Siraj Syed reviews Lion: Soaring emotions, roaring cinema Lion is the tale of mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, separation and unification, brimming with humanity, and yet not fighting shy of tilting the camera down, to capture the grim realities of crime and perversion in a cruel and miserable world. All those who frown upon technology as the bane of the 21st century, here’s a glorious tribute to the great service it can and is meant to render, and does, as evidenced in the film....

  As a young boy coming up in rural India, Saroo Brierley often helped his big brother Guddu scavenge for food and money on trains. One evening in 1986 the brothers got separated. Five-year-old Saroo accidentally wound up a thousand miles from home, after boarding what turned out to be an empty, decommissioned train. “Dickensian” doesn’t begin to describe the conditions he toughed out in Kolkata, West Bengal, before being adopted by a well-heeled Australian couple. A qu...

Siraj Syed reviews Rogue One, A Star Wars Story: While there is war, there is hope! “Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.” — George Walton Lucas, Jr. "It's the reality of war. Good guys are bad. Bad guys are good. It's complicated, layered; a very rich scenario in which to set a movie." --Gareth Edwards. It has been reported that the creator of Star Wars, George Lucas, liked Rogue One very much, and that th...