Spaceman Spiff to the rescue
stupendousblog 
Premalu (2024) – ★★★★☆
Malayalam film industry is operating on a completely different level than rest of the Indian film industry. How do you take a such a cliche story and turn it into something endearing and joyful to watch? There is literally nothing original in this movie and yet it works completely because of its stellar star-cast, acting and writing.
Manjummel Boys (2024) – ★★★☆☆
Far too long at 2+ hours – this should have been a solid 90mins and it would have been edge of seat.
Gladiator II (2024) – ★☆☆☆☆
Arrrrghhh!! I actually rented this complete piece of crap and paid premium $ to rent it. I guess at least I didn’t see it in theater and regret more. What a hopeless sequel to one of my favorite movies form youth. Yuck!
Hridayam (2022) – ★★★★★
Logging for posterity that I rewatched it again in 2024. I love movies that play heavily on nostalgia – not everyone’s cup of tea but surely mine.
The Godfather Part II (1974) – ★★★★☆
This was way better even at 3:20 run time. Still required me two sittings to get through, and final 45 was a slog allright!
The Godfather – ★★★☆☆
Rewatching the series this Christmas and oddly enough in retrospect the original movie doesn’t hold up as well as I thought it would. I didn’t remember any of it going in so it was like watching a new movie – I mean it’s a good movie but I remember it being great!
Bandish Bandits (2020) – ★★★☆☆
My god season 2 of this show could never make up its mind on what it really wanted to be. So many good ideas on the table and yet felt like the show never wanted to settle on one – should it have been a classical singer coming to terms that classical music is not accessible to all? Should it have been about a pop singer realizing what her talent was? Was it about a disgraced son who rightfully demanded his place? Or was it about math and ai in music (not making this up!). Like anyone of those would have provided a good season worth of material and it does none of them well. The pop music unlike season 1 doesn’t work too well, but the classical pieces on the other hand are absolutely superlative! Even the classical fusion are awesome – Garaj Garaj rock and Saavan mohe tarasaaye were standouts.
The Day of the Jackal (2024) – ★★★★☆
Another series that ideally should have ended in 8 episodes or less but is stretched to 10. Nonetheless excellent acting and some of the set pieces are just fun. The last 15 mins of 9th episode was just nail biting. Looking forward to season 2.
Sikandar Ka Muqaddar (2024) – ★☆☆☆☆
Never going to get back two hours of my life I spent on this back. Ugh.
Citadel Honey Bunny (2024) – ★★★★☆
This was surprisingly a fun watch considering we couldn’t get past 1 episode of the original citadel. Maybe they should let the Indian directors take over the series completely. The action set pieces and background music was on point and elevates a rather basic plot.