Balaji's Thots

Aside from being instrumental in Satyaraj’s ascent from minor actor to memorable villain(Nooraavadhu Naal, 24 Mani Neram), successful anti-hero(Vidinja Kalyanam) and popular hero(Chinna Thambi Periya Thambi), director Manivannan gave the actor one of his most memorable roles as an idiot-turned-scheming politician  in Amaidhi Padai. The director and actor revisit the iconic character Nagaraja Cholan in [...]

Tamil cinema has recently seen a mini-resurgence of sorts with young directors, armed with good ideas, new and/or willing actors and small budgets, delivering movies that tackle new genres or put a fresh spin on an existing one. Debutant director Nalan Kumarasamy further boosts this resurgence with his Soodhu Kavvum. A delightful dark comedy that [...]

Director Vasanth has had very strong entries in both the romance and thriller genres with films like Keladi Kanmani, Rhythm and Aasai. But his last two films in both those genres, Hey! Nee Romba Azhaga Irukke and Satham Podaadhey were disappointing. After a long break, he makes a comeback with another romance Moondru Per Moondru [...]

As an actor, Dhanush has taken on some challenging roles in recent times but as producer, he has stuck to a safe route. His first production Ethir Neechal brings together two crowd-pleasing genres – the romcom and the sports underdog tale. The latter has its issues and doesn’t work as well as the former but [...]

In all his films so far, director Radhamohan showed us that his strengths were subtle humor and low-key drama. He surprised us with the hijack thriller Payanam but even in that film, the portions that worked best were those that included those two aspects. So its surprising that for his latest film Gouravam, he has [...]

2013 has been pretty lukewarm when it comes to films from our big-league stars with only 2 releases – Vishwaroopam and David – so far and no further releases planned for the summer. But the year has been packed with smaller films, most of which fall somewhere between an event film and one that arrives [...]

I received the biggest surprise in quite some time on Friday when I saw the above photo tweeted by Bharat Bala, director of the upcoming Dhanush film Mariyaan, which has music by A.R.Rahman. Yuvan clarified things when he tweeted that he had recorded a session with ARR and sung a song for the film. Since [...]

When it comes to thrillers, aspects like romance, sentiments and character development are usually seen as negatives since they act as speed-breakers that affect the film’s pace. So its ironic that in Udhayam NH4, they end up saving the day. The film is weak on actual thrills but the characterization and the romance are strong [...]

Though Rajnikanth found his groove as an action-comedy hero with Thambikku Endha Ooru, most of his films after that were predominantly composed of action and drama with comedy restricted to a few extended sequences(like the ‘fly’ sequence in Velaikkaaran). Guru Sishyan was one of the films where comedy was the primary element. Though there is [...]

Reviews for Marandhen Mannithen, Chennaieil Oru Naal, Kedi Billa Killaadi Ranga and Settai are now available on the reviews site.
Just noticed that after this update, at this point in 2013, there are exactly 3 films in each star category from 1/2 star to 3 stars. How’s that for symmetry!