Nuanced

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeCate Blanchett swallows Tár whole and spits out bullets in return. The role, of a fictional classical conductor somersaulting into her own downfall, was written by director Todd Field solely with her in mind. It’s a performance that functions as a total culmination, the crystallised form of all the women Blanchett’s played in the past – from Elizabeth I to Lilith in Nightmare Alley –…

Digital intermediaries are hoping for a nuanced definition of their category while being classified under the proposed Digital India Act, industry insiders told ET. They say the classification must factor in features and services that platforms provide rather than focus only on their user base. This, they say, can potentially help reduce their compliance burden under the proposed Act. Digital intermediaries currently include internet service providers, cloud service providers, consumer-facing social media platforms, and…

It’s the job of a satirist to identify their subjects by their works – “By their fruits shall ye know them” is our sustaining text from Saint Matthew – justifying the monstrous portrayal of our political masters because of their serial screw-ups. But how then should we judge satirists? Often their works are taken at face value, assumed to be advocating what they are, in fact, satirising. Judgment is, therefore, frequently harsh. In 1703 Daniel Defoe was sentenced to be pilloried after his satirical pamphlet The Shortest…

The first abortion I encountered in literature isn’t named. In Ernest Hemingway’s short story Hills Like White Elephants, which I studied at school, a man and a woman wait at a sleepy Spanish train station for the express to Madrid and conduct a veiled conversation as they drink: “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” the man said. “It’s not really an operation at all.” The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on. “I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the…

By Lindsey Bahr | Associated Press Female desire is not a topic that gets a lot of space in mainstream Hollywood movies. And the desire of women north of 45? Well, that’s been almost exclusively the province of Nancy Meyers, Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton. There have been others, sure, but it’s often either played for humor or scrubbed and sanitized of anything remotely carnal. Usually it’s some horrifyingly infantilized combination of both. It’s as though someone decided that audiences couldn’t possibly bear to watch a…

Dir: Sophie Hyde. Starring: Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack, Isabella Laughland, Charlotte Ware, Carina Lopes. 15, 97 minutes.“I want to do a blow job,” Emma Thompson’s Nancy announces in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. “Get that sorted.” She throws those words out as if she were reminding herself to get the oil changed in her car – mechanically, even a little irritably. Nancy’s husband died two years ago. He was the only man she’d ever had sex with, and none of it was particularly good. All of it missionary. She’s never had…

All remaining U.S. states with COVID-related public mask requirements have recently lifted them, and in mid-April, a district judge in Florida ended a federal mask mandate on trains, planes, buses or other public transport. For the first time in about two years, consumers can shop, exercise, travel, work and lounge in public spaces without wearing a mask, despite recent surges in COVID infections. Since the onset of the pandemic, most restaurants, grocery stores and retail shops have followed state and national…

Dir: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert. Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis. 15, 139 minutes.The multiverse is having a moment. I’m undecided on whether the decision to chase up Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with Everything Everywhere All at Once – a film grounded in the same concept of parallel realities, yet made with a fraction of the budget – is foolhardy or ingenious. Either way, David has shown Goliath how it’s done. While…

By Shira Ovide, The New York Times Company Perhaps you have an image in your mind of people who get brainwashed by YouTube. You might picture your cousin who loves to watch videos of cuddly animals. Then out of the blue, YouTube’s algorithm plops a terrorist recruitment video at the top of the app and continues to suggest ever more extreme videos until he is persuaded to take up arms. A new analysis adds nuance to our understanding of YouTube’s role in spreading beliefs that are far outside the mainstream. A group of…

Gehraiyaan — the new Amazon original movie with Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi, and Ananya Panday — is a classic case of being all over the place. It starts off as a romantic character drama, as the Gehraiyaan trailers and songs have hinted at. An aimless woman (Padukone) is trying to pick between two guys and their polar-opposite philosophies, and a man who takes no prisoners (Chaturvedi) is trying to have it all and juggle two worlds. But Gehraiyaan transforms into another beast over the course of its bloated…