Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opens with the one last wish of a very old birthday boy Henrik Vanger, a retired industrialist. Every year he receives a new exotic flower as a birthday gift and it is a constant reminder of the decades old unsolved disappearance of his brother’s daughter that continues [...]
Posts under ‘Reviews’
PIFF Movie Review: Emotional Arithmetic
Paolo Barzman’s Emotional Arithmetic is an inequation with four very capable actors on one side and a whole that doesn’t add up on the other. Nobody can be blamed of over-expecting when Christopher Plummer, Gabriel Byrne, Max von Sydow and Susan Sarandon star not in a grand epic but a gentle drama. They play such [...]
But For Gandhism
Himmat karne wAlonki hAr nahin hOti Three years ago Anupam Kher received a note that read, “You don’t belong to the category of heroes and lead actors, but we can’t not award you because that would draw everyone’s attention to our impaired judgment,” along with a Special Jury National Film Award. It was for his [...]
PIFF Movie Interpretation: Three Monkeys
Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s film making style is mostly categorized as ‘high art’ making him a Cannes favorite and an acquired taste. His Three Monkeys (Üç Maymun) was one of the PIFF 2009 movies that I didn’t like then but think about even now. I have now finalized one interpretation. It is amazing how much [...]
How Tom Rob Smith Implicated Mayawati
As someone who reads little contemporary crime fiction, I have taken to reading the highly acclaimed debut novels of each year. Tana French’s In the Woods (2007), Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 (2008), and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009). I haven’t come to the latter one yet because I can’t decide [...]