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The Critic (2023)
A POLITELY ENGLISH HATE LETTER TO CRITICS A majority of 51% of professional critics on the Rotten Tomatoes website actively dislike “The Critic” while an even larger majority of 71% of paying viewers like it. What does this tell us about the schism between audience…
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Kooki (2023)
(Trigger Warning – Reference to Rape) “Why is rape not considered as a heinous crime?” Pranab J. Deka repeatedly asks you this question through his movie and refuses to move further. Kooki is a movie on rape, about rape and everything that surrounds a rape…
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Boston Strangler (2023)
STRANGLER DANGLER For those who don’t know about the infamous string of killings that shook Boston in the 1960s — 13 women killed in near-identical circumstances, all strangled to death with the bodies left decorated with a stocking bow tie around the neck — this…
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Tejas (2023)
Courage, Valour, Patriotism and Truth Tejas is a movie that is an all encompassing feature of all the above mentioned characteristics, let me assure you. It takes an immense amount of Courage to pick up the remote, open Zee5 and click on Tejas. The Valour…
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Kill Boksoon (2023)
KILLING TIME WITH KILLERS ‘Kill Boksoon’ builds promise right from the opening scene where two famous assassins face off near a railway track for a stylish yet anti-climatic (dark humour?) fight unto death. It then develops into a full-blown action melodrama that, well, somehow works.…
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Bheed (2023)
TO BHEED OR NOT TO BHEED As a person of so-called Dalit origins, I can’t help view movies that deal with the issue of caste and caste empowerment without a vicarious sense of representation. “Bheed” too was one such story. It depicts the omnipresent shroud…
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Thankam (2023)
ALL THAT GLITTERS “Thankam” is a good movie — a mix of a thriller a police procedural — that stops short of being excellent. It grips you enough to keep you guessing what might happen next throughout, until the somewhat tame albeit surprising end to…
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Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023)
ABLE ELBA For fans of the original BBC series, “Luther: The Fallen Sun” picks up where it left us, in a movie sequel. It has all the key elements of the series absolutely intact, on a slightly larger scale. Idris Elba once again plays the…
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Christopher (2023)
CHRISTOPHER, WITH LITTLE TO OFFER What can you say about a movie that is an endless parade of predictable clichés right from the word go? Watching it till the end was like watching a train derail on a bridge — you know what to expect,…
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The Romantics (2023) & Cinema… Marte Dum Tak (2023)
FOR THE LOVE OF CINEMA If you are a diehard fan like me, and love cinema in all its many-splendoured glory from the biggest blockbuster extravaganzas to the most measly productions, the duds delivered by the biggest stars to the runaway hits served by rank…
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Iratta (2023)
TWIN TREAT ‘Iratta’ is that Sunday afternoon kind of movie that keeps you riveted from start to finish, through every twist and turn, while you burn brain cells trying to second-guess what is to come next. The movie starts at a police station where a…
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Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam (2022)
MORE NIGHTMARE THAN DREAM Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam is a strange movie. Reminiscent of the style of films like Elippathayam (1982), it is deliberately slow to the point of ennui. There are cinematic devices strewn around in the narrative ostensibly to evoke a “how clever” from…
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Pathaan (2023)
Pathaan is called a “High Octane Spy Thriller” from the stables of Yash Raj Films and it proves to be every bit of it….. But first let’s get a few things out of the way…. The story is nothing more than a testosterone driven rehash…
