★★★☆☆ For his sixth feature as writer-director, Noah Baumbach continues a newly prolific streak with While We’re Young (2014), which furthers his approach to infusing his cinema with his own thoughts, feelings and verdicts on specific areas of contemporary culture. Where his previous film, the monochrome crowd-pleaser Frances Ha (2012), Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Anand Patwardhan’s War and Peace was released in 2002, and its presentation of escalating nationalist posturing – aka the arms race between India and Pakistan – was incredibly apposite. Over a decade later, WMDs in Iraq may not be the hot-button topic they were back then, but the Bharatiya Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Given that its source material is a beloved book with a potent history, the film adaptation of Suite Française (2014) is a sincere disappointment. Its a middling exercise in schmaltz, often overflowing with heavily wrought dialogue and oft-deployed melodramatic tactics. Despite two leads of notable standing, this is a Continue Reading
★★★★☆ On his 40th birthday the Italian director Roberto Rossellini received a surprise gift. It was a letter from the Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman: enchanted by his Rome, Open City (1945), she offered to come and make a film with him. She signed off the letter with the only Italian Continue Reading