At a tastefully appointed birthday dinner in a chic restaurant, François (Daniel Auteuil), a dapper antiques dealer, learns from his party guests that he hasn’t a single friend who would trouble to attend his funeral. Challenged by Catherine (Julie Gayet), his sensible gallery partner, to produce a “best friend,” François sets out to procure this […]
Laura Boyes
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Chak De India (Let’s Go India)
Shah Rukh Khan, the de facto King of Bollywood, stars in Chak De India, a hybrid of the underdog sports movie and the ecumenical patriotic rabble-rouser, released just in time for Indian (and Pakistani) Independence Day on Aug. 15. The film’s politics are affirming, and complicated. Shah Rukh is Muslim, the biggest movie star in […]
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No Reservations
Pop culture’s creative artist du jour is the chef, with kitchen celebrities on constant display in print and on television. The third fine-dining movie of the year (after Cheeni Kum and Ratatouille), No Reservations bears no relation to the identically titled Travel Channel show starring snarky Anthony Bourdain. This No Reservations is a portrait of […]
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Hairspray and Eagle vs Shark
The 1988 film Hairspray was indie-film maverick John Waters’ valentine to his high school best friend, the flamboyant, plus-size drag queen Divine. That film, the subsequent Broadway musical, and now the film of the musical have had extraordinary persistence in pop culture. A utopian view of rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm ‘n’ blues as a […]
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Jhoom Barabar Jhoom (Sway, Baby, Sway)
Jhoom Barabar Jhoom opens amid the throngs in London’s Waterloo Station, where we see Rikki (Abhishek Bachchan) juggling shady deals by cell phone when he meets posh Alvira (Preity Zinta). Waiting in the food court for their fiancés (Lara Dutta and Bobby Deol), they pass the time by trading love stories. A mismatched couple, indeed, […]
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Paris, Je T’Aime
A sparkling rosette of fireworks illuminates the Eiffel Tower and a lilting score evokes Audrey Hepburn’s Paramount Pictures Gay Paree over the opening credits of the enticingly titled Paris, Je T’Aime (“Paris, I love you”). Comprised of 18 petites romances de quartiers (little neighborhood romances), Paris, Je T’Aime employs a dazzling international array of writers, […]
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Ta Ra Rum Pum
After a crack-up, NASCAR driver RV (Saif Ali Khan) struggles to get his nerve back. Broke, he and wife Rani Mukerji migrate with the kids from posh digs to ethnic Jackson Heights, Queens. Car racing is an unusual subject for a Bollywood movie, but in Ta Ra Rum Pum, the track scenes filmed at the […]
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The Namesake, The Lookout and Blades of Glory
The Namesake opens Friday in select theaters. Gogol Ganguli is mortified by his first name, a mark of his Indian parents’ eccentricity. What possessed his father to name him after his favorite author, the Russian Nikolai Gogol? In The Namesake, Gogol struggles to decide what’s meaningful to him amidst the masala of his suburban American […]
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Mystic India
Exploris in downtown Raleigh debuts Mystic India, the latest IMAX extreme travelogue, in conjunction with India Day celebrations on Saturday, Feb. 3, during which a statue of Mahatma Gandhidonated by the local Indian communitywill be unveiled. Peter O’Toole provides the corny narration for the film, which emphasizes India’s spirituality as a locus for cultural tourism. […]
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Female trouble
Pedro Almodóvar’s new film begins in a wind-swept village cemetery, where women furiously scrub the mausoleums to keep the past from vanishing beneath a veil of dust. Raimunda is tidying her mother’s tomb, with a bit of desultory help from her sullen teenage daughter. She’s returned to her ancestral town to check up on her […]