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