Simbu? Silambarasan? STR?

It’s Ilaiyaraaja, not Ilayaraja; S.P. Balasubrahmanyam, not S.P. Balasubramaniam; Arvind Swami, not Arvind Swamy; and Prabhu Dheva, not Prabhu Deva. You’re welcome for this life-changing lesson.

The Baashha I knew

For months after the release, Baashha was all you discussed. If you wanted to watch a film, you went and saw Baashha again. You watched it till you could run the film in your head during classes, scene by scene, dialogue by dialogue.

Lion: A sincere adaptation of an incredible true story

For almost the entirety of the first half, the film plays as a highly stylised regional film, with all the characters talking in Bengali and Hindi. There’s little of the unconvincing English-speaking employed in Slumdog Millionaire.

Night of the stars

Darkness in many of these films isn’t just of the day; it’s of character itself. The disloyalty of Troy in Fences. The bloodlust of Tanner Howard in Hell or High Water. The violence—inner and outer—of Lee Chandler in Manchester by the Sea. The treacherous conformism of Kevin in Moonlight.