Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Mar 21, 2010, 2:46 am
The Hurt Locker starts with the iconic quote “War is drug”, and then goes about both backing and demystifying the statement. One of the best movies on that historical blunder of genocidal proporti...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Mar 20, 2010, 3:03 am
033 conforms to the themes of its predecessor Madly Bengali in that it is about a Bangla Rock Band, it is about a group of four egocentric and lost youths who learn to come to terms with themselves, a...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Mar 18, 2010, 1:27 pm
Bengali auteur Rituparno Ghosh’s latest feature, Abohomaan, continues with his life-long fascination with the subtleties and layers that define human relationships. And, in the vein of Shob Choritro...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Mar 13, 2010, 1:01 pm
Spider, unlike his earlier films, might not be bordering on the bizarre or grotesque, but it is in line with Canadian horror maestro David Cronenberg’s latent obsession with delving into the darkest...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Mar 10, 2010, 11:34 am
A number of critics have called Cache Austrian provocateur Michael Haneke’s most accessible film vis-à-vis his other works like Funny Games and The Piano Teacher, because of its lack of nerve-racki...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Mar 9, 2010, 11:55 am
Nowhere in Africa, based on the best-selling autobiographical novel of the same name, is a tale of love lost and found, an epic account of a young girl’s journey from wide-eyed innocence to reluctan...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Mar 7, 2010, 9:31 am
Karthik Calling Karthik is a mightily refreshing and encouraging sign of the growing maturity of Hindi film directors, and their willingness to explore cinematic possibilities far outside the inane, j...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Mar 5, 2010, 9:50 am
Bhalo Theko has presented the various dichotomies that oftentimes exist within a society, or as in this case, an educated and politically conscious Bengali family residing in the countryside – the r...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Mar 2, 2010, 9:17 am
Iron Man is the first in-house production by Marvel Comics, and what an inspired decision it seems to have been because this might just be one of the most memorable superhero films and comic book adap...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Mar 1, 2010, 7:30 am
Trouble Every Day, directed by the darling of arthouse circles, Claire Denis, left me largely untroubled despite its overtly provocative content. A pervert might find the movie something of a sinful d...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Feb 27, 2010, 12:43 pm
Film critics and cinegoers have called Up a rousing success, and have named it, along with Wall-E, as one of the great masterpieces of modern cinema. I wouldn’t go that far; but yes, there’s no do...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Feb 25, 2010, 11:12 am
Corneliu Porumboiu’s sophomore effort is in many ways akin to 12:08 East of Bucharest, his brilliant debut feature – it has captured the mundane ordinariness and ironies of life with the kind of c...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Feb 21, 2010, 12:19 pm
Call Adolf Hitler a genius, a few people will grudgingly agree; call him a twisted genius with the ability to mind-wash people, and a lot more will agree; but try and paint him as a human being, and, ...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Feb 17, 2010, 12:12 pm
Michael Haneke’s latest feature, The White Ribbon, is an extraordinary work of high art. On surface viewing it appears to be a paradigm shift vis-à-vis the films Haneke has been mostly come to be i...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Feb 14, 2010, 12:22 pm
Yi Yi, the final film by legendary Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang, is a masterful exploration of the mundane details, foibles and moments of personal disappointments that often come to one's defi...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Feb 11, 2010, 12:13 pm
There’s often a trend among filmgoers to dismiss a movie like Bad Timing, Antichrist or The Piano Teacher simple because they are unabashed enough to present matter which is difficult and challengin...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Feb 7, 2010, 11:46 am
Okay, just for the record, Mystic River didn’t endear itself to me as much as it did prior to my having read the brilliant novel by Dennis Lehane it is based on. But once I realised that its well ni...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Feb 2, 2010, 11:13 am
Hunger, directed by Steve McQueen (no, not that Steve McQueen), is based on the last few months of IRA (Irish Republican Army) member Bobby Sands’ life in a British prison. He and his fellow-members...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Jan 27, 2010, 12:23 pm
Zodiac, like his earlier Seven, happens to be a terrific achievement for David Fincher for the simple reason that, despite being in essence a serial killer movie, it has managed to be far more than th...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Jan 25, 2010, 12:08 pm
Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven is a morally and psychologically complex tale on human nature – the inherent fallibility in human character, and his futile attempts at reconciling with his life an...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Jan 23, 2010, 7:06 am
Clerk is a rapturous, mightily engaging film with distinctly arthouse sensibilities. Boldly experimental without ever being inaccessible, newbie director Subhadro Choudhury has shown the kind of audac...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Jan 20, 2010, 11:44 am
First French film by acclaimed Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Flight of the Red Balloon was inspired by and is a loving homage to Red Balloon, the much loved 1956 short film by Albert Lamorisse....
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Jan 18, 2010, 12:05 pm
Werckmeister Harmonies, made by master filmmaker Bela Tarr, isn’t really a movie to everyone’s taste, what with its lumbering pace, non-narrative structure and complex philosophical overtones. Nev...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Jan 16, 2010, 12:37 pm
The epithet used most often to depict Danish auteur Lars von Trier is ‘provocateur’. Because of it, or perhaps even despite it, his most defining feature, for me, is that I find each of his movie ...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Jan 14, 2010, 12:22 pm
Their first directorial effort since the much acclaimed The Son, Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne’s L’Enfant is a more emotionally charged and less morally ambiguous, albeit as psycholo...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Jan 12, 2010, 12:39 pm
WALL-E is rated by many a film critic as Pixar’s best work till date. Pixar has established such a reputation with its groundbreaking behind-the-scenes work that one has almost come to take technica...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Jan 10, 2010, 12:55 pm
Aparna Sen was a successful Bengali film actress, and has transitioned as one of the most respected directors of India. Though not very prolific in her output, she has made up with sheer quality, with...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Jan 7, 2010, 12:30 pm
That this movie doesn’t belong to the genre of suspense thrillers is amply clear from its title. Yet, such is the successful culmination of the director’s audacious vision and the beauty of the ad...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Jan 4, 2010, 11:17 am
Morvern Callar, Lynne Ramsay’s follow-up to her acclaimed debut feature Ratcatcher, a hauntingly beautiful, intensely moody (even angry, if you will) and highly visceral poetry on celluloid. Only th...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Jan 1, 2010, 12:13 pm
The title of the French movie A Christmas Tale, by Arnaud Desplechin, is deliciously misleading, and reminded me a lot about another brilliant movie, Rituparno Ghosh’s Utsab (The Festival). Both the...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Dec 31, 2009, 3:45 am
Antichrist might not be Lars von Triar’s best movie, but it might just be the one he would like to be remembered by. This movie has world cinema’s enfant terrible at his most unapologetically and ...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Dec 29, 2009, 12:25 pm
The refreshingly offbeat movie Barking Dogs Never Bite, by Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, has all those thematic and stylistic aspects, quirks and trademark tar-black black humour that would reach mem...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Dec 27, 2009, 11:51 am
Pedro Almodovar, who, like Rituparno Ghosh, is often known as a women’s director, has for once made a movie for the male counterparts with Talk to Her. Almodovar certainly knows how to turn a tale o...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Dec 23, 2009, 11:40 am
... deadpan brilliance by its ensemble cast spearheaded by Gene Hackman, and including the likes of Angelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gweneth Paltrow and Luke Wilson, with able supports from Bill Murray...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Dec 21, 2009, 10:49 am
Despite returning from a long hiatus – 12 years to be precise since he made Titanic, James Cameron has yet again shown his unsurpassed ability in making larger-than-life blockbusters with Avatar, a ...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Dec 19, 2009, 12:02 pm
The epithets that might closely define Fatih Akin’s Head-On are, in my opinion, grimy, brooding and bare-assed. Akin completely stripped off any sugar-coatings while displaying human frailties and l...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Dec 15, 2009, 11:49 am
The Squid and the Whale is one of the most incisive looks into the breaking-down of a marriage and its various repercussions. Yet, despite the topic being a ready-made recipe for a deadly serious tone...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Dec 12, 2009, 7:17 am
Fulltime Killer is Hong Kong filmmaker Johny To’s unabashed expression of his love affair with the action genre. In fact the movie abounds in scenes and sequences that pay homage to a range of thump...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Dec 5, 2009, 11:23 am
Dardenne brothers’ The Son is a difficult movie to classify, and hence assess in a few words as I do here. A complex and quietly unsettling character study, the movie is about revenge and catharsis ...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Nov 25, 2009, 4:02 am
Ratcatcher, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s exceptional debut feature film (she was earlier into making award-winning short films), is an exceedingly bleak yet hauntingly lyrical coming-of-age stor...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Nov 23, 2009, 11:31 am
Hit List, Sandip Ray’s first foray outside “Feluda” movies (adapted from stories written by his late father Satyajit Ray) since the wonderful Nishijapon, has yielded, at best, mixed results. The...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Nov 19, 2009, 11:51 am
An expansion of the fifth episode of his legendary ten-part miniseries Decalogue, Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski’s A Short Film About Killing is based on the Commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill�...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Nov 17, 2009, 11:02 am
El Crimen Del Padre Amaro is on a topic that is as complex as it is controversial. The movie concerns with the subject of the fundamentalist and sanctimonious nature of religious (here, Christian) pas...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Nov 15, 2009, 12:01 pm
Katalin Varga, my second (and possibly my final) movie viewing at the ongoing Kolkata Film Festival, is a well-made, brooding, near-Dostoevskian tale of revenge and redemption from Romania. The bleak ...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Nov 14, 2009, 1:47 pm
A few critics have accused Danish filmmaker Nils Malmros' Aching Hearts to be a mere recreation of his most famous work Trees of Knowledge. I haven’t watched the former movie, and hence (or perh...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Nov 11, 2009, 12:40 pm
Spanish director Victor Erice, like his American counterpart Terrence Mallick, is a deeply enigmatic filmmaker (he has made just three movies in his entire career!). However, for me, the similarity do...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Nov 6, 2009, 11:37 pm
Compiled into a behind-the-scenes kind of documentary from over 100 hours of footage filmed during rehearsal sessions for his last planned world tour, This Is It perhaps comprises of the last few popu...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Nov 3, 2009, 10:01 am
An expansion of the sixth chapter of his legendary Decalogue miniseries, Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski’s A Short Film About Love, though on paper a cinematic recreation of the Commandment “Th...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Oct 27, 2009, 11:48 am
The Firemen’s Ball was quite an event in the career of Milos Forman, who would later become a darling of Hollywood what with his One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus. It was his first film ...
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Shubhajit L. posted an article on Cinemascope - Oct 22, 2009, 10:33 am
German filmmaker Christian Petzold’s Jerichow is a modern-day variation of James M. Cain’s classic pulp fiction The Postman Always Rings T...
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