Your destination before or after you complete your journey at the movies
The rise in production and consumption of “social-message movies” in Bollywood of late has given birth to some actors’ careers (Ayushmann Khurrana), and somewhat resurrected flailing ones (Akshay Kumar). But, if there is one person, this movement has entirely changed (arguably liberated), it is director Anubhav Sushila Sinha. Take his output before the still hauntingly […]
Major Spoilers for Chhapaak (Only if you have not seen the trailers) In an era whereby Bollywood has been content in churning out countless hagiographies and jingoistic propagandas to comfort the mass’ sentiments, the success of the fearless Meghna Gulzar deserves special praise. With Talvar (2015), the female director turned what could have been (and was in […]
The transformation of this anthology film series from being a one-off theatrical celebration of Bollywood in Bombay Talkies (2013) to a regular Netflix production that champions the idiosyncrasies of Hindi cinemas’ auteurs is an admirable one. The streaming platform affords these directors so often constrained by the need to bring in box-office numbers and obey Indian censorship’s strict guidelines […]
A question asked during the Q & A of Bi Gan’s fascinating “Long Day’s Journey into Night” brought about an answer from the young Chinese director that continues to linger in my mind. The person in the audience asked the director if he thinks contemporary filmmakers should focus on making emotionally driven films (like Gan’s […]
Imbuing what are essentially very conventional potboiler-y Bollywood plots – the mistaken delivery of a dabba to a lonely person who turns out to be the dissatisfied wife’s soulmate in “The Lunchbox,” and the chance encounter between two complete lonely strangers through a photograph here – with a European art-house sensibility doesn’t sound like a […]
The recent surge in auteur-directed “mainstream” films offer tremendous insight into these filmmakers’ directorial abilities as opposed to their storytelling chops. The plots here are the least important thing, as the question of what is going to happen in the film is already answered for the viewer if they are aware of the typical underdog story, love […]
Major Spoilers for Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (Only if you have not seen the trailers) The emergence of a large number of mainstream Hollywood LGBT films in recent years, like “Love, Simon,” (2018) “Milk,” (2008) and “Battle of the Sexes,” (2017) has led film writers to question the relevance of New Queer Cinema – […]
Operating in a similar vein to Cristian Mungiu’s neo-realist masterpiece “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days,” Ivan Ayr’s expertly crafted directorial debut gets so many things right to create a lived-in experience of the ghost-town-like dreary atmosphere of a wintery Delhi that I felt that his technical prowess might actually hamper my engagement with […]
Minor spoilers for Unbreakable (2000), Split (2016), and Glass (2018). Films based on comic books tend to gravitate towards displaying a sense of grandiosity on screen. Even the supposedly more grounded blockbusters, like Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight Trilogy,” exaggerated certain aspects of filmmaking, like the actors’ performances, the visual scope of the action scenes, and […]
Nowadays, the prospect of watching (another) patriotic film made by Bollywood seems like a daunting one. My skepticism for these types of movies churned out very regularly in India (almost all Akshay Kumar vehicles in the past five years) stems not from the fact that I do not share the same respect, and pride that a majority […]
