After a high-voltage chase involving helicopters, speedboats, and snipers, the film seems to build toward a fitting conclusion. Instead, it ends abruptly midway, setting up the next part. This comes despite a runtime nearing three hours. Sure, the cliffhanger is intriguingly absurd, but it raises a question. Is there enough material to justify splitting the story? A tighter first half, especially trimming the prolonged setup around the stone’s location, along with unnecessary detours like the ‘special dance number’, might have allowed the story to conclude within a single film. That could have made this a truly complete experience—a genuine one last ride. Or are we in for more madness, with characters stranded in timelines they don’t belong to? For now, we wait for the ‘final ride’.
Agadha is a horror thriller with supernatural and divine elements. It is not a great film, but it offers a few thrills and scary moments here and there.
Naveen Polishetty has created an image where his films guarantee entertainment, and he once again proves it with Anaganaga Oka Raju. Though Maari is the director, Naveen’s involvement in the dialogues and screenplay — as mentioned in the title cards — makes it evident that he has a strong hand in shaping the film. He knows how to keep the audience engaged without letting the film feel boring.
It is perhaps a testament to the power of storytelling and cinema that no matter how important your message is, if you don’t respect the medium enough, the film doesn’t even work as a competent PSA (Public Service Announcement). Arulvaan follows a young tribal girl and her quest to find education, after she sees how her illiterate tribal community is exploited and oppressed by the ones in power. There is an all-encompassing unidimensionality to the film's making. It is as if the director was hoping you would be moved enough by the very real issue shown that you would give the shoddy making a pass. Which, ironically, translates to an (hopefully) unintentional form of exploitation despite the supposed noble intention.
If Ayogya was about becoming a leader, Ayogya 2 explores staying one. It replaces the thrill of an underdog victory with the burden of responsibility, making for a more ambitious sequel.
Eighteen years after Aa Dinagalu, director KM Chaitanya returns to Bengaluru's underworld, but this time he is not interested in the men who ruled it. He asks a more unsettling question: who created them in the first place?
There's beauty in simplicity, and director Girish AD swears by this. He cherry-picks simple, relatable stories and grounds them firmly with reasonable conflicts and well-etched characters.
There are a few laughs here and there, but overall, the film fails to impress and falls short of Kishore Tirumala’s usual standards. Many jokes are lifted directly from social media instead of being organically written. Sunil’s flashback 'Kerosene' episode is in poor taste and reflects badly on the director’s judgment. A routine story is presented in a very weak and uninspired manner.
Beyond the scares and the laughs, Boys Never Compromise leaves its audience with a simple thought: success and failure are two sides of the same coin, but compromise is always a choice. It's a fitting sentiment for a film that doesn't always get everything right but never backs away from its youthful spirit. Like its protagonists, Boys Never Compromise stumbles, laughs, and keeps moving, making for an entertaining, if uneven, horror-comedy.
Chargesheet 03-08 understands this better than most crime dramas. While the film follows a police investigation, it is really about a father who refuses to stop waiting for his daughter.
Chiraiya has other bigger problems though. The series suffers from the excess in many ways. Relentless in its sense of sermonising, it doesn’t know where to pull the breaks. Every scene is underlined with a statement, and every statement is underlined with heavy-handed treatment just so that we don’t miss out on the theme. The show has no trust in its viewers. While there are a few good men in the series, the show is not afraid of pointing fingers at the root problems of our society, and how it’s still governed by patriarchy. But after a point, with so much finger-wagging, it must physically hurt.
