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Member Reviews

No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough. Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.

You can also browse reviews using our alphabetical index of films reviewed

Films reviewed on this Page

Kanguva (2)
Self-Potrait as a Coffee-Pot (1)
Matka (1)
Bhairathi Ranagal (1)
Against the Tide (1)
Gladiator II (1)
Freedom at Midnight (2)
Half Love Half Arranged S02 (1)

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Kanguva
Aditya Shrikrishna (for OTT Play) 
Independent Film Critic
Suriya's Kanguva Is A Flaming Mess

If you thought Indian 2 was cringe, wait till you witness the first 40 minutes of Kanguva.

Kanguva is a flaming mess. The “pan-India” bug is upon actor Suriya, the film’s producers and Siva, and they don’t have a clear strategy to achieve it. There are no ideas here, just loglines. There is no writing here, just random deaths and fight sequences. There is no story here, just events. This is taking “event film” much too literally. Even if you are ready to forgive all that, there is no actual filmmaking here; just a bunch of shots strung together with no coherence or cohesion. During the film’s promotions, much was made of the makers’ respect for SS Rajamouli. After all, he is the progenitor of this pan-India bug that spares none. But no one in the Kanguva camp stopped for a minute, sat down and thought hard about what makes Rajamouli. What makes his cinema, cinema. Kanguva is not cinema.

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All 5 reviews of Kanguva here

Kanguva
Gopinath Rajendran
The Hindu
A fiery Suriya headlines Siva’s damp squib of a film

Many intriguing ideas get diluted in this jarring Suriya-starrer that succumbs to convoluted writing and incoherent making

A Roman general, in a bid to expand his base, ventures out into the open sea with his army. Before you think you have inadvertently clicked the link to the review of Gladiator 2, fret not; this is how Kanguva begins. The fascinating story of director Siva’s Kanguva stretches from a legendary island’s hills to the sandy shores of Goa; it even transcends time as its proceedings occur in two different timelines. But whether they amalgamate to make for an intriguing watch is a different question altogether.

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All 5 reviews of Kanguva here

Self-Potrait as a Coffee-Pot
Uday Bhatia
Mint Lounge
Chaos and creation in the studio

This series of video essays is a brilliant dissection of William Kentridge’s artistic practice and a lively covid diary

A portly white-haired man walks into the frame and, even before he’s sat, addresses the camera with some urgency. “Before he arrives, there are some things I just want to say. It’s about the nature of the structure of, and the destructure, and the non-structure of what we see." He lists the disparate thoughts running through his head: a green cake he once ate in Naples, the fish pie he must take out of the freezer, a line from Mayakovsky, digging in The Great Escape and as a young boy on the beach, a row of coffins for mass burial, the impending birth of his granddaughter

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Matka
Sangeetha Devi Dundoo
The Hindu
A sincere Varun Tej cannot salvage this boring drama

Director Karuna Kumar’s Telugu film ‘Matka’ scores in its attention to the period setting but falls way short of leveraging its potential to be a soaring drama

How does a business venture that does not require much investment work, a character wonders in director Karuna Kumar’s Telugu film Matka. We sell hope and buy people’s trust, explains the protagonist (Varun Tej as Vasu) whose character is inspired by gambler Ratan Khatri, also known as the ‘matka’ king. His statement and the scenes on a train that precede it, showing the potential for gambling and how it can turn ordinary citizens into addicts, perk up an otherwise predictable narrative.

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Bhairathi Ranagal
Subha J. Rao
The News Minute
Shiva Rajkumar shines in a well-crafted but violent prequel to Mufti

The film, set against the background of iron mining, crafts its own path, cleverly bypassing any comparison to a recent blockbuster franchise that revolves around gold mining.

The trick with a prequel is that you have to impress viewers who have watched the original film, and those who are new to its cinematic world. So, first, a round of congratulations to director Narthan, who charmed in 2017 with his debut Mufti, and now with its prequel Bhairathi Ranagal, starring Shiva Rajkumar, Rahul Bose, Rukmini Vasanth and Chhaya Singh, among others.

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All 2 reviews of Bhairathi Ranagal here

Against the Tide
Poulomi Das (for HyperAllergic) 
The Federal
A Tale of Two Indigenous Fishermen in Mumbai

Against the Tide examines Mumbai’s Koli community’s drift between tradition and progress.

The story of Mumbai, India’s largest city, is linked inextricably with the story of the Kolis, the lower-caste, Indigenous fisherfolk community whose koliwadas (villages) dot the coastline. Until the 1800s, what we know as Mumbai today used to be an archipelago of seven islands, harmoniously inhabited by Koli communities. These islands turned into a city due to human intervention — a product of several land reclamation projects that also enabled the displacement of Mumbai’s original inhabitants.

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Gladiator II
Tatsam Mukherjee
The Wire
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.

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Freedom at Midnight
Srivathsan Nadadhur (for Binged) 
Independent Film Critic
A Sensitive, Well-crafted Show On The Politics Around Partition

After years of struggle, the idea of an independent India doesn’t seem a distant dream. The British looks ready to hand over the reins to the country by 1946, but at what cost? Nehru is at odds with Gandhi’s ideals and the interests of the Congress party, while Patel prefers to be the bad cop. A bitter and ailing Jinnah is desperate for the formation of Pakistan. Who has the last laugh?

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All 11 reviews of Freedom at Midnight here

Half Love Half Arranged S02
Srivathsan Nadadhur (for Binged) 
Independent Film Critic
A Superficial Yet Tolerable Rom-com

Riya’s household has a new guest – Ved, son of her father’s close friend Dinesh. As the family gradually adapts to his presence at the house, Riya is desperate to stabilise her relationship with the divorcee Jogi. She finds a new friend in Ved, also her secret admirer. Meanwhile, aunt Rajjo is all set to enter wedlock with a neighbour but Riya is as confused as ever about her relationships.

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Freedom at Midnight
Uday Bhatia
Mint Lounge
Independence, warts and all

‘Freedom at Midnight’ is flawed in too many ways to deliver on its promise of showing an untold history of India on the brink of independence.

It’s 1946, Partition is starting to look like a real possibility, and the Congress High Command isn’t a happy place. The visiting Akali leaders are militant, Nehru is getting worked up, and Patel’s biscuit, which he isn’t paying attention to, is getting soggy. At the exact moment Nehru asks the Akalis what they want, half of it disintegrates and falls into the tea. The next shot is Jinnah in his garden, snipping a rose stem.

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All 11 reviews of Freedom at Midnight here