances.  While Atharvaa, tested my patience with his mostly blunt acting, Anurag Kashyap and Nayanthara, made me go wow with their killer performances. Nayanthara, in her second innings, have been cautiously selecting roles which provide her quite a larger platform to perform and justifiably excels in the same too. She is a stylish, strong and talented CBI officer Anjali Vikramadithyan, as usual with a storm behind the calm waters. I was happy to see her completely switching between emotions, ...

While I was waiting to watch Kaala in the theatre, surprisingly it dawned on me that, this was the first movie of Rajinikanth, that I was about to watch in a theatre. It wasn’t intentional, most of his movies came out long before I even got entry to this world and the rest were old enough to come on TV by the time I grew up enough to understand movies. I always had this crazy love for the language and traditions of TamilNadu, the reason to which I haven’t yet been able to figure out. So, while I grew up, more than the Malayalam movies I have watched Tamil movies; but Rajinikanth was never a huge chunk of the movies that I grew up with, it was mostly new faces who started off their career in Tamil Cinema like Ajith, Vijay, Arjun, etc., but I knew Rajinikanth was not just an actor but a sensation in TamilNadu. It was ARRahman who intensified my love for Tamil, the amazing songs he composed in Tamil made it impossible, not to know the meaning of them. And it was ARRahman who intro...