To The Distant Observer: Form and meaning in the Japanese cinema, Noël Burch Burch aims to do something akin to Bordwell/Thompson/Staiger in The Classical Hollywood Cinema, namely, a…
Dark Water (dir. Hideo Nakata, 2002) – As horror films go, this is good. It’s about the terror, not about the gore. Pretty clearly by the same director who did…
Nashville (dir. Robert Altman, 1975) – Amazing how much you can forget about a film in five days. Nashville came across as so much more scathing this time around than…
The Double Life of Véronique (1991, dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski) – A film that continues to challenge and provoke. Struck this time around by the very immanent nature of Kieslowski’s transcendence.…
Shohei Imamura undoubtedly constructed the film Vengeance Is Mine precisely so that many critics would take a variety of readings on it. The Freudian reading is easy enough, and the…
It had been too long since a Kurosawa viewing, and certainly too long since a first-time viewing. Hadn’t seen the alternately titled I Live In Fear or Record of a…
An Education (2008, dir. Lone Scherfig) – Everyone seemed to love this one when it came out, and not without good reason. The positioning is what’s interesting about this one:…
Saw this one the other week at the Stanford Theatre during the wonderful Kurosawa run (which is not yet over). First time to have seen it in 35mm, which was…
So good, and, as old faithful Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto insists, not simply a sequel to Yojimbo! Rather, a totally different film in tone and style; different in kind and not just…
Gilda (dir. Charles Vidor, 1946): The tagline read, “Was there ever a woman like Gilda?” Indeed. Upon a more recent viewing of this long-been favorite, it appears much less textbook…
My introduction to the “noodle Western” genre was a most satisfying one. Tampopo is especially rewarding to the viewer who’s been blessed enough to watch John Ford films, then Kurosawa’s…
