The Offbeat Critic

Where to Watch: Free Streaming on PLEX, available for rent on Amazon Prime Video, YouTube Movies Christmas - it has to be one of the most celebrated festivals across the world. It is the time for social and family gatherings, religious services, people taking part in gift-giving, and businesses experiencing increased economic activity. Things seem to be happy during this time of the holiday season. There are a lot of "Christmas-themed" movies. One of them is "Home Alone (1990)" which seems to be playing on the television every time you switch it on during this period. As I am not a fan of Slapstick humor, I decided to watch something else. That something else was "It's a Wonderful Life". A movie that was not as financially successful as "Home Alone" but was more "Critically Acclaimed" (albeit not immediately). This stars James Stewart, whom I have seen previously in "Rear Window" (another classic). The movie starts with an...

Where to Watch: Disney + Hotstar When I think about Pixar, the first movie that comes to mind is "Toy Story 3" (my favourite animated movie). In 2022, Pixar released "Lightyear" a spin-off of the "Toy Story" Series focusing on one of the series' main characters "Buzz Lightyear". "Lightyear" was a box-office bomb and received mixed reviews. I felt the first 15-20 minutes of that movie were good, but after that it went haywire. In June 2023, Pixar's twenty-seventh movie "Elemental" was released. It is a marked improvement over both "Lightyear" and "Good Dinosaur"(Peter Sohn served as the director for both "Good Dinosaur" and "Elemental"). This movie premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival where it received mixed reviews , but the reviews became more positive when it reached wider audiences.  It is the story of the four elements of nature - Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. The focu...

Where to Watch: Netflix A few years ago, I saw a movie called Searching (2018), directed by Aneesh Chaganty, an Indian-origin Director. It was a mystery thriller unlike any other I had seen before. The story was riveting like many movies in this same genre, but its portrayal on screen was unique. It is a relatively new genre of visual storytelling called Screenlife. While the definition of a Screenlife movie may be a bit hazy (as per the link ), the movie certainly wasn't. It was one of the best thrillers I had ever seen, and to see the director make such a movie on his debut is worthy of praise. Five years later, we have a Standalone Sequel to "Searching"; called "Missing". But this time, Aneesh Chaganty only serves as the Writer.  While comparisons to the former are inevitable, this is a worthy Standalone Sequel (The characters or plot line here are not the same as that of the original). There were some pacing issues in between, sometimes the screens shifted t...

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime Video Movies, when you decide to watch one, what do you look at? The IMDB score? The Runtime? The Cast? The Genre? The Director? The book/material from which it draws inspiration? When I started watching movies, I used to check the IMDB score. But there were many instances where I felt disappointed, mainly because some had a higher rating than they should have while others had a lower rating. Mostly I think IMDB is biased because users can skew the ratings. Otherwise, how does one justify Mithun Chakraborty's Gunda receiving 7.3/10 (as of 15th Aug 2023)? I reckon Metacritic 's ratings on a scale of 100 makes sense for mainstream movies. I went through the list of my watched movies and gave a rating on a scale of 100 and checked their Metacritic Ratings and found them to be similar to what I had given. (for documentaries I generally don't refer to them as they usually have high ratings). One of my favorite Film critics is Chris Stuckmann. I came...

Where to Watch: Apple TV Back in 2021,  the "UEFA Euro 2020 Final" (yes, the tournament was supposed to happen in 2020 but happened in 2021 due to "you know what") ended with the England Football Team finishing as runners-up against Italy. The game ended 1-1 after extra time with Italy winning 3-2 on penalties. After a few days, Jason Sudeikis (who plays the central character Ted Lasso) was seen sporting a Black Jumper with the words " Jadon & Marcus & Bukayo " (supporting the three players who missed the penalties for England and were targets of racial abuse) ahead of the Season 2 premiere. This was the first time I heard about this series and after researching about it, I realized that this character is based on a series of TV commercials that aired back in 2013. The premise was intriguing enough for me and I saw Season 1 (2020) and Season 2 (2021) back to back.  Seasons 1 and 2 were good for the most part, but there were a couple of episodes in...

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime Video The second season of "The Test" comes out almost three years after the first season debuted. This season has only four episodes compared to the eight in the first season. The season begins just before the 21-22 Ashes series when Tim Paine stepped down as Captain of Australia's Test team. The first two episodes focus on the Ashes Series, Pat Cummins' captaincy (and Steve Smith's during the second test match). The third episode shifts focus to the Australian Cricket team returning to Pakistan for the first time in over two decades to play a three-test match series. The final episode is Australia's Tour of Sri Lanka (Only the Test Matches). If I had to judge this installment, I would do it in 2 parts; the first two episodes had a slower tempo (maybe because it was one-sided) while the last two episodes were riveting. This series could have been better if it had two more episodes. The episodes covering the Ashes focussed more on ...