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Capsule Corner #4: Love and Death
(Spoilers?) Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, 2024) (I wrote this capsule for InReview’s best of 2025 list.) Characters in Alain Guiraudie’s films express no inhibitions when following their flows of desire, and while, like more maudlin films that loftily uphold the Oscar-approved stamp of love triumphing over the torments of a constricting society, the sociopolitical environment might… Continue reading
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Tropes and Tensions: The Mastermind
(Focusing on spoilers in this article can be likened to J.B’s apoliticism in the film. The revolution needs you to read the full article! Okay, I am half-joking, but spoilers ahead.) Kelly Reichardt’s approach to genre hasn’t been one of inversion, but of dilation and destabilization. Her films haven’t shown an unwillingness to adopt genre… Continue reading
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Ordet (1955), and My Struggles with the Miracle
(Spoilers ahead, but how are you going to interrogate faith if you can’t handle some spoilers?) The loss of spirituality in this modern era has left a vacuum in our lives, or so we are frequently told. Many attempts to grapple with this statement leave a lot to be desired, because it is primarily used… Continue reading
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Medium Takes #1
(Neither capsules nor essays in length. This series might contain spoilers, but they won’t be expanded on, so win-win??) The Delinquents (Rodrigo Moreno, 2023) The heart of every heist, and by extension, heist films, are undergirded by the fantasies of those involved in them, fantasies of freedom, defiance and thrills. Instead of focusing on the… Continue reading
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Reconfigured Rituals: Exotica
(Wrote about Atom Egoyan’s Exotica for InReview. Here’s a small excerpt. If the spoilers are wrenched from their preferred settings, do we still treat them as spoilers?) As much as critics have lapped up Egoyan’s description of Exotica as an “emotional striptease,” lauding the film for gradually unveiling the layers behind the characters’ actions through its unusual… Continue reading
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Hyperactive Voids : The Story of Scenarios (Jean-Luc Godard, Fabrice Aragno, Jean Paul Battagia and Nicole Brenez)
(Non-narratives do have “spoilers”, but these aren’t the kind that affect your viewing, right?) Two of Godard’s last films, Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario” and Scénarios, which were previously only circulating in festivals and languishing in the encrypted financial walls of an NFT service, were finally released by Arte, one of the films’… Continue reading
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Ageing in Style: The Shrouds
(I wrote about The Shrouds for The Hobbyhorse. Here’s a small excerpt. No spoilers, though you have to read to confirm it.) By making the body central to his films, David Cronenberg has established himself as a fastidious chronicler of our shifting anxieties and desires by grafting them onto the contours of our body. Thinking… Continue reading
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Digital Deliriums: Inland Empire
(Wrote about Inland Empire for InReview. Here’s an excerpt. RIP David Lynch, one of the greatest to plumb the cinematic unconscious.) 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… Continue reading
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Journey Through Space and Tradition: Kottukkaali
(Spoilers are littered across your reading landscape, so even if I didn’t include them, you would somehow notice its presence. So let them remain as it is.) 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… Continue reading
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IFFR 2025 Dispatch for In Review
(I wrote three reviews for InReview’s IFFR dispatch on Rhythm of a Flower, Bad Girl and Kajolrekha. Here are some excerpts for each of these pieces. No spoilers this time.) The films of Amit Dutta have always been concerned with exploring and re-imagining art forms through cinema, deepening the possibilities of both the art and… Continue reading
Criticism may have ended with Daney according to Godard, but some zombies still roam in the wasteland of cinephilia.
Film Critic-is-me 