[Rajeevraj]

Watched Kappela (Malayalam, Anna Ben, sreenath bhasi, Roshan Mathew). Lovely little film with great performances and a good message. Streaming on Netflix.

On a side note, while I enjoy the phase malayalam movies are in currently, I am missing that leave your brains behind laugh your heart out comedies malayalam cinema was so well known for. Even the clean slapstick comedies that will not win any awards but will entertain you and make you laugh. Other than Aadu series and to an extent Janamaitri, My boss and two countries, cannot really think of good laugh aloud comedies in the last few years.

Is it because the current generation of actors especially the leads cannot pull off something like that or those kind of writers and directors are no longer there.

[bimal_67]

Originally Posted by WindRide

Kappela. One word - delightful. Do not miss.

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj

Watched Kappela (Malayalam, Anna Ben, sreenath bhasi, Roshan Mathew). Lovely little film with great performances and a good message. Streaming on Netflix.

Second that. Good performances by Anna Ben, Sreenath and Roshan. The twists and turns are good enough to keep the viewer glued to the screen. Do not miss

[myavu]

Me too watched Kappela day before yesterday. Fantastic movie

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj

I am missing that leave your brains behind laugh your heart out comedies malayalam cinema was so well known for. Even the clean slapstick comedies that will not win any awards but will entertain you and make you laugh.

Due to this kind of a craving for a change I watched Mazha Peyyunnu Maddalam Kottunnu yesterday (after a long time). Lots of nostalgia but guaranteed.

Cheers!

[naveen.raju]

Kappela

I somehow thought it was just an average movie. Very good acting though by all 3. Is it because I watched something similar - Joju George's Chola?

Rating - 3/5

[PrideRed]

Gentleman(Kannada)-3.5/5
Good movie, worth watching. Good story, decent screenplay and good performance by Prajwal and actress(forgot her name). Back during college time Kannada movies were pure commercial but I love the current crop of actors/movies. They don't hesitate to experiment and most of the the recent movies are atleast watchable while good chunk of them are good.

[StarrySky]

Originally Posted by naveen.raju

Kappela

I somehow thought it was just an average movie. Very good acting though by all 3.

I thought so too. For me, it seemed a bit predictable given the many real-life stories we have heard. Of course, there were a couple of moments where I thought the story was going in a different direction than I had thought, and it made me excited. But in the end, there was nothing really new.

[chinkara]

In this thread I have not seen too many Bengali movies. In the nineties, most Bengali movies were such crap copies of Hindi / Tamil / Telegu hits that most of us stopped watching them - Bengali movies were old classics, nothing contemporary was worth watching.
The other stream was arthouse films - supposedly "intellectual" movies almost moribund in pace (think Malayalam arthouse films in slo mo) with strong Marxist indoctrination as a side dish.

But over the past decade or two, there have been many Bengali movies worth watching. Many are literature based (like 50s and 60s), innovative plots, crisp contemporary dialogues etc. Again there are 2 branches: genuinely innovative movies and good adoptions of other language classics. Focusing on some such films, mostly available on Prime / Hotstar, that others may find interesting.

1. Bhooter Bhabishyat (The Future of Ghosts): Clean Family movie with a twist in the end. 5*
2. Baishe Srabon: This is a serial killer thriller, quite innovative, but I suspect will not resonate with non-Bengalis because it heavily references Bengali literature. 4* (5* if you are Bengali)
3. Dahan (Burn) : Someone reviewed earlier; about society becoming apathetic about crime committed in public. Good, but end could have been a little less preachy - the novel was more understated. 4*
4. Autograph: About a movie star, ego and loneliness (may resonate in the circumstances) 3.5*

Other Rituparno Ghosh movies like Unishe April, Utsav, Shubho Maharat etc. are also recommended.

On the pure commercial movies front, I really liked a few:
1. Ke Tumi Nandini - a light rom com about a teenager who falls for a slightly older young man, who is also her cousin's ex. Completely told from the girl's / woman's perspective, which is rare in Indian cinema
2. Guptadhaner Shandhane and Durgeshgarer Guptadhan - Clean family movies of the treasure hunt genre based on Bengal's history (inspired by Da Vinci code maybe, although this genre existed in Bengali literature for ages)

[vibbs]

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj

On a side note, while I enjoy the phase malayalam movies are in currently, I am missing that leave your brains behind laugh your heart out comedies malayalam cinema was so well known for. Even the clean slapstick comedies that will not win any awards but will entertain you and make you laugh. Other than Aadu series and to an extent Janamaitri, My boss and two countries, cannot really think of good laugh aloud comedies in the last few years.
.

I feel you bro.

Kappela is a good watch. But I so miss the easy to brain and mind movies of the past despite all the great movies that are being made nowadays. Somehow all seem too serious to me. Which is good when you want to watch such movies.

At times however, I just want to forget the world and have a good laugh. Sadly not too many recently that qualify for this.

[benbsb29]

Kappela - Malayalam (Netflix)

As mentioned by others here, this is a simple movie with interesting twists. At some points the avid viewer will guess the story, but it definitely makes for a good one time watch. Having watched the movie, I got to watch a YouTube video which analyses the finer details of the movie and from a different perspective. This helped cement the thought behind even the little things that went into the movie. Considering that this is the director's directorial debut, it certainly is praiseworthy.

[naveen.raju]

For Malayalam audience - Stumbled upon a new streaming platform that was launched last week. Nothing special, it's just similar to Hotstar, Sunnxt etc but did find few movies that wasn't available elsewhere. Also, "Musical Chair" was released here last week. Apparently, it had some bugs and the "premium" movies were all free.



Musical Chair

Vipin's previous movie "Homely Meals" was pretty entertaining and expected something similar but was a disaster. From a comedy/entertaining subject, this was just the opposite - sad/depressing etc. Super boring.

Rating - 0/5

[Ithaca]

Originally Posted by naveen.raju

For Malayalam audience - Stumbled upon a new streaming platform that was launched last week.

Do the movies have English subtitles. If they do, I will subscribe.
Thanks in advance.

I just realized that even Telugu audience have Telugu specific content called -AHA.
Just subscribed to it at Rs 365/- annual plan (introductory offer)

[naveen.raju]

Originally Posted by Ithaca

Do the movies have English subtitles. If they do, I will subscribe.
Thanks in advance.

Haven't explored it but guess they do not have subtitles. Moreover, the content is free now and but very buggy.

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by naveen.raju

For Malayalam audience - Stumbled upon a new streaming platform that was launched last week. Nothing special, it's just similar to Hotstar, Sunnxt etc but did find few movies that wasn't available elsewhere.

I had a hard time decoding the name of the platform from the above post. So here is the play store link https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...video&hl=en_US

[naveen.raju]

Sorry to have missed that. It's www.mainstreamtv.in

Guess it would be good if we have a pinned section in this thread listing all the streaming platforms. Here are the ones I use frequently:

1) Netflix - www.netflix.com
2) Amazon Prime - primevideo.com
3) Hotstar - www.hotstar.com/in
4) Sunnxt - www.sunnxt.com
5) Mainstream - www.mainstreamtv.in
6) Airtel Xstream - www.airtelxstream.in (few streaming services like Zee5, Eros etc are part of this)

[binand]

Originally Posted by naveen.raju

Guess it would be good if we have a pinned section in this thread listing all the streaming platforms.

Few more.

1. MyNK: World Cinema. Claim to fame is that it is associated with Anurag Kashyap.
   
2. MX Player: My wife got it for that Jayalalithaa bio-serial.
   
3. Hoichoi: Bengali only. Came across it when I was searching for a specific movie. Haven't tried it because they didn't seem to have a trial version and also mentioned their entire inventory is not subtitled.
   
4. The venerable Google Play Movies. It was the only one that was streaming the acclaimed Daniel Craig movie, Knives Out.

In Tamil there used to be some that would stream only outside India (USA, mainly). Not sure if those are available in India now.

Zee5 and its companions (Voot, Sony Liv) are missing - because they are mostly Hindi?