Member Reviews

The Sohum Shah filmmaking banner comes with a suitcase, currency notes blowing out of it. Start and Finish come misspelt. It’s a wonky world. Tall, suited-booted surgeon Dr Abhimanyu Sood (Sohum Shah) strides towards his Range Rover, a duffel bag stuffed with cash is stashed in the boot. Rs 5 crore, you soon learn. There’s menace hanging in the air. Inside the car with White Coat calling, hyper and bossy. “I’ll be there on time,” the surgeon assures White Coat. Outside, a wheelie-performing two-wheeler dashes across the Range Rover, the rider cheekily showing a blurred middle finger. Our doctor is hot-headed. Must give it back. Chases the two-wheeler, returns the finger gesture before resuming his drive to God-knows-where. A man with a mask leers at Abhimanyu from the window. Currency notes have been peeping out of the bag in the boot, prompting the mask to leer some more. The scene is set for the unexpected.

A certain machine-like uniformity marks the male and female characters in Boban Samuel’s Machante Malakha. While almost all the male characters are good-hearted and submissive, a majority of the female characters are scheming ones trying every trick in their book to make life difficult for the men around them. This unmissable pattern in the writing of the characters serves the purpose for which the film appears to have been made – to put into cinematic form the grievances of the men’s rights associations that have cropped up in recent times. Machante Malakha begins as a typical boy meets girl story, with Sajeevan (Soubin Shahir), a bus conductor, falling in love with Bijimol (Namitha Pramod), a regular passenger in the bus, after a series of fights. But the prologue to this love story, when a fellow bus conductor whom Sajeevan is in love with leaves him to get married to a rich man, signals the film’s intentions. Whether it be due to this underlying agenda of the film or plain bad writing, Bijimol is written with confusing character traits, changing her behaviour multiple times even within a single scene.

In another life, Maya (Tillotama Shome) would have lived a different, more comfortable life. A college graduate in Barrackpore, she was set for an ordinary middle-class life like the many girls around her. However, all her parents’ dreams crash and burn when Maya tells them about Sundar (Chandan Bisht) – a pahadi man stationed in the nearby army cantonment. By the time Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi’s Baksho Bondi (English title: Shadowbox) begins – it’s been a few years since Sundar has been dishonourably discharged from the army because of what appears to be a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The rebellion of young love has made way for the caution and weariness of middle age. Both presumably in their late 30s by now, the onus of providing for Sundar now falls on Maya.

‘Shaukh paal ke kya karega, Malegaon mein tu marega.’ This innocuous line sung rambunctiously by two childhood friends on a bike ride is both about ambition and the realisation of the futility of it, destined as they are to live within the borders of Malegaon, the small town they were born in and will probably die in. And yet, it is these two boys — along with a few pals, all of who share a common love for cinema — that have gone on to put Malegaon on the map. Superboys of Malegaon revolves around this motley crew. A charming, slice-of-life film about ordinary men doing extraordinary things, this Reema Kagti directorial written by Varun Grover is a potent, layered example of storytelling, one which strikes a chord immediately, even if you know very little of the world the film is set in. Malegaon, an unassuming town close to Nashik in Maharashtra, has made it to the news for a variety of reasons. There were the Malegaon blasts close to two decades ago that claimed many lives. Five years ago, Malegaon incubated itself in such a way that very few lives were lost in the Covid-19 pandemic, prompting other administrations to attempt and replicate its model.

Fictional translations of ready-made underdog journeys make me nervous. As do independent themes getting the mainstream treatment. A recent example is Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins (2023), a sports comedy about “the weakest football team in the world” that reduced its source material (a fantastic 2014 documentary) to a checklist of sef-conscious tropes. In terms of concept and design, Superboys of Malegaon ticks both boxes. Directed by Reema Kagti and written by Varun Grover, the 131-minute feature is inspired by Faiza Ahmad Khan’s Supermen of Malegaon (2012), a charming 65-minute documentary that revolves around the cinema-crazy residents of a small Maharashtrian town who start their own DIY-filmmaking ecosystem of Bollywood spoofs. I remember watching Khan’s documentary and marvelling at how it married the objectivity of journalism with the subjectivity of emotion. It allowed the story to tell itself, while trusting the ‘characters’ to underline its humour with cultural meaning.

Pushakar-Gayathri’s Suzhal: The Vortex Season 1 continues to be one of the very few Tamil web series that’s on par with the global standard of such long-form thrillers. It has set a high benchmark that even the second season of Suzhal: The Vortex also fails to reach. Yet, the new season, streaming on Amazon Prime Video still warrants a watch as it has a lot going on for it. While the problem with season 2, directed by Bramma G and Sarjun KM, is largely due to its predictability and convenient writing, it still holds your attention due to a few good streaks of brilliant writing.

“Small cell carcinoma,” the doctor begins. Two blank faces stare at him. “Have you seen Anand?” he tries again. “What happened to Rajesh Khanna.” The simple point of Superboys of Malegaon is that, even at its bleakest, life can be made sweeter by cinema. The Anand reference softens the blow of a cancer diagnosis for two movie-crazy men who’ve travelled from the small town of Malegaon in Maharashtra. When they get back, the patient’s friends gently rib him about having a rich man’s ailment. Even the doctor’s life is made a little happier. He accepts a part in their upcoming film in return for home visits, saying he’d always wanted to be an actor but his father forbade it. Thirteen years earlier, Nasir (Adarsh Gourav) and Shafique (Shashank Arora) are on a motorbike, singing an improvised tune about not being too ambitious because they’ll end up dying in Malegaon anyway. It’s an early acceptance of the cards they’ve been dealt: Nasir to shoot wedding videos and work in his brother’s photo studio, Shafique in the mill.

In 2019, a production house went into the slums of Dharavi, into the lives of Murad Ahmed (Ranveer Singh), his ladylove Safeena (Alia Bhatt) and the gully-origin rap music that emanated passionately from their mohalla. It was Zoya Akhtar’s delicately unobtrusive look at a troubled family in a community which is in no conflict with any other. Safeena, she cast, as a surgeon in the making. Six years later, Zoya’s filmmaking partner Reema Kagti replicates the community in a different setting, driven by a different passion. Doffing her hat to Faiza Ahmad Khan and her crew for their 2012 documentary ‘Supermen of Malegaon’, which is the springboard for Varun Grover’s feature film screenplay, the camera moves to Malegaon, a small town in Maharashtra, earlier known for its (hand) loom factories.

A problem with magnum opuses is the weight of the expectations it creates for future projects from the filmmaker. Eeram continues to be a victory director Arivazhagan is unable to emulate. Sabdham is the second collaboration with Aadhi, which has brought the hit duo back again, but not the quality it had produced with Eeram. Though Sabdham is an unabashed attempt at creating a horror film of a similar pedigree, Arivazhagan falls short due to the lack of simplicity that Eeram wore as a crown. Eeram, his debut, was a straightforward story about the ghost of a virtuous woman haunting everyone who wronged her, using water as her medium. When the protagonist investigates the case, it takes an organic route to move from being a crime thriller to a horror. Everything about the film was lucid and engaging as the film doesn’t take too much on its shoulders. On the other hand, Sabdham (meaning sound) is confusing as it tries to marry science with the supernatural.

Director duo Pushkar and Gayatri were pioneers in making the Tamil web series space a flourishing one. Cashing in on the success of Suzhal - The Vortex, the makers created a sequel to it, which is currently streaming on Prime Video. Suzhal - The Vortex is one of the most celebrated web shows in Tamil. Has Suzhal - The Vortex 2 lived up to expectations? Let’s find out! Nandhini (Aishwarya Rajesh) is sentenced to jail after killing her abuser, while SI Chakravarthi aka Sakkarai (Karthir) is helping her from outside. He is also closely working with activist and lawyer Chellappa (Lal) to fight in court for Nandhini. However, Chellappa is found dead at his cottage with a gunshot to his forehead.