“Are you my friend now?” Connor (Michael Fassbinder) asks Mia (Katie Jarvis) about mid-way through Fish Tank. It’s a fair question, given how turbulent her emotions are, particularly where he’s been concerned. One moment she likes him, the next she’s lashing out at him; she’s 15, it’s a tough time. Making it tougher is her [...]

From its title, you’d immediately expect Women Without Men to be a feminist tract, and that’s what you get — sort of. Set amidst the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh in the early 1950s, it tells the story of four women, each oppressed by men in some way, and how they [...]

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.
“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.
Let me start with the obvious – Catch-22 is the kind of book I have never read ever before, and in all probability, will not get to read since. It is a mad, crazy, insane, hilarious, acerbic, brilliant book brought forth through [...]

I wish I could write the way Nicole Holofcener writes. I wish I could write the way she directs too. It’s sometimes difficult to articulate the feelings and motivations of her characters in Please Give — they contain layers of often contradictory emotions — but they elicit our immediate empathy. There is a scene, and [...]