Life Of Navin

I'm always amazed when the first week of January rolls by, and invariably, by the end of the week, a dozen people would have asked me "Where's your list of movies for the year?". Always amusing to me that a year-end movie recco list is something that's become a tiny, fun New Year tradition for a whole bunch of friends :)

This year's list is dedicated to these folks, because your kind messages are the only thing helping me keep my procrastination at arm's length every year. Without much more to say, here's my list of the best movies of 2024!

13. Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya (trailer)

The casual rom-com/drama is a genre that seems to be fast disappearing, but I'll start my list with a movie whose vibe falls bang in "timepass movie to watch with someone you love on a friday evening" territory. Gorgeous people (Shahid and Kriti dayumm) doing things gorgeous people do while shaking a leg gorgeously is apparently all it takes to get on this list, and TBMAUJ was the best of the genre this year

Hattip to Anyone But You ("Sydney Sweeney Simp Sanstha" as my Gen Z teammate calls it ) and We Live in Time ("Andrew Garfield Simp Sanstha?") for being two other movies that kept the same vibe this year.

12. The Coffee Table (trailer)

Every few years, I come across a random hispanic dark comedy that completely knocks my socks off (Wild Tales being the best recent example), and this year, Caye Casas' The Coffee Table was that movie for me. The movie isn't for the faint-hearted for sure, but if you like your humor in dark shades of grey, then you'll definitely enjoy this one.

Another Spanish movie that went a bit under the radar this year was The Platform 2, which, while definitely a weaker movie than the first, explored quite a few interesting socio-political ideas which kept it interesting.

11. Heretic (trailer)

Who would have thought that Hugh Grant, the charming bookshop owner from Notting Hill, would be able to pull off the titular, devilish heretic. Heretic is an example of a movie that is all about execution, because the same story executed badly quickly becomes like a B-Grade slasher/horror movie. Thankfully, the movie is executed so well technically, that you will be at the edge of your seat through the entire runtime. The ending has also generated a lot of buzz online, so if you watch the movie and have thoughts on the ending, definitely send them my way!

A couple other horror movies that I genuinely loved this year were Speak No Evil (James McAvoy being the most James McAvoy he can be) and Brahmayugam (Truly a testament to Mammooty's stardom that he can pull off such roles with such practiced ease)

10. Do Aur Do Pyaar (trailer)

There's a common refrain in Hindi Cinema that most romance movies end at the point of marriage, but rarely explore stories of life after marriage. This year, we had a quirky movie exploring one such story with Vidya Balan and Pratik Gandhi playing a married couple who are both secretly seeing other people. The whole movie somehow manages to touch on very deep topics of relationship, abandonment, and estrangement without getting too preachy or serious.

As an aside, something I really liked about this movie was also the soundtrack which features the who's who of Desi Indie music, from Local Train to When Chai Met Toast to even Lucky Ali. And Lost Stories' Jazbaati Hai Dil is easily one of the bops of the year!

9. Dìdi (trailer)

Coming-of-age is such a personal genre of movies, because at the end of the day, a movie in the genre will either resonate or alienate you, and most American coming of age movies seem so distant to the lived experiences of Indian kids in the 90s. Yet somehow Sean Wang's Dìdi managed to pull at all the right strings, and got every reference just right to immediately sent me into a nostalgia rabbit hole.

Whether it's the relationships with friends and family, or the then nascent relationship with the social media (heck, with the internet itself), Dìdi managed to capture the point-in-time so beautifully. It's always amazing to me how globalization has made our stories overlap so beautifully, and Dìdi is a movie that made me glad to be part of the only generation that could "escape" to the interwebz.

Another coming of age movie I really enjoyed was Monster. While wholly different in genre and tone than Didi, it nonetheless leaves a strong impact, and an ending that will devastate you.

8. Conclave (trailer)

Ralph Fiennes is one of those actors who seems to have a knack of picking such delicious scripts, be it The Menu or Corialanus from a few years ago, to the more acclaimed roles of M in in James Bond series or of course, Voldemort in the Harry Potter series. And Conclave, based on a book by Robert Harris, is a great screenplay brought to life with marvellous acting performances across the table.

The story follows the process of the selection of the next pope, which happens behind closed doors, and explores how even cardinals at the highest levels have not been able to get past human vices of greed, jealousy, and lust. The ending was completely unexpected and caught me completely off guard. If you are a fan of the Robert Langdon series of books (The Da Vinci Code / Angels & Demons et al) you'll feel right at home with this movie!

7. The Contestant (trailer)

Japanese reality TV is something I've always associated with silly, over the top gameshows mostly thanks to shows like Takeshi's Castle that I grew up watching. The Contestant is a documentary about one such reality show from 1998 where the titular contestant "Nasubi" is locked up in a room with  nothing other than stacks of magazines which have mail-in sweepstakes, and the goal given to him is to keep playing the sweepstakes until he wins ¥ 1 million in total prizes.

Watching Nasubi start off excited about participating, and slowly devolve into complete madness in what is practically solitary confinement, while the TV show goes on playing his misery for laughs is truly shocking. And to overlay the TV series with current-day interviews with the people involved, was really a jolt to the senses.

6. Maharaja (trailer)

I've been a Vijay Sethupathi fan since probably Vikram Vedha, and a fan of Anurag Kashyap, the actor rather than the director, since Imaikkaa Nodigal. And when I heard they were both starring together in Maharaja, expectations were high. What starts off as a simple story of a man looking for a stolen dustbin (yes, really, a dustbin), quickly evolves into a taut, gory thriller about love, loss, and revenge. Anurag Kashyap has a penchant for playing the baddie, and brings his best to this role.

While the Oldboy-ish ending had a lot of mixed reactions, it completely worked for me and left me shocked beyond words. Truly an ending that will live with me for a long time. I've heard the movie did excellent numbers outside of India as well (specifically in China) which is testament to how well good Indian stories can travel globally as well.

I can't talk about gory movies without mentioning two other movies that elevated the gore quotient in Indian cinema: Kill and Marco, both really simple stories, but driven strongly by extremely stylized gore. So if that's a genre you enjoy, definitely check these out as well!

5. The Substance (trailer)

As each birthday goes by, there's but a natural tendency to wonder: If I could relive my younger days, would I really want to? Would I do anything different? Would my childhood be any different growing up in the age of Instagram rather than Orkut? The Substance takes this question and pushes it to a fun conclusion.

If there was an award for best casting, it would easily be Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley in this movie, where Demi plays a yesteryears' TV superstar who gets access to a drug (the titular Substance) that allows her to live for 7 days a time as a younger, hotter version of herself (Qualley) and how this ability takes over her life. The body horror in the movie is executed so well, and both Demi and Margaret bring in great performance backed by an awesome background score by Raffertie.

Another movie dealing with body horror this year, albeit from a very different, yet interesting perspective, was A Different Man. Sebastian Stan has really had an incredible 2024, and it's hard to pick his best role, but A Different Man is definitely right up there!

4. Challengers (trailer)

Yes yes, I also saw the trailer for Challengers and was flabbergasted to say the least to see Zendaya in the most risque avatar we've ever seen her in, so when I went into Challengers, I expected to be blown away, and am happy to report back, Challengers lived up to all the hype! If I had to describe the movie, it's like Y Tu Mama Tambien meets Borg vs McEnroe, and if that sounds like a mashup that you'd enjoy, you'll love Challengers.

Of course, special mention of the sountrack of the movie (Nine Inch Nails FTW), and the cinematography, including the POV tennis ball shots that allow the ball to be a character of it's own. And of course a special mention of that ending that left me more pumped at the end of the movie than any other movie this year did.

In it's own way, Challengers is a fictional movie about feminism in the modern age. Another movie that deals with the same idea, though based on a true story instead, is The Red Virgin. If strong female characters are your vibe, then both movies should be on your radar.

3. Godzilla Minus One (trailer)

The difference between how Hollywood makes Godzilla movies and how Japan does is a contrast that I'll never get over. While Hollywood has just been going bigger, badder, grander in their interpretation of Godzilla, Japan always favors telling human stories that feature Gojira and how it impacts the humans. Fun Fact is that Gojira was originally created as a warning of the dangers of radiation in the aftermath of WWII.

Godzilla Minus One continues this tradition by telling a story that has all the elements of an human-driven action movie, talking about rebuilding lives from zero while dealing with loss of pride, forging bonds of family, conquering PTSD in the aftermath of WWII, all in the presence of our favorite kaiju, Gojira. This was the 37th Godzilla movie in the Godzilla franchise, and I for one am starved for more such grounded Kaiju stories.

2. How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (trailer)

I had seen the trailer for How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies a few months ago but found it quite sappy and not at all interesting. But seeing it get hyped through word of mouth through the last couple of months (and ofcourse the "before and after the movie" Tiktok trend that went viral), I decided to check it out, and boy oh boy, was I hitting myself for judging this movie by the trailer.

In India, it's very common for children to be close to their grandparents, and if you are someone who has had the fortune of being able to spend time with your grandparent, especially in the latter stages of their lives, this movie is a rigorous pull on your heart. Absolutely no regrets in saying I bawled at the end of this movie. Thai cinema has another masterpiece after 2017's Bad Genius

1.  Black Dog (trailer)

Folks who know me know well that a Chinese director I deeply admire is Jia Zhangke. He is a master at telling stories that talk of the clashing ideas of modern, urban life and traditional, rural life, be it in A Touch of Sin, Mountains May Depart or Ash is Purest White. But I was so disappointed when his latest movie, Caught by the Tides simply did not work for me at all. But before that disappointment could even settle in, I managed to catch Black Dog by Guan Hu, which deals with the same genre (and funnily enough, stars Jia Zhangke as a side character) and presents the strongest voice in the genre in a long time.

I'm at a stage in life where there's a constant tug between wanting to grow more into a citizen of the world half the time, while wanting to return to the comfort of the small frozen-in-time village where I grew up the other half, and naturally stories that talk about this clash of ideas resonate strongly with me. And from start to end, the way Black Dog uses analogies to talk about this clash we all face, made this a movie I'll cherish for a long time.

Another movie that was really hyped and I enjoyed a lot that deals with clash of ideas is The Zone of Interest, except here the ideas clashing are of a soldier and his family living happily in, of all places, Auschwitz. While my appreciation for this movie has decreased over the year, it's still well worth a watch. 

 Few other notable movies: Poor Things (Emma Stone + Yorgos Lanthimos = Absurdity 101), The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Iranian movies on Feminism are always a treat), Heavier Trip (a hilaroious sequel to Heavy Trip), Monkey Man (Dev Patel flexing his versatility), Saturday Night (What went down on the first night of SNL), Joker: Folie à Deux (Honestly, the ending worked for me), Laapataa Ladies (A story with heart from rural India), Tatami (When sports intersects with geopolitics)

2023 was a plentiful year when it came to entertainment. Whether it was huge movie releases in theaters, sleeper hits across OTT platforms, or story-driven TV series, there truly was way more to consume than anyone could handle. Even though I try my best to keep track of what's new in the world of pop-culture, 2023 was a year when there was so much that I wanted to watch but a lot just slipped into a backlog that I need to get to someday in the future (and let's be honest, most of it is going be in the ever-growing backlog void). Either way, here's a pick of the best movies I watched through this year:

13. Polite Society

Movies about the immigrant experience, especially based on immigrants from the sub-continent are always fun, but Polite Society added a new layer of zaniness, paired with arguably the best rendition of "Maar Dala" since Devdas itself. This story of a girl in the UK, balancing between the demands of tradition and her dreams of being a stuntwoman was completely hilarious, and will absolutely bring up memories of Bend It Like Beckham.

Another fun, whacky movie this year about the immigrant experience, centered around a group of Indian-origin friends in the US, was Four Samosas.

12. Infinity Pool

I'm not sure how I'd even explain to someone what Infinity Pool is about. It's a mix between horror, sci-fi, and dark comedy, while also being a commentary on the excesses of the modern bourgeoisie. Starring Alexander Skarsgard and Mia Goth, both of whom have a penchant for picking scripts that most other mainstream actors would consider "crazy", Infinity Pool keeps you guessing throughout it's the entire runtime. David Cronenberg is definitely someone to watch out for!

Another movie in a similar vein that I enjoyed this year were Knock At The Cabin. Again, a movie that'll have you second guessing yourself right uptil the final reveal.

11. Jawan

OK, I'll be honest. Jawan is probably not the best action movie this year. But yeah, it's my list so I'm going to have it on the list because, well, we're all SRK-simps. I know there's folks who watched the movie and then went about criticizing it as being too over-the-top, but c'mon, admit it! You felt some deeply primal part of you cheering out loud when you saw a 58 year old with a cigar in his mouth, and a belt in his hand, whooping the shit out of nameless goondas. That's it. That's all. Atlee really is in the rarefied space of directors who know how to build stand-up-and-clap moments for our audiences.

Some other standout action flicks from this year were Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, John Wick Chapter 4, Silent Night, and Sisu. Funnily, despite being from different parts of the world,  nearly every one of these stars an actor in his 50s as the lead. Looks like global action cinema really has a type.

10. Vaalvi

 

Marathi cinema pops up with absolute gems like this movie every once in a while, and I hope that movies that Vaalvi get more visibility and appreciation outside the state as well.

9. 12th Fail

Vikrant Massey stars in this biopic of Manoj Kumar Sharma, who made the journey from failing in the 12th standard (hence the title) to becoming a decorated IPS Officer, despite all the obstacles in his path. Everyone puts up an earnest performance in the movie, and reinforces how anyone's success is always a combination of hard work, perseverance, and the ecosystem built around you. 

I think the only reason it doesn't rank higher in the list is because the TV series, TVF Aspirants, had already raised the bar so high for movies/series around this theme, especially with it's incredible first season (:sobs: Sandeep Bhaiyya :sobs:). Some other true-story biopics I enjoyed this year were The Burial, Blackberry, and Tetris.

8. Talk To Me

Well executed horror movies are so few and far in between, and when I came across Talk To Me, I was quite certain it'd be a one-time watch at best. But boy, was I wrong. The movie follows a bunch of kids who are able to talk to the dead by holding an embalmed hand and repeating the titular phrase. And in pure teenager style, everything is all fun and games, until it isn't. If you are a fan of the worlds of Jordan Peele, you'll feel right at home with Talk To Me.

It goes without saying that A24 continues to sharpen it's axe in this genre, and I can't wait to see what they have in store next. Two other horror movies fromn this year that you should check out were When Evil Lurks, a Spanish movie about demonic possession, and M3GAN, which is very prescient in a pseudo-AGI world.

7. Barbie

When me and Arch discussed the whole Barbenheimer phenomenon, it was quite easy to assume that she would like Barbie more than me. However, the exact opposite happened, and I ended up liking Barbie way more than her. Sure, it's a little blunt-tool at times, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't laugh my ass off through the entire runtime of the movie. Even some of the throwaway jokes like the Duolingo line had me ROFL-ing. Hat tip to Ryan Gosling, for pulling off the perfect Ken. And Margot Robbie as Barbie = * chefs kiss *

6. Babylon

Yes, I know Babylon is technically a 2022 movie, but it came out basically in the end of Dec and I watched it in 2023 so I'm going to include it here. Incredible cast (Margot Robbie again, this time with Brad Pitt and Diego Calva), a tremendously talented director (Damien Chazelle), and what is arguably the best movie soundtrack in a long time all come together to create this fever-dream of a movie set in 1920's Hollywood. When it came out, people had very mixed reactions to the movie, but IMHO, Babylon was a better story than even La La Land which Chazelle is known more widely for. 

5. Sapta Sagaradaache Ello

In recent times, it feels like Bollywood has forgotten how to tell love stories, and nearly every great love story seems to come from outside of Bollywood. And the surprise this year was  Hemanth Rao's two-part Kannada saga: Sapta Sagaradaache Ello. Rakshit Shetty and Rukmini Vasanth have chemistry that's simply incredible, and the beautiful screenplay takes us through the trials and tribulations of the couple across multiple decades. Nothing much more to say. Watch it, and keep a box of tissues handy, because you'll need it.

A couple of other movies around love that I enjoyed this year were Joyland, which is easily the best film to come out of Pakistan this decade, and Journey of Love 18+, which is a more light-hearted romcom.

4. Three Of Us

While the rest of the world went gaga over Past Lives, folks in India were very lucky that we also got to see Three Of Us. Just like Past Lives, the movie deals with reliving nostalgia and young love, but through the lens of having lived complete, fulfilling adult lives with other partners. Shefali Shah and  Jaideep Ahlawat have rightfully gotten a lot of credit for their performances in this movie, but a special hat tip goes out to the Swanand Kirkire for his role as Shefali Shah's husband.

I needn't explicitly say it again, but do watch Past Lives and Three Of Us as a double feature, and decide for yourself which movie is better. Maybe because of the setting, or the relatability of the characters, I found myself drawn so much more to the latter.

3. Sick Of Myself

As I've gotten older, I find myself feeling more and more distant from social media. But many of the people I work with, especially from Gen Z, have gone deep into the world of likes and shares, always on the lookout for the next 15 second adrenaline hit. Sick Of Myself is the story of one such person, who is quite literally ready to go to any depths for a minute of attention, even when it takes her closer and closer to self destruction. The modern world is very self-centered, dog-eat-dog, vacuous, and collaboratively disillusioned, yet we all go about our day like this is all very normal. Sick Of Myself is a dark, yet funny, take on this generation and their fallacies.

Some other movies that capture similar themes, and will resonate with people who have been pulled into the selfish, social-media fueled bandwagon from this year are Shortcomings, Passages, and Kho Gaye Hum Kahaan.

2. Oppenheimer

There's so much that I liked about Oppenheimer. The performances: From Cillian Murphy, who really deserves all the credit that he gets for this execution of the tortured genius, to Robert Downey Jr., who makes us forget he was literally, friggin' Iron Man not too long ago, to even smaller performances like Bennie Safdie, Tom Conti, and Emily Blunt. The minute-long silence in the IMAX theater followed by the earth shattering boom of the nuke. The music score, which was quite literally considered impossible to play. The accuracy of so many of the minute details when it comes to showing scientific process on-screen.

Christopher Nolan has time and time again, shown that he is one of the few directors whose works I'll always pay top dollar to watch in the best possible theater I can get to, and he doesn't disappoint.

1. Amerikatsi

First things first: I know nothing about Armenia. I can probably point it out on a well-labeled map, but besides that I know nothing about the country, it's culture, or it's history. Which is probably one reason why Amerikatsi was such an incredible movie-watching experience for me. Or maybe it was because I've gotten into arguments with many friends who "cheer for India from the sidelines" while sitting in their cushy first world apartments, and this movie shows them a picture of what that blind optimism can lead to. Or maybe it's the sublime ending that gets to me. Or maybe it's how it perfectly blends silliness with it's message on patriotism.

I know that Amerikatsi is an outside-shot for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film in 2024, alongside some tremendous juggernauts (many of which have not had wider releases yet so I've not seen), but if there's one nominee I'd strongly want everyone to watch, it's this one.

Honorable Mentions: The Whale (Brendan Fraser deserved that Oscar), 
How To Blow Up A Pipeline (Anarchism + Cinema?), 2018
 (a fine nominee for the Oscars), As Bestas
 (Xenophobia is a global truth), Scrapper
 (Because 'Aftersun' made father-daughter movies cool again), The Holdovers (O Captain, my captain), Viduthalai: Part 1 (Vetrimaaran doing what he does best), Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani (Surprisingly fun family swap, mostly driven by Ranveer's charisma), Chithha (Siddharth continues his run of movies tackling hard subjects), The Male Ghost (Quirky malayalam police procedural), If You Were The Last (Sci-fi romcoms are a thing!), The Creator (OK story, stunning visuals 1.0), The Wandering Earth II (OK story, stunning visuals 2.0)

Extended Berkeley Packet Filters (eBPF) is probably the most exciting additions to the Linux Kernel in recent times. To put it simply, eBPF is designed as a very nice middle-ground between native kernel changes, which have traditionally been very slow (arguably rightfully) to come into mainline, and kernel modules, which have become a popular footgun for anyone working at the kernel level.

My introduction to eBPF was through Pyroscope, which uses eBPF to provide continuous profiling (And anyone who's worked with code long enough knows the pain that it takes to profile a system running in Prod WITHOUT having a significant impact on performance), and over time, I've been playing around with more tools in the eBPF space, whether it's on the networking front (a la Caretta), or on the security/observability front (a la Cilium / Falco), to wilder shots like load balancing (a la Katran). But while I've grokked the "what" and "why" of eBPF, the "how" was something that was always a mystery to me.

So I dug a little to see how you can write your own eBPF-enabled program, and it turned out to be much easier than I assumed it would be... So let's see how we do it!

For this sample app, we'll write a simple Python program that will act as the userspace application and have it communicate with an eBPF program written in C (which the eBPF compiler will compile to bytecode and run at the kernel level). So let's get started.

First, let's install the bpfcc-tools and linux-headers package, which has what we need(*)

 $ sudo apt-get install bpfcc-tools linux-headers-$(uname -r)

And now we can write our code:

$ cat hello_ebpf.py

from bcc import BPF

ebpf_program = r"""
int process_start(void *ctx) {
   bpf_trace_printk("A new process was started!");
   return 0;
}
"""
prog = BPF(text=ebpf_program)
execve_syscall = prog.get_syscall_fnname("execve")
prog.attach_kprobe(event=execve_syscall, fn_name="process_start")
prog.trace_print()

And that's it! Our eBPF hello-worldis now ready for action. To run it, simply run the file in the terminal

$ sudo python3 hello_ebpf.py
# Depending on your package version, you may see some warnings here

In another terminal, you can kick off some processes by running commands like ls, echo, cat etc. and every time a new process starts (which internally uses the execve syscall), you'll see a message printed in the running python application.

b'       bash-3713    [000] d...1 12276.629282: bpf_trace_printk: A new process was started!'
b'       bash-3714    [000] d...1 12278.088251: bpf_trace_printk: A new process was started!'
b'       python3-3715    [000] d...1 12278.244559: bpf_trace_printk: A new process was started!'

So, how does this work? Well, the code should be quite self-explanatory, but the important bit is the prog.attach_kprobe(event=execve_syscall, fn_name="process_start") line. What this does is create and attach a kprobe to each call to execve and runs a hook defined in process_start method, which is what is compiled to eBPF bytecode. 

You can probably appreciate how this makes writing applications that can access kernel level data so much easier, and allow access at an incredibly detailed level. Want to know when a file is accessed? eBPF allows that. Want to know when a process talks to another? No problemo. Want to know when a network socket request is made? Easy, peasy!(^) eBPF's relatively straightforward interface means that even with so much fine-grained access to syscalls, picking, filtering, slicing, and dicing kernel calls is straightforward, without needing as much low-level kernel knowledge. Best of all, since eBPF is compiled to bytecode by the eBPF compiler and executed within the kernel rather than in userspace, the performance impact of these listeners is EXTREMELY low. This allows real-world applications like continuous profiling, network security, and load balancing to be driven through eBPF without worrying too much about real-world performance.

I've been playing with eBPF over the last year or so and would definitely recommend folks to look into this incredible kernel technology. Who knows, it may just be the system-level observability "silver bullet" you've been looking for.

---

(*) I'm running this on Ubuntu 22.04. Instructions may be a bit different depending on your distro. But as long as you have a fairly modern kernel version (4.1+) you should be able to get this up and running.

(^) If there's interest, I may just make this a multi-part series diving deeper into how to write these applications as well.