A thin line stops it from being terrific The kernel of a Gautham V. Menon (GVM) film is its love story. That’s his tour de force. While his romances — Minnale , Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya , Neethaane En Ponvasantham — are obvious examples of this, the best parts in even his cop films — Kaakha Kaakha…

A bucketful of clichés The recipe of Killadi could have been palatable, had the makers managed to get hold of a crucial ingredient they unfortunately seem to have overlooked — a time machine. If it were available, they would simply have had to input a random year in the 90s and hurl it back to…

A familiar ghost serves as humour fodder, again Remember when Subramaniapuram ’s success spawned a whole host of Madurai-based gangster films? It’s as if Tamil filmmakers sat up suddenly and concluded that the reason for the film’s success was its setting and genre. A few years later came Raghava Lawrence’s horror film Kanchana: Muni 2,…

This Kappal doesn’t sink The premise of Kappal — three friends willing to go to any lengths to stop the fourth from breaking their childhood promise of celibacy — isn’t altogether rooted in reality. But to be annoyed by it is to miss the point. There’s no message here, just like how the main characters…

A one-liner that tries to be a film Imagine if somebody bought you an ice cream and then proceeded to explain that it is an ice cream and that you are supposed to eat it and that it tastes sweet and that it melts in your mouth… you get the idea. Just give me the…