Utter mountaintop musical melodrama. Anti-greed, pro human. Gorgeously photographed and pieced together. Several musical and instrumental sequences absolutely soar. Lyrical and feverish emotionalism transcend its uncomplicated idealism. The kind of film that I’ll probably rewatch without subtitles sometime soon so I can just bathe in the images, editing, and spirit of it all, Tower of Babel be damned.

Scene that plays in The Great Movie Theater in the Sky:

Gulabo, saved in the street by Vijay, follows him furtively to…

Has anything ever truly captured the absolute horror of being in a relationship with an actor like this does?

This is one of a clutch of flicks I make a point to watch at least every ten years. Conservatively, this is maybe my fourth watch. It is the quintessential Hollywood gothic noir. It is Bronte in the SoCal sun. Unattended empty swimming pools filling up with rainwater replace those Victorian novels’ grey stormy coastlines, the West Yorkshire moors are now…

Wirt is the ideal fairy-tale adventurer. Uncertain, lots of lessons still to learn about himself, makes mistakes, sometimes is mean to his younger brother but not nearly as often as he’s protective of him, and just pure enough of heart to see it through to the end and figure out the mysteries at the heart of it all. Is it any wonder Sara the Bee was always interested in him, even if his insecurities kept him from believing it?

This…

Acknowledging that this is as hollow and frothy an act of male-gaze feminism as Barbie was a corporate didactic toy commercial (I found both extremely entertaining) does not mean this movie isn’t also a gloriously weird modern cartoon parable about fathers and daughters, little girls and women, husbands and wives, lovers and enemies, sex workers and clients, cruelty and humanity, philosophy and reality, and the balance between the desire for an adventurous life and the joys of a settled one.…

This is what Edward Yang was talking about when he wrote, “we live three times as long since man invented movies”. Last night I got to be on the streets of Mumbai, watch a young Hindu nurse dress in a burka to infiltrate the neighborhood of the Muslim man she loves, I traveled to a beach side village of another woman as she tried to figure out the next chapter of her life, and so much more. A slice of…