When I moved to Boston for college I remember hearing about a weird law that precluded more than four women from sharing the same residence. The story went that as soon as a house hit that magic female number it was deemed a brothel. It was something that people laughed about. What an absurd and antiquated…
Tanu Weds Manu Returns is the sequel to Tanu Weds Manu (2011) directed by Anand L. Rai of Ranjhnaa fame. Kangana Ranut’s stellar performance as a double role has cemented her reputation as one the few outstanding actresses out of the current crop in Bollywood.
For all the gasps that may fill the cinema as Mala, one of the more prominently featured members of the eponymous group in The Backward Class, describes a vague recollection of an argument between her parents that left her mother ablaze, it’s the quiet moments of…
Death comes for us all, in the end. It haunts the conscious thinker at the very least periodically that all of this, at long last or short, will come to an end. Everything you are and everything you know may fall away in an instant, leaving nothing where you once stood. But what if it didn’t? The concept of immortality as an achievable goal …
It seems that every time I come to review a documentary, I have the urge to expound on the virtues and potential great fortune of the medium. For like any genre of film, documentary has the ability to transcend mere entertainment. Regardless of whether its subject is biographical, historical, or political, it can permeate…
All the highlights of the news from yesterday with stories on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies gaining Game of Thrones veterans and HBO announces leads for True Detective season two.
The first of two films (the second being Joi Baba Felunath, reviewed here) directed by Satyajit Ray that follow his own Sherlock Holmes’esque literary creations, detective Feluda and his companions Topshe and Jatayu, Sonar Kella is filled with mystery and intrigue accessible to all ages as it travels through ancient cities and the ruins of …
Behemoths of war rumble overhead and block out the sun in shadows carved from steel as people living ancient agrarian lifestyles look upward and see the inevitable conclusion of their way of life. Neighbors become competitors for dwindling resources as scarcity is manufactured from fear and the death of empathy triggered by …
Everywhere in the sweltering concrete expanses of Calcutta, men and women are competing for precious few jobs, candidates strictly vetted by their political affiliations, ideological preferences, and proficiency in English. Such exacting standards can only thrive in an environment where workers vastly outnumber available jobs, giving …
For Satyajit Ray’s third feature, he took a break from his Apu Trilogy to make a film about a broken man, once important but now barely remembered and then only as a formality. This man, Huzur Biswambhar Roy (Chhabi Biswas), was the landowner of an entire area who lived in an elaborate palace with his wife Mahamaya …