Jai Arjun Singh
Deep Water movie review: Ana de Armas, Ben Affleck in an uneven, oddly paced thriller
Around halfway through, as the ambiguity of the early scenes is lost, and we get a clearer sense of what exactly is happening, Deep Water also becomes more predictable, and refuses to gather steam as a thriller.
Oscars 2022: Olivia Colman may be 'The Favourite' — but here's why I don't want her to win Best Actress again
I want Olivia Colman to escape the morbidly respectable fate of becoming a multiple Oscar winner while she is still just in her 40s. She is too dynamic and too interesting for such overrated honours.
Munich: The Edge of War movie review — Jeremy Irons, George MacKay in an elegant, often-engrossing historical thriller
Munich: The Edge of War is an uneven, sometimes perplexing narrative, but moreover it’s a touching story about friendship, about the ways in which the personal and the political can collide.
420 IPC movie review: Low-key but engaging courtroom drama about a middle-class CA caught in financial scam
420 IPC is an engrossing depiction of a world where the line between small finance and big finance – or small scams and enormous ones – isn’t clear, and where it is hard to say who holds the reins of power at any given time.
Last Night in Soho serves as a worthy nostalgia piece, but also warns against perils of living in the past
Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho uses the tropes and elements of a horror film to present a cautionary tale to those like me who treat nostalgia as a place of great allure and comfort.
The wholesome, unadulterated joy of watching cinema in fragments — where parts are often greater than their sum
I am now unembarrassed about my propensity to watch and re-watch specific scenes, especially the ones with great background score. Being able to take pleasure in the small moment is, I find, as important and valid as anything else.
Bhavai movie review: Pratik Gandhi's Bollywood debut is a mostly innocuous, bland comment on religious hegemony
Contrary to expectations after the controversy around the change of its title from 'Raavan Leela,' Bhavai is a determinedly inoffensive work, almost to the point of being a soporific.
Only Murders In the Building review: A charming comedy-mystery spruced up exchanges between two generations
There is much to relish in Only Murders in the Building, in which the three leads are terrific as true-crime-podcast addicts who team up when a murder is committed in their big New York apartment building. But what I enjoyed the most was the generational divide between the two men and the woman.
Joi Baba Felunath: How a child's misgivings about gods open Satyajit Ray's detective thriller on fake godmen
Satyajit Ray’s second Feluda film Joi Baba Felunath is a detective story that makes fine use of Varanasi as a setting – while also critiquing showy displays of religiosity.
Ari Aster's Midsommar, the Scandinavian sun that rarely naps, and horrors set in blinding light
Midsommar is packed with reminders that if a film succeeds in depicting the darkness within vividly, then a sunshine-y environment can make the experience even more unnerving. Because viewers have nowhere to hide.
How The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp's ingenious opening sequence rewinds 40 years in its protagonist's life
In one of the many enchanting films made by the duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, a pompous old man plunges into a pool and emerges 40 years younger. It’s a good lesson.
Promising Young Woman: How a lilting, pop music-scored sequence opens Emerald Fennell’s remarkable film
Promising Young Woman is both a fast-paced thriller and a powerful account of grief and retribution.
In Titli and Mukti Bhawan, Lalit Behl's binary portrayals of two fathers who cast a tall shadow on their sons
Lalit Behl's demise is a reminder of his performance in Mukti Bhawan, which made one believe death can be dignified even when the road leading to it is full of missteps and potholes. It is a useful thought in the current time.
Inside two Frank Langella takes on villainy: As Julius Hoffman in The Trial of the Chicago 7, and the evil Skeletor in He-Man
Of the many pleasures of watching The Trial of the Chicago 7, I wasn't anticipating a nostalgic one — of watching Frank Langella, as a villain eerily reminiscent of the one he played in the 1987 He-Man film Masters of the Universe.
How a sense of place and the passage of time is created in two gentle films, Bombay Rose and Ottaal
What these two films have in common is how they create a sense of a setting as something inseparable from the inner lives of the protagonists.
Why Basu Bhattacharya’s Anubhav is one of the most formally distinctive Hindi films of its time
Anubhav, Bhattacharya's frank and intimate treatment of marriage, employs a language very different from most other narrative Hindi films of the 1970s.
In Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood, a chilling, and funny, view of creative people as entitled predators
Roger Corman’s 1959 film A Bucket of Blood turned out to be a wry comment on the idea that artists — “thinkers” — are superior to other, “ordinary” people.
Revisiting Mayabazar: How the opening scene sets the tone for this classic about two princes and a mischievous God
If you grew up watching Tamil or Telugu films anytime from the 1950s onward — or even had some knowledge of these cinemas — you would know Mayabazar, and its towering reputation, in the same way that Hindi-film viewers know of Sholay or Mughal-e-Azam.
In caring for stray animals during a pandemic, thoughts on the transformative relationships between humans and dogs
My growing concern about humans was also a result of my relationship with street dogs over the years. Since these are very social animals — who not only depend on people for food but also genuinely like being around us — I had access to this vantage point: how sad and empty a human-free world might look through the eyes of a creature that has evolved socially alongside us over tens of thousands of years, become one of our most steadfast companions, emotionally enriching many of us along the way. | Jai Arjun Singh writes
Despatches from a room: In these stories set in confined spaces, imagination helps decipher an inaccessible world
In this month's #MyBookshelves column, Jai Arjun Singh writes about stories centered on immobilised people in an unnatural situation, using what resources they have to stay productive and to find a form of escape: whether it involves travelling into the past, moving towards physical freedom, or re-evaluating the mechanics of an outside world that is temporarily out of reach.