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24 Movie Review

Despite few shortcomings, this movie is a welcome gesture from Surya. When other mainstream heroes restrict themselves to "formulaic" films considering the mammoth money spinning around them, considering their need to satisfy their ardent fans, considering the profit they need to make for all involved in film distribution, Surya has invested his money in an experimental genre and his utmost efforts too.



In a movie falling between sci Fi and fantasy, the introduction inciting incident should be around the invention of the device, right?? Here it is. Surya, enacting the role of Sethuraman, who is nerdy and cowardly and other Surya, who is Athreya, overdoing the villainic gestures fight for that.

The device has to reach other Surya. Manikandan who is a routine romance seeking hero. The director overuses the factor of "coincidences" to make the plot point. Till this the movie was fantabulous.

Things get messy, when the director suddenly drifts the trajectory in a love track. It annoys us, it dampens the flow and swallows enough time which could have been otherwise used to show the enmity between Athreya and Sethuraman or the pursuit of Athreya for Manikandan.

Even the directors who have enough potential like Vikram Kumar, could not skip the romantic side track and make the hero using the device for a monotonous episode. Things get interesting again when Athreya reaches the device and interval point.

He compensates well in the last half hour of the film. Till then he uses bits like vow of Samantha s family and showing maternal gush of Saranya.

All the three roles need justification, and Surya does it. Especially when he is a chair ridden mass fuming with incapability, frustration and vengeance, he is extravagant.

Many compare 24 with "Indru Netru Naalai" as both revolves around a device which can travel time. That movie is a low budget, low key star vehicle which can strictly fit itself to Blake Snyder s beat sheet. There isn't any need for a protruding romantic track or songs. This made its screenplay appealing and gripping. 24 is a high key star vehicle which requires all these. The director has to keep in mind all the sectors of audience. So he keeps the key concepts for an hour or so.

Vikram Kumar deserves appreciation to fit a mainstream hero in a high concept movie like this. The cinematographer Thiru  makes this movie a lesson, on how visuals can be framed, tone and shades can be used to show the mood of the movie.

The movie demands intelligence and correlation from a viewer. If not, some of scenes will leave a casual movie viewer perplexed. This factor can disrupt the movie in B and C areas.

Nevertheless, its a worthy intelligent script, the sort of which should be tried by all mainstream heroes.

Rating : 3.5/5

- Dinesh (https://www.facebook.com/dinesh.88560)

 Checkout 24 movie page on WoodsDeck - http://www.woodsdeck.com/movies/13698-24-2016
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Kaadhalum Kadanthu Pogum Review - An Okayish RomCom

The movie is an official remake of a typical Korean movie, so it moves it its own pace sans quirky turns or overloaded emotions of a Tamil movie. This is both the plus and minus of the movie. The lethargic pace in the first half may help us to fit into the shoes of Yazhini and Kathir, an engineering graduate seeking a job and a "thathi" henchman. Both are not high profile flyers in their own fields. Both are loners for different reasons. Both seek a redemption in their lives, one in the form of a job and other in the form of BAR license.


What happens when these both come together in tandem?? This is the one line.. An age old template love story where opposite poles should(??!!) attract, which seldom happens in reality. But the director, Nalan, who gave a path breaking Soodhu Kavvum, gets entangled here. He shouldn't spoil the soul of Korean films involving lengthy conversations, slow paced screenplay and on the other hand he should cater a movie quenching Tamil cinema fundamentals. The critics expected a different platter from him. This pivot slips in execution.

The first half, was pretty interesting. The family of Yazhini is one closer to reality. Her father as she says is a soft TV serial type Dad. On other hand, the group kathir is working for is a mellowed down one. In fact Kathir himself is not a typical cold blooded henchman... He receive blows instead. But for that, the subplot was dragging.

All these details are kept out of focus. We see only Yazhini - Kathir most of the times. If it would have been Mani ratnam or GVM or selvaraghavan they would have punched in their own way. But we are watching a Korean remake, so all goes smoothly..

At this point, the director would have had a doubt lingering...whether this unidirectional flick would be received well by Tamil audience?? This is where the movie slips down and travel in a clichéd, not so real, turns filled path. This can be expected from a debutant director. But if this was from a prominent new wave director, it makes us tired. It is a typical 90 s movie thereafter..

I loved Vijay Sethupathi a lot in this movie. He shoulders the role in a "I don't pretend - I simply live" pattern...some expressions are stereotypical but nevertheless rejoicing..the interview scene and confronting Yazhini s father are notable on his part...Madonna plays her role within prescribed arc..

If u seek moments as in ROM com movie or if you expect a fast going generic drama or if you expect something new...this movie night not satisfy..but this is a movie which you can watch at ease, as if watching a star filled sky at night. But is this what expected from Nalan??


Verdict:  An Okayish RomCom
Rating: 3.5/5

Checkout Kaadhalum Kadanthu Pogum's profile on WoodsDeck - http://www.woodsdeck.com/movies/14394-kadhalum-kadandhu-pogum-2016
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Inroducing a unique scoring for movies, WoodsDeck Score

What does WoodsDeck Score mean and how do we use it to rate a movie?

 WoodsDeck Score denotes the overall score given for a film and unlike other rating methods, we@WoodsDeck estimate it from the average of three components: 

 1. User reviews

 2. Critic reviews 

 3. Crowd Sentiment

 So do not worry about the ratings of your favourite movie given here. There are the unprejudiced opinions of what we have analysed from over an average 1 lakh audiences varying from users to critics. Checkout the WoodsDeck Score page for Tamil movie Kadhalum Kadandhu Pogum below.

How is the WoodsDeck Score calculated ? 

 Let us walk you through the backstage operations done here. We present you before the breakdown elements that decide the final scoring.

 1) User reviews:

 Reviews and rating by WoodsDeck users, that is what you and I give for a film. It may be a low or high depending upon our views. Someone of us may like the film very much and give 10 upon 10 but someone else may find it worth only 5 upon 10. There is a normalization done at this stage to prevent biasing of the score towards a particular group of audience.

 2) Critic Reviews:

 Reviews by popular critics and film trade analysts’ opinions differ on their critical analysis of each & every scene from the film and interpretation from them. Some movies may have an intense story and requires a behind the screen understanding. Critics are good at them and offer unbiased views about it. 


3) Crowd Sentiment:

 Sentiment of the tweets analysed and average of positive, negative and neutral tweets about the movie are calculated. Thanks to the growing trend of tweeting that we could use it positively for our purpose. Every day, in an average there are about 20,000 hashtags running around about a recently released film. They may also be of differing in nature, positive, negative or even neutral opinions.  


Our task is to analyse the sentiment of all of them and take the average of it and use here.

 What are unique features distinguished in WoodsDeck Score ?

 1. Mix of both critic & user reviews

 There is a balancing of user’s as well as critic’s ratings done by us. If we take the IMDb for discussion, they use a weighted average rating depending on only the user’s votes. The Metascore from Metacritic also calculates the rating based on the weight given to some critics, say 50 who give quality reviews and then normalize them. While assigning weights to the scores may lead to clustering of the views, we take the factor called as Crowd Sentiment. 

 2. Significance given to Crowd Sentiment element  

 It is not few person’s opinion but a mass crowd’s perception and reception of the films. There may be as many as 100000 - 1000000 tweets to be considered before going for the scoring of this factor !

 So how WoodsDeck Score is effective ? 

 The WoodsDeck Score is a purely scrupulous rating of your favorite movies and others. Even the very same day of the release of the film, you get to know its response from the audience through WoodsDeck Score. 

 It’s just a single swipe in the WoodsDeck website or App(http://bit.ly/1QdjCfx) that it takes to look at the rating. So do not get to miss this feature exclusively made for you and start using it right away at www.woodsdeck.com
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