Life Of Navin

 

There's this PR that's been sitting in my head rent-free for the last few weeks. +64,218 lines added, -4,691 removed. The kind of diff that would have, in a previous life (circa: 2024?), represented months of careful, deliberate work: A system redesign, a major migration, something with weight, and weeks of deliberation attached to it.

Instead, it's a Tuesday afternoon's worth of AI output that someone generated, presumably with a dozen prompts to Claude Code/Codex. We used to joke that measuring engineering output in lines of code was like measuring a novel's quality by word count. Somewhere along the way, we stopped joking and started doing exactly that, except now the numbers are a lot bigger and the accountability is even thinner. Looking at the PR, I wonder if there was a prompt saying "Make sure you add tests for all updated code paths", and maybe one with "review your own work and ensure you are not missing any edge cases", and whether, at some point, tokens with IDs "13659" and "1608" (for "Thank" and "You") were sent to an LLM for all the hard work it did.

Here's what irks me most: we had actually gotten good at building software. The last decade of software engineering, for all its chaos, produced some genuinely beautiful thinking: microservices done right, event-driven architectures that scaled elegantly, infrastructure-as-code that made you feel like the system had intention behind it. Renaissance art is, IMHO, a fair comparison. Not because it was perfect, but because you could tell a human being with taste and hard-won judgment had made deliberate choices. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all, or even most, code was beautiful in any sense of the word, but it seemed to be a lot easier to find software that had meaning beyond just existing. What we're producing now seems closer to that banana duct-taped to a wall. Except it's not even provocative enough to be interesting. It's just... a lot of banana.

The tragedy isn't that AI can generate code. Heck, that part is genuinely remarkable technology, and it's only getting better. The tragedy is the organizational layer on top of it. Some manager in a large org discovered that their team's PR velocity went up 4x, put it in a deck, and now that's the metric. Nobody is asking what any of this code does, whether it's maintainable, or whether the engineer who wrote it could explain it under mild interrogation. But beyond the metrics nonsense, there's something more personal that's been lost. There used to be a specific kind of joy attached to a large PR. The kind where you'd been heads-down for weeks, had the whole system in your head simultaneously, and finally opened that merge request knowing you'd genuinely moved something forward. Teammates would dig in, leave comments, ask questions that showed they cared about what you'd built. That PR was a conversation. Now it's menial labor.

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.

Well, it's that time of the year again isn't it? After a year that's brought us some incredible movies, it's time for the much awaited (or so I've been told) list of my favorite movies of 2022. I genuinely felt that this year was the first year since COVID began when movies really kicked back into high gear. So many great movies across the year that picking a single "Best Of" list really doesn't do justice. But let me try my best to put across my opinion nonetheless. Here we go!:

13. Rosaline

The story of Romeo and Juliet has been hashed and rehashed over and over for centuries at this point. But have you ever heard the story from the perspective of Romeo's ex-girlfriend, Rosaline? That's the one-line pitch for this quirky movie, which pretty much went under the radar this year. This genre of modern-day takes on classics is a guilty pleasure of mine, and if you add in some great comic timing, paired with a really fun jilted-girlfriend performance by Kaitlyn Dever, then you have yourself a very enjoyable watch!

12. Happening

Annie Ernaux, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, wrote the book that this movie is based on, which deals with the topic of an unwanted pregnancy in a country where abortions are illegal (1960s France). What should, in any decent democratic state, be a simple, straightforward process to give someone authority over their own body is unfortunately rarely the case. In a landmark year where the gReaTEsT DEmOCRaCY has taken away the rights of half their population's to choose, it really goes to show how history can be cyclic.

Three other movies that deal with the theme of women dealing with a system stacked against them from this year that I enjoyed were Saani Kaayidham, Gargi and Qala. In each of these, the central themes couldn't be more different from each other, nor could the director's vision. But all three movies tell stories of resiliency in the face of sheer adversity, led by excellent leading actors.

11. Triangle of Sadness

No annual "best of" list is complete without a dark satirical comedy cementing it's place in it, and boy oh boy, is Triangle of Sadness the most juicy satire you'll see all year! Since Force Majeure, Ruben Östlund has carved out a name for himself as a director to watch out for, and Triangle of Sadness really does deliver on that promise. The story, which starts off on a cruise-liner for the super-rich, deals with the class divide in a delightful way, and will leave you in splits when you watch it, but then kicks off an eternity thinking of the layers below the surface.  And while the movie does leave you with a bit of an open ending, it's been interesting to discuss with friend how they interpret the ending, because it's a glimpse into their rationalization rather than the movie itself.

If you are a fan of quirky, satirical movies, then another fun movie from this year was Official Competition

10. Bullet Train

Cinema is all about escape, and no genre of cinema promises more escape than the action thriller/comedy. And you've got to admit, in recent years, the bar for action movies has been quite high. And for me, the movie that defined the genre this year was Bullet Train. The John Wick series is such a guilty pleasure for me, so when the new David Leitch movie came out, it was a must-watch! Set almost entirely on a single train (Snowpiercer vibes anyone?), the movie tracks a bunch of zany characters, connected to each other in one way or another, culminating in action set pieces that are oh-so-beautiful interspersed with a tonne of out-and-out comedy, and callbacks that'll give you major whiplash in all the best ways!

I maintain a list of movies that I enjoyed watching through the year, and the first movie that made it on was Ambulance which is in the similar genre, and truly Michael Bay doing what Michael Bay does best. And of course, Top Gun Maverick is another movie in the same genre from this year that deserves a watch! Monica, O My Darling and Knives Out: Glass Onion are other Action comedies I enjoyed this year

9. The Fabelmans

I'm an absolute sucker for movies that tell stories that are very personal to the director, and who better to tell a story about his own life then the king himself, Steven Spielberg. The Fabelmans is a story of a fictional family, but is based closely on the director's own childhood and details the coming-of-age story of a kid who loves movies and the extents he'll go to in order to be able to do what his heart tells him to do. Like classics like Cinema Paradiso, this movie is a love-letter to movie-making as much as it is the story of a cinema-obsessed child in a dysfunctional family in 1960s USA. As someone obsesses with movies, watching The Fabelmans was a throwback to the freedom and obsession that only young adulthood can provide.

Two other movies in a similar vein I enjoyed watching in 2022 were Licorice Pizza and Chello Show (Though the latter is a bit too "inspired" by Cinema Paradiso for my liking)

8. Love Today

 
Modern relationships are rarely captured well in Indian rom-coms, with most movies being written quite obviously by middle-aged teams trying to capture what modern relationships look like. And this means just randomly throwing in some Millenial/Gen Z lingo for brownie points and calling it a day. But out of the blue, a movie like Love Today comes out and shows you how it's done. The premise is simple: A girl's father asks the couple to exchange their mobile phones with each other for a day as a precondition to accept their alliance, and all hell breaks loose. But the execution is where this movie shines! Fron the creative editing and jumpcuts, to the quirky background score, to the incorporation of tech in the movie, to storypoints that'll have you laughing out loud, Love Today manages to craft an interpretation of a RomCom that I hope more folks try to emulate. Hattip to Pradeep Ranganathan, who both directs the movie and plays the main doofus protagonist of the movie

7. The Batman

This was finally the year when it happened. "Peak Superhero" was finally reached, and specifically with the MCU, it felt like I'm officially too old to see more CGI-heavy rehashes of the same story from the Russos. But like The Joker from a few years back, a new, refreshing take on the caped crusader was just what the doctor ordered! The Batman was by far the best superhero movie of the year IMO. I loved Matt Reeves' take on the hero, and returning him back to the detective roots was such a great creative decision (from whatever it is that the awful Justice League batman was). While I did initially have reservations about the choice of Pattinson as Batman, the screenplay of this entire movie played very well into his strengths as an actor. Not to mention Paul Dano in a very unique interpretation of The Riddler that was the cherry on the cake!

6. A Hero

 
From a superhero to a movie where performing a heroic act creates the central tension in the film. A Hero is another installment of the "slice of Iranian life presented in the form of a story" series of films by Asghar Farhadi (of The Salesman and A Seperation fame) that deals with the ramifications of a "heroic act" that a prisoner performs while out on parole. There's few directors who manage to meld in distinct cultural markers of their cultures into their movie-making (Panahi being the obvious other name for Iranian cinema, and Zhangke for Chinese cinema), and with A Hero, Farhadi shows how he has perfected the balancing act of telling a story while offering a glimpse into society that it's based in.

5. Kantara

If you are from India, then you should just skip the next two movies on the list because you've probably heard enough about these movies for the better half of the last 3-4 months. But heck, the praise for both is extremely well deserved. Kantara by Rishab Shetty, who's also lead actor in the movie, is a movie that takes the much-explored "bad-landlord good-villagers" trope and blends together with elements from local mythology/folklore into a spectacle that's been causing waves across the country for months. Having grown up being part of the Dakshin Kannada culture and having experienced events like Bhuta-kola and others personally, seeing a action fantasy that incorporates these into it's story with arguably the best cinematography and sound design that Kannada cinema has ever seen was absolutely surreal. The movies I most closely compare Kantara to are Jallikattu and Tumbbad, both of which have made it onto my yearly lists in the past for many of the same reasons that I loved Kantara!

Kantara does have it's fair share of elements of horror, but this has been a great year for horror fans nonetheless with movies like Hatching, Nope, and Smile providing plenty of spooks.

4. Vikram 

 
If Kannada cinema delivered us Kantara, then Tamil cinema was not one to be left behind with Vikram. Yes, I know all the problems this movie has. Yes, it may not have a deep social message behind it. Yes, it's "massy" in the most massy way possible. But I'll fight anyone who'll say Vikram wasn't an absolute blast of a movie. Kamal Hassan + Fahadh Faasil + Vijay Sethupati (+ Suriya being a tease) in a movie directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj and music by Anirudh Ravichander. What more can a Tamil movie fan ask for? Heck, I walked out of this movie and hummed "Plata o plomo" for a week. If there's one cinematic universe I'm in for for 2023, it has to be the Lokiverse (and yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds as well... bite me! 😆)

Speaking of massy, two other mainstream movies I enjoyed this year were 83 (which I still can't believe flopped quite badly), and Sita Ramam (which is a great example of romantic dramas done right)

3. Boiling Point

Folks who know me know my relationship with cooking that has developed over the years into a skill I want to master, and an escape I need to have. And as such, movies and documentaries based around cooking always pique my interest. Boiling Point is just that. The movie is a one-shot movie set in a restaurant over a single night, moving from person to person, between the head chef, the sous, the managers, the servers, the dishwashers, and the guests. I have a few friends working in the food industry, and their anecdotes of working in a professional restaurant aligned with this movie quite a bit while making me feel extra-cushy about my "sit in shorts and work with code" career. Boiling Point hammers in the stresses that hover below the surface of most restaurants. I promise you'll not complain about tardy waiters or food taking too long for a few weeks after watching this movie!

Another excellent movie based on the theme of food is The Menu, which features Ralph Fiennes as as mysterious chef at an exclusive luxury restaurant where a select group of people get invited for dinner.

2. Everything Everywhere All At Once 

 
There was one movie about multiverses that was heavily publicized this year, and another one that was actually a great movie. The latter was Everything Everywhere All At Once. I really don't know how to even explain this movie to someone to get them interested in it, so I won't even try. Just know two things: 1) That this is a movie about a middle aged woman who discovers she can jump between multiverses and 2) That when you will walk out from this movie, you'll come out with a wide smile, a blown mind, and a full heart! Michelle Yeoh puts forth an incredible performance as the protagonist, but is supported equally well by Ke Huy Quan who playes her husband. The Daniels' are slowly proving their mettle as the Absurdist duo (their previous feature was the whimsical Swiss Army Man). As an addon, you have to see this WIRED feature on how they've mastered the art of building CGI on a budget in an age where Bollywood struggles even today with basic CGI.

Ke Huy Quan gets emotional as he accepts his #GoldenGlobe. https://t.co/IpBnF0ZqEp pic.twitter.com/i1dj81Ns6c

— Variety (@Variety) January 11, 2023

1. Tár

 
A movie that I keep debating about with Arch is the 2014 movie Whiplash, which is one of my all time favorite movies. And the debate is always the same. Do the results justify the methods when we're talking about the process of learning? Tár deals with the same subject but modifies the question a little to ask: Does brilliance justify the behaviour that it comes from? We've heard all the stories of Steve Jobs being an A-hole which many folks justify would justify with some variant of "He deeply cares about the product hence...". Or everytime you see The Shining, and knowing that Kubrick pretty much psychologically tortured Duvall, which translated into one of the best pieces of acting. And of course the eternal question of "Can you seperate the art from the artist?". Tár attempts to explore some of these questions through the story of the titular Lydia Tár, who's a world famous orchestra conductor. Cate Blanchett pulls a powerhouse performance in this (I'll be surprised if she doesn't win the Oscar for this role). Long after the credits roll, you'll be left pondering about the questions this movie raises!

Honorable Mentions: Gehraiyaan, After Yang, Jalsa, The Northman, Kaun Pravin Tambe?, 7 Days, Chup, Prey, The Banshees of Inisherin, All Quiet On The Western Front, Fresh, Pleasure, Jana Gana Mana

All in all, 2022 was a momentous year in terms of the world returning to a semblance of normalcy after a couple of crazy years. And it looks like 2023 is only going to get bigger and better! So as always, here's hoping that 2023 brings with it more great experiences for everyone and I hope to see you all the movies!

Well, it's that time of the year again... Another year in the pandemic, though to be honest, this year felt less surreal than the last. Or maybe we've just learnt to find traces of meaning in this kakfkaesque world, with lifestyle adjustments, both big and small, defining the year for us. Thanks to this constant sense of dread (which got triggered even more with the second wave which hit many of my direct gaggle of friends and family), 2021 was the first year in a long time when I didn't visit a movie theater even once over the course of the entire year. 

Yet, the ever-growing number of OTT platforms (along with our friends at the bay of pirates 😉) ensured that noone could complain about being bored at least. 2021 was a fun year at the movies, so without saying much else, here's some movies I enjoyed watching this year:


13. Lamb (trailer)

  

Nordic cinema has seen a revival of sorts over the last few years with their movies getting distributed much more widely, both by OTT platforms and traditional media houses. And what I love about a lot of Nordic movies are the whimsical horror movies that come out of there (I still tell everyone I know to watch Dead Snow). Lamb falls bang within this genre. The movie centers around a couple in Iceland who discover an unnatural birth in their sheep pen, and then raise the creature as their own child. A really fun mashup between folklore, fantasy, horror and drama!

If you enjoy Lamb, this year also had Malignant, which was a fun James Wan directed horror flick (which also extensively uses an excellent cover of one of my fave songs), and Titane, which is an excellent entrant to the school of French body-horror!

12. The Mauritanian (trailer)

The Mauritanian is based on the true story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was arrested and held at Guantanamo Bay for 14 years with no charges filed against him, simply because the army claimed he was part of Al Qaeda. "Innocent until proven guilty" is simply a phrase unless it is actively practised. And in an age where the government in India seems to be inching closer and closer to using draconian laws as a catch-all against all dissent, this movie hit much harder.

The Mauritanian stars the always charming Bumberdit Clunderbash as the army prosecutor prosecuting Slahi. If you enjoy his movies, you should also check out The Courier which came out this year, which is based on another true story of espionage during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

11. Mandela (trailer)

  

South Indian cinema is an absolute beast that's just grown leaps and bounds over the last decade. And Mandela was one of the finest political satires I've seen in a long time. A village where 2 fighting upper-caste factions realise that the deciding vote in the village election will be that of the low caste village barber is such a great premise, and executed to near perfection. Yogi Babu truly shines in every frame of this movie!

Some other really good South Indian movies at the interesection of politics, religion and caste that came out this year were Nayattu, and Kuruthi (end of the day, we're all Prithviraj Sukumaran stans, aren't we?)

10. The Trip (trailer)

 

Another entrant from Scandinavia in the list, The Trip is the story of a couple that plan a trip to a remote lodge, but unknown to them, each is planning to kill the other on the trip. The movie is a laugh out loud riot, and reminded me quite a bit of Papa, sdokhni, which was on the list last year.

Some other comedies focussed on couples at odds with each other that came out this year which you'd also enjoy are Together and Ikkat, both of which focus on couples cooped-in together during the covid lockdown, the former in the UK, and the latter in Namma Bengaluru!

9. Shiva Baby (trailer)

Ever been at a family function where you feel like you are the only person that doesn't belong there? Well, that's the foundation that Shiva Baby builds itself on. What do you think would happen if a young, confused, bisexual, jewish lady attends to a family function where other invitees include her lesbian ex-lover, her ex-sugardaddy who's just had a kid with his new wife, and a never-ending slew of relatives who want to know what's new in her life and just want "to help her out"? So much to unpack here, yet done so beautifully over the course of this movie, shot almost entirely in the house where the function is taking place. And to think this was the director's debut is just a cherry on the cake!

Another movie which, like Shiva Baby, centered around a single location was Malcolm and Marie, which focuses on a couple in a house over one night (who said you can't make movies in a pandemic?), and stars the incredible John David Washington and Zendaya going through waves of equally intense love and hate.

8. Lapsis (trailer) 

Lapsis was a movie I went into without knowing what to expect at all. But it's stunning how Noah Hutton takes elements that we are familiar with, such as the gig economy, robotics, and high speed internet, and pushes it in quirky directions. In an age where Sci-fi is more and more about movies made on a grand scale, movies like Lapsis (and Cargo and Android Kunjappan from last year) truly show that storytelling can shine brightly in a landscape filled with expensive CGI.

Other Sci-fi movies I enjoyed this year include Dune (though tbh I thought it was quite overrated... or maybe it was just the lack of a theater experience), Churuli (whose ending I'm still trying to wrap my head around), and  I’m Your Man (which was another relatively small budget German movie, which was quite reminiscent of the 2013 film, Her).

7. The Novice (trailer) 

 

The Novice is a movie about a freshman who joins her university rowing team. But more than that, it is a movie about what happens when you try to make "excellence" part of your identity, especially in a world where that word means something different to everyone. It's about the sacrifices made to be the best, and the absolute lows felt when your best is still not enough. It's about the process of trial by fire, anguish, self-flaggellation, and near-insanity. If you resonate with movies like Whiplash and The Social Network, you'd like this movie as well. 

Two other movies from a similarly focus on people blurring the line between focus and insanity are The Disciple, which is probably my second-favorite Chaitanya Tamhane movie after Court, and The Alpinist, which is a Free-Solo like documentary about Marc-André Leclerc.

6. Nine Days (trailer)

Some movies make you laugh, some movies make you cry. But some movies just make you sit back and think. About love. About life. About what it means be alive. Nine Days is one of these movies. Set in a fantasy land where souls are "interviewed" before being selected to be sent to earth to live is such a surreal concept in itself (though quite parallel to Pixar's Soul), but what makes this movie click is completely down to Winston Duke's incredible performance as the arbitrator. This movie captures the essence of life, with all of its complexities oh so poignantly.

5. Tick, Tick... Boom! (trailer) 

 

I'll be the first person to admit that I had no clue who Jonathan Larson was. Heck, my knowledge of Broadway itself is pretty much limited to a handful of names crumpled somewhere at the back of my mind. So I went into Tick, Tick... Boom! expecting it to be a nice, light musical but boy was I wrong. Massive credit to both Lin-Manuel Miranda for directing this and Andrew Garfield for his portrayal of Larson, and the trials and tribulations he goes through while trying to get the eponymous play onto Broadway for a decade, while life seems to move on from him. 

The multi-talented Garfield (Holland can dance, Garfield can sing, the ball is in Tobey's court now) is incredible as Larson, and manages to capture so much of the constant struggle Larson went through, and the single-mindedness with which he approached things. One of the funniest scenes in the movie is when Larson is arguing with his girlfriend while simultaneously thinking if he could write a musical number about the fight. This movie sent me down a multi-week rabbithole of reading all I could about Larson and his work, as any good biographical movie should!

Two other biographies that came out this year that I thought were incredible were King Richard, which is about Richard Williams, and his "plan" to make his daughters the world's best tennis players, and Spencer which follows Princess Diana over Christmas with the Royal Family. Will Smith and Kristen Stewart, respectively, deserve massive praise for their roles in these movies.

4. The Father (trailer) 

 

Dementia is such a saddening condition, and unfortunately, way too many of us end up encountering people who suffer from it, in some form or the other, during our lifetimes. The worst part about the disability is that you are constantly second-guessing yourself, never quite certain if your brain is playing tricks with you or not. And like so many other diseases, the condition is hard on both the victim as well as the family. The Father is a movie that focuses on this condition, and Sir Anthony Hopkins plays the titular father in the movie. 

The director chooses to tell the story from the titular character's frame of reference, so you are constantly disoriented by the dementia he faces and the effects it has on him. It's a movie that'll break you (especially that final scene), and leave you shattered when the credits roll. Don't watch this if you are already feeling low, because this movie will ruin your day.

Along the similar lines of memory lapse is the Greek film, Apples, which takes place in world where a world-wide pandemic causes people to have sudden amnesia. Another great story-led film, that deals with memories, and how they impact the people that carry them.

3. Minari (trailer) 

Stories about immigrant families have become a bit of a trope at this point, but every now and then, a movie like Minari comes along, and reminds you why the trope exists in the first place. Minari is about a Korean immigrant family in Rural USA, trying to build a life, and live the so-called American Dream. 

I think the reason Minari really works is because there is so much of the director's own lived childhood experiences that come through in this movie, so the movie never really has to make massive moments, but clicks throughout simply showing the work that goes into assimilating into a foreign land without losing one's own identity. 

The Justice of Bunny King and Eeb Aalley Ooo are two other movies from this year that tackled similar topics, about how we treat those who are less fortunate than the average joe, and how societies treat those different to the status quo.

2. Bo Burnham: Inside (trailer)

 

Remember those two years when you were locked in at home, constantly on edge, unsure of what the future held, and whether "normalcy" itself was a concept that we would have to redefine? How did you spend your pandemic years? Well, Bo Burnham sure as hell found a way to create art in the middle of the pandemic. And not just any art, the dude managed to sit alone in a room and pretty much capture the entire essence of what the pandemic felt like to most of us, in all of it's whimsy, depression, excitement, rage, and agony.

Bo is one of those artists I have so much respect for, because whenever I feel like I've achieved something in life, I find myself going back to see what Bo is up to, and constantly being in awe of the stuff that he's putting out, and I feel like he's one of the few master artists that have managed to capture the voice of my generation so well, imbibed of course with his own whimsical style. Special shout-out for the scene where he celebrates his 30th birthday during the pandemic (hard relate there), and for giving us the song that automatically plays in my head everytime Bezos shows up somewhere.

As an aside, another movie that again made fine use of pandemic-induced filming restrictions like Inside and Malcolm and Marie was Language Lessons. The movie is basically just conversations between two people learning Spanish on Zoom, but is a very sweet movie.

1. The Great Indian Kitchen (trailer) 

The female urge to make sure every man in India watches The Great Indian Kitchen. pic.twitter.com/GP61m4eLqU

— Sukhada (@appadappajappa) December 27, 2021

If there's one movie that truly, truly needs to be watched by every single man in India, it's The Great Indian Kitchen. As someone living in a country where the patriarchy rears it's head ever so often, it's quite easy to forget how a lot of privileges I enjoy are only thanks to, in large part, my gender. And post-marriage, it's also been quite surprising to have even so-called educated folks (including, amazingly, a lot of women) say silly, openly misogynistic things, quite matter-of-factly to me and (more often) my wife.

The Great Indian Kitchen makes incredible use of repetition, and slow shots to drive home the point of how life differs for men and women, how societal expectations shape lived experiences, and how monotony, routine, and sacrifice is just another expectation from a woman after marriage. I was constantly squirming in my seat through this movie, since I could point out countless similar incidents in my own extended families where these expectations hold even today. So while it was a fictional movie, it hit a bit too close for comfort. Feminism, as a concept itself, has so many definitions, but movies like this show us that while a certain segment of folks may feel more empowered today, we have a long way to go in the journey to equality.

Two other movies that deal with similar stories are Biriyaani, which talks about the life of an married muslim woman in Kerala, and Sabaya, which is a chilling documentary about Yazidi women kidnapped by ISIS to be used as slaves.

Honorable Mentions:

I Care a Lot (Rosamund Pike + Peter Dinklage. What's not to like?), Cinema Bandi (A heartwarming movie about movie making), Kala (For the excellent fight sequences), The Suicide Squad (For the fresh breath of air from DC after all the dark, brooding movies), Coda (A movie about a deaf family and a daughter that love singing), Dead Pigs (A Jia Zhangke-esq movie about rural and modern China colliding), Luca (Just Pixar doing Pixar things), This is the Year (For a feel-good YA rom-com), Love Hard (For a feel-good adult rom-com), French Dispatch (Because it's Wes Anderson... duh!)

On the whole, 2021 was a fine year at the movies, and I'm glad that the world seems to be finding it's footing again while that microscopic maniac mutates along. Of course there'll be missteps along the way, and I'm sure that 2022 will have just as much, if not more, in store for all of us. But as the saying goes, here's hoping that everyone expects the best, prepares for the worst, and cherishes every moment in the year ahead. Happy New Year!

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Footnote: Never realised that these random yearly movie reccos are something that some folks actually look forward to. So a tip of the hat to the folks who pinged me over last few days asking where this year's reccos are 🤠