തരംഗം (Tharangam: The Curious Case of Kallan Pavithran) (2017)

Director: Dominic Arun
Writers: Dominic Arun, Anil Narayanan
DOP: Deepak D Menon
Cast: Tovino Thomas, Balu Varghese, Neha Iyer, Santhy Balachandran
Language: Malayalam

Tovino and Balu Varghese plays the role of two traffic cops who gets suspended after their goof up in an unofficial operation. Tovino is living in with his girlfriend and is a slacker selfish kind of person who is in debt. They now take up another private detective operation which gets them into all sorts of situations meeting some 'interesting' characters.

The debut director's short film, which was in black and white, was heavily stylised and one would expect something similar. Especially so, when you see the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright, Robert Rodriguez, Guy Ritchie thanked among many others, in a list too long to read during opening credits. Surprisingly enough, it is the style that the film lacks and you just end up with a comedy of errors kind of storyline. Films of Edgar Wright and Guy Ritchie are characterized by their editing flourishes and very interesting transitions and we got something similar in Double Barrel, which bombed heavily at the box office. Maybe that experience have scarred all aspiring filmmakers from trying something as audacious style wise. Not to say that Tharangam is devoid of any as there are a few interesting things thrown around but not nearly enough for the genre that it is going for. It has enough laughs to be interesting enough for a kind audience. It is the sort of film that normal Malayalee audience won't have enough patience in a theatre watch but might enjoy when they try it on small screen with lowered expectations. Other films that could be compared with are Kili Poyi and Neram. Kili Poyi was attempted in the early days of new-gen wave and deserved appreciation then. We've come a long way since then and experimental films have kind of become the norm now.

Performance wise it is a good one overall and the combination of Tovino-Balu-Santhy works very well. But there is a one-noteness in Tovino's performance as he seems to be always on the edge. His character situation is such but some variation and subtlety could be brought. First half of the film goes on a fair clip but things get quite strained in the second half. Film ends with a very chaotic (not in a good way) kind of ending which was a characteristic of late 80s Priyadarshan films, another director that was thanked during the opening credits. Overall it is a compromise film between Priyadarshan and Guy Ritchie inspirations and ends up neither here nor there.

PS: Rock n Rolla train track chase scene idea is replicated here.

Rating: 2.75/5

പറവ (Parava) (2017)

Director: Soubin Shahir
Writers: Muneer Ali, Soubin Shahir
DOP: Littil Swayamp
Cast: Amal Shah, Govind Pai, Shane Nigam, Dulquer Salman
Language: Mattanchery Malayalam

Soubin Shahir is making his directorial debut with this tale of Dove raising kids from Mattanchery. They have a dove flying competition in mind in which the objective is to get the birds to fly for the longest time before they get back to the terrace where they are reared. Over the course of the film we're introduced to three generations of male characters with the other two being one of the kids' elder brother and their gang of friends and rivals and the third being the generation of their fathers who all have now settled down earning bread for their families.

The film is at its best when we are following the story of the kids which is captured in all its raw magnificence. Obvious comparison would be with Guppy which was slightly less feel-good in its portrayal and also had a much more credible and subtle conflict between the generations. Soubin manages to give an authentic feel to everything and it apparently took very long to shoot the film probably because of all the dove scenes. There is even a dove sex scene which was missed by the sanskaari censors. They were probably expecting mating using tears. We're induced to the story of elder brother and their gang towards the interval point and we get Dulquer Salman in Charlie MK II role.

Malayalam films quite often portray Muslim characters in a very cartoonish manner and there were these obnoxious scenes from Charlie and Ustad Hotel where little girls are shown in full black burqas as if it is a cute phenomenon. Parava does its Muslim characters full justice by showing their vulnerabilities instead of extreme piousness. There is one 'blink it you miss scene' where a somewhat insignificant character from film is feeling visibly proud when he sees Hashim Amla getting a century on TV. Detailing is quite in vogue in Malayalam cinema ever since Maheshinte Prathikaaram.

Parava is around 150 minutes long and am usually sceptical when films go that long. But you never feel any lag whole way through it. Still you are left with feeling that they didn't properly mesh it together and some of the scenes don't make much sense. Kids are introduced to the villains in a very convenient manner and that acts as a segue to the flashback scenes. Dulquer Salman can only be introduced with him hitting a six in the last over. But what follows make fuck all sense because he is seen getting himself deliberately run out to give strike to Shane Nigam, who apparently is the star batsman. Even some of the climax scenes make not much sense as the kids go from heartbreak to elation and then again to heartbreak for no obvious reason. I wish they had given even more prominence to the kids storyline and leave us giving only hints about the other storyline involving Dulquer Salman and Shane Nigam. Overall, Parava is a good watch with great technical excellence and casting choices but could have been even better with some prudent editing and writing choices.

Rating: 3.25/5

Raw (2016)

Director: Julia Ducournau
Writer: Julia Ducournau
DOP: Ruben Impens
Cast: Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpf, Laurent Lucas
Language: French

When a young vegetarian undergoes a carnivorous hazing ritual at vet school, an unbidden taste for meat begins to grow in her.

Both of her parents had studied in the same vet school and her elder sister is currently studying there. She is considered as a potentially brilliant student and like all 'studious' ones is somewhat an outsider. She is forced to eat rabbit's liver in its raw form during one of the hazing rituals and surprisingly enough, she digs it, even though she got an allergic reaction to it at first. A scissor related accident causes one of her sister's fingers to come off and she ends up eating it. Now, she is like a dog that tasted human flesh and can't help herself from having more. She then proceeds to learn that her sister had also undergone the same transformation in the college and it runs in the family.

This is the third film related to food habits that I've seen recently with Okja and The Bad Batch being the other two. It is basically a coming of age story with some sibling relationship as something which eats each other metaphor thrown in, in a literal manner. It is extremely visceral and stylishly shot with great use of pop music. We see the film from the point of view of the cannibal who turns into so with the trigger being the hazing related rituals. It is such a taboo subject in our society and it is rare to have a film that takes 'in their shoes' take on it. Even in Amirpour's 'The Bad Batch' it was approached as big bad 'they'. The ending of the film is necessary though it creates a few logical loopholes.

Body-horror is a sub-genre that is synonymous with the name David Cronnenberg. Even the ones that claim to belong to this genre these days concentrate more on horror/psychological aspects of it rather than treat them as a drama of sorts. Raw can certainly be categorised as a body-horror film in the Cronnenberg mould. It is a very good watch if you can stomach it, no pun intended. It did cause some faintings when it was screened at Toronto film festival. I do have to say that many of the cringy parts of it are the kind you watch half laughingly. It is titled as 'Grave' for its original France release.

Rating: 3.75/5

It Comes at Night (2017)

Director: Trey Edwards Shults
Writer: Trey Edwards Shults
DOP: Drew Daniels
Cast: Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Riley Keough

Secure within a desolate home as an unnatural threat terrorizes the world, a man has established a tenuous domestic order with his wife and son. Then a desperate young family arrives seeking refuge.

The film is very light on exposition and it takes a good half an hour or so for us the audience to figure out what exactly is going on. The protagonists themselves don't exactly know what really happened and how many people might have survived. Their house is secluded and in the woods and film begins with them deciding to kill the grandfather who is infected. Trust is always an issue. The film really got some hype due to its poster, trailer and the rave reviews it generated from the critics. The audience had a mixed reaction to it because its marketing was quite misleading as it is in fact a psychological thriller orather than horror. The sequences that they used in the trailer were largely from the nightmares that the teenager is having and the director does not hide that they are so in the film. He intentionally opens up different possibilities and none of them are resolved. It ends up as another one of those 'What fucked up things humans are capable of doing when they are desperate' films and my reaction to it was 'meh'. It is well made and all that but I really don't get all the hype. I hadn't even seen the trailer or posters to be actually misled by it. Had to be said though that the initial scenes do build up tension really well.

One film I was reminded of was the excellent 'Martha Marcy May Marlene' even though the premise is very different. Maybe it is the secluded cabin in the woods kind of settings. Joel Edgerton was excellent in 'Black Mass' and he is the same in 'It Comes at Night', a title which don't need to be changed for its porn remake. In fact the entire cast is great.  When the new family comes in there is a power dynamics at play between the two family heads and the hormonal teenager is also affected by the young wife. Like all things in the film, the director does not expand further on it. He supposedly stated that he wanted the audience to be as confused as the protagonists are and that can work really well on many occasions. Great performances, aspect ratio gimmicks and all that aside, but it didn't do it for me here. Checkout Xavier Dolan's 'Mommy' for some great use of aspect ratio as a storytelling device.

Rating: 3/5

Adam Joan (2017)

Director: Jinu V. Abraham
Writer: Jinu V. Abhraham
DOP: Jithu Damodhar
Cast: Prithviraj, Bhavana, Narein
Language: Malayalam

The film is centred around a Malayalee family settled in Scotland and the kidnapping of a child and associated murder that happens. There is some visible strains in the relationship between the family members which adds to the intrigue regarding the motive of the kidnapping.

The film's teaser raised eyebrows because of its exquisite Scottish settings and technical excellence. After watching the film I can conclude that there isn't much in the film apart from that. Like almost all recent films from Prithviraj, apart from Ezra, it is close to three hours long and it seems that he is smitten by the word 'epic'. When you make films that are nearly three hours long one should ensure that there are enough things in it to sustain audience's interest. This film sadly manages to lose its audience after the motive is revealed sometime after the interval point. Ezra was one film that you can appreciate purely for its technical excellence and novel Jewish settings even though it touches many of the clichés from horror genre in a self-aware manner. One thing going for it was the comparatively short running time which don't give you too much time to think. The Jewish baggage from that film is carried over to this making you wonder about the fate of 'Lucifer', which is slated to be 'officially' Prithviraj's directorial debut. He should really be hiring a good editor. Another thing is that one shouldn't reveal/explain too much about these kind of mysterious shit because audience will then start applying logic to things. The ambiguous nature of Mohanlal's character from Koothara was what made it work really well for me and I do hope Lucifer is in that vein.

It is certainly good to see such kind of technical excellence in Malayalam cinema and looks like the budget was put to good use. Maybe that also made them reluctant to cut things on the editing floor. Prithviraj is in his usual 'epic drama' mode of acting with perfect lines and calculated delivery. It seems that he is too invested on the technical side of things to be mindful of the repetitive nature of his performances these days. Adam Joan ends up as a very well-packaged turd of a film.

PS: They should really approach Scottish Tourism to see if they can get some subsidy.

Rating: 2.5/5

ഞണ്ടുകളുടെ നാട്ടിൽ ഒരിടവേള (Njandukalude Naattil Oridavela) (2017)

Director: Althaf Salim
Writers: Althaf Salim, George Kora
DOP: Mukesh Muraleedharan
Cast: Nivin Pauly, Shanthi Krishna, Lal
Language: Malayalam

Kurien (Nivin Pauly) is in England and his rich Christain family (NRI moneyed) is in Kochi. His mother suspects that she has breast cancer and asks Kurien to come back without telling him the reason why. He thinks they have arranged a marriage for him and happily returns. First half of film largely deals with their parents having trouble telling the kids the big bad news. How they face it in their own quirky ways is the second half.

Film can be classed in the genre of 'Cancer Comedy' which has been there in Hollywood for sometime with '50/50' being one of the finest in the genre. In Malayalam, the usual norm is to have tear-jerkers when it comes to dealing with life-threatening illnesses. So it is refreshing to see a film dealing with the disease in a comedic fashion and doing so quite blatantly. I was quite put-off by its posters and teasers since everything looked too polish. The film does not go too far in that regard in terms of its settings mostly as their house has an old school mosaic flooring, which is a sign of poshness from early 90s. Polishness is there though in terms of interactions between the characters since no-one ever gets angry in the film. One can forgive them for that because it anyway wears its feel-good factor on its sleeves. It is better anyway to not add too many complexities and fail.

Many had commented that Nivin had put on some weight when the teasers came for the film. They address that in the film in a self-aware manner making you doubt whether it was intentional. Humour in the film works really well for most parts and Nivin is back in his safe-zone after two misses in the form of 'Action Hero Biju' and 'Sakhavu' preceeding it. Another film I was reminded of was 'Anuraga Karikkinvellam' and one reason for that is the way the camera is handled. The way the relationships between the family members are shown was better in AKV but this one does not have any glaring weak portions to turn a certain section of audience off. Looks like a certain blockbuster for Nivin, who is also the producer of the film.

Rating: 3.5/5