The Week

I never experienced this kind of warmth and joy from a film in a while.

by Pooja Biraia

The premise, while flimsy, could have yielded a sharp relationship comedy. Instead, the film settles for broad slapstick and increasingly contrived situations.

by Sajin Shrijith

Mollywood Times" is, in essence, a film that every aspiring filmmaker should watch before considering making films as the only career option to get an idea of how this industry operates (and maybe read Sidney Lumet's 'Making Movies' too). Some scenes and dialogues are likely to offend some, but these aren’t made up; these are actually valid points, whether someone likes it or not. If you don’t like it, try to deal with it. Why should a filmmaker suppress his/her creativity just to earn the brownie points of a select group? Take the caste element, for example, which is one of the things addressed during a few crucial moments. Some filmmakers make mediocre-to-terrible films, but they get a pass (along with a couple of awards) simply because of their background. It's a fact! And kudos to Abhinav for including it in the film.

by Sajin Shrijith

Yes, we get some terrific performances from actors like Indrans (who gets the film's best lines), but everyone else is underwritten.

by Sajin Shrijith

Exceptional performances from the ensemble cast, coupled with strong technical elements like music and cinematography, contribute to the film's overall feel-good atmosphere and harmonious narrative

by Sajin Shrijith

There's not a single flawed performance here.

by Sajin Shrijith

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie fails to generate any level of excitement or emotional reaction.

Movie of the bad variety. A couple of reasons. One, this is the kind of movie that you have to be mentally well-prepared for, more than you would a genuine horror movie. Two, it reminds you of the kind of hate that can be manufactured through the medium of cinema. By

by Sajin Shrijith

But the only horror scenario I can imagine here is that the writer-director of this movie got possessed by a male teenager who has been watching way too many Instagram reels — the ones that alternatively feature seductive women, grandmother sentiments, melodramatic teleserial clips, cringe-inducing jokes, embarrassing dance sequences and male posturing, and stunning visual effects — and combine them all into a

by Sajin Shrijith

The second film, "Vaazha 2: Biopic of a Billion Bros", is relatively devoid of several interesting flourishes that made the first film richer and stronger. But that doesn't make it a "bad" film either.

by Pooja Biraia

The film showcases regality and grandeur, adrenaline-pumping action sequences and punchy dialogues, but interestingly, it does all of that and more, while ensuring it doesn't lose track of the plot and the narrative that runs beautifully across all its frames. This is a good watch, whether you're a history fan or not.

Alas, it was a false alarm. I don't mind an old-school masala entertainer if done well. But here's the problem with JSK: It wants to create the impression that it's trying to do something huge through seemingly "big" diversions and buildup moments. It takes you in one direction, making you believe you're watching some intricate mechanism. It's when you're finally done with it, after around 150 minutes, you realise that the trip you undertook to reach a destination was much longer than necessary. JSK wants to say something; perhaps the makers were serious (or not) about addressing a particular topic, but the paths it took to get there offer the least measure of intrigue and excitement. I asked: They went to all that trouble to say this?

by Sajin Shrijith

Kalamkaval is a story in pursuit of the answers to not these two questions but many more. It's a perfect example of a thriller that demonstrates that sometimes more fun can be had with a crime story where the killer's identity is already known to us, but not to the sleuths. And Kalamkaval delights with numerous surprises, achieved through the combined virtuosic zeal of Jithin K. Jose's economical filmmaking and Praveen Prabhakar's seamless, magical editing. The surprises don't cease to come even when the end credits roll. Of course, some are bound to question the lack of completeness with regard to certain resolutions, but where's the fun in that? When two heavyweight talents like Mammootty and Vinayakan are involved, why settle for something ordinary? The latter’s police role is his best since the one in 2022's Oruthee.

by Sajin Shrijith

Sajin Shrijith of The Week rated 3/5 and wrote, "The second chapter of 'Lucifer' is too pre-occupied with eyeball-catching visualisation than storytelling prowess, and suffers a little as a result."

by Sajin Shrijith

While Rekhachithram doesn't quite reach the high bar set by those films in terms of narrative ingenuity, it has enough going on to make us pay attention. Perhaps its principal strength lies in the fact that it doesn't have lofty ambitions. Rekhachithram is a straightforward thriller that doesn't pretend to be anything more. There's an old-school quality to the film, and what I really mean by this is that you get the feeling of watching some of the yesteryear Malayalam thrillers like K.G. George's Ee Kanni Koodi or any of the K. Madhu-S.N. Swamy classics. Asif Ali's casting is efficient. He plays a police officer recently suspended for a gambling habit. While this character's past is not the film's primary concern, he is written with sufficient details that come in handy in situations,

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