‘Kathak: Dancing With Taboos’ Film Festival Review: A Story of Passion and Perseverance
Eloquent and informative, Hajera Sheikh’s documentary Kathak: Dancing With Taboos tells a story of love for one’s culture and perseverance through adversity.

Claudio Dragonetti is an Italian assassin, one of the best in the industry. He is hired by a local mafia boss in Gothenburg, Ivan. He needs Dragonettis services to get rid of the two competitors. The job is nothing special really. This is something that Claudio Dragonetti done many times before. But this time something goes wrong and he accidentally kills the wrong people. This is appreciated neither by the Mafia or the Swedish authorities and Dragonetti soon finds that he is driven from two directions. But Claudio Dragonetti has a trump card which none of his enemies know. He has signed a pact with Satan, a pact that makes him almost invulnerable, all he had to leave in return was his own immortal soul.
Eloquent and informative, Hajera Sheikh’s documentary Kathak: Dancing With Taboos tells a story of love for one’s culture and perseverance through adversity.
I believe in homages, but there's a proper way to borrow a creative idea instead of making it appear as if you hit the copy and paste button. Most likely, anyone is better off simply reading the books. Or just put on Scream.
The social issues The Half of it takes on are handled well, between the antagonization brought on to Ellie for her race and the conflict that arises from her being gay. Both aspects of her character are built up over the course of the film and don’t seem abrupt or rushed. The film shows racism towards Ellie and her and father in varying levels, from having her schoolmates specifically address her as "Chinese girl” to the fore mentioned way her Dad is treated due to language barriers. The same can be said about Ellie being a lesbian. While she never truly “comes out” in the narrative, that does not undermine her journey of self-discovery from being meaningful. These ideas aren’t thrust upon the viewer in a preachy manor, the scenarios that occur feel believable given the rural setting. The film presents watchers with problems whom those like Ellie may face, and leaves us to sit with them and reflect.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is the most human movie of the year. It is based on the 2010 short of the same name that follows a big-hearted, little shell named Marcel as he navigates through life in a human-sized world.
After the 2018 surprising hit "A Quiet Place" brought something fresh to the horror genre, the announcement of a sequel may have been disappointing to some. A lot of the time, a sequel to an already successful movie is no where near as good as the original. Yet, John Krasinski once again shows that he's much more than Jim from The Office.
In order to learn why an arguably outdated fanfic trope was resurfacing in the contact zone of popular culture, I dove into a vibrant trough of character development.