Cinema, Karam, Kapi

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Debutant Rajesh Karna turns that law of physics into a law of karma, and builds a Telugu thriller on it. The film opens in Zuluk, Sikkim, in 2026. David (Srinivas Avasarala) is reading a book titled Newton's 3rd Law. Its pages mirror real events from 1999 Hyderabad, and the film takes us back there. In 1999, Jyothi (Neha Pathan) hears of her husband's death and dies soon after in a road accident. Her little daughter Shravya (Abhinayana) is left orphaned. Neha also plays the grown Shravya, so one face carries both the loss and its echo. It is smart casting. Then Vinay (Trinadh Varma), an engineering student, falls from a rooftop at night. Inspector Vasudev (Sumanth) smells murder. His probe takes in Vinay's parents, Gangadhar (Ravi Varma) and Parvathi (Shelly N Kumar), a suspicious friend, Karthik (Gowtham Pandit), and finally the ruthless smuggler Stephen Mercury (Jagapathi Babu). How does a college boy land in the underwo...

Good Intent, Slack Script A bridge collapses in Visargaon and children die. Sandhya Yadav (Parineeti Chopra), a reporter with the Mumbai news channel Azaad Bharati, rushes to cover it with her cameraman Vinod Sharma (Deven Bhojani). Shiva kaka (Amol Palekar), a villager whose son died in sand mining, points them to the real story: an illegal sand mafia. Debutant director Dhruv Tripathi, who co-wrote the film with Mihir Jadhav, picks a subject Indian cinema rarely touches. Sand is called "brown gold" here, and the film makes you see why. At 1 hour 56 minutes, it moves briskly. Sandhya is fearless and hungry for the truth, and Parineeti plays her with conviction. Vinod is the pragmatic anchor, and the warmth between the two is the best thing in the film. The newsroom politics are its sharpest idea. Vidur (Adil Hussain), Editor-in-Chief of Azaad Bharati, represents the spirit of journalism and is the most dependable presence on screen.  Shyam (Shekhar Suman), the channel owner, ...

A Second Look at the Common Man I watched Unnaipol Oruvan again, start to finish, and it holds up remarkably well on Subin Tv, a new cable tv channel on Jio Tv. The film’s produced by UTV and Rajkamal doesn’t have a digital presence for reasons best known to the producers.  The film is a remake of the Hindi hit A Wednesday , set across a single tense day in Chennai. An unnamed man places bags at the Central railway station, a shopping mall and an Anna Salai police station. He then calls the Commissioner and says five bombs are set to explode within four hours. His demand is to release four terrorists in custody, or the city pays. This is where the film turns clever.  The caller never wants them freed. He wants them gone. They were arrested years ago, and he has watched courts and governments treat such men with patience while ordinary citizens pay in blood. His logic is simple and chilling: terrorism is instant, so justice and safety must be instant too. The bombs are a blu...

Vysakh's Khalifa: Part 1 is a gold-smuggling gangster saga that arrives with swagger, a big score and a bigger secret in its last act. It is the first of a two-part story, and you can feel the makers saving their best card for later. Mambarakkal Aamir Ali (Prithviraj Sukumaran), is heir to a vast gold-trading empire stretching across the Middle East, London, Nepal and Kerala. His father Younus (Renji Panicker) never wanted this life for him, and Aamir himself never planned to walk into it.  The first half takes its time with his love life, his family and the circumstances that slowly pull him back into the family business. His grandfather's smuggling legacy once worried even Mrs, Indira Gandhi, and that bloodline hangs over every frame. Then the film changes gears. Harris Basheer (Neil Nitin Mukesh), making his Malayalam debut, emerges as Aamir's foil, while Seittuji (Suresh Oberoi) brings quiet weight as his mentor.  Indrans and Shammi Thilakan add their familiar presenc...

Director Nelson Dilipkumar has once again delivered a blockbuster. Jailer 2, the second instalment of the super successful Jailer series, arrives over three years after the first film. The film opens on a surprisingly quiet note. Tiger Muthuvel Pandian (Rajinikanth) is working peacefully as a supervisor at a supermarket in a small town. Grandson Ritvik (Rithvik) leaves for school and daughter-in-law Shweta (Mirnaa) heads to work, while wife Vijaya (Ramya Krishnan) packs the lunch and runs the house. That calm does not last. Varman's best friend is searching for Tiger, and his men eventually land up in Muthuvel's town. The moment they identify him, the clashes begin. Only then do they realise that Muthuvel is also searching for their top boss. This mutual search leads to Goa and the Kalpak family. At the top sits Kalpak Bodhi (SJ Suryah), the big boss behind Varman and his men. Family patriarch Chakri Kalpak (Mithun Chakraborty), sister Kantha Kalpak (Vidya Balan) and brothers S...

Maia, how can I be like you? How do I build your patience, persistence and perseverance? How do I outthink a rival who plays dirty, as you did?  And how do I keep running non-stop, though I keep boasting that I own "Miles To Go" more than Robert Frost ever could have, had he been alive? These thoughts chased me through the brisk 84 minutes of Runner on Amazon Prime Video. We meet Maia Marten (Gal Gadot) , a sharp London lawyer and single mother. Her morning begins like any other, with a school drop-off and a run. Her day's work is to escort a key witness to court, someone who can finally nail the killer of two young women. Next comes her son, Noah (Rory Wilmot) , the centre of her world. He waves goodbye at the school gate. That ordinary moment is what the film later makes you ache for. Then the phone rings. The unseen voice belongs to The Caller (Damian Lewis) , who tracks her every step with chilling calm. His terms are brutal. She must cover 11 miles in 60 minutes ...

I went in cautious about this one—true crime dramas about real-world violence can so easily tip into exploitation, turning tragedy into spectacle.  But what struck me within the first hour was how quiet this movie is.  It doesn't dramatize the hunt for theatrical effect. Instead, it sits with something far more unsettling: the slow unraveling of a mind that believed it had solved the world's problems. The script doesn't rush to the bombings. It spends time in the cabin—Ted Kaczynski's philosophical universe, his sense of betrayal by institutions, his conviction that technology itself was the enemy.  Director Sam Esmail lets us see the logic, however twisted, that led him there. This isn't moral relativism; it's ethnographic.  We understand without being made to sympathize, which is the hardest and most important distinction to make. What gets me about the performances—particularly Paul Bettany's Kaczynski and Holt McCallany's FBI profiler Jim Fitzgera...