"See, we need more black folks making photos in the area, taking pictures and stuff, you know."

At some point in his documentary Hale County, This Morning, This Evening , RaMell Ross tells this to a (presumably) old black man who sees him shooting a video of a fire and approaches him to ask about what he was doing. It was an innocuous, wholesome exchange, but this line really remained with me.

Over the course of following Ross' interviews and…

"I sent you kisses through the clouds, so when it rains, my kisses touch your lips"

Poetic cinema. A film that is out and out about solidarity - of women, of the working class, of immigrants who leave their homes and come to a city and buy into its illusion and call it their home, although it never is home enough for them. This film is a landmark for Indian cinema, not only because of the international acclaim it has…

I decided to see this because Seth Rogen couldn't stop talking about it in the The Studio press interviews, and I also have been wanting to watch Altman's work for the longest time, so here we are.

Absolutely brilliant, razor-sharp, timeless critique of capitalism and how it damages art to the point where it can even profit off its own critique. Robert Altman clearly made this because of the shift I guess he noticed in the studio system where more…

Minor spoilers later in the text.

রানার ! রানার !
এ বোঝা টানার দিন কবে শেষ হবে ?
রাত শেষ হয়ে সূর্য উঠবে কবে ?
...
রানার ! রানার ! কি হবে এ বোঝা ব’য়ে ?
কি হবে ক্ষুধার ক্লান্তিতে ক্ষয়ে ক্ষয়ে ?
রানার ! রানার ! ভোর তো হয়েছে – আকাশ হয়েছে লাল
আলোর স্পর্শে কবে কেটে যাবে এই দুঃখের কাল ?

I don't know if Amir Naderi has ever come across legendary Bengali poet Sukanta Bhattacharya's poem Runner…

Real bummer because ofcourse this was one of my most anticipated movies of the year and it just left me kind of disappointed. Sean Baker tries so hard to balance sadness and detachment with comedy and ends up landing neither properly. Sometimes the film tries to be Uncut Gems, other times a home invasion movie or a Capra-esque screwball comedy and left me totally confused about what it was trying to be.

The film often feels voyeuristic/male-gazey and spends a…