Sudhir Srinivasan

Balan: The Boy Movie Review: When You Run from Love

In Balan: The Boy, you spend an entire first half following a mother and her son, watching them drift from place to place, drop identities like clothes, until that heartbreaking interval when they get separated. When the second half begins, of course, you’d expect to remain with one of them. Instead, like society that has abandoned…

Nooru Sami Movie Review: The Woman in the Mirror

You know how we’ve made important films that examine who people are allowed to marry in our complex, problematic world. One of them, the unforgettable Kadhal, is even referenced in Sasi’s new film, Nooru Sami (which, fascinatingly enough, features Kadhal’s director Balaji Sakthivel as an antagonist). And yet, in our cinema, sometimes we fail entirely…

Backrooms Movie Review: The Rooms Inside Us

Backrooms. What a strange film. What a uniquely unsettling experience. You’ll probably ask if I was satisfied? But conventional satisfaction requires a film that falls within a familiar framework. Backrooms is trying to be something else entirely. It asks whether you can surrender yourself to its distortions: in storytelling, in visuals, in sound. It aims…

Obsession Movie Review: Love Loses Limits

Before we sink into the many layers of Obsession, let me get my superlatives out of the way first: WHAT A FILM! What an ingenious premise. What a climax. What incredible performances from the lead actors. Inde Navarrette is tremendous as Nikki, of course, but how good is Michael Johnston as Bear? Also, did I…

Peddi Film Review: A Mishmash in Search of Meaning

Oh, Peddi. That ‘love track’ is really all kinds of terrible, isn’t it? I begin here only because, in a film full of slow-motion elevation attempts and reaction shots, it is this portion that evoked the strongest reaction from me. Peddi (Ram Charan) ogles Achiamma (Janhvi Kapoor), and this is rivalled only by the more…