Sight and Sound Movie List - La Rahman

Not favorites, but movies I have happily watched multiple times...

1)      Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson, 1996): It’s best if you watch this alone the first time around, or maybe with a friend or two who know not to talk a whole lot during movies, because the jokes are quiet and disguised as throwaway lines. If you root for the underdog you will love this movie. Also has one of the cutest love scenes ever.

2)      Bhaji on the Beach (Gurinder Chadha, 1993): A movie about a bunch of multigenerational South Asian women going on a day trip to a Blackpool beach resort. The fight, they laugh, they cry, they flirt, they lament. This movie is smart, funny, touching, and on point. I relate to every character in this movie.

3)      Devdas (1955 and 2002 remake): The 1955 version is dark and devastating. So much pain, so little joy.  The 2002 remake is absolutely gorgeous—the music, the costuming, the colors, the scenery. I want to live inside of it forever. But the glitzy Bollywood treatment takes away from the story a little, I think.  Also, I find Sharukh Khan to be SO irritating and hate his trembly scrunched-up crying face. Ugh, annoying. Really, though, both versions are classics.

4)      Mississippi Masala (Mira Nair, 1991): South Asia in the Deep South. This one is about a woman working in her family’s crappy motel in South Mississippi, the political circumstances that brought her family there, and her romance with a Black man. Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washington are SUPER HOT together. I love the juxtaposition of two cultures that are fiercely loyal to their roots and their ways of being.

5)      Hype! (Doug Pray, 1996): I wasn’t even that into grunge music and don’t even necessarily like all the music in this film (although it did introduce me to “Second Skin” by The Gits, which is one of my favorite songs ever), but it’s a really well-made documentary and I’ve seen it way more times that I can count.  Good examination of how artistic communities grow, get talked up, get exploited, and then become “forgotten”.

6)      The Wedding Banquet (Ang Lee, 1993): I seem to gravitate towards movies involving cultural norms and the ways children and parents negotiate their way around them, I guess? Great movie about a gay man who not only feels that he cannot be honest about his sexuality with his Taiwanese parents, but who also goes through a traditional wedding ceremony to avoid hurting them with the truth.  Ultimately it’s about the lies families tell to protect one another. Warning: the trailer is TERRIBLE, so misleading and super corny, if I hadn’t already seen the movie it would have made me want to pass on it.