Debutant Tanu Balak' Cold Case was touted and marketed as a supernatural-meets-crime-thriller flick. In this review, we look into whether the film, starring Prithviraj Sukumaran and Aditi Balan in lead roles, was able to deliver on its nail-biting, spine-chilling experience. An unidentified, putrefied skull is found by a layman from the bottom of the lake. ACP Sathyajith (Prithviraj Sukumaran) is called in to crack the case, after intense political pressure, when fingers start to turn towards the kin of a prominent politician. Due to the aged state of the discovered remnant, identifying the victim becomes a herculean task. Meanwhile, Medha (Aditi Balan), an investigative TV journalist who runs her own program on supernatural, paranormal events, relocates to a new house with her daughter. There, she begins to experience strange occurrences which lead her to uncover the reasons for them. At a point, these parallel investigations converge, as both factual and the otherworldly strive t...

  Disney's dalliance with live-action retellings and interpretations of its beloved characters and stories continued with its latest venture- Cruella, which was set to establish an origin story for  Cruella De Vil.  the primary protagonist of   The Hundred and One Dalmatians,  an animated classic beloved by many. Disney roped in some of the popular names in the industry for the project- Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Mark Strong, Craig Gillespie (director of Oscar-nominated I, Tonya) among others. Here's the review of Cruella. Young and rebellious Estella witnesses the death of her mother, of which she believes she was the reason. Guilt-ridden and orphaned, she meets teenage grifters Jasper and Horace. From there, her swindling days slowly takes her to the Baroness (Emma Thompson), a very popular fashion designer whose very presence can intimidate and frighten those in front of her (sort of a 70s era Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada ). Estella's ambi...

Animation giant Pixar's latest motion picture, Luca, released on Disney+ recently. Directed by debutant Enrico Casarosa, the premise of the film, interestingly, featured an adolescent sea monster, with the ability to take human form when on the surface, discovering the joy of being amongst humans and nature with his new friends. With its fascinating premise and promising visuals, did it satiate expectations? Here's our review of Luca. Luca follows the adventures of Luca Paguro, a teenage sea monster (unlike the visceral, violent mythological ones), who is often warned by his parents that the human world is dangerous for them to visit and explore. Still, he wants to break free from his mundane underwater life and seek out something adventurous and daring. This is when he meets Alberto Scorfano, an affable and carefree sea monster who guides Luca to the human world. Even though contrasting personalities meet, their unanimous desire to explore the unknown unites them in a journey ...

Netflix initiated a heavy marketing campaign for Karthik Subbaraj's next, Jagame Thanthiram , after securing its distribution rights, given that Dhanush was set to appear in the Russo Brothers' next for Netflix, The Gray Man,  starring alongside bigwigs like Chris Evans and Ryan Reynolds. Other reasons for the hype were that Jagame Thanthiram was Karthik Subbaraj's next after his colossal mass entertainer Petta. Dhanush was back after his rather stellar outings in Karnan and Asuran. Movie-goers were promised a bloody, cacophonous gangster thriller with its teasers and trailer.  But did the film satisfy these expectations? We find out in this review of Jagame Thanthiram. At the start of Jagame Thanthiram , we are introduced to the central characters of the film- Sivadoss (Joju George), an Eelam Tamil ganglord operating in London, Peter Sprott (James Cosmo), a white supremacist, affluent crime lord who lobbies for anti-immigration legislation, and finally, Suruli (Dhanush), ...

Amit Masurkar's Sherni released yesterday on Amazon Prime Video. The picture is headlined by the likes of Vidya Balan, Vijay Raaz, Brijendra Kala, Sharat Saxena among others. Here's the review of this drama-cum-thriller. One reason why I was so hyped for the release of  Sherni  was that its' director Amit Masurkar's previous venture,  Newton , is one of my favourite Indian films of this decade. Newton beautifully captured the angst of a dedicated and righteous government officer, when faced with a rotting and flawed electoral system and a deceitful arena of tribal politics. In Sherni too, Masurkar crafts a world similar to Newton-  a hardworking DFO, recently posted to a forest-laden region, pitted against dual threats- one, the danger of a tigress loose in the human habitat, and the other, a decaying system of corrupt officials, red tapes and, yet again, the opportunistic politicos. For Vidya Balan's Vidhya Vincent, the tigress roaming human settlements is the ...