Carrie (2013)

One of the biggest issues with Kimberley Peirce's film adaptation of Stephen King's "Carrie" is that it appears to be assuming that everyone watching the film has read the book or watched Brian De Palma's 1976 film. Right from the opening scene where Julianne Moore's Margaret is seen writhing in pain, oblivious to the fact that she is in labour, the film comes across as too eager to get to the parts which are now considered iconic. Often, when a major character is to be introduced, the camera slows down and some character off screen utters their full name loud and clear. Carry White. Sue Snell. Tommy Ross. Chris Hargensen. Yeah. That's the quality of writing you can expect from this film.

Veeram (2014)

How seriously can you take a film that tries to milk sentiment out of its star's salt and pepper look? The answer is: not very seriously. No matter how you see it, director Siva's "Veeram" is an awfully trite movie. It is absurdly predictable and throws cliches at us two at a time. I'd like to say there's a method to its madness but that would be far from true. Yet there's something about it that keeps it from being completely useless.

Jilla (2014)

Director R. T. Neason's "Jilla" reduces Mohanlal into being a narcissistic caricature with a God complex who converses only in punch dialogues. His Sivan is a feared Don in Madurai who makes his victims perform a version of seppuku where they are supposed to slit their throat instead. He adopts his driver's son after the boy's father gets killed by a policeman. The son Sakthi (Vijay) grows up into a classic porikki, becoming Sivan's right hand man. They are pretty much the same kind of unsympathetic people like Simmakkal Ravi, the villain in "Pandianadu". But the film glorifies them and tries to lend them some dignity when there is none to be deserved.