Your destination before or after you complete your journey at the movies
Major spoilers for “Vertigo,” & “Om Shanti Om.” Minor ones for “Inception” and “Dunkirk.” Cinema is engineered memories — a meticulous (re)construction of the intangible; an intercutting of precise technique and imprecise emotion; the (as late/great film scholar Gilberto Perez puts it) — “material ghost.” My four favorite films of July highlight the very construction of filmic […]
9 to 5. 5 to 9 to 5.I’ve belonged to both. Then I sought to get away from both.It’s natural, I suppose. Whenever I’m bound up, I want to escape. When I’m free, I seek direction. My four favorite films of June find people, symbols, institutions, and states see-sawing between forms of extreme order and disorder. Two Christopher […]
Major Spoilers for three 2022 films — “Armageddon Time.” Minor spoilers for “The Fabelmans” and “No Bears” — all now available to watch on different streaming platforms. It’s always thrilling to see filmmakers upend conventional film narratives and forms. Doubly so, when the established template that’s deviated from is the autofiction film — usually conceived […]
This academic paper closely analyzes the first and final shots of John Ford’s “The Searchers” (1956) to situate the film as an old and new Western. In doing so, the paper sees the film as representative of the Mid-to-Late 50s – marked by the end of the studio system and the rise in popularity of […]
This academic paper is a close analysis of Marguerite Duras’ “India Song” (1975). Spoilers for a movie that can’t really be spoiled. INTRODUCTION We open with an establishing shot of a hilly landscape during what appears to be a sunset. The reddish-orange sun and the dark green valleys occupy the top and bottom halves of […]
A fun film festival programming assignment that encouraged us to make connections between director Mike Leigh’s work and another director of our choice! INTRODUCTION It’s all about those long-drawn-out silences. Or the never-ending rambles. People’s desire to connect but their inability to do so is a reality that humanist filmmakers consistently tap into to understand […]
This academic paper compares the different ways in which two schools of 70s filmmaking – The Hollywood New Wave , and the LA Rebellion – tackle the post-traumatic stress that its male protagonist’s face post Vietnam-war. Major Spoilers for “Taxi Driver,” (1976) and “Ashes and Embers (1982).” Vietnam is over, but its images and sounds […]
This academic paper conducts a formal analysis Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1973), extensively focusing on its cinematography and editing. Major Spoilers ahead. In his infamous interview with filmmaker and critic François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock details the critical difference between eliciting surprise and suspense from an audience. Using the “bomb under the table” analogy, the […]
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 […]
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