Vilayath Budha: Prithviraj-Shammi's Tale Of Male Ego Fails To Take Root |
Vilayath Buddha is meant to explore pride, shame, and ego, but outdated storytelling and exaggerated archetypes dilute its impact. Neelima Menon reviews.
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| | | Cast: Prithviraj Sukumaran, Shammi Thilakan, Priyamvada Krishnan | | | | VILAYATH BUDHA unfolds in the picturesque valley of Marayoor, where we meet Bhaskaran (Shammi Thilakan), a schoolteacher-turned-Panchayat President hoping for another term in office. But his political fortunes take a spectacular hit when, on a fateful night, he slips and falls into a pit of excreta — an accident made infinitely worse because it happens in the premises of the local prostitute. The stench clings to him, and so does the scandal, as his rivals seize the opportunity to weaponise it and tarnish his reputation. The humiliation burrows so deeply into his psyche that Bhaskaran becomes convinced that only death can truly wash him clean. In a moment of warped clarity, he decides that the sandalwood tree in his own compound should one day be used for his cremation — a final act, he believes, that will release him from the “stench” that has come to define him. Running parallel to Bhaskaran’s story is that of Double Mohanan (Prithviraj Sukumaran), a local sandalwood smuggler who, as these narratives often go, enjoys a quiet, almost folkloric hero status in the region. We know little about his past beyond the fact that he’s a school dropout, but his presence carries the weight of someone shaped by the land’s moral grey zones. There’s also a love interest, Chaithanya (Priyamvada Krishnan), the daughter of the prostitute, whose social stigma quietly shadows their relationship. Stream the latest Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada releases, with OTTplay Premium's Power Play monthly pack, for only Rs 149. |
| | Sisu: Road To Revenge — When Violence Becomes A Glorious Punchline
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There is some kind of perverse pleasure in watching deranged Nazis and cowardly Soviets get butchered by an old man soldier bereft of patriotism. It’s justice imagined, but not denied,
writes Rahul Desai.
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| | | Cast: Jorma Tommila, Stephen Lang, Richard Brake | | | | SISU, we are told at the beginning of this film, is an untranslatable Finnish word. It means a very specific nothing-left-to-lose kind of courage — an impenetrable madness almost, one that stems from fear no longer being a dealbreaker. It’s why the hero of this franchise, Aatami, is known as “the immortal”. The one who refuses to die. A former Finnish commando whose entire family was slaughtered during the 1939 Winter War, Aatami became a one-man killing machine of Nazis during the Lapland War in the first film (2022). It wasn’t some grand moral stand; they simply messed with the wrong guy. His survival instincts were delightfully and deliriously detached, but the film thrived on dismembered Nazi corpses and outrageous kills. This sequel, Sisu: Road to Revenge, begins after the end of the Second World War. This time, it's the Soviets. Aatami, already a ‘legend’ for those who failed to finish him, has reached a stage of his life where looking back is the only way to move forward. He returns to Soviet-occupied Karelia (Finland) to dismantle his old family house and load it onto his truck so that he can rebuild it somewhere safe in their memory. But the Red Army takes note of his brief arrival and dispatches war prisoner Igor Draganov to finish off Aatami. In return, he is promised freedom and wealth. Aatami doesn’t know that the man chasing him is the one who murdered his family — until he does. Suddenly, ‘sisu’ isn't just numb courage: Aatami risks the chance of losing a shot at fully honouring his family. There are stakes. In hearts and driven into chests. |
| | Mastiii 4: It's Brain-Dead & Aimed Solely At Killing You
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With Mastiii 4, Milap Zaveri amps things up to horrid and sordid degrees. The film has set a new benchmark of treating every living being in a film with such vulgarity that it feels like contempt.
Ishita Sengupta writes.
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| | | Cast: Vivek Oberoi, Riteish Deshmukh, Aftab Shivdasani | | | |
AS SOMEONE IN HER 30s, I have a lot of worries: ageing parents, climate change, whimsical world leaders and the growing cost of living. But late at night, when struggling to sleep, one thought plagues me the most: how is Milap Zaveri still making films? This isn't a personal affront, at least no more than what his films unleash on us. But really, lesser filmmakers have dwindled into oblivion and here’s Zaveri with two films in one year, and while one seemed like the worst, the other has somehow surpassed it. Mastiii 4, the latest instalment of the sex comedy franchise, is every bit as bad as one expects it to be. It is still geared to the same premise of three married men wanting to cheat, only to be humbled by the realisation of how terrible that is, and how lovely their wives are. The male actors are the same, their arcs are ditto, the fate is the same, the tone is still clownish, but it is still worse. WATCH | Masti is streaming on JioHotstar, now available with your OTTplay Premium subscription. For one, the premise makes little sense in 2025. Monogamous relationships today have branched into multiple sub-genres, and infidelity is less attached to morality than it was when the original Masti (2004) released. So, the plot is already dated, but that refuses to deter Zaveri, who further pulps things into disfiguration by conceiving gags rejected from Anees Bazmee and Indra Kumar films. The only thing believable here is three men refusing to change their ways even after two decades. |
| | Mask: One Of 2025's Worst Tamil Films
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With incoherent filmmaking where neither the edit pattern nor the dialogues cohere, Vikarnan Ashok's Mask feels forced, clumsy and tasteless. Aditya Shrikrishna reviews.
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| | | Cast: Kavin, Andrea Jermiah, Ruhani Sharma | | | | VIKARNAN ASHOK'S Mask begins in chaos. Not of the good cinematic kind. It’s not a film with a handful of characters overwhelmed by their own endgames. It’s not the cinema where chaos is orchestrated to give the audience a high, one where so many things happen so fast that we hold our breath in unison, only for that single moment to strike when we let loose. Mask inadvertently orchestrates chaos. It has a narration voiced by director Nelson Dilipkumar. It has overlapping dialogues, layer over layer, along with this narration. It also has GV Prakash’s incongruent score. We witness a loot, Money Heist style but with MR Radha masks and then Nelson introduces us to a host of characters, chiefly Velu (Kavin ), who has caused two deaths thanks to his paramour Rathi (Ruhani Sharma), and Bhoomi (Andrea Jermiah), a philanthropist who saves children from human trafficking but she might also be into the flesh trade and probably moonlights as a power broker. Confused much? Mask is one such hurriedly put-together meal of different cuisines with no flavour profile. Your pop culture fix awaits on OTTplay, for only Rs 149 per month. Grab this limited-time offer now! Velu is a private eye with total disregard for privacy. He specialises in sneaking into bedrooms, capturing extramarital affairs in action and offering leverage to his clients. It is all very crude, and the film lives up to this crassness, which remains the only consistent aspect of it from start to finish. As the masked gang steals around 440 crores, Bhoomi — hand in glove with a politician looking to fund his election campaign — hires Velu to find it all. Not a lot of this makes sense, but Nelson’s voiceover is there to state the obvious, offer empty philosophical quips, and rationalise the decisions of the characters. You know the writing is weak when a voiceover must guide the narrative in the most literal ways. |
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| Each week, our editors pick one long-form, writerly piece that they think is worthy of your attention, and dice it into easily digestible bits for you to mull over. |
| In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an hour on this. |
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