"Truly, I consider editing half of my directing and a third of my screenwriting"
- Sean Baker accepting his Oscar for Best Editing
This is actually true in Anora's case, which, I think, is beautifully exemplified in Igor's characterization alone. The screenplay only partially sketches the character through his actions and lines, who is fleshed out later by the director who frames and blocks scenes in such a way that Igor is always shown observing and listening often at the…
One of my favorite things about Call Me By Your Name is the uninhibited joy that Oliver experiences in the latter half of the film; while it is first and foremost an evocation of the tortuous, ethereal pleasure of falling in love from the POV of Elio, the queerness of it all is more embedded in Oliver's hesitancy and fear.
Something similar happens in Queer as well. Allerton is merely an object of desire in the novella that is entirely…
Obviously it didn't reinvent the wheel or anything but love how structurally sound and consistently good-looking this is- a forty-minute long prologue that largely uses a facebook live session as exposition, followed by propulsive-yet-unhurried storytelling. Raftaara section felt overlong the first time but it feels like a proper introduction sequence (yes, with a bit too much of fanboy indulgences) in the context of a planned trilogy.
Visually speaking, when it comes to Indian commercial films, the weakest links are often…
Have been meaning to revisit this ever since I caught it on the big screen, and I gave the English dub a try this time purely for Pattinson's freaky voice work as the titular heron. He's incredible but this watch reconfirmed my belief that one should always go with the original language. I mean, my absolute favorite line -the one that made me cry last time- is lost in translation here! "Forgetting is normal", which is arguably the single most…
It's like a series of SNL sketches (with high production value, of course) based on the most basic thought experiments you can think of on class system, combined with a bunch of stale Seinfeld-esque brand of observational humor, and it acts as if it's got something profound to say (it doesn't). The cast is great, the whole thing is quite funny, and, some day, I hope to become rich enough to be completely out of touch with the real world, and that day I might find this film deep. Triangle of Sadness is probably the most unremarkable Palme dOr winner I have ever seen.
It's a leftist manifesto patiently articulated over the course of three hours that leads up to a rousing revolutionary warcry of an ending. It is also a jolting reminder of a history lesson, which argues that political apathy amounts to fraticide.
The seemingly central arc of Nivin's character is one hell of a subversion that brutally dismisses -it's almost funny even- apoliticism as a compassionless, pitiful subscription of meaningless hedonism; and hints that it's an animalistic excuse of a life…
