Anora
Beyond the Frame: Unraveling the Mystery of Anora When Anora was first released, it felt like more than just any other Sean Baker film. It felt like the merging of realism and fairy tales, of satire and heartbreak. It became a talked-book indie films of the decade, not solely for its audacity and boldness, but […]
American Pie
When Teen Comedy Changed When American Pie was released in 1999, few understood how to identify the American Pie phenomenon and how it was going to influence the portrayal of teenage comedy in the years to come. It was, after all, marketed to the audience as a lowbrow comedy set in high school, replete with […]
The Bubble
Welcome to the Hotel That Never Quits Initially, The Bubble may appear to be merely a comedy that deals with absurdity — a movie-within-a-movie, filmed during the pandemic. A group of stars in a blockbuster franchise arrives to an English hotel and quarantine for two weeks before filming begins for the next Cliff Beasts sequel. […]
Deseo
Desire as Mirror: What Deseo Tries to Say On the surface, Deseo appears to be a sequence of erotic interludes, each linking to the next in a chain-like fashion. This is the modern-Mexico version of Arthur Schnitzler’s Reigen, re-cast not in fin-de-siècle Vienna but in contemporary Mexico. It is playful, scandalous and uneasy. It asks: […]
The Sentimental Education of Eugénie
Beneath the Provocation The Sentimental Education of Eugénie (2005) is not your typical erotic drama. It is an Italian art-house film based on libertine literature — inspired by the works of the Marquis de Sade and infused with the philosophical decadence of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. At its core, it is a story about the “education” […]
Sanctuary
Sanctuary: The Fight for Power, Perfection, and the Pain Behind the Ring When Sanctuary first dropped on Netflix in 2023, it didn’t look like a show that would break boundaries. A Japanese sports drama about sumo wrestling — shot with grit, anger, and emotional chaos — sounded niche. But by the end of its eight […]
Hell of a Summer
When Campfire Tales Became a Bloody Reality It may be hard to believe, but Hell of a Summer was not pitched in a boardroom; instead, it started at a friendship on the set of Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk, fascinated with the horror-comedy genre, came up with a concept for a slasher film […]
The Kissing Booth 2
The Kissing Booth 2: Love, Distance, and the Weight of Expectation The Kissing Booth premiered on Netflix in 2018, it caused major controversy in Netflix’s teen movie division. It was received with polarized sentiments, and the movie is impossible to ignore. Containing the early 2000s rom-com nostalgia mixed with new-age social media and global fandoms, […]
Badnaam Gali
The impact of a small film opened up a Pandora box of issues – starting with a discussion on surrogacy. The film Badnaam Gali premiered on ZEE5 streaming service on 2019. The film was a comedy about a surrogate mother and a small-town husband. The film was starring Patralekha and Divyenndu Sharma. The film was […]
Meenakshi Sundareshwar
The Modern Goddess from Madurai Sanya’s Malhotra’s Meenakshi is far from your usual small-town heroine. She is a woman of spark — someone who reads Chetan Bhagat and Murakami with the same curiosity, who wears her silk sarees like armor, and who is quietly unafraid to dream beyond the temple town. She is also unafraid […]