Anaamika

Cast: Nayanthara, Harshvardhan Rane, Vaibhav Reddy, Pasupathy, Naresh, Thagubothu Ramesh, D C Srivastav

Direction: Sekhar Kammula

Genre: Thriller

Duration: 2 hours 7 minutes

Story : Anaamika Sastry (Nayanthara) comes to Hyderabad in search of her husband Ajay Sastry (Harshvardhan Rane), who vanishes without a trace. Parthasarathy (Vaibhav Reddy), an honest cop, empathises with her desperation to find her husband and vows to help her. As the duo try to unravel the mystery behind the sudden disappearance of Ajay Sastry, they find themselves inching closer to a big conspiracy which puts their own lives in danger.

Movie Review : Anaamika is an unlikely film from the stable of Sekhar Kammula and him making a thriller is surprising, to say the least. For a change, the director resists the temptation of imbibing some of his favourite themes like social inequality, coming-of-age theme and innocence. This in turn gives a distinct tone to Anaamika compared to his previous films; however, the film leaves a lot to be desired, in terms of eliciting an emotional response from the audience.

The film's opening scene, which is set in the bylanes near Charminar, sets the tone for a gripping drama, but before we get sucked in to the drama, Sekhar Kammula takes his own sweet time to establish the characters. Soon after Anaamika Sastry comes to Hyderabad, the film slowly into a laborious exercise, where we are told what exactly she does on a daily basis. The only solace during this process is M M Keeravani's scintillating background score, which keeps us hooked on to the screen despite the sheer lack of drama for nearly half the film's running time. Moreover, most part of the film's first half unfolds within the precincts of a police station and a hotel, which in turn restricts the characters and storytelling.

Then there's Parthasarathy (Vaibhav Reddy), the only police officer whom Anaamika can trust, who goes out of his way to solve the case, much to the displeasure of his senior official. The film's most interesting character, however, is another police official named Khan, an encounter specialist played with aplomb by Pasupathy. His frustration can be measured from the puffs of smoke he exhales every minute and surprisingly, he's the most intense character in the film. The second half is a redeeming factor and almost immediately the story moves ahead with enough speed, to make up for all the lost time in setting up the story.

Comparisons are inevitable when one remakes a critically acclaimed film like Vidya Balan starrer Kahani and in the case of Anaamika, Sekhar Kammula almost gets away because he deviates from the original plot to a large extent. Nayanthara is no match to Vidya Balan, but she does a decent job in portraying the role of a woman who is helpless. It's tough to understand what's going through her mind and when the big twist in the film is revealed, we are left wondering how she figured it all out.

Anaamika is by no means a solid thriller, but it's a good effort from Sekhar Kammula who is enamoured with the idea of a helpless woman struggling to find her husband in a city which has learnt to embrace all its contradictions. The only thing missing in the story is edge-of-the-seat drama and that makes all the difference. Watch it if you haven't seen Kahani.

kahin hai mera pyar

Cast: Abhishek Sethiya, Sonia Mann, Sanjay Kapoor, Jackie Shroff

Direction: Mahesh Vaijnath Doijode

Genre: Romance

Duration: 2 hours 10 minutes

Story: Obsessed with a woman he has never seen, an artist paints a picture of her in his head and puts it on canvas, believing she exists. Does she?

Review: The film has a decent premise. It starts off as a story about people who are destined to meet. However, in no time, the tale of eternal love and serendipity turns into a soppy love triangle, hints reincarnation, gives references to Adam and Eve and basically loses the plot.

If an overdose of poor acting, silly dialogues ('Meri shaanti hamesha ke liye shaant ho gayi'), pointless songs, forced incidents and badly choreographed stunts were not enough, you are forced to see Sanjay Kapoor do the tandav wearing fig leaves (posing as Adam)! He has his secret motives. You give up trying to make sense of the proceedings by then.

Son of God

Cast: Diogo Morgado, Greg Hicks, Adrian Schiller, Darwin Shaw, Sebastian Knapp, Amber Rose Revah, Roma Downey

Direction: Christopher Spencer

Genre: Biography

Duration: 2 hours 18 minutes

Story: The film traces the life of Jesus Christ, from his birth along with his teachings as a Prophet, to his crucifixion and resurrection. 

Review: At the outset, it's important to say what Son of God is not. Adapted from a TV miniseries, in tone and character, it is not at all like Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. Son of God has none of Passion's unflinchingly powerful and charismatic depiction of Christ's last days and resurrection.

Tarzan

Cast: [Voices] Kellan Lutz, Spencer Locke, Jaime Ray Newman, Mark Deklin, Joe Cappelletti

Direction: Reinhard Klooss

Genre: Animation

Duration: 1 hour 34 minutes

Story: Tarzan and Jane's budding romance and idyll deep in the African bush is disturbed when the industrialist William Clayton arrives with a small army in search of a powerful energy source of intergalactic origin. 

Review: The telling of Tarzan's (Lutz) tale in this version begins many, many years in the past when a meteorite crashes on Earth with cataclysmic results. Dinosaurs, leaping lizards and all the other prehistoric creepy crawlies wind up kaput. What remains, hidden for millennia, is the marauding chunk of rock in Africa

Brick Mansions

Cast: Paul Walker, David Belle, RZA, Catalina Denis, Ayisha Issa

Direction: Camille Delamarre

Genre: Action

Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes

Story: Set in a dystopian Detroit, an undercover narcotics cop teams up with an ex-con to infiltrate a ghetto to diffuse a bomb and bring down the most wanted drug baron. 

Review: Brick Mansions, a remake of French film District B13 (2004), is special, for it happens to be the late Paul Walker's final finished role. Sadly, it turns out to be one of his most forgettable films for he sleepwalks through the hastily-made generic action caper. Walker, who plays an undercover cop 'yet again', is not the only actor to look uninterested, rapper RZA looks least menacing as a drug lord as well

Angry Young Man

Cast: Ajay Sinh Rathod, Prachi Sinha

Direction: Ramesh Rout

Genre: Action

Duration: 1 hour 53 minutes

Story: An ode (of sorts) to superstar Amitabh Bachchan of the 70's, the film is a revenge drama that comes across as a rehash of various hits like Agneepath, Ghayal and Ghulam to name a few. 

Review: Years after his righteous parents were brutally murdered by a mobster for opposing his illegal activities, Arjun (Ajay Sinh Rathod) enters the Mumbai underworld to seek revenge. He becomes a hitman for a local gang leader in order to settle old scores with his real enemy. When he doesn't indulge in slow-mo fist-fights with the bad guys, he looks after the poor and needy. 

Enters 'I am so cute' Sarah (Prachi Sinha), whose character is a cross between Basanti of Sholay and Asin from Ghajini. The talkative girl falls for the brooding hero, who's in no mood for love. He is obsessed with fighting injustice instead. What lies ahead for the two - one driven by relentless love, the other by his troubled past? 

An indestructible hero, vengeance, a love story and painful flashbacks...though this film has no direct reference to Bachchan, it clearly looks inspired by his cult classic Agneepath. The newcomers act well, stunts look realistic and the songs do not interrupt the narrative. 

However, the film lacks novelty. The story has been done to death and characters aren't established enough for you to feel for them. Stunts are given more prominence but after a while, they look repetitive. Modest production values make the film look like a blander version of its predecessors. Overall, the film lacks intensity. The happenings fail to evoke a reaction and there lies its failure. 

Action junkies may not mind watching this one. For the rest, revisit Vijay Deenanath Chauhan instead.

Ne Enge En Anbe

Synopsis: Anamika (Nayanthara), a young woman, comes to India in search of her husband Ajay (Harshvardhan). Even as a hit man is taking down the people she goes to asking for help, Anamika is told by Khan (Pasupathy), an encounter specialist, that her husband is in fact Milan Damji, a terrorist mastermind... 

Genre: Thriller

Movie Review: Let's cut to the chase. If you have seen kahaani, you will find Nee Enge En Anbeunderwhelming. That Sekhar Kammula is not interested in a frame-by-frame remake of Sujoy Ghosh's film and wants to stamp his fingerprints over this film is established the moment he introduces his heroine. Unlike Vidya Bagchi in Kahaani, Anamika, here, is not a pregnant woman to instantly earn our empathy and trust; she is an ordinary young woman who claims to have come from the US to India (Hyderabad, in particular) in search of her missing husband, Ajay Swaminathan. It shows that the director isn't worried about putting himself in a tighter spot and is willing to do his share of heavy lifting. In fact, he effectively shows how such a young woman could also be vulnerable — one cop wants her to share his bed in exchange for information on her husband, while another berates her and blames her after noticing that she has failed to button up her top. 

Anamika is helped by Parthasarathy ( Vaibev), the only Tamilian in the police station, who develops a crush of sorts over her. Meanwhile, she is told by encounter specialist Amjad Ali Khan that Ajay is actually Milan Damji, a terrorist, who masterminded a horrifying bomb blasts months earlier. Anamika refuses to accept it as she sees this as a cover-up by the police to hide their inefficiency. Meanwhile, a hit man is murdering the people she had gone to asking for help, and everyone is interested in a hard drive that could be the key to solving the whole mystery. 

While the audacity to deviate from the original is appreciable, the deviations that Kammula and his co-writer Sai Prasad bring in to the basic plot of the original are what, sadly, let this film down. The Hindi version was essentially an elaborate act of cinematic rug-pulling and yet, it always felt plausible (at least while we were watching it) and also explained the hows and whys in a convincing manner. Here, the final reveal only leaves us with more questions that need answers — from how did Anamika realize the true nature of the villain to why do the cops, led by Khan, never discuss the possibility of capturing Milan Damji alive and why do the terrorists, knowing that she's on to them, leave Anamika alive (bafflingly, we are even shown a flashback of Damji murdering a woman who had identified him in the past). 

The film's setting doesn't help as well. It is understandable that the filmmakers decided to set the film in Hyderabad as they were making a Tamil-Telugu bilingual but it alienates the Tamil viewer because we are never truly able to get the local flavour, despite the rousing score in the climatic Durga puja and the numerous zoom outs that Kammula resorts to show us the teeming locality in which Anamika stays. The lengthy Telugu and Hindi dialogues become too much of a strain beyond a point. The mismatched lip sync in scenes when we can make out the actors speaking in Telugu doesn't help either. There is even a laugh-out-loud instance when Sarathy, who is chasing the hit man, tells him, 'Aye nillu, odaathe'! 

The performances, too, are just functional. Nayanthara, especially, doesn't internalize Anamika and fails to provide the character the minute shades that Vidya Balan gave to her Vidya Bagchi. So, be it when she is pleading with an Imam to provide some information or while running away from a cop who tries to feel her up or when facing a hit man on her doorstep, her acting seems all surface. The one scene where she does score is when she takes on Pasupathy and we are able to feel the character's righteous anger. Even here, she is overshadowed by Pasupathy who is very good in a role that isn't as clearly drawn as Nawazuddin Siddiqui's Khan in the original. The actor is all fire and brimstone initially during the scene, taking out his anger and frustration at not being able to capture Milan Damji on Anamika but once he sees it in her eyes that she is genuine (after her outburst), he mellows down in a manner that is remarkable

Vaayai Moodi Pesavum

Synopsis: A mysterious illness declared as dumb flu spreads in a quaint hill station forcing the town's residents from speaking. Will the problems in the place increase due to this or will it lead to better communication? 
Genre : Fantasy

Movie Review: If his debut film Kadhalil Sodhappuvadhu Yeppadi was an irreverent rom-com, in his second effort Balaji Mohan gives us a high-concept comedy which, in its second half, is entirely a silent film. Well, almost. Many of its tropes must be familiar to those who have seen enough Hollywood comedies and rom-coms. A do-gooder hero with a dream, a heroine with a jerk of a boyfriend, her somewhat dysfunctional family (here, it includes a forever busy dad, stepmom who has stopped writing to take care of the family and whom the heroine isn't ready to accept yet, a stepbrother who flunks in his class but is highly creative), a charity organization that faces eviction, and so on. But the director shows that you only need a bit of invention to turn routine into unique. 

The film is set in Panimalai, a fictional mountain town, where the hero Arvind ( Dulquer Salmaan), making a sparkling debut in Tamil) is a salesperson. As he tells a character, he cannot stop himself from mending things that are broken. He believes that every issue can be resolved if the parties involved talk sensibly to each other. The heroine, Anjana (Nazriya), is diminutive, doesn't talk much and obliges to her boyfriend's dictates (no specs, only contacts and so on). Meanwhile, interesting (read absurd) things are happening in the town. An association of drunks is protesting against a film star (John Vijay as Nuclear Star Boomesh) for defaming them in his movie, but most importantly, a mysterious illness is spreading in the town which results in people losing their voice. The government declares this as dumb flu, and quarantines the entire town. The health minister ( R Pandiyarajan)

, who is stationed there, embarrasses himself in an interview (which results in a funny YouTube mash-up video) and to save himself, announces that he is infected with the flu. And, following researchers the advice of researchers, the government implements a curfew forcing all individuals of the hill station from speaking. Will this loss of speech make things worse or will it make people to communicate better? 

Vaayai Moodi Pesavum is truly an ambitious effort, at least by Indian cinema standards, and what's truly heartening is that Balaji Mohan succeeds in his attempt. Humour is his trump card and he provides that in liberal doses and in every form, from intelligent ones to downright silly. He doesn't spare anyone, from the government machinery to the film industry and even himself. He takes a swipe at not only the fringe groups which have started curtailing freedom of expression in the form of protests but also people in the film industry, who do the same by stifling critical voices. Tellingly, he uses RJ Balaji, who was forced to take his show off air, to launch into the plot. 

He doesn't stop with creating quirky characters but he manages to integrate them well with the plot. The conflict involving the drunks and film star might look like low comedy to keep the laughs coming (Blade Sankar is a scream as the leader of the protestors) but it also plays a small part in bringing together the hero and the heroine. The TV news bulletin, too, is used not just for comedy (the tickers are little gems in themselves) but also as a crutch to further the plot or narrate the off-screen events, especially in the second half. In a 'meta' touch, the director himself plays the news presenter; he is the narrator both on screen and off screen! 

Given that the second half has very little dialogues, there was always the threat of it descending into tediousness, but the various sub-plots help to keep things moving. The jaunty score (by debutant Sean Roldan), too, does its part and prevents things turning dreary. If at all there is a flaw, it is that the resolutions for these various conflicts are so predictable. Anjana manages to find courage to call off the engagement with her boyfriend, the dour landlord who is hell bent on selling off the property on which the charity stands decides to let them stay after he patches up with his son, the writer Vidya getting back to writing, the incompetent minister who chose to lie about the illness loses his voice... And, the writing could have been tighter as at times, we can sense the director staying a bit too long with the sub plots.

ThenaliRaman

Synopsis: In the fictional princely state of Vigada Nagar, the king's corrupt ministers strike a deal with the Chinese, giving them unrestricted access to trade in the kingdom. When the king makes a witty and intelligent fellow, Tenaliraman, as a minister, they are worried about their secret. Meanwhile, Tenaliraman seems to have a plan of his own...

Genre: Comedy
Review: When an actor returns to the screens after a two-year gap, we expect him to choose a vehicle worthy of a comeback. Vadivelu seems to have gone for a safer option and so comes with a film that feels like a less funny and bloated version of his own Imsai Arasan 23am Pulikesi. Like that film, this one too is a historical fiction. They feature garish set design and costumes. The heroines in both these films are dispensable. Even the actor's dual roles in both the films are similar — a naive king and an intelligent commoner. But while the previous film had wit and playfulness and nicely adapted the Uthama Puthiran formula (which, in turn, had its roots in Alexander Dumas's Man In The Iron Mask), this one tries to adapt the fables of Tenaliraman, pitching it at a very childish level.

The film opens with ministers from Vigada Nadu meeting the Chinese emperor. They are egged on by Parasparam (Radha Ravi, alternating between his father's style of dialogue delivery and a normal one), the ruler of a smaller state, to agree to a deal giving the Chinese unrestricted access to trade in the kingdom in exchange for personal wealth. One minister, Nandi Varma Rayar, who refuses to accept this offer is offed. In his place, the child-like king takes in a witty and intelligent fellow, Tenaliraman, who has his own agenda for getting close to the king. Meanwhile, he discovers the plot of the corrupt ministers and they, in turn, try to get him exiled from the country. Who wins this battle of wits?

Tenaliraman is somewhat amusing, especially if you like loud comedy. But the laughs are far and few as director Yuvaraj is in a confusion — should he stay true to the narrative or play up the comedic prowess of his hero? Sadly, he chooses the latter, and so, the plot digresses to episodes from the Tenaliraman fable that we are familiar with — an episode involves Tenaliraman demonstrating how he pacified an adamant child by showing it an elephant inside a pot; another has him outwitting the ministers' plan to get him executed by the king and one over-long segment shows us how he makes the king understand that everything happens for a good reason. Thus it falls into the in-built trap in picturising a fable. These stories, which we find witty while reading seem silly when we actually see the act. So, the sight of Tenaliraman bawling like a child in the king's court only makes the scene ridiculous.

While it doesn't end up as lifeless as Vadivelu's other film Indiralogathil Na Azhagappan, many of the scenes lack vitality and the film exhibits a tendency to stop dead every now and then. The score tries to inject some energy but mistakes bombast for grandeur and ends up overpowering the scenes. Vadivelu tries a little too hard to make things funny and his portrayal of the king is clearly over-the-top; the body language and the tonal inflections of the character feel funny initially but soon end up tiresome. The motley bunch of supporting actors who play the ministers hardly gives the impression of being formidable foes to Tenaliraman. So, we hardly feel anything is at stake. In fact, the climax is one of the least exciting endings in recent times.

Daamal Dummel

Synopsis: A young man fired from his job finds bundles of cash at his doorstep. He decides to keep it but two gangs, to whom the money belongs, come after him. Can he dodge them and getaway with the cash?

Genre: Thriller

Review: The hero of Dammal Dummel lives life comfortably — he has a high-paying job (project lead in a software company); lives in a posh, tastefully decorated rented apartment; has his own house in another town where his mom and sister live; has plans to conduct the wedding of his sister with no expenses spared; and, has a good-looking girlfriend. He also believes in numerology and astrology — he has named himself Moneykandan (Vaibhav, a little bland for this role) to invite wealth; every morning, he gets astrology alerts on his mobile phone, and even dresses accordingly. He is also a little self-centred —when he comes across a news item on TV where the IT crowd is blamed for the all-round rise in prices, he just tells himself that they are jealous and skips the channel. In other words, an ordinary young man with desires that most of us can identify with.

Everything is going great for Money but his cocooned world comes crashing down when he is fired out of the blue. He is worried about all his financial commitments (in a niftily shot scene, the director shows this with the faces of everyone from the landlord to the head-scratching watchman asking his for money) and to top it, his girlfriend, Meera (Remya Nambeesan, in a rather short role), tells him that her father would like to meet him.

It is in such a scenario that Moneykandan finds a mysterious box at his doorstep. He opens it up only to discover bundles of cash. He plans to it to himself but little does he know that the box belongs to the notorious gangster, Ilavarasu, who has sent it for his friend Meenakshisundaram, a counterfeit drug maker who is on the run from the cops. With the henchmen of both these criminals now after him, Money plans a quick getaway to a foreign country. But that proves easier said than done.

The trouble with Damaal Dumeel is that it is a little late to the party. Black comedy as a genre was a trend in 2013 and we have had a handful of such films in recent times (Soodhu Kavvum, Neram, Moodar Koodam, to name a few) that we are only too familiar with the elements — grey-shaded leading man, cash, rival gangs, cops, confusion, shootout. So, we are able to sort of sense how this story is going to unfold; we know the criminals will be confounded, we know there will be a climatic shootout and Money will walk away from it unscathed. The director even begins the film with the end as we see a hooded figure placing cash in plastic covers and walking away with them. And, when we hear the ringtone in the hero's phone (the sound of gun shots), we instinctively understand that it will play a role at a later moment, which it does.

Still, as a first film, Damaal Dumeel is a worthy attempt. Right in the opening shot — a burning match falling down in slow motion and its flames engulfing a document — we realize that we are in the hands of a competent filmmaker and Shree keeps things moving at a brisk pace till the end. Even the romantic track is used only in small doses and the director doesn't allow a possible melancholic moment to linger. The actors who play the henchmen and the cop in Money's apartment are apt in their roles. Though both Kota Srinivasa Rao and Sayaji Shinde never convey any menace, we get some humour at their expense. Though, the film never becomes the sum of its interesting parts as the screwball nature of the plot isn't fully exploited. There is a nice point made in the end on how money can change a man overnight but it doesn't really come across as effectively as it should as Vaibhav, though he looks the part, is a little bland in the role; an actor with a better range would have conveyed Moneykandan's descent to the darker side in a much better way.

Naan Sigappu manithan

Synopsis: Indran suffers from narcolepsy, a sleep disorder that makes him fall asleep at the slightest excitement. He meets Meera and they fall in love but one night, they are attacked by unknown persons. Indran panics and goes into sleep, while Meera is raped. Indran must rely hard on his wits to find the assailants and overcome his condition get his revenge. 

Genre: Action

Movie Review: Forget the narcolepsy; forget the lip-lock controversy (on which reams have been written about). Naan Sigappu Manithan is first and foremost a tale of one man's quest for revenge. If Thiru's previous film, Samar, had the hero searching for the mysterious adversaries who were shaping his life, Naan Sigappu Manithan has the hero hunting for the unknown assailants who have raped and maimed his lover. As in Ghajini, whose formula this film faithfully follows to some extent, the film tries to camouflage the generic nature of its plot by giving its hero a fanciful medical condition; if it was short term memory loss in the former, here, it is narcolepsy. 

Thiru actually builds a solid first half building on this sleep disorder, using it to fuel the film's humour, romance and interval twist. Like a guide, he takes us through the life of the narcoleptic Indran ( Vishal) and we see how the medical condition has influenced his life — at job interviews, he falls asleep on being told he has been selected; we learn he fainted after a classmate proposed to him in school; his incapability to have sex becomes a cause for amusement at a college demonstration; he always needs a 'driver' (Jagan slipping into the role of the hero's witty friend) to be taken to places; and, in a rare occasion when he decides to venture out alone, a blast of a vehicle's horn leaves him sleeping in the middle of the road, which also leads to him getting acquainted with Meera ( Lakshmi Menon, playing the angel to this 'flawed' hero). These scenes, in addition to Saranya Ponvannan's yet another naive mom act, contribute to the lighter moments in the film, and Thiru endears us to the characters that populate Indran's world. 

While Ghajini's hero tattooed his body to aid his memory, Indran, here, writes down a list of things — from staying awake all day to kissing a girl and even watching a Shakeela film first day, first show — that he cannot (but yearns to) do. And, after Meera enters his life, he manages to strike out many of these items, and when we realize that he only has the last one — to fight for the right — remaining, we anticipate how this twist will arrive. And, it unfolds when mysterious men intercept their car atop an unfinished flyover. Indran panics and goes into sleep, while Meera, who is now pregnant with their child is gang raped. Now, she becomes the sleeper as she gets into a coma, and Indran decides to hunt down the assailants and avenge her. But, can he, with his medical condition? 

There is intelligence in this script, like the hero's name which actually tells us about the one element that can neutralize his condition (which results in a cleverly done romantic scene with Meera and Indran) but Thiru slips quite a bit in the second half as he goes for one twist too many in explaining why Meera is attacked. So, we get a back story about one of Indran's friends involving adultery and blackmail, but the entire segment ends up being unintentionally funny because of the Wild Things-like manner in which characters change colours and the unconvincing performances of the miscast actors involved. Even the climax, despite featuring a couple of gory deaths, fails to fully capture Indran's rage towards the villains for maiming his lover, and what we are left with is a feeling of mild discontent, as a promising premise is compromised for a generic revenge drama.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Review: The Amazing Spider-Man 2, is  dragged well past two hours

Star Cast: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan, Sally Field, Chris Cooper

Director: Marc Webb

Genre: Action

It’s hard to keep the amazing coming, but somehow, Marc Webb manages it yet again, two years after The Amazing Spider-Man and not so many years later that people have forgotten Tobey Maguire doing those same tricks with more or less the same material. The primary reason is Andrew Garfield, who brings good looks and innocent charm, goofy spunk and enough heart, as well as dollops of romance, to give us a Spider-Man more close to our times, when being nerdy is not nearly as bad.

His superhero is as much of a misfit to begin with but more comfortable when he makes the transition. Maguire was never allowed that privilege.

Plus, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 comes with two villains with just enough character and enough acting abilities to make the contest worthwhile. Foxx stars as Max, who works in the electrical division of Oscorp, which we know is the big bad corporation of this comic world. With a balding head, carefully gelled down hair to cover the pate, thick glasses and ill-fitting clothes, he is a pushover, ignored and mocked by his superior and colleagues. Max’s best memory is being saved by Spider-Man one day on the road, and being addressed by him kindly.

The other villain is Harry Osborn, the heir to the Oscorp empire and Spider-Man or Peter Parker’s childhood friend who is dying of an inherited disease and believes his hope is an experiment Peter’s late father was working on. Played by DeHaan, Harry is an unstable element, looking vulnerable and venomous at the same time.

Max transitions into the electricity-fuelled Electro and Harry into a crazed maniac over action that Webb carefully orchestrates to keep us interested. In fact, the director nails this aspect right at the beginning when he enacts Peter’s parents’ death in a plane crash, bringing in a fair amount of suspense. You just wish Max’s hand wringing over his sorry state didn’t get tiresomely repetitive While real-life couple Garfield and Stone — as Peter’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy — again sizzle on screen, she is among the characters The Amazing Spider-Man 2 does least justice to. She is given ponderous dialogue and placed in incongruous circumstances, from which she never emerges without a helping hand.

Webb also overstretches Garfield’s welcome, dragging the film well past two hours and giving a teaser to the intended sequel before coming to a, literally, clanking halt.

2 States

Synopsis:
A story about a romantic journey of a culturally opposite couple - Krish Malhotra and Ananya Swaminathan. They meet at the IIM-Ahmedabad College and during the program they fall in love

Star Cast: 
Arjun Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Amrita Singh, Revathy, Ronit Roy, Shiv Subrahmanyam, Achint Kaur

Director: Abhishek Varman

Genre: Romance

Story Line
A story about a romantic journey of a culturally opposite couple - Krish Malhotra and Ananya Swaminathan. They meet at the IIM-Ahmedabad College and during the program they fall in love. Complications arise after the program comes to an end and they decide to get married. Krish and Ananya belong to two different states of India. Krish, a North Indian Punjabi boy from Delhi, and Ananya, a Tamilian Brahmin from Chennai. They take a conscious decision; they won't get married until their parents agree. Everything goes downhill when the parents meet. There is a cultural clash and the parents oppose the wedding. To convert their love story into a love marriage, the couple faces a tough battle in front of them. For it is easy to fight and rebel, but much harder to convince. Will Krish and Ananya's love for each other sustain the battles? Will they manage to convince their parents and make it to their wedding?

Yennamo Nadakkudhu

Synopsis: Burma, a gangster and politician, is after Vijay, who, he thinks, has swindled him of a huge amount of money. But Vijay claims that the money was stolen from him. Is he lying? If not, who has stolen the money and why? 

Genre: Thriller


Movie Review: It is not often that we get to be pleasantly surprised by a film and Yennamo Nadakkudhu is the surprise of the season. It is directed by a debutant director and features no A-list stars, but still keeps you hooked from start to finish. The film opens with the hero being battered almost to death by goons who demand something from him. And, the entire first half tells us what happened till that point in gripping fashion. Generally, thrillers tend to lose some bit of the tension after the revelation but this film manages to keep you on the edge of the seat till its climax and it is certainly its biggest triumph. 

The plot revolves around Vijay, a lower middle class guy, who falls in love with Madhumitha, a nurse with plans to go to Canada for her higher studies. Her father borrows a huge sum from a loan shark for the same but it is only latter that he realizes that the agency which promised to take his daughter abroad is a racket. Viji decides to repay the amount to save Madhu and seeks help from Uthaman, a lawyer who works for Burma, a gangster and a rising politician. They use Viji for their elaborate scam, which involves lending out money deposited in a bank and making a profit out of the interest. All that Viji has to do is take the money and distribute it to the various middle men. However, Viji is tricked en route and the money is stolen. Burma is in a fix and thinks Viji has cheated him but he goes into a coma after being beaten up by Burma's henchmen. Where did the money go and who has stolen it? 

There is a lot to like in Yennamo Nadakkudhu and first and foremost among these is the script. The film is tautly written with one scene leading into another or informing the other so that there is hardly a wasted moment. We have seen films where a young man gets caught in a power struggle between two powerful individuals, and yet, this film manages to feel fresh. 

Even the characters are familiar and still feel new to some extent. At first glance, Viji seems like the wayward young heroes that our directors seem to be fixated on these days. He is crude, drinks with his friends, stalks the heroine and beats his mom in public. But then he is also somewhat responsible. He has a job even if it, as he says in a scene, doesn't leave him with any savings. He loves his mom and only beats her up because she is sympathetic towards a prostitute who lives in the locality. The mom-son relationship, despite Saranya Ponvannan playing the naive mother for the hundredth time, is what makes us root for Viji. And, he genuinely loves Madhu and earns her respect. She, too, isn't the normal love interest as it is her character which sets the plot in motion. She also becomes a stake in the conflict in the latter half of the film. As for Burma, he is an immoral man but at the same time, he also has boundaries that he cannot cross and has to play the game by its rules. 

The film also shows how it is more important for a director to get the right actors; they need not even be strong performers or stars but should look the part. So, when we see Sukanya, we readily believe that she could be the brains behind such a scam and with Prabu, we instinctively realize that he will not be too bad. The same goes for Thambi Ramaiyah. Even though he is seen with Burma all the time, we know that there will be some goodness in him. As for the lead character of Viji, a star like Dhanush would have added to the visibility of the film but that would also have meant additional scenes to justify the star power. Given that Viji isn't around for at least 20 minutes in the film, a non-star like Vijay Vasanth feels just right. And, he does full justice to the character. 

There are a couple of scenes that make the foreshadowing very obvious — one involving a mobile phone with tracking feature and another that takes place during a film shoot — but even these are woven into the screenplay in a nice way. The mobile phone plays a part in furthering Viji's contact with Madhu while the latter is mentioned at least in a couple of instances in conversations to make it seem organic. 

If you really want to pick on the film, you could say that the songs are speed bumps, given that they aren't even that catchy, but even in these, Rajapandi gives us minor variations to make them somewhat interesting. Doesn't it feel unique when the hero's mother becomes part of a duet song? And, a song in a flashback sequence has the male dancers dressed in MGR's costumes from his popular films. The film also doesn't really transcend its genre but when a director has managed to genuinely thrill us for two hours, should we really be complaining?