Email Author Ella Taylor

Awards

• 2009 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published July 10, 2008

  "Was Roman Polanski a Pedophile"

• 2009 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published July 24, 2008

  "Waugh adn Remembrance"

• 2009 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published December 25, 2008

  "From Reverence to Rape"

• 2009 - National Entertainment Journalism Awards/LA Press Club, published September 11, 2008

  "The Women: Ladies Night"

• 2009 - National Entertainment Journalism Awards/LA Press Club, published December 11, 2008

  "Doubt Wags the Finger of Moral Relativism"

• 2009 - National Entertainment Journalism Awards/LA Press Club, published July 10, 2008

  "Was Roman Polanski a Pedophile"

• 2009 - National Entertainment Journalism Awards/LA Press Club, published July 24, 2008

  "Waugh and Remembrance"

• 2009 - National Entertainment Journalism Awards/LA Press Club, published December 25, 2008

  "From Reverence to Rape"

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2008 Stories by Ella Taylor

• Ping Pong Playa

  published September 3, 2008

  Documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu takes a breather from chronicling heavy-duty outsider artists (In the Realms of the Unreal) and... More >>

• Penélope Cruz and Ben Kingsley in Elegy

  published August 5, 2008

  It's May-December time again, and for an aging dude who scores one of the ripest young lovelies in cinema (Penélope Cruz), Ben Kingsley... More >>

• Frozen River Lays It On Thick

  published July 29, 2008

  When I heard that Quentin Tarantino handed the Grand Jury Prize for best feature to Courtney Hunt's Frozen River at this year's Sundance... More >>

• Sixty Six Comes of Age Jewish in 1960s England

  published July 29, 2008

  Aside from the occasional Yiddish-spewing East End gangster, Anglo-Jewish life has evolved largely off the radar of British national cinema.... More >>

• Even When It's Ripping Off Juno and The Hills, American Teen Is Fascinating

  published July 23, 2008

  Notwithstanding all the pundit-driven hot air about the horrors of being young in today’s America, I’m willing to buy the argument that... More >>

• Julian Jarrold's Brideshead Revisited

  published July 23, 2008

  Making notes in 1949 for a review of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited , George Orwell wrote that “Waugh is about as good a novelist... More >>

• Mamma Mia! Drains the Fun Out of ABBA

  published July 16, 2008

  I've always enjoyed ABBA—not in that post-hoc, so-bad-it’s good hip way, but innocently, the way I like Phil Spector. To this day,... More >>

• Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired's Dizzying Leaps to Judgment

  published July 9, 2008

  Along its winding road to crucifying the American judiciary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired—which aired to mostly warm reviews on... More >>

• Tell No One Twists Away

  published July 2, 2008

  François Cluzet, who looks like Daniel Auteuil and runs like Dustin Hoffman, simmers beautifully as a Paris pediatrician who, eight... More >>

• We Are Together: Wincing Through Tears

  published July 2, 2008

  What's not to weep over in the latest documentary about the virulent spread of AIDS through the African continent? Film-school graduate Paul... More >>

• Finding Amanda's Honest Heartbreak

  published June 24, 2008

  Drop a gambler into Las Vegas and of course he'll lose his shirt, but the how and why of it remain under-explored even after—dare I say... More >>

• Kit Kittredge: As American as Overpriced Dolls

  published June 17, 2008

  To my 10-year-old daughter, the term "American Girl" means "that store my meanie of a mom—unlike all the other, higher-quality... More >>

• Brick Lane's Immigrant Song

  published June 17, 2008

  Bracket the fact that it's an adaptation of Monica Ali's great big treat of a 2003 novel about displacement and feminine emancipation, and... More >>

• Mike Myers in The Love Guru

  published June 17, 2008

  Mike Myers likes ice hockey. He also likes Deepak Chopra, a little bit too much. So he pulled together a bit of hockey and a whole lot of Chopra... More >>

• Love Comes Lately: Singing Singer

  published June 10, 2008

  The mercurial spirit and gnomic intellect of Isaac Bashevis Singer are properly difficult to trap in a bottle, but German director Jan... More >>

• The Minor Pleasures of When Did You Last See Your Father?

  published June 3, 2008

  Directed by Anand Tucker with the same intelligent tact he brought to Hilary and Jackie, and cleanly adapted by David Nicholls from a... More >>

• Messing With You Don't Mess With the Zohan

  published June 3, 2008

  In a passable Israeli accent, outsize codpiece, and a new and improved bod, Adam Sandler's Zohan, a Mossad super-heavy, is every Jewish nerd's... More >>

• Kung Fu Panda's Small Mercies

  published June 3, 2008

  By all means, gather up the little ones and take them to this perfectly pleasant, very good-looking, modestly funny, dispiritingly unoriginal... More >>

• Sex and the City: Plotless and Pointless

  published May 27, 2008

  Oh, please—spoiler alert? Fine, I won't tell you whether Carrie Bradshaw ties the knot with Mr. Big, even though you've already seen that... More >>

• The Unknown Woman (La Sconosciuta): Paradiso Lost

  published May 27, 2008

  Remember Giuseppe Tornatore, who made the overrated but harmlessly cute Cinema Paradiso, about the grumpy projectionist who made him the... More >>

• The Children of Huang Shi: Epic Bore

  published May 20, 2008

  Loath though I am to carp about any director who's devoted chunks of his career to bringing the non-white world's suffering to Western attention,... More >>

• My Father, My Lord's Spiritual Crisis

  published May 13, 2008

  Like Amos Gitai's 1999 Kadosh, Israeli writer-director David Volach's first feature has scores to settle with Ultra-Orthodox Judaism,... More >>

• Reprise: A Beautiful Riff

  published May 13, 2008

  Joachim Trier's dazzlingly kinetic tale of two aspiring Norwegian cult novelists is bounded by fantasies of what might have become of the... More >>

• Prince Caspian Loses Some Magic

  published May 13, 2008

  “Things never happen the same way twice.” Thus boometh Aslan the lion (Liam Neeson), alias the Son of God, popping his... More >>

• Surfwise: An Alt-Family Portrait

  published May 6, 2008

  Halfway through Surfwise, a mesmerizingly ambivalent documentary about an itinerant family of Jewish surfer-dude health nuts, we meet... More >>