Midway, Review: Exactly When you make a war movie, based on facts, you might be motivated to give a slightly balanced view of events, for every country that goes to war has its reasons and its heroes. Your sympathies might lie with the nation where the film is produced, yet, unless your motive is jingoism and ultra-nationalism, you will give some weightage to the enemy’s point of view. Also, a faithful recreation means detailing and realistic characterisation, which when juxtaposed agai...

Movie memories, by Siraj Syed—Bowling for Columbine (2002): Gun lobbies and gun hobbies America has the highest rate of gun-related deaths and some critics of the gun culture refer to the gun lobby as gun nuts. Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11) pegs this docu-feature as an investigative, analytical account of the Columbine school massacre and derives its title from the story that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold—the two students responsible for the Columbine High School massacre—...

Siraj Syed reviews Incarnate: This Entity is an Omen for the Exorcist In cinema, as in most other industries, if you don’t innovate, you are dead. Innovation is an essential part of the survival kit, and if new genres are proving elusive, makers must, nevertheless, try to reformat the template. So, if you can’t re-incarnate, at least ‘incarnate’. A good example of eschewing supernatural tropes and plying atypical ropes instead is Incarnate. That it stumbles occasionall...

Ben Hur, Review: Chariots for hire What do you remember about the 1959 screen version of the 1880 story? Nothing, unless you are a Senior Citizen, even if the Indian release was probably two years later than the Hollywood opening. I remember the chariot race, with Charlton Heston as Judah Ben-Hur and Stephen Boyd as Messala. Edge of the seat stuff, especially Messala. The sub-text of Christ, Christianity, Judaism, and the Roman Empire’s sadistic tyranny, was lost on the bunch of school-...