10 Brilliant Tamil Films from 2020 You Can Stream Right Now
Let’s face it 2020 was a wipe-out for most. It was the year in which we all stayed home, the year that theatres rusted and became cobwebbed, the year when “big-screen experience” was substituted for a stalling bar on your streaming app. But then a strange and beautiful thing happened in Tamil cinema. The grand opening weekend command pressure released, our film makers and writers and actors released: some of the boldest, intimate, powerhouse movies in years.
This was the year a superstar’s triumphant return hollered around on a 6-inch screen. It was the year we all got duped by a crafty con movie, and when God blessed a literal rom-com with a second opportunity. And we were served a brutal art-house-style police drama and a gut-wrenching anthology that made us look at our own reflections. 2020 wasn’t about the box office; it was about the narratives. It was the year when Kollywood showed that no screen is too small for a big idea to feel epic. Here are the 10 films that, for me, defined that odd, quiet and brilliant year.
Soorarai Pottru
It was a movie, to be sure — but it felt like a communal adrenaline shot. Soorarai Pottru is the blistering, high-flying story of “Maara” (Suriya), a man from a remote village with an impossible dream: to build a low-cost airline. Based on the life of Captain G.R. Gopinath, this is not your standard-issue biopic. Yes, it’s a furious, passionate and deeply personal saga about one man’s battle against crony capitalism, a rigid caste-based culture and his own demons. Kongara directs with as much fire and precision as her protagonist, never once allowing the film to flagBo for a second.
This will remain as Suriya’s growling entry forever! It’s not that he plays Maara; it’s that he has become Maara. We see this not just in the raw desperation in his eyes as he solicits coins at an airport, or his explosive rage at a system designed to make him flounder, but also the gentle vulnerability with his wife, Bommi (a terrific Aparna Balamurali). Their relationship is, essentially, the film’s secret weapon — a real partnership. The much-adored scene of him dashing across the tarmac and yelling in frustration as his maiden flight gets sabotaged is sheer, uncut cinematic might. With an adrenaline-pumping score by G.V. Prakash, “Veyyon Silli” was more — a song of the year that sounded like an anthem.
Kannum Kannum Kollaiyadithaal
If 2020 was a year for surprises, then this film was the biggest and best one out there. Kannum Kannum Kollaiyadithaal unfolds as a breezy, predictable rom-com. We get a couple of happy-go-lucky tech guys (Dulquer Salmaan and Rakshan) who fall for a couple of sweet, innocent girls (Ritu Varma and Niranjani). We’re all settling in for a sweet love story and then … wham, the interval. The film does a great job of pulling the rug from underneath us with one of the most brilliantly executed twists in contemporary Tamil cinema: that every person among them is, in fact, a con artist.
The movie blossoms into a sexy, wildly entertaining heist flick from there, and never looks back. The charisma of the leads can hardly be measured by normal means, but the real magic was in the casting. It was a feast watching Gautham Vasudev Menon — the king of stylish cop-romances, portray this hard-nosed obsessive police officer. Fans continue to hoot and applaud when the climax comes, as the film brilliantly flips his own cinematic universe with a VTV reference that brings the house down. From the genius car-hacking antics to the 3D-printed thumbprints, this was a pithily written, perennially rewatchable caper nobody saw coming.
Oh My Kadavule
What if you had a second shot at your own failed marriage? Oh My Kadavule takes this high-concept fantasy premise and roots it in pure, sincere emotion. Ashok Selvan stars as Arjun, who in a weird fit of sleepwalking exchanges vows with his childhood best friend, Anu (a wonderful Ritika Singh), and then wakes up to discover that they have practically nothing in common. Sitting in a “Love Court,” this director, known for pulp-horror-film flights of fancy (“Pizza,” “Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru” and last year’s frustrating “Imaikka Nodigal”), sows his plot with one of those time-tripping twists you expect from anything avant-garde enough to follow up the shot that ended the chase-up-a-cork-screw sequence in D.W. Griffith’s epic “Intolerance” (1916).
The movie is a sweet, appealing and genuinely funny meditation on love, friendship and the what-all blues that get us down. The chemistry between Ashok Selvan and Ritika Singh is what keeps evaru floating, their bittersweet fight as a husband wife pair that is no longer together so realistic. The fan-bait scenes are all there like ready to be picked cherries, especially in each of the casual buddy chat with Vijay Sethupathi and his sidekick Ramesh Thilak and Arjun’s “audition” to impress his crush (Vani Bhojan) before a surprise reveal adds director Gautham Vasudev Menon’ midas touch. Then, of course, is the “Kadhaippoma” song — a montage-oriented scene that embodies the enchantment of falling in love with your best friend.
Psycho
Mysskin doesn’t really make movies; he paints scary canvasses on celluloid. Psycho is a very dark and deeply disturbing thriller which is certainly not for the fainthearted. The film is about Gautham (Udhayanidhi Stalin), a blind musician, who seeks revenge for the kidnap of his lover, Dagini (Aditi Rao Hydari) by a serial killer. He’s assisted along the way by a potty-mouthed, quadriplegic ex-cop named Kamala (Nithya Menen, who plays this ferocious dynamo with eviscerating power).
This is not your standard hero-villain pursuit. The movie is a layered and sometimes disturbing meditation on obsession, trauma and redemption — Hitchcockian in tension and marked by Mysskin’s trademark lengthy, stylized shots. The haunting background score and score of Ilaiyaraaja is a character on its own, it resonates with the operatic dread that fills the silences. The target of fan chat tends to be the stuff that’ll floor you: the cold, precise brutality of its moments of violence, the sure-to-be-discussed scenes featuring defiance between Dagini and her captor or a surprisingly strong (if not unpredictable) team-up from its two differently-abled leads. It’s hard and tough and unforgettable filmmaking.
Paava Kadhaigal
It was a gut punch, this Netflix anthology. Four of Tamil cinema’s biggest directors (Sudha Kongara, Vignesh Shivan, Gautham Vasudev Menon and Vetrimaaran) teamed up to tell four stories about how “honour” is twisted into a weapon that justifies the most horrifying violence. It’s an unrelenting, potent, and vital examination of the ugly truth of caste, gender and ingrained biases, and it didn’t provide any easy answers.
Of these four strong films, two emerged as all the buzz. Shocking: Already in competition were two films, one by Sudha Kongara Thangam and the other Pa Ranjith Irudhi who had made a deeply moving, pathbreaking film about a transgender’s selfless love (featuring a splendid, soulful performance by Kalidas Jayaram). But it was Vetrimaaran’s Oor Iravu that rattled the audiences. Prakash Raj is a father who appears to have reconciled with his estranged, pregnant daughter (Sai Pallavi in an agonizing performance) who eloped with a lower-caste man. The entire short film is a lesson in slow-burn tension, which pays off with a devastating, absolutely horrifying climax taking place over one night and forcing the viewer to face what "honour killing" really means.
Mookuthi Amman
In a year when heavy, dark movies were the norm, Mookuthi Amman was what we needed – the sharp, satirical laugh-out-loud comedy. RJ Balaji and NJ Saravanan deconstructed the “Amman” films of the 90s in a spiritual sequel, with a twist for our age. Balaji plays Engels Ramasamy (such a funny name for a character in a devotional film), small-time reporter from China Kiloni, where he comes from another family that has more problems than merits. In desperation, he prays to his family goddess: Mookuthi Amman… and she (a regal, radiant Nayanthara) actually arrives.
It is a brilliant satire, which squarely targets fake godmen and the business of faith. But the true star, and the scene-stealer of all scenes, was Urvashi as Balaji’s Ma. Her role is an all-time great comedy turn, especially a fan-favorite scene where she narrates her family’s multitude of problems to the goddess, including her daughter’s quest for getting into “L.K.G.” (Lower Kindergarten) seat. The exchanges between the very-human, very-flawed family and the all-powerful but sarcastic goddess are absolute gold.
Andhaghaaram
This was the sleeper hit of the year, a movie that required your full attention and you were rewarded with one of the most complex screenplays in years. Plot Andhaghaaram unfolds in a non-linear manner and interweaves the lives of three men — Selvam (Arjun Das), a blind medium, who also indulges in exorcism; Vinod (Vinoth Kishan) is guilt-ridden cricketer tormented every night by an eerie rotary phone; Dr. Indran (Kumar Natarajan) has a bitter survival tale after being attacked badly.
You spend the first hour just as lost as the characters, trying to uncover the “darkness” that brings them together. Then the movie gives you its secrets, at a slow, elegant clip, and demonstrates how those three timelines don’t simply run parallel. And Arjun Das is a standout, with his voice — that glorious gravelly voice — becoming a force of nature. This is a solid-blue “hyperlink” movie, and its moment beloved by fans is the “aha!” emotion in the final act, when all the pieces of its puzzle snap into place and it’s clear that we’ve been watching a tale of revenge, trauma and supernatural justice. It was a strikingly assured debut by the director V. Vignarajan.
Ka Pae Ranasingam
This is just another proof that Aishwarya Rajesh is one of the great talents in India today. Vijay Sethupathi is in the film, but it’s not his story. That is the tale of the poor, rural woman Ariyanachi (Aishwarya Rajesh), whose husband Ranasingam (Sethupathi, here in flashbacks) perishes while toiling in Dubai. Instead, the movie feels like a long, torturous and enraging trip through one woman’s bureaucratic fight to bring her husband’s body back after he is killed.
It’s a grim watch that sounds unwatchable, one that Aishwarya Rajesh makes so riveting with her powerhouse act. She runs with the whole three-hour movie on her back, and she makes you feel every ounce of the frustration, grief and sheer force of will. She grasps at this agency, that organization, railing against her destiny as a receptacle for violence and refusing to be silent. An unfiltered, no-holds-barred take on state apathy.
Kavalthurai Ungal Nanban
(That translates in the title as “Police is Your Friend,” a phrase which, in this film anyway, serves as its bleakest most savage piece of irony.) It’s brutal, it’s gut-wrenching and you absolutely need to watch it. Directed by Geetha Rajput, it is the story of Prabhu (Suresh Ravi), a food delivery boy, and his wife, Indhu (Raveena Ravi). An unjust, petty stop by the police for not wearing a helmet turns into a nightmare of custodial torture, abuse of power and systemic rot.
This film is a spiritual sibling to “Visaranai,” and no easier to watch. It is an up-close, stomach-churning lesson on how something so normal and middle class can be destroyed by the very folks who are supposed to protect it. The beloved fan “craft” here is its unyielding realism. There are no heroics, no slow-mo fight-backs. There is nothing but the banal, awesome, absolute power of the police uniform. The film’s denouement, its crushing climax, is one that will be seared into the memory of everyone who watches it. It’s a tough, angry and essential film.
Dharala Prabhu
So how do you remake a much-loved, near-perfect Hindi film like Vicky Donor? You do it by being respectful, smart and having a lot of heart. Dharala Prabhu is a rare case of a remake that stands on its own. Harish Kalyan is Prabhu, a jovial young man who is convinced by the “hilariously” persistent Dr. Kannadasan (Vivekh) to be a sperm donor.
The movie has such a lovely light touch with its sensitive subject matter, never punching down and always concerned primarily with the human feeling underneath. Harish Kalyan is impossibly likable as the protagonist, but this is Vivekh’s film all the way and then some. And in one of his last major roles, he is quite the brilliant wit when it comes those witheringly funny one-liners that spout from the fertility doctor. He lifts the entire film up from being another dopey remake, into a very sweet, quite amusing and occasionally perversely funny ride.