Maharaja When movies blow up on social media, I like to take a wait and see approach. Generally, I let the initial excitement die down before watching it myself. But Maharaja was different. One of my friends asked me to watch it at midnight, and then another asked me to check it out in the […]
Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes What is it about Elizabeth Taylor? Her work caught my fancy, I think, with the Zeffirelli Shakespeare “The Taming of the Shrew” and the Nichols Albee “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” both with then husband Richard Burton. And then also I must have seen her in some of the “Father
A Different Man Here we are, three weeks into January, and the Sundance Film Festival has delivered what promises to be the year’s most uncomfortable date movie, a grubby New York set fable about a facially distinctive actor (modeled on Adam Pearson) who undergoes an experimental procedure that leaves him looking like Sebastian Stan presumably
The Pope’s Exorcist In his original review of “The Exorcist” from 1973, Roger Ebert wrote about “the absolute rightness” of casting the older priest who battles evil opposite the demonically possessed child with Max von Sydow, a great character actor. “He has been through so many religious and metaphysical crises in Ingmar Bergman’s films that
Daughter of Genghis is a documentary that spends seven years with a mother and son but the character arc it captures is so compelling, it could not have been better paced if it were fiction. She calls herself Gerel. She works as a Mongolian nationalist fighting against China’s influence over her culture. On the surface,
Terry Gilliam is a frustratingly enormous talent, but also two traits that struggle with each other while you watch one of his movies and often team up to fight him. I have a feeling that Gilliam giggles. This must be what irritates his financiers and studios about him. It’s no wonder he has trouble getting
Recently, many people have been talking about man-child protagonists in Indian movies however, this is taken to a whole new level by Sharwanand’s latest film Manamey. The main character of the movie, Vikram (Sharwanand), can be described as a typical man-child who lacks real responsibility and is happy with that. We are told he is
With life, music and transformative clashes between cultures and eras at every corner, the Portuguese maestro’s Cannes Competition entry is a salve for the soul in troubled times. Our age is difficult; our sorrows are heavy our way through life is hard and stupid. But if you have been feeling a creeping pessimism dull your
For a reason, many streaming services have started producing their own films those movies are owned by the platform and thus cannot be taken away from them (except for HBO Max they both make and remove their own products). On this blog, we believe that these streaming originals are as valid as any other film;
I think we’ve finally reached the point where Chinese monster movies are now easily the best in the world, with the only exception being the big budget American blockbuster films. I say that because when it comes to realistic looking snakes, I’ve never seen anything better. What China lacks in horror movies they more than
