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The 10 Best Action Movies to Stream for Free in 2023

January 25, 2023 by www.howtogeek.com Leave a Comment

There’s no need to pay for a streaming subscription to get your action-movie fix. Free streaming services have plenty of action-packed movies from a variety of eras and subgenres, from martial arts to crime thrillers. Here are the best action movies to stream for free.

Update, 1/25/23: Because they left the free streaming platforms, we’ve replaced Hero , John Wick , Live Free or Die Hard , Robocop , and The Rundown with fresh action flick recommendations.

Table of Contents

Battle Royale Becky Braven Death Proof The Debt Collector Heat Highlander Kickboxer Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior Red Cliff

Battle Royale

Before The Hunger Games , there was the Japanese movie Battle Royale . It’s also about a future in which school-age kids are pitted against each other in deadly games, with only one emerging as the victor. Director Kinji Fukasaku stages some brutal fights between the students, keeping the focus almost entirely on the island where a high school class has been trapped and forced into combat.

Banned in some countries for years, Battle Royale is equally thrilling and nasty, a demented dystopian vision that makes the audience root for innocent children to fight and kill.

Battle Royale is streaming for free with ads on Freevee , Plex , Pluto TV , Redbox , The Roku Channel , Tubi , and Vudu , and for free via local libraries on Hoopla and Kanopy .

Becky

Kevin James fighting a 13-year-old girl doesn’t necessarily sound like the formula for a successful action movie, but the filmmakers behind Becky pull it off remarkably well. James is surprisingly convincing as the menacing leader of a gang of neo-Nazis, who take young Becky (Lulu Wilson) and her family hostage at their vacation house.

The gang is looking for an unspecified hidden item in the house, and they’re willing to torture and kill everyone in order to get it. Becky escapes and mounts a counterattack that’s part Rambo , part Home Alone , in a creative and often gruesome battle to the death.

Becky is streaming for free via local libraries on Hoopla .

Braven

Jason Momoa has proven himself in big-budget franchises like Aquaman and Game of Thrones , but in Braven he shows he’s just as capable of carrying a gritty, small-scale action movie. He plays the title character, a rugged, devoted family man, who finds himself in a stand-off with ruthless drug dealers at his secluded cabin.

Director Lin Oeding stages some nasty close-quarters action, with Braven using every tool at his disposal to take on the bad guys. Garret Dillahunt snarls and sneers as the villain, and Stephen Lang gets his own action-hero moments as Braven’s ailing but still fierce father.

Braven is streaming for free with ads on Freevee , Plex , Redbox , Tubi , Vudu , and YouTube .

Death Proof

Quentin Tarantino’s contribution to the Grindhouse double-feature bill doesn’t get as much attention as some of his other movies, but it’s an entertainingly sleazy no-frills exploitation-style movie with fantastic stunt work. Kurt Russell plays the hot rod-driving killer known as Stuntman Mike, who meets his match in a quartet of women who decide to stop his murderous rampage.

With stuntwoman Zoë Bell leading the cast, Tarantino delivers stunning car-chase footage, alongside his typical razor-sharp dialogue and effortlessly cool characters.

Death Proof is streaming for free with ads on Plex , The Roku Channel , and Vudu .

The Debt Collector

Star Scott Adkins and director Jesse V. Johnson are an action B-movie dream team, and The Debt Collector may be their best collaboration. It’s a breezy, comedic thriller starring Adkins as a struggling martial-arts instructor who takes a job collecting debts for the mob.

Adkins has great chemistry with fellow B-movie veteran Louis Mandylor as the seasoned debt collector who shows him the ropes. The two of them travel around Los Angeles, beating up lowlifes, collecting debts, and heading toward an inevitable showdown with the real bad guys.

The Debt Collector is streaming for free with ads on Plex .

Heat

Michael Mann’s classic crime drama is more than just an action movie, but it features one of the most intense shootouts ever depicted onscreen, between the LAPD and members of a robbery gang led by criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro). The movie is built around the interplay between McCauley and LAPD Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), who’s tracking McCauley’s crew.

McCauley and Hanna don’t directly interact for most of the movie, but they influence each other’s every move. Mann masterfully examines masculine identity in the context of a sprawling, suspenseful thriller.

Heat is streaming for free with ads on Plex and Tubi .

Highlander

Immortal warriors battle across the centuries in director Russell Mulcahy’s bombastic action fantasy. With its soundtrack full of Queen arena-rock anthems, Highlander sometimes comes across like a two-hour music video, in only the best ways. Christopher Lambert plays one of the last of the eternal combatants, living in modern-day New York City and preparing for a final battle with his longtime enemy. As the lore goes, “there can be only one,” so the two must fight to the death—which can only be achieved via decapitation. It’s an over-the-top epic that launched a franchise full of dense mythology.

Highlander is streaming for free with ads on Dark Matter TV , Freevee , Peacock , Plex , The Roku Channel , Shout Factory TV , and Vudu , and for free via local libraries on Hoopla .

Kickboxer

An early breakout role for Jean-Claude Van Damme, Kickboxer is undeniably silly, but it’s a fantastic showcase for the martial-arts skills that made Van Damme into a superstar. Van Damme co-wrote the story and choreographed the fights, creating a perfect vehicle for his talents. He plays an American kickboxer out for revenge after his brother was paralyzed in a fight. Van Damme’s Kurt Sloane participates in awesomely cheesy training montages as he prepares to take on the corrupt Thai fighter who crippled his brother.

Kickboxer is streaming for free with ads on Freevee , Plex , Pluto TV , Redbox , The Roku Channel , Tubi , and Vudu , and for free via local libraries on Hoopla .

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior

Thai martial arts star Tony Jaa burst onto the scene with this kinetic showcase for his talents. The plot is rudimentary, starring Jaa as a villager who travels to Bangkok to recover a stolen statue, taking on a variety of thugs and criminals in the process. The simple story provides room for Jaa to practice his dazzling Muay Thai moves, in a form of martial arts that had rarely been highlighted onscreen before this movie. Jaa and director Prachya Pinkaew use slow motion and multiple camera angles to make sure each amazing stunt can be fully appreciated.

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior is streaming for free with ads on Crackle , Plex , Redbox , The Roku Channel , Tubi , and Vudu , and for free via local libraries on Hoopla and Kanopy .

Red Cliff

Legendary Hong Kong action director John Woo returned from his stint in Hollywood to direct this exhilarating war epic full of breathtaking action. The movie is set during the Battle of Red Cliffs in third-century China, starring Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro as commanders in the vastly outnumbered forces of two regional leaders holding out against a brutal warlord.

Woo prizes excitement over historical accuracy, but the expertly staged large-scale battle scenes easily make up for any liberties taken with actual history.

Red Cliff is streaming for free with ads on Crackle , Plex , Pluto TV , and Vudu , and for free via local libraries on Hoopla .

The Best Streaming Devices of 2023

Roku Streaming Stick 4K

Fire TV Stick Lite

Best Roku Streaming Device

Roku Ultra

Fire TV Stick 4K

Best Google TV Device

Chromecast with Google TV (2020)

Best Android TV Device

NVIDIA SHIELD TV Pro

Best Apple TV Device

Apple TV 4K (3rd Gen)

10 spring movies that (mostly) aren’t sequels

February 6, 2023 by www.chron.com Leave a Comment

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The spring movie calendar is cluttered with numbers: “Book Club II” (May 12); “Creed III” (March 3) “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” (May 5); “John Wick Chapter 4” (March 24); “Scream VI” (March 10); “Fast X” (May 19). Even several of the titles without numbers have subtitles, indicating they’re part of a franchise: “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” (March 17); “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” (March 31); “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” (June 9).

“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (Feb. 17) may only be the third Ant-Man movie, but it’s the 31st feature in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the sprawling entertainment behemoth that has grown to include spinoff TV series on Disney Plus, making it almost impossible to appreciate the nuance of a new film without quitting your day job to keep up.

There are, however, still a few films out there that don’t come with a cinematic syllabus or prerequisite: movies that stand on their own two feet, and – for better or worse, wobbly or not – try to to hold our attention on their own merits. Character, direction, acting, writing and story.

Here are a few of the more distinctive and idiosyncratic films of the coming season.

1. “Cocaine Bear”

Opens Feb. 24

The true event underlying this very loosely fact-based horror-comedy – whose coke-addled-predator-on-a-rampage plot is neatly synopsized by the two-word title – is just evocative enough to suggest a deliciously deranged backstory: In 1985, the bones and hide of a black bear were discovered by narcotics investigators in rural Georgia, not far from a duffel bag and 40 torn-open packets of cocaine thought to have been dropped from an airplane by Drew Thornton, a narcotics-agent-turned-smuggler who died before he could retrieve the package. There’s no evidence to suggest that the bear went berserk after overdosing, as the trailer, which went viral in December, shows. But the whiff of the what-if was enough for screenwriter Jimmy Warden, whose short résumé includes the Netflix slasher comedy “The Babysitter: Killer Queen.” According to “Cocaine Bear’s” director and producer, Elizabeth Banks (“Pitch Perfect 2,” “Charlie’s Angels”), it was a no-brainer: “Jimmy Warden wrote a really funny script,” Banks said at a publicity event. “He was on a text with Brian Duffield, who is also a writer and one of the producers of the movie. [Jimmy] basically read an article, and he sent a text saying, ‘Wouldn’t this make a funny movie?’ And Brian said, ‘Write it.’ And Jimmy wrote it, and I read it, and then, there it is.”

2. “Inside”

Opens March 17

If you take your Willem Dafoe neat, the actor serves up what one of the film’s producers has described as “essentially a one-man show” in this psychological thriller, which marks the fictional feature debut of Greek filmmaker Vasilis Katsoupis. Set in a luxury, high-tech penthouse in New York’s Times Square, the high-concept story by Ben Hopkins centers on an art thief named Nemo (“no one” in Latin) who becomes trapped inside the site of his latest heist. Able to break in but not out, and left alone with millions of dollars of art he can’t sell, Nemo slowly loses his grip on sanity. As fans of “The Lighthouse” already know, Dafoe is pretty good at evoking isolation-induced derangement.

3. “65”

Opens March 17

Adam Driver plays an astronaut who crash-lands on a mysterious and dangerous planet, only to discover that’s it’s actually Earth, 65 million years ago, in the age of the dinosaurs. Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, co-writers of the surprise 2018 hit “A Quiet Place,” the sci-fi thriller has been described as “Star Wars” meets “Jurassic Park.” According to the Knockturnal, the pair started writing it in the wake of Paramount’s decision to make “A Quiet Place” a franchise, something the filmmakers – who famously turned down an offer from Lucasfilm to work on installments of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises – just weren’t into. “We wrote ‘A Quiet Place’ because we were tired of the sequels,” Woods explained. “The only movies that were being made were sequels and franchises and comic book movies. We wrote this movie in the wake of that.”

4. “Air”

Opens April 5

Ben Affleck directs longtime pal Matt Damon for the first time in the true story of how an upstart shoe company called Nike wooed a teenage Michael Jordan into signing his first shoe endorsement contract in 1984. In addition to directing duties, Affleck plays Nike co-founder Phil McKnight, with Damon portraying Sonny Vaccaro, the Nike executive whose crazy idea about the potential of athletic gear endorsements ushered in a new era of celebrity marketing. The screenplay – writer Alex Convery’s first to be produced – was selected for the 2021 Black List, the buzzy annual list of the best unproduced scripts.

5. “Renfield”

Opens April 14

Ostensibly the story of R.M. Renfield, a supporting player in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula” who did the titular vampire’s dirty work, this contemporary horror-comedy is the latest in Universal’s reboots of its classic monster movies. Nicholas Hoult plays the servile title character, but it’s the Count himself, played by Nicolas Cage as the most horrible of all horrible bosses, who is sure to steal – or at least take a very big bite out of – the spotlight. The bloody, R-rated film, which could appeal to fans of Hulu’s “What We Do in the Shadows,” also stars Awkwafina as Renfield’s love interest: a New Orleans traffic cop.

6. “Beau Is Afraid”

Opens April 21

We don’t know much about Ari Aster’s follow-up to “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” and that’s even more true after watching the bananas trailer, which does little to explain what the horror wunderkind meant when, in a 2020 interview with the Associated Students Program Board of UC Santa Barbara, he called it a “nightmare comedy.” (He also said it would be four hours long, so take it with a grain of salt.) Joaquin Phoenix stars as the title character, who is depicted at several different ages, in a tale whose official synopsis reads: “A paranoid man embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother.” That’s also a rough approximation of the plot of Aster’s 2011 short film “Beau” – good luck finding that – but like each of the filmmaker’s previous features, it’s safe to expect surprises.

7. “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”

Opens April 28

Author Judy Blume had long been reluctant to sign away the movie rights to her beloved 1970 novel about the sixth-grade daughter of an interfaith couple – part coming-of-age tale, part story of spiritual discovery. That was before producer James Brooks (“Broadcast News”) and writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig (“Edge of Seventeen”) came calling five years ago. “She was very nervous that someone would turn the film into something very glossy and pretty, where all the edges were sanded off,” Craig told Entertainment Weekly. “When I sat down with her, she had just seen my first film, ‘The Edge of Seventeen,’ and she expressed that that made her feel confident that I was going to embrace all the flaws and nuances. That gave her confidence that the film would have the same honesty that she is so known for.” Abby Ryder Fortson (“Ant-Man”) plays Margaret, with Rachel McAdams and Benny Safdie as her parents and Kathy Bates as her grandmother. Amazon’s documentary “Judy Blume Forever” is also set to hit Prime Video on April 21.

8. “The Little Mermaid”

Opens May 26

As Disney slowly works it way through the studio’s canon of animated classics, producing such live-action updates as “Maleficent,” “The Jungle Book,” “Pete’s Dragon,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King,” “Cruella” and, most recently, “Pinocchio,” reviews have ranged from “dazzling” to “chaotic and inert.” But hope springs eternal, and when the trailer for the Mouse House’s upcoming release, “The Little Mermaid,” arrived featuring Black actress and singer Halle Bailey in the role of Ariel, reactions ranged from sheer delight to racist backlash. Let’s focus on the delight and the magic. Bailey’s casting is a welcome corrective, and the tradition of the Black mermaid has a long history in the African folklore character Mami Wata.

9. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Opens June 2

It’s impossible to talk about the most anticipated new films of the spring without mentioning at least one superhero sequel. Sorry (not sorry). And this follow-up to 2018’s animated Oscar winner, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” a visually stunning and inspirational out-of-left-field hit – and a better movie about the multiverse than either “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” or “Everything Everywhere All at Once” – is my concession to popular demand. As before, the new movie focuses not on Peter Parker, but on teenager Miles Morales (voice of Shameik Moore), a Puerto Rican and African American web-slinger, at least in one dimension of the film’s trippy parallel universes.

10. “Flamin’ Hot”

June 9

Maybe you read something about the Frito-Lay janitor, Richard Montañez, son of Mexican immigrants, who claims to have invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. And maybe you also read something about how that junk-food origin story may turn out to have been, well, junk, with some at the company saying Montañez, who eventually did rise quite high in the company, was only incidental to the creation of the popular snack. Urban legend or not, the long-gestating movie about Montañez is finally landing on Hulu, directed by Eva Longoria and starring Jesse Garcia of “Quinceañera” as Montañez.

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Home-Cooked Spaghetti Dinners and a Glam Photo Shoot: Eight Unusual Oscar Bids

February 6, 2023 by www.nytimes.com Leave a Comment

When the actress Andrea Riseborough wrapped a 19-day shoot on the microbudget indie “To Leslie” in Los Angeles during the height of the pandemic, her hopes probably extended to positive reviews from critics and indie film enthusiasts.

But now, after a social media campaign on her behalf by some famous friends, among them Gwyneth Paltrow , Edward Norton and Sarah Paulson, she’s been nominated for an Oscar for best actress — an honor she can keep, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ruled Tuesday after reviewing the unorthodox lobbying on her behalf.

While the regulations around campaigning have become ever murkier in the age of social media, the Riseborough campaign was hardly the first to stretch the rules, which forbid, among other things, mentioning competitors or their films directly or calling academy members personally.

Here are eight memorable bids for a statuette that went rogue.

1961

Chill Wills, ‘The Alamo’

After Chill Wills was nominated for best supporting actor for his role as Davy Crockett’s buddy Beekeeper in “The Alamo,” he hired the veteran publicist W.S. “Bow-Wow” Wojciechowicz to run his campaign. Wojciechowicz submitted an ad to Variety with a photo of the film’s cast and text that read, “We of the ‘Alamo’ cast are praying harder — than the real Texans prayed for their lives in the Alamo — for Chill Wills to win the Oscar as best supporting actor.”

Variety refused to run it, and John Wayne, the film’s director and star, took out his own ad rebuking Wills that said neither he nor his production company were in any way involved in the effort. (“I am sure his intentions are not as bad as his taste,” Wayne wrote of Wills, who later blamed Wojciechowicz.) After this fiasco — Wills lost to Peter Ustinov for “Spartacus” — it became rare for actors to run their own campaigns, which have since mostly been the purview of studios and teams of publicists.

Interviews With the Oscar Nominees

Kerry Condon: An ardent animal lover, the supporting actress Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” said that she channeled grief from her dog’s death into her performance .
Michelle Yeoh : The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.
Angela Bassett : The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”
Austin Butler : In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12 , had been able to celebrate the moment with him.

1974

Candy Clark, ‘American Graffiti’

The nostalgic coming-of-age feature “American Graffiti” included some future big names like Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford among its ensemble cast, but Candy Clark, then a little-known actress, was the only one to embark on an Oscar campaign. She paid $1,700 to take out a series of quarter-page ads in The Hollywood Reporter and Variety — a strategy that paid off when she was the only member of the film’s cast to be nominated, for best supporting actress. (She lost to a 10-year-old Tatum O’Neal for “Paper Moon.”)

1975

Liv Ullmann, ‘Scenes From a Marriage’

The Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann delivered a standout performance in Ingmar Bergman’s domestic drama “Scenes From a Marriage,” but a potential nomination was tripped up by a technicality that The New York Times likened to a situation “one usually encounters at obscure border stations in Central Asia.” Because a television cut of “Scenes From a Marriage” had premiered on Swedish TV in 1973 — the year before its American theatrical release — it was deemed ineligible for the Oscars thanks to an academy rule that prohibited the film’s being shown on television during the year before its theatrical release.

Three of that year’s eventual best actress nominees — Ellen Burstyn (who went on to win), Diahann Carroll and Gena Rowlands — took up Ullmann’s cause, even signing an open letter supporting her right to compete, but the academy stood firm. (Ullmann, now 84, did receive an honorary award from the academy last year.)

1986

Margaret Avery, ‘The Color Purple’

After being nominated for best supporting actress for “The Color Purple,” Margaret Avery used $1,160 of her own money to pay for a Variety ad promoting her performance. Intended to suggest the voice of her character, Shug Avery, it read: “Well God, I guess the time has come fo’ the Academy voters to decide whether I is one of the best supporting actresses this year or not! Either way, thank you, Lord for the opportunity.” Avery was criticized for the ad, which did not reflect the way her character actually spoke in the film. (She lost to Anjelica Huston for “Prizzi’s Honor.”)

1988

Sally Kirkland, ‘Anna’

Sally Kirkland took a letter-writing fiend approach in an effort to score a best actress nomination for her role as a once-famous Czech actress in the small indie “Anna.” Kirkland not only personally wrote letters to academy voters, she also financed her own ad campaign — the film had no budget to do so — and spoke to any and every journalist who asked. Her persistence paid off with a nomination, though she eventually lost to Cher for “Moonstruck.”

1991

Diane Ladd, ‘Wild at Heart’

After she was nominated for David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart,” Diane Ladd — Laura Dern’s mother — decided that the way to voters’ hearts was through a home-cooked spaghetti dinner. She embarked on a one-woman blitz that involved not only writing personalized letters to voters , but also inviting 20 academy members to a screening of her film, accompanied by a spaghetti dinner that she prepared herself. She might have wanted to spend more time perfecting that spaghetti recipe, though — she lost to Whoopi Goldberg, who won for “Ghost.”

2011

Melissa Leo, ‘The Fighter’

Unlike other nominees who took matters into their own hands, Melissa Leo was considered the front-runner when she began her campaign to secure a best supporting actress win for the boxing drama “The Fighter.” But she took out her now-infamous “Consider” ads anyway, she told Deadline in 2011 , because she was frustrated at not being able to land magazine covers as a 50-year-old woman. The ads , which showed off her glamorous side as she leaned forward in a low-cut black evening gown, presented a stark contrast to the gritty, blue-collar mother and fight manager she played in the film (which was not even mentioned in the ad). There’s no way to say for sure if the strategy helped her chances, but it certainly didn’t hurt — she beat out her co-star Amy Adams, as well as Helena Bonham Carter of “The King’s Speech,” to claim the Oscar.

2013

Ann Dowd, ‘Compliance’

Ann Dowd received stellar reviews for the Craig Zobel thriller “Compliance,” a flop of an indie with such a tiny budget that Dowd was paid just $100 per day for her role. But she believed in her performance, and after raising $13,000 by dipping into her bank account, borrowing money from friends and colleagues and maxing out her credit cards, she mailed DVDs to academy members and placed ads in trade publications in an effort to secure a best supporting actress nomination. While the Oscar recognition proved elusive — Anne Hathaway won that year for “Les Misérables” — the media coverage of her efforts may have helped put her on the radar of directors. (And now she has an Emmy for “The Handmaid’s Tale.”)

Jamie Chung poses in nothing but her Levi’s… after sharing details about Showtime’s Dexter reboot

May 20, 2021 by www.dailymail.co.uk Leave a Comment

Lovecraft Country star Jamie Chung wore nothing more than a pair of Levi’s blue jeans in an artsy picture she Instastoried on Wednesday.

The 38-year-old SAG Award nominee has been hard at work playing Molly – a famous LA true crime podcaster – in Marcos Siega’s 10-episode reboot of Dexter, which premieres this fall on Showtime.

‘The original series happened over 10 years ago. So there’s certainly a different vibe of the way the actual show is shot in terms of the aesthetic,’ Jamie told People on Wednesday.

Ooh la la! Lovecraft Country star Jamie Chung wore nothing more than a pair of Levi’s blue jeans in an artsy picture she Instastoried on Wednesday

Dexter’s Michael C. Hall appears in new teaser trailer for… Jamie Chung takes a stand against anti-Asian racism as she…

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‘I do think it’s a little darker. It takes place in upstate New York and as we know from the last season, Dexter’s hiding.

‘So it certainly carries on and you have a lot of fresh faces, but a lot of familiar ones. I think it will certainly satisfy everyone’s appetite. Especially if you’re a big Dexter fan.’

Next Monday, Chung will next celebrate the 43rd birthday of her husband of six years Bryan Greenberg.

Premieres this fall on Showtime! The 38-year-old SAG Award nominee has been hard at work playing Molly – a famous LA true crime podcaster – in Marcos Siega’s 10-episode reboot of Dexter

Jamie told People on Wednesday: ‘I do think it’s a little darker…I think it will certainly satisfy everyone’s appetite. Especially if you’re a big Dexter fan’ (Michael C. Hall pictured)

Birthday boy: Next Monday, Chung will next celebrate the 43rd birthday of her husband of six years Bryan Greenberg (R, pictured May 11)

Still going strong! The Left Right Game actor (L, pictured April 20) originally began dating the Korean-American beauty in early 2012

The Left Right Game actor originally began dating the Korean-American beauty in early 2012.

Audiences can next catch Jamie as a**-kicking thief Violet in Renny Harlin’s gold heist thriller The Misfits, which hits US theaters June 11.

The Dubai-set action flick also stars Nick Cannon, Pierce Brosnan, Rami Jaber, Mike Angelo, Hermione Corfield, and Tim Roth.

‘I don’t need men. I kill them’: Audiences can next catch Jamie as a**-kicking thief Violet in Renny Harlin’s gold heist thriller The Misfits, which hits US theaters June 11

Ensemble: The Dubai-set action flick also stars Nick Cannon, Pierce Brosnan, Rami Jaber, Mike Angelo, Hermione Corfield, and Tim Roth (not pictured)

Vinoy Thomas: In Malayalam literature, stand-ins for Kerala ethos are giving way to pluralism

January 25, 2023 by www.moneycontrol.com Leave a Comment

The bilimbi tree plays an important role in the narrative of ‘Anthill’. (Photo: Joygeorgek via Wikimedia Commons 3.0)

Vinoy Thomas won the 2021 Kerala Sahitya Akademi award for his novel Puttu – Anthill , its English translation by Nandkumar K, was released on January 15, 2023.

But you might already know his writing for a different reason – he wrote “Kaligeminarile Kuttavalikal”, the story that Lijo Jose Pellissery’s film Churuli is based on.

As in Churuli , the village (Perumpadi) in Anthill has a backstory of its own – a refuge for those on the run from the law and from society, it is described as a land of sinners. Indeed, child molesters rub shoulders here with cashew smugglers and con women claiming to have divine vision.

Vinoy Thomas (Photo by Vinayaraj via Wikimedia Commons 4.0)

But it is also a place of refuge for the downtrodden and those looking for a fresh start – the woman who has an affair with her brother-in-law and has nowhere else to go; the sex worker who needs a new means of livelihood as she ages; the man who inherits the responsibilities of village mediator from his father; a fantastical man who is desired, reviled and mythologised here. Anthill’s 200 characters each have their own backstory and arc, and yet the whole is cohesive, even immersive.

In an email interview, Thomas spoke about Anthill , his literary influences, his readers, the moral compasses that Anthill defies, and what he’s reading, watching and writing now:

Who are your biggest literary influences?

Like many of my generation, I was brought up on a diet of penny-dreadful meets Mills & Boon in Malayalam literature ; they go under the genre of painkili (sic) stories. They were, understandably, the initial influence. Baton Boss, Kottayam Pushpanath and Mathew Mattom were glib, facile storytellers, enough for people like me to get addicted to them at that point of my journey as a reader. But those penny-dreadfuls did help in instilling in me a reading habit at a young age.

Then, with access to local libraries, I graduated to reading Basheer, M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Punathil Kunjabdullah, K. Surendran, O.V. Vijayan, M. Mukundan , who are venerated writers in Malayalam; and they became mine too. Then I moved on to translations from other languages and my favourites among them were Dostoevsky and Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay . Even the contemporary Malayalam writers have influenced my writing in many ways. If I am asked to select one among them, S. Hareesh would be it. His writings have been the greatest motivation for me.

There’s an element of fantasy in ‘Anthill’ that must have been pretty hard to translate. Did you work closely with the translator or oversee the drafts?

anthill book cover Nandakumar and I were in constant touch during the translation. There are some leitmotifs and imageries that I have used in the novel which are indigenous to our locality. For instance, the bilimbi tree, which plays an important role in the narrative. Its fruits cover the tree from top to bottom like bees on a beehive. Only those who are familiar with the tree and its fruits can understand the fantasy attached to it.

Perhaps the biggest challenge he may have faced as a translator could be how to render these regional imageries into another language. Through our discussions we were able to resolve these.

Inevitably, in the narration, my characteristic style of nit-picking, mimicry, mockery, and lifting up the cloak and peering inside things have all come in. I am most happy that Nandakumar has made a good fist of it, without any attenuation.

You place the story in a very specific part of Kerala – does the English translation inevitably flatten some of the regional nuance?

The locale is a boondocks called Perumpadi whose remoteness attracts migrants. Being migrants, a majority of the characters use the Kottayam-Pala dialect. There are minor players who have migrated from Thrissur, Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram also. The denizens of places around Perumpadi use the Malabar dialect. They too figure in the novel. Therefore, many of the dialects used in Kerala appear in the novel.

I do not think that these patois and dialects can be reproduced in English. Nandakumar has overcome this by using equivalent phrases and using the original Malayalam word where unavoidable.

Are some of the characters based on real people? What can you tell us about them?

I have declaimed in the preface to the novel that everything is a product of my imagination. I cannot say it otherwise here too. After reading the novel, a few people have approached me claiming that they are so-and-so character in it. An example is Shukoor Haji. In the novel, the character becomes wealthy by selling fish. Shukoor Pedayangodu, who holds literary and novel appreciation discussions in front of teashops and shopfronts, had been a fishmonger once. He claims Shukoor Haji is him. If all the people of my place could read and would read the novel, every one of them would come to me claiming to be Jeremias Paul, Kunjandi, Kocharaghavan, Father Neerukuzhi, Prasannan, Neeru, Louis, Balls Scorcher, Sr Philomena, Gandhi of the Valley and all the other characters, depending on how the shoe fits. However, I shall not admit to anything. Any such admission would lead to undesirable consequences.

Is any segment of the book autobiographical? If yes, could you share an anecdote or two from your life that filtered into the book.

The novel does contain autobiographical bits and pieces. But none of them will be openly admitted to. A large part of the story of Paul sir’s family could form part of my family’s story too. Many of the mediations conducted by Jeremias Paul were done in my house. Once upon a time, I too smuggled cashews to Makkoottam. I have dived into the river, swum underwater, farmed and swung on the vines by its banks. Like Theruva Mathu and Uthaman, I have played cards with frayed, mushy decks and done black magic against some. However, it would be a dishonour for me to admit to these as autobiographical. Therefore, I desist. Everything is a figment of my imagination.

One thing I could admit to is the doings in the library. Nellikampoyil Sahrudaya Library has played a great role in my formation. Everything that I have narrated as happening in Perumpadi library has happened in my life too.

Could you talk us through the treatment of sex in the book – there is this matter-of-fact way in which the story talks about child sexual abuse, gay love, sex work, sexual harassment (at the party), and a fantastical virile man who can live under water. Were you consciously distancing from more puritanical views that we espouse in public?

All the description of sex in the novel have not been brought in for the sake of prurience. Every character I dreamt up came with all those trappings and baggage. I had mentioned here before that people could turn up claiming to be characters in the book. If they do, I would ask them to their face if their lives weren’t as I have described in the book. If they are honest, they can give only a positive reply. This is all that I have done – when I wrote about anyone in the novel, I didn’t indulge in any censoring. I wrote everything as they are. What the puritans would think or that I may need to cross swords with them was never of concern to me and nothing I have written is with that intent. This is what happens in reality.

I have met readers who, in an effort to appear genteel, claim that such people exist only in Perumpadi. Let them mull for some time and, hand upon their hearts, say how they and the people around them really are. As someone said, chastity is only the lack of opportunity. You can see the true face of anyone only when the circumstances are in their favour.

Do you write with a Malayalam-reading audience, a pan-Indian audience in mind, or does this not matter in your opinion?

I don’t write with any particular audience or readership in mind. What is important is to narrate the stories that are within me. As a reader, I am keen to listen to the story of a Bengali village, a street in Ahmedabad, or people living in the foothills of Himalayas. I should assume the same is the case with people living there – they want to hear stories from Kerala. Jeremias’s mediations could happen in a North Indian village community; his decisions are the same as those of a village mukhiya.

After they have read Anthill (in its Malayalam version) many people have told me that life in Perumpadi is similar to that of the early migrants of Australia and other places. The plot of Anthill is relevant to any community that has migrants, families and religion.

What is the most exciting development in current Malayalam writing according to you? Who among your contemporaries do you admire most?

What used to pass for the ethos of Kerala in our literature were some social tropes such as zari-bordered mundus, Kathakali, the temple elephant, the brass ceremonial lamp, Theyyam, Muslim women in their veils, and Christian women in fan-tail mundu and scapulars. However, works now coming out which present minute aspects of parochial life is what I see as growth of Malayalam literature.

The patois and argot of people from the various corners of Kerala, their rituals and traditions, their vocation and all that are now becoming part of Malayalam literature. Democratisation and pluralism depicted as Kerala ethos is a heartening development. Most of the current crop of Malayali writers pay heed to this. I have already answered the question on who among them I admire most – it is S. Hareesh.

What are you reading right now?

I am reading Gitanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand now. August 17 of Hareesh in Malayalam is a novel I loved reading recently.

What are you writing right now?

I am writing a novel with the working title Wealth with the theme of man’s concept of money. It is a rather large one, encompassing the monetary transactions that have taken place in Kerala’s and India’s history, changes in power equations and myths. I am also writing scripts for a couple of movies.

What movies/series are you watching currently?

The pandemic had turned me into more of a watcher of web series. Now I am back to watching movies in theatres. The last English movie I had watched was Avatar: Way of the Water . And some of the recent excellent Malayalam movies I have watched are Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hai , Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam , and Aavasavyuham .