Author Archives

Beth Watkins

The Miracle of Ajooba

Ajooba is one of those Bollywood movies that almost everybody dismisses—cheap costumes, awkward giant monsters, make-do special effects—until you get them to actually think about it. Released in 1991, this  bank-breaking Indian and Soviet co-production features a plot that sounds more at home in the 1970s in the […]

Ek Paheli Leela: When a B-Movie Goes Good

When I was recently asked for my recommendation for the most underrated Bollywood film of 2015, I didn’t go with the high-profile, high-intelligence, period piece flops from big-name directors that I loved even though very few critics did (Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! from Dibakar Banerjee and Bombay Velvet from […]

Using Fantasy To Be Better Than We Are In Real Life

Instead of raving about Satyajit Ray’s well-known-outside-of-India projects like the Apu Trilogy (Pather Pancahli/Song of the Little Road, Aprajito/The Unvanquished, and Apur Sansar/The World of Apu) or Jalsaghar/The Music Room (available through Criterion), I want to rave about his fantastic fantastical 1968 children’s film Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne/The […]