Check out the winners at the News18 Reel Movie Awards 2019.
The hits and misses of the week.
The reasons are too private to be discussed at a round table, listed out during a seminar, or uncovered in an academic course. A proud but insomniac connoisseur murmuring in his sleep may do a better job of explaining the phenomenon than an expert on a podium. Sreehari Nair airs his thoughts.
ITo steer clear of sanctimonious newspaper stories all your life, and then be saddled with movies like Kadak Singh -- now there's a rotten bit of luck worth moaning about, sighs Sreehari Nair.
The hits and misses of the week.
Salman Khan's big Eid release Tubelight is also a major loser.
Since nothing irritates Lijo Jose Pellissery more than a throwaway critical judgment, Sreehari Nair carefully presents his opinions about Malaikottai Vaaliban, a good two weeks after he first saw the movie.
'Garm Hava understands that the scorching, hate-filled, doubt-filled affair between Hindus and Muslims is our national love affair.' Sreehari Nair revisits M S Sathyu's classic film, featuring the incomparable Balraj Sahni at his finest in his final role.
Siddharth Anand's artistry bespeaks an upbringing filled with GI Joes, plastic combat boots and plastic bayonets, fake punching noises and fake sounds of gunshots, rudely interrupted by an adult voice saying, 'Beta, all this is good, but try bringing in some feelings too', observes Sreehari Nair.
You will appreciate the Mammootty of this movie better if you do not take the servile reviews to heart, for this is a grand, broad, almost proudly comic performance, assures Sreehari Nair.
They represent a new tribe whose grace and skill-sets lie well beyond my comprehension, notes Sreehari Nair.
What follows is essentially a long scene set in a single location, and you watch in amazement as the scene grows into one of Indian cinema's funniest and most spectacular pieces of sustained craftsmanship, accumulating emotional power and subtext, growing wings and claws, becoming its own beast, applauds Sreehari Nair.
The films that mattered: Here's looking at the half yearly box office report of 2017.
800 gets so lost in celebrating its grand subject that it forgets something pretty elementary: Cricket is a team sport!, notes Sreehari Nair.
I do have a dream biopic. It has as its subject Renu Saluja, the cosmically gifted editor, with a special focus on the Vidhu Vinod Chopra-Saluja-Sudhir Mishra love story, says Sreehari Nair.
MS Dhoni or Sachin A Billion Dreams? Dangal or Mary Kom?
It's not uncommon for performers to become bigger than the stories they are placed in and Sreehari Nair would happily pay to watch Isha Talwar and Paramvir Singh Cheema riffing on love, bad life choices, psychology, rhythm, and oven-baked Kulchas in Chamak.
Watching Aavesham is like sprinting through the whole history of our mass-masala movies and seeing it in a new light, notes Sreehari Nair. And this, incidentally, is the story of Fahadh Faasil's career too.
Girish AD doesn't make romantic comedies so much as he elevates the genre, observes Sreehari Nair.
If you have never seen Sriram Raghavan fly, you would hardly realise that this time, he is happy in his cage, this time he isn't reaching for the skies, notes Sreehari Nair.
'If you can tell the quality of a movie-watching experience, only and only by referring to set standards, you *aren't really* going to the movies,' argues Sreehari Nair.
Heart-breaking stories of sorrow and shock began emerging from various parts of Kerala as people learned about the death of their loved ones.
We asked colleagues, present and past, to reflect on a man who has made such a difference to their lives and careers. Here it is then, a rich collection of memories that offer enchanting glimpses of the enigmatic Ajit Balakrishnan.
'As I watched Mammootty 'try out' Mathew Devassy, I could hear from my theatre seat the ready-made appreciation of the liberal press, their applause for the great actor having flirted with queerness on screen.' 'But it is a flirtation and nothing more, for I could not detect in Devassy any hint of love, not for his homosexual lover, not for his wife,,' observes Sreehari Nair.
Konkona Sen Sharma's short Mirror in Lust Stories 2 is a rare thing: A feminist film that is also very, very funny, states Sreehari Nair.
Let us get high on Pathaan and his simple-minded antics, sure, but let us also take a moment to think about Jim who, with that one cunning piece of dialogue, goes on to boldly state that patriotism is a many-hued thing, observes Sreehari Nair.
This isn't a hatchet job, and my excuse for the exercise is my feeling that when you invert some of the clichés mentioned here, you might just arrive at the portals of genuine movie-making energy, says Sreehari Nair.
Though the lies hardly go beyond extramarital affairs and conception problems, they are laid out by arresting storytellers who raise the stakes while speaking in tongues not wiped clean to make progressive points (No Made in Heaven-type diddling, here), notes Sreehari Nair.
'Both Main Aur Charles and Titli are essentially stories of two plot-devices that became protagonists. You cannot relate to Titli or Charles, without submitting to the knowledge that neither of them are well-rounded characters; they are more like artifacts -- Charles, a schlock artifact and Titli, an artifact of spirit toughened by years of live brutality.'
'I believe it's not the success of RRR or KGF that we must actually investigate but what makes these two films our marquee events,' argues Sreehari Nair.
'His sin was that he made public a certain lifestyle that was to be kept within the confines of those sweaty dressing rooms,' says Sreehari Nair.
Bharat is nothing more than a reflection of the times we are living in: where we expect our heroes to be flawless, virtuous fellas -- it is our current national disease.
The hits and flops of the week.
It was a year of so many contradictions and contrasts that it became dangerous to talk about movies, people lost their heads discussing Friday releases, psychiatrists began dabbling in film criticism, and film critics turned into psychiatrists, says Sreehari Nair.
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