Despite familiarity with the songs in the movie (still AR Rahman’s best music album in Hindi to date imo), I’ve put off watching Dil Se.. ,not wanting to sit through what I had presumed to be an extravagant 3hr musical melodrama. So imagine my surprise as the viewing experience slowly reveals the level of depth, abstraction, and craftsmanship that expertly blends art house storytelling with elements of populist cinema.
Dil Se.. (From the Heart) is rather aptly titled, given…
It’s always refreshing to see an action hero with some depth, and not just a hunk of muscle with a badass attitude (unless you’re Arnie and you have the outrageous one-liners and charisma to pull it off). John Rambo in First Blood is fractured and mentally still suffering from post traumatic stress during the aftermath of the Vietnam war. It doesn’t help that Vietnam war veterans were largely neglected and left to fend on their own with that PTSD, and…
The Criterion Challenge 2025 (Film 13/52)
#15: 1960s
The Criterion Challenge 2025 (Film 12/52)
#32: Ayo Edebiri’s Closet Picks
A feast for the senses. Michael Mann’s cinematic style is singular and uncompromising, evident right from his directorial debut. The biggest flaw here is that the overarching theme unfolds with such no-nonsense nihilism that it perhaps works against the film in a dramatic sense. It feels more like a demonstration of male machismo than a true tragedy. This could very well be intentional, given the perfunctory way Frank assembles…
Don’t know what to feel about this. On one hand, the film does look very pretty and the colourful Irish characters are somewhat endearing, even if they’re one dimensional caricatures. However, at least to my foreign sensibilities, the film appears to romanticize sentiments and customs that seem horribly misogynistic. John Wayne manhandling Maureen O’Hara (it was done for laughs) made me uncomfortable, so I didn’t exactly warm up to the comedic sensibilities of the film either.
You know it’s the 70s when even the animated features have a psychedelic feel to it.
