RIFLE RANGE BOY

Cairo Conspiracy (aka Boy from Heaven;  2022) Director: Tarik Saleh What started as a guide for mankind to live in symbiosis with Nature and his fellow beings has come to this. Religion used to be a solace for the broken-hearted and for broken dreams. It is unbelievable how some doe-eyed ignorant (read stupid) voters in some Eastern States of the Malaysian Peninsula are hoodwinked into believing that a vote for the Islamic party is a ticket to secure a place in Jannah in the afterworld. Can you get any stupider than that? Not to forget the self-centred foot soldiers who want to re-instate the past glory of the Levant kingdom without a thought for the innocent collateral damage just because they want to spend eternity with virgins (or grapes in the new revised version of the scriptures!). The only problem is that, in a body-less afterlife, they would not have a body for bodily pleasures. Recently, the cabal of non-god-believing leftists took it upon themselves to destroy the career ...

The Storied Life of AJ Fikry 2022 Director: Hans Canosa (based on Gabrielle Zevin's novel) So often, we have heard that truth is stranger than fiction; stranger things happen in real life compared to what happens in our imagination. On the other hand, we were told to be competent to sieve fact from fiction, what is possible, plausible or probable and what is not. Occasionally we are advised not to live in Lalaland but to descend to reality, not to yearn for that Prince Charming or Snow White to sweep us off our feet. The fact is that the biological clock is ticking away, and opportunities are flying by. They tell us 'carpe diem', seize the moment, not wait for the perfect ending and not expect to live a happy life forever and ever. Life is so full of twists and turns, more convoluted than spaghetti if one reflects on it in his twilight stage of life.  This film will excite an eternal bibliophile. A gadget-savvy person would not understand the excitement about the physical...

Asia Reborn (A Continent Rises from the Ravages of Colonialism and War to a New Dynamism) Author: Prasenjit K Basu The 21st century, especially the second half, is considered an Asian century. Still, no single nation is said to have successfully challenged the Pax Americana of the late 20th and early 21st century. A continent ravaged by events from the 18th through the 20th century, Asia is making a comeback. As they say, time is cyclical. From the Common Era (C.E.) to the 1600s, when Europe and the Middle East were pretty much in the dark ages, more than half of the world's GDP came from India and China. Both these countries were the world's superpowers and ruled the greatest oceans. Suddenly, there were either domesticated or decided to close their doors. The European and Arabic powers, who all these while were running around like headless chickens, morphed into a force to be reckoned with. They ushered in mercantilism, slavery and colonialism. They embraced Industrial Revolu...

Argentina 1985 ( Spanish, 2022) Written and directed:  Santiago Mitre After years of lawlessness in Argentina, after Peron and many ineffective military leaders, the people managed to democratically elect a government in 1983 after the disastrous Falkland Wars. The memory of the extreme torture, planned disappearances, complete lack of dignity and rape in the Dirty War just before peace could not be written off. For the first time after Nüremberg, a court tried military leaders for crimes they carried out as military personnel. The country was split is whether to persecute the perpetrators. The people decided they should not be persecuted amongst their peers, i.e. court marshalled, as the whole machinery was complicit in the crimes. A group of the population benefitted from the army leaders' action; hence, they objected to prosecuting the junta members. Against this background, Prosecutor Julio César Strassera and Luis Moreno Ocampo are chosen for the unenviable task. The trouble i...

Dancing on the Grave (2023) Written and directed by Patrick Graham This an interesting case that, on paper, is considered closed. The victim's next-of-kin asserts that justice has been meted out and the perpetrator is doing time even more than they had bargained. The prosecutors are jubilant about how they solved the case despite the long timeframe it took. The defence (and the affected) are adamant, however, that the accused is being punished for a crime he did not commit. At one look, it sounds like a case of mismatched personalities from totally different backgrounds coming together in the name of love. This case also reminds us of India's past history, about the Diwans, the aristocrats, and the vibrant Shia-Persian community in Karnataka and the fact that India is not quite a homogenous society but one rich with a plurality of cultures and societies. It takes a peek into the life of the rich and famous ambassador and the type of life the family once led. Shakereh Khaleeli n...

The Eternal Daughter (2022) Director: Joanna Hogg This is not your usual horror movie, but it has a Gothic feel to it. It is a dark, slow movie with nostalgia, old age and loneliness hanging over it like a theatre drape.  In the formative when the rebel in us tries to surface, we tend to look at our parents as the worse examples of how parents should bring up their kids. We look at other people's parents and yearn for lost childhood. We blame them for all our not-so-fancy physical attributes and life failures. We could not wait to grow up and get the hell out of their supervision.   Fast forward in time and space. The hard dents of life knock us back to realisation. We look at our parents through a different lens. We realise that life as adults are neither a walk in the park nor a pleasure cruise. Every corner has a brick wall to give us concussions as we rush through life's journey.   We look at our parents and see that the springiness of youth and headiness of being you...

Nile Hilton Incident (Arabic/Egyptian; 2017) Written/Directed: Tarik Saleh Every time a new law comes into force, guess who the happy people are. No, not the law-abiding citizens or the patriots who want to see rule and order respected in this country. It is the lowly local enforcers - the front-liners who are there to ensure that the law is respected. There are the first to detect any wrongdoing at the ground level and could squash a ticket, at a nominal fee, of course.  Everyone is happy. The poorly paid constables and local council employees get on by tying up loose ends - maybe a child's birthday present or that emergency trip to the hometown.  The problem is that this kind of 'closing an eye' or 'I scratch your back, you scratch mine' attitude has infiltrated all strata of the civil service. What we see now are the accusations of so-and-so of the higher pecking order being charged for siphoning off funds and dishonestly performing their civil duties. Invariably...

The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin, Irish: 2022) Written and Directed: Colm Bairéad My sisters and I were brought up to believe that only empty vessels make a lot of noise. Through Aesop's fables, we were told to keep our mouths shut. The story of three good friends, a tortoise and two wild geese, comes to mind. In the tale, the three friends planned a guided flight away from their habitat, a drying-up pond. The problem was that the tortoise could not fly. So the geese held either end of a long stick, and the tortoise bit the middle portion with its mouth with strict instructions never to open its mouth when they were cruising at a high altitude. And that is precisely what the tortoise did, opening its gap to praise the beauty of a 'bird's eyes view' of Earth. The end could have been more pleasant. Children were expected to be seen and admired afar but not heard. But no says techniques of modern parenting. Children are encouraged to express their feelings. They advocate a ...