Occasional critic, written for In Review, Ultra Dogme, Film Companion.
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Inland Empire 2006
Wrote about it for . Here's a small excerpt:
Inland Empire is to Mulholland Drive how Twin Peaks: The Return is to the first two seasons of Twin Peaks — a film/TV series about returning to and reconciling with transformed landscapes stripped of their saccharinely surmounted exteriors. The sepia-infused warmth draping the monstrous horrors of Twin Peaks‘ first two seasons gives way to the gloomier landscapes of the third, haunted by the ghosts of a mythical past and the broken…
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Kottukkaali 2024
Wrote about it here. . Here's a small excerpt:
In just two films, PS Vinothraj has established his signature and even a template. Armed with the accoutrements of art cinema (landscape shots, long takes, “social” commentary through landscapes, minimal use or complete lack of music), Vinothraj layers it with tics and concerns of his own through his mildly jerky tracking shots and storytelling structure. Both Koozhangal and Kottukkaali involve long journeys/trips littered with stumbling blocks that situate the predicaments of…
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Megalopolis 2024
Every film is a story of its production, even though most attempt to conceal it. Megalopolis infuriates its more economically-minded detractors (not the other kind who are barely heard in this debate) as its delays and revisions are laid bare for everyone to see. The film, like Coppola himself, flits wildly from one idea to another, manically colliding multiple styles, forms and eras while asserting his ambition in every frame. Coppola is far too proud to be called a bricoleur…
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These Encounters of Theirs 2006
My capsule from a larger piece on the blog :
“Everything can be cinema”, remarked Albert Serra in praise of Straub-Huillet’s films, and cinema’s ability to assimilate, digest and regurgitate all art forms, and in some cases, transform them, has been acknowledged by most viewers, even those who speak of cinema only in terms of plot and acting. But a certain resistance to the films of Straub-Huillet remains (besides market suppression), as they supposedly go against the grain of one…
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