Letterboxd — Your life in film

The logical next step for Schrader. It takes the post-war antihero of his early work and applies him to the 21st century context, a world that is stained by CCTV cameras, American soldiers unable to move on, flashing lights and touch blocked by screens (or, plastic screens in this case). Schrader’s admiration for Bresson is apparent, as one should expect from this era of Schrader’s career - the focus on hands and their actions, on the writing out of the…

This review is also available on my blog.

When I was ten years old, there was absolutely zero doubt to be found in my mind that my favourite film was Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man finally had earned itself a replacement after I spent my entire childhood crawling around the floors in a Spider-Man outfit and always leaving the room during the oh-so-important spider bite sequence that gives Peter Parker his powers, and it oddly enough came in the…

How do you deal with the absolute complete mental breakdown that happens due to being holed up in your house by yourself, not being able to meet friends and family in person, and constantly feeling like killing yourself because every day feels like the same day over and over again? In the case of Bo Burnham, you take all of those feelings, write about them and perform something that becomes incredibly special (It is technically, A SPECIAL).

Bo Burnham's INSIDE…

While the queer narrative and the carefully placed analogies are hewn out of Biblical references, Happy as Lazzaro transcends the realm of symbolism and weaves a startling, semi-realist chronicle, universal in appeal. Rohrwacher draws inspiration from her own upbringing in rural Umbria and that folksy, homespun feel is sprinkled all over her cinema. Happy as Lazzaro even though anchors it's chassis at rural Italy, harbours a global message and captivates one with sublime use of cinematic antecedents.

The pastoral mien…

Getting tired of the widely accepted notion of The Assassin being a 'visually stunning dull affair' finally wrote something on the film. Do read if you can bear spoilers and such a long ass blabbering

A Meditation on Nothingness

I watched The Assassin for the first time during the earliest phase of my cinephilia. I did not even know who Hou Hsiao-hsien was or what his contribution was to Taiwanese cinema. I don’t even remember properly whether it was my…

Part of The Criterion Challenge, 2021.
Film #2: Directed by Akira Kurosawa.

I had always stalled myself from watching a few Kurosawa films solely because I didn't want to let go of the fantastic first-time experience of watching a Kurosawa film (he is also one of those few directors whose work I am yet to dislike). So, keeping some Kurosawa films on the watchlist always felt like a wise decision. I cherry-picked one from them, another one with a mammoth…

"I am twenty. Despite being twenty, I am walking for thousand years. Poverty, misery and deaths, I pushed aside in each step for thousands of years. For thousand years I witnessed the history, history of poverty, history of humiliation, history of exploitation."
A big shift in Sen's style and approach can be noted here from his earlier film 'Interview.'
It is not satirical and darkly humorous, instead it uses the absolute stark realism to show the poverty, misery, hunger, humiliation…

𝐍𝐚𝐦𝐞 - 𝐉𝐨𝐣𝐢
𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 - 𝐃𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐬𝐡 𝐏𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧
𝐑𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 - 113 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐬
𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 - 𝐀𝐦𝐚𝐳𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐕𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨

If Macbeth and King Lear had a baby, who then procreated with Knives Out, we have an unsettling crime drama in Joji.

Supplanting the events in a rubber Plantation, the members of the patriarch of this family are the subjects of his kingdom. The patriarch is a physically strong, burly man who suffers a stroke, which then causes all the members of his family…

At the core, Sound of Metal is a film about the terrifying link between disability and mental health issues, and how that can lead to substance abuse. However, it manages to be more constructive and uplifting than any other film I ever saw about the same subject. It never shows the protagonist at his worst. It shows both the challenges and the rewards that come from accepting one's disability and trying to get better by finding support and learning to…