where reviews, columns and essays jostle for attention
She doesn’t want to sit on his lap. Miss Julia is enraged, and all her billionaire boyfriend Russi Billimoria does — as the man in charge, her lover, her producer — is slap the inside of his left thigh, inviting his tigress to clamber aboard so he can make it all better. She seethes while […]
The coffee is in a different pot. The year is 1961, and nervous mathematician Katherine Johnson is an exceptionally bright woman assigned to NASA’s Space Task Group. Here, in a world of white men wearing detergent-commercial white shirts and grey pants and thin neckties, she feels like an anomaly. An anomaly who has to walk […]
There are many Batmen. Detective. Dark Knight. Dancer. Father-figure. Fascist. Flirt. Teacher. Troublemaker. Terrorist. Created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane in 1939, the crimefighting vigilante has had a varied and sprawling mythology. With many a writer and filmmaker desperate to leave their own stamp on the shadowy character, the years have seen him turned […]
The cinematographer shines the brightest in Moonlight. The film by Barry Jenkins is a soulful and evocative work of motion picture poetry, performed by fine actors and with a musical score that keeps things heartbreakingly dreamy, but what cinematographer James Laxton brings to the table is the most special of all. Based on Tarrell McRaney’s […]
One has to feel at least a bit sorry for Vin Diesel. Diesel, following franchises like xXx and The Fast And The Furious represented a new kind of mainstream action hero: a lunkheaded leading man, a swiss-army-knife of brains and brawn. He’d rappel down the skyscraper, punch out a squad of guys, and get the […]
As always, there were many contenders for this list. But these ten films — these ten monstrosities — are the absolute bottom of last year’s barrel. 10. Fitoor Grated expectations. What a pretty mess this was. In my review, I’d said: “People age oddly in Fitoor. A small Kashmiri boy with innocent eyes and a […]
This has been a year of makeshift marvel. My Best Actor and Best Actress selections showcase worthy performers, but this set of movies makes it clear that this year has been characterised by fundamentally flawed winners. Most selections on my top ten come with built-in caveats, and yet they are films I’d rather celebrate than […]
Lists are made to be debated. To be obsessed over and taken apart and analysed, and while we critics bemoan the December ritual of rankings, those of us who love Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity will also confess to enjoying the absurd make-believe analysis of it all. On that note, I’d like to thank the ten […]
This summer, India learnt the name Produnova. An intricate gymnastic move named after a legendary Russian athlete, the Produnova is a vault so complex that only five gymnasts have actually executed it. The Olympic gold-medallist and reigning queen of the sport, American gymnast Simone Biles shuns it entirely, saying, “I’m not trying to die.” This […]
Twenty Decembers ago, Woody Allen’s underrated Everyone Says I Love You had the director dance with the striking and cherubic Goldie Hawn on the banks of the Seine, by moonlight. As Allen clumsily kept pace, Hawn began suddenly to float — as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and her black […]
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