As good as Mammootty is playing Sundaram, we see this facet of his performance through two lenses: That of Sundaram being an offset to whatever we know about James, and that of Mammootty doing quintessentially Tamil tics, including enacting scenes from old Tamil movies like solo plays, observes Rohit Sathish Nair.

As much as we enjoy and write reams and reams about our amazement at the Kantara climax, 30 years on from now, will we remember these portions more fondly or the ones where Shiva is simply hanging out with his friends, mulls Rohit Sathish Nair.

The simplicity of the model that was the original, which allowed it to glide with grace, has been foregone, observes Rohit Sathish Nair.

Gehraiyaan seems to be aurally thin, which serves as a clue to the larger issues plaguing the movie, observes Rohit Sathish Nair.

The failure of Decoupled is that, as it deals almost solely in 'snapshots of insight', it fails to showcase how life flows, how the world goes round, how things unfold, feels Rohit Sathish Nair.

Jagame Thandhiram is a failure alright, but it is certainly an interesting one, given that both the ideas that it was borne out (twin seeds, if you may) were sure-shot movie ideas on their own, observes Rohit Sathish Nair.

Meel Patthar is, both by theme and design, a tragedy of inertia, observes Rohit Satish Nair.

'This is a movie made with this gaze fixed on its immediate well-wishers, while at the same time it squints hard looking for those swaying back and forth on the fence,' notes Rohit Sathish Nair.

'Thugs is smarter than a lot of 'nationalistic' movies,' notes Rohit Sathish Nair.