Narrative
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BADLAPUR (Sriram Raghavan, 2015, India) – Purgatory
Director Sriram Raghavan fourth directorial feature Badlapur opens with a brave bit of tableaux cinema. We can’t quite figure out where to look; the frame is wide open with the camera observing at a distance everyday street life, all in a single take. A bank robbery and the violent getaway disrupts the ordinariness of the Continue reading
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Anatomy of a sequence: Collateral (Michael Mann)
Tom Cruise as Vincent in Mann’s Collateral. I was going to post an entry on Manhunter, based on my enslavement to chronological film analysis, but since Collateral is a Mann film I saw again recently on Blu-ray, I was compelled to offer a closer look at a key sequence which includes the introduction of Vincent’s Continue reading
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YATRA – (Dir. Goutam Ghose, 2006, India)
Yatra really took me by surprise. Made in 2006 but receiving a quick release in 2007, Bengali director Goutam Ghose has made one of the most layered, intricate and reflexive of Indian films. It is a film full of wonderful mysteries and really captivated my imagination unlike Continue reading
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DHOBI GHAT : Mumbai Diaries (Dir. Kiran Rao, 2010, India) – The Gaze of the City
Mumbai is one of the great cities of the world, drawing in film makers so they can use the dense urban landscape as a canvas on to which they can endlessly inscribe dreams, nightmares and anxieties. A microcosm of cosmopolitan and secularist narratives, Mumbai is continually Continue reading
Movie Mahal 