The Truffle Hunters
This documentary follows grumpy old men and their dogs but scratch beneath the surface and you find... truffles.
The Truffle Hunters is highly recommended viewing. It documents the hunt for an enigmatic underground delicacy that only the uncanny nose of a trained dog can detect.
Sometimes the camera acts as a fly on the wall, catching quotidian conversations between these grizzled men and their terriers and labs. Other times it shows the dog's point of view as it leaps from the truck and scurries through the beautiful North Italian undergrowth, frenetically pawing for lumps of subterranean fungus.
Some forage for their own table, others to sell. The market is lucrative and comes with its own ecosystem of middlemen, appraisers, sellers, and consumers.
This unleashes dark forces: dogs poisoned with strychnine, suspicion and hostility amongst old acquaintances, turf wars and temptations.
It reminded me of another documentary—Taming The Garden. This darker film documents a billionaire's vanity project to populate his garden with the most stately trees from all over Georgia. Contractors scout, stalk, dig, scaffold, uproot, raise, and transfer them one by one.
The film's most striking visual shows a beautiful tree in all its arboreal glory rising above what appears to be an ocean. It's actually a lake, and the tree is being transported on a flatbed shipping container to its new home in the billionaire's private forest.
Crimson Gold
A schizophrenic pizza delivery man —played by real-life schizophrenic pizza delivery man Hussein Emadeddin —encounters the inequities of life in Iran during his delivery runs. There is no blood in the movie—spoiler alert: what initially appears as blood in the bathroom is nail polish—but the violence is palpable until it finally boils over.
Deemed unfit for Iranian theaters, it's another great, groundbreaking polemic from a country whose cinema never ceases to intrigue, fascinate, and entertain.
Leviathan
Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan follows an ordinary man fighting off foes and so-called friends who covet what he has: a beautiful wife and waterfront property. On a deeper level, it's the story of all ordinary people buffeted and victimized by forces beyond their control. The leviathan could be the State as in Hobbes's eponymous treatise, or the Biblical creature rich in symbolism.
A beautiful, satisfying film with great acting, stunning locale, pathos, and humor—never a dull moment.
About Elly
A group of middle-class friends go on a beach outing. Elly, a young woman unrelated to the group, has been invited by one of them for prospective matchmaking. When Elly disappears, presumably drowned, facts about her past emerge that raise disturbing questions, causing acrimony and soul-searching among the friends.
The Salesman
Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman follows a couple who move into an apartment still containing the former tenant's belongings. One day the wife is attacked in the bathroom by someone who apparently came for the previous occupant. In his haste, he leaves behind keys to his pickup truck, which is found parked nearby.
The story follows the husband's search for the perpetrator and the peculiar retribution he exacts.
The title refers to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The couple plays key roles in its Iranian production, with snippets of rehearsals and performances shown throughout the film.
The connection to Miller's play becomes clear in the end, albeit somewhat contrived. Not as engaging as Farhadi's other films, but worth watching for the stellar acting and insight into middle-class Iranian life.
A Separation
I'm a huge fan of Iranian cinema, and this film doesn't disappoint. A family reaches breaking point: the husband wants to stay in Iran to care for his ailing father, the wife wants to emigrate, and their daughter is caught in between. After the wife leaves, the man hires a caretaker for his elderly father. Events escalate until class differences, Islamic jurisprudence, filial piety, and family dynamics combine to create truly compelling cinema.
Tokyo Sonata
A middle-class Tokyo family, each member quietly facing an existential crisis, finds (one hopes) a measure of redemption through the cleansing power of Debussy's Clair de lune.
The Elephant God
I first watched a low-resolution, grainy version on YouTube. Later, on MUBI, the film came alive. Utpal Dutt excels as the menacing Maganlal Meghraj. The whodunit unfolds in Benaras. Trust Ray to slip in comic genius: Feluda's hotel roommate, Biswasree Gunomoy Bagchi, is a bodybuilder for whom the body is indeed his temple.
The Holy Man
Another Ray delight. Some friends conspire to literally smoke out a holy man. He is one of Ray's most intriguing creations — a polymathic fabulist who bids the sun to rise from a railway carriage, claims to have taught Einstein relativity, argued with Plato, and insists the crucifixion should be called "crucifact" because, of course, he was there.
Azor
A Swiss banker travels to Argentina in the 1970s during a military takeover. His mission: to meet old and prospective elite clients and to search for Keys, his mysterious predecessor. The film unfolds in chapters like matryoshka dolls, leading to an anti-climax reminiscent of The Big Sleep. Watch it for an insight into the refined yet ultimately banal lives of the upper class, and capitalism's knack for finding profit in anything from religion to revolution. A modern allegory told in a manner that suggests style itself is the substance.
The Tragedy of Macbeth
This interpretation of Macbeth is starkly different from Polanski's dark and messy version. Visually, it has the clean-lined angularity of a graphic novel. The stage-like lighting effects give it a neo-noir vibe. Denzel Washington works hard — and awkwardly at times, perhaps because of his Hollywood DNA — to shoulder a Shakespearean role. Frances McDormand's Lady Macbeth, however, pales beside Isuzu Yamada's unforgettable portrayal in Kurosawa's Throne of Blood.
The real star here is Shakespeare's text. Even rendered as subtitles, the language inspires awe, decades after we sweated through it in the ISC exams. Wikipedia reveals Macbeth has inspired nearly thirty-eight films in multiple languages, besides countless literary reworkings. My personal favourite remains James Thurber's Macbeth Murder Mystery, where some bored Americans read the play as a whodunit, complete with a hilarious polemic on the identity of the enigmatic "third murderer."
The Ghost Writer
A taut political thriller by Roman Polanski. Ewan McGregor (unnamed in the film) is hired to ghostwrite the memoirs of a beleaguered ex-British Prime Minister, caught in the moral quicksand of the West's war on terror. Much of the film takes place at a retreat on Martha's Vineyard. As the ghostwriter combs through drafts, he discovers unsavoury truths. Resolution is withheld until the very last scene — the unexpected intrigant revealed by a script wound tight as a spring.
The film has a period, neo-noir vibe. Its cinematographic aesthetic is engaging without being obtrusive; the acting is understated yet precise. The result is a cerebral thriller devoid of profanity or gratuitous violence, but charged with menace nonetheless. Proof that Polanski can craft a political thriller with restraint and resonance.
The Hummingbird Project
On paper, the premise is brilliant. Two cousins attempt to connect Kansas's data exchange with the NYSE via a straight fibre-optic line. Sixteen milliseconds — the flap of a hummingbird's wing — would give traders a decisive edge. The thriller aspect lies in logistics, rivalries, and personal strain. A geeky quant explains the "epistemological problem": while traders profit, the farmers who grow the lemons remain invisible. Sadly, this profound insight is raised and abandoned. The script tries to do too many clever things at once and delivers none. Even Salma Hayek, as the scheming rival CEO, vanishes abruptly, like the wisp of her silver-streaked hair.
Arab Blues
A young Tunisian woman returns from Paris to set up a psychoanalytic practice. Her clientele is colourful — including a cross-dressing baker who scandalises a beauty parlour. To continue, she must battle local bureaucracy for a licence, all while contending with family pressures and a persistent policeman. A vibrant, gently subversive mosaic.
Asako I & II
A sparkling, fresh Japanese love story. Asako falls in love with Baku, an enigmatic drifter who vanishes after promising to return. Later, she falls for another man who bears an uncanny resemblance to him. When Baku returns, Asako is torn: remain with her stable, dependable lover or give in to the reawakened pull of the past. A meditation on love, choice, and identity.
Where Is the Friend's Home?
Eight-year-old Ahmed's mission is simple: return a friend's exercise book. The camera follows him from his village to the next and back, his errand unsuccessful but the film luminous in its humanity. This first entry in Kiarostami's Koker Trilogy reaffirms why one watches films. After slogging through the loquacious Malmkrog, this life-affirming piece arrived like a breath of bucolic Iranian air.
Through the Olive Trees
A young man, besotted, tries one last time to win his silent lover's consent. "If you won't speak," he says, "at least turn the page of your book." She doesn't. The film ends with the two of them in the distance: does he walk away buoyed or broken? Kiarostami's deceptively simple final entry in the Koker Trilogy lingers in its ambiguity — a quiet study of unrequited, or perhaps eternally deferred, love.
The Secret in Their Eyes
With Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. A brooding, ponderous thriller, overburdened by its own ambition. Yet the top-notch acting and a sharp late revelation salvage much.
Bridge of Spies
The film opens with the arrest of a Soviet spy in New York. James Donovan (Tom Hanks), an insurance lawyer, is persuaded to act as his defence counsel. What begins as a token role, Donovan takes up with seriousness, mounting a formidable defence. His insistence that the spy's life be spared proves prescient: the man becomes a bargaining chip. When an American U-2 pilot is shot down, Donovan is dispatched to East Germany to negotiate a swap. The Glienicke Bridge becomes the stage for high Cold War drama.
Directed by Spielberg and co-written by the Coen brothers, the film is a stellar lesson in history — fact-checkers suggest it is about 80% faithful to events. Donovan was real, and his later negotiations (even with Cuba) added to his reputation. Hanks portrays him with quiet decency and grit. The Cold War setting simmers with the possibility of nuclear conflagration, yet the film never drags. Thomas Newman's score is right on the money. A work that entertains while illuminating history.
The Post
"News is only the first draft of history." The line, attributed in the film to Phil Graham of The Washington Post, sets the tone. Spielberg directs, Streep and Hanks star, and together they re-create the story of the Pentagon Papers. When Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep) inherits the paper after her husband's suicide, she must decide whether to risk everything to publish leaked documents exposing government lies about the Vietnam War. Tom Hanks, as editor Ben Bradlee, pushes for truth against odds. Nixon's White House looms, shown in eerie silhouette with sinister voiceovers.
The film takes us behind newsroom debates, corporate boardrooms, the Supreme Court, and the private turmoil of Graham herself — a woman emerging from the shadows of father and husband to stand her ground. A landmark Supreme Court ruling affirms the press exists to serve the governed, not the governors. Streep conveys Graham's arc from diffidence to decisive courage, her transformation as important as the story she helps break. The final scenes foreshadow Watergate, with a burglary at the Democratic National Convention about to pull the paper into an even larger storm. Riveting cinema, part civics lesson, part character study of a remarkable woman.
Green Book
Viggo Mortensen is Tony Lip, a down-on-his-luck bouncer hired to drive Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a virtuoso pianist, on a tour through the segregated Deep South. The "Green Book," a directory of establishments open to Black travellers, guides their journey. A road movie in the classic sense, it is about self-discovery, courage, friendship, genius, and the uneasy racial dynamics of America. That it is based on real events makes it even more heartwarming. The music throughout is consistently good. Warm, humane, and entertaining.