Almost plotless, The Perfect Days does not break new grounds, but actor Kōji Yakusho shines bright, making the result a heart-warming tribute to Tokyo.
Category: World Cinema
“The Teachers’ Lounge” Review
An Academy Award-nominee brews a storm in a cup of tea.
“Anatomy of a Fall” Review
An intelligent, nuanced, attentive and very much focused courtroom drama with some remarkable performances.
“The Beasts” Review
The Beasts is a film of palpable tensions and unwavering conviction, showing that enmity can be subtle and insidious.
“Song of the Exile” Review
Song of the Exile [1990] – ★★★★ Such recent popular films as Past Lives (2023) and Return to Seoul (2022) may be all about the themes of national and cultural identity, immigrant experience and making peace with the past, presenting these topics movingly and convincingly, but more than three decades before, Hong Kong director Ann…
“A Simple Life” Review
A Simple Life [2011] – ★★★★ We will all grow old one day, or maybe are already, but have we ever wondered what our last years will really be like? We all want to believe that our sunset years will be comfortable and surrounded by the people we love, but loneliness among the elderly is…
Short Reviews: Utama (2022), & There Will Be No Leave Today (1958)
Utama [2022] – ★★★1/2 Everything seems close to extinction in this film: a place, a mode of life, a language (Quechua), and maybe even the film itself, with its slow pace which may now be compared unfavourably with the recent popular trend of fast-paced, genre-bending flicks. Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s debut film Utama follows an elderly…
“Godland” Review
Godland [2022] – ★★★★ “To get back up to the shining world from there/My guide and I went into that hidden tunnel,/And Following its path we took no care/To rest, but climbed: he first, then I-so far/, through a round aperture I saw appear/Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears/, Where we came forth, and…
“The Widow of Saint-Pierre” Review
Patrice Leconte (1947-) is a French director and writer known for such films as The Girl on the Bridge (1999) and Man on the Train (2002). Much underrated, he is also the one who directed a historical drama-comedy and Academy Award-nominee Ridicule (1996), as well as an outrageous, black humour-suffused animation The Suicide Shop (2012)….
“The Return of Martin Guerre” Review
The Return of Martin Guerre [1982] – ★★★★ From Hitchcock’s Vertigo [1958] to Mangold’s Identity [2003], there is nothing like a film that makes the audience question the identity of a character, and The Return of Martin Guerre is not only one of those interestingly-premised films, but it is also one based on a legend from…
“Height” Review
Height [1957] – ★★★★ Italo Calvino, an Italian writer, said that “a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” If we apply this quote to a film, then Height may be one of these classics, too. Based on a novel of 1952 by Evgeny Vorobyov, Height is a…
“White Material” Review
White Material [2009] – ★★★★1/2 White Material is set in one unspecified French colonial African country, and follows Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert), an owner of a large coffee plantation. Well-known to the area, Maria lives on the estate with her ex-husband Andre (Christopher Lambert), her ex-husband’s father Henri and grown-up son Manuel. However, there are…
“Titane” Review
Titane [2021] – ★★★★ 🔥 Titane hypnotises and mystifies as it repels and shocks, delivering not only a story, but also “an experience”. Titane is the second feature film of French director Julia Ducournau (Raw (2017)) and the Palme d’Or winner of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. The film is not for the faint of…
“Wings” Review
Wings [1966] – ★★★★★ Larisa Shepitko was a Soviet film-maker who made only four full-length films (her film Ascent won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival 1977) before her untimely death in a car accident at the age of 41 in 1979. Shepitko’s film Wings tells the story of a decorated…
The “Home Sweet Home” Blogathon: Nowhere in Africa (2001)
Nowhere in Africa [2001] – ★★★★1/2 When I heard about The Home Sweet Home Blogathon, I knew I had to participate. Homes and families have always been such an important theme in films, and it is one of my favourite topics. I previously talked about the meaning of homes in my post “Housing Films: 99…
“Death of a Cyclist” Review
Death of a Cyclist (Muerte de un ciclista) [1955] – ★★★★ Death of a Cyclist is a Spanish-language film that was the winner of the FIPRESCI Award at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. Directed by Juan Antonio Bardem (Main Street (1956)), this social realist film tells of a couple of secret, privileged lovers residing in Madrid who…
Short Reviews: Raise the Red Lantern (1991), Quiz Show (1994), & Close-Up (1990)
I. Raise the Red Lantern [1991] – ★★★★★ Chinese director Zhang Yimou tells in this film, based on the novel Wives and Concubines by Su Tong, the story of a beautiful nineteen-year-old ex-university student Songlian (Gong Li) who decides to become a concubine in the 1920s China. After her decision, Songlian finds herself in the…
“Departures” Review
Departures [2008] – ★★★★1/2 Departures is the Japanese winner of the 2009 Academy Award in the category of the Best Foreign Language Picture. Loosely based on a memoir by Shinmon Aoki titled Coffinman: The Journal of a Buddhist Mortician, it tells the story of Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), an ex-cellist who comes to his home…
“Parasite” Review
Parasite [2019] – ★★★★★ Parasite or Gisaengchung is a South Korean dark comedy-thriller from Bong Joon-ho (Okja ((2017)) that won the grandest award at the Cannes Film Festival 2019 – Palme d’Or. And, a well-deserved win, too, since this film must be seen to be believed. In Parasite, the Kim family, consisting of a mother,…
“Museo” Review
Museo (Museum) [2018] – ★★★ This heist movie is by Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios (Güeros (2014)), starring Gael Garcia Bernal (No (2012), The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)) and Leonardo Ortizgris (Güeros). Loosely based on a real story, the film won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlin International Film Festival 2018, and is about…
Spotlight on Film 