Parasakthi Review: A passionate argument, a distant film

At one point in Parasakthi, someone observes that language isn’t merely a tool to express thought. It is thought itself. Languages aren’t clothes you can change for convenience and still remain the same person inside. Each alters you. To suffocate one language or impose another, then, isn’t simply a superficial shift. It is a demand for transformation. It…

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Avatar: Fire and Ash Review: Beautiful, bleak, but barely evolving

For a while, it’s so good to be back in the Avatar world, to surrender to the astonishing visual joys that James Cameron offers. Each moment, each shot feels so textured, so dense with detail, that it’s so easy to forget all of this isn’t real. Skin, flora, water… all of this feels so tangible….

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Dhurandhar review: Craft, conviction, and troubling certainty

The soul of Dhurandhar is rooted in quiet deception. Wait, I’m talking about Hamza Ali Mazari’s (Ranveer Singh) mission. He’s a spy operating across borders in this 214-minute film, and given this running time and the number of characters, motivations and political threads it handles, this film could very easily have collapsed into something rambling…

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Kaantha review: The murder of innocence

Kantha is so dense with meaning and layers and emotional subtext that a simple reading of whether it’s good or bad, impactful or not, would be a grossly reductive, unfair response to it. The longer I contemplate the film, the more it seems to reveal itself… the writing choices and the emotional motivations underneath its…

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The Girlfriend review: The girl who couldn’t say no

How do you rescue yourself from a bad situation when you’ve never been allowed to fend for yourself? When you’re huffing and puffing while carrying luggage upstairs (like in that first scene of The Girlfriend) and someone asks if you need help, what are you supposed to say? What are you allowed to say? Is it okay…

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