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Ornamental Hairpin [1941] – A Japanese Wartime Drama that Skilfilly Combines...
Hiroshi Shimizu’sOrnamental Hairpin (‘Kanzashi’, 1941) along with the director’s other two talkies – Mr. Thank You (‘Arigato-san’, 1936) & The Masseurs and a Woman (‘Anma to onna’, 1938) – were...
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Detour [1945] – An Intense and Concise Film Noir of the Classic Era
Film movements and newly flourishing film culture have often helped movie enthusiasts to re-evaluate or re-discover particular style of films. This was particularly true of film noir (of the 40s) which...
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Half Nelson [2006] – A Teacher & Student’s Search for Identity
Half Nelson refers to a wrestling hold in which a wrestler’s arm is passed under his opponent’s armpit and the hand is holding the back of the opponent’s neck; an uncomfortable position in which the...
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Pitfall [1962] – An Inventive, Allegorical Cross-Genre Cinema
Pitfall (‘Otoshiana’, 1962) marks the first of the four intriguing collaborations between director Hiroshi Teshigahara, novelist and playwright Kobo Abe (who adapted his own novels), and the renowned...
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The Big Clock [1948] – A Suspenseful Newsroom Noir
John Farrow’sThe Big Clock (1948) is the movie equivalent of a delightfully tense page-turner. Based on Kenneth Fearing’s novel and adapted by Jonathan Latimer, it’s one of the minor classic of...
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Linda Linda Linda [2005] – A Typical Heart-Warming Tale Laced with...
Nobuhiro Yamashita’s charming, nostalgia-tinged offbeat dramas have a calming effect on me. His deadpan minimalism, the simple narrative largely free of manipulations, the relaxed mid to long shots,...
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Reversal of Fortune [1990] – A Taut Drama with Questions about Legality and...
What do you give a wife that has everything? A shot of insulinSwiss film-maker Barbet Schroeder’s movie career is going strong even after five decades. Born (26 August 1941) to a Swiss Geologist dad in...
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Sorry, Wrong Number [1948] – A Classic Claustrophobic Suspense Flick
Anatole Litvak’s taut noir drama, ‘Sorry, Wrong Number’(1948) is an adaptation of Lucille Fletcher’s 22-minute radio play. The script for the film was written by the original author, embellishing the...
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Copycat [1995] – A Gripping Thriller with Two Strong Female Leads
Jon Amiel’s serial-killer thriller Copycat (1995) starts off in a very academic or didactic manner. The film opens with a criminal psychologist addressing a large classroom of students about ‘what...
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Wait Until Dark [1967] – A Classic Suspense Thriller
Frederic Knott’s 1966 Broadway play Wait Until Dark is anything but contrived. The same could be said about the 1967 adaptation by Terrence Young. But it also happens to be one of the tensest thrillers...
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Le Corbeau [1943] – A Decidedly Bleak Picture on Human Duplicity and Frailties
Henri Georges Clouzot’s Occupation-era film, Le Corbeau (The Raven, 1943) although regarded as a masterpiece in the later decades, attracted lot of controversies in the immediate post-war period....
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Bug [2006] – A Profoundly Disturbing Claustrophobic Horror
A lonely and isolated individual could come across a loving personality who’s on the same page with him/her, and from whom a blissful bond is developed. But what if this lonely person meets an...
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Touki Bouki [1973] – A Visually Striking Critique on Post-Colonial Mentality...
Apart from being a master storyteller, Martin Scorsese was well-known for his encyclopedic knowledge about cinema and for his commitment to preserve or restore the lost and forgotten cinematic gems of...
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Emitai [1971] – A Thoughtful African Perspective on the Colonial Era
Ousmane Sembene, who has made a series of seminal Senagalese movies, is generally hailed as the‘father of African cinema’. Born in 1923, Sembene has worked at the docks of Marseilles, where he got...
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A Visitor to a Museum [1989] – An Unconventional Post-Apocalyptic Cinema with...
Konstantin Lopushansky’s heavily textured, nightmarish cinema projects a future for humankind that looks prophetic, although we wouldn't hope for it to happen. Lopushansky, who worked as production...
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Late Chrysanthemums [1954] – The Everyday Disappointments of Japanese Women...
Mikio Naruse’s first three adaptations of Fumiko Hayashi’s stories – Repast (1951), Lightning (1952), and Wife (1953) – explored how women’s social roles remain limited by traditional gender norms...
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Hopscotch [1980] – A Relentlessly Playful Espionage Comedy
British Author John le Carre’s legendary character George Smiley is anti-James Bond. He fights enemies with intelligence and his battlefield is a drab office interestingly referred to as The Circus....
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Forty Guns [1957] – An Audacious and Exciting Revisionist Western
Samuel Michael Fuller was one of the greatest maverick American film-makers whose unpredictable genre movies oft posed incendiary critiques on the decadent and hypocritical nature of the American...
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Young Mr. Lincoln [1939] – A Visually Eloquent & Lionized Portrayal of the...
The year 1939 was pivotal period in the film-making career of the America’s greatest director John Ford. By this time, Mr. Ford had been making movies for more than two decades, yet the works that...
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Manic [2001] – Troubled Youths and Unforgiving Environment
Jordan Melamed’s indie-feature Manic (2001) is a well-intentioned drama on young damaged souls who have no hope whatsover to win over their inner demons. Although, it’s not a very memorable or...
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Glory [2016] – A Universal and Timeless Tale of Bureaucratic Nightmare
East European cinema possesses the knack for offering subtle and powerful tales about people getting thrown under the wheels of apathetic bureaucracy system. Their film-makers (especially the auteurs...
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Birdboy: The Forgotten Children [2015] – The Quest for Freedom in a Strangely...
Pedro Rivera and Alberto Vazquez’s Spanish animated feature Birdboy: The Forgotten Children (‘Pscionautas, los ninos olvidados’, 2015) is a gloomy yet beautiful impressionistic parable of survival in...
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The Interview [1998] – A Taut, Solidly Crafted Police Procedural
At dawn one morning in Melbourne, police force led by Detective Sergeant John Steele (Tony Martin) bust into an apartment of a middle-aged man, who is slumbering in his recliner surrounded by stack of...
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The Paper [1994] – A Facile yet Delightfully Energetic Newspaper Movie
Ron Howard’sThe Paper (1994) centers on 24 hours in the life of the Sun, i.e., The New York Sun, a fictitious New York tabloid which like any traditional newspaper is torn between idealism and...
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Composition Class [1938] – The Strengths and Inconveniences of Honesty
It’s fascinating to witness the number of Japanese studio films from 1930s that focuses on the social and economic situation of the underclass. Yasujiro Ozu’s Passing Fancy (1933), An Inn in Tokyo...
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