Balaji's Thots

Notwithstanding the weak critical and commercial reception it got, Manirathnam’s Kadal was definitely a dream debut for Gautham Karthik since it got him noticed. But based on the scripts he has been selecting since then, the actor seems determined to become the poster boy for actors whose career takes a sharp nose dive after starting off with a strong […]

Its become rare these days to read a simple, straightforward story where the narration is not complicated by unreliable narrators, multiple points of view and the story itself moving back and forth in time. Fiona Barton too relies on many of these techniques in her debut novel The Widow. The story keeps us hooked with good […]

Suriya has mentioned a few times that Singam was the film that gave him good reach in the B and C centers. He must’ve wanted reassurance about that reach again after a smart film like 24 and so joins hands again with Hari for Singam 3. His decision isn’t that much of a puzzler since […]

It goes without saying that I’ve been watching a lot of movies but lately, the action in the Tamil Nadu political arena has provided more entertainment than all those movies combined. Yes, our movies do straddle several genres to entertain but even they would find it hard to throw in all the genre elements that […]

Villains in most of our hero-centric masala films are little more than punching bags. They may be loud but they make up weak plans, get duped ridiculously easily and their threats are designed to simply elicit massy punch dialogs as responses. Thani Oruvan showed us how effective a thriller can be when the villain is […]

Enakku Vaaitha Adimaigal starts off with photos of famous and not-so-famous friends, making it immediately clear that it is another movie that is going to sing praises of friendship. It does do so as Krishna(Jai) and his friends Ramesh(Karunakaran), Moideen(Kali Venkat) and Sowmya Narayanan(Naveen George Thomas) regularly pass comments on how friends help each other. But […]