Wordside Woman

                                                (Movie review) " Dhurandhar " (2025)  The two-part film series, Dhurandhar, released in December 2025, read like a palimpsest to me where the filmmaker and his editor have dexterously woven together the raw footages and audio clips of the parliament attack from 2001 and the 26/11 Mumbai attacks with the scenes in the movie. It is by no means a novel narrative strategy. Having said that, Adithya Dhar has masterfully conveyed the immediacy and urgency demanded by these instances without excessive dramatization or rabble-rousing gimmicks that several movies tend to employ at the cost of narrative authenticity. These juxtaposed scenes felt like they were superimposed; with fiction deliberately layered above the facts. The net effect is one of a story that challenges disbelief every time it settles into the lull of a typ...

                                                                      (Movie Review) “Past Lives” (2023) A colleague of mine urged me to watch Past Lives repeatedly, and me being the lazy sloth that I am, kept procrastinating it for no particular reason. Finally, the day before yesterday, after watching Untamed , since I had nothing better to do, I decided to watch Past Lives . As soon as I started watching the movie, I couldn't help but notice its resemblance to another film I saw recently in the theatre. I had watched the  Materialists  last month. The story was, to be frank, nothing exceptional. It was predictable and pretty straight forward. Having said that, what really got me going was the cinematography; the colour schemes and the sedate pace of narration. You could pause the movie at any point du...

                                                     (Movie Review) " Am I OK?" (2022) Today was yet another one of those extremely unproductive days, but slightly better than the worst ones. At least I didn’t starve myself for being too lazy to cook. I had been wanting to see this movie after I chanced upon a trailer of this on the YouTube. I must confess I watched it for Dakota Johnson. I love that woman (that is, in the capacity of an actor of course…. duh!). She will forever be Anasthasia Steele for me. I don’t know what it is exactly that attracts me to her, but there is definitely something. But this is not about my inexplicable attraction for the leading lady. It is about what I felt about the movie. Wikipedia says it is a comedy drama film and I am choosing to go with it for want of a better word to describe the genre. I must tell there are no h...

                                                     Movie Review: Your Name (2016) It was a colleague of mine who insisted that I watch Your Name. I couldn’t bring myself to watch it for some reason. After a couple of weeks, as I lay on my bed at night, wrestling with recalcitrant sleep, I automatically proceeded to click on the link. For some reason, as soon as I started watching it, sleep decided to take me in its warm embrace. This happened several times over the next few days. Eventually, three days into my summer vacation, one night, after all had gone to sleep, I made up my mind to watch it in the darkened room. With the low humming of the air conditioner and my sleeping mother’s deep breath in the background, I found myself slowly getting drawn into the dreamlike, magically enmeshed worlds of Mitsuha Miyamizu and Taki Tachibana. The movie opens ...

                      Shreelancer : The Journey of a Stoic Freelancer Director: Sandeep Mohan Release Date: 18 August 2017 (India)   The indie filmmaker Sandeep Mohan has crafted a visual narrative sans the polish and glitter of a commercial feature film in Shreelancer . The movie is as much about Shree’s search for his own comfortable space as it is about him getting pushed out into the boundless world where he is forced to look life in the eye in all its bitter glory. The dispiriting contrast between Shree’s aspirations and reality becomes apparent in the very first scene, in the café, where after taking a few deep breathes, he plugs himself into the right mental zone aided by mood music and a steaming cup of coffee, only to be shown writing an add for a cheap Thai foot massage parlor. Lack of validation from his father, who would rather he take up a nine to five job, coupled with financial instability, stops him fr...

                                         SHERNI (2021) The title “Sherni” is applicable both to the predator in question as well as to the protagonist. Vidya Balan seamlessly plays the role of a rookie officer trying to combat corruption and inefficiency in the government system while simultaneously attempting to hold on against the slighting remarks and gender bias within her sphere of work. The lopsided power dynamics become apparent in several scenes, where the hands of the conscientious officers are tied and are further made to made to feel feckless. Unlike many other movies with female leads, the character played by Vidya Balan doesn’t dominate the narrative. The viewer is offered a fulfilling viewing experience without a wasted scene or dialogue. The movie begins with a seemingly insignificant scene indicating the lack of subject knowledge among the officials of the forest de...