Balaji Ranganathan

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Amaran is an exaggerated narrative based on a true story of Mukund Varadharajan. Sai Pallavi shines as the wife of an army officer who dutifully embraces her long distance relationship with her loving husband. While Sivakarthikeyan has worked very hard in the physical attributes as an army officer he is still uncomfortable in the emotional scenes. The first half is a breezy love story which starts off meaninglessly but sucks us in mainly due to Saipalavi. The actors playing SK’s parents have done a fantastic job of Army parents constantly worrying about their son. Especially the lady playing the mother has been simply fantastic. The second half seems very long with a lot of shootings and killings. Even though we all walked in expecting the ending it was as unnecessarily prolonged showing the pains of an Army widow. This movie is not as impactful as Maniratham’s classic Roja.

Vettaiyan directed by TJ Gnanavel of "Jai Bhim" fame has too many bullets but too little entertainment ! The title card only shows bullets and guns preparing the audience for the blood bath that will follow. The Rajini intro scene is a lot of meaningless killings and a shameless product placement. Honestly this is an all time low in monetising Thalivar’s popularity. A gruesome killing of an honest teacher is shown graphically to justify the extrajudicial killings that will follow. Fahad Faasil provides comic relief with his one liners in otherwise painful proceedings. The cringy dialogues justify these encounter killings. There is an interesting twist just before the interval. The second half unexpectedly deals with Edtech company issues. The narrative is awfully similar to the Byju’s sales practices and Rana Daggubati’s character seems to be inspired by Byju Raveendran. Ritika Singh and Amitabh appear in a lot of frames with very little to do. They seem to have included Amitabh, Rana Daggubati and Fahad Faasil to ensure the movie reaches all the South and North Indian audiences. Anirudh’s songs are below average while the background score is a little better. The story has absolutely no emotional connection as it wanders aimlessly to a preachy painful ending. Rajini earnestly tries to save this movie without a soul but must he be laughing his way to the Bank. This movie is neither as entertaining as Jailer nor as impactful as Jai Bhim.

Indian 2 more painful than the Dengue mosquito bites. First 30 minutes is painfully slow and cringy. Then you patiently wait for Kamal’s introduction to see if he can save this movie. Unfortunately even Kamal cannot do anything to save this disaster. The movie almost plays in a loop of corrupt rich people killed by Kamal. Anirudh’s music and songs are terrible! The only background score that is good are the ones rehashed from the Original Indian movie. The support cast in this movie sleep walks this movie making us feel like a television serial with a lot of unnecessary emotional melodrama. Let me share some gems from this movie - An incompetent doctor performs the appendicitis operation in the back of a woman. He calls his friend for help and then uses YouTube videos to rectify the mistake. He kills the women in the process and the proceedings are watched by her daughter 😳😳😳😳 - A rich man takes a dump in a golden toilet?? - Another rich man is getting ready for a trip to Mars. - The last painful 30 minutes is an entire city chasing Kamal and he is running away from them in a unicycle??? Really 😳😳😳 - The best part is we are not done with this agony and there is a part 3 for those idiots that will pay to get slapped 🙏🏻 We all walked out of the movie with the question, why Shankar sir why?? Why did you ruin Indian for us ?

This a very well written movie with amazing screenplay that will keep you guessing till the end. Vijay Sethupathi’s acting is as brilliant as ever and he plays the character to its perfection. The pace of the film is just perfect with no songs or romance. The dark portions of the movie made me close my eyes but the story required those moments to have the impact. The director ties all the pieces together in the end with clever storytelling.

This is an absolute classic by Kiran Rao. A movie that will make you laugh, cry and feel ashamed for how the society treats women. Rao holds a mirror to our faces and makes us smile and feel sad. The casting is simply brilliant and all the characters magically transform themselves into this small town folks. Dialogues by Sneha Desai have packed in powerful messages in simple sentences 😁 A must watch for every man who has a woman in his life 🙏🏻

A lovey mystery thriller by Sriram Raghavan! A slow first half leads to an interesting second half. Lovely performances by Vijay Sethupathi and Katrina. Even though I take a lot of pride in predicting who done it mysteries I struggled with this one. The killer was evident but the modus was very unique. Loved the music by Pritam especially the violin bit in the climax was mind boggling! Arijit Singh kills it with the track raat akeli thi 👌 Definitely a one time watch for movie buffs. I look forward to the OTT release for my second watch to clarify my open questions 😀

A breezy first half with a lot of laughs. The second half gets serious without getting too heavy and the ends predictably Shahrukh and Tapasee shine in their roles. This movie has a strong Hirani feel good factor though out and narrates this beautiful love story through the lens of illegal immigration. The story is almost predictable if you are a regular movie buff however ernst performance from SRK and Tapasee keeps you invested. This is a full fledged family entertainer to start the holiday season.

It is said if something is free then you're the product. This is the feeling I got after watching the Navarasa where several leading actors, directors and technicians have said to have worked for free. They made us their product by experimenting various things on us and we paid the price by sending our weekend watching this nonsense. 1. Karuna - The visuals were brilliant in this one which is expected in Maniratnam movies. One of the scenes reminded me of the iconic “Chinna Thai” visuals in Thalapathy. Most lead characters were under utilised in this episode except Revathi. This one really tested my patience but since it was the first one I showed Karuna on the cast and the director. 2. Hasya - As an animal lover this one disappointed me the most. If the director felt attempting to kill a dog and dumping it in human excretion will bring a laugh, it did not ! This one made me disgusted. It was even more terrifying to learn this is a true story. 3. Project Agni - Abdhuta - let’s get one thing straight Karthik Naren is a good director unfortunately he is not a Christopher Nolan ! This one shamelessly tries to copy from movies like Tenet and fails miserably. 4. Payasam is as pointless as a fish without a bicycle. A man who is jealous of another and spills the payasam in the other man’s son’s wedding. Why spend 30 minutes to narrate this story that could have been done in 30 seconds? God only knows ! 5. Peace - This one immediately gets your attention when learn it has GVK in the cast, directed by Karthik Subburaj and music by Santosh Narayan. The story is of the LTTE who risks his life to save a puppy. To be fair he only went on this mission because he mistook the pup to be a little boy. The moral of this story is that no good deed ever goes unpunished. Terrible message ! 6. Anger - Story and direction is by Arvind Swamy but what gets your attention immediately is the stunning photography by Santosh Sivan and background score by AR Rahman. Thank god Arvindswamy looks good and is an excellent actor he should stick to that and stop any further experiments with story telling 🙏🏻 7. Bhaya - It starts with a Rumi quote what is fear ? It is non acceptance of uncertainty. However the story bores us with a long drawn back story and scientific concepts like Placebo effect and hallucinations. The only fear I had after watching this one was that the makers will make more nonsense like this one. One the positive side I loved the beautiful villa shown in this episode and the calligraphy. 8. Courage - This one is on the communist ideology and Stockholm syndrome. It will take a lot of courage on your part to sit through this episode without getting frustrated at yourself. 9. Guitar kambi mela - This one is by Gautam Vasudev Menon (GVM) so you get his usual dose of romance, stunning visuals, one line dialogues, love at first sight and the famous VTV gate before the house. Karthik the famous singer has composed music for this episode but in my humble view he should stick to singing and leave the music direction to the big boys. Of his several scores for this episode the only one which is foot tapping is Thooriga which generously copies Illyaraja’s Ninukori Varanam by mixing it with Techno music. Any day I will listen to unadulterated Ilayaraja music over this remixed nonsense ! Surya was his usual self in this episode but Prayaga Martin seemed to imitate Nitya menon in her looks and wardrobe.

This movie starts off as a cute romcom but quickly transforms into a crime drama and ends with a weird social message in the end. Even a frequent movie watcher like me could not predict this unexpected twist the story had in the climax. The movie moves in a rapid phase which is a reason you are not emotionally invested in any of the characters. Aishwarva Rajesh’s role seems inspired by Nayantara’s wardrobe and mannerisms from her past movies because her boyfriend Vignesh Karthik has directed this movie. I feel this movie is inspired by a Bhimas advertisement that got a lot of praise. After watching the movie check out the advertisement in YouTube to understand what I’m saying.