one time wanderer

I don't even know how many times I have watched this film- I used to watch it religiously as a child and then as a teenager, and even now, I could find myself saying out some of the dialogues before they happened. Everything about Jab We Met is so comforting to me. The characters, the places, the songs, the clothes, the dialogues, and of course, the feelings. There is something so wildly emotional about the last hour of the movie: I was laughing, crying, and gushing, all within the span of five minutes. Shahid-Kareena chemistry is off the charts here (the two reportedly broke up while the shoot was still going on), and it's a pity that we'll probably never see them back again (the Udta Punjab premiere photos don't count).  Basically,  I am glad this was the first film I saw after moving to a new city, because I love it so much.  In conclusion, the album is arguably one of the finest Hindi cinema has ever produced. 

I knew this would be a bad film, but I had no idea it would break me to this extent. The train sequence was... a classic. That's all anyone can say. If the movie can get away with an extended rape joke sequence in 2020, is there anything anyone can say? "Meow meow billi, milk boy lo pelli!" is officially the best poem of all time, though. No cap.  Mahesh Babu is completely unimpressive as a mass hero, and Rashmika Mandanna's talents get hidden somewhere in her pathetically written role. Vijayashanti deserved a better comeback, and I don't think I have seen Prakash Raj be this bad elsewhere. How and why people defended this film, and made it a successful venture is beyond my comprehension. In conclusion, go watch literally anything except this. Just don't. 

Someone please take away Vijay Sethupathi's movie selection rights. His taste is spiralling downwards so bad, it's not even funny anymore. Tughlaq Durbar could still be justified or excused, but this? I couldn't finish it, because I simply had no motivation. It was so absurd, but not in an interesting way- more like "they either clean up their act real quick or I'm going home" way. Taapsee's dubbing was so off, it was pure cringe after a point. Every single actor, from Raadhika to Jagapathi Babu (I am still not over Tuck Jagadish , by the way), is thoroughly wasted. VJS was barely a presence. In short, I hated it and I wish I had done literally anything else rather than watched it. 

I know I said I'm warming up to Rajini (and yes, I still am), but Padayappa belongs to Ramya Krishnan only. Even though the soundtrack boasts of one gem after another by A.R. Rahman, it's 'Minsara Kanna' that plays in your head the longest, all thanks to Queen Ramya's powerful performance in that video. All that being said, I did enjoy Lakshmi's and Nasser's performances as well. It was their scenes, along with Ramya's (duh) that I looked forward to the most. I didn't like Rajini's elevation scenes all that much here- they were honestly the weakest parts of the movie for me, and I only wanted a full-on Neelambari feature without all the unnecessary Rajini glorifying drama (yawn!!) In conclusion, Neelambari is a character I want to very thoroughly imbibe into my personality, and I'm not even slightly ashamed of the fact that this "review" was only a simping post for her and Ramya Krishnan. PS- bring this era of A.R. Rahman back!!

This film confirms something I have been suspecting ever since I watched Fire and later saw the actual fire surrounding the adaptation of Shyam Selvadurai's  Funny Boy : Deepa Mehta is not the women's representation we need in cinema. As far as adaptations go, this was a bad one. Maybe if I hadn't read Bapsi Sidhwa's novel I would have been kinder towards this, but since I watched the movie right after reading it, I was left with such a palpable feeling of disappointment. Aamir Khan did an excellent job as the ice candy man, but the movie managed to butcher the characters of Lenny (the protagonist!), her cousin, Aayah, and Masseur. It also didn't even have the Godmother?? What nonsense is this??? They basically ruined everything that made the book so special, and replaced it with a very meh form of nonsense. Unacceptable. Do me a favour, and read Cracking India (or Ice Candy Man  as it was earlier called) instead. Florida tried to ban it on grounds of pornography, t

This movie is simply unfair on so many levels. First of all, it has quite an interesting premise and a very satirical way of looking at the state of Indian politics today. Vijay Sethupathi is too good, and other actors, most notably Bagavathi Perumal do a good job as well. However, the film is written so shoddily that I quickly lost interest despite my best efforts. It is very unevenly paced and drags so much after the initial excitement that towards the end, you literally just want it to end. You don't care about the resolution, the conflict, or whatever- you want to move on with your life. And speaking for myself, that's never a good sign with a movie. Especially a VJS movie. I honestly wanted to shut this one down and go watch Naanum Rowdy Dhaan instead.  Netflix never learns, does it?

There is absolutely no explanation for this movie except Telugu cinema. It started off with a woman throwing red chilli powder into her brother-in-law's eyes in the middle of the night over a property dispute, which eventually led to a man saying this line out loud in a village mediation meeting: "If I sleep with your wife in my farm, will she become mine?" The thing is, I had actually gone into Tuck Jagadish with an open mind, despite all the negative reviews I had already heard. I was also one of the very few people who had liked the trailer, so I was hoping I would like the movie too. In a way, I did. The last half hour was full mass (what I wanted), Natural Star Nani at his best (what I came for), and some great dramaTM moments. But the journey I had to undertake to reach this cherished half hour was simply too much. Every single moment of the movie is messy, and there is some very weird sexual politics at play here, with a wife/cheating joke thrown in every few minut

I really can't imagine anyone doing Anantha Sharma's role and pulling it off like Mammukka did. That's what makes the man such an irreplaceable part of Indian cinema: he not only does justice to every role (never mind how good, bad, or in-between the movie is), but leaves such an impact that it's hard to imagine anyone else in his place.  Apart from Mammukka though, I loved Raadhika as Anantha Sharma's wife. She brought in a lot of dignity to the film, especially considering how most of it was about her husband's ugly display of pettiness and unnecessary egotistical drama. Master Manjunath as Gangadhar was decent too, but I feel like his character simply wasn't well-written enough. This brings me to my main problem with the movie: the characters weren't fleshed out deeply enough for my liking, and I do wish there was a little complexity to make the story even more interesting.  The other problem I had was with the climax and the ending. I don't see t

I have a lot of feelings about this film, most of which conflict with each other. On one hand, this is a movie that is a testament to the immense talents of everyone involved in it. On the other, there is a lot that just doesn't sit right with the "love" story- at least for me. While I appreciate how the story shows that self-sacrificial love doesn't necessarily lead to a happy ending, there were several points in the narrative when I just couldn't sit through Maari's (Parvathy, in a stunning Tamil debut) adventures in the name of love. Call it second-hand embarrassment or whatever, but I wish the film had toned some of her devotion down.  However, like I said, Parvathy does full justice to Maari, and really makes you feel all the despair, longing and unadulterated love and passion her character has for Thangarasu (Srikanth) who is always just agonisingly out of her reach. I loved Srikanth too- he made his character's obliviousness seem natural, a tricky t

Against my own principles, I kept my expectations high about a post-2011 Hindi movie. In my defence, I had enjoyed the director's Nil Battey Sannata  (2016), and I love Rajkummar Rao, so I thought I was justified in expecting a good movie. But no. No no no no no. Rajkummar was probably the only good part of this movie, along with the ever dependable Pankaj Tripathi and Seema Pahwa. Sadly, they were not enough to hide how boring and awful the movie actually was. Let me start with the adjective "boring": I literally had zero interest in the main love story arc. There was no chemistry to make up for the bad writing, and no good writing to make up for the lack of chemistry. It was pretty tiring to watch after a while, and the atrocious music did nothing to alleviate my suffering. I was only partially interested in the Vidrohi-Rama storyline, but that got ruined thanks to the divorce rhetoric. I know what point they were trying to make about normalising divorce, but I just cou

I had my expectations high with this one, thanks to the Fazil-Mammootty-Shobana trio. I knew that Shobana wouldn't have a huge role to play, but I wasn't expecting it to be this short either. Apart from that, Fazil and Mammukka won over my heart yet again, even as they broke it into little pieces in this emotionally overwhelming story of grief and family and love. The one thing that will stay with me is how I couldn't bear to look at Mammukka in the last half hour of the movie. You can tell he really poured everything into his portrayal of Balagopalan, and I'm kind of shocked he didn't win an award for this. It will remain one of my favourite performances of his anyway. What a man. Master Badusha, the child artist playing the eponymous Appoo, was exceptionally good and carried the entire movie. It was so easy to feel his alienation, his longing for affection, and his infectious need to have fun. The climax was as powerful as it was purely because of both his and Mam