Maanadu Review

 Maanadu is too good. The amount of writing and re-writing (in loop) which the director and his team has gone throughout the process is clearly evident from the output. Excellent screenplay

It is an example of how story telling needs to be done for a complex subject. Sometimes I feel Hollywood movies on similar theme it's tough to understand at least for me and had to look at the Wikipedia to understand. We might fall for the brand of the name of director and miss a chance the same can be conveyed in a simpler way like Maanadu. The need to carter all the audience like Maanadu does is very essential and this should be termed as world class film making.

Movies like this and especially directors needs to be awarded as this is a phenomenal effort for story telling, addressing most of loop holes. Awards shouldn't be restricted to dark/serious movies but VP deserves one and so does SJ

AtrangiRe Review

 AtrangiRe is an exclusive use of creative freedom, that if one takes it for granted, would definitely like the movie very much. Stupendous performance by Sara Ali Khan and Dhanush. Main back bone is music by ARR for sure and the twist in the tail was carefully crafted by Anand L Rai

Nevertheless, I feel this ain't a cup a tea for everyone but for those this is very tasty tea of Laughter, true excitement to the title mentioned (Funnily weird)

If you planning to watch, would suggest to watch in Hindi to get the real taste as 5% dialogues are in Tamil and it helps to get through actual story better

Dhanush is just fantastic and wonder how he truly adhere to the definition of an actor in his horizontal expansion of his growth across languages be it Tamil, Holywood, Hindi films and as he steps in direct Telugu

Break point on Zee 5 (my view)

 This isn't a review, but just my view

This is a 7 episodes ( 35 to 40 mins each) series which takes us through the journey of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi across the world, I still remember the 1999 Wimbledon win which made the whole country happy, but the situations and circumstances preceded to that was just unbelievable and sad to hear. This is just a single incident, the series uncovers lots more on how the brotherhood relationship they had gone through and how a potential external factors influenced their decision making in the partnership. It's soo awesome to see how they blanked out all the disturbances and commotion as they enter the tennis court especially playing for India.

This is very healthy project to bring a series of this fashion and sharing the truth in an unbiased way and also helps a lot as an audience to diagonize what could potentially go wrong when all works out well and get prepared for an effective decision making. Wish they had the maturity to sort out all the troubles as they could have won together 15 to 20 grandslams and an Olympic Gold.

Could not be a taste of choice for all, but if you are interested in sports series and especially Tennis on Paesh & Bhupathi, a must watch and highly recommend it.. The last scene of the 7th episode 👌👌

Sarpatta Parambarai - My View ( Not a review)

Movie Name: Sarpatta Parambarai 

Language: Tamil

OTT: Amazon Prime

My view:

To start of, I will make sure to generalize my view as usual, without any spoilers. But still please feel free to skip the moment, you feel like the view below is revealing any spoilers. So if you are planning to watch the movie, yes its definitely worth and a decent investment of 2 Hours and 52 mins. Usually when the entire team does well, the visuals we see on the screen is quite natural and that's what this movie is about. Lots of very important characters and each and everyone has done extremely well. Not only that even the non main characters shedding tears and understanding the emotion elevates the film to another level of authenticity and sincerity. 

Salute to all the boxers (characters played), in the amount of effort they went through, to bring in front of us the reality of the sports without too much dramatization. The stars of the movie are Arya and Pasupathi and my personal favorite is John Vijay and Shabeer Kallarakkal. 

There will be dips and come backs in the movie like any other movies, but Ranjith made sure to not let the engagement factor of the movie fall below average at any point of time. He and his team needs applauds for the amount of ground work they did to take us back to the 70's.

Arya, what an excellent talent. He should chose movies like this. Be it Parithi of Madarasapatinam in 1940-50's, or Kabilan here in 1970's, Arya's and his choice of period films is being crafted extremely well with a wonderful team. Music, actors casting, direction, sets across and the intensity in the atmosphere of every scene, will make this movie a cult movie for sure. Though the pattern might be the same as previous boxing movies, the execution and perfection in this movie is way ahead of other movies of similar pattern.

The screenplay and the intensity will get into your nerves in many brilliant scenes of the movie and full kuods to Ranjith for that for bringing that engagement factor. So would suggest to get your best 3 Hour slots for this great movie (if you are a action drama movie fan). This is a very good movie, which is not to be missed. I would go with 90/100 for this movie.

Vaazhl | வாழ் - My view ( Not a review)

Movie Name: வாழ் | Vaazh (To Live)

Language: Tamil ( available in Telugu, Malayalam dubbed)

OTT: Sony Liv

My view:

I would make sure to not give any hints on the plot and hence I will not add any spoiler. One thing I could say about this movies is "Unexpected and Unpredictable" and its a journey which they take us through via the lead character. Most of the times you would feel funny and pity at the lead actor, and the scene where the lead character comes to know what is happening with the funny background music, makes us laugh and roll and feel pity at the same time.

Exceptional music and stunning visuals, and may the TN Tourism (also PNG) can get the permission from the producer and do their own editing for tourism promotion. Such is the beautiful screenplay ( thanks to the location and long shot) feathering the screenplay of the movie. So far the above is the observation and my view for the first one hour of the film. ( with 52 minutes to go).

Well, enter the second part of the movie, the movie still stands to this tag line "Unexpected and Unpredictable" . This tag line is justified to the core, with a brilliant non boring screenplay. "Yaatra's" rhymes, Prakash reaction + the music, is just another funny sequence of the movie. Prakash, portrayed by Pradeep Anthony has lived the character be it the expression or curiosity or fear. He is brilliant.

The way the later part of the movie, moves around PNG (again cinematography is brilliant) with another accompany, who helps understand Prakash, the way to live the life, is done well and you could compare that to the extended version of  "Life of Ram" from 96. I personally felt that you may like or not like the movie, but this is a quality content in terms of visuals for sure, which needs to be watched in big screen. Probably I felt the lag in the last 25 minutes, and may be I didn't get the context well and some concerns on the logical aspects, but still the movie ends of well back the square one, with now Prakash found the essence of life, i.e.., TO LIVE.

After watching the movie, I felt like if I need to summarize the movie, I would say it could be liked or not liked (  I am in the former category), but the directors idea and attempt to make a film completely different from the usual screenplay as this is more like travel, twits and turns with the tag line of "Unexpected and Unpredictable" at every scene definitely needs to be applauded. Though the engagement factor is much more in the first half, it doesn't mean the second half of the move is bad at all. It lived to the dream of the directors idea I believe.

I will go with 80/100, and probably one thing is for sure, the locations and cinematography over it is something very new in Indian cinema as I have not seen those locations in the second half in any of the movies I watched as of now.

FARGO SERIES - My View ( Not a review)

 FARGO

(Amazon Prime)

Season 1: 100/100

Season 2: 100/100

Season 3: 100/100

Season 4: 100/100

My View:

Brilliancy loaded all across the episodes all 4 seasons. Be it direction, music, screenplay and the required slowness, makes this a cult classic in Thrilling + Gangster genre. I personally liked the tone on of the series . All these seasons are independent and has different storyline. Also, all these stories were real life incidents happened in the past across Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota

I really felt beyond brilliant in the way the story was narrated, music, acting, thriller and most importantly the slowness. Yes the slowness is the biggest advantage I felt for this series. It was beautifully articulated and if you start watching it, you would love this I hope. Most of the other movies/series, slowness is usually for build up for bigger fast pace scenes, but screenplay I felt is powerful because of the slowness added to it. 

Each and every season is independent (mostly) and it covers the real story happened in Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota in the USA. I personally feel this as a cult classic and for sure you should give a try as it gets addicted to watch the next episode.

SUITS - My View ( Not a review)

 Series Name: Suits

OTT: Netflix (in India)

Language: English

My View:

Season - 1:

Excellent. The series is about how happenings in a prestigious NY Law Firm , where the key associates are from Harvard Law School, and this young guy who is extremely talented (but without a degree from Ivy League) joins his senior partner tackles the various cases. Too good, if you like this genre and the episodes are mostly independent. I would go with 95/100, as the 5 points reduction is for some technical terms regarding law which they use in the episodes.

Season - 2:

Brilliant yet again and much more interesting and fun compared to season 1. They indirectly educate us some of the terms in law firm in season 1 and that made much more confirmable in some technical aspects.. The lead characters "Harvey Spector" and "Mike Ross" give us such a confidence, that anything is possible . If you are here at the end of season 2, you would love much more on senior associate character "Louis", and what an excelling acting and he is the best of all. Though is not a lead, he blows away with his excellent performance

A City based genre, with lawyers and different battel they fight and how they good deep in finding a small evidence which would work them favor is the genre of the story. I felt, this is one series where episode is not getting bored and always my first one to select in my current watchlist . 95/100 yet again for me

Season - 3:

Extremely good and too brilliant. The first 2 season sets the stage to to grasp the way the law firm work and not worry about too much detailing and definitely addicted to it. I would go with 95/100 for third season

Season - 4:

The show only gets better, as this season had 20% of emotional battle happening between the well established character. Rick Hoffman in Louis Litt character is probably at the top of the league for the best actor in a series. He is just brilliant in the way he acts. Though he is not the main character, if you ever get a chance to watch SUITS, I would be jealous of you 🙂, as you get to watch his travel from episode 1 without knowing the plot so far. I would go with 90/100, as it was not racy compared in terms of speed with respect the first 3 seasons. But nevertheless, it is still engaging at its best in a different flavor.

 Season - 5:

I was pretty sure during the first couple of episodes, that this is gonna the bad season so far. But the screenplay, twists and turns, emotions, fight back in the next episodes proved me wrong. The later episodes were so racy as it didn't even made me realize it completed over the weekend's time. The last 6  to 8 episodes, is like a "tik tok" moments ( If you get a chance to watch this season, the wordings will be understood by that time) and its the best of of all in the entire 5 seasons. Nail biting thriller, in a drama genre series. I was wrong initially during my first season review that episodes are independent, rather its connected or used some way or the other. The final episode of this season tops all. I would go with 100/100 for this, for sure.

Season - 6:

I would go with 100/100 for season 6. Probably this the first season, where you could see lots happening outside the usual office. Lots of brilliant moments and the battle Harvey does for Mike. Oliver's character was beautifully done as we could see Mike in him, with the way he wanted to help people. The sequences in clinic was really interesting. Ton of emotions  with cards being played well in the screenplay to use the key character at the time time and right place.

3 more seasons to go...