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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This "moving, sympathetic but ultimately frustrating tribute" to Marianne Ihlen inadvertently reveals the male gaze's narrow focus by defining this complicated woman as Cohen's passive muse.
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A young man attempts to reclaim a grand home in San Francisco's gentrified Fillmore district in this "wistful fairy tale built from real-life materials."
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The writer/director of 2013's crowd-pleasing romance The Lunchbox returns with another heartwarming tale of unlikely love among the crowded streets of Mumbai.
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This trifle — about a bunch of plucky seniors (led by Diane Keaton) who form a cheerleading squad — is a "fitful good time," despite infantilizing both its characters and its audience.
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Writer-director Olivier Assayas' latest film, set in Paris' literary world, is a "mostly delightful, occasionally exhaustingly word-drunk comedy of manners larded with giddy farce."
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Two sisters (Lily James, Tessa Thompson) struggle to navigate the opioid crisis in their small town. Nia DaCosta's first film is a "quietly feminist thriller" that's "modest but intensely empathetic."
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This charming musical fable about a teenage girl (Elle Fanning) who competes on a UK singing competition doesn't cover much new ground, but Fanning's terrific.
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The debut feature of documentary filmmaker Kent Jones paints a loving but clear-eyed portrait of an older woman (Mary Kay Place) enabling her grown, addict son (Jake Lacy).
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A beautiful, headstrong young woman (Juli Jakab) interrogates her past even as Budapest prepares to crumble; director Laszlo Nemes depicts "the soil in which fascism takes root" with cool dispassion.
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Two cousins (Jessie Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård) hatch a scheme to speed financial trading with a new fiber-optic cable in this " likably cheeky but rambling and overstuffed" comedy.