If you thought Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was the only great desert classic, think again. Overshadowed for decades by David Lean’s masterpiece, Khartoum (1966) remains one of the great neglected historical epics. Directed by Basil Dearden and anchored by commanding performances from Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier, it deserves a place alongside the decade’s finest large-scale historical dramas. While it falls short of the towering achievement of Lawrence of Arabia, it rem

There are films that critics unanimously consecrate, and others that, despite critical derision, retain a strange and enduring grip upon memory. Such ambivalently received films are cherished with an almost irrational devotion by those who encounter them at the right age and the right mood. The Cold War yarn ‘Ice Station Zebra’ (1968), from the nerve-wracking novel by thriller maestro Alistair MacLean, belongs firmly to the latter category. I watched it during adolescence whe

The first thing that struck me about the story was how implausibly modern it sounded. A filmmaker in India obsessively listening to an obscure dream-pop track from Los Angeles. An actor with ten million Instagram followers casually asking the internet if anyone recognised the song in his post. A comment beneath it. A reply. Then, within forty-five days, a film was born. Most films begin with financing decks and market calculations. I’m Not An Actor began with taste. Aditya Kr

Cinema ceases to interpret reality when it begins to shape how that reality is understood. There is a reason history is easier to watch. Even when it is selective, dramatised, or quietly biased, history comes with distance. It allows us to engage without feeling implicated. We can question it, critique it, even reject it - but we are not inside it. The present offers no such comfort. When cinema focuses on the present, it ceases to be a secure narrative space. It starts shap

Pinjar literally means “cage.” But the word can be expanded to mean more than a cage. In Rudrajit Roy’s debut film, the title refers both to birds, the bird-catcher and to other characters held captive in the larger and invisible cage called Life. “Pinjar is about captivity in its visible and invisible forms. It asks whether freedom is an external condition or an internal awakening. It does not provide solutions. It observes, reflects, and invites the audience to confront the

Legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (1910–1998) was shaped as much by American cinema as by Japanese tradition. American cinematic genres, be it the film noir , gangster pictures and above all, the Western coursed through his work. As a result, some of his masterpieces proved unusually hospitable to remakes. Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) became ‘The Magnificent Seven’ (1960) while his ‘Yojimbo’ (1961) - itself indebted to Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel Red Harves

If Werner Herzog’s ‘Aguirre, the Wrath of God’ (1972) is justly recognised as a staple of world cinema, Irving Lerner’s ‘The Royal Hunt...

Robert Redford was an icon of American cinema whose political courage and dedication to independent storytelling left an indelible mark...

There was a time when war films aspired to something greater than the blood-spattered grit of today or tightly choreographed mayhem. They...