Sudhir Srinivasan

Varmaa Movie Review: A listless, lifeless remake of Arjun Reddy

“The Arjun Reddy universe is Bala’s backyard. It’s pretty much his debut film, Sethu. The one-liner is the same: A misanthropic, alpha male forces a meek woman to submit to his ‘pure love’, and when it all goes to hell, he becomes deranged. Given the inherent melancholy and madness in this subject—Bala’s playthings—the question was, how would he reinterpret this story that is right up his alley?”

Nishabdham Review: A convoluted screenplay fails to mask fundamental flaws

Nishabdham begins with a bag of horror clichés. There’s a flashback. We see a villa in 1920s America. The camera’s already peeking from behind a curtain and letting out menacing whispers. You know the rest. The residents see strange activity, descend into the cellar, and get themselves offed by you-don’t-know-who. The man is found crucified on…

Music has no mortality

“Given the omnipresence of songs, is it a surprise at all that when someone like SP Balasubrahmanyam, whose vocal signature is stamped across our film music, passes away, it feels like the loss of a family member?”

Enola Holmes Movie Review: A charming character tries to propel a not-so-charming film

“The feminism in this film is not just admirable for intent but also for how seamlessly it’s woven into the Holmes investigation at the centre of this film. Despite this paean to womanhood being sung from start to finish in this film, not for a minute does it feel forced.”

Mohan Raja: Mithran was stronger, craftier, wilier than Siddharth Abhimanyu in Thani Oruvan

“Heroism in our cinema is usually of two types: Active, where the hero questions something wrong that happens around him, and Reactive, where he reacts to a wrong done to him. I don’t know if it has been done in Indian cinema before, but we came up with the idea of a ‘Proactive’ hero in Thani Oruvan.”