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. -
In A.J. Eaton's documentary, Crosby proves a "passionate, wry, often bellicose" storyteller who "often seems to be writing his own self-lacerating obituary." -
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. -
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. -
Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin) directs Joaquin Phoenix in this violent, strident and repetitive tale about a man who sets out to rescue a kidnapped girl. -
A Southern town, a heapin' helpin' of heartbreak, a shot at redemption and an adorable tyke: Writer-director Bethany Ashton Wolf's romantic drama never complicates or deepens its rote story. -
Emmanuelle Bercot's sympathetic drama follows a young man who encounters a variety of well-meaning allies, including a judge played by Catherine Deneuve. -
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. -
The coming-of-age drama about a black teenager in a poor Paris suburb takes some unexpected turns, but struggles to define why they progress as they do. -
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.
