Eleanor Reviews

Director : Anurag Kashyap Cast : Saiyami Kher, Roshan Mathew, Amruta Subhash Where can I watch? : Choked is streaming on Netflix Rating : 4/5 Review : Netflix's attempts to diversify its entertainment collection seems to have accelerated rapidly during lockdown, with a number of new international offerings becoming readily available in amongst all the nostalgic 90s releases. One such film is Choked , a Hindi-language film that centres around put-upon bank worker Sarita (the engaging Saiyami Kher) and her disintegrating marriage. Setting the scene in a tumbledown set of flats - paint-flaking ceilings and a drain that constantly leaks and gurgles are as much characters as their human counterparts - we're hurled into Sarita's tiring existence, but could salvation be at hand? Marrying Bollywood-esque musical sequences with grainy news footage capturing the fallout of Modi's monetary reforms, director Anurag Kashyap effortlessly moves from fantasy to reality,...

***** With their father at war, sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy navigate the difficulties of growing up, bumping into some colourful characters along the way. For many generations of readers, and hopefully many more to come, Little Women has been a treasured tale. For me, first gifted the audio book and then the novel, it's a story that instantly reminds me of my childhood. When I came to study the text for my degree, the class ubiquitously agreed that it was a nostalgic treat to revisit the book again - perhaps why so few of us chose to analyse it for our end-of-module exam. Sitting in a cinema, packed with women of all ages, that same sense of nostalgia washed over me as Greta Gerwig deftly and sensitively interwove two time frames (the youthfulness of the Little Women story with the bittersweet nature of the sequel, Good Wives ), whilst simultaneously reintroducing me to some of my favourite literary creations. Let's start with the elephant in the room - Gr...