Since most of the exposure for most people might only be to Pixar films in the sphere of animation, I would forgive them if they thought Azur et Asmar refreshing: of course, how many folklores are made today as films? And then, this is an “original folklore,” though this is where the film’s troubles start.

Taking bits and pieces from various sources, like the old man sitting on Azur’s shoulders reminding one of Richard Burton’s Arabian Nights and the lion taking Azur flying through mountains of a similar Russian folk tale…

In Days of Glory, there is a single forward track on the face of a Colonel in the French troupe, who is talking about the glory that the French would bestow upon the North Africans who are fighting for them in the war. And this ‘track’ on his face, to form a tight close-up; as he is speaking (the only one within the film) is a prominent deviation within the mise-en-scene that spoke beyond what the narrative, the image and the sound the rest of the film provided. Because it’s exactly here the film transcends the boundaries of becoming just another war movie and vibrates more than the limitation of heroism, patriotism and death all such films provide aplenty. Since the ‘track’ becomes a document that the film later uses to testify against the false promises, dreams and hope the French had promised and shown.

The Silence was the first Bergman film I ever saw, way back in 1973 as part of a film society screening in Chennai. India. I loved the disturbing and profound film but could not come to grips with why I loved it so much. Was the graphic carnal content (for the social standards of that decade) a reason for my liking it? Was it the austere film making where ticking of a clock was the most important sound effect in the film? Was it because of the mesmerizing performances? Was it due to the theological and existential content?

Few films have exerted such profound and lasting influence on viewers the world over as The Bicycle Thieves, which was made sixty years ago. Its maker, the legendary master of Italian neo-realism, Vittorio de Sica (1901-1974), directed a series of outstanding films, but none with a greater impact on the connoisseur and commoner alike than The Bicycle Thieves.

“I always said I will never be married and sent far away,” says Nazneen, a skinny rural Bangladeshi girl whose eyes are full of sorrow. The sad mood of the film is immediately set. This is exactly how you get sucked into the depressing British film Brick Lane. The film revolves around the yearnings and the quest for self and identity of a female Bangladeshi immigrant living in London’s East End, an area called Brick Lane. Of course, the stories are of struggling and sorrow, but who says they have to be portrayed thus, cinematically as well? After all, Marjane Satrapi’s blatantly feminist film Persepolis tapped war, Iran’s turbulent history as well as the filmmaker cum graphic novelist’s own immigrant battles.

Jugu Abraham writes about South African filmmaker Gavin Hood’s film “Tsotsi” (Thug) (2005)
Tsotsi (2005)The film is an adaptation of the acclaimed anti-apartheid playwright Irish/South African Athol Fugard’s novel Tsotsi. Director Gavin Hood wrote the screenplay based on the novel. The film was a critical success winning the best foreign film Oscar along with other awards […]

Bikas Mishra reviews Mehreen Jabbar’s Ramchand Pakistani
Ramchand PakistaniKids often help us understand the world better! India and Pakistan badly needed this Ramchand to show our decision makers how innocent people suffer from their politics around border and eagerness to fight over it.
Well known Pakistani television director Mehreen Jabbar’s debut feature film “Ramchand Pakistani” approaches the […]

The Gods of Cinema must have smiled on Mumbai. How else can one explain the Ingmar Bergman retrospective getting a re-run, that too on public demand? In an age when tripe like Singh is King make it to the Toronto Fest, it’s a relief knowing that the Swedish Master still retains his share of ardent fans.

It was a night show on a weekday, yet the hall in central Mumbai was jam-packed. Playing on screen was the first film in Bergman’s celebrated “absence of God” trilogy Through a Glass Darkly…

Christopher Zalla, the debutant director who won the grand jury prize at Sundance last year for this film packs the film with immaculate drama of relationship. The city that he portrays is scary, it is a place where people don’t trust each other, nobody helps anybody yet nobody wants to go back to where they belong.

This has to be the best film of the year 2007. That it wasn’t nominated at the Academy Awards is their loss. Just a reflection of the fact that award shows are at best, only indicators of good cinema; they cannot sit in judgment over what is or what is not the best.

This time too, the dilemma is how to narrow down a list of great films made on the Nazi-infused Jewish Holocaust. While the last piece explored the greatest Holocaust classics, this one explores the best of contemporary films on the Holocaust. However the dilemma persists - are the films great by themselves or is it the magnitude of the subject itself that makes them great cinema? You tell me.

Crossed Tracks, (or Roman de Gare in French) the latest offering by the prolific filmmaker Claude Lelouch, comes across as a sophisticated and witty take on the spicy ‘train station’ thrillers one flips through hurriedly between lonesome journeys. Lelouch being one of the lesser revered contemporaries of the French New Wave auteurs and frequently bashed by the Cahier’s critics for his melodramatic sentiments, is in fact in this film very close to the themes of the masters like Truffaut, Chabrol and Godard …

If you haven’t seen a Won Kar-Wai film before this is not one that you ought to begin with. In fact I would not recommend it anyways. This is not a movie; it is a collection of images. Images that are so artificial, it’s preposterous trying to stick them together using a feature-length film. I am certain it has been made on a whim; Wong must have had an idea, and he has started shooting before something concrete could have come out of it.

Goodbye Bafana is another one of those movies which completely lose the plot what cinema is all about. And instead start dosing you with hard to bear values like sexism and a child asking “Is it fair?” and thus shaking the soul of her otherwise ruthless father. It’s a little difficult to comprehend how much popcorn does the average American viewer need to consume before finally getting onto something else?

Boil water, toss in some sugar, blend in a dash of lime juice and voila you get Sukkar Banat (Caramel) - the irresistibly sweet and sticky concoction used for waxing purposes in what actor-director Nadine Labaki calls “our part of the world.” And that’s the first thing about her delightful debut drama/romantic comedy Caramel. Its warm lighting, colourful ambience, playful mood and inviting exotica do not seem as Lebanese as Mediterranean in general. The setting might as well have been Spain or even old world France; you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. But then, Labaki’s focus is not as much on Lebanon’s socio-political turbulence or religious mayhem as it is on personal turmoil.

Germany’s Christian Petzold belongs to the new breed of European directors that loves to make films layered with meaning for the astute viewer. Russia’s Andrei Zvyagintsev mesmerized serious film-goers with his multi-layered films that urge film-goers to approach cinema as one would approach a challenging and intelligent puzzle to derive maximum entertainment. Spain’s multi-talented Alejandro Amenabar has proved that a holistic mix of good screenplay, music and direction can result in films that recall the precocious brilliance of the young Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane made so many decades ago.

Blanc (”White” in English) is easily the film lacking layers in Kieślowski’s Trois Couleurs trilogy. Though interestingly it is the film having the most rich storyline out of the three. Both Bleu and Rouge have stories that are simple if you consider a story by the number of events that happen and the number of twists that the tale takes. Yet, both are exceedingly rich in metaphors, in cinematic challenges achieved, in the psychological depths that they enter into through their characters and of their characters, and both are extremely thought-provoking.

By the grace of Google I know approximately 284 films have been made on one of the most malicious events in history - the Holocaust. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) defines the Holocaust as “the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.” But the concept of Holocaust cinema envelops films dealing not just with the Holocaust itself but World War II as well. This is simply because the two historic episodes are as inseparable as two sides of one coin. However, I have tried to stick to USHMM’s definition as much as possible, in selecting the greatest Holocaust films ever made. But before we get to the list I’d like to mention a quick disclaimer. This article is not a celebration of sadism. Some of the greatest films ever made happen to be Holocaust films

I fell in love with Kozintsev’s King Lear some 30 years ago and I continue to be enraptured by the black-and-white film shot in cinemascope each time I see it. Each time you view the film, one realizes that a creative genius can embellish another masterpiece from another medium by providing food for thought—much beyond what Shakespeare offered his audiences centuries ago. Purists like Lord Laurence Olivier and Peter Brook offered cinematic versions of the play that remained true to what the Bard originally intended, only refining performances within the accepted matrices.

[ May 30, 2008; 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm. ] The best thing about Krzysztof Kieślowski’s A Short Film About Love is probably that it shows an aspect of love which is very, very less understood, and is able to demonstrate that love has myriad forms, takes myriad sentiments as its ways of outpouring, including those banned by society to be even thought of: cases in point being incest, voyeurism, lust itself (and not as something distinct) and a sadistic desire and search for pain.

Unlike earlier generations of film enthusiasts I haven’t known Clint Eastwood as an action hero, though I have loved those fantastic westerns. I have known him as a director of films like The Bridges of Madison County and Million Dollar Baby; soulful renditions. And then I saw Letters from Iwo Jima.
In 2005, a group of Japanese archaeologists come across a sack of letters while exploring tunnels dug in the island of Iwo Jima back in 1944. Buried there towards the desperate end of the war by Private First Class Saigo, they were letters the soldiers wrote to their families, which never left the island. Words from those letters take us through the story of the battle for Iwo Jima.

[ May 12, 2008; 9:01 pm to 11:00 pm. ] The William Faulkner of cinema, Alain Resnais through La Guerre Est Finie (”The War Is Over”) does not only a brilliant psychological study of the revolutionary but also of the resistance itself. The spirit, the anger, the disjointedness, the weariness, the inspiration, the mechanical, the loss of charm, the loss of ideology with the gain of further knowledge, the loss of innocence in more ways than virginal: how often do you find a film that can catch all this?

To say a simple thing, yet beautifully, yet effectively, to show a story which hadn’t had to use far stretches of imaginations, except the most inspiring ones of what happens between a young man and a young girl when they are in love with each other, and when it’s first love for both of them, to do all this you not only require a director of the calibre of Ingmar Bergman, but you also require an actress like Maj-Britt Nilsson. She is so natural, so much the Marie, the playful, winsome ballerina she is playing in the film, you don’t even realise that these are actors and this is a film. More crucially, Bergman has stuck true to the title (literally “Summer Games”), so the film is a long sequence of youthful love which you don’t otherwise get at all in films.

While watching this movie I was often reminded of the word lush. It is the lush emerald scenery, the lush colors, the lush texture of fabrics, the lush succulence of food…this film is a feast for the senses, a sight for sore eyes! With its mixture of the scents of summer and the moist coolness of rain, this is one of the most enchantingly atmospheric films I’ve ever seen!

Nothing quite beats the ennui out of a droning afternoon, like a great film. And few films manage to do that over and over again. For me, Chungking Express is that magical film. Its visual energy and celebration of the Coca Cola-sipping, Mc Donald hamburger-eating and California Dreamin’-crooning lifestyle, bounces you out of your boredom and kicks you back into action.

Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is arguably his most exquisite film to date. The film is full of unending layers and juxtapositions. Innocence meets ferocity, beauty meets beastly barbarism and love meets deceit which in turn meets love. Predator hunts prey, they swap roles, and love develops out of their savagery. Yes, it is complex with layers unfolding into layers.

Every now and then comes along a musical that tries to be more opulent and spectacular than its last predecessor. A few of these get lost in the process of flashing their epic-scale magnificence. And then, once in years, comes a musical that changes everything. I’m talking about Once – the Irish modern day musical that has wowed international viewers and critics alike. Winner of about 12 international awards including an Oscar and the Sundance Audience Award for World Cinema …

The first few minutes into the film introduce you to breathtaking effect of the cinema of Fados. You have shadows of live individuals walking as they do on a street (you do not see them under direct light). These shadows fall on a screen where another film image is projected. The present and the past merge. As the opening credits roll, you realize you are being seduced by the kinetic images. And even up to the final shot of the film, you realize that you are under the spell of creative use of shadows, images, mirrors, projection screens and shiny reflecting dance floors…..

“The Orphanage” is destined to draw comparison to “The Devil’s Backbone,” producer Guillermo del Toro’s frightening and atmospheric 2004 ghost story, in which another orphanage is at the heart of supernatural goings-on involving apparitions of children.

Directed byJuan Antonio Bayona, “The Orphanage” (or “El Orfanato” in it’s native Spain) stands on it’s own feet, however, similarities to the aforementioned spine-tingler extending to the film’s steadily heightening atmosphere and love for dark corners…

Bleu (in English, Blue), from the Trois Couleurs trilogy of Krzysztof Kieślowski, is all about the pain of love. In many ways, the film reminded me of the Italian masterpiece Cinema Paradiso, but both films take completely different aspects of the same theme. While Cinema Paradiso is about the pain of unrequited love, unfulfilled love, Bleu is about the pain of love that is lost, love that seems never to wash us again, love that seems to have filled up our life with its suffocating scent for ever.

Jugu Abraham reviews veteran Czech director Jiri Menzel’s 2006 film that won FIPRESCI Prize at Berlin International Film Festival 2007.
I Served the King of England (2007)The works of Czech director Jiri Menzel constitute a tasty cocktail of humanism and laughter. In I served the King of England this cocktail is personified in the words spoken […]

Satyen K. Bordoloi reviews Palme d’Or winner at Cannes 2007 Romanian film 4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile that’s getting released in India this weekend

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (2007)The longest take is close to 8 minutes in this movie full of long takes. Only twice in ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks And […]

Passenger is not about plot devices and contrivances. Like Blow Up it is about a man caught up in a lifestyle so passive that he would do anything to get away from it. And like L’Avventura the mystery/thriller element here is merely incidental. Perhaps ennui can be portrayed in more interesting ways that what Antonioni had resorted to in Zabriskie Point and here. Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life) is the perfect example of how even an exploration of existential angst can be downright entertaining. Antonioni’s style, with the notable exception of his masterpiece BlowUp, is much more langorous and demanding. […]

Review of 2001 entry from Australia for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the Spanish language film La Spagnola.

La Spagnola (2000) is an unconventional film, it’s another one in a line of those films which somehow only succeed in showing a woman helpless, in showing her in need of a man always.

La Spagnola is for me the Australian version of Merci, La Vie. It’s interesting that while both films show men always lusting after women, as lechers, yet it’s the women who probably show up in a poorer light than men themselves - the unresisting…

[ March 2, 2008; 11:00 pm; ] How many times you’ve felt like crying after watching a movie? How often you’ve felt that what you just saw on screen could have been you? And how often you’ve left the theatre in such a contemplative mood as if you’ll change the course of history?

If you really look for that elusive feeling called satisfaction after watching a film, here’s a rare treat from Chilean director Andrés Wood.

The Counterfeiter by Stefan Ruzowitzky has won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. The film, based on Adolf Burger’s memoirs of the Nazi period, tells the story of Salomon Sorowitsch, king of fraudsters in a world of gamblers, gigolos and easy women, who is forced by the Nazis to use his counterfeiting talents on the trading floor, caught up in a war in which he is destined to perish. Like other Jews recruited in the concentration camps

Awaiting every new release from director Gus Van Sant has been a treat since 1997’s “Good Will Hunting.” A master director whose crowning achievement has to be 2003’s “Elephant,” Van Sant completes his so-called stoic trilogy - including the aforesaid masterpiece and 2005’s “Last Days” - with “Paranoid Park,”

An Oscar nominee ahead of countless superior pictures, “Mongol” surely only got there in the Best Foreign Language Film category because of Oscar’s apparent rebellion against viewers pushing for better films like “Persepolis,” “The Band’s Visit,” “4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days,” “The Orphanage” and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”

This film is a non-linear movie about the life of France’s musical soul, Edith Piaf, played by the excellent Marion Cotillard. Piaf begins life as the daughter of a poor mother and an absentee father. Soon the father returns and moves his daughter to a brothel, and later returns for her once again to take her traveling with his circus.

The recipient of the Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, “Persepolis” is a compelling, wonderfully told film based on the autobiographical graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, writes Tom Elce
Persepolis (2007)A vivid and personal account of the years following the 1979 Islamic revolution told from the point-of-view of writer-director Marjane Satrapi as she grew […]

Jugu Abraham reviews Canadian filmmaker Paolo Barzman’s second film “Emotional Arithmetic” (2007)
Emotional ArithmeticIt is fascinating how the horrors of World War II continue to spark off good, intelligent cinema around the world even after a gap of over half a century.
Emotional Arithmetic, based on a novel by Mark Cohen (I guess, a Jew), begins with […]

“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is absolute gorgeous. There are few other words for it. Emotionally, I cannot call it heartbreaking, because it is about a man who achieves what he sets out to achieve, and there is nothing tragic in that. Jean-Do’s immobile life is a stunning success, and although it ended early, it ended on a note of deserved beatitude.

Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Rolling Stones is all set to rock India, reports a DearCinema Correspondent
Shine a Light, Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ron Wood, Photo courtesy: IMDbMumbai based world cinema distributors, Palador Pictures, have announced to theatrically release Matin Scorsese documentary on the cult rock band Rolling Stones Shine a Light […]

Jugu Abraham writes on Turkish director Abdullah Oguz’s film that won special jury prize at Kerala International Film Festival 2007
Mutluluk (2007)Some forty years ago, one went to a movie because it was based on a famous book. Today, you are more likely to ferret out a book because the movie on which the film was […]

[ March 14, 2008; 11:00 am to 11:00 pm. ]
Tom Elce reviews Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a film that won Golden Palm and FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes 2007
Romanian cinema has been surprisingly prolific despite a fairly limited output. Averaging less than ten cinematic outputs in recent years, Romania has nonetheless managed to produce films that have set […]

Jugu Abraham writes on Chinese director Yang Zhang’s “Luo ye gui gen (Getting home) that won the 2007 Berlin Film Festival Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the Best Asian film NETPAC award at the recent International Film Festival of Kerala.
Luo Ye Gui Gen: Getting Home“A falling leaf returns to its roots” is a Chinese […]

PK Nair, the founder director of NFAI, recieving the certificate of felicitation from French actress Olivia BonamyWorld Cinema seems to be in the air this season, while five Indian cities are having a rendezvous with French Cinema, the pioneers of this segment in India, Palador Pictures have releases a DVD set of legendary French director […]

Salvatore would never leave his first loves throughout his life. A film that opens the magic of first loves, of a persona that develops when you go with your first loves, when you have the courage to do it instead of joining a rat race; the film that “teaches” you love, is the film Nuovo […]

Director Melville, one of the stalwarts of the new wave genre, films Le Samourai as a thriller with a cinema-verite approach, creating an atmosphere through pauses and an eye for detail. His style here, is for the lack of a better term, “pure filmmaking”, writes Aniruddha Basu
“There is no solitude greater than a samurai’s,” “Unless […]

Has the world cinema really arrived in India, Bikas Mishra ponders in the wake of initiatives such as Palador DVD releases and the launch of NDTV Lumiere
NDTV LumiereWatching 13 Tzameti, a Georgian film, in Metro Adlabs theatre of Mumbai, I felt that world cinema has finally arrived in India. From elite groups of film clubs […]

Jugu Abraham writes on Chadean filmmaker Mahamet-Saleh Haroun’s film “Daratt (Dry Season) that won Venice Film Festival’s Grand Special Jury Prize in 2007
DarattThere are a handful of films from Africa that can leap out like a big cat from the celluloid jungle and make the viewer think.
A recent example is Daratt (Dry Season), a movie […]

“When would you begin loving a story?,” asks Ankur Agarwal on seeing Jules et Jim, filmed on Henri-Pierre Roche’s novel with the same name, a story “beautiful.”
Courtesy www.brightlightsfilm.comLong after seeing it, I hazard to review it – it’s not an easy film to review, to judge. Most of the times you tend to get absorbed […]

The Mourning Forest is a sensitive film tracing a senile old man’s quixotic pilgrimage to his wife’s grave in a forest interlocking a mystical relationship with nature, writes Jugu Abraham
Mourning ForestThere are directors who write their own original stories and scripts and there are those directors who bring to the screen works of novelists, playwrights, […]

Kay reviews Majid Majidi’s 2001 film Baran
BaranOne filmmaker I truly admire is Majid Majidi because the simplicity of his characters warms your heart and yet leaves you poignant. After giving a masterpiece like ‘children of heaven’ Majidi scripts a beautiful love story ‘Baran’ set in a war torn country.
Baran is a story about the deplorable […]

A blind man, a beautiful girl into drama and music loves him - how could he be not insecure? - that’s the stuff, the simple emotional fabric, the rubric that great stories are made of, says Ankur Agarwal about one of the stories in the anthology Paris, je t’aime.
Courtesy cms.film.gery.plUnlike Dus Kahaaniyan, this movie does […]

There is a touch of director Andrei Tarkovsky in Reygadas’ Silent Light as he captures the magical, fleeting moments in life, writes Jugu Abraham
Can light have sound? So what is silent light? Something surreal, somehow related to the Christian hymn Silent night? TheA still from Silent Light intriguing answers are provided in the film to […]

In the second part of Bikas Mishra’s conversation with Márta Mészáros, the legendary Hungarian filmmaker talks about the state of European cinema and her upcoming film.
Cleo Ladányi in Márta Mészáros’ Little VilmaMárta Mészáros’s cinema has always been textured with her childhood memories of Hungary that she left for Russia (then USSR). She belongs to the […]

OLDBOY presents an issue some people will find disturbing, sprinkled with some equally graphic violence. Cinematically the film is rich, emotionally intense and layered with serious undertone, writes Gaurav Singh
Min-sik Choi in OldboyIt was one of those times when a good friend and I were indulging in a week long session of drinking, eating and […]

Márta Mészáros, the grand old lady of central European cinema recently visited India as the Chairperson of International Film Festival Jury. Bikas Mishra met the septuagenarian filmmaker who’s busy making her next film. Excerpts from the conversation.
Márta Mészáros in MumbaiI always believed that great filmmakers belong to some different world and the only way to […]

The Banishment is a film that requires several viewings to savor its many ingredients of photography, music, and screenplay writing, writes Jugu Abraham
The BanishmentAndrei Zvyagintsev’s second film The Banishment, if evaluated closely, could arguably be as interesting as his first film The Return, if not better. Both relate to related concepts “Father” and “Love/Absence of […]

Young Hana Makhmalbaf’s achievement in cinema makes you think about the increasing use of children to deal with adult issues. In this film, the story is almost entirely seen from children’s point of view–making the film agreeable to the viewer, instead of employing shrill adult views on the brutal and non-secular Taliban, writes Jugu Abraham
Buddha […]

Sabiha Sumar’s Khamosh Pani is a brilliant work showcasing the plight of women during periods of political upheaval, writes Kay
A still from Khamosh PaniPartition has been a favorite subject in Bollywood but not many films have attempted to show the real trauma and aftermath of partition. Sabiha Sumar weaves a story of one such woman […]

Osama aptly depicts how religious fundamentalism and military aggression are two sides of patriarchy that aim to seek control and gain power over women, writes Kay
OsamaDirected by Siddiq Barmak Osama is a film that raises your goose bums and leaves your spine chilling with horror. And before you assume that this film is about Osama […]

More people need to see the Stefan Haupt’s A Song for Argyris so that similar horrors are not perpetrated elsewhere in the world. Haupt offers open-ended options to deal with grief, which makes you think how you ought to deal with personal grief, writes Jugu Abraham
Ein Lied für Argyris: A Song For Argyris (2006)Here is […]

The film is open to a host of interpretations – each viewer can draw his own inference, own morals, even own story – says Ankur Agarwal about the 1990 Bertrand Blier film, Merci, La Vie.
Still courtesy of dvdtimes.co.ukThis is a film I would want every film to be, when there is no narrative to tell. […]

Adoption ends in a freeze frame-Kata on the road with her baby about to board a bus, probably on a journey far away from submission and in the search of her own happiness, writes Bikas Mishra
AdoptionHungarian director Márta Mészáros’s is known for the political nature of her films. Her diary series takes one to the […]

if you believe in the poetry of everyday life, watching The Naked Island could be a memorable experience, writes Bikas Mishra
Hadaka no shima (1960) : The IslandCinema as a medium has been rapidly undergoing a transformation. In the era of Terminators and Jurassic Parks, we might feel that it’s the new technology that empowers […]

The whole film is an unvarying social commentary, upon the times we live in, upon the way rich and society-conscious people live, and upon the simple ways that give you pleasure in life and that never change with time, not just an uncontrolled slapstick comedy, says Ankur Agarwal about this 1958 Academy Award winner for […]

He had loved truly - that was only for once. Let the glass be dashed to pieces before drinking from any other; this is the tragedy of The Accompanist according to Ankur Agarwal
L’Accompagnatrice: The Art Of SubsumptionUsually, French films haunt you by their atmosphere, by their lethargy-inducing pace, by the thick rings of smoke and […]

The art instructor is rude and pricks her to the heart, yet Mina has the courage to answer that to place a nude among clothed does not require courage, writes Ankur Agarwal
Mina TannenbaumA multilayered story, at first glance it looks quite frivolous, and you tend to frown upon encountering such a film, upon getting conned […]

Sensitively and intelligently handled this movie stands heads and shoulders above all the other teenagers-awakening-into-adulthood kind of movies made anywhere for it is honest in its storytelling, write Vedavyasa Bhat
Awesome piece of what I would call in my terminology dry comedy & intense underlying drama. Dry comedy to me is when the comedy is […]

Every scene, every sequence is carefully created. You remove one and the whole film collapses, write Jugu Abraham
WinterlightIngmar Bergman realized this was the film (with the arguable exception of Fanny and Alexander) that satisfied him most among his entire body of work. And this was not a casual remark made by a director to promote […]

The Departed is one of the most astounding movies I’ve seen that indicts America for its exhibition of insensitivity and xenophobia, writes Abhishek Bandekar
The DepartedMartin Scorsese’s The Departed is one of the most beautifully layered pieces of modern cinema that deftly and effortlessly sieves together the best of literature & cinema, pop culture & politics, […]

It’s a great film, but not necessarily a film that can give you pleasure. But, yes, it will give you fodder for thought - too much of it, Ankur Agrawal writes on Jean Luc Godard film also known as It’s My Life or My Life to Live
Anna Karina in Vivre Sa VieI read somewhere an […]

The film has been beautifully shot. I could feel the hot perspiration on myself when I saw Jean toiling in the hills for trickles of water, writes Ankur Agrawal
Daniel Auteuil and Yves Montand in Jean de Florette, Photo courtesy: The GuardianJean de Florette is a wonderfully made film - all the actors play their parts […]

Day for Night has quite an unusual cinematic structure where things happen in a manner that looks difficult to achieve with a script, writes Bikas Mishra
Truffaut in the Day for NightA stone deaf director whose “ear was messed up when he was in the artillery”! An unattractive production manager whose wife follows him on the […]

I got to watch a couple of foreign movies recently, thanks to a gem of a library called Habitat in Bangalore. After watching Amores Perros, I thought I should check out lesser known (to me at least!) movies as they give a refreshing change from the oft seen faces of Hollywood and Bollywood, writes Vedvyasa Bhat
Cronicas
Written […]

Elephant is a work of an auteur. It’s so original in its style that people used to conventional storytelling could feel uneasy, writes Bikas Mishra on Gus Van San’t 2003 film.
ElephantA low angle shot, camera looking up at the blue sky as the clouds float by. A lamp post and electric wires create […]

This is a thinking person’s film. After viewing the film several times, one is in awe of this filmmaker so prolific, so perfect and so sensitive, writes Jugu Abraham
Through the glass darklyThis film’s title is taken from the Bible: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know […]

It’s an exhilarating mix of comedy, violence, high melodrama and angst and the dialogues flow so naturally that I suspect much of the script was improvised on location, writes Aniruddha Basu

La HaineI have just finished watching the 1995 French film La Haine for the second time (my first time being five years back as a […]

[ November 30, 1999; 12:00 am; ] What happens when the life of a Stasi spy meets with the life of a contemplative writer artist during the communist East Germany in 1984? The answer, the spy becomes a sensitive “good man” and the artist perfects the art of being discreet.

The deeper question is whether Kieslowski was using marriage as a metaphor for politics? There is the mention of the Russian corpse with the head crushed for sale, there is a mention of the neon sign that sputters…The name Karol seems reminiscent of Kafka, writes Jugu Abraham
Three Colors: WhiteOstensibly Kieslowski chose white of the French […]

Here is a film so spiritual in content with no obvious markings of being a cinematic essay based on an entire abstract chapter in the New Testament—-a chapter that could fit into the holy books of any religion, writes Jugu Abraham
A Still from Three Colors: BlueA film on I Corinthians Chapter 13, just as Kieslowski’s […]

Anirban Lahiri writes on Mrinal Sen’s 1970 film Interview and the poor state of preservation of our celluloid heritage.
Bulbul Mukherjee in Mrinal Sen’s Interview, photo courtesy: mrinalsen.orgMrinal Sen is obsessed with commenting on bureaucracy and bureaucrats. Off and on, he has gone out to villages for films like Baishey Shravana (1960), Matira Manisha (1966), Mrigaya […]

Vedavyasa Bhat, an avid movie buff finally watched Amores Perros and got amazed.
A still from Amores PerrosBlame it on non-accessibility of better cinema or blame it on my inclination towards commercial cinema, just didn’t get down to watching serious and powerful cinema. But like I said, late..but finally !
Unfortunately,I got to watch this gem of […]

Senior film critic Jugu Abraham revisits Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point and pays his tribute to the “flawed genius”

Daria Halprin and Mark Frechette in Zabriskie PointWhen I saw the film for the first time in the early 1970s, I was in awe of this film. Visually, it was stunning and the events on campuses in Europe […]

I watched Cries and Whispers last night on DVD, for the nth time. Needless to say, I wept during the same moments I have always wept, write Arindam Ghatak remembering Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman 1918-2007A moment of heart-stopping joy… A moment of sharp-shooting pain… These two often visit you hand-in-hand, they can rarely do without each […]

Ingmar Bergman 1918-2007Somehow the images of the Professor Isak Borg from Wild Strawberries and Ingmar Bergman have got mixed up in my memory. Whenever I think of the master, the professor’s melancholic face flashes before my eyes. Like the professor who came alive in the evocative masterpiece, Bergman himself uncompromisingly and […]

From Ozu to Tezab and Volver to Nirupa Roy, Anaya’s rather “melodramatic note” on films, she loves
A still from Ozu’s Floating WeedsMy genes of the fertile plains of the Mahanadi belt, still like their occasional dose of melodrama, Rajni pyrotechniques and Nirupa Royesque motherhood, as […]

Do banish me from theaters for a lifetime but tell me, what the Potter film is all about?? Cries Bikas Mishra
Potter with his magic wand!!It took my maid to shake off my slumber and force me to venture out to the happening theaters where Harry Potter was waving his magic wand. Did you watch the […]

A signature Wong Kar Wai film. Full of passion, grief and melancholy, Bikas Mishra writes
Along with ‘In The Mood for Love’ and ‘2046′, ‘Days of being Wild’ forms a sort of trilogy. Stories of pain, loss and unfulfilled love. A film that fills one with a sense of melancholy.
I don’t know why love always remains […]

Sharmila Tagore as DeviDevi is beautiful from the very first frame -from a close up of the idol of the Goddess, camera moves to reveal the gathering of an entire village for the evening prayers.
I would go a step further and say, Devi is probably the most overtly political Ray film, that takes a stand […]

A still for ShutterShutter is another Southeast Asian horror film that reinforces my belief that no body can understand horror as well as our oriental cousins. Bollywood and Hollywood both can take much needed lessons from this horror gem in how to create a truly creepy work on celluloid.
This Thai horror film operates on a […]

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