Cinema, Karam, Kapi

I When I wrote this movie review on the fifth week of its release, I continue to be surprised how and why mediocre films that are hyped by the right wing and the media alike become top box office hits.  Dhurandhar, by far would be the top grosser for the year 2025. The film is said to have made over INR 1,000 Cr in box office collections back then and is still running. I watched the movie in a Tier-3 town in Tamil Nadu called Erode. It was a night show, and the 120-seater was houseful indeed. In a city where predominantly the population is Tamil-speaking, it was surprising to see a large diaspora watching a Hindi-language film with English sub-titles! Content is King. Content is Queen. Content drives audience. Period. Hamza Ali Mazari (Ranveer Singh) reaches Lyari Province in Karachi, Pakistan as an immigrant, crossing from Afghanistan border. He joins a juice shop as a helper and gains the trust of the locals.  In an instance when the elder son of dreaded don, Rehman Dekait ...

The much awaited and most hyped Superstar starrer “Coolie” released worldwide on 14 th  August to the cheers, claps and applause of his ardent fans.    Directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj, a self-claimed disciple of Actor Kamal Hassan, the film has been produced by Kalanithi Maran’s Sun Pictures. It is interesting to see Thalaivar move seamlessly from Lyca to Sun to Lyca and again to Sun. Only he can manage this politics of business and business of politics so damn well.  Coolie is all about Deva (Rajinikanth) and his childhood friend Rajasekar (Sathyaraj) who is found dead by the train tracks.  His three daughters imcluding Preethi (Shruti Hassan) are threated by  Soubin (Dayal) and his men to complete certain tasks left behind by their father. How Deva finds and fights his friend’s murderer is the rest of the plot . Upendra (Kaleesha) enters the fray one last time for old times’ sake even as Thalaivar fights his off-screen bestie Nagarjuna who dons the role of ...

Inspector Jaikumar (Ashok Selvan) is investigating the death of a high-profile corporate czar S. Gurumurthy (Samudrakani), who is the CXO of one of India’s largest, listed and reputed Real Estate companies  and a key sponsor of IPL T20 Cricket,  based out of Ghaziabad, NCR. The upright executive, with no visible scars on his reputed corporate  career all along, is killed by torture, much to the surprise of the community at large.  Little do people know that Gurumurthy had a shadow life too, acting as the hit-man of the company’s owners, by making gullible small-land owners to surrender their cultivable land for real estate development across Northern India. Indrani (Trisha) runs the CSR arm of the company, which among other social initiatives also runs a school and a college, where the children of poor farmers are enrolled. Jaikumar & Indrani have a parallel love track going on, with their wedding solemnised. (Indrani had a past affair, btw!) Jaikumar takes spec...