Now Streaming:

[ashik786]

Orphan First Kill digital premiere on 19th August...will be available to rent on Prime Video in India

[wapkerala]

Heaven malayalm movies streaming from August 19th on Disney+ Hotstar

[ashik786]

Kerala State award winning film AvasaVyuham : The Arbit Documentation of an Amphibian Hunt streaming on SonyLiv

Aavasavyuham | Official Trailer | Malayalam | SonyLIV | Streaming Now - YouTube

Aavasavyuham | Official Trailer | Malayalam | SonyLIV | Streaming on 4th August - YouTube

[ashik786]

Sai Pallavi starring social legal drama Gargi now streaming on SonyLiv

Gargi | Tamil Movie | Official Trailer | SonyLIV | Streaming on August 12 - YouTube

[ravenus]

Saw the 2013 Malayalam noir thriller Mumbai Police on Hotstar:

Quoting from my blog:

2013's Mumbai Police has, up to a point, a decent mystery plot about a cop who lapses into amnesia in an accident just moments after informing a colleague that he has cracked a murder case. Now without those memories, he has to re-solve the case.

Antony 'Tony' Moses - played by Malayalam cinema's action hero Prithviraj Sukumaran - is the cop. At the beginning of the film, we see him tell someone on the phone "I've got the culprit". Moments later, a falling refrigerator from a van ahead forces him to veer and his car overturns. When Tony awakes, he has no recollection of who he is. Only his senior officer and friend Farhan (Rahman), who was on the other end of that call, is dealing with him. Farhan informs Tony that he was on the trail of the killer of their mutual friend Aryan Jacob (Jayasurya), a cop shot dead on the very stage he received a gallantry award.

Armed with only what information Farhan can share with him and his own instincts, Tony must start again at square one. In a script contrivance, Farhan asks Tony to conceal his amnesia from everyone, including their own colleagues in the force. This leads to some awkward moments for our protagonist. Also, it would seem that there are people bent on thwarting Tony's investigation, even if it means killing him.

Prithviraj is not the most versatile actor, but fits a certain badass hero / arrogant anti-hero niche. In this lead part, he gets a little more depth than the typical masala movie he is known for. A series of flashbacks makes us privy to the events prior to the amnesia loss, and we get an interesting contrast in Tony's nature before and after the accident, almost a different person in several aspects. The bulk of the film is a police procedural in which Privithraj follows up various threads - and associated red herrings - before the solution dawns upon him.

Without spoilers, the resolution of the mystery is where the film completely threw my suspension of disbelief. It makes a mockery of how amnesia affects a person's basic identity and is executed with zero sensitivity, making me want to clout the writers (credited as Bobby and Sanjay) and director that came up with this rubbish. It also relies on an offensively contrived series of circumstances that undo the - rah-rah moments notwithstanding - layered build-up of the investigation that had been depicted till that moment. Put simply, it's a lame and disappointing conclusion that leaves a bad aftertaste after a promising beginning.

[ashik786]

Thor Love & Thunder Streaming On Disney + Hotstar From Sep 8

Available with English, Hindi, Tamil , Telugu & Malayalam audios

[ashik786]

Cuttputlli (Remake of 2018 Tamil fim Ratsasan ) streaming on Disney+ Hotstar from 2nd Sep

Cuttputlli | Official Trailer | Akshay Kumar, Rakulpreet Singh | Sept 2 | DisneyPlus Hotstar - YouTube

[ashik786]

HASYAM (8th part of Jayaraj's Navarasa movie series) 2020 Malayalam movie streaming soon on ROOTS OTT platform - direct OTT release.

[ashik786]

Vikrant Rona streaming from 2nd Sep on Zee5

[ashik786]

[ravenus]

Saw the Telugu original of HIT: The First Case on Prime. Quoting my impressions from my blog:

Vikram (Vishwak Sen), the lead character of HIT (which stands for Homicide Investigation Team), is the investigator you have seen in a thousand modern detective shows. He ticks the columns of being (a) a brilliant but morose anti-social chap with (b) past trauma that gives him nightmares / hallucinations and (c) is is tasked with a case that has personal ramifications and threatens to burst his bubble of sanity. Vikram is so pathologically obsessed with the job he refuses to give it up even when his therapist warns him that his 'vitals' are failing, but the moment he takes a sabbatical on the insistence of his forensic scientist girlfriend Neha (Ruhani Sharma), she goes missing. Her disappearance seems linked with that of a young girl Preethi, who vanished one day after her car broke down on the highway. To find Neha, Vikram plunges headlong into cracking Preeti's case (for some reason, even though Neha disappears directly after digging up forensic evidence on Preeti's abduction, no one else thinks of connecting the two matters). Meanwhile he repeatedly gets stress-triggering flashbacks of a past trauma in which he is unable to save a girl being killed. I won't spoil it for you, but the reveal of the mystery calls for some serious suspension of disbelief, and characters acting in a manner that far exceeds their motivations.

Even with the cliches and contrivances, HIT has its moments of interest. Vikram gets so caught up in tracking down Neha he doesn't care about risking the lives of suspects. His superior officer (Bhanuchander) uses him like a gifted bloodhound and indulges his eccentricities (though a botched narc test crosses even his line). There is an intriguing sequence of events early in the film showing Preeti's encounter with a disheveled cop Ibrahim (Murali Sharma) who offers to drop her after her vehicle breakdown, and when she goes missing makes some forays towards tracking her, but a chain of circumstances lead to his ignominious suspension and the overlooking of crucial evidence till Vikram picks up on him later. At least in the Telugu version, the writing is solid in this segment and Murali Sharma's under-playing is a joy to watch. I actually wish the film had been more about this guy because...

For me, the lead character was a cold fish. I think a good deal of this has to do with Vishwak Sen's acting so perhaps the Hindi remake with Rajkummar Rao fares better. True, Vikram is supposed be psychologically fatigued, but there is zero emotional register in Sen's performance. Even in the writing the relationship between Vikram and Neha is a vacuum. Given that he refuses to share his past trauma with her, and doesn't seem one for cheery small talk, one wonders what apart from their work draws them together. That seems a bigger mystery than the one tackled in the film.

[ravenus]

Saw Vikram on Hotstar last night...or should I say endured it?

Lokesh Kanagaraj's Kaithi was an entertaining masala film that had an organic build-up of scale and made you feel for the main characters so much even the exaggerations towards the end of the film could be taken in stride. Vikram is the other way round, so labored and contrived it is sad to think that it came from the same guy. The effortless flow and interlocking of scenes in that one is now replaced by a jerky unstable narrative struggling to do justice to its star lineup. It launches with full swagger, starting with a 'mass' song by 'Ulaga Nayagan' Camel and then killing him off before the twist that everyone saw coming. There are very few Camel scenes in which he doesn't come across as a twat (and some, like the one where he is arguing his ideology are beyond insufferable). 'Makkal Selvan' Vijay Sethupati brings a certain wild energy, but even he seems to be playing a set of Sethupati mannerisms than a comprehensive character. Fahad (no title for him yet) is reduced to a mostly generic lead. There is so much posturing and obnoxious guitar music, it offsets the characters' emotional arcs. You have humor like the detonator of an RDX pile being connected to the toilet flush (talk about dropping an explosive load - Then again, how did Sethupati's gang become the top drug mafia in the country by being gullible enough to let someone install several kilos of RDX across their entire lair, anyway?) I won't even describe the incredibly stupid Surya cameo that made me want to punch the people that wrote this rubbish.

The action, which was Kanagaraj's strong point, has that same jerky quality as the writing, the only scene that makes an impact being the chase of the assassins after they escape from the wedding. Why do the henchmen of a multi-billion-rupee drug racket carry blade weapons and basic shotguns that are easily neutralized by our heroes?

If anything Vikram is proof that all this talk about Bollywood films failing because people want better content is BS. I can't imagine anyone that cheers for this bilge having particularly high standards in cinematic entertainment. Thoo!

[ashik786]

Superhit Malayalam movie Nna, Than Case Kodu (Sue me) starts streaming on Disney+hotstar from 8th Sep

Nna Than Case Kodu | Official Trailer | Kunchacko Boban, Gayathrie Shanker | 8th September - YouTube

[ashik786]

Babli Bouncer | Official Trailer | Hindi | 23rd September | DisneyPlus Hotstar - YouTube

[ashik786]

Superhit Malayalam movie Thallumaala(Chain of fights) starts streaming on Netflix from 11th Sep

[ashik786]

Superhit Telugu movie Sita Ramam starts streaming on Prime Video from 9th Sep. Available in Telugu, Tamil & Malayalam

Sita Ramam - Official Telugu Trailer | Dulquer Salmaan, Mrunal Thakur, Rashmika Mandanna | Sep 9 - YouTube

[ashik786]

EESHO | Official Trailer | Malayalam | SonyLIV | Streaming on 5th Oct - YouTube

[ashik786]

Critically acclaimed Malayalam film Attention Please now streaming on Netlix

Attention Please - Official Trailer | Vishnu Govind | Athira Kallingal | Jithin Issac Thomas - YouTube

[ravenus]

Saw Thor: Love and Thunder on Hotstar some days ago.

For me it had the same problems that the previous Thor film, Ragnarok had - the relentless, even painful barrage of jokes in the hopes that at least something will stick. A friend of mine said it right when he described the film as "A middle school play, with better VFX". Even cancer gets trivialized as a plot point with some horribly awkward jokes. The tone of the film veers like an overloaded boat driven by screaming goats (wait). Perhaps I am biased, but the whole MCU schtick of having a series of cameo appearances from an ever-increasing cast of characters is also beginning to grate on me. It does get better towards the end, in which a villain is given a less cliched resolution. But I would have preferred a film which didn't seem so insecure about being liked.

Marvel Studios' Thor: Love and Thunder | Official Trailer - YouTube

[wapkerala]

Tamil movie Cobra streaming from September 28th on Sonyliv and simplysouth (outside india)