The basu! Guide to the Movies

#SpaceJamANewLegacy Good, clean career-sequel-building fun. Man, I can't believe it's been how many years since #SpaceJam😱?! We took our nephew and the kid loved the movie…and now he's all grown up with a significant other, his own place, a Master's…when did that happen?! Yikes! Is it meta? I mean, they're making fun of the "algorithm"(Cheadle, having the time of his life, like he always does these days)…only to release it all on HBO Max…that's pretty meta, no? Wait, speaking of meta…the whole thing with the middle kid(Joe, stealing the show), that's not meta is it? Tell me #LeBron's the post-character-arc fun dad/teammate in real life😬🙏!!! PS. *Every*one hates Clippy, er, I mean Pete…Pete😂 PPS. "Somebody's gotta do something, just give me the ball!"🤣😳 PPPS. "Any device with a camera I can see you, if it's got a mic, I can hear you…"😱😱😱😱😱 PPPPS. RIP #MelBlanc😢🙏 - - - #MalcolmDL

#RoadrunnerAFilmAboutAnthonyBourdain Decorous, well-mannered retrospective of a decidedly un-decourously-well-mannered if-he-wasn't-real-they'd-have-to-make-him-up-larger-than-life-all-too-human character. By now, Neville's a pro's-pro at this sorta thing, and he deploys his usual skill with great efficiency to bring Bourdain's remarkable life into (soft)focus. If you're searching for answers, look elsewhere(as one almost always must), if you want to be reminded of why you were such a fan in the first place, then, well, this is as good a place to start as any. I was lucky enough to have seen Bourdain live once, and he wasn't what I was expecting. Yeah, he was blindingly charismatic, yeah, everyone's eyes turned to him, but he wasn't the take-charge/no-prisoners, garrulous, suck-up-all-the-oxygen(boy, would he have hated this writing😬!) look-ma/at-me star the Q&A crowd had become accustomed to. Instead, he was thoughtful, funny, charming

RIP #RichardDonner Made *so* many of my favourite movies, in fact, he's that proverbial movie "soundtrack" to all our youths, no? Because of the vagaries(?📚) of growing up outside of the US where movie availability and release dates were intrinsically not intertwined, it's a little hard to pinpoint which was the first movie of his I saw, and when did I see it? Was it Superman II, which I'm almost positive I watched for *years* before Superman, but then again, was it his movie(?man, I gotta put that film degree to work sometime…). It wasn't Ladyhawke was it, sadly, it wasn't even Goonies(shhh…don't tell anyone…I watched it…in college😱!), was it, OMBG, it couldn't have been Omen, could it😳?! That's a story for another TBT day… At some point during that run between Goonies and Lethal Weapon 4, it must've seemed like every superbly-crafted, mainstream, mid-budget theatrical film was a Donner. Boy, what would Hollywood give for one o

RIP #DilipKumar My goodness, where to begin?! An absolute *pillar* of Indian cinema, in fact when you look at the impact he had on Indian movies, and the length of his career, you could make the case that he wasn't merely an *integral* part of Indian film history, he *was* Indian film history. That *impossibly* rare combination of giant movie star and great actor, he really was a hallowed name growing up, DilipKumar this, DilipKumar that, and, that incredible story from Didu about how nice he was to Ma and Mashi when they met him (there were pictures to boot😲!). A nice movie star?! Now that's truly impossible! He was well into his Grand Old Man phase when I started watching him, but he was still such a presence - that commanding gravitas but with a twinkle, none of that heavyhanded stuff for him - that you understood where the almost-mythic reputation came from. And then when you started catching up with the classics, yikes, then you knew, right, that's DilipKumar

RIP #CharlesGrodin One of my *all*-time favourite leading actor? character actor? comedian? talk show guest? talk show host?…just all around favourite inimitable, irascible, interesting, characters. Just the other day TBH & I we were checking out both of our fave #MartinShort's career retrospective(😬er, sometimes it's better to appreciate the art, not go too deep into the artist…) during #TCMFF (thank you BatManuel!) and they showed scenes from Clifford(no, not *that* Clifford), and I was like, man, this looks hilarious, also, where is Chucky G, haven't seen him anything recently, I should look up what he's been up to… Sigh… I discovered him in…Beethoven…don't judge! It was a fun, funny movie(despite my film school's first-day "brilliant" dissection of the opening sequence reinforcing evil white male hegemonic patriarchy…but, uh, that's a story for another day😳) that made me a lifelong fan, and then, of course, the immortal Midnig

#Jallikattu 😳😱😲🤭😵‍💫 Holy H*ll…literally! I mean, oh man, like, I, well, the thing is… The most insanest, craziest, gonzoest, brazenest, off-the-wallest, boldest, audaciousest…okay now my thesaurus app is beginning to heat up…simply *most*est movie of the year, any year🤗! And…it's from India🇮🇳! And…wait for it…it was submitted for the Best Foreign Film #Oscar! 😳 G*d bless whatever producer bankrolled this film and whatever entity decided to submit this to the #Oscars👏! I'd have given anything to have seen the looks on the faces of the voters more used to the kind of genteel, well-mannered, well-meaning desi films that usually make the fest/critics' rounds in the West😏 Look I don't want to resort to the kinds of easy stereotypes we used to in School, but the craftspersonship is absolutely *top*-notch, but then I wouldn't expect anything else from a South Indian film 😇 First of all, the directing! Man, this kid is something el

#TBT so how about a #Throwback Movie? 😁 #Kapurush (#TheCoward) (1965) Stunning, criminally underrated Ray. Man, I get my Underrated Ray's mixed up: #ShakhaProshakha, #Seemabaddha, #AshaniSanket, Kapurush, so I'm glad that the last was the only one available on streaming…what a way to start this collection of movies! What a perfectly calibrated, self-contained, emotional wallop. This is Ray's Noir, no?, so naturally this being a Bengali Noir the most important murder that takes place is of…the heart💔. *Stunning* restoration who(m?)ever did it! Not a blemish in all that lovely contrast-y saturated black and white👏! The cinematography, *luscious* black and white, with those interior(!) sweeping camera moves…#WongKarWai would approve👍. Right from the opening we're hit with a superb single-take, in a film full of great long-takes that all serve to focus your attention on the people within the frame, not the operator outside it. That slow, longing zoo