“All the world’s a stage and all men and women merely players.” Meyaadha Maan starts with this Shakespeare quote. The director repeats this line at three different points in the film as the story changes track each time. Everytime you feel like the film is slowing down and veering towards something predictable, this quote and the quirky twists that follow put a smile on your face. One of the highlights is the interval block which involves one long tracking shot in a hospital that changes the perspective of not just the lead character, but also ours when we realise that it is not a romantic story, but a detailed character sketch…

There are films which make you uncomfortable because they are so bad that you wonder how they got made in the first place. And then there are films like Puriyatha Puthir, which has scenes so raw that you almost don’t want to see what will unfold next on screen for fear of seeing your worst suspicions come true. And this, in a film that for the first 15 mins lulls you into a sense of false comfort by portraying itself as a breezy romance. But that doesn’t mean this is not a romantic movie. Kathir (Vijay Sethupathi) is an aspiring music director and Meera (Gayathrie) is a part-time music teacher.…

Tamil cinema has not really sung the praises of the ‘middle-bencher’ as much as it has talked about the last or the first benchers. Kootathil Oruthan tries to paint an entertaining picture of people in this segment. And how it tries to do that is very interesting. Aravind (Ashok Selvan), your average middle-bencher, is so nondescript that even his teacher asks him which class he belongs to. A middle child who lives a rather unremarkable life, he gets his first praise from Janani (Priya Anand), because of which he falls for her. He takes up the same course as her, and  what follows is your regular Tamil romance of a boy…