The Offbeat Critic

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...