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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Adapted by scripter Christopher Hampton from a Doris Lessing novella, the sand-and-surfy soap Adore centers on two Aussie friends (Robin Wright, Naomi Watts) who get into all kinds of trouble with each other's adolescent sons. Critic Ella Taylor says ... well, she pretty much says "Harrumph." -
Two former lovers find themselves on an accused terrorist's legal team in a surveillance-state thriller that goes a little too far to be credible — at least, that is, if it's really meant as a caution against the excesses of a security-obsessed Establishment. -
Co-workers in a Chicago brewery teeter on the edge of romance in this mumblecore-ish film starring Olivia Wilde (Thirteen from House M.D.). Even a trip to Costa Rica and copious amounts of beer can't animate a rambling plot. -
The comedy Austenland rightly pokes fun at Americans' ideas about the British, says critic Ella Taylor. She says the line between high and low culture in England has always been a bit hazy. -
The only virtues of this lumbering farce are those of the much livelier novel from which it's adapted. Critic Ella Taylor says an affectionate needle in the side of the Jane Austen industry — and the hordes of Darcy-mad Americans it caters to — has become a clunky, tone-deaf broadside. -
Glenn Close plays a quiet woman who takes on a man's identity in order to work and survive in 19th-century Ireland. (Recommended) -
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) -
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. -
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) -
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)
