Top 7 Malayalam Movies of 2016 So Far

Top 7 Malayalam Movies of 2016 So Far
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Malayalam cinema is currently evolving on a faster pace than it did in the previous decade or the one before that. While the mid-1980s to mid-1990s was the golden era of Mollywood, the new wave disruption began to take effect only towards the close of the 2000s decade. The kind of films that are coming out of late have really drawn the world’s attention to the industry, which produces around 150 films every year on an average.

Year 2016 in Malayalam film has been meek so far, with no extraordinary output to talk about, except for maybe Dileesh Pothan’s directorial debut, Maheshinte Prathikaaram. Starring Fahadh Faasil in the lead role, it narrates a “cause and effect” scenario of a photographer who vows to take revenge after he gets embroiled in a street fight with the riff-raff. In my opinion, never has a Malayalam cinema explored butterfly effect so beautifully, let alone as a standalone film. Noted Malayali new-generation actor Nivin Pauly turned producer with Abrid Shine’s police procedural drama, Action Hero Biju, while legendary comedy filmmaker duo Siddique -Lal returned to the industry with a collaboration after a gap of several years and smothered us with King Liar, a messy and highly unenterprising film featuring Dileep and Madonna Sebastian, and thereby forever crushing the interesting subject of mythomania.

Lots of underdogs were released in the first half of 2016, and fared relatively well in the box office. For instance, Omar’s Happy Wedding, which revisited the basic theme of last year’s blockbuster, Premam (2015), completed 100 days at the Kerala box office, while Sujith Vassudev’s James & Alice tanked. Avant-garde films were a welcome bunch with titles such as Sajan K Mathew’s Oru Murai Vanthu Parthaya exploring the compelling subject of witches, and at least helping in bringing back the good old memories of the 1993 cult classic, Manichithrathazhu. Ranjith released his philosophical harangue, Leela, which baffled both the audience and the critics as everyone tried to make sense out of it. Cynics were able to at least praise Biju Menon for his fiery performance as an alcoholic activist who solicits prostitutes so that he can stare at them metaphysically all night.

Big names with big credits like late Rajesh Pillai’s Vettah, Vineeth Sreenivasan’s Jacobinte Swargarajyam, and Kannan Thamarakkulam’s Aadupuliyattam were well-received by the audience, but failed to impress majority of the critics. While the people were able to emotionally connect with each of these aforementioned films due to their hyped-up idiosyncratic qualities, critics scrutinised the amateur imagination behind the narratives and ripped them apart. Old-generation actors like Mohanlal and Mammotty stayed low with fewer releases. While the former shined with Priyadarshan’s Oppam in August, Mammootty banged the theatres with A K Saajan’s Puthiya Niyamam, Nitin Renji Panicker’s Kasaba, and Uday Ananthan’s disastrous experiment, White, which also introduced Bollywood actress Huma Qureshi. He is going to pit it up in October against Mohanlal-starrer Pulimurugan with Johny Anthony’s Thoppil Joppan. But, let us not digress from the topic and focus on films released after June.

Plenty of low-budget, indie films were also released. And, two of them succeeded in making it to my list of the best Malayalam films of 2016 so far. All films released between 1 January 2016 and 30 June 2016 were considered. Ratings from industry’s eminent critics were then averaged to produce the list. Here it goes...

For the monthly-updated list of best Malayalam films of 2016, follow my post here.

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