Suffers from illusions of being grand The talking point of Sandamarutham before its release was that Sarathkumar plays the villain (apart from being the hero, of course). So, naturally, you expect something explosive, something novel from the characterisation. Why else was the actor returning to play the villain after decades? This same thought seems to…

Recipe for a box office winner Who could have believed that three average love stories would assume bigger proportions and become a lot more novel by the simple technique of connecting them all with a concept — in this case, past life regression and rebirth? The answer: K. V. Anand. A concept, not unlike the…

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,…