Saturday 18 May
 
 

The Last Stand

Early in The Last Stand, the small-town sheriff played by Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "It's my day off. Should be a quiet weekend." That's the new way of saying, "I've got one week to retirement," because it signals — with flashing neon and everything — that life is going to royally upend those plans.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0

Texas Chainsaw

One of the most inconsistent franchises in movie history is the one beget by Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. How does one follow all those less-than-beloved sequels? Lionsgate's latest in the series — the seventh — has a solution: Ignore 'em.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0

Captain America: Collector’s Edition

Not long after Batman changed Hollywood in the summer of 1989, every studio wanted to have the next comics-based blockbuster. I remember visiting Penn Square Mall’s multiplex (as I did often back then) and seeing a poster for Captain America. The one-sheet was comprised of little more than a close-up of Cap’s iconic shield and a promise to arrive next summer.
05/16/2013 | Comments 0

Dark Circles

With the Broken Lizard comedy troupe becoming increasingly broken, member Paul Soter has branched off to write and direct something about as far away as one can get from the likes of Super Troopers and Beerfest: a horror film. Now that I've seen it, I'm thinking maybe he should stay on his own.
05/16/2013 | Comments 0

Die! Die! My Darling!

File 1965's Die! Die! My Darling! under that now-dead subgenre dubbed "Grande Dame Guignol." The Hammer Films production may lack the dueling duo of two twilight-era titans of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and the others, but truth be told, Tallulah Bankhead is fierce enough to provide all the fire it needs.
05/14/2013 | Comments 0
Home · Articles · Movies · Drama · The Namesake
Drama

The Namesake


None April 12th, 2007

namesake

Reviewers' grade: A-
In chronicling two generations of an Indian American family, "The Namesake" mines the divide between cultural identity and assimilation.

Our story begins in 1977 with the arranged Indian marriage of scholarly Ashoke Ganguli (Irfan Khan) and beautiful Ashima (Tabu). They move to New York, struggling with this strange new world and raising two children. Their oldest is a boy they name Gogol (Kal Penn) in honor of 19th-century Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, with whom Ashoke feels a special bond. Gogol the son chafes against the odd name and the Bengali parents he views as hopelessly out of step.

Based on the Jhumpa Lahiri novel, the film boasts the expansiveness of a good novel. If "The Namesake" occasionally shoehorns in too much, director Mira Nair still excels for her sensitivity and delicately rendered characters. It helps that the acting is superb. Bollywood superstars Khan and Tabu turn in captivating performances, while Penn ("Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle") demonstrates a solid dramatic side. PG-13 -Phil Bacharach

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  • Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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