Member Reviews

Picture This, led by Simone Ashley, is a remake of the Australian rom-com Five Blind Dates from star Shuang Hu. Relocated to London, director Prarthana Mohan’s film takes the same elements but places it within a dysfunctional but loving British Asian family. Amidst wedding planning, blind dating, and reconnecting with an old love, Ashley’s Pia finds herself again in this funny and enjoyable romantic comedy. The Amazon Prime Video feature is fast-paced and colourful, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Ashley is Pia Jaswani, a talented photographer who owns her own photography studio, The Ninth Mandala, and runs it with her best friend Jay (Luke Fetherston). Her younger sister Sonal (Anoushka Chadha) announces she’s getting married with a month-long series of events. Their mother Laxmi (Sindhu Vee) calls an astrologer (Kulwinder Dhir) to check the groom and bride’s janampatris (birthcharts), when he suddenly predicts Pia will meet her soulmate after going on five dates. Her meddling family gets to work with unsuitable suitors, while her first love Charlie (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) walks back in her life.

Many a time in Sumanth Bhat’s Mithya, conditioned by today’s happenings and a generally unsafe world, the stomach knots up with uncertainty, wondering what would befall a child that seems to trust adults. You heave a sigh of relief, only to realise that the child can still be injured through other means — what he hears and how he’s treated — especially when he’s too young to remember it all, but also too old to forgetfully. Snatches of these conversations linger and play on in his head like scabs being yanked off.

सोनी लिव पर आई नौ एपिसोड की इस वेब-सीरिज़ के पांचवें एपिसोड के अंत में जब नायक ऋषभ नायिक सुरभि से कहता है-‘मुझ से शादी कर लो प्लीज़’ तो उसकी आंखें नम होती हैं। यह सुनते हुए सुरभि की भी आंखें नम होती हैं। इस सीन को यहीं पॉज़ कर दीजिएगा और गौर कीजिएगा कि एक हल्की-सी नमी आपकी आंखों में भी होगी। अब याद कीजिएगा कि आपकी आंखें इससे पहले के एपिसोड्स में भी कुछ जगह पनियाई होंगी और ध्यान रखिएगा, अभी आगे भी आपकी आंखों में कई बार नमी आएगी। बल्कि कुछ एक बार तो यह नमी झरने का रूप भी लेना चाहेगी। जी हां, यह इस कहानी की ताकत है, उस सिनेमा की ताकत है जो ऐसी कहानी को आपके सामने इस तरह से लाता है कि आप, आप नहीं रहते बल्कि इस कहानी के किरदार हो जाते हैं, कभी मुंबई, कभी उज्जैन तो कभी रतलाम हो जाते हैं।

Reviewing a film often involves stating the obvious: an interesting or amusing idea does not always translate into an engaging cinematic experience. Yet, after watching director Trinadha Rao Nakkina’s Telugu comedy Mazaka, written by Prasanna Kumar Bezawada, it feels necessary to reiterate this point. The writer-director duo take a premise with potential for outrageous humour but dilute it with predictable tropes, making the film tedious. The saving grace is the performances of Sundeep Kishan, Rao Ramesh, and Ritu Varma, though even they can only do so much to redeem the narrative. The film opens with a morning walker discovering a trail of red leading to two men washed up on Visakhapatnam beach. Alarmed, he alerts the police, only for the inspector (Ajay) to find that the men — Krishna (Sundeep Kishan) and his father Ramana (Rao Ramesh) — are not injured but simply hungover. The red stain, in fact, comes from a packet of avakaya (mango pickle) in their shirt pockets. The inspector, who is struggling with writer’s block while working on a novel, takes an interest in their story. The absurdity of the situation sets the tone for mindless fun and signals to the audience not to take anything too seriously — or ask too many questions.

In a short epilogue, The Brutalist finally shows us László Toth’s buildings. Brady Corbet’s film presents as a given that Toth is a genius architect of the Bauhaus school, but we are only shown one of his creations—a library—in full right up till the final 10 minutes. The format in which they’re presented is strange: a showreel for a biennale that looks like it’s shot on cheap video, with cheesy transitions. A film with startling pristine images spends its last moments looking like DTV. It’s a strange end to the film – and that’s without even getting into the whole Israel of it all. The Brutalist hits you several times with shots of roads and rail tracks zipping by, as seen from the front of a car or train. If the intention is to have the viewer recall the opening of Lawrence of Arabia, it worked on me. Corbet’s film has that David Lean sprawl, certainly in terms of runtime (202 minutes), but also in the ambition and density of its storytelling.

Malegaon, a small little town in Maharashtra, has its own little film industry. It all began after the mid-1990s when local artistes over there started making parodies of iconic Hindi films. These films were made in minimal costs and with whatever resources available. Some examples of these include Malegaon Ke Sholay, Malegaon Ki Shaan, etc. Filmmaker Reema Kagti’s Superboys Of Malegaon is a fictionalized tale of Nasir Sheikh and his friends who started the crazy film industry in Malegaon. Starting off in 1997, the film tells the story of Nasir (Adarsh Gourav), who runs a video parlour in Malegaon. He struggles to attract audiences as he screens international films. The parlour opposite to theirs is doing well as it screens mainstream Hindi films. Nasir, one fine day, learns the trick of editing and starts compiling action sequences from different films and releases them as a single film.

If you saw the poster for The Brutalist, featuring Adrien Brody squinting his eyes, staring straight at you in a low-angle shot, cigarette in mouth, with streaks of fire flying across, you might take him for an Italian-American gangster. Especially since The Brutalist sounds like the perfect title for a gangster flick, set in late 1950s America, adding to its vibe as the ultimate land of freedom and wild wealth. But The Brutalist isn’t that. It’s about architecture — big, heavy, concrete-and-steel stuff. These imposing structures mirror the post-World War II psyche. For those untouched by the war’s direct traumas, these brutalist buildings might feel cold and uninviting, even ugly. But for those who have endured the dehumanising horrors of war, they represent something deeply intimate.

Ever since ‘Aashram’ dropped in 2020, both the director, Prakash Jha, and Bobby Deol, who plays the devious Baba Nirala, captured our imagination. Indeed, the perils of a successful show are that it often gets extended into many seasons, elongated and stretched way beyond the story actually calls for or deserves. Thus, the powerful and impactful show about the nexus between fake gurus, politics and power did get diluted in between as it offered more of the same in the intervening seasons. But, as ‘Season 3 Part Two’ drops, our worst fears that it will continue to go round in circles are given a slight reprieve. Sure enough, his victim, Pammi (Aaditi Pohankar), who is on the run, manages to nail the Baba. But before you can even heave a sigh of relief, he and Bhupa (Chandan Roy Sanyal), his irascible deputy, once again outwit her and have her jailed instead.

Nothing is more heartwarming than aspirational stories of underdogs. Only, Reema Kagti’s cinematic recreation of small-town filmmaker Nasir Shaikh’s life is more than just a tale of a man dreaming the unthinkable, and realising it. As she takes us to Malegaon and right into the heart and soul of these dreamers, it is at one level an ode to friendship, at another about the magic of filmmaking. More importantly, it reimagines how dreams can take flight, not on the wings of hardcore ambition but an emotion far more beautiful and deeper than that. Though an extended disclaimer does not vouch for the complete veracity of the story, the fact that Nasir is very much alive and part of making of the film as well as the promotions implies that the story is rooted in his reality. Yes, there is a possibility that the narrative could have been buttressed to make his story look even better than what it actually might be. Nevertheless, at no point does it sound exaggerated or artificial. Consistently, it remains an interesting and inspirational tale of Nasir (Adarsh Gourav), who runs a video parlour, and intercuts pirated videos of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee to create some original mishmash. A police raid sets him on the path of ‘original’ filmmaking.

At least two Tamil films that released in 1988 get a namedrop in the second season of Suzhal: The Vortex. They are Senthoora Poove and Agni Natchathiram. One is about a dying man who makes it his mission to save two young star-crossed lovers, which is a throwback to season one of Suzhal that unfolds around the death of one such pair. The second film is about parents and children, warts and all, which points to a theme in Suzhal’s second season— about father and mother figures, and their adopted sons and daughters. At the centre is the father, pointedly named Chellappa (Lal), a criminal lawyer known for his righteousness and sincerity, a darling of victims and survivors. There is also a mother with a fleeting appearance but otherworldly deeds and influence. It is a curious thing, those namedrops—one vaguely referring to a dance troupe named Senthoora Poove and the other directly invoking Mani Ratnam’s Agni Natchathiram and its unforgettable climax of strobe lights waltz. Later, the series invokes another 1988 Tamil film title.