Long, insipid Hindi melodrama, Bandini is Bimal Roy’s last film. It revolves around Kalyani, who poisons to death a demanding patient at the hospital where she works as a servant, the spoiled wife of freedom fighter Bikash Ghosh, Kalyani’s former lover who jilted her. We learn this by way of flashback; the film opens as […]

Leaden, coldly sentimental (in the German manner), punishingly protracted, Kirschblüten—Hanami reminds me of why I haven’t seen a film by Doris Dörrie in more than twenty years—to be precise, since her international breakthrough hit, Männer . . . (1985). Life is short; I am not likely to give any more of her work another shot. […]