West is West is an odd film. You wonder about why it was made – or at least why it was made in 2011. Ayub Khan-Din is a British actor and playwright whose 1997 play East is East was adapted as a film in 1999 and was a considerable commercial hit. At the time I … Continue reading
Another gem from Rossellini, this film (which operates under various titles) is not quite what I expected given the general critical writing on Rossellini. On the other hand, if I’d never read any Rossellini profiles I would have recognised aspects of the film from European cinema generally around 1960. The common view is that after … Continue reading
Here is a film from a director who deserves the title of ‘Contemporary Master’ because of his skill in constructing stories rich in everyday details. Several of his films have unusual stories at their centre, but each set of characters is presented without anything other than seemingly simple observation. We learn a great deal about … Continue reading
There are many interesting ways into The Woman in the Fifth. It’s another French film in which Kristin Scott Thomas plays a role which requires her character to adopt a background to explain the fact that she speaks English and French and up to five other languages. It is also an entry into the relatively … Continue reading
When a subtitled film gets a wide release, I’m always torn between elation that it is going to be more widely seen and a terrible fear that there will just be two of us in the multiplex screen. The other possibility is that people will see it and loathe it. I wondered if this might … Continue reading
Here’s India’s biggest film of the year so far, a Karan Johar production no less. The Hindi title translates as ‘This Youth Is Crazy’ – not really very helpful as a title as the film is bang-centre mainstream and conventional. I decided to see it partly because I’ve been impressed by two of the leads, … Continue reading
