Laxmii is billed as a horror-comedy, but the real joke (and horror) is on the audience. Any film where the protagonist gets possessed after drinking lemongrass tea lacks logic. But being illogical is not the main issue with the movie.
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Terrie Samundra's film is about female infant homicide in old Punjab and the horrific events that it spawns. The makers may have a stellar idea, but contrived writing means that the movie is a let-down.
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Much of what happens in Bejoy Nambiar's slick thriller is all behavior and mood. For the major part of Taish, we see characters getting angry, but we do not quite feel their emotions. It does not help that Nambiar shows it all in broad strokes, even though his class is unmistakable.
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Seeing Putham Pudhu Kaalai on Amazon Prime is like watching lightning bugs glow at night. The anthology is quite elaborately mounted, and it has short films that capture your imagination only in brief spurts. This is to say, almost all shorts in the anthology come and go so quickly that these only leave you with a melange of good and quirky moments.
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Zakariya Mohammed blends religion with cinema within a cinema to make a thoughtful work on love and kinship in Halal Love Story. Always engaging, and occasionally too simple to a fault, this love story is not overpowering as Zakariya's first film, Sudani from Nigeria. Nonetheless, it is a timely satire on the two things most of us feel but cannot quantify: kinship and love.
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Ginny Weds Sunny is a not-so-bad love story with nods to several Bollywood rom-com classics. Made watchable thanks to the likeable screen presence of its stars, it is one of those movies that makes you contemplate Bollywood's obsession with love stories. It is for those who are a total sucker for these kinds of films.
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In 'Serious Men', Sudhir Mishra crafts a fascinating story of a kid who is made to act matured beyond his age. Based on Manu Joseph's book of the same name, Mishra's movie has potent provocations on underprivileged people's need to break free and on India's education system.
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Randeep Jha's film 'Halahal' is a rather slick, gritty suspense thriller revolving around a medical conspiracy. It is powered by two central performances that make up its deficiencies in supporting character writing. Mostly entertaining and always engaging, Halahal is Paatal Lok in minor key.
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For a middle-of-the-road film, 'Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte' fails to live up to its promise, but it offers an engaging viewing. Despite the major hiccups in its screenplay, Alankrita Shrivastava's film benefits a lot from the sparkling chemistry between its leads.
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Buried underneath the occasional laughs and playfulness of Arati Kadav's 'Cargo' is a sense of melancholy. The movie works as a musing on life after death and lonely astronauts. A homegrown blend of science-fiction and Indian mythology, Kadav's film subverts sci-fi formulas.
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Unfolding fully through mobile device and laptop screens, 'C U Soon' is an unprecedented format in Malayalam cinema. The portions of the actors were shot separately following social distancing norms, but C U Soon is a real-time conversational film. The basics of filmmaking and storytelling always apply, and Narayanan's film excels in both departments.
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For a travel movie, Jeo Baby's 'Kilometers and Kilometers' may not break new ground, but it finds fresh, respectable ways to tell a familiar story without many cliches. It is a story of Josemon, a handyman who finds himself stuck in Rajasthan with a foreigner and with many financial troubles running through his head.
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