Like a mediocre TV soap Imagine you’re stuck in an ATM, and are in mortal danger. You’ve just seen a man murder two people outside the ATM with a crowbar. He’s now sizing you up from outside, but is reluctant to walk up to you, lest he be captured by the CCTV camera. What do…

Another brick in the horror wall Science has proved the desensitising effects of over-exposure (to violence, usually). I understood this theory never more than when watching Unakkenna Venum Sollu … yet another horror film. I almost felt a palpable sense of frustration in the audience I was watching the film with, as everybody realised that…

Loyal to the horror genre When reviewing Strawberry last week, I wondered how long we’d have to wait to see an inventive horror film again. Well, the answer, it turns out, is just a week. Maya is an exercise in both horror and mise en abyme. It’s one of those rare Tamil films, like Uttama…

Good intentions alone don’t make a good film There are filmmakers out there who really need to be told that it’s quite all right to make films that don’t preach. Good stories subliminally educate, without its characters having to carry placards and deliver monologues. Taking on the greed of private schools is the primary agenda…

A dialogue-heavy average comedy When I was growing up, audio movies were quite the rage. People hugged their transistors close, as they listened to these movies for what was possibly the tenth time. This was, of course, the same time when audio cassettes of stage plays by artistes like Crazy Mohan and S. Ve. Shekher…