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 slyly subversive revisionist take on an infamous Australian outlaw presents the burnished popular myth and a darker, brutal and tragicomic take alongside one another.
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Director Karyn Kusama has a history of films where women fight back. But Destroyer, despite its transformation of Nicole Kidman, fails to develop a compelling story to support that transformation.
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Rams, an Icelandic film that follows two feuding brothers through a crisis and a long winter, is an intense and tender tone piece that conveys deep and bitter loneliness.
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In 2007, filmmaker John Maloof bought thousands of undeveloped negatives at an auction. Now, he and Charlie Siskel present Finding Vivian Maier, a film about the reclusive woman behind the photos.
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Any Day Now, set against the backdrop of the 1970s, tells the story of a gay couple's fight to adopt a neglected boy with Down syndrome. Director Travis Fine's film lacks technical polish, but critic Ella Taylor says the story's heart makes up for most of its faults.
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Glenn Close plays a quiet woman who takes on a man's identity in order to work and survive in 19th-century Ireland. (Recommended)
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Two years after his father is killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, a 9-year-old boy finds a key that unlocks a family mystery.(Recommended)
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With her steely turn as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Meryl Streep puts the cap on a year that stands out for a raft of movies in which strong women take life on their own terms.
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A big-screen adaptation of John le Carre's classic espionage novel casts Gary Oldman as George Smiley, the spy called back from retirement to unearth a traitor in his own agency. (Recommended)
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Filmmaker Cyril Tuschi turns in a muscular, visually arresting docu-thriller about the Russian oil billionaire brought low after Vladimir Putin's government charged him with tax fraud. (Recommended)