RIFLE RANGE BOY

I always wondered what is it that maintains order in our lives. What ensures total silence in the cinema when the movie is starting? What is it that assures that the viewers in an art gallery do not go around touching their exhibits with their dirty stubby fingers? What forces a patient to pay at a clinic after a consultation and the customer settle his bill after enjoying (or hating) his meal? They can jolly well just scoot off, now that their mission is accomplished.  Well, it can happen with the occasional client who refuses to pay, but that is not the norm. Perhaps he is dissatisfied with the service or just because he can. Rather than creating a scene and draw unwanted publicity, the service provider would probably write it off as miscellaneous loss of doing business. To the rest, they know the long arm of the law would get them. They know that as the majority support orderly running of life transactions, they would not garner support against a sea of law-abiding supporters no...

  Kumbalangi Nights (Malayalam, 2019) For the longest time, the idea of a family unit, at least amongst the average middle-class family is that it would comprise a father who would predominantly contribute towards the material needs of the family. A mother would always seem to play second fiddle to the patriarchy but would be a tresure trove of love and affection in abundance. She would oversee the everyday running of the household. On the surface, the mother, the wife, seem to live under the shadow of her husband, dancing to his puppet-strings. In reality, however, she has her own ways of controlling the narratives in her own passive-aggressive way.  In modern times, family dynamics have evolved. Not only have the extended family concept where relatives live under the same roof is getting rarer, one has to put up with single parents and same-gender parents. The notion of a male-domination in households is viewed upon as male toxicity.  This movie compares two families, o...