By this time, all of us have best-of lists popping out of our ears, and I promise to maintain this transient, however I couldn’t let 2024 go by with out marking my prime performances from amongst the non-Hindi movies I managed to catch.
Most of them belong to Malayalam movies, which had been once more, no surprises right here, proper on prime of the film totem pole. Two are from Tamil movies, which use stars to inform highly effective, delicate tales. And one is from the Telugu movie which has blown all current box-office data to smithereens, its Hindi dubbed model having saved the trade from drowning.
Let me start with Allu Arjun’s act in Pushpa 2, which doubles down, unapologetically, on all of the mega-loud components it makes use of to choose up the threads on its hero’s doings, three years after the unique. The dances are cringe-making, the dialogues are risible, the drama is doused with exaggerated mainstream tropes, however protecting all of it collectively is Allu Arjun who goes at all of it with ferocious conviction: the jaatra-sequence, in addition to the one by which he takes on all comers, in his the sari-and-nath-feminine-divine-avatar, is powerfully, delightfully subversive.
On the centre of Christo Tomy’s Ullozhukku (Undercurrents) is the fraught relationship between two girls, Leelamma and Anju. The latter’s marriage to Leelamma’s son is short-lived for causes which can be made clear because the movie bobs alongside, with flood waters rising, and a funeral getting delayed. Do the lifeless converse? The perfect intentions are undermined by deceit, however people will at all times take the simple method out. Veteran actor Urvashi as Leelamma and Parvathy Thiruvothu as Anju are terrific, as is the movie. You need faces? Take these house with you.
There’s lots to love in Chidambaram’s Manjummel Boys, the highest-grossing Malayalam movie until now, nevertheless it didn’t blow me away. Sure, the boys– grown males who behave like adolescent-boys-out- to-have-fun– do get caught between slim rocks and laborious locations, and the rescue act is suitably nerve-wracking, however every thing proceeds in keeping with plan. In all this, Soubin Shahir gave me one in every of my favorite acts of 2024, an actor who effortlessly steals whole motion pictures, not simply scenes.
Prasanna Vithanage’s Paradise, set in opposition to the backdrop of the current financial upheaval in Sri Lanka, turns into the location of a sharply instructed domestic-cum-political thriller. It is among the most layered movies of the yr, centre-staging Roshan Mathew and Darshana Rajendran’s lived-in performances of a pair straining on the edges, negotiating the cracks of their marriage on a vacation which spins uncontrolled after an sudden occasion.
Fahadh Faasil is having the time of his life in Jithu Madhavan’s Aavesham, as an eccentric, clad-in-all-white, festooned-with-gold-chains gangster who turns mentor to a bunch of cowed school boys. Girls, as ordinary, present up solely momentarily on this all-boys caper. The movie sags in some locations, however Fafa is unstoppable.
Additionally Learn | Hindi cinema’s finest to worst in 2024: Of Pushpa 2 and Stree 2, Chamkila and Laapataa Women
Meiyazhagan is an uncommon bromance for testosterone-laden mainstream Tamil cinema, not simply in its selection of story which proceeds on the placid tempo of a bicycle– the selection of car within the movie—but additionally within the actors on the centre of it. Karthi and Arvind Swamy step again from their starry personas, and provides us two males forging the sort of connection manly, moustachioed males have historically been made to scoff at: actual males could be light, too.
I’ve saved the very best for the tip of this quick listing. In P Vinothraj’s Kottukkaali, Anna Ben is paired with Soori, in a movie which talks of massive themes—patriarchy, misogyny, casteism, poisonous masculinity– by means of its story of an adamant lady refusing a match chosen by her mother and father. Soori, because the livid man who doesn’t know any higher, is great, however this Ben’s movie. With out saying a phrase– she stays speechless virtually by means of the movie—she conveys every thing. A efficiency for the ages.
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