Ella Taylor
Ella Taylor is a freelance film critic, book reviewer and feature writer living in Los Angeles.
Born in Israel and raised in London, Taylor taught media studies at the University of Washington in Seattle; her book Prime Time Families: Television Culture in Post-War America was published by the University of California Press.
Taylor has written for Village Voice Media, the LA Weekly, The New York Times, Elle magazine and other publications, and was a regular contributor to KPCC-Los Angeles' weekly film-review show FilmWeek.
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Critic Ella Taylor says Maladies — a preening art film about a mentally ill ex-actor — is a prime specimen of the blossoming sub-genre VBMWJFA, or Very Boring Movie With James Franco Attached.
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In a role written specifically for her, screen icon Catherine Deneuve is Bettie, a woman in crisis who abruptly leaves her provincial French restaurant for a road trip around the country.
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The Berlin wall has fallen, and a middle-aged Norwegian woman finds her idyllic life coming unmoored as secrets rooted in World War II come to light.
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The Romanian entry in the foreign-film Oscar category turns on a nouveau-riche mother who maneuvers ruthlessly to shield her no-account son from charges he kills a teen in a car crash.
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A frustrated would-be poet (Emma Roberts) takes the first steps beyond her suburban comfort zone, exploring L.A.'s artsy fringe in the company of a drag queen and a washed-up practitioner of her own chosen form.
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Documentary filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, known for his long and thorough examinations of the Holocaust and its memory, presents a series of 1975 conversations between himself and exiled Jewish elder Benjamin Murmelstein. (Recommended).
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The unsparing German drama Generation War follows a group of childhood friends as they fight in battle, care for the sick, strive for fame, and try to survive during World War II. (Recommended)
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In The Truth About Emanuel, her second film about teen angst, director Francesca Gregorini (Tanner Hall) trains her eye on Emanuel (Kaya Scodelario), a tightly wound adolescent whose mother died giving birth to her.
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Portraying author P.L. Travers and Walt Disney, Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks re-create the backstage drama that got Mary Poppins from the page to the screen in Saving Mr. Banks. Colin Farrell, Paul Giamatti and Jason Schwartzman also star.
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Bettie Page Reveals All explores the life and lasting legacy of the 1950s pinup queen. The documentary features interviews from Page's friends, fans, lovers — and the sensation herself, interviewed just before her death.