Blakwall

Secularism has gone from being a part of our constitutional to an insult and accusation.  On October 11, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray announced that the government would not open places of worship due to the risk of Covid-19. This is reasonable because Maharashtra has the highest tally in the country, both in terms of cases and deaths- 1.5million and 40,000 deaths. The restrictions on opening of religious places will avoid crowding during festivals. In response to the Maharashtra government’s order, Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari shot off a letter to Chief Minister Thackeray, advising him to reopen the places of worship. The Governor went on to take a jibe at the Chief Minister by asking if he is turning “ secular ” despite the Chief Minister being “ a strong votary of Hindutva .”   The Governor’s letter is a far cry from the constitutional position of his office. That the governor found it fit to interfere in the state government’s work on a mat

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

At a time when Black Lives Matter movement is bringing forth the deep embedded racism in the United States, when racist people are being called out and racism deniers are trying to hog the limelight, The Nickel Boys serves as a testament to the truth beneath it all. Set during the era of the Civil Rights Movement, Colson Whitehead tells the story of Elwood Curtis. Elwood is a serious young boy, getting good grades and working hard at Mr. Marconi's Tobacco and Cigars shop. He's kept on tstraight and narrow by his grandmother, Harriet. Elwood listens to Dr. Martin Luther King and conducts himself according to the ideals. But as luck would have it, he is sent to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reform school. The school claims to turn delinquent boys to honourable men. But that is all on the surface. Inside the campus of the reform school, Elwood sees the horror white men can exert when he is beaten senseless for standing up for a fellow inmate. It is here in the school