Spotlight on Film

15 American Road Movies: A Genre of Its Own

An unparalleled sense of freedom. The vastness of a landscape. The romance of a road – no wonder America fell in love with a road movie. Apart from criminals on the run, road travellers in films are also often on a journey of some sort of “self-discovery”, and one’s physical journey often occurs in tandem…

“The Masters of Time” Review: Heady with an Unforgettable Twist

The Masters of Time [1982] – ★★★★ French director René Laloux is known for mind-bending French animation Fantastic Planet (1973), which he made in collaboration with Roland Topor, but after its international success he also made two other animations – The Masters of Time (1982) and Gandahar (1987). The Masters of Time is a Franco-Hungarian production,…

10 Great Films Set in Small-Town America

Summer is often associated with countryside-living, and, thus, now may be a perfect time to think about those films that tell of the lives lived outside big towns and cities. When one thinks about the hot season, one may conjure up long, lazy afternoons with a book, lawn picnics in the shade of trees, and…

“Carrie” Review

Carrie [1952] – ★★★★ Scene: 1889; a charismatic and rich restauranteur catches sight of one shy and poorly dressed young woman who has just arrived to his upscale restaurant for a date she no longer wants. Another scene: a train is about to start its journey, a man is seen on the train, a girl is still…

5 Great Speeches in Film

You may forget any film’s plot or characters, but you may never forget how that film made you feel. The power/memorability of speeches in film can be immense if handled right and in the hands of capable actors. Below are 5 memorable speeches found in films, coming from such great actors as Al Pacino, Mel…

Remembering Henry Mancini

Henry Mancini (16 April 1924 – 14 June 1994) was a prolific American composer and pianist, creating scores for such films as Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Charade (1963) and Touch of Evil (1958), and writing such well-known songs as “Moon River” and “Days of Wine & Roses”. Below is his “The Pink Panther Theme” from…

Short Reviews: Utama (2022), & There Will Be No Leave Today (1958)

Utama [2022] – ★★★1/2 Everything seems close to extinction in this film: a place, a mode of life, a language (Quechua), and maybe even the film itself, with its slow pace which may now be compared unfavourably with the recent popular trend of fast-paced, genre-bending flicks. Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s debut film Utama follows an elderly…

Short Animation: Le Retour des Vagues

Loving home is a place you always carry in your heart. Le Retour des Vagues (The Return of Waves) is a French short animation about a young man who returns to his hometown and finds that time has stopped there. It is a 2020 graduation project work by three students (Manon Cansell, Alejandra Guevara Cervera…

“Godland” Review

Godland [2022] – ★★★★ “To get back up to the shining world from there/My guide and I went into that hidden tunnel,/And Following its path we took no care/To rest, but climbed: he first, then I-so far/, through a round aperture I saw appear/Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears/, Where we came forth, and…

San Francisco: 7 Films Showcasing the City

“San Francisco has only one drawback – it is hard to leave“, once said Rudyard Kipling, and it is very easy to see the city’s glorious appeal: situated on hills and surrounded by a vast bay, it looks almost like some fairy-tale land with its jaw-dropping landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island,…

“The Widow of Saint-Pierre” Review

Patrice Leconte (1947-) is a French director and writer known for such films as The Girl on the Bridge (1999) and Man on the Train (2002). Much underrated, he is also the one who directed a historical drama-comedy and Academy Award-nominee Ridicule (1996), as well as an outrageous, black humour-suffused animation The Suicide Shop (2012)….

“M3GAN” Review

M3GAN [2023] – ★★★ Everything in M3GAN is “in vogue”: sentient artificial intelligence (readers must have had their fill of it with Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and McEwan’s Machines Like Me, and viewers – with After Yang (2021), Finch (2021) and Brian and Charles (2022)), cinematic mishmash of genres, and, in line with Ari Aster’s popular…

“Harvey” Review

Harvey [1950] – ★★★★ 🐇While perhaps trivialising some serious issues, Harvey still presents a sweet and delightful comedy-drama about one eccentric man who befriends an imaginary (or possibly just invisible!) giant rabbit. This play-based film focuses on a 42 year-old bachelor Elwood P. Dowd (James Stewart) who is in the habit of talking to his friend…

7 Most Brutal & Violent Historical Dramas

I. The Proposition [2005] Centering around three very different brothers embroiled in the life of crime in 1880s Australia, John Hillcoat’s brutal western is bound to leave an impression. The scriptwriter of this under-seen gem is musician Nick Cave, and the story tells of a lawman (Winstone) who makes the proposition to an outlaw (Pierce):…

“The Return of Martin Guerre” Review

The Return of Martin Guerre [1982] – ★★★★ From Hitchcock’s Vertigo [1958] to Mangold’s Identity [2003], there is nothing like a film that makes the audience question the identity of a character, and The Return of Martin Guerre is not only one of those interestingly-premised films, but it is also one based on a true story…

“Height” Review

Height [1957] – ★★★★ Italo Calvino, an Italian writer, said that “a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” If we apply this quote to a film, then Height may be one of these classics, too. Based on a novel of 1952 by Evgeny Vorobyov, Height is a…

“A Blast from the Past”: 7 Italian Cinema Recommendations

I. The Tree of Wooden Clogs [1978] This Palme d’Or winner shows “[l]ife on a farm in Italy at the end of the 19th century. Many poor country families live there, and the owner pays them by their productivity. One of the families has a very clever child, and they decide to send him to…

Film Scene Spotlight: Joel Schumacher’s Cousins

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of my followers! In spirit of all the onscreen love and its lovers, today’s highlighted film scene is from Joel Schumacher’s romantic comedy Cousins [1989], which is a remake of French comedy Cousin Cousine [1975]. Now, this film is no masterpiece by any stretch of imagination, and suffers on almost all fronts,…

“White Material” Review

White Material [2009] – ★★★★1/2 White Material is set in one unspecified French colonial African country, and follows Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert), an owner of a large coffee plantation. Well-known to the area, Maria lives on the estate with her ex-husband Andre (Christopher Lambert), her ex-husband’s father Henri and grown-up son Manuel. However, there are…

Top 10 “Mary Poppins” Songs: Ranked

I. Chim Chim Cheree This is the catchiest tune in the whole film. It is so simple and yet so inexplicably endearing. Bert nearly steals the whole film from Mary Poppins with this song, showing his cheery disposition, but also hinting at the underlying injustice – “the social ladder has been strung”. Pavement Artist is the…