Wacky and inventive, Arun Prabu Purushothaman's Vaazhl is about characters who choose to live in a certain way while accepting the consequences that accompany their choices. It is a road movie that metaphorizes life as a long journey where characters and experiences have life-altering effects. Not all of it works, but the portions that do work like magic.
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Like all boxing movies, Toofaan has a conventional arc in its story of an underdog winning against all odds. The movie has some bold and unconventional moves but too many songs, cliches and contrivances. Nevertheless, an earnest Farhan Akhtar in the central role makes it watchable.
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Malik from writer-director Mahesh Narayanan is an intense cocktail of politics, romance and religion. The movie tells the story of a village and its de facto leader. Few recent films match Malik in terms of grandiosity and ensemble cast. I recommend viewing it on the biggest screen possible.
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Sara's works both as a coming-of-age-type movie and a drama on a sensitive matter. While the film is riddled with songs as well as simple to a fault, the performances and the treatment make it worth your time.
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It appears that Haseen Dillruba has more depth on paper, but director Vinil Mathew treats the film with pulp, like how, say, an Abbas Mastan would. Nevertheless, the performances from the lead actors make it a rather believable watch.
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Part paranormal thriller, part whodunit, first-time director Tanu Balak's Cold Case is a different film in terms of narration. Aside from a few jump scares, and a number of paranormal terms and concepts, Cold Case does not have much to offer. If anything, you may view it as a first-time director's attempt to combine two different genres into a seamless whole.
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Amit V. Masurkar's Sherni works as an efficient warning against the bureaucracy's anti-conservation behavior. Sherni is not the first film to suggest that animals beyond the forest are more savage than those in it, but it may be the most intelligent of its kind. In Vidya Balan, it has just the right actor for holding it together as both a human and animal story.
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Jagame Thandhiram is a gangster drama addressing more serious themes like the refugee crisis with gunmen's intelligence. It suggests that a gangster's worldview is so limited that his reading of issues like the refugee crisis is also limited. So, its gun-for-gun approach to storytelling is justifiable, even as director Karthik Subbaraj's flourishes have an overbearing effect on the proceedings.
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The characters express deep thought for each other for a long time in the meditative and understated gem that is Aarkkariyam. This is not a plot-driven film but rather a contemplative one that shows how human beings behave in a particular way under some circumstances.
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'Sardar Ka Grandson' has a too-good-to-be-true story, with cliched moments and broad beats. It is a similar story to Carl Fredricksen's from Disney Pixar's animated film Up. Just do not expect Pixar-level subtlety here. This is nothing but Bollywood professionalism trying every trick in the book to tug at our heartstrings.
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In Thimiram, writer-director Sivaram Mony portrays a Kerala society in which men and women contribute to a person's chauvinistic character. Mony goes for a simple resolution, and he spoon-feeds the audience through dialogue. Anyhow, by avoiding melodrama and treating the characters well, as well as through some bold stretches of storytelling, Mony makes Thimiram work.
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Karnan is a powerful action drama about the collective uprising of an oppressed community against the upper class. Karnan is littered with Theni Eswar's striking imagery, plus Mari Selvaraj's provocative war cry moments. In Dhanush, it also has just the kind of actor who could pull off a mass titular character with artful touches.
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