In one of the interviews for Checkmate, I heard Anoop Menon talking about why he decided to do the film eventually. His wife told him that as he is anyway doing a lot of trashy movies these days, why don’t he just do this one too? Well, the end result of that push from his better half has only resulted in the creation of a film that can damage your brain cells. Checkmate is basically an amateur short film that got good funds to enhance its production quality. With a generic story getting tortured by silly screenplay experiments, the movie from Ratish Sekhar is easily the best thing you can recommend to your enemy.

Phillip Kurien, the head of a pharma company that is facing allegations of illegal drug trials, is our central character. His partner Jessy is trying to help him from all the legal troubles by doing her bit. What we ultimately see in the film is the history of these two, the people connected with them, and what they had to go through because of their inhuman actions.

It actually took a while for me to understand the whole story because the film’s screenplay has this nature of going after characters pointlessly for a long time. The narrative shifts from 3 months ago, 12 months ago, the day of the kidnap, 5 minutes before the kidnap, etc., in a very pretentious way to make the audience feel that some sophisticated filmmaking is happening. But the dialogues, be it the Malayalam ones or the English ones, are so theatric that some of them reminded me of that Vipranasam short film. Looking at the way the writing gets lost in unnecessary subplots, you would feel like poking the director to cut the chase and come to the point multiple times during the film.

Anoop Menon appears in multiple looks in the film, and the very first one reminded me of that deleted scene in the climax of Mohanlal’s Mr. Fraud. The guy who sat behind me was saying, “What happened to Khureshi-Ab’raam?” The name of the character might well be Phillip Kurien, but Anoop Menon makes sure that Phillip will act like Anoop Menon. This is perhaps the second misleading thing Lal has been a part of after that rummy ad. Rekha Harindran, who makes her debut through the film, has won the Kerala Film Critics Award for her performance in this movie. Being someone who reviews films, I just want to clarify that I have no association with that organization. There are a lot of debut actors in the film, and I think they all have this hope that the audience would applaud them, like how families root for kids in kindergarten during the annual day performance.

The story, screenplay, music, cinematography, and direction of the film are handled by Ratish Sekhar, and by the end of it, you should feel that he shouldn’t have burdened himself with all those responsibilities. The camera movements are so poor that even the short films made in Kerala with minimal budget have better visual sensibility. Shot division and camera angles are so bizarre. The visuals change from a medium close-up to a low-angle one in split seconds without any motivation, and the editing done by Prejish Prakash with far too many unnecessary cuts would make you think that he was getting paid for the number of cuts. There is a fight sequence towards the end inside a boxing academy, and the conversations that happen after the goons realize they have kidnapped the wrong person is unintentionally comical.

Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you’re a director. This is a quote by the great James Cameron. What he forgot to mention was that show it to your friends and family and don’t release it in theaters.

The opening frame of “The Sparrow in the Chimney” evokes a kind of art-directed ideal of country living: In a spacious, rustically textured farmhouse kitchen, mid-afternoon sunlight pours in through open windows so large they double as French doors, looking out onto rolling, summer-kissed lawns and hazy woods beyond. A regal ginger cat slinks in over the sill, as amplified birdsong and insect chatter also seem to blur the indoor-outdoor boundary. A casserole simmers patiently on the stove. Who wouldn’t want to live like this? Pretty much everyone, it turns out, in Ramon and Silvan Zürcher’s elegantly vicious domestic horror movie, which forensically unpicks the compacted resentments, betrayals and traumas underpinning a single weekend family gathering, with a touch as icy as the lighting is consistently, relentlessly warm.

The Zürcher twins — who take a joint “a film by” credit on all their work, though only Ramon is billed here as writer, director and editor, with Silvan as producer — have a knack for probing inviting household spaces in a way that renders them unfamiliar, even alien. Their 2013 debut “The Strange Little Cat” observed the everyday routines of an ordinary family from a distance that turned their movements into droll physical comedy, while 2021’s “The Girl and the Spider” located whispers of the uncanny in the back-and-forth of a young woman’s apartment move. The third film in the Zürchers’ “animal trilogy,” “The Sparrow and the Chimney” marries that same detached observational quality and fey sense of the absurd to a more elaborately fleshed-out narrative, crackling with melodramatic danger and intensity of feeling. This increased dramatic heft could earn this Locarno competition entry the broader arthouse exposure that has eluded the Zürchers’ previous work, despite their ardent critical following.

The “animal” aspect of the trilogy isn’t incidental. Throughout “The Sparrow and the Chimney,” the natural world encroaches on human life in ways that don’t feel invasive so much as equalizing, as social conventions and restraints are gradually shed in favor of brute base instincts. The first innocuous sign of this collapse is, well, a sparrow caught in the fireplace of the rambling rural house where Karen (“I’m Your Man” star Maren Eggert) grew up, and is now raising her own gradually dispersing family. The bird is freed, in a dusty flurry of flight, by Karen’s lonely pre-adolescent son Leon (Ilja Bultmann); over the next two hours, few will make quite such a lucky escape.

Karen’s consistently stiff, stricken expression is the first clue that all is not rosy in this apparent idyll. When her younger, cheerier sister Jule (Britta Hammelstein) arrives to stay the weekend, with her husband Jurek (Milian Zerzawy) and daughter Edda (Luana Greco) in tow, Karen has to be pulled into a hug, as if her body has forgotten how. When Karen’s eldest daughter Christina (Paula Schindler) joins them from college, too, there’s an anxious void where an embrace should be. Meanwhile, her highschooler daughter Johanna (a scorching Lea Zoe Voss) wouldn’t touch her mother if her life depended on it: A self-styled Lolita who yearns to escape the nest, she radiates above-it-all hostility toward the world in general, but saves a special white-hot reserve of hatred for Karen. That’s beginning to rub off on cherubic Leon, a precocious gourmet (and vulnerable mark for local bullies) who cooks the family’s meals but doesn’t eat them.

The occasion for this family gathering is the birthday of Karen’s husband Markus (Andreas Döhler), though he’s not much in a mood for revelry either — he’d rather quietly continue his dalliance with the family’s young dog walker Liv (Luise Heyer), who lives in a cottage across the way, and has an alleged history of mental illness and arson. Thus are all the elements lined up for a quasi-Chekhovian knockdown battle of competing desires and miseries, though not every conflict plays out exactly as you might predict: Some aggrieved characters passively watch when you expect them to strike, while others resort to stark acts of violence without obvious provocation. The most aggressive presence here, meanwhile, may be a phantom one: Karen and Jule’s late mother, remembered rather differently by the two sisters, who still wields control over a house to which Karen feels oppressively obligated, while Jule was all too happy to wash her hands of it.

Zürcher’s script balances the excavation of long-buried secrets against a steady stream of present-tense confrontations and revelations, as does his limber, darting editing — while Eggert’s tensely still, hollowed-out performance, as a matriarch increasingly inclined to walk away from familial chaos, is a stabilizing anchor amid all this narrative sturm und drang. The remaining ensemble deftly rolls with the film’s volatile tonal shifts. There’s more broad, barbed comedy in their collective interactions, and occasional, devastating tenderness when they get each other alone — as in one exquisite scene where Christina, despite her recent absence, reads her younger brother’s inner life so acutely as to make him feel, at least for a moment, less alone in it.

“The Sparrow in the Chimney” may be a crowded work, sparking and seizing with nervous energy, but there’s a mutually enhancing tension between the rough-and-tumble of the drama and the refinement of the filmmaking. Characters seem to veritably chafe against the poise and gilded beauty of DP Alex Hasskerl’s immaculate compositions, and they sometimes strain to be heard over the intricate sound design, with its symphonic melding of human rhubarb and the hum, traffic and weather of the outdoors. Nearby, a lake and island where Karen’s children once swam has been taken over by intimidating cormorants, possessively guarding a spot they’re no longer willing to share; perhaps the time has come for this fevered, fractured house to cede itself to the elements.

Inspired by the profound (and often profoundly silly) Frenchness of the Paris Games, we — like much of the internet — have been thinking about how to showcase L.A. when the Olympics come to town in 2028. While the next edition of the Summer Games has come in for criticism and complaints, it’s also likely to match or exceed events like the Super Bowl and the Oscars in terms of turning the world’s attention to the city. In the spirit of the loud, chaotic, inimitable City of Angels, here are nine wild ideas for making L.A. itself the star in four years’ time.

Erect the Olympic cauldron at Griffith Park…

In the land of sunshine and palm trees, one landmark that (literally) stands out above the rest, situated on the side of a mountain range overlooking the greater L.A. area, is the Griffith Observatory. That it can be seen from nearly every neighborhood and surrounding cities makes it a perfect location to build the cauldron. Imagine taking an evening stroll around the Silver Lake Reservoir and seeing the flame across the surface of the water? Or walking out of a bar in Koreatown and staring north up Normandie at the cauldron? Or staying in Mid-City and seeing the light of the burning fire from miles away? Imagine the photos taken on a clear night from all over Southern California. If the cauldron were built at the Griffith Observatory, it would also take advantage of being next to one of our most famous landmarks honoring our greatest cultural export: the Hollywood sign. —David Viramontes

… and make sure the torch relay visits California’s most iconic peaks

Celebrate California’s 14ers and the highest mountain in the contiguous U.S. by having a hiker or ultra-trail-marathoner take the flame up Mt. Whitney. Or the flame could be taken by a climber (Alex Honnold, maybe roped this time?) up Yosemite’s El Capitan. —Rebecca Bryant

Perform a “La La Land”-inspired dance on the 105 and 110 interchange

Paris has the glimmering Seine, we have . . . majestic freeways. It seems only appropriate that Olympic festivities involve commuters (or actors pretending to be commuters) in bumper-to-bumper traffic. An opening ceremony that acknowledges L.A.’s infamous traffic woes, rather than pretending they don’t exist, would be a sly way to nod at the inevitable slow roadways that the 2028 games will bring. And hey, I bet Ryan Gosling would be game to participate. — Alyssa Bereznak

Plant out L.A.’s ugliness

LAX, for example, is bleak. Aside from the difficulties of getting in and out of the airport, it’s such an ugly introduction to L.A. Back during World War II, The Times encouraged residents to plant victory gardens and even led by example; this time, residents, business owners and municipalities should plant trees and install planter boxes outside their homes and businesses and LAX should use them to soften passenger arrival and departure lanes. Why not counter the starkness of the cityscape with color and fragrance unique to our region? The catch: L.A. needs to start planting now, with trees, shrubs, etc. that take about three years to get established. Already, there are community groups trying to organize this, but their voices are small. Let this be their megaphone: If everyone pitches in, we can make our city more beautiful before the world comes calling. —Jeanette Marantos

Create a mechanical surfing ride for spectators

There could be several with different degrees of difficulty, so beginners can simply try to stand up on the board, while semi-pros ride waves closer to those faced in competition. It’s safer than the open water, and of course comes with lots of possibilities for commemorative photos. They do water rides at theme parks, where people get drenched. Why not the Olympics? —Jeanette Marantos

Mount a Randy’s Donut’s / rhythmic gymnastics crossover

Picture it: A giant Randy’s Donut, modeled on the famed Inglewood shop, rolls right into the stadium during the opening ceremony, helped along by a CGI rhythmic gymnast. Then a troupe of actual rhythmic gymnasts rolling rings that look like the doughnuts spread across the field. I’m kidding. But only sort of. —Rebecca Bryant

P-22 was the beloved mascot of Griffith Park.

(National Park Service)

Make a mountain lion the LA28 mascot

Recently, I’ve taken a deep dive into Olympic mascots after being wholly enamored by France’s Phryge — a red hat with expressive eyes that has taken a tumble, jet-skied and become a celebrity in Paris.

In 1984, Sam the Olympic Eagle strutted down in a stars-and-stripes top hat and bowtie at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. And in 2028, it should be a mountain lion — donning sparkly eyeglasses or streetwear or whatever else is adorable — that welcomes athletes to Los Angeles.

It makes sense, and, no, it’s not too niche. L.A. is the only place on this side of the Earth that has big cats living within city limits, according to the National Park Service. Not only will this pay homage to the mountain lion king of Griffith Park — P-22 — but it’s also a chance to highlight a species that has long captured the zeitgeist of L.A. —Angie Orellana Hernandez

Turn the Hollywood pitch meeting into an Olympic short film

In this vision, an Olympic torchbearer makes their way into a studio building — could be a lot, could be CAA or somewhere corporate. It’s all filmed with GoPro. They get a fist bump from the valet. Run through the mailroom. Ride up in an elevator (Sly Stallone cameo). Race down a hallway. Finally, they sit in a private conference room or office. We cut to the runner and it’s Timothée Chalamet or someone of similar star quality. They make a beautiful pitch about the “spirit of the Games, the essential humanity of the moment. It’s bigger than Hollywood — bigger than all of us.” Cut to the studio executive and it’s Albert Brooks: “That was more than 25 words.” —Joshua Rothkopf

The nightly crowds have thinned at Tacos El Pecas on Monday, March 23, 2020. Taco trucks are just one of the many facets in the service industry being hit hard economically as COVID-19, aka Coronavirus, continues to spreads throughout the country and the world.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

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Launch a parade of taco trucks (and other homages to L.A. culture)

This one’s a no-brainer. Match them with lowriders cruising, maybe with Snoop Dogg leading the cruise. Aztec dancers and some ballet folklorico at Placita Olvera. How about a sea of performers dressed up as the al pastor vertical spit? Dancing trompos! I’d like to see two murals that are critical to L.A. art history and which were originally censored to be celebrated grandly: “America Tropical” by Siquieros and Barbara Carrasco’s “L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective” at Union Station. Reopen the murals in time for 2028! Plus, let’s see evocations of the tagged up walls of the L.A. River, Five Points in East L.A., the Compton civic center, a soccer game at MacArthur Park, the Korean Friendship Bell, a bonfire at Dockweiler, and cameos by Tommy the Clown, Angelyne if she’s available, and please, please, Harry Perry, the roller skating guitarist from the Venice Beach walk. —Daniel Hernandez