Minutes into Manusangada, Kolappan (Rajiv Anand) receives a phone call. His dad has passed away at the crack of dawn. He is shocked, tears breaking out, but first, he has to take care of the practicalities. He asks the person on the call to get an ice box and promises to be there as soon as possible. Kolappan gets up from his bed and disappears off camera. We hear the sound of water first and then the howl of Kolappan. The camera then dutifully follows each of Kolappan’s four friends as they wake up and disappear off screen, much like Kolappan. He is a grown man, who cries under the…

There have been very few times during the past year or even two of watching cinema that I have sat at the interval and reflected on what I had watched so far. Usually, when I do that, it’s because I’ve suffered, but Panjumittai is a pleasant surprise. At its heart, it’s a simple film. Appu (Ma Ka Pa) is married to Ranji (Nikhila Vimal) and during their first night, he learns that she loves food, so much that she keeps eating something or the other almost always. He also learns that she loves the colour yellow a lot, to the point that from the hairclip to the sari she wears,…

Arulnidhi has over the years built his repertoire meticulously to the point that the audiences implicitly trust his choices. Iravukku Aayiram Kangal is the latest in his impressive filmography. At its heart, it is a simple murder mystery but the sheer number of characters and the range of motives at play make you wonder if it is straight out of an Agatha Christie novel. In its style and execution, though, it resembles one of Rajeshkumar’s dynamite pocket novels. This isn’t a knock on the film per se because the author knew the audience he catered to, and one of the prime reasons why the pocket novel was a craze was…