Although many pan-Indians dominated the limelight and box office throughout 2022, there were a few Tamil gems that were well-received by both critics and audiences too. Here is a list of my personal favourite 20 Tamil Fims of 2022:
20) Hey Sinamika
After two years of being married to Yaazhan, Mouna starts to realize that his overly affectionate and talkative nature is overbearing. She ropes in the help of psychiatrist Dr. Malarvizhi to seduce him so that she can use it as an excuse to file for a divorce. However, Malarvizhi begins to fall in love with Yaazhan. To make things even complicated, Yaazhan's newfound blossoming career as an RJ with the psychiatrist's helps takes their friendship to a whole new level...
19) Love Today
Uthaman and Nikitha have been in a relationship for awhile and are planning to get married. However, Nikitha's orthodox father finds out about them before she can properly ask for his permission. Her father promises to give them his blessings if they exchange phones for a certain period of time. After the end of the period, if they still feel that they are the perfect, they will have his blessings. Both Pradeep and Nikitha agree to this. However, Nikitha is unaware that Pradeep has a very dark secret from his college days that he still has saved in his social media accounts...
18) Kaathuvaakula Rendu Kaadhal
Ever since childhood, Rambo has led a cursed life. His father has died, his mother is paralyzed and all his aunts and uncles remain unmarried in an effort to end the vicious cycle of misfortune that has plagued their family for generations. His mother also suffers seizures whenever he is nearby. Fearing that he emanates bad luck, he runs away from his village for good, believing that his family's luck will improve with him apart. As an adult, he strikes a friendship with two young women and finds that by having both of them in his life, he is miraculously cured of his misfortune. Problems start when both of them fall in love with him and he is unable to leave either one of them...
17) Rathasaatchi
Back in the 1980s at the height of the Naxalite unrest across India, college topper Appu rejects an offer to further his studies in London with his fiancé. Instead, he heads a Communist youth wing which travels from one village to another propagating their ideology among the lower-caste communities to rebel against their merciless landlords. While Appu consistently favours peaceful campaigning instead of his party's proneness to violence, the custodial death of his best friend instigates to kill the arrogant police officer responsible for the murder. With no other choice, Appu is forced to turn to the Naxalites and hide out in the jungle while waiting for what comes next...
Source: Google Images
16) Selfie
Kanal is a bad-tempered student who holds a grudge against his overbearing father who bribed a college admission brocket to get him a placed at his low-level engineering college. When a friend's relative approaches Kanal and his gang for help to get his son a place at a prestigious medical college in Chennai, they decide to start their own underground college admissions racket by pretending to be a local gangster's men. However, the situation becomes complicated when the client pulls out and demands his money back. When Kanal's gang refuse to cooperate, the gangster finds out that someone has misused his name, Kanal and his friends' lives change forever...
15) Writer
Head constable Thangaraj is fighting for the establishment of a police union for lower rank police officers. On his first day at a new station, he is assigned to watch over a PhD student Devakumar who is illegally held in at a banquet hall nearby. His superiors fear that the case against Devakumar is not strong enough to convict him. Since Thangaraj is a writer, they arrange for him to write a convincing crime scene. Unknown to Thangaraj, his superiors have falsely implicated Devakumar as a Naxalite because of a unresolved case that happened years ago...
14) Kuruthi Aattam
Shakthi is an attender in a government hospital and a Kabaddi player in Madurai, who is always at loggerheads with the wealthy kids in town, Muthu and Arivu. However, things change when Shakthi befriends Muthu after defending him in a fight. However, Muthu is forced to keep his newfound friendship a secret from Arivu and their other friends who are jealous of Shakthi. Unknown to Shakthi, Muthu is the only son of Gandhimati, the most powerful mafia kingpin in the city, and things change when a mysterious gang plans to kill their entire family...
13) Mahaan
Gandhi comes from a family of strict teetotalers who follow the principles of Gandhism closely. One evening, Gandhi reunites with Sathya, his childhood friend who runs a local liquor operation. His family abandons him after discovering he spent the night drinking. Gandhi then becomes Sathya's partner after helping rebrand their business. All this time, Gandhi's son Dada grows up despising his father who he believed left his mother in favour of drinking. He trains to become a police officer so that he can avenge his his childhood abandonment even if it means relinquishing the Gandhism principles he was raised to believe in not unlike the father he so hates...
12) Sila Nerangalil Sila Manidhargal
The story revolves around four young men of different backgrounds in Chennai. Vijaykumar is an egoistic and hot-tempered young man who is always berating his father for being too independent for his age. Rajasekar is a hardworking employer at a famous resort in the city who is often overlooked because of his qualifications. Pradeesh is a nepo baby who is trying to make a name for himself in the entertainment industry while enjoying the perks of living under his famous father's shadows. Praveen is a senior software engineer who finally has the chance to leave for The States to live the American Dream that he was been wishing for for ages with his wife and child. A disastrous road accident that happens one night changes their lives and the lives of everyone around them forever...
11) Rocketry: The Nambi Effect
Despite receiving a permanent position at NASA, Princeton graduate Nambi returns to India to work at ISRO. After securing 400 million pounds of equipment from Scotland for free, Nambi and his team move to France for a few years to learn from the French. However, it is in Russia where Nambi strikes a deal with the Soviet Union to import cryogenic missiles. Throughout his time in America, Britain France and now Russia, Nambi is closely followed by NRI Barry Amaldev who is suspicious of Nambi's progress. Back in India, Nambi is arrested for allegedly selling military secrets to Pakistan...
10) Saani Kaayidham
Ponni is a vengeful young woman out to seek revenge against the upper-caste landlords who killed her family and raped her. After corrupt police officers and lawyers help the men escape before the court can sentence them, Ponni teams up with her estranged half-brother Sangayya to seek vengeance. During their adventures, the half-siblings multiple hurdles in the form of misogyny and casteism. Throughout their detective work to track down the perpetrators, Ponni begins to suspect that one of her daughter's blind teenage friend who is also the son of one of the landlords might have also been involved in the incident that night...
Source: Google Images
9) Vendhu Thanindhathu Kaadu
Muthu is a young low-caste village boy who moves into the house of a distant relative who promises to find him a job in Mumbai. However, the following day, Muthu finds the man has committed suicide after having a heated discussion over the phone the previous night. Muthu finds a bag a gun next to the body. Instead of reporting it to the police, Muthu decides to keep it and take it with him to his new job in Mumbai. To Muthu's surprise, his new job in the big city is not as glamorous as he expected and the gun he stole might come in handy in more than one way...
Source: Google Images
8) Kanam
Three friends come across a scientist who task them with a time machine. Aadhi plans to go back in time to be with his dead mother one last time. Pandi wants to make his childhood self realize the importance of education so he can get a good job as an adult. Kathir wants to convince his childhood self to befriend his classmate who ignores as a kid but grows up to become the most eligible bachelorette in the city. Although they are successful in going back in time, their younger selves start growing suspicious of them and eventually finds the time machine they used...
Source: Google Images
7) Iravin Nizhal
When corrupt film financier Nandu learns that the cops are coming to arrest him, he makes a run for it. As he hides out at a fake godman's ashram, he recounts his eventful life. Neighbors found him as a baby by his mother's corpse after she was murdered by her husband and they then raised him as their own. At ten, he runs away from home after being wrongfully accused of getting his adopted sibling killed. Living on the streets after being raped by a cop, he is adopted by a trans-woman who makes him sell drugs to help them survive. As a young adult, he gets involved in two failed relationship, which eventually forces him to join the fake godman's ashram. The people he meets here, combined with his already tragic past, would shape the rest of his adult life...
Source: Google Images
6) Thiruchitrabalam
Thiruchitrabalam is a food delivery boy, who lives with his strict father and dotting grandfather. He blames his father for his mother and sister death in a car accident, which turned him into a self-conscious person. He avoids talking to his father even though they live under the same roof. His only comfort is his childhood friend Shobhana who helps him court the girls he has a crush on. Just as Thiruchitrabalam is about to reconcile with his father, the father suffers a stroke. While helping his grandfather care for his father, and constantly suffering one heartbreak after another from the girls he approaches, Thiruchitrabalam begins to realize that life is not always what it seems...
Source: Google Images
5) Poochandi
Journalist Murugan travels from India to Malaysia to study the influence of the ancient Chola empire in the Southeast Asian country. However, he quickly becomes fascinated by the story of Shankar and Anbu who lost their friend Guru to an evil spirit. Late one evening, the trio uses one of Anbu's oldest coins from the Kadaram period to play Ouija. Initially, they assume that the spirit they invite, Malika, is a friendly one that will help them get everything they want. However, things start getting out of hand after Guru disrespects the spirit, which seemingly results in his death. Murugan accompanies Shankar and Anbu in tracking down Malka's family to find out if she has any unresolved wishes that has left her spirit stuck in this world. To their surprise, they find Malika very much alive...
Source: Google Images
4) Vikram
The police ropes in Sepcial Agent Amar, the commander of a confidential black-ops squad to investigate a series of murders committed by a masked group of vigilantes. Of all the murders this group has committed, one is out of place. Karnan was a regular senior citizen who recently adopted his grandson following the death of his son and had nothing to do with drug dealing like the other victims. During this time, Amar and his team are being Sandhanam, the local kingpin who works for a much more dangerous crime lord who has access to much more power than Amar...
3) Ponniyin Selvan: Part 1
Vandiyathevan is sent to the capital of the great Chola empire to deliver a message from the crown prince Aditha Karikalan to the emperor. During this time, Vandiyathevan learns of an attempt by vassals and petty chieftains of the empire to overthrow the current emperor and install his nephew Madhurantakan, the firstborn son of the previous emperor as the new emperor. Vandiyathevan reports this to Princess Kundavai, who in turn asks him to go to Lanka to bring her younger brother Arulmozhi Varman back to the capital while she tries to convince her elder brother to return. However, Aditha Karikalan has vowed to never return to the capital as long as the wife of one of the chieftain lives there. Unknown to anyone, she is more than just a queen of a vassal state...
Source: Google Images
2) Suzhal: The Vortex
Okay, technically this is more of a miniseries than an actual feature-length film, but still, it is too good to be left our of this list. In the small town of Sambaloor, the local community is preparing for the annual 10 day festival of Mayana Kollai in honour of the Mother Goddess. Even the burning down of the neighbouring cement factory that employs almost half of the locals cannot stop the celebration. However, the sudden disappearance of Nila, the teenage daughter of the local union leader, and the son of the town's police inspector sets in motion an investigation that brings out the deepest, darkest secrets that the townsfolk has been trying to suppress for years...
Source: Google Images
1) Gargi
School teacher Gargi and her family become the center of public hatred after her security guard father and a few other men are accused of sexually assaulting a young girl at the posh apartment complex he works at. Since public opinion against her father is strong, their family lawyer abandons the case and Gargi is forced to seek the help of his no-note protégé, Indrans who has no reputation to lose. Since Indrans works part-time at a pharmacy, he realizes that the victim was wrongly medicated with a high dose of barbiturates, which makes her testimony against Gargi's father inadmissible in court. However, the case is still not as straightforward as it seems as Gargi refuses to accept the truth that is right under her nose...
Source: Google Images
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