Vishal Menon

In its rush to play it safe, while also trying to check all the right boxes, we feel stuck in a tiring game of tug-of-war between people we never feel at home with

Gireesh AD's film has a narrative softness that's obsessed with making you feel, rather than telling you about it Updated on

Ancy Sojan was around three when Anju Bobby George launched herself into the air at the end of a brisk run-up in Athens and set a seemingly unsurpassable national long-jump record. For much of the two decades that followed, Ancy may not have spent a lot of time thinking about George’s record, because her sights were set elsewhere, on the athletics track — remarkable for someone who would eventually overhaul the mark that had stood for 22 years.

Vishal Menon reviews Bethlehem Kudumba Unit, director Girish AD's effortlessly charming age-gap romance starring Nivin Pauly and Mamitha Baiju as Justin and Ashley, two neighbours brought closer by a shared love of music. Vishal finds the film's magic in Girish to transform the most ordinary details into major emotional events — a guitar that quietly charts the progress of their relationship, a bag of empty alcohol bottles that reveals the anxieties within Ashley's home, and the release of a seat belt that lends an enchanting confession of love the scale of an epic cinematic moment. None of the film's more serious ideas are underlined. Ashley's maturity, her attraction to the older and dependable Justin, and Justin's own past are conveyed with a narrative softness that allows the audience to feel their significance rather than simply be told about it. Holding this delicate world together is the inexhaustible charm of Nivin and Mamitha. Mamitha delivers a performance built around feelings left unspoken, while Nivin's restraint makes even a sudden flash of shyness feel wonderfully revealing.

“I was, to be frank, a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.”

With the release of Nivin Pauly's , director Girish AD has just completed a unique record of having five back-to-back superhits.

Malayalam star Nivin Pauly has expressed his frustration with the delayed production of Benz , his Tamil-language debut. The film, a part of the Lokesh Cinematic Universe (LCU) and directed by Bakkiyaraj Kannan, has Pauly as its antagonist opposite Raghava Lawrence.

Nivin Pauly and Mamitha Baiju play the leads in the age-gap romance, which has become a major success in Malayalam Updated on

Shuffling between the naive optimism of a Vineeth Sreenivasan film and an ultra messy Gautham Menon romance, this is a neatly narrated and ably

Kavin and Nayathara are great when it's all fun and games in director Vishnu Edavan's 'Hi,' but they're not able to navigate the film through the more serious portions