Recent Reviews by Tatsam Mukherjee
The Wire
Tatsam Mukherjee has been working as a film journalist since 2016. Having contributed to the Indian Express, Mint Lounge, India Today, Open magazine, his byline has also appeared in foreign publications like Slate, Al Jazeera and Juggernaut. He is currently based in Bangalore.
Films reviewed on this Page
Gladiator II
Citadel: Honey Bunny
Anora
Girls Will Be Girls
Jigra
CTRL
Gladiator II
Director Ridley Scott Goes Through the Motions, Retreading Old Ground
While the first one held attention with its striking performances, this one plays it safe.
What happens when you take one of the most irreverent filmmakers of our times, and force him to be sombre, sincere and melodramatic? The result is a film like Gladiator II. It’s not to say that the sequel doesn’t have the campy goodness of the original, especially in the turns by Denzel Washington playing Macrinus (a gladiator-turned-influential figure in Rome), Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger playing Emperor twins Geta and Caracalla (a more sadistic version of Romulus and Remus), but there’s something amiss.
Citadel: Honey Bunny
A Lifeless Spy Franchise Prevails Over Filmmaker Duo Raj & DK
The Amazon Prime series is arguably the safest and weakest project Raj & DK have taken part in.
The choices in Citadel: Honey Bunny sing less frequently compared to other undertakings of the Raj & DK filmmaker duo. An offshoot of Amazon Prime’s gazillion-dollar spy franchise pitted against the silliness of James Bond, Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt, etc., Raj & DK’s latest carries the baggage of an over-embellished universe tensely fitted into a studio-approved runtime. Like its American counterpart helmed by the Russo brothers, even the Indian version spans six episodes with a duration of 40-50 minutes each.
All 10 reviews of Citadel: Honey Bunny here
Anora
Reimagination of 'Pretty Woman' With Some Twists
Indie director Sean Baker’s latest has a firm grip on the audience’s emotions.
A lot of the splendour in Sean Baker’s Anora lies in its treatment – where we might be shown one thing, but deliberately made to feel something else. For example, the film opens with a discomfiting panning shot featuring barely-clothed exotic dancers performing with neon lights around them. However, Baker scores this scene with a loud, winsome techno song taking what is a distressing visual of young women forced to work a job that fetishises them, and drains the self-pity out of it.
Girls Will Be Girls
A Sensitive Debut Film That Finally Does Justice to the Coming of Age Tale
First time director Shuchi Talati extracts superb performances to portray adolescence in an authentic and messy way.
There’s a lot going on within twelfth-grader Mira (Preeti Panigrahi). Chosen as the first female head prefect at her seemingly orthodox hill-station boarding school, she’s battling most of the pressures and anxieties of being a teenager, while simmering in the shadow of her vivacious mother Anila (Kani Kusruthi). Mira needs to keep her scores up, balance the shifted power dynamic with friends and bullies because of her duties as a head prefect, and rein in her excessively eager hormones for the mysterious new boy – Srinivas (Kesav Binoy Kiron) – in class.
All 3 reviews of Girls Will Be Girls here
Jigra
Alia Bhatt Successfully Reinvents the Cornered Anti-Hero of 1970s Bollywood
Vasan Bala’s smart thriller draws from various influences, but loses momentum towards the end.
The clock’s ticking for Satya (Alia Bhatt) in Vasan Bala’s Jigra. Her brother Ankur (Vedang Raina) is on death row in an island nation called Hanshi Dao (a fictitious version of Singapore), and she’s just gotten news that the date of his execution has been expedited for an attempted jailbreak. What was supposed to happen in a few weeks, will now happen in a few days. We see her face computing all possible ploys as fast as she can, and then deciding on a plan of action. It’s not going to be pretty, an accomplice warns, but she’s already made up her mind. The accomplice backs out, telling Satya that she’ll be on her own. “I never said I was a hero. I’ll understand if you don’t wish to join me,” she says, “but don’t get in my way.”
All 18 reviews of Jigra here
CTRL
A Digital Screen Thriller Is A Tepid Look at the Evils of Big Tech
Vikramaditya Motwane’s film is a weak Black Mirror episode at best.
There’s one significant challenge to making ‘screen-life films’ (films that unfold almost entirely on digital screens). Once you commit to its visual grammar, you’re tied to them till there’s a good reason to break out of it. No matter what, all your exposition needs to happen on the small screen, key plot points need to be hashed out during video calls, and the filmmakers need to keep imagining newer screens – ranging from iPad, mobile phones, CCTVs, GoPros, webcams, paparazzi lenses, TV screens etc.