The performances of all the actors are uninspiring because the writing is so dull. It feels like the actors were in the film for the paycheck but not because they believed in the material. Nishabdham movie cast: Anushka Shetty, Madhavan, Anjali, Michael Madsen Nishabdham movie director: Hemant Madhukar Nishabdham movie rating: 1 star One of the many disengaging aspects of Nishabdham, streaming on Amazon Prime Video, is that the characters in this movie behave as if they have no skin in the game. Especially Anushka Shetty’s Sakshi, who becomes a witness in a murder case involving a world-famous cello player Anthony, played by Madhavan. It all begins when Sakshi takes Anthony to a haunted house in Seattle. She goes to the haunted house to find a vintage painting. The house in question has seen a couple killed brutally in 1972. The deaths are designed to make us believe that this is, indeed, the doings of the devil. And cut to 2019, we also find Anthony crucified to a wall in the basement in the same manner of the house’s previous occupants. The plot thickens, when Sakshi somehow miraculously escapes the clutches of death and makes a run for her life. Now, she should be able to settle the debate about the presence of a ghost in the house. However, she is deaf and mute and that makes police officer Richard Dawkins (Michael Madsen) snap: “Just what I need. A mute for a witness.” Firstly, that’s insensitive and not cool at all. And secondly, Richard knew Sakshi personally even before this incident and that means he must have been aware of her condition as well. That’s the problem with this thriller. Things in the narration just don’t add up. The gaping holes in the narrative, to put it like Maha (Anjali), disrespects the “experiences and intelligence” of the audience. And the biggest bummer is not a single actor behaves normally or brings in some originality to his or her performance. It feels like all the actors were perpetuating stereotypes, instead of finding a unique voice for their respective characters. For example, Anjali’s Maha thinks swag is all about wearing fancy sunglasses. She doesn’t have a single quality that inspires respect or admiration for her character. And another example is the use of the “F” word. It seems writer and producer Kona Venkat felt, given that Michael Madsen is playing an American cop and he has done a few Tarantino movies, he must use the “F” word even when there is no necessity for that. Take, for example, the scene from “Old Cases”, which is episode 4 from season 1 of The Wire. Two cops take up a murder case and methodically examine the crime scene, making discoveries. And the entire conversation in the scene is filled with nothing but iterations of the “F” word. And it’s an iconic scene that will stick with the audience for years to come. But, whenever Michael Madsen uses that adjective, it feels so shallow, meaningless and out of place. The performances of all the actors are uninspiring because the writing is so dull. It feels like the actors were in the film for the paycheck but not because they believed in the material. Anuskha hardly makes an effort to sell the movie with her performance. Maybe she must have realised halfway through the production that the audience would not buy a variation of Bhaagamathie. Click Something : (Ads)

All traditional conventions of storytelling has been upended by Kaufman in I'm Thinking of Ending Things. Instead, we get episodes and snippets of conversations which might trigger individual responses from people who relate to the said occurrences. I’m Thinking of Ending Things movie director: Charlie Kaufman I’m Thinking of Ending Things movie cast: Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemmons, Toni Collette, David Thewlis I’m Thinking of Ending Things movie rating: Three stars From the trailer, it was evident that I’m Thinking of Ending Things will not be an easy watch. It rather gave the sense of a tough literary essay, that everyone in grad school raves about, but no one has actually read. And with a name like Charlie Kaufman behind it, the readings on the surreal and vague scale only went higher. Divided in three parts, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is essentially about ‘Young Woman’ (Jessie Buckley) who is in a relationship with Jake (Jesse Plemmons), and seven weeks later, they both embark on a road trip to meet his parents. But right before the trip begins, we hear the young woman’s inner monologue, beginning with the rather ominous phrase, which is heard several times over the course of the film — I’m thinking of ending things. That long road trip is punctured by forced conversation, and the distance between the two widens as they approach the destination. He explains Wordsworth to her, in an almost patronising tone, and she tries to blend further into the upholstery of the car seat. With a snowstorm blazing outside, they have no one else to turn to, and melancholy weighs them down. But what else did we expect from a Kaufman film, he gave us films like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and he directed Synecdoche, New York. I’m Thinking of Ending Things is based on a novel by Iain Reid, and well Kaufman has adapted it in his own style. The dynamic between the couple is the core of the film. Ever seen a couple on the brink of a breakup? One of them — usually the chief architect of the breakup — has checked out the said relationship, and everyone can see it, except the unaware party. That is what it feels like when we see ‘Young Woman’ and Jake. One wants to hold on to the frayed ends of a dissipating dynamic, and the other couldn’t care less. There is a sense of heightened foreboding, as we meet the ageing parents of Jake, played by Toni Collette and David Thewlis. We gather that Jake doesn’t like to be touched, or shown affection by his mother, and he also feels slighted. He strongly feels that he should have got the ‘acumen’ pin in high school, and not the ‘diligence’ one. After a highly dramatic dinner, which featured some sporadic outbursts — there is some back and forth in time, when ‘Young Woman’ encounters the aged, bedridden versions of Jake parents, and a rather young one too — the couple make their way back to the city, aided by tire chains as the snowstorm has grown to a full-fledged blizzard. The narrative is often cut by scenes of an elderly janitor cleaning up the local high school, apparently its the one which Jake attended. There is a fantasy scene where Jake makes a speech and sings when he accepts a Nobel prize. All traditional conventions of storytelling has been upended by Kaufman in I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Instead, we get episodes and snippets of conversations which might trigger individual responses from people who relate to the said occurrences. We see the change of colours: the bright tangerine red jacket sported by ‘Young Woman’ turns to a sedate navy blue, the tapestry in Jakes’s parental home shifts hues from a heady turquoise blue to a warm burnt sienna. Its surreal, its engaging and it is at times laborious. But, everything is not supposed to be easy nowadays, especially films which cater to the inner workings of the mind. There are references to David Foster Wallace, and ‘Young Woman’ recites lines from an Eva H.D. poem. The film demands to be interpreted from our own experiences and perspectives. While the narrative flows linearly, the take away is hardly linear. One feels uncomfortable with the scene where Jake and ‘Young Woman’ keep talking at each other, or the one where ‘Young Woman’ keeps insisting on ‘going home’, even when Jake’s tending to his rather ill and elderly mother. Maybe the second viewing will make more sense for me, and maybe the mysteries that lie hidden in the film will be unlocked then. For now, I am reeling from the impending heartbreak that the couple will eventually deal with. I’m Thinking of Ending Things is streaming on Netflix.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui is very good, channelling Ayyan’s seething rage into something we can empathise with; the tender passion he exhibits with Indira Tiwari rounds off his character. Aakshath Das, as Adi, is perfect, and the real star of the movie. Serious Men movie cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Nassar, Indira Tiwari, Aakshath Das, Shweta Basu Prasad, Sanjay Narvekar Serious Men movie director: Sudhir Mishra Serious Men movie rating: Three stars Based on Manu Joseph’s novel of the same name, Sudhir Mishra’s adaptation of Serious Men is a bitingly sharp, satirical look at Aspirational India. Ayyan Mani, a Tamil Dalit who lives in a Mumbai slum with his wife and son, represents a here-and-now Indian who wants a better life, and will do anything he can in order to achieve it, even if the things he does may not pass a strict moral or ethical metric. But when the chips were stacked against you generations before you were born, what is right, and what is wrong? The answers, in this thought-provoking film, lie somewhere in between. Ayyan (Nawaz) is a personal assistant to an overbearing astronomer Acharya (Nassar). The harder the former tries to please his Brahmin boss, the more obnoxious is the latter’s behaviour: to be called a moron and an idiot, in his hearing, is something Ayyan is used to, and he does what others would have in his position—swallow his pride, smile unctuously, and scurry off to do the boss’s bidding. But there’s something else that Ayyan is doing, as we discover. Creating a weapon of destruction in the shape of his genius school-going son Adi (Das), who slays rote-loving teachers and patronising principals with his astonishing math-solving skills. Good education can help create a well-rounded individual; it can also, if that individual is lucky enough to find an enabling environment, help break class and caste barriers. Ayyan brings an extra edge to this mix because he knows that to play the victim card with the right degree of canny belligerence in the right place can take you far indeed. Will Adi’s astonishing skills, attracting the attention of the media in search of quick sensation (Slumchild! Poverty! Lower caste! Underprivileged! Prodigy!) and smart politicians building their Dalit base, take the family out of their contained-in-the-chawl life? It would appear that all is on course, till something happens, and the serious men begin dismantling the building blocks they had begun handing out. Once the secret Ayyan has harboured all these years about Adi is out, he tries desperately to contain the damage. But he hasn’t taken into account the damage that’s been done to the young boy, who starts wilting under pressure. What’s noteworthy about Serious Men is that it refuses to salvage its characters, and their bundle of lies, whether it is Ayyan, or Acharya whose work on ‘alien microbes’ is based on exaggerations and falsehood. Nawaz is very good, channelling Ayyan’s seething rage into something we can empathise with; the tender passion he exhibits with Tiwari rounds off his character. Das, as Adi, is perfect, and the real star of the movie. The most effective parts of the film are between these three; the rest, which include those in the research institute where Ayyan works, and in the party office of the politician father-and-daughter duo (Narvekar and Prasad) are somewhat woolly, even though the actors all fit their parts well. This is Mishra back in form. He is one of the few Hindi film directors who understands politics, and at his best, has been able to spin winning yarns around the politics of the day (Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi). His 1992 Dharavi, also set in the slums, and an automatic comparison, was more about a man eking out an existence. Serious Men allows its slum-dweller the new-age quality of ambition, and gives him the wiles to see that if the goodies we take for granted are not his, then a snatch-grab is the only way out. Ayyan Mani is the real serious man of his tale. Serious Men will begin streaming on Netflix from October 2. Click (Something here)

The joy of watching a film that is written so beautifully is all down to Aaron Sorkin. Everything feels of the time. The lines are laced with acerbity, humour and, in the right places, pathos. And the ensemble cast is perfect. The Trial of the Chicago 7 movie cast: Joseph Gordon-Lewitt, Sacha Baron Cohen, Yahya Abdul Mateen II, Frank Langella, Eddie Redmayne, Mark Rylance, Jeremy Strong, John Carroll Lynch, Daniel Flaherty, Noah Robbins, Alex Sharp, Michael Keaton, Alex Sharp, Noah Robbins The Trial of the Chicago 7 movie director: Aaron Sorkin The Trial of the Chicago 7 movie rating: 4 stars In September 1969, a trial of the ‘Chicago Seven’ began: seven people were accused by the state of inciting rioting and violence at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. It was a motley bunch. Long-haired, bearded, happily stoned Abbie Hoffman (Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Strong), prosaic student leader Tom Hayden (Redmayne) and his cohort Rennie Davis (Sharp), much older peacenik David Dellinger (Lynch), and two others, John Froines (Flaherty) and Lee Weiner (Robbins), who sort of hang around on the sidelines wondering what they are doing there. They are there just to be able to say, one suspects, this classic line: ‘this is the Academy award of protests, and it is an honour just to be nominated’. So cracking, so Sorkin. The two-hour-long film stays mainly in the courtroom, while taking occasional sideways leaps into the outside world. An early warning signal of how the chips are stacked against the seven is evident in the way the prosecutors, led by Richard Schultz (Gordon-Levitt) are given the nod: Lyndon B Johnson is history, they are told, this is the administration of President Richard Nixon, and those seven are to be found guilty, whatever it takes. We see black-and-white real-time footage of the demonstrations, the police brutality and the tear-gas shells, the cracking of skulls and spraying blood, skilfully transposed on to the film. There are also conversations between the seven, out on bail, and their lawyer, William Kunstler (Rylance), which point to the differences between them, as well as the crucial thread that unifies them: they are all peace-mongers. Barring a couple of slack instances when it slackens, the film never loses pace. It was a time when young people were being drafted and sent off to fight America’s impossible war in Vietnam, anti-war protests were rising in University campuses, and the people who were rising up in protest included youthful hippies who smoked up and made the two-finger peace signs and sang songs of revolution, as well as those who wanted to do more. The joy of watching a film that is written so beautifully is all down to Sorkin. Everything feels of the time. The lines are laced with acerbity, humour and, in the right places, pathos. And the ensemble cast is perfect, not putting a single foot wrong in the recreation of that historical event, in which the concerted attempts by the state to quash counter-culture pushback was met with failure. The performances are all very good, especially Rylance as the lawyer who knows just which buttons to push, Cohen as the guy who keeps pushing them, and Langella, as the old-style legislator who rules his courtroom with a lethal mix of disdain and dislike, handing out contempt charges like they were confetti. And Keaton, who is on for just a few minutes, makes his presence felt. A film with mostly men talking (it would comprehensively fail the Bechdel test; there are only two women in it, and they are completely dispensable) to each other, is spectacular nevertheless, because this is a true story of those seven men, that long-drawn trial, and what the impact of the trial meant. The group was also called the Chicago Eight. Black Panther leader Bobby Seale (Mateen) was arraigned with the seven, even when he had nothing to do with the planning of the demonstration. He was there just for four hours, to make a speech, but he was thrown in with the seven, just to make a point. Racism is in the frame from the beginning, as we see Seale struggling to be heard. But his voice is quelled by Judge Julius Hoffman (Langella), who refuses to listen. It takes a shocking incident involving Seale being dragged off ‘to be dealt with’ by the marshals, and brought back into the court-room, gagged and bound, to drive home the point. Someone asks him, ‘can you breath?’ It’s a bit obvious, but you know exactly what’s being referenced. The question also forces viewers to examine how far the US has moved from then to now, not just in terms of all-round racist behaviour, but in terms of the much wider issue of freedom. What you can do, what you can say, and how far you can go, are all questions that are constantly being asked in today’s America. As they are in India. Watching the vicious attack on protestors, with cops riding on the back of complicit officialdom, reminds you of the similar things happening around us. The trial of the Chicago Seven took over six months before the defendants walked free. Closer home, with protestors being charge-sheeted and arrested, freedom seems a long way off. As this rousing and timely film shouts out, channeling the popular cry of those times: the whole world is watching. The Trial of the Chicago 7 begins streaming on Netflix from October 16. Click (Something here)

Enola Holmes is a joyous adventure, and one feels giddy with delight to be a part of it. Just maybe there should have been a bit more deduction, a tad more mystery. But perhaps this is the beginning of a franchise, and Enola is just wetting her toes. Enola Holmes movie cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill, Sam Claflin and Helena Bonham Carter Enola Holmes movie director: David Bradbeer Enola Holmes movie rating: Three and a half stars Rarely a film comes long which fills you with chuckling delight, makes you sort of tizzy with its balanced pace, makes a strong political point and yet fills you with hope. Enola Holmes, which is streaming on Netflix, does all this without getting bogged down by one idea alone. It’s 1884 and England is on the cusp of a new era, courtesy an important vote in the House of Lords, which will allow the expansion of the suffragette considerably. Interesting times, perfectly suited to introduce Enola Holmes, the little known sister of Sherlock Holmes, a detective whose deduction skills had already earned quite a reputation. Enola (Millie Bobby Brown), whose name is literally ‘alone’ spelt backwards, is an exception in 18th century England, as we learn in the very first five minutes of the film. She doesn’t embroider, or wear hats and gloves, the horror! Instead she plays chess, practices jujutsu with her mother (Helena Bonham Carter) in an overgrown backyard and there are experiments in chemistry and tennis and archery lessons. Her mother who has always blazed her own trail — we later come to know — makes sure that Enola follows in her footsteps. The two lead an adventurous, interesting life in Ferndell Hall, away from the world and the established elder brothers — Mycroft, a conservative government stooge and the more popular and enigmatic Sherlock, who is distant and self-absorbed. Until, Enola wakes up a summer day to find her mother gone from the rambling house. Enter her two semi-estranged brothers, who have swooped in to salvage the situation which is replete with a wayward intrepid teen and a missing mother. While Mycroft has plans to send away Enola to a finishing school, “to undo the damage wielded by their mother,” Enola, the intrepid teen, expert solver of ciphers, has other plans. Therein begins the cat and mouse game of Enola embarking on a mission to look for her mother, while her much elder brothers are chasing their own tails trying to keep up. The Sherlock universe is already well populated, with the likes of Robert Downey Jr, Benedict Cumberbatch having donned the famous ear-flapped travelling cap, and who can forget Johnny Lee Miller in the Elementary with Lucy Lui as Joan Watson, upending gender in the police procedural show. House MD too was inspired by Sherlock Holmes. With Enola Holmes, we are taken into that universe yet again, and its a pleasant surprise. We meet a Sherlock who speaks less, is happy to play second fiddle to his younger sister and is downright proud of her achievements. The lack of a super-sized ego and arrogance took some getting used to, but that’s what David Bradbeer, the director was going for. This is where Enola Holmes goes beyond Elementary. Its all about Enola, as she gets into scrapes, breaks the fourth wall with charming alacrity — hello Fleabag, David Bardbeer directed Fleabag as well — and forges her own path. Phoebe Waller-Bridge has inspired this trend of speaking to the audience directly, and we couldn’t be happier. Her path entwines with the young Viscount of Tweaksbury, a dashing Marquess to be, and oh, yes there is an all-important vote that will be held in the House of Lords. The scenes between Enola and Sherlock — obviously he has her favour, unlike the stoogey Mycroft — are the best in the film, as he comes to recognise her as an equal and a force to be reckoned with, instead of the young smock wearing girl. Has Sherlock gone soft in his latest avatar? Well, we are not complaining. We have not had a strong female detective in a while, and Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple seems a long time ago. Millie Bobby Brown, fresh from the success of Netflix’s Stranger Things, is the perfect casting for a quirky Enola, and Henry Cavill with his perfectly wavy hair is enigmatic enough to play Sherlock. The film makes many subtle commentaries on the state of affairs, but they blend seamlessly into the screenplay, brilliantly written by Jack Thorne, who has earlier written the stage play for Harry Potter and The Cursed Child. Feminism and the female gaze are recurring themes, but they never get in your face. In fact, the lack of a chest-thumping speech is conspicuous by its absence. There is also a nod to ‘an idea of England’, and they could very well be talking about a post-Brexit England. Enola Holmes is a joyous adventure, and one feels giddy with delight to be a part of it. Just maybe there should have been a bit more deduction, a tad more mystery. But perhaps this is the beginning of a franchise, and Enola is just wetting her toes. It would be quite something to see how the two Holmes square off against each other as they solve crime in 19th century London. Enola Holmes is streaming on Netflix. Click (Something here)

Alankrita’s film opens spaces and dialogue around the thorny subject of female desire : Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare is the kind of film which opens up spaces and dialogue around difficult topics, and raises the feminist bar while doing so: give it many ‘chamakte sitare’ already. Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare movie cast: Konkona Sen Sharma, Bhumi Pednekar, Aamir Bashir, Vikram Massey, Amol Parasher, Kubbra Sait, Karan Kundra, Neelima Azim Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare movie director: Alankrita Shrivastava Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare movie rating: Three and a half stars Female desire is one of those thorny issues that mainstream Hindi cinema has always had difficulty touching upon: when touch per se is so hard to show on screen without all kinds of self-righteous moral stakeholders making a noise, anything that involves grown men and women and the thing between them becomes a toughie. Alankrita Shrivastava’s Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare blows off, with a great deal of flair, feeling and courage, the layers of repression and hypocrisy that surrounds us. You can draw a broad thematic connection between the director’s previous film Lipstick Under My Burkha and this one, which can be seen both as a worthy follow-up, and a terrific companion piece. Dolly (Sen Sharma) lives with her husband Amit (Bashir) and two children in Greater Noida, part of the National Capital Region (NCR). They could well stand in for the Aspirational Nuclear Family In New India: paying instalments for a flat in one of those faceless under-construction high-rises that have sprung up in the area, surrounded by malls, call centres, gyms, all markers of urban progress. From the outside, Dolly’s life appears perfect, but when her cousin Kitty aka Kajal (Pedenkar) from small-town Bihar comes to live with them, the cracks begin to appear. There’s a lot going on in this busy film, and some of those elements appear to have been lifted straight from the headlines. Saffron-clad goondas targeting courting couples, and liberal, progressive ideas. Call-centres masquerading as phone sex providers. Dodgy clinics combining unwanted babies and childless couples. The air of faint desperation exuding from those involved in unskilled jobs with no security is captured beautifully: both Dolly and Kitty work, but both stare at dead-ends. Other characters show up. Apart from Bashir who plays the my-way-or-highway entitled spouse, there is Usman (Parasher) as a smart-mouthed delivery boy. Pradeep (Massey) as a two-faced night attendant. D J Johnny (Kundra) as a buff ‘best deejay in Greater Noida’, and his girl-friend (Sait), with her eye on the main chance. We see them interact with Dolly and Kitty, in a revelatory matrix of ambition, frustration and desire: this is a solidly-written film, and growth is part of the arc of each character. A few lines are too explanatory, some situations are too on-the-nose, and a climactic twist feels a bit too convenient. But those are minor quibbles in a film, so well performed across the board, which says it like it is. We live in a society where illicit carnal connections men make are fine because boys-will-be-boys, but a little boy who likes dolls is not a boy, and women expressing passion are invariably harlots. Dolly is given a chance to realise that her non-existent sex life is not down to her, hallelujah; Kitty leaves an inadequate sexual encounter to actively seek one better. An older woman (Azim) steps past the guilt-trip for having abandoned her family, saying it wasn’t a life she wanted. And there are actual honest up-front conversations between women about what they want, and how they want it, and more importantly, what they don’t want. This is the kind of film which opens up spaces and dialogue around difficult topics, and raises the feminist bar while doing so: give it many ‘chamakte sitare’ already. Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare is streaming on Netflix.

The only thing that makes one sit through this period piece is the performances. The A-list heavy ensemble cast makes everything believable. The Devil All The Time movie director: Antonio Campos The Devil All The Time movie cast: Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Bill Skarsgard, Stan Sebastian The Devil All The Time movie rating: Two and a half stars The Devil All The Time is an alternate universe where Spider-Man, Batman and the Winter Soldier have all converged. And they are all battling — not a common enemy, or even each other — but the darkness within. Actors who play superheroes, or characters based on comic books and literature, have to work extra hard to shed that character. Till today, Daniel Radcliffe is synonymous with Harry Potter, but thankfully, Emma Watson was able to shed her Hermione tag with The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The Devil All The Time does the same for Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson and Stan Sebastian, all in a single masterstroke of casting. The film has made them shed their superhero capes, and it will be a struggle to see them as superheroes again. This is where the Antonio Campos feature succeeds. It’s guaranteed that you will take at least ten minutes into watching The Batman, when it releases next year, to adjust to Pattinson being the billionaire superhero. Tom Holland will no longer be the kid who stumbled his way to being Spider-Man, instead, after watching this film, you will think of him as a man capable of some dark deeds, as perhaps most men are. The two-hour-twenty-minutes long film, which streams on Netflix, is based on the Donald Ray Pollock novel of the same name. It is uncomfortable and grim. The soothing voice-over, a rarely used device, by the writer Pollock does nothing to assuage the bleak tone of the film. The Devil All The Time oscillates between West Virginia and Ohio, and is set in the period between World War 2 and the Vietnam war. We meet Willard Russell — Bill Skarsgard not giving away any trace of his Swedish ancestry and upbringing — who has come back from the War, and is keen to settle down with Charlotte, a pretty waitress. They settle into domesticity, have a son, and all is fine on the surface. Willard has seen things in the war, and the one sight of his fellow soldier being crucified on a wooden cross with the body mutilated, and flies eating it, has stayed with him. He makes a cross out of a bowed out tree in the backyard and starts praying there. We see a deep-rooted connection between religiosity and violence in the first half-hour itself; how too deep a belief can be manoeuvred to justify extreme acts of violence. Willard kills his son Arvin’s (Tom Holland) dog, with his hands, and the feeling that was bubbling at the back of our heads, finally occurs. A series of unfortunate incidents lead Arvin to live with his ageing grandmother, and a ‘step sister’ Lenora in West Virginia. Cut to seven years, and we see a grown-up Arvin — Tom Holland, with his perfect Southern accent and stylish way of smoking. He is now the man of the house taking care of things including driving his step-sister around and protecting her from school bullies, who think her pious Christian nature makes her fair game. Enter a new preacher, Reverend Preston Teagardin (Robert Pattinson), who is young and wears ruffled shirts and has a proclivity for fancy cars. Pattinson, with his side flicked hair, and an oozing, devilish malice will make you wrap your jacket in this heat more snugly. He also has a thing for unassuming teenaged girls. One can predict what happens next. The Devil All The Time, is like a banyan tree, where religiosity is the root of everything and it expands out through violent acts. But the overall sense of foreboding is not edge-of-the-seat kind and at the end leaves you drained. There are many subplots, and all roads lead back to Knockemstiff, the small town where Willard set up his home, and we zero back on Sheriff Bodecker (Sebastian, sufficiently heavy and rounded up to justify a corrupt middle-aged lawman, with many secrets of his own). Bodecker had helped out Arvin on one fateful night, and fate brings them face to face again. The only thing that makes one sit through this period piece is the performances. The A-list heavy ensemble cast makes everything believable. If nothing else, watch for the showdown scene between Holland and Pattinson set in a church. This one is for the books. The Devil All The Time is streaming on Netflix.

Vikrant Massey wears Prahastha's longing and loneliness like his comfortable suit. Shweta Tripathi is at ease displaying Yuvishka's gullibility as well as assertiveness. Cargo movie director: Arati Kadav Cargo movie cast: Vikrant Massey, Shweta Tripathi, Nandu Madhav Cargo movie rating: Three and a half stars When humans arrive in the huge spaceship Pushpak 634-A after death, they don’t find heaven or hell based on their karma. Instead, they find demon agents, who heal and prepare them for reincarnations. Arati Kadav marries myth and science in the most original, inventive Indian sci-fi film I have seen. She subverts the ideas of rakshas and through the various stories of human deaths, tells a profound story of the loneliness of demons. Vikrant Massey’s Prahastha, a homo rakshas, has stayed on Pushpak 634-A for the last 75 years, as the main astronaut transitioning the dead to another life. These transitions are part of a peace treaty between humans and demons. Daily, Prahashta meets several dead humans, most of them with unfinished dreams. He listens to them but doesn’t engage. He is a man of few words, who has found comfort in his solitude. His dead guests are the most exciting, alive part of his monotonous life. His routine is disrupted as he gets an assistant, university topper Yuvishka Shekhar (Shweta Tripathi). Yuvishka’s confidence and more modern, evolved ways of dealing with humans, who are addressed as cargo, throw off Prahastha, who finds her threatening a space that till now only belonged to him. But as Cargo progresses, Prahastha’s initial resistance gives way to the fear of losing his only companion in a lifeless place, where his spirit feels shrunk by years. In her debut feature as a writer-director, Arati Kadav is ingenious. Her love for science fiction is known through the shorts that she has made previously, but her efficiency in bringing alive the crippling sense of isolation not only through her protagonists but also the large and empty space that they inhabit is where her brilliance lies. Vikrant Massey wears Prahastha’s longing and loneliness like his comfortable suit. Shweta Tripathi is at ease displaying Yuvishka’s gullibility as well as assertiveness. Both the actors lend simplicity and spontaneity that was needed for a coherent telling of their director’s grand vision. Through Yuvishka’s sensitivity, Arati Kadav delves into the many questions we all ask about the purpose of life. The fact that Cargo comes at a time when the world is gripped by the briefness of life at the hands of the coronavirus pandemic and man-made disasters, the existential crisis in Cargo hits harder. Cargo also bursts one’s illusion about permanence. It makes you confront these uncomfortable truths, while also giving you hope that the cycle of life and death will continue. Our memories will fade, we will heal and start again. ‘When we all have to die, why do we have stories?’ asks Yuvishka. Because the stories are what make us more than just cargo. Cargo is streaming on Netflix.

Atkan Chatkan review: The dishevelled brown, dirt-streaked faces of the children in Atkan Chatkan leave nothing to the imagination. Atkan Chatkan movie cast: Lydian Nadhaswaram, Sachin Chaudhary, Madhav, Yash Rane and Tamanna Dipak Atkan Chatkan movie director: Shiv Hare Atkan Chatkan movie rating: One and a half stars It’s 2020, twelve years since Slumdog Millionaire, but still, we need poverty porn as a medium to convey an ‘inspirational message’ and build a narrative around hope. The dishevelled brown, dirt-streaked faces of the children in Atkan Chatkan leave nothing to the imagination. The two-hour-fifteen minute film is the directorial debut of Shiv Hare, and while the earnestness of the attempt was palpable in the trailer, the full-length feature adds nothing more to it. Atkan Chatkan is the rags-to-riches story of Guddu, a gifted child prodigy who has an absent mother and an alcoholic father. He works at a tea stall but lives a life dedicated to the pursuit of music. The opening sequence has him tuning to the sounds of kathha being mixed in a brass pot in a paan shop, wheat being husked, a finger ring tapping on a glass tumbler. He stumbles his way to a motley group of other street kids and they all form a band using paraphernalia of street goods — broken pipes, plastic drums etc. But of course, he has to go through a tough beginning — get really down on his luck, and when everything seemed lost, he is rescued. Guddu and his band are ‘discovered’ by the principal of the Tansen Sangeet Mahavidyalaya in Jhansi, where the film is set. There is a prestigious music competition on the cards, and the raggedy bunch are roped in to win it for the school. Throw in a talented teacher who has a heart of gold. This happens in the first half of the film, and by now, one can predict the second half. The second half is as tedious, hackneyed and predictable as the first. For how long can we use ‘even poor people are allowed to dream’ trope? All this would have been palatable, if only numerous people had not tried it successfully, many times, years ago. Atkan Chatkan, a phrase in Hindi, which is often used for alliteration purposes, is supposed to lend a zesty, youthful vibe. The film is neither zestful nor happy. Contrived sequences, like that of the privileged kids feeling resentful towards the gifted poor ones is very eighties, and does nothing but makes one wonder if the director was stuck in a time warp. The kids are a delight to watch, even if they have to regurgitate dialogues that don’t belong to this decade. Lydian Nadhaswaram, who plays Guddu, is a gifted pianist in real life. He has to play the role of a percussionist, which he tries valiantly. The percussion-heavy score, courtesy Sivamani, the drummer, gets lost in the melodramatic screenplay. With a name like Sivamani, attributed as the music composer, and the film being presented by AR Rahman, expectations were high on the musical end, but even there one cannot recall even one hummable ditty. Give Atkan Chatkan a miss. Listen to ‘the best of AR Rahman’ on your choice of music player instead.

V movie review: Nani-starrer V is not the popcorn movie that we deserve but the one we need right now. V movie cast: Nani, Sudheer Babu, Nivetha Thomas, Aditi Rao Hydari V movie director: Mohana Krishna Indraganti V movie ratings: Two and a half stars When you are told that an actor like Nani is playing a “serial killer” in a movie, you exactly know what it means. You know he is not going to play a Ted Bundy, you know that our protagonist will have the truth on his side and soon, it will be revealed that his actions were the result of him taking the higher moral ground. He is not someone who kills for amusement, but he does it to restore balance in the world. You won’t be shocked when you find out why Nani’s Vishnu is killing his targets brutally. During a pre-release interview, director Mohana Krishna Indraganti suggested that V is sort of a love letter to 1970s Hindi cinema, which gifted us many iconic crime dramas. So, he sticks to the basics when it comes to plot. A bunch of evil powerful men drunk on arrogance commit crimes against underage girls. When their bad deeds breach the threshold, the hero rises to destroy evil-doers and protect the good. Mohana brings some elegance to this tried-and-tested plot with his writing. Especially the way he shapes Nani’s V. The hero might be a trained killer, but he would prefer not to take a life if it is not absolutely necessary. And the director establishes this core characteristic of the hero in an action scene set in the backdrop of Kashmir. In the well-choreographed rescue operation, Vishnu clams down the nerves of a teenage terrorist and stops him from exploding a bomb. Instead of slitting the young terrorist’s throat, he gives him a shoulder to vent. There is a grace to his action. Mohana Krishna Indraganti has gone the extra mile while writing scenes for Vishnu. The scenes where Vishnu plays a cat-and-mouse game with his fellow travellers are particularly fascinating. However, Mohana doesn’t show an equal amount of love for other key characters, including Sudheer Babu’s Vivek Krishna. The director drastically undercuts the weight of the supercop character to benefit Nani’s highly intelligent killer. That said, V is a much-needed relief for film buffs who are on the lookout for fresh entertainment. V is not the popcorn movie that we deserve but the one we need right now. BACK GO

Producers Fahad Faasil and Nazriya Nazim, and director Mahesh Narayanan pick up a story with disturbingly familiar outlines and impart it with fresh urgency and impact, making each frame of the 1 hour 38 minutes run time count. C U Soon movie cast: Fahadh Faasil, Roshan Mathew, Darshana Rajendran, Amalda Liz, Saiju Kurup, Maala Parvathi, Kottayam Ramesh C U Soon movie director: Mahesh Narayanan C U Soon movie rating: Three and a half stars Of late, there’s been a worldwide flurry of made-under-lockdown web series and shorts, with socially distanced actors and technicians working remotely to come up with work that proves that human creativity can never be locked down. The quantity of such work has been increasing exponentially, but the quality has been variable. With the novelty factor wearing off, we are now turning into demanding viewers: we can make home videos on our phone cameras too, so what have you got that’s special? It’s almost as if the people behind C U Soon were aware of this slight but discernible impatience creeping upon us, especially when we are surrounded with streaming platforms and their never-ending offerings. Producers Fahad Faasil and Nazriya Nazim, and director Mahesh Narayanan pick up a story with disturbingly familiar outlines and impart it with fresh urgency and impact, making each frame of the 1 hour 38 minutes run time count. So many needy young women in Kerala are duped by canny agents with Gulf jobs that sound kosher, but are actually traps for the flesh trade. Only a few weeks back, Khuda Haafiz, a Bollywood film with the same premise came out, but while that went down the heavy-on-action melodrama route, C U Soon never takes its steady eyes off the ensnared young woman and the young man who gets drawn to her. The plot smartly doesn’t reveal all its cards up front, and as Jimmy Kurian (Mathew), totally smitten by the pretty but troubled Anu Mol (Rajendran), discovers that there may be more to her than meets the eye, and reaches out to his cousin Kevin Thomas (Faasil) for help, we are hooked: what will happen next? The constant use of technology is on full display in the film, reminding us how much our lives are parked in the digital sphere. Also, because we all have smartphones and social media accounts, it makes us vulnerable to people who want to stalk us: there really is nowhere to hide. Jimmy, Kevin and his sulky colleague Sanjana (Liz) spend all their time crunching computer keys, or tapping on their phones. Talking is so last century. Now we text. And if we come upon someone who has a phone without a sim card, there is clearly something suspicious going on. The one thing that’s disconcerting in most of these shot-on-camera-phones films is the lack of depth. C U Soon makes up for this by slowing things down, lingering on expressions, and allowing us to observe what’s going on. The action mostly happens in Dubai (with a few darts into the US and Kerala) and the way it unfolds, with the characters uncovering sordid secrets behind smiling faces, it’s all very real and moving. One scene in particular is heart-wrenching, and it visibly allows both Jimmy and Kevin to learn a couple of crucial life lessons—being too gullible is as much of a problem as is to automatically think the worst of someone, but it is also never too late to make up for it. Faasil’s face is a map, and we can see how he absorbs the painful reality of the character he is ‘investigating’, and how it affects him. Mathew too jumps over his initial objectionable comment about ‘call girls’, and we get a better version of the feckless, reckless Jimmy that we started with. It’s a bit hard to swallow this quick change of heart, but that’s okay: sometimes, a moment can be enough. And it’s also okay because we are rooting for these characters. Read ~ Fahadh Faasil: I’m here because I’ve nowhere else to go Which brings me to the excitement that this film brings with it. Anything that Faasil does (Maheshinte Prathikaram, Super Deluxe, Kumbalangi Nights) brings joy: here again, he gives us a complex character — not really likeable, cutting corners, borderline misogynistic — and then he makes us see how circumstances can make a little dent, that change is a possibility. Mathew is good too, as is Rajendran, and the supporting cast. In its short duration, C U Soon also manages to make a sharp comment on the way innocent women are lured into the flesh trade, and how their families are often unable to help. Read the review in Malayalam The film ends on an optimistic note, telling us on behalf of these ‘virtual’ characters, that they will ‘c us soon’ in theaters. Amen. C U Soon is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Maniyarayile Ashokan movie review: Shamzu Zayba did not clearly think through the idea. The half-baked plot results in a wannabe slice-of-life movie. Maniyarayile Ashokan movie cast: Gregory, Anupama Parameswaran, Krishna Sankar, Shine Tom Chacko Maniyarayile Ashokan movie director: Shamzu Zayba Maniyarayile Ashokan movie rating: One star Maniyarayile Ashokan is the tale of a lonely man who projects his desires for love and intimate companionship on a plantain plant. Yes, that’s right, a plantain plant. “Is there any other tree in nature with such fine feminine beauty as a plantain plant,” goes the voiceover that justifies the protagonist Ashokan’s (played by Gregory) obsession to seek an intimate relationship with a plant. No, it is not a stoner movie, and our hero is not smoking any grass. While we have movies like Spike Jonze’s Her envisioning a future where an operating software is deemed suitable to meet the intimate needs of human beings, debutant director Shamzu Zayba believes that a non-responsive plant will just be enough. Maniyarayile Ashokan opens with Ashokan’s dream. He is dreaming about a girl he saw at a function recently. It is not something crazy or implausible. It could well be a common recurring dream for every man, with deep-seated conviction in self-centric ideals. In the dream, Ashokan is woken up his wife, who serves him his morning tea in bed. He opens his eyes to his beautiful, smiling wife. And turning this dream into a reality will be his life’s biggest achievement. But, it is not easy because he is not exactly sharp-looking like Dulquer Salmaan in a navy uniform. (Dulquer makes a cameo appearance as Ashokan’s cousin). A girl rejects Ashokan because he doesn’t have fair skin, height or a high-paying job. And he is desperate to get married because of peer pressure. Reasonably, one may expect the film would examine the society’s obsession with fair skin and indict a marriage-centric society for putting undue stress on a person’s mental health. Director-writer Shamzu Zayba does neither. Looks are of great importance for Ashokan himself despite the fact that he is getting rejected on the same basis. The film puts forth the idea that a man doesn’t have to be good looking, but a beautiful appearance is a must for a woman when it comes to marriage. Even when Ashokan seeks out to marry a plantain plant, he vows to marry the most beautiful plantain plant in his garden. And the general ambience created by leaching winks and sinister laughs of just married men overtly sexualizes the institution of marriage. In more than one way, the movie underscores that physical need triumphs the need for emotional compatibility in a marriage. Read the review in Malayalam Shamzu Zayba did not clearly think through the idea. The half-baked plot results in a wannabe slice-of-life movie. Maniyarayile Ashokan is streaming on Netflix.