The Slipperiness of Beginnings I‘m pretty steeped in long form, why it works and how to increase effect. There is the assumption in long form, that you can contain some structure that by itself matters, and in doing so fits into the larger narratives that surround...
A mother lives quietly with her son. One day, a girl is brutally killed, and the boy is charged with the murder. Now, it's his mother's mission to prove him innocent.
Torque Sheer Most storytellers want to take you somewhere into the soul, but all they have to work with is the externalities, the actions of humans. You don’t have many strategies to work with. A common one is to place the examined soul in the midst...
A spell of time in the life of a family in rural Tochigi prefecture. Yoshiko is not an ordinary housewife, instead working on an animated film project. Uncle Ayano, a successful music producer, is looking to get his head together after living in Tokyo. Meanwhile, Sachiko is concerned with why she seems to be followed by a giant version of herself. As the lazy days pass by, each member of the family is followed in a series of episodic vignettes.
Running Toward Touch It must be me. It seems that only Japanese filmmakers are able to find that light world where everything seems incidental, but every motion has cosmic force. So very many of these succeed. And again, we have a simple family who we observe, but...
A study of an amoral and sleazy defense lawyer who suddenly tries to "go straight" when he finds out that his tart wife is cheating on him; as well as the similarities he has in life with one of his clients.
See Evil, Do Ambitious Evil I usually seek out detective movies from the early 30s because this is before the film narrative found short cuts and experimentation was the norm. After ‘Kane,‘ the narrative stance changed, and while novel forms got more radical, they are harder...
Po is now living his dream as The Dragon Warrior, protecting the Valley of Peace alongside his friends and fellow kung fu masters, The Furious Five - Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper and Monkey. But Po’s new life of awesomeness is threatened by the emergence of a formidable villain, who plans to use a secret, unstoppable weapon to conquer China and destroy kung fu. It is up to Po and The Furious Five to journey across China to face this threat and vanquish it. But how can Po stop a weapon that can stop kung fu? He must look to his past and uncover the secrets of his mysterious origins; only then will he be able to unlock the strength he needs to succeed.
Seeing Inside I’ve been in China for a month, discovering calligraphic cinematic principles. I had a chance to see this film while there and note two remarkable aspects. The first is that while this is wholly an American film in its obsession with fathers, character sculpting and...
Chelsea is an in-demand call girl whose $2,000 an hour price tag allows her to live in New York's lap of luxury. Besides her beauty and sexual skill, Chelsea offers her clients companionship and conversation, or, as she dubs it, "the girlfriend experience." With her successful business and a devoted, live-in boyfriend, Chelsea thinks she has it made... until a new client rocks her world.
Risks of Borrowed Eyes Soderbergh satisfies because he is fearless in a way that Herzog could never be. Herzog goes toward danger in order to capture experiences, but he relies on cinematic methods and narratives models that are safe. Indeed, he never innovates or experiments here....
After a vicious attack leaves him brain-damaged and broke, Mark Hogancamp seeks recovery in "Marwencol", a 1/6th scale World War II-era town he creates in his backyard.
Exposed Cathouse Tortures I saw this with a science documentary that bothered me because instead of giving us the worthwhile narrative of the actual events, it invented a narrative of ‘discovery‘ that was bogus and which occluded the cool stuff. This film settled me because it is...
A well known Parisian inspector becomes involved in an investigation while on holiday.
Woman-defined Identity I was never a champion of Chabrol, but I am amazed at what he left as his last film. The film is superficially framed as a detective story but as it progresses it slowly turns inside out as it becomes a discovery about the...
A group of students investigates a series of mysterious bear killings, but learns that there are much more dangerous things going on. They start to follow a mysterious hunter, learning that he is actually a troll hunter.
Petrified and Exploding Legacy Wow. This is yet another folding of a movie being made into the movie we see, but with the deliberate dissonance of ‘Blair Witch.‘ The game in such things is to play off the difference among layers. Blair did that well, I think. It...
A teenager named Noriko Shimabara runs away from her family in Toyokawa, to meet Kumiko, the leader of an Internet BBS, Haikyo.com. She becomes involved with Kumiko's family circle, which grows darker after the mass suicide of 54 high school girls.
The Magical Inbetweens Magical spaces in Hispanically influenced films are easy to locate. We as viewers find it easy to place ourselves there it seems natural. Only Medem challenges. There are three similarly structured magical traditions in modern Japanese films, and I find them tantalising, sometimes difficult,...
