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...

#Alive (2020) Director : Cho Il-hyung A gamer finds himself alone in his apartment when a zombie apocalypse hits the country. He barely manages to escape from an infected person who enters his apartment, and helplessly watches people being bitten by a horde of zombies. He soon runs out of food, water, phone and internet connection, and at one point decides to take his own life. But he is saved by another survivor from the adjacent complex who shines a laser pointer at him. Finding the other survivor lends our gamer a renewed vigour and the two share food and eventually a walkie-talkie to talk. After they barely escape another mad horde of zombies, they realise they'd die if they stayed at their apartments any longer and decide to make a run for the 8th floor. Of course things go bad and zombies find them but they're saved in the nick of time by a stranger. Things start to look good only for the stranger to drug them so that his zombie wife can feed on them. They bar...

  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...

Unsane (2018) Director: Steven Soderbergh. Unsane tells the story of Sawyer Valentini who finds herself unwillingly locked up in a psychiatric hospital after an interview with a therapist. Sawyer talks to her therapist about her previous suicidal tendencies for being relentlessly stalked by a David Strine. Based on this and that she did not look at the forms she signed, she finds herself stripped of her clothes, phone and gets told, she voluntarily committed herself to the hospital. Her fellow inmate, Nate, however reveals to her that her incarceration was part of an insurance scam run by the company. She is placed in a ward next to a seemingly violent woman who threatens to cut her. Trapped in an unwanted situation, Sawyer lashes out verbally & physically, leading the staff to drug her and strap her down.  It is here in the hospital that she seemingly runs into her stalker who is a member of the staff called George. But we don't know if she's telling the truth ...

T en years have passed since Roshan Kalra started the Raasta café. Radha and Armaan, moved by his newfound passion and dedication towards them and cooking, decided to stay back, even though Radha had said it wasn’t a hot idea. She eventually gave in to Roshan’s killer moves on the dance floor and in the kitchen and got back together    with him, much to the delight of Armaan, Nazrul and Alex and much to the dismay of Biju. Biju was devastated. He was all set to propose to Radha when she dropped the R bomb on him. Heartbroken, he took out his 1960 Impala on a ride which unfortunately broke down in the middle of the road. Finding no option, he started walking/running towards the next town and realized he was a pretty decent runner and took to marathon running where he met his 23 year old girlfriend and went off to Oslo for their pre-wedding trip. Roshan K moved to his childhood home in Chandni Chowk with his family and father, and his son Armaan, infused with the lov...