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.
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Films reviewed on this Page
Game Changer (4)
Identity (2)
Vanangaan (1)
Miss You (1)
Soodhu Kavvum 2 (1)
Black Warrant (1)
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Identity
Vishal Menon
The Hollywood Reporter India
Tovino Thomas And Trisha's Overstuffed Thriller Has Identity Issues
In its excitement for having landed on a series of excellent concepts — and all the research that went in — we end up with a confused film that shares the same identity issues with its protagonists.
There is a 10-minute-long sequence in Identity, in which an important character explains a medical condition called prosopagnosia—a rare cognitive disorder where damage to a particular part of the brain affects the patient’s ability to identify faces. The scene itself is loaded with exposition, almost like a TED Talk, but it is effective in explaining the condition of the film’s most important character. As a detail, it sounds just about right to make the character appear mysterious, vague and, of course, human. But on a screenplay level, it forms a solid base to explore the unreliable narrator trope—where the only person whose observations matter, is the one who cannot be relied on at all.
All 3 reviews of Identity here
Vanangaan
Vishal Menon
The Hollywood Reporter India
Bala Returns With An Insipid Parody Of His Own Movies
The Arun Vijay-starrer is so dated and lifeless that we watch with apathy, even when we witness a series of events that must have sounded shocking on paper.
Bala probably forgot that he is Bala. Why else would a director with an obsession for the same pet themes begin a film with a song like ‘Irai Nooru’? The song composed by GV Prakash, isn’t the issue. It’s another one of those mirthful songs about a brother and the unending love he feels for his sister. They have fun, they go to the beach, they go to temples, they go to church, and they are obviously very happy. The year is 2025 and by now, we have a 100-year history of movies telling us that something terrible is going to happen when a film begins with such a lazy, happy montage. And then we must remember that this movie is being made by Bala, a man who has built his brand around tragedies. The remaining runtime of Vanangaan, then, isn’t so much about what’s going to happen and why, as much as it is about how many people are going to die and if we will care when they do.
All 2 reviews of Vanangaan here
Miss You
Kirubhakar Purushothaman
News 18
Siddharth’s Old-School Rom-Com Is Nearly Decent
Miss You seems real despite its commercial cinematic absurdities like bar songs and street fights
It’s been a minute since a rom-com like Miss You was made in Tamil. It is not to say the film is rare or great, but it is just one of those old-school rom-coms that harps just on a straightforward story and drama. A kind that hasn’t been around for a while now. Directed by N Rajasekar, starring Siddharth and Ashika Ranganath in the lead roles, Miss You reminds you of the times when not every single release had to be unique or bearing a USP or having the need to cater to the whole nation. It has low stakes, featuring normal people, cliched songs, and fights that evoke a sense of nostalgia. The strong point of Miss You is that is aware of its limitations and contrivances. At one instance, when a character is forced to narrate the past, he lets out a disclaimer that the ‘flashback’ is going to feature a story within the story. That doesn’t absolve the film of its mistakes, but it is nice to know now and then that the filmmakers aren’t in a bubble.
All 6 reviews of Miss You here
Soodhu Kavvum 2
Kirubhakar Purushothaman
News 18
A Dishonour To Vijay Sethupathi’s Phenomenal Dark Comedy
Soodhu Kavvum 2 pales in comparison to its predecessor, failing to capture the dark humor and cynical brilliance of Nalan Kumarasamy's original.
Watching Soodhu Kavvum 2 makes one realise the genius of the first part and its director Nalan Kumarasamy. More than the delicious dark houmour and wacky texture, the life of Soodhu Kavvum (2013) lies in its sarcastic pessimism. Nalan doled out a cynical comedy about a corrupt society beyond reckoning. Yet, his dark comedy made everyone overlook the philosophical core of his world. The title of the film Soodhu Kavvum (Evil Engulfs) is part of the Hindu god Krishna’s sermon in Bhagavad Gita, which goes: Dharmathin Vaazhvuthanai Soodhu Kavvum, Aanaal Dharmam Irudhiyil Vellum (Evil will engulf the dharma, but the good will always triumph in the end)." Though director Nalan’s film just takes part of it, ‘Soodhu Kavvum’ is a complete statement in the context of the movie. Evil engulfs. Period. The truth doesn’t triumph here, but that doesn’t seem to be a bad thing as it looks at life with a sense of sardonic humour that is soothing and pleasurable.
Identity
Kirubhakar Purushothaman
News 18
Trisha And Tovino Thomas' Thriller Is Engaging But Wants To Be Many Things At Once
Director-writer duo Akhil Paul and Anas Khan pack a lot into Identity. While individually, each idea is left unexplored, the film overall is a gripping watch.
Identity sets off as a film about Haran Shankar (Tovino Thomas), a boy with an abusive father, who turns him into a perfectionist with obsessive-compulsive disorder. As we expect the film to be about this eccentric personality solving cases, we are thrown into a story of a serial rapist, who blackmails his victims with videos of the crimes. When we think it is going to be about nabbing this criminal, he gets killed by an unknown person (we instantly know who it is). Alisha (Trisha), the witness of the crime, gets a peculiar disease called Prosopagnosia aka face blindness, due to an accident right after witnessing the murder, which renders her incapable of recognising faces. Now, we settle for a concept film about this person with face blindness trying to identify the killer with the help of Haran, who also happens to be a good sketch artist (thanks to his mom). But no. Identity is neither that. It keeps turning into a different film every 20 minutes. You have a gripping flight sequence where Haran tries to stop a collision. Later, we also get an enjoyable Bondish fight sequence in a private jet. Clearly, Identity has an identity crisis.
All 3 reviews of Identity here
Game Changer
Kirubhakar Purushothaman
News 18
Ram Charan Shines In Shankar's Usual Anti-Corruption Film
Shankar keeps betting on his usual socio-political conscience to work wonders like it did with Mudhalvan and Anniyan. However, Ram Charan’s Game Changer doesn’t live up to its name.
Shankar has an unrelenting confidence in his socio-political conscience, and he seems to be constantly bothered about the ills around him. Nothing else explains his grip on the anti-corruption ideas, which fuels most of his films. After the disastrous Indian 2, Shankar’s Game Changer, starring Ram Charan, is another addition to his list of political films. The filmmaker not only holds onto his politics in Game Changer but also strongly believes in the old-school commercial entertainer where the film breaks to a song every twenty minutes. In a sense, this familiar screenplay formula works in the favour of Game Changer as you know what to expect from the film at any given point. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more than what it is. Hence, there is no room for disappointment with Game Changer. That said, Game Changer, at the end of the day, is a dated film that would have probably been fresh a decade back.
All 7 reviews of Game Changer here
Game Changer
Avinash Ramachandran
Indian Express
A riveting Ram Charan anchors a middling Shankar showreel that needed more upgrades
Despite the film blowing hot and cold with an erratic consistency, the Ram Charan-Shankar film is truly held together by consistently good performances
When one looks at Shankar’s filmography, it is interesting how his mind doesn’t gravitate towards the easiest way to elevate the hero. Almost all of his leading men could have been typical straightforward police officers who take on the system. But instead, he makes them a small-time entrepreneur moonlighting as a Robin Hood, a young lover fighting for his love, an old revolutionary who wants to eradicate corruption, a journalist who becomes the chief minister, an NRI who returns to his homeland to weed out societal ills, and even a robot. But never a cop.
All 7 reviews of Game Changer here
Game Changer
Sangeetha Devi Dundoo
The Hindu
The fun is tailormade for instant gratification
Director Shankar’s latest has fun segments featuring Ram Charan and SJ Suryah, but the hasty narrative leaves little room for emotional heft
At a pre-release promotional event, director Shankar mentioned how his new film, Game Changer, considers the audience’s diminishing attention spans, shaped by Instagram Reels, and delivers engaging sequences in quick succession. This is perhaps why two-hour 45-minute film feels like a patchwork of segments opting for hurried transitions rather than seamless segways. Is Shankar’s first Telugu film (his older Tamil films were massive hits in Telugu) fun? Yes, quite a bit. Do the face-offs between Ram Charan and SJ Suryah live up to the hype? Sure, there are clapworthy lines and segments. The bigger question is, beyond the instant gratification, will these segments, or the film, stand the test of time?
All 7 reviews of Game Changer here
Black Warrant
Tatsam Mukherjee
The Wire
A Deep Look at the Prison System With Journalistic Rigour
The show digs deep into the power-dynamics between jailers and inmates, India’s justice system and how it fails so many.
For all intents and purposes, Sunil Kumar Gupta (Zahan Kapoor) is not a good fit for Tihar jail. He has a slim build and his oversized uniform hangs loosely on him. He’s grown a moustache to mask his lack of depth in an institution fuelled by testosterone; Gupta is too stuck in his ‘decent’ ways to even inadvertently cuss. He refers to his mother as ‘Mumma’ – a seemingly ordinary-but-revealing detail about his dynamic with her and how he’s been raised. He’s called ‘Baby’ by family members and neighbours – a detail almost trying too hard to sell his obvious displacement in Tihar.