Sudhir Srinivasan

Bethlehem Kudumba Unit Movie Review: The Forgotten Plains of Beauty

While watching Bethlehem Kudumba Unit, I kept thinking about one of my favourite quotes about love, by Victor Hugo: “The first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a young girl, it is boldness.” You see the timidity when Justin (Nivin Pauly, who seems perfect for these characters) is entertaining feelings…

Vishwanath and Sons Movie Review: A Film That Won’t Stay With a Feeling

Things happen in Vishwanath & Sons. Lots of things, in fact, but you never learn about their weight. A young woman subjects her body to pregnancy just so she can fund her education. Later, almost on a whim, she decides to give up this hard-earned education. Meanwhile, a man who seems perfectly content being single…

DC Movie Review: The Shape of Wounded Souls

What pleasure it is to hear Anirudh in form inside a theatre. What pleasure it is to watch him dictate pace, to watch him orchestrate mass moments with his choice of music. It’s incredible that the very first strains of Raga of Revenge around the interval are enough to create such loud anticipation in the…

Jananayagan Movie Review: When a Farewell Becomes a Manifesto

I suppose the question always was: what’s so special about Bhagavanth Kesari that it needed to be repurposed as Vijay’s last film? Balakrishna’s film rides on moments, on his entertainingly over-the-top presence, on a kind of, shall-we-say, self-aware absurdity? When he yells, “Bro! I don’t care!”, you’re laughing even as you’re cheering. With Vijay, we…

The Odyssey Movie Review: Christopher Nolan’s Homecoming

The control Christopher Nolan exercises over his cinema deserves to be studied. That he has mastered hero elevation should be evident to anyone who’s watched just Batman Begins. In The Odyssey, he reminds us once again that there can be no true elevation without… restraint. Here, the protagonist, Odysseus, must first suffer—and how he suffers. In the…