Cinema, Karam, Kapi

Max Barber (Robert de Niro) and his nephew Walter Creason (Zach Braff) are film producers in Hollywood. None of their films recover their investment. Max wants to make another film to set-off the losses of the previous one and the cycle continues. Reggie Fontaine (Morgan Freeman) is an influential investor who lends money to film producers like Max. But he has had enough of it with the duo and demands that this entire loan be returned, or he is going to kill them off. Max is forced by James Moore (Emile Hirsch) to give him a script which is close to the former’s heart to which he will pay him enough and more so he can cover his debts with Reggie. Reluctantly, Max decides to sell the script.   At the first day of the shoot, Frank Pierce (Patrick Muldoon) falls off the terrace of the building where the filming is planned. James has “insured” any such unfortunate outcome and hence gets paid in millions. The film is trashed, while James gets his insurance. Max decides to cancel the sale-ag

It’s Christmas time, so makes a lot of connect to watch movies which have been made for the season! This one is on Amazon Prime and wouldn’t let you down for sure. Hayley Taylor (Cora Kirk) and Hubert James Hughes (Asa Butterfield) are classmates and are departing by train to their respective family homes. The couple seem to be deeply entrenched in love and seem to already miss each other’s absence. In a sudden last minute decision, they alight from their respective trains and board the other one’s train. Each one wishes to surprise the other by coming to the other’s place for Christmas. Sounds a bit odd, as ideally they would wish to reunite with their families for the holidays. Alas, both have done the same thing, so they are going to be travelling solo, without each other!  When they arrive at their respective destinations, they figure out they did not travel with the other. Hayley manages to walk all the way, finding Hubert’s house, only to be accosted by a gunman who assumes her t

Like millions of fans worldwide, I too have been watching ' a few videos on youtube since morning which brings a lot of nostalgia. After all, its 12/12 and an important day for every fan of entertainment. In Indian cinema, Tamil cinema especially, entertainment has been among the foremost reasons why ardent cinephiles watch a movie. Ask Netflix, Amazon and others, and they would tell you how tamil films are watched repeatedly. Some for their content. Some for their screenplay. Many for the lead actors & actresses. Among the top of this pyramid would be the one and only Superstar of Indian Cinema – Rajnikanth who is celebrating his 72 nd  birthday today. Much to the chagrin of his fans, he is not in town today and is shooting with his team for the upcoming movie Jailer, a film which has a lot of expectations due to the Director of the film Nelson, who’s Doctor (Sivakarthikeyan) and Beast (Vijay) has built a certain level of expectation.   This would be Rajini’s 169th movie. The

Artificial Intelligence, may sometimes result in to natural stupidity. With all due respect to machine learning, automation techniques and the innumerable scientists and engineers who code on computer data, at the end there is always a human intervention that is required to stop an accident or even an apocalypse from occurring. Takeover is a movie about this.  Mel Badisson (Holly Mae Brood) is a student with acute computer skills who hacks in to the server of a local military to avoid them from using the aerodrome from flying, atleast for a few hours a day. And her motive – is to minimise the noise harm to animals in the surrounding. As she grows up, she turns up an ethical hacker, while front-ending herself as a system security specialist, that is ensuring her clients computer servers are safe from viruses and commercial hackers who demand money in lieu of letting go off their systems.  In one such case, Mel intervenes in to the servers of Rotramax, an autonomous Bus development compa

All of us want some “me time” every now and then. In the context of working men vs. stay at home women, it is almost like a privilege that is showered on the latter by the earning male member of the house. It is not just unusual but also societally inappropriate for a father to be a house husband and rear the family while the lady love gets to work and earns the dough. The film “Me Time” is a typical characterisation of one such stay-at home dad, his wife, two kids, a long lost friend and how eventually it makes sense of the much-hyped “Me Time” that many of us crave for, quite often.   Sonny Fisher (Kevin Hart) has a daily routine; get the kids ready to school, make breakfast for his wife Maya (Regina Hall), drop the kids at their school and undertake voluntary work at the same school, which he feels is a part of community service. Regina’s boss at the architecture firm Armanda Zavala (Luiz Gerard Mendez) feels very high of her and in a party, not just does he showers praises on her w

If you know an Entrepreneur or know one, then it’s quite easy to relate to this film. In the last scene, the wife of the protagonists says “ Stop ”… even as he tries to make yet another escapade. It’s one thing to be a self-made professional or a first-gen Entrepreneur, but it’s equally important to know when and where to stop. The Nest is all about this. Rory O’Hara (Jude Law) is married to Allison (Carrie Coon), an American and they live a middle class New York city life. Benjamin (Charlie Shotwell) is their son together while Samantha (Oona Roche) is Allisson’s teenage daughter from her first marriage. Allison teaches horse riding and is extremely passionate about her horses, especially Richmond, the black beauty. Rory makes her morning coffee daily and one day announces that they should move back to Britain, where he hails from. He has an offer to join his former employer though Allison is uncomfortable with the idea as he has shown no success in trying with his entrepreneurial ide

There is nothing bigger than a remorse when one loses his/her child. In this fictitious account of one such man, we see emotions flying from a loving dad in memory of his son.   Mason Hargreaves (Jason Statham) is a crime warlord with his group of colleagues Mike (Darrell D’Silva), Brendan (Cameroon Jack) and Moggy (Babs Olusanmokun). While overseeing one such heist of a Cash Truck, his son Dougie (Eli Brown) is shot down by the masked perpetrators. He is also shot down to death, though he recovers from the wound. He joins the Cash pick-up firm Fortico through the influence of team leader Terry Rossi (Eddie Marsan). Though he barely passes the required tests to join the fleet, he somehow scrapes through the marks. His colleagues Dave Hancock (Josh Hartnet) and Dana Curtis (Niamh Algar) are suspicious of his motives but none are able to find out anything about his past. The company’s trainer Haiden Bullet Blaire (Holt McCallany) names the new joinee as H and is part of the crew to pick

21 hours is a slick thriller who’s screenplay is set in 21 hours time. A lonely wife to a supposedly gay husband wants to move out of the relationship and the household. In a chain if events, she gets killed. Who triggered the bullet, find Investigative Cop Srikanth (Dhananjaya).  Madhuri Menon (Durga Krishna) is married to Renjith Menon (Sudev Nair) and fight almost every other day. Her Mother in-law keeps teasing her that she is yet to deliver a baby but Madhuri feels to shy that there is no physical relationship between the couple. Fed up of the feud, one fine day, she simply walks out of the house and accosts her former Ex and now friend Vishal Nair (Rahul Madhav). She informs her parents what she has done while her father Girish Nair (Dinesh Babu) requests his an old acquaintance Joe Machado (Ravikumar Rao) to help her in the mess. Joe connects with a Minister (Dinesh Mangaluru) who in turn connects him with someone else. And all this happens late on that fateful night. Early next

Dhanush appears briefly in the film “The Gray Man”, his first Hollywood outing but creates an impact with the morality the character displays. The Netflix movie was released on Fri. 21 Jul. 2022. . Mark Greaney’s novel by the same name has been adapted in to a film which has been bankrolled by the Russo Brothers company AGBO and released worldwide (sic) on Netflix. The film stars Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, Jessica Henwick and pan-Indian star Dhanush among a host of characters. The film opens up in a prison in the US in the year 2003 when a CIA agent Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) accosts a lifetime prisoner (Ryan Gosling) and asks him to operate as a mercenary, taking directions from the agency to “complete tasks” from time to time by the high command. He is code named Sierra Six, perhaps indicating the number of predecessors he has. Cut to 2021, the scene is now set in Bangkok where Agent Six has to kill a supposed traitor who is sharing critical and confidential information per

I have been on thousands of flight trips over the past 20 years, mostly on work. But when I was watching this  movie on a small screen, I was more tensed & worried than ever - not about the safety of flying, rather the nervous moments each Pilot, Co-Pilot & First Officer go through before every take off, landing and everything in between. Runway 34 is an excellent portrayal of what runs in the mind of such a pilot and his colleague, in a 2 hr suspense drama and mostly a fictional depiction of real life events. Produced and Directed by Ajay Devgan, the film was released on Amazon Prime on 14 July after a few weeks of theatrical run where the movie didn’t do well. On the midnight of 16/17 Aug. 2015, a Boeing 777 aircraft owned by Skyline Airway Company is flying from Dubai to Kochi. Capt. Vikranth Khanna (Ajay Devgan) takes the throttle along with his First Officer Tanya Alburqueque (Rakul Preet Singh). Just the previous night, Vikranth parties hard with his friends in a night cl

  Set in the midst of a resort in Idukki, the film is all about the 11 men and women and the 12th man who uncovers a murder mystery. Jeetu Joseph, who made the classic Drishyam (Malayalam & Hindi) and Papanasam (in Tamil) is now back with his favourite hero Mohan Lal, The crew, obviously 11 of them, have given a terrific performance with each of them playing a significant role from the word go till the end. Sidharth is engaged to Aarathy and they decide to throw a bachelor’s party to Sid’s classmates – 10 of them. Interestingly, but for one, all other are married within the group, so that makes 4 couples. Banker Sam and his wife Merin are a happy couple. Dr. Nayan and her husband Jithesh are not the perfect match, but they continue to navigate this relationship that is a marriage. Annie & Zacharia are about to become parents and decide to announce the big news at the party the next day. Shiny & Mathew are a couple who have their own excesses. Shiny borrows money from friend

After 10 days since its release, I finally watched Kamal Hassan’s Vikram, well er… should I say, Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Vikram. That’s how it seems to be, going by the screenplay, the audience feedback and of course, the Box Office collections. As I write this piece (after 3 weeks of its release), the film has collected over Rs. 300 Cr at the Box Office in India and wolrd wide. Plus OTT rights, of course.  Kamal Hassan’s Vishwaroopam 1 & 2 were anything patriotic, to say the least. His critics have always said the gentleman lacked clarity of thoughts in his screenplay, and political stance, later on. But that’s for a different article. Staying true to his age and image that he has created for almost 6 decades now, KH has sprung a surprise in Vikram, where he plays a disheartened father who loses his son to the drug mafia – just that his son was not an addict, rather a cop who uncovered the mafia and stashed their prized catch.  The film opens with a drunk+sober Karnan (KH) who seem to

There’s nothing called the perfect match in the world – a couple in love, a geek and his device, a musician and his composition, a spin bowler and his catch and so on. But something that really pairs very well – being a foodie, I can bet you – is Wine with it’s right combo (of foods). A Perfect Pairing is not exactly a documentary on Wine tasting & pairing, rather a breezy movie about a fairly imperfect couple who eventually end up a great pair. Fairly cinematic stuff, unrealistic in life at most time. Hell yea, it’s a feel good movie after all. Lola Alvarez (Victoria Justice) is a Sales Manager at one of the top Wine Import firms in the US and is getting ready for a promotion as a Sales Director soon. After her recent divorce, she wants to take a break before another hook-up. Celebrity Chef Hamish (Nicholas Brown) loves her knowledge of wines and gets her win a big contract for her firm and she’s about to present her newest idea to her Boss Calder (Craig Horner) in the Team Meetin

A war which is unending, sabotage by those whom one trusts, enemies within and to top it all, a biological war in the making by spreading a man-made virus stored in a vial – I am not referring to the ongoing Ukraine crisis coupled with the Covid-19 led lockdown which is celebrating (sic) its 2 nd   anniversary today in India. Operation Black Crab is a movie set somewhere in Scandinavia where a fighter reaches her destination for just one reason – Hope!   We have seen war movies and many of them. From classics like Ben Hur to the current times’ Outside the Wire, 2 Guns and so on, there has been enough and more where soldiers and fighters use various weapons, fly across regions and use sophisticated guns and revolvers among others. But Operation Black Crab is different. The soldiers use skateboards. Legends! Caroline Edh (Noomi Rapace) skates all the way across an archipelago to deliver a courier to the “base” on the other side which would perhaps end the war. Or so she thinks. The singl

Maaran is the third consecutive OTT release for actor Dhanush after Jagame Thanthiram  and Atrangi Re. This time on Disney+Hotstar.  Sathyamurthy (Ramki) is a news reporter who is into investigative journalism. On the day his wife delivers their second child, a girl baby, Sathya is killed by his detractors while his wife deceases upon delivery. Mathimaaran brings up his sister Shweta (Smruthi Venkat) along with his uncle (Aadukalam Naren). Maaran changes job often due to his straightforward way of writing and eventually lands up  with a News channel (owned by Jayaprakash) where he gets to show his professional work and grows up the ranks while also gaining social popularity. Thara (Malavika Mohanan) is his colleague and the two build a mutual liking for each other. Pazhani (Samuthrakani) is a former Minister who is trying to get re-elected in the upcoming by-election. However, as he is unsure about his victory, he indulges in tampering with the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM). In Maar

A social message, power packed performance by the protagonist, a small, yet effective cast of actors and no boring, disconnected songs for the heck of it – that’s Vinod’s Valimai for you. His previous outing “Dheeran” feat. Karthi and 2019 Nerkonda Parvai with Ajith were somewhat similar too but with different plots. Ajith carries the entire strength of the movie on his shoulders and doesn’t disappoint. The movie begins in Cambodia (South America) and reels down for a few minutes to set a context about the film’s intentions – drugs, drag racing, small time crimes and a cover-up job – in that sequence and how disconnected they all are and go unnoticed until one fine day. Bankrolled by Boney Kapoor, the film released worldwide on 24 Feb. 2022 with a record number of screens.  Arjun Kumar (Ajith) is a cop in Madurai and dances for the opening song which revolves around a world famous temple event – the Azhagar Utsavam. That the actor is a staunch follower of Lord Ganesha and Lord Vishnu i