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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A small Alaskan community is left reeling by an act of violence. Jamie M. Dagg's thriller tenderly explores its aftermath without the glib, jokey cynicism that so often marks the noir genre. -
Critic Ella Taylor says Kenneth Branagh's wildly unnecessary retread of the Agatha Christie tale is "fatally tepid." -
In this Richard Linklater dramedy, three Vietnam War veterans "embark on an endlessly digressive road trip at once uproarious and rife with detours of the soul." -
Two male farmhands in Yorkshire find each other in this "full-throttle, grand love story and ... coming-of-age parable" from first-time writer-director Francis Lee. -
Using aerial photography and intimate, one-on-one interviews to document the plight of migrants in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, artist Ai Weiwei's documentary is grim but vital. -
In this "intelligently talky, properly claustrophobic chamber piece,' Rooney Mara plays a woman who confronts the man who sexually abused her when she was a girl. -
Judi Dench returns to the role of Queen Victoria — this time in her dotage — for Stephen Frears' film about the monarch's eyebrow-raising friendship with a young Indian man (Ali Fazal). -
In Mike White's latest film, Ben Stiller plays a middle-aged man so consumed by envy that he fails to grasp how much his emotionally mature son (Austin Abrams) could teach him. -
The writing/directing debut of Hallie Meyers-Shyer (daughter of Nancy Meyers) features tired tropes, stiff acting and lots of hand-wringing about how tough it is to break into Hollywood. -
Directed and co-written by Gurinder Chadha (who also directed and co-wrote Bend it Like Beckham) this crowd-pleasing, gently revisionist period drama examines the last days of British colonial rule.