കുമ്പളങ്ങി നൈറ്റ്സ് (Kumbalangi Nights) (2019)

Director: Madhu C. Narayanan
Writer: Syam Pushkaran
DOP: Shyju Khalid
Cast: Soubin Shahir, Fahadh Faasil, Shane Nigam, Anna Ben
Language: Malayalam

Kumbalangi Nights is centred on the lives of four Christian brothers who are parent-less and lives in a dysfunctional household, which is apparently the worst in the panchayat as per the youngest of the lot. Relationships between the brothers are also strained and the reasons for it are gradually revealed over the course of the film. They need to get their house in order as the third one falls in love with a Hindu girl whose brother-in-law (Fahadh Faasil) doesn't approve the relationship for quite obvious reasons.

Eldest of the brother is played by Soubin Shahir and he is the no-good out of the lot who is leaching on a Tamil guy. Second one is a mute played by Sreenath Bhasi and he is a dancer and visits the house only occassionally. Shane Nigam plays the third youngest as a jobless 'freakan', and the role  is against his usual type. Youngest out of the lot has sort of escaped from the house with a sports scholarship but is back home on his vacation. Fahadh Faasil stars as Shammy who is newly married into a women only household where he is passive aggressively establishing himself as the Patriarchal head. He is a barber in the city and runs a saloon in partnership with his equally creepy brother. All of these are revealed very slowly as the film meanders it way through with plenty of comedic moments as well as scenes which will tug your heartstrings.

Ultimately it is a feel good film which becomes conclusive as such only by the end. In another universe the Shammy character would have been played more subtyly and would have been equally as effective. Girl's father role in Thondimuthal for example. Portrayal of Shammy as a semi-psycho helps in keeping the audience on its toes. His role can be seen as a  representation of the angry Hindu in Modi's India with the aggression basically stemming out of inferiority complex/small-dick syndrome. He is primed to lash out at all and sundry.

The film is a great watch overall even though I was irked by some of its forced political correctness. Performances are top notch with Shane Nigam being the stand out IMO, even though it is Soubin who is getting all the accolades. Shyju Khalid once again brings out the beauty of Kumbalangi, which is a tourism village. I do wish these people also tell stories set in normal Kerala towns where everywhere you look is not picture perfect.

Rating: 4.25/5

9 (2019)

Director: Jenuse Mohamed
Writer: Jenuse Mohamed
DOP: Abhinandan Ramanujam
Cast: Prithviraj, Wamiqa Gabbi, Master Alok
Language: Malayalam

A comet is going to pass very close to the Earth, an event which is going to affect life on Earth for 9 days. Electricity, combustion engine vehicles with spark plugs, battery run things etc will all be out for 9 days. Albert (Prithviraj) is an astrophysicist of great repute and is assigned a task by his mentor which involves going to Himalayas to document the event and how it affects the tribes over there, whom have predicted this happening much earlier than the scientific community. He also takes his motherless son, Adam, with whom he have a difficult relationship. There they meet an outsider, Eva (Wamiqa Gabbi), which sets in motion certain chain of events for the film to jump from one genre to the next.

Genre jumping within a film can be quite risky because you can lose your audience with each jump. Prithviraj in his promotion interviews had been stressing on sci-fi aspects of the film while director Jenuse was more or less pitching it as a fantasy film with some cosmic sci-fi background. They have been keen to manage audience expectations to make sure that the right ones turn up during the initial days of the release. Trailer was also pretty detailed and stunning. Prithviraj himself produced the film with Sony Pictures International also partnering, a first for Malayalam cinema, and they haven't made any compromises. Film is top notch on a technical level and you're doing well when the audience is immersed enough to not notice the VFX while watching the film.

The first half an hour of the film is its weakest with lengthy expositions some of which could have been trimmed or made in a little more cleverer manner. You cannot fault them too much for it because there is quite a lot of information that they have to pass to the audience. The one flashback song in it also looked totally unnecessary but the reaction of Albert to the pregnancy news is also kind of key. Film gets going once they reach the Himalayas as they get the pacing spot on from there. It is difficult to talk much about the film from then on because everything becomes spoiler territory. Steer clear of them and pay close attention while watching. The ending is deliberately ambiguous and you have a science Vs supernatural explanations competingat the end. Such ambiguous endings are not familiar for Malayalam cinema and a section of audience will certainly fail to appreciate it. There is an explicit explanation sequence at the end for such people but many will find problem with the similarity to another Prithviraj film from recent times. Many have missed the alternate possibility suggested by the final line of the film and the brief closing credits scene.

Performance wise, Prithviraj is his usual self and it is Wamiqa Gabbi who steals the show. The kid actor in it is also very good as is the creepy caretaker. I'll be certainly watching it once again and very glad that I picked the best screen possible during my first outing. This is a film that has to be seen at the cinemas and I really hope it does well. Ambiguous films are hard to pull off and they've managed it.

Rating: 4.25/5

Dark (Season One) (2017)

Creators: Baran bo Odar, Jantje Friese
Cast: Too many in different versions
Language: German

I stumbled upon this Netflix original show after seeing it being described as 'Stranger Things' for adults. I haven't seen Stranger Things and not really planning to. Dark is so fucking good that I binged it twice within eight days. If you're planning to watch it, I can't recommend it highly enough, go ahead and do it. Plenty of spoilers ahead.

****************SPOILERS****************

I can best describe the show as 'Twin Peaks+Predestination', on steroids. Twin Peaks because of its small town industrial setting, family affairs, haunting atmosphere and music. Predestination reference is quite obvious due to the time travel factor. The way time travel works in the series so far is in the "Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban" mode (the best Harry Potter book by the way). What has happened can't really be changed. Whenever someone from future tries to influence things, they only help in aiding what has already happened inadvertently. So it doesn't take anything goes approach which can be quite disengenous if time travel is your main theme.

Story begins in 2019, the present for all intends and purpose, with shots of Jonas' father committing suicide. It ends with a boy disappearing in the woods near the caves which is again near the nuclear power plant which dominates over the small town of Winden. Boy's father is the cop Uhlrich, who's having an affair with Jonas' mother, Hannah. Jonas, suffering from post traumatic stress,  discovers cave maps drawn by his father in the attic. Different characters in the story discovers the time travel possibility over the course of first season.

The time travel jumps in it is 33 years, a span over which solar-lunar cycle sync happens. So the time periods the series jumps to are 1986, 1953 and for a brief final seconds to 2052. It also has plenty of philosophic references including Nietzsche's musings about eternal recurrence which has a big overhang over its plotline. There is a love triangle in each of the time period: Helge-Claudia-Tronte in 1953, Hannah-Uhlrich-Katharina in 1986 and Jonas-Martha-Bartosz in 2019. It doesn't make a big deal about the twists that come along the way, all of which are pretty much guessable before they are revealed mainly because of the good job they have done with the casting of same characters from different time periods.

Based on the missing pages in Claudia's diary, I have a theory that many of the characters in 2019 are different versions of same people from past and future. Noah is Bartosz grown up and there is some mystery left around from where/when Alexander turned up. His real name Boris suggests some Russian connection, probably Chernobyl, and his surname Niechwald could be a reference to his parents from Nielsen and Kahnwald families- Jonas & Martha? On first watch I ended up with the obvious conclusion that Noah is the villain/dark and Claudia is the light. But on re-watch, I am not that sure especially because of the reference to our propensity to think in terms of duallism. The re-watch is so rewarding and you can see how well the show is edited, with recurrences offering it ample scope to place scenes together. It is masterful storytelling and I can't wait for the second season, which is currently in production.

"You are free with regards to what you can do but you are not free with regards to what you can will"...

PS: I am now more familiar with the family trees in Winden than my own.

Rating: 5/5

Hold the Dark (2018)

Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Writers: Macon Blair, William Giraldi (Novel)
DOP: Magnus Nordenhof Jønck
Cast: Jeffry Wright, Alexander Skarsgård, James Badge Dale, Riley Keough

After the death of three children in an Alaskan village, suspected to be killed by wolves, writer Russell Core is hired by the mother of a missing six year old boy to track down and kill the wolf.

It is the latest from independent filmmaker Jeremy Saulnier which dropped on Netflix this weekend. It was the revenge thriller Blue Ruin which got him noticed and he followed up that with the excellent 'Green Room'. Both are violent genre films and the latter was an attempt to subvert some of the genre tropes. This is the first time he is working with a significant budget and he gets to mix several genres (western, noir, revenge thriller) here on an epic scale. Like 'Wind River' from last year, it is set in cold conditions and with native Americans and cops involved around a murder case. But the treatment couldn't be any different. Saulnier subverts the expectations by having racial groups play against type while it was the total opposite in Wind River, which was exactly my problem with the latter.

The makers have chosen to leave many things mysterious for the audience by choosing to not explain things. But is is not a deliberate effort to leave things open-enbed with they themselves not having a theory to explain it all. Sufficient clues are given and you get a tremendous pay-off when you figure it out. But the downside to that is that plenty won't do and will end up getting disappointed with it. I'll put my theory below with a spoiler alert. Overall the film is a great watch if you are a fan of ambiguous films and it will eventually go down as a cult classic. Performances are excellent and the violence is relentless. I'm really glad that films like this and Annihilation are getting made due to Netflix since we're never gonna get theatre releases here anyway for them as they are not shitty DC/Marvel films.

Rating: 4.25/5

                   ****SPOILER ALERT****

The kid being sickly, her eyes being supposedly same as her husband's and him being with her ever since she could remember: they all mean that there is incest involved and they are siblings. Russell describes how the wolves he sighted in the wild was eating one of their own and referred to it as savaging. That is what they are gonna do with the body after retrieving it at the end. It still doesn't explain the actions taken by the mother after the killing and it could be that she was having second thoughts. All the killings are people who got in the way. Them being Nordic in origin I think is a reference to the American discovery as Vikings are supposed to have reached America before Columbus did.

വരത്തൻ (Varathan) (2018)

Director: Amal Neerad
Writers: Suhas-Sharfu
DOP: Little Swayamp
Cast: Fahadh Faasil, Aishwarya Lekskmi, Sharafudeen
Language: Malayalam

NRI couple, Abin and Priya, moves back to latter's ancestral home in a high range village while they are facing some difficulties on personal and career fronts. The village is not an idyllic one as is portrayed quite often in cinemas and as the title suggests (outsider), they are not that fond of Abin for no other particular reason.

Film's teaser reminded me of Enter the Void's opening credits and the trailer gave me the vibes of Sam Peckinpah's 1971 movie 'Straw Dogs'. It turned out to be almost like a remake of Straw Dogs, with all the major plot elements being there except for its infamous half-consent during the rape scene. Some of the camera angles surrounding Priya also reminded me of Aronofsky's mother! as well. These are what you expect from an Amal Neerad film and its success depends on how well it is placed in the domestic setting. I don't have a problem with it being a remake in terms of the plot structure as his films are never really about plot but solely on the making.

It is the village's moral policing, executed chiefly by its perverts, that welcomes the couple initially. Abin, boarding schooled and city-bred, is oblivious to the pervy nature of the village as he is predisposed to see the good in others initially by default. Priya, who has history in the village, is at pains to point this out to Abin but he doesn't realise until it's too late. As in Straw Dogs, the story arc around the husband's masculinity is also explored in the film in a convincing manner. The whole cast is excellent but the one who steals the show is Sharafudeen playing the villain character. It should be a turning point in his career. Little Swayamp and Sushin Shyam provides ample support with camera and music respectively, which are like always the chief highlights in an Amal Neerad film. It is his best work till date and should be watched on the best screen possible with Dolby fucking Atmos.

Rating: 4.25/5

Ranam (2018)

Director: Nirmal Sahadev
Writer: Nirmal Sahadev
DOP: Jigme Tenzing
Cast: Prithviraj, Rahman, Isha Talwar
Language: Malayalam

Aadhi (Prithviraj) is a transporter for a Srilankan Tamil drug boss, Damodar (Rahman), in Detroit. He is trying to get out but, like in all these mob films, his boss drags him back in.

Film had some very good buzz around it ahead of the release due to a very interesting teaser and a very well cut trailer, both of which gave it an atmospheric action thriller vibe. But the atmosphere around it is that of an emotional drama and the action scenes, which are done very well, happens very intermittently. So if you are buying tickets based on the trailer, adamant that it has to adhere to what they projected, then chances are you will be disappointed. If you are willing to enjoy it for what it is, then it is a satisfying film overall.

A guy doing one last crime job before getting out of it for good is a genre that I very much enjoy. Examples for those would be Driver, Thief, The American, Drive and Carancho. In most of the those films, the protagonists are usually loner sort of characters who don't talk much. Even though the protagonist of this film does have that vibe, there is too much voice over narration explaining things and also conveying what he is thinking. Director must be thinking that it is necessary for the general Malayalee audience, who are not aware of this space in USA or this genre of films, to have some of the things explained to them. But that choice makes the film lose some edginess it could have had by having the protagonist be really mysterious, in terms of being unpredictable about his thinking and the choices he makes. They could have also given more time for the villains to sort out the pacing issues during the middle part of the film.

It is a pretty good watch overall, treading the middle path for the genre fans and the general Malayalee audience who might be interested in seeing an emotional drama set in USA. The dangerous thing with the misleading trailer is that both might get turned off by it, the former for being misled and the latter by reaction to it from the former who turned up on the first weekend. Misleading trailers have invariably proved disastrous, in terms of box office numbers, for Malayalam films and often end up being reassessed post DVD/torrent release and TV run. It deserves to be seen on a big screen with great sound system because it is so fucking well made.

Rating: 3.5/5

Mindhunter- Season One (2017)

Created By: Joe Penhall
Directors: David Fincher, Asif Kapadia, Tobias Lindholm, Andrew Douglas
Cast: Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, Hannah Gross, Cotter Smith

Mindhunter is a Netflix original crime drama series based on the book 'Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit' by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker. The lead character played by Jonathan Groff is based on John Douglas and the first season is set in the late 70s. As they put it in one of the scenes, FBI is still under the influence of Hoover era good-bad binary thinking while the nascent behavioural science unit is trying to bring some grey perspective into it. What we now take for granted from the point of view of nature-nurture debate, psychological interrogation techniques etc were quite niche back then. I didn't know that the coining of the term serial killer was this recent and they dabble with sequence killer instead through much of the season one.

Charlize Theron serves as an executive producer for the series and David Fincher directed four episodes in total, a couple each at the beginning and end. A usual season for American TV drama series proceeds like a 50 over ODI innings, with fast paced beginning and end, and the middle can be a phase of consolidation. They have you hooked with the big hitters Fincher and Asif Kapadia directing the first four episodes. TV is kind of seen as a writer's medium but you do see the difference in style when it is Fincher and Kapadia directing it as opposed to Lindholm and Andrew Douglas.

Se7en is seen as the first big break for David Fincher as a director and had, *Spoiler Alert*, Kevin Spacey playing God as the serial killer in it. He again had a go at this genre with 'Zodiac', which I reckon is the high watermark for it. Many of these films have super intelligent evil genius characters, like Hannibal Lecter, as serial killers and with Mindhunter, Fincher supposedly wanted a more realistic portrayal. Ed Kemper, the coed killer, features heavily in season one. Fincher has supposedly cast for season two the same actor Quentin Tarantino has cast as Manson for Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. I truly binged it by basically watching all episodes back to back over a nine hour period. Really looking forward to season two.

Rating: 4/5