Blakwall

Raat Akeli Hai. (2020) Director : Honey Trehan. The patriarch of a rich Uttar Pradesh family, Raghuveer Singh is found murdered in his bedroom on the night of his second marriage. In comes Inspector Jatil Yadav, a no nonsense cop, to investigate what turns out to be a layered whodunit. It becomes clear in the very beginning that every member of the family is a suspect. Although all fingers point towards Singh's mistress and now second wife, Radha, played by Radhika Apte, who the family loathes, Jatil is in no hurry to declare her the killer. Even in the face of pressure from political leaders and seniors from the department, Jatil says with gusto, I'll dig out the truth from anywhere. A lot of reviews seem to be comparing Raat Akeli Hai with Rian Johnson's Knives Out. The only similarity between these two movies is that they're both closed room mysteries. In Knives Out, detective Benoit Blanc suspects the entire family and Jatil does the same here. As the fi

  For the uninitiated, these pictures are screengrabs from the 2015 Tamil language film, Visaranai, directed by Vetrimaaran. The film is based on the book "Lock Up" by M. Chandrakumar. When I started watching the film, it appeared to be a film about linguistic divide and the sort of hegemony that locals tend to exert over immigrants. Boy, was I wrong! This is nothing like that. Visaranai kept me hooked to it. It took me a long time to unravel my mind and actually come to terms with the entire film. It is an ugly film that was shot beautifully, with actors who have done immense justice to their roles. Visaranai means Interrogation. Or at least that's what Google tells me. The film begins in Andhra Pradesh where we first meet some of the characters of the film, a small group of Tamil immigrants. They are soon picked up by the police and their life turns upside down. Beaten up by the police to coerce a confession out of them, our four Tamil immigrants are forced to be the sc