Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights is a strange film. Some thirty minutes into it, there’s a scene in which Jude Law’s character kisses the sleeping Norah Jones; and they barely know each other. Whether or not you’ll fall in love with this film depends on how you react to that one scene. You [...]

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror: F W Murnau (1922)

German Expressionism, it is said, rose not because of an artistic revival but because German film makers found it hard to compete with the extravagance of their Hollywood counterparts; so they resorted to symbolism and darker subtexts. F W Murnau’s Nosferatu was one of the [...]

The greatest horror films have always been the ones where the monsters/ghosts were merely plot devices; real evil it seems is more often human in nature than say, floating apparitions or giant locusts. Watched Frank Darabont’s (of Shawshank Redemption fame) The Mist last night and what disturbed the audience more than the tentacled monsters was [...]

 
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Don’t believe the hype. Cloverfield is a terrible, nauseating and utterly pointless piece of cinema catering mostly to today’s attention deficit generation. No matter what they tell you, the camera work is not clever, it’s maddening.
Now that’s out of the way, it does have a couple of redeeming qualities (none of which redeem the [...]

Sidney Lumet is living proof that age is never a deterrent. The 83 year old master auteur has crafted what I can safely say is one of the finest films in the last few years; painfully intense, deeply disturbing and layered with nuances that no other film maker his age is capable of [...]

I love the way this country smells. I’ll never forget it. It’s kind of spicy.
Wes Anderson, in many interviews has stated that this film was intended as an homage to Satyajit Ray (and even inspired by Jean Renoir) and that’s exactly what hits you from the first frame; a poignant, stylized and funny [...]

2007 has been a great year for cinema what with a number of films that managed to successfully combine both art house sensibilities and general appeal. Following is a list (in no particular order) of films I loved this last year.
Zodiac: David Fincher

Brilliantly photographed and very atmospheric. David Fincher redeems himself from Panic Room.
Ratatouille: Brad [...]

The Vatican has outdone itself this time. After the Ten Commandments of Motoring and declaring itself as the one true church, the dark empire has denounced The Golden Compass. For the uninitiated, The Golden Compass is the (children’s) film based on Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials books and from the looks of it, the film [...]

Christopher Nolan’s follow up to the brilliant Batman Begins, The Dark Knight is well over half a year away from hitting the cinemas but the first trailer (apart from the teaser) made it’s way online via one of the zillion viral sites promoting the film. The last time I watched a trailer so many times [...]

I’ve just spent the last nine hours watching 3 near perfect films, back to back; the cinephile in me couldn’t have asked for more.

Gegen die Wand (Head-On): Faith Akin (2004)
One of the best foreign films I’ve watched so far this year; a tale of self destruction, love and rage. Faith Akin’s brilliant [...]