Wordside Woman

                                                                      (Movie Review) “Past Lives” (2023) A colleague of mine urged me to watch Past Lives repeatedly, and me being the lazy sloth that I am, kept procrastinating it for no particular reason. Finally, the day before yesterday, after watching Untamed , since I had nothing better to do, I decided to watch Past Lives. As soon as I started viewing the movie, I could not but notice the resemblance it bore with another film I had watched recently in the theatre. I watched Materialists the last month. The story was, to be frank, nothing exceptional. It was predictable and pretty straight forward. Having said that, what really got me going was the cinematography; the colour schemes and the unhurried pace. You could pause at any point during the runtime of the ...

                          (Series Review) "Untamed" (2025) - Miniseries Morality is a many-sided compass. When people say “moral compass”, we are, in fact, way off the mark. It assumes that there is only one moral north and south. Though it may sound controversial, I firmly believe that morality is almost always a relative notion. It has a lot to do with the priorities in one’s life. Even the judicial processes fall short frequently while dishing out justice. The system often ends up being a mere frame of reference. It simply is incapable of covering the vast gamut of human depravities. It is scary being reminded of what crimes human beings as a race is capable of committing and to what extent the people at the receiving end can go to ensure that justice is served, even if it is outside of the established institutions. Untamed is a limited series on Netflix, written by Mark L. Smith. Smith is known for writing the screenp...

                               (Series Review) “Ransom Canyon” (2025) - Season 1 I am writing this piece with a truckload of guilt weighing in on my heart, and not for the reason you think. I was supposed to get back to my research paper today after a two-week long break. I simply couldn’t focus. I know it is a lame excuse. I started watching " Ransom Canyon " yesterday evening and by mid-noon today, I finished watching all ten episodes of it. I was watching an interview of Josh Duhamel and Minka Kelly (the lead pair), where the interviewer was telling them how the viewers were comparing the show to a cross between “ Yellowstone ” and “ Virgin River ”. It is indeed an astute observation. That’s definitely one way to describe the show. I have not really watched many Westerns, lets alone Romantic Westerns.  But I have had enough exposure to know what to expect in general when the term “western” pops up in...

(Series Review) “ The Pit ” (2025) - Season 1 I used to be an aspiring medical student at one point of time in my life. I am not even sure if that is a thing, but I still experience this pull I can’t shake for anything remotely close to medicine and doctors. I do realize it a place frequented by the sick and the infirm, where pain and loss creates a miasma of despair all over the place. Having said that, it also the place where one is relieved of pain and misery, where the initiated perform their magic on human physiology and wins us more days on this planet. I guess it is all a matter of perspectives. I feel reassured and safe when I am in a hospital and I tend to look at the bright side of the place. There is this inherent respect I feel for these warriors, not for their station life, rather for their raw spine of resolve and their willingness to pursue a career that is slowly turning into a life hazard owing to the excessive and unwarranted violence directed against them on a daily ...

                                                     (Movie Review) " Am I OK?" (2022) Today was yet another one of those extremely unproductive days, but slightly better than the worst ones. At least I didn’t starve myself for being too lazy to cook. I had been wanting to see this movie after I chanced upon a trailer of this on the YouTube. I must confess I watched it for Dakota Johnson. I love that woman (that is, in the capacity of an actor of course…. duh!). She will forever be Anasthasia Steele for me. I don’t know what it is exactly that attracts me to her, but there is definitely something. But this is not about my inexplicable attraction for the leading lady. It is about what I felt about the movie. Wikipedia says it is a comedy drama film and I am choosing to go with it for want of a better word to describe the genre. I must tell there are no h...

                                                     Movie Review: Your Name (2016) It was a colleague of mine who insisted that I watch Your Name. I couldn’t bring myself to watch it for some reason. After a couple of weeks, as I lay on my bed at night, wrestling with recalcitrant sleep, I automatically proceeded to click on the link. For some reason, as soon as I started watching it, sleep decided to take me in its warm embrace. This happened several times over the next few days. Eventually, three days into my summer vacation, one night, after all had gone to sleep, I made up my mind to watch it in the darkened room. With the low humming of the air conditioner and my sleeping mother’s deep breath in the background, I found myself slowly getting drawn into the dreamlike, magically enmeshed worlds of Mitsuha Miyamizu and Taki Tachibana. The movie opens ...