Firstpost

Firstpost is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Anna M.M. Vetticad, Bedatri D. Choudhury, Poulomi Das, Prahlad Srihari, Siddhant Adlakha, Tanul Thakur, Udita Jhunjhunwala
Rating Title/Year Author
2/5 Dil Bechara (2020) Anna M.M. Vetticad Dil Bechara subtracts from the positives of the original with its slipshod rewriting, sloppy editing, and ordinary production quality. EDIT
Posted Jul 27, 2020
4/5 The Vast of Night (2019) Prahlad Srihari The Vast of Night is one of those indie miracles: a low-budget sci-fi film featuring unknown actors, from a debutant director with a distinct style and clear personal vision that makes you hopeful for cinema's future. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
4/5 Blow the Man Down (2019) Prahlad Srihari The movie feels like a slow-motion skid on thin ice, as an atmosphere of dread slowly envelops the characters. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
3/5 The Lodge (2019) Prahlad Srihari Chilling in its constant ambiguity, Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's film thrives in keeping the viewer in a perennial state of suspicion over the characters' motives. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
2/5 The Lovebirds (2020) Prahlad Srihari It has got about as much ingenuity that can be coded into its algorithm. Of course, the intention is to entertain, not to reinvent the rom-com, but it does run through some familiar junctures with a pep in its step. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
4/5 Ema (2019) Prahlad Srihari Pyromania becomes performance art for [Ema]. The ceremonial destruction of public property becomes not only an empowering weapon to burn down the patriarchy, but also a ritual for cleansing pain so she can be free to claim a brighter future. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
3.5/5 Bad Education (2019) Prahlad Srihari Finley rejects the sensationalism of a typical Hollywood treatment for a more restrained deconstruction of a white-collar crime. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
1.5/5 Bloodshot (2020) Prahlad Srihari Vin Diesel's Valiant Comics superhero can't transcend the Marvel-DC bipartisanship. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
3.5/5 Les misérables (2019) Prahlad Srihari Ladj Ly's Les Misérables doesn't just take the title of Víctor Hugo's work, but also its heart, spirit and anger. The film is however not a straightforward adaptation, but a freedive into the daily life and struggles of the underclass. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
2.5/5 Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) Prahlad Srihari Hoping to capitalise on the wave of nostalgia around vintage video games, Paramount delivers a feature-length commercial to sell Sonic the Hedgehog merchandise to kids. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
3.5/5 The Invisible Man (2020) Prahlad Srihari Moss communicates with her bulging blue eyes the terror of past trauma, the panic of being systematically tyrannised, the helplessness of not being believed, and the courage to take her tyranniser down head on. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
4.5/5 Little Women (2019) Prahlad Srihari By focusing the story on the aspirations of women and their position in society, she rolls an adaptation and dissertation into one. Yet, it is always delightful, never didactic. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
2.5/5 Bad Boys for Life (2020) Prahlad Srihari Even if they are middle-aged, Smith and Lawrence still fly through the air, in slow motion, shooting two guns at once, and drive a Porsche 911 recklessly through the "this time, it's personal" plot of the film. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
5/5 Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) Prahlad Srihari Portrait of a Lady on Fire has been crafted with a painter's eye, a poet's tongue and a musician's control over emotion. As art imitates life, and life imitates art, Sciamma gives us arguably the greatest love story ever told on cinema. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
3.5/5 Dolor y gloria (2019) Prahlad Srihari Pain and Glory is the Spanish auteur's scrapbook of memories culled from his own life -- a fictionalised self-portrait which journeys into the heart, mind and soul of a man mesmerised by movies and weakened by numerous maladies. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
4.5/5 Parasite (2019) Prahlad Srihari What starts off as a light-hearted comedy ends up becoming a bloody thriller as Bong intertwines slapstick comedy scenes and tense artful schemes. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
3/5 Just Mercy (2019) Prahlad Srihari Cretton's direction lacks the same level of compassion Barry Jenkins brought to If Beale Street Could Talk, or the same level of outrage Ava DuVernay brought to When They See Us. So, it fails to rise above a conventional courtroom drama. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
3.5/5 A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) Prahlad Srihari Hanks slips into the cardigans as easily as he does into the personality of the revered TV icon, perfectly capturing everything from his cadence down to his compassion. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
2.5/5 Bombshell (2019) Prahlad Srihari The dramatic tidiness of the film results in a way too cautious approach in addressing how a work environment and an agenda that vindicates people like Trump play a part in this cycle of systemic abuse. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
0.5/5 Cats (2019) Prahlad Srihari Every ounce of goodwill built by the feline community in this economy of viral cat videos and memes has been squandered by a single movie. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
4.5/5 Knives Out (2019) Prahlad Srihari Knives Out is not only a throwback to classic murder mysteries, but a well-calibrated genre exercise truly meant for these troubling times. Though the text feels retro, the subtext feels unapologetically contemporary. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
2.5/5 Motherless Brooklyn (2019) Prahlad Srihari Norton sacrifices substance for style, and even style for stylishness. So, there's a lot to behold but little to contemplate. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
5/5 Under the Skin (2013) Prahlad Srihari Under the Skin is essentially a road movie abstracted into an erotic poem, where somewhere in between our pleasures and fears coincide. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
5/5 A Ghost Story (2017) Prahlad Srihari Lowery crafts a haunting meditation on grief, the passage of time, the nature of memories, and the meaning of home. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
4.5/5 Nightcrawler (2014) Prahlad Srihari Bloom's vulture-like instincts and sense of ambition is symptomatic of a society that enjoys its breakfast cereal with a spoon of blood-tinged violence. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
4.5/5 Ex Machina (2015) Prahlad Srihari Vikander's turn as Ava is as chilling as it is empathetic, internalising the torment of being considered inferior and subhuman to her male oglers. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
5/5 The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) Prahlad Srihari In an all-too-familiar capitalism-gone-rogue world, [Scorsese] offers an uncompromising portrait of Wall Street hedonists' unscrupulous excesses. EDIT
Posted Jul 24, 2020
4.5/5 The Lobster (2015) Prahlad Srihari Amid all the chilling images of high-concept cruelty, the Greek auteur reveals the self-inflicted shackles that hold us back from finding real happiness. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
4.5/5 Upstream Color (2013) Prahlad Srihari Parasitic worms and pig farms, past and present, real and surreal, Whitman and Thoreau all come together in this strangely sensual concoction. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
4.5/5 Frances Ha (2012) Prahlad Srihari The [French] New Wave itself was a movement which had an of-by-for the youth vibe -- and just like Chabrol or Godard, Gerwig cuts her teeth with a film filled with youthful preoccupations. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
2/5 Black and Blue (2019) Prahlad Srihari For a film with a bit of righteous anger, Black and Blue is a little too conventionally dramatised. So, it neither stimulates nor provokes as an editorial on the impact of racism and police violence in the US. Frankly, it feels like a cop-out. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
2/5 Midway (2019) Prahlad Srihari World War II turns into, as Scorsese would have called it, a 'theme-park ride' in Midway. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
3.5/5 El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019) Prahlad Srihari While El Camino doesn't hurt Breaking Bad's legacy, it doesn't enhance it either. It does, however, fulfill its purpose as fan service -- as you get to see some familiar faces, some tense drama and some gorgeous visuals once again. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
2.5/5 Zombieland: Double Tap (2019) Prahlad Srihari Not sure where we can go with the genre from here. We have more than enough films about the undead to last us a lifetime. And frankly, we are all tapped out. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
2/5 In the Shadow of the Moon (2019) Prahlad Srihari Its combination of buddy cop drama, serial killer whodunit, and time travel thriller does seem like the result of a mix-and-matching algorithm. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
4/5 I Lost My Body (2019) Prahlad Srihari The animation offers a study in contrasts as it wraps the fantastical elements of the story in the real, the past with the present, and the frenzy of city life with the quiet urban isolation. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
3.5/5 First Love (2019) Prahlad Srihari First Love is a grand guignol of sparring, slashing, stabbing and shooting interrupted by muted stretches of character development. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
2.5/5 In the Tall Grass (2019) Prahlad Srihari In The Tall Grass is nothing more than a serviceable dread concoction as Netflix tries to make hay while the sun shines on Stephen King adaptations. But even in Netflix's Stephen King catalogue, it is not exactly the cream of the crop. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
3/5 Share (2019) Prahlad Srihari Its strengths and faults lie in its pokerfaced objectivity, which doesn't condescend to its teenaged protagonist but it doesn't offer much psychological depth in its depiction of her journey towards recovery either. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
3.5/5 Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood (2019) Prahlad Srihari [The film] builds slowly, accumulating characters and taking various detours before unraveling in a batshit-spectacular fashion. Its climax will leave you in a delirious Dopamine-rush, the kind of which only Tarantino can induce. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
4/5 Manbiki kazoku (2018) Prahlad Srihari Kore-eda offers an intimate view of a poverty-stricken Japanese family from ground level, where the ground is continually cut from underneath their feet. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
4/5 Anima (2019) Prahlad Srihari The world of Anima could easily exist in a universe, somewhere between Metropolis and THX 1138 -- evoking the underlying angst about capitalism and technology's sway over both society and the individual. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
4/5 It Must Be Heaven (2019) Prahlad Srihari Suleiman questions the notions of home and belonging by employing the universal language of comedy. Thus, the film is neither nation-specific nor culture-specific but acts as a synecdoche to much larger national and cultural problems. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
2.5/5 Lux Æterna (2020) Prahlad Srihari Noé has always revelled in creating such sensory experiences that celebrate the primacy of the visual medium that is cinema ... Sadly, [Lux Æterna] feels like a film conceived after an hour-long pot high. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
4.5/5 The Lighthouse (2019) Prahlad Srihari The primal violence that often binds men has rarely been evoked as intensely ... [Dafoe and Pattinson's] pairing provides a recipe for one unforgettable moment after another as they drink, dance and dispute over everything, from supper to superstitions. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
3/5 Rocketman (2019) Prahlad Srihari Dexter Fletcher gives a duly reverent and indulgent treatment of a man who confounds a culture still trying to define him. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
3.5/5 Vivarium (2020) Prahlad Srihari The film emphasises why our need for community should never come at the cost of conformity. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
3/5 A Hidden Life (2019) Prahlad Srihari Malick takes us on another deeply spiritual journey, this time exploring the idea of resistance. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
4/5 Little Joe (2019) Prahlad Srihari The film updates the plot of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to our fake happy era, with a Charlie Brooker-style cautionary tale. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
3.5/5 Atlantics (2019) Prahlad Srihari The stark reality of life in the post-colonial, post-industrial landscape of Dakar is transformed into the magical and meditative ... and Diop elevates the film from a sequence of events to a state of mind. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020