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…

What is the relationship writers have with their work? Do they live vicariously through the characters they create or perhaps, each character has a part of the writer within them? Uru attempts to answer this question with a line that goes,”Orey nerathula ellara maariyum irukanumna adhu oru ezhuthalanaaladhaan mudiyum.” The writer of this film, Vicky Anand (who also doubles up as the director) proves that this is not just a throwaway line, by making you feel he has pervaded into the minds of each of the characters he introduces in the film. Jeevan (Kalaiarasan) is a writer. In the opening scenes of the movie, we learn that he has gone from…